The Game Changer - Believing Big

In real life, we all have our mission impossibles.

And some of us here have one that is very much on our mind and our heart.

No.

Sometimes it's a financial seems like it's impossible.

It can be marital, very deeply personal, private, but very, very deeply important to us.

Because for some of us there's a mission impossible and some of what we got work out in our marriage and it hasn't worked out yet.

Some of us have a child or a grandchild who right now it's no TV series, it's a real deal.

Because we got some young person in our family that we're concerned about.

At this point, we might consider the mission impossible.

There might be some medical things happening.

I don't know what's going on in everybody's life here.

Or maybe your mission impossible has a name.

It's a person.

You're like Ralph.

Ralph is my mission impossible.

As far as I know, I don't think there's a Ralph here.

So I think we're okay with that. that uh that's my middle name I'm offended but but there's there's there's uh some sometimes we have a mi an impossible person in our life it might be a situation in church it might be that right now Your workload, just the responsibilities you have, are out of control.

Or again, maybe somebody you love was out of control.

That maybe a conflict.

That just seems like it has never been resolved, never gonna be resolved.

It's a mission impossible.

It's a problem that will not be solved.

A lot of us, if you don't have one, stay tuned.

You will get one These are the really big challenges of our life.

The good news about Mission Impossible is it sets the stage for the most amazing things God does.

Because God does the most amazing things when you have a mission impossible.

So I hope this weekend we'll build hope and build anticipation As we look at one of the more obscure books of the Bible that has become life-changing for me.

That will show us the six steps to take to have a supernatural outcome in any area of our life.

And it's going to be, I think, pretty exciting.

By the way, anytime in the next few minutes, if you want to do this, I would love to have you do it.

If you are a texter, now I turned off my phone, so I'm working against my very idea here, but if you are a if you text. .

And with text, . and Rick, can you give me a number or a what are we if you text my mission impossible right now is don't put your name with it, just put my and put however you want to express it and send it to this and then we'll we'll have them up on the screen without any names attached in the next few minutes.

But uh my mission impossible.

It might be good to know some of what some of us in this room are dealing with right now.

My mission my personal uh challenge that's bigger than my resources to change it right now is.

Now As we start to move toward a study in a fascinating, actually a couple books of the Bible, because they're interrelated, let me describe the times in which this story is set See if this sounds familiar at all.

It's a time when everything was changing.

It's a time when sin appeared to be winning.

And it was a time when God's people were asleep.

Nothing like our generation.

But maybe you can at least sympathize with that time.

Now you you look at our own I mean right now you talk about everything changing going to the doctor is changing.

I spent all afternoon trying to sign up for my affordable health care and I Uh it said uh see you this time next year.

So I'm gonna come back next year and see what happens.

Uh no, I'm only kidding.

No, no, it didn't, it was they said actually six months.

But going to the doctor is changing.

Going to the bank is changing.

Going to school. is changing.

You look at the acts of violence this very week.

It's almost like every day.

It's a new one every day.

Our kids are going our the world in which they are trying to navigate life.

This is out of control.

I mean who would want to live in that who would have to be like to make the decisions they have to make with the pressures they have to face right now and so little support around them?

The boundaries, boundaries are moving like crazy.

And very quickly.

Finance is the financial world.

Who wants to make any predictions about where that's going to go?

So I mean so much is changing.

Just like in the days we're going to look at right here.

Back in the old days of making maps before they had explored a lot of the world, they used to put three Latin words on the map.

Hip sunt dragonus.

Hip sunt draconus meant Here lie dragons.

And what it was was all the unexplored areas, you get up to a line on the map and they didn't know what was beyond there, so they drew dragons.

Why would any explorer go anywhere?

I mean it's like I'm not going there.

It would say, here lie dragons beyond this.

Well man, we have got a lot of, you know, that kind of new territory that we hicks Dragonas.

Looks like the dragons are out there.

And now also they were living in a time when Sin was winning.

And we'll be you'll get the whole picture as we go over the weekend.

But take my word for it as we get into this, you'll see Sin was winning.

Sin was winning big time.

Among God's people.

Yeah, oh, not in a nasty world.

I mean, among God's people, sin was winning.

I heard one commentator say this past week that never in the history of the world Has the morality of a nation changed so far so fast It has changed.

Have there been civilizations worse off?

Yes.

Has any civilization, any nation changed their morals as quickly and as rapidly and as radically as we have?

They said, never in history has it changed so fast.

And many people have the feeling sin is winning.

Oh, and God's people are sleeping.

Well, I probably don't have to comment on that too much But the good news, the good news is, what we're about to study was that God was stirring.

God was stirring on the in the middle of this, all this darkness, the sun was about to come up.

Even though nobody could they thought the night was going to be forever.

Maybe like in your life.

Maybe it's been dark for quite a while.

But it might just be for right before sunrise.

In the Chronicles of Narnia, as C.

S.

Lewis wrote about a mythical land called Narnia where the animals spoke, and there was a Christ figure, a lion figure named Asalon.

And you don't see him much, but he's always in the background and occasionally in the foreground, and he changes everything.

And it's very dark because the white witch has. has taken over Narnia and it's always winter and it's never spring and it's a terrible, violent, cold place to live.

And and uh Mr. and Mrs.

Beaver who talk, and by the way, if one of the animals in your room does that, you need really need more sleep.

But but if the but the beavers tell it was okay in Narnia, the beavers And they talked to the children who who were in Narnia, that's part of the story, and they said, boy, this is kind of scary of what's going on here.

And they said, but listen, listen, Aslan is on the move.

He's the Christ figure.

And you don't see him, and you may not see it right now, but the lion, the king who is the lion Aslan, he's on the move.

And that's what was going on in the story, with sin winning, and with darkness everywhere and everything changing and God's people sleeping.

Aslan was on the move.

Now, you know where we're going?

One of your favorite books of the Bible, the book of Ezra.

Right?

In fact, why don't we just take a minute and each of us quote two of our favorite memory verses from the book of Ezra.

You ready?

Go.

Who's gonna be first?

If you had one, I would be amazed.

Because we just don't know.

This book is kind of there.

Ezra.

I usually joke about it.

I'll say I'm going to be speaking on predestination in the book of Ezra, you know, and everybody's like, oh, sounds really good.

I don't joke about it anymore.

Maybe predestination, but not Ezra.

Because this book, it's a little, you see in your notes, and you should be in your notes by now because we'll probably use the book at this point.

The little travel book of Ezra, it's a mirror of our times.

And the good news is it's got a heavy dose of hope, man.

It's got a heavy dose of hope for every need in this room.

I'm gonna give you, you gotta have, I know you may have hated history, you may have flunked history, but this is God's history, so you need to know this.

Here's what's been going on. 70 years prior to the Book of Ezra beginning, the Jews, because of persistent rebellion against God and rejecting his messengers and closing your ears going, la la la la la la la, whenever a messenger came from God God levels everything.

He allows Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian Empire.

To come and some of you saw the Bible series and you saw this.

I mean, they portrayed it very violently, but he came in, and I mean, God's temple is rubble, it's a pile of rocks.

God's city is gone It is nothing.

And then all so many of their people and their best, their best and brightest especially, were taken to Babylon.

And so a whole generation, now this is 70 years ago.

So a whole generation has died, and a whole generation has grown up there in this pagan land.

It's all they know.

They've never seen, they've never seen the Holy Land.

They've never seen God's temple.

They've only heard tell about the city of God And so 70 years has passed, the world has changed dramatically in that period of time.

When Nebuchadnezzar came in and leveled everything Jewish.

Babylon ruled the world.

Some of you may remember there was a later king named Belshazzar And you remember the handwriting on the wall, he was having his drunken feast there with the gold goblets from the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had hauled away and uh and and God says you're gonna be you're gonna be judged you're gonna have to be your how file you're in the balances waiting the balances found wanting while they were having that banquet the Persian army was digging a tunnel underneath the wall into Babylon And in the middle of the party, they came in, killed Belshazar that night, and there was no longer the Babylonian Empire.

Overnight it was the Persian Empire.

So the world has changed completely.

Now the whole new gang is in charge.

So it in and and their homeland is hopelessly devastated.

There's nothing to go back to, and if they did go back there, and it looks like they'll never go back.

It really does look like they'll never go back.

Because the word on the street among all these kings is that the Jews are rebels and they don't pay taxes, and you don't want them to have a city, you don't want them to get back in power, because they're just trouble.

Those Jews are trouble.

So it looks like it's never going to happen.

And if they went back, there's nothing to go back to.

The only thing they go back to is a pile of rocks and people who don't want them back there and certainly don't want the Jews having any city or any temple again The people that are in the land are hate the Jews and hate everything about their God.

So they simply do not want to see them back there.

Other than that, it's a pretty optimistic situation.

And then the ground starts to shake.

Welcome to the book of Ezra.

And let me uh and I will pose these questions.

Do you know a family that's too broken to fix?

There is no such thing.

You watch.

Is there church too broken to fix?

There is no such thing.

You watch.

Is there an addiction too powerful to break?

No such thing.

Is there a country beyond hope?

No such thing Is there a person who will never change?

Are they hopeless?

Uh-uh.

There's no such thing as hopeless, it says in your notes, it's never too late, and it's never too hard We're going to go to the book of Ezra and I'll show you why.

But first of all, let's take a look at the long night.

2 Chronicles, let's begin to hit God's word, 2 Chronicles 36.

By the way, the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles, anybody know who wrote it?

Bible quiz here.

Ezra.

Ezra wrote the this history of 1 and 2nd Chronicles.

So you got Ezra who didn't just write the book that has his name on it, but he also wrote the history that preceded it Here we go.

This is as as Babylon is closing in.

The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent to them persistently by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling places, warned over and over again.

But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, scoffing at his prophets, till the wrath of the Lord was against his people, till there was no remedy, there was no healing.

God does reach the end of his rope and said, I've done all I can do without turning up the heat majorly.

They kept mocking, he brought up against them the key notice, he brought up against them.

God rules in human affairs He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, speared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged.

God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar.

He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large.

Imagine what an abomination this would be to the Jews, that all this holy stuff that only the priests could touch.

He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, the treasures of the Lord's temple, the treasures of the king and his officials.

I gotta think that Ezra is weeping as he writes this.

This is tearing his heart out to read the write this history.

They set fire to God's temple.

They broke down the wall of Jerusalem, they burned all the palaces, and destroyed everything of value there.

This is just an awful, awful picture.

Mission impossible who could ever imagine That anything would rise from this rubble.

Now we go to Ezra 1-1, which is the next thing you read in the Bible In the first year, and I'm going to ask you to read out loud with me a couple words, by the way, don't forget the texture of Mission Impossible if you haven't.

In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia.

In order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, and I want you to read the next three words with me The Lord moved.

No, no, no.

I want you to shout those words with me.

You ready?

The Lord moved.

And that's when everything changes Everything is about to change because of three words, three little words.

The Lord moved.

God says it's time.

It's time.

And when I move, everything moves.

And you're about to see how that happens.

So the sunrise is coming, the Lord moves.

Now, as we move into the book of Ezra, and I hate to do this to you, but I have to give you a little context.

We only need to do this once.

And then you'll go, oh, I get it now, because you won't see it as you're reading the book.

Here's what's happening.

And if you go to pages seven and eight in your notebook, I think it's pages seven and eight, I think you'll see something there called Ezra story.

Is that right?

Is that pages seven and eight?

Eight and nine?

Something like that?

What is that?

Pages eight and nine?

Okay.

Bottom of eight and nine.

Okay.

And you see Ezra 's story, just real quick, so you get the you know we'll fit everything into this as we go along.

I wish we didn't have to do the history, but it's the only way it'll make sense to you.

First of all, we're not gonna look at all the dates, that's not so important.

There's there's three waves coming back.

Three waves coming back to Israel The first wave is led by a guy named Zerubbable.

I'm not quite sure why his mother named him that or what his nickname would have been.

The guy Zerubbable reminds me I this is my sick little brain, but when I was a kid there was a show called Zorro And I just remember he would put a z into a Z, marking everything with the Z.

And I don't, I just picture Jirabbable going around Jerusalem doing with that.

I don't know.

It's just My sick little brain.

But anyway, I just call him Mr.

Z for short.

But Zerubbabel and Jeshua, who was then the high priest, they lead this and they bring almost 50,000 Jews back.

Because King Cyrus has said they could.

He wants them to do this.

It's amazing how that happened.

Okay.

Their mission in Wave 1 is to rebuild God's temple.

That's where they're going to start.

They're not going to put the walls back up.

They're not going to put the gates back up.

They're not going to rebuild the city.

One thing God's going to put up, his temple goes first.

So their job is to rebuild God's temple.

That's the first six chapters of Ezra.

Now, here's the crazy part of it.

They work on it for two years and then they stop for 17.

Why?

You'll find that out before the weekend's over.

Because we're in that story of why for 17 years they stopped doing what God sent them back.

Pull them out of Babylon to do.

You'll see.

At that time, I guess, Persia, but okay.

Then so they stopped for 17 years.

They got two preachers that are sent to them.

They wrote books of the Bible.

Haggai and Zechariah.

They hang out there, and when you read their books, and we're going to look at their books a little bit, because you in order to get the story, you got to figure that God has two messengers he sends that is the wake-up call to his people.

You'll learn a little bit of Haggai and Zechariah.

You some of the stuff Haggai writes.

You can read it tonight.

It's a short book of the Bible.

A couple chapters.

If you can find it.

Use your index.

Haggai He's got stuff he wrote in others like did he just read does he did he just read the newspaper?

Has he been hanging out in our churches?

Holy moment, how does he know?

It's so relevant you can't believe it.

Well, we'll see what he had to say to God's people back then.

Now, they finally get the temple done.

Took some about 20-some years, but they finally get it, most of which is not doing it.

And then 58 years go by.

Ezra is not around yet.

He wrote the book, but he's not he's not there.

The guys, the main men are Zerubel and and uh uh Jeshua.

Now there's a second return.

Now 58 years later, so probably those guys have died.

So 58 years later, Ezra comes.

Ezra is a priest.

And Ezra brings back just a small group.

He brings back about 1,700 people.

You can see that.

Their mission is not to restore God's temple.

God's temple is done.

Now he's going to restore God's people.

By the way, when I say God's in the business of doing big things and believing big, there's two kinds of big things he does.

One, he does a big thing to change your situation.

Other times what he does, he doesn't change your situation.

He dramatically changes you.

Those are both big things he does You might believe in be believing him for a big change in your situation.

And he's like, no, the situation is for a purpose, is to do something big in new.

So first they change it God does change the situation in a sense they got the temple back now he changes the people okay now there's a 13-year little gap there and the book of Nehemiah If you know your Old Testament books, Ezra Nehemiah.

Well, guess what happens?

There's a third return.

Guess who's the bad man?

Nehemiah, who works for the king of Persia.

Ezra's still around.

Ezra's still around.

We're gonna see him in the book of Nehemiah.

He's still around, at least for part of the book of Nehemiah.

And the mission there is to restore God's city.

They do the gates, the walls.

This whole process takes about a hundred years.

So Pardon me for the history lesson, but you'll you'll thank me for Lulla.

Where's this all fit?

So we're gonna we got the Zerrebal Joshua chapter and we got the Ezra chapter and a little bit of the Nehemiah chapter.

Somewhere in there you'll see in your history the book of Esther comes in and Esther's the queen of Persia, but that's a whole other story and we're not studying her book.

Okay.

Now, you there?

And wait, wake up, slap somebody next to you, make sure they're still awake after the history, okay?

Good.

Now, now we're ready to dig in The book of Ezra, here we go, six steps to supernatural outcome.

Step number one, step number one is to embrace the plan, embracing God's plan.

There is a plan going on that nobody could have guessed, nobody could have seen, and and this is Revelation number one, basically, for embracing God's plan.

The interventions of God Change everything.

It only takes God stepping in, the Lord moving, and an impossible, long-thought, hopeless situation changes the Lord moved.

So you gotta know the Lord moved.

The interventions of God change everything.

Here's I if you could walk away this weekend with this, it will change the way you live your everyday.

With God, there is always something bigger going on than what you can see.

We're gonna have a couple examples shortly There's oh here's the situation you're in.

Believe me, that's not even begin to be the whole story.

God has got something bigger going on.

I see Karen with pneumonia this weekend.

But I have learned watching my God work that that's part of something bigger going on.

I don't know what the bigger is, but I know there is.

I know there's something so whatever's going on is a piece Is a window of a much bigger thing God is doing.

So the fact you're here this weekend, no accident, this is nothing random here this weekend.

There's a reason for each of you to be here.

And it is part of, this is a weekend in your life, but it is part of something bigger God is up to.

And we won't have that all figured out this weekend, but the thing is, every day you gotta wake up and go, I am not just part of this situation, there's a big thing going on.

In Ephesians 1. 11, we get the panoramic scope of things where it says, in him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything. in conformity with the purpose of his will.

God's working on something here.

He's got a big plan.

My job is to wake up in the morning and go, this is the day the Lord has made.

This is not the day the doctor has made.

This is not the day the economy has made.

This is not the day the government has made.

This Is not the day my family has made This is not the day your boss has made.

This is the day the Lord has made.

There's he you have God-designed days.

I will rejoice and be glad then.

Pardon me so uh many of you have heard me tell this before, but it it it just it's it to me it's been so helpful.

Um years ago Kofi Annan was made uh Secretary General of the United Nations because he was one of the world's great negotiators in hotspots.

And when they asked him why he had been so successful as a negotiator and bringing people to the table, he said, when I was a boy in a British school, he said one day our teacher, we walked in and our teacher had to speak chart up there had a black dot he'd drawn on it.

He said, boys, what do you see?

Well we all see a little black dot.

He said, that's really funny.

I see a big white canvas with one little black dot on it.

Is that what you see is the black dot See, I don't know.

We're always we're like we're looking we're always looking at our little I like you got your dot right now.

Whatever you're in the middle of, whatever you left when you came here, you'll look at your little dot God says I've got to set a little dot on a big canvas.

Don't make your decisions based on a little dot.

So there's a big canvas.

God has always got something bigger going on.

Get that in your mind.

Get that in your soul.

There's something bigger going on than what you can see.

Now, nine times in the book of Ezra, God has called this title, the God of heaven.

He's called the God of Heaven 27 times.

In the Old Testament, five times Daniel, four times in Nehemiah, and you know who calls him that in the book in the book of Eshra?

Three times, three different pagan kings.

Call not their God, not the God of Persia , the God of the Jews.

They call him the God of heaven.

They know who the big God is So they're like we know that we don't make the final decisions.

There's a God in heaven who decides what goes on on earth.

Three pagan kings call him a God of heaven.

Now, I uh there's some of you who've been around a long time, and you know what?

Uh can you guys bring me my uh Little notepad over there, because I uh I left some cards there.

I gotta read you this great quote from uh Dr.

Alan Redpath.

I think it might be over by you, Doug.

A little leather pad there.

I tell you what color it is, but I'm colorblind And I've got, yeah you go, thank you.

This is see I told you without caring here, I'm a mess.

So that's right.

See pants, shirt, yeah, okay, good.

Um Everything important.

Dr.

Alan Redpath used to be the pastor of Moody Church, and he said this.

Listen to this.

I read this to Karen yesterday.

There is nothing, no circumstance, no trouble, no testing that can ever touch me until first of all has gone past God and gone past Christ right through to me.

If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose.

It has come with a great purpose which I may not understand at the moment.

But as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose, a blessing to my own heart, No sorrow will ever disturb me, no trial will ever disarm me, no circumstance will cause me to fret.

For I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is.

And that is the rest of victory.

Well, that that's what they're going to find out in in Ezra 's day, that there's something bigger going on than all the things that they can see in front of them.

There was a man named Jeffrey Sitzer who back in 1996 lost his wife, his mother, and his young daughter in a car accident.

Imagine, that's a lot of loss at one time.

Any one of those would be losing a mother, losing a daughter, losing a wife.

He lost all three.

He later wrote a book called The Grace Revealed, How God Redeems the Story of Your Life.

Our R.

Ingleswings team members, who you will get to know this weekend, know about that, how God redeems the story of your life.

Listen to what he said.

Even this tragic event does not stand on its own or exist unto itself.

It is part of a larger story.

In that moment I have no idea how that is for me to discover in the future.

For now, in the painful silence, it is enough to know there is a story. out there.

That can make sense of my own.

But it is not merely a story.

It is the story Bethany Hamilton, many remember, was on her way to become one of the world's great surfers.

Had her arm, lost her arm to a shark.

And uh she people have been amazed at how she handled it.

At the time, her father said she sees this as an opportunity that has been handed to her by God.

What She believes that her arm was taken by the shark so that she would be um uh just a second.

Um all of a sudden the print got small.

Um that she would be noticed and that she would help and inspire others.

She said I might not be here if I hadn't asked for God's help.

I look at everything that's happened as part of God's plan for my life.

And since then, as you know, there's been a movie called Soul Surfer.

It's affected many lives.

Bethany Hamilton suspected far more lives without her arm than she could have with it.

She said, there's a plan here.

There's a plan here.

Well, embracing God's plan is the first step to the supernatural.

You'll miss it if you don't.

By the way, Rick, have we been able to take a look at those those, let's look at some of those texts and see what some of what we're dealing with, some of the grid that some of us are hearing these messages through.

Legal, mission impossible.

Jeff and Joe, no doubt loved ones.

Life-threatening illness.

We've prayed for Jeff and Jill, actually.

A life-threatening illness.

Wow.

Getting all my bills paid Mission impossible, an unbelieving friend.

Easy to give up on them when they've rejected you so many times.

And business and colleague.

Patience with myself.

I'm the mission impossible.

Patient with my growth.

And those two words at the bottom are some of the saddest, aren't they?

Lost child.

Family health decisions.

This is what we're hearing these messages through in the room right now.

Hard relationships that are getting harder.

My child and her battles with friends.

Getting into the right career.

Wow, a lot of you texted.

Two nieces living with a mentally ill mother, stuck in a life of poverty, finances, and spirit.

Several years of broken relationships with our son and daughter-in-law.

We don't know our grandchildren.

Re-establishing my marriage with Christ in the center.

Our marriage, a son completely healed of traumatic brain injury, including anger.

Our other son surrendering his life to God.

A lot of burdens in the room, huh?

We brought a lot of burdens with us.

Let me stop and pray right now.

Lord, there's a lot of Weight and emotion.

These are names, these are these are not just texts with little answers.

These are burdens that people have come with, Lord.

I can only ask you that way beyond any capacity I have to speak your love and your perspective on that situation.

I cannot do that, but I ask you to do that in Jesus' name.

I would ask you that every person, whether they shared a burden or not, would take these burdens that are God-sized way beyond my ability to handle.

And I pray, Lord, that they would leave her with hope, practical steps to take, ways to pray, and a new expectancy For you led me to talk this weekend on what happens when the Lord moves.

And we believe we cannot see it, but you are on the move.

And we pray that is the case in every one of these situations.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Woof!

Now, here's something you need to remember Write this down.

It's not in your notes.

You got to remember the difference between a chapter and a book.

Remember the difference between a chapter and a book.

You are in a chapter right now.

This is not the whole book, baby.

And many a book with a happy ending has many dark chapters in it You do not know the end of this story yet, unless you decide to write the last chapter right now and not stick around for the rest of the book.

Because God has something bigger going on here.

You ain't seen it all yet.

So don't get lost in the chapter.

Get through the chapter.

And there may be a couple other ugly chapters.

But this ain't the book As long as there's breath, there's hope.

Now, since God is doing something bigger, and when the Lord moves, everything moves, and we're going to see how that happened in the book of Ezra in just a minute.

Look at look at your notes.

You should never decide based on human capacity, human capability, or human calculations.

Well, I don't see how the numbers add up here Uh-huh.

Yours.

And then there's miracle math.

Remember the feeding of the 5,000?

Philip says, okay, five loaves, two fish, five thousand people, we get everybody a chrome?

Jesus, they've been here for three days.

You talk forever.

Man, we got all these hungry people.

We're gonna have a food riot.

This is in the Greek.

It's not you don't see it in the English.

And so , but you don't decide based on human calculations because there's the God factor.

You can't calculate what God's gonna do.

You can't just say, well, our capacity is this, so what your capacity is Our human capability.

So what?

Is that the deciding factor here?

No.

We have the omni-god.

Remember?

He's omni, omni, omni, he's omnipotent, he's omnipresent.

He's omniscient, he knows everything.

I have an African-American pastor acquaintance.

He says my mama can't even pronounce omnipresence.

She just says God is so big everywhere he goes he keeps bumping into himself.

Well that's right.

That's pretty.

I'll take that over with the what they taught me Moody.

I like that definition That's pretty cool.

So omnipresent.

He's omni all these things.

He's got the top of the puzzle box.

You got the pieces.

He's got the top of the box.

He's putting something together.

Don't get confused just because you don't have the top of the box.

Look what he did with Joseph.

Oh, let's look at Daniel.

Daniel who saw kingdoms change, three different kingdom changes in his lifetime.

He says, God does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.

No one can hold back his hand.

No one can say to him, What have you done?

Nobody can, including the most powerful men on earth who Daniel worked for.

You think about Joseph.

Joseph's thrown in a pit.

Now, is that the whole story?

Oh, for heaven's sake, God has a huge thing he's doing.

So, this caravan that comes to take you want to write the end of this story?

And so Joseph, promising young man, is carried to Egypt and sold at a slave auction and lives unhappily ever after.

Oh no, no, no.

See, the caravan taking him to the slave auction was a vehicle to his destiny That that caravan was taking him to a destiny.

Who could have written that story?

He's gonna go from the pit to the pyramids.

He's gonna become the second most powerful man on earth, starting in a pit.

That pit is a launching pad for a story no one could have believed.

Those evil brothers, the bad boys, are the hands of God They think we're done with you.

All you're doing is setting them up to be in a position to save thousands of lives one day.

Oh my goodness.

That's your God.

He's always doing something bigger.

So don't try to contain God's lightning in your little bottle.

He is working outside that bottle.

I want Doug to tell you a story real quick.

Of how what you see in front of you is part of a story you could not write.

And starts with probably worst news that our son and daughter-in-law ever got.

Yeah, I I would have heard those words Uh eight years ago, God is always up to something bigger.

And man nodded my head and said, Amen.

And I believe that.

But then uh something happened.

About this time eight years ago, some of y'all were actually here and probably probably prayed with us about this time about eight years ago.

We were told that our son, Taylor, who was uh about two months away from being born at the last moment uh at a regular checkup, a doctor caught something, he said, I don't think it's anything, but go have this checked out.

Well as it turned out it was uh Taylor had several large holes in his heart along with some other big uh problems that were cardiac related.

And We got I don't know if Taylor's in here.

Okay, he's not right now, so I can tell I mean they were real honest with us and said this is basically potentially a a a death sentence.

This is very rare.

His heart when he's born is the size of a nickel.

And he'd have to have open heart surgery and we'd have all these things we had to fix.

And uh and it was the darkest time of my life.

I was wrecked.

I was wrecked I mean I had I had plans for my son.

I had plans for him.

Um I already loved them.

I already loved them.

We named him after uh Hudson Taylor, our favorite missionary.

Uh but and I'll tell you, if you've ever been in that situation where it was someone you loved in life and death, you know what I mean when That those nice scriptures on the walls b start to become promises that you cry out to God and say, Did you mean it?

Do you mean that?

Because I I I'm I I gotta choose to believe you.

And and when worship songs become more than these neat songs that we sing together in church, but these for me, these intense moments of Dependent desperation.

I I remember driving back and forth to town, it was a long drive with my wife Anna and us just Singing at the top of our lungs, my my heart will choose to say, Blessed be the name of the Lord.

And just trusting God and trusting God.

What we couldn't have known then.

Well we uh as as dad said, uh you know for for mom it's she's got pneumonia this week.

Uh for us it was these doctors' visits, and that was all we could see.

But what we couldn't know was that God had initiated a plan here.

That while we were hearing this potential death sentence for our son, God had initiated a plan That would end up, as of now, filling God-sized holes of a hundred thousand young people on the internet with his love We found out we couldn't live in Hopi.

We went back.

We lived on the Hopi Indian Reservation for about 11 years.

We went back and uh The elevation was too high for Taylor to live at.

It was life or death.

They said he can't live there anymore.

You need to get out of there.

Now it was turning blue.

It was it was horrible So we ended up, we prayed about it.

We ended up in Arkansas.

It's a long cool story, but with uh with RHM.

And what what we had to do in Hopi, my brother Brad and I were was really learn how to reach hard-to-reach hearts there for young people.

They um The Hope Young people just were so there's such a long history of bad things happening in the name of Jesus and and so indoctrinated against Jesus specifically by their parents That we had to find ways to get past all that stuff and and enter into their life and their experience so that so that they would understand who Jesus was.

Well I brought that to along with Brad to Arkansas here.

And we just said, you know, I wonder wonder what would happen if we Uh, took all the things that we learned to do to reach hard to reach hearts on the Hopi reservation and and married those things.

Great art, great technology, and the gospel and put them all together and got them online and got them in on uh social communities online and put them on the internet and beautiful films and I wonder what would happen Uh in the last three years RHM has glory to God and and to a great team, not me.

But God's given me the ability the the chance to lead this great team.

Uh in the last three years we've seen more people come to Christ with through RHM than in the 17 years combined prior and and it's not even close.

Um we have a video we made where it's just a straight gospel presentation and I think two point two million people now have have watched it and and over a hundred thousand uh young people have have indicated that they prayed with us to receive Jesus um just by taking what we learned in Hopi and and bringing it here.

To Arkansas.

Um a hundred thousand hearts with holes in them too.

That God was planning to fill with Jesus while we were hearing about the holes in the heart of our son.

Uh there 's it's a longer story, but um when he intervenes, and I can tell you this in so many areas of my life.

When he intervenes, fasten your seat belt because he is working out for the good, to the good, for those, everything for those that love him You know, and there are other testimonies in this room like that.

Can you believe that about your current situation?

Can you believe that the God is doing something bigger than you can see?

And the interventions of God change everything.

Now fasten your seatbelt, because I want to give you a A couple more of the revelations come out of the book of Ezra about embracing God's plan.

That's this.

The plan of God covers everything.

As it starts to unfold, there's nothing God doesn't think of.

2 Samuel 22, 31.

Look at this.

Read this out loud with me, just the first sentence.

As for God, his way is perfect.

Whoa!

And when I make a plan, there's all kinds of loose ends, things I didn't think of.

I'm like, oh no, I wouldn't know that was I should have thought of that.

God doesn't ever do that.

When God does it, everything works.

That's how you know it's God.

Let me just show you how it worked in the book of Ezra.

Let's look at uh first of all chapter one of the book of Ezra opens by saying that Cyrus says, the Lord, see, the God of heaven, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has charged me to build him a pagan king, to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah, which another king had had torn down 70 years before.

Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem.

I can't believe this.

The king of of the world here basically who's running things, says, Go to back there and build his temple.

What And let him go up to Jerusalem and Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord.

It won't be a temple for his God, but rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel, in Jerusalem.

And then he goes, I've been watching these people.

I think he is God.

Now, in any place where a survivor of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews sojourns, let the men of that place, I want you guys to cough up some money to help them.

He's like I'm you can he's doing a little fundraising on behalf of the this effort here.

Let the men of that place assist him with silver and gold, goods and beasts, besides free will offerings.

He didn't just give them permission.

He's like, oh yeah, come up with a way to They've got stuff they're gonna need besides free will offerings.

What is this?

It's like a Baptist pastor.

Besides free will offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.

This is incredible.

Now notice this When God is doing it, the doors open.

First of all, doors open.

Whoever is the doorkeeper, whoever's the guy who has to open the doors to give you permission, he doesn't have to be a believer.

God says, when it's mine, when I want to move, the doors are gonna open The guy who opens the door will open a door.

Okay.

Secondly, look at chapter 6, verse 22.

This is a testimony that they give a little later.

For seven days they celebrated.

They're back there.

They've dedicated the temple now The Lord had filled them with joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria so that he assisted them on the in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel.

They had a guy who was standing in their way.

When God moves, doors open and hearts open.

Hearts that were closed open.

God says it's time.

It's time.

This guy was in your way.

I'm changing his heart.

That's it.

Here's the third thing that happens.

Ezra chapter 1.

We already saw a little bit of this And I'm only you see other verses here, but you see all the neighbors assisted and loaded them up with what they were going to need in resources.

Wallets open.

Wallets are open.

When God's doing it, doors open, hearts open, wallets open.

When the Lord moves Everything it covers everything.

Pastor went to his congregation, he said, I have some bad news and some good news and some and some bad news for you.

The bad news is the roof on the church is shot.

We've got to replace it.

That's gonna cost some money Good news is that we have the money.

Hey, man.

The bad news is it's in your wallets.

It's the best offering appeal I ever heard And to some extent that is true in America.

It takes missionaries three years to get to the field while people are dying there because they can't raise their support.

What's going on here?

Haggai, one of the two preachers that God sent to this generation back then?

Haggai 2, verse 8, look at what it says.

Notice who owns what here.

The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord Almighty.

What are you doing sitting on his stuff?

Somebody's sitting on his stuff.

Because of all the work in the world that is waiting on the money to get it done.

So God says, I have all the resources, but.

He opens hearts to open wallets.

And the leaders step up.

Look at.

Now we've got to have leaders too, right?

When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, the people assembled as one man in Jerusalem.

And uh and uh because the gracious hand of our God was on us, let me tell you the situation.

This is when Ezra comes back in that second wave.

He didn't have any priests.

They've been in Babylon for 70 years.

They didn't have priests.

He's like, if we don't have any priests, we got the temple.

We don't got the priests.

What are we going to do?

Look at this.

They brought us because of the gracious hand, they brought us Sherobiah, a capable man.

They went out and God says, I know where some sons of Levi are.

I know where I can, and he knows some other guys who could be priests They're from the right tribe, they're from the right heritage, they're from the sons.

So God raises up the leaders.

He says, okay, you need leaders for this effort?

I got exactly what you need.

Isn't that fantastic?

It's all there.

As for God, his way is perfect.

By the way, God had a power alliance back then back then and it is the same power alliance he uses to get his work done today.

When they went back the first wave with 50,000 Jews, there were two guys that were the key.

Zerubbabel, Zoro, and Zerubbabel?

And Jeshua.

Zerabbabel was a prince.

He was the descendant of the last king of Israel before the Babylonians leveled him.

If you look in the line of Jesus, he is in the genealogy of Jesus.

He's in the messianic line.

Zerebal is.

And Jeshua is the religious guy.

He's the spiritual leader You know who the you know what you know what it took to get this thing done?

It took a manager and a minister.

Isn't that interesting?

You had a manager, Zerubable He's the make-it-happen guy.

And you got the you got the minister who's the make-it God's guy.

It's like one guy makes it happen, the other guy makes sure it's his what's happening.

Do you know I just have to tell you this a little bias I have?

I am sick and tired of people who are lay people being considered second-class citizens in the work of God.

Sitting on the sidelines writing checks for the real play people who play the game.

Let me tell you, that's not how God looks at it.

It's just a little rant of mine.

I'll get it over with pretty quickly.

I believe that God wants you got a zerubbable, it takes a zerubable as well as a Jeshua to get the job done.

And some of you who say, well, I'm not really a minister type, I'm really not a Bible teacher type, I really can't explain all that, but you have other gifts that can and ought to be actively harnessed in the work of God. because business people know how to make things happen better sometimes than ministry people do.

They know how to network, they know how to plan, they know how to finance.

And those of you who are in business, don't just be using that for your business.

Get involved in, I've had some seen some amazing things that business people have done in their communities.

Because they were reservables.

They were princes in what they do who harnessed that to lead a work of God.

So that's a my rant's over.

Okay, back to where we were.

Now, here's the great supernatural variable in every story.

God changing hearts.

We read about this, how God changed the heart of Cyrus, he changed the heart of the king of Assyria.

What you can't plan on, and you see the references, we won't look them up right now, but you can't, this is the thing you can't plan.

God's going to change a heart.

And changing that heart will change everything.

Everything will move.

Some of you, that's the miracle you're counting on.

God is, if he was a doctor, he'd be a cardiologist, he'd be a heart surgeon.

He promised the prophet Ezekiel, I will take the heart of stone and I will replace it with the heart of flesh.

And put my spirit in you.

Ezekiel 26, 36, 26, a good prayer to pray for somebody you know who needs a change of heart or a marriage that needs a change of heart.

You know how to tell it's God?

Everything's moving.

And it happens, bam, suddenly.

Here's a third revelation about embracing God's plan.

The path of God is lit by the promises of God.

The path of God is lit by the promises of God.

I gotta take you to Ezra 1-1.

Notice, we skipped over it at the beginning.

Now I'm going to ask you to read some other words out loud.

In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, read these next words.

Loud.

In order to fulfill the word of the Lord.

That's the part you need to get.

Do you know why everything was moving?

Because God had a promise to keep.

He made it 70 years before.

And we'll look at it in a minute, but he had promised something to Jeremiah through Jeremiah.

God is a promise-keeper.

Martin Luther said, not to me personally, but Martin Luther said this, and uh here we go.

He says, God does not deal, nor has he ever dealt with men, otherwise than through a word of promise.

We in turn cannot deal with God otherwise than through faith in his promise.

He does not desire works, nor does he need them.

God has need that we consider him faithful in his promises and patiently persist in this belief.

Promise and faith must necessarily go together, for without the promise there's nothing to believe.

While without our faith, the promise is useless, since it is established and fulfilled through faith.

Okay, just write this down.

It's in your notes.

Here's how you live the plan of God.

You live the plan when you make your choices based on the promise.

You do not make your choices based on your situation or what you can figure out.

You say what did God promise, and you make your decision based on a promise.

That's the truest truth there is.

You live the plan when you make your choice based on the promises.

Abraham being an example in Romans chapter 4.

Against all hope.

You in that situation?

That looks like it ain't never gonna change.

Against all hope.

Abraham and hope believed.

So he became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, So shall your offspring be.

You're gonna have kids.

Let's go on.

Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact he's realistic.

He's like, we got an impossible situation here.

I'm not I'm not just not pie in the sky.

I know my body's as good as dead.

Guys like me don't have babies.

I don't make babies.

Guys like Sarah don't have ma have babies.

Since she was about 100 years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead.

Yet, situation, mission impossible.

Yet, he did not waver through unbelief Regarding what?

Regarding what?

Regarding what?

The promise of God.

That was his truth.

But the promise of God.

He was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.

He made a little mistake along the way, but man, he still believed for that son, being fully persuaded.

Being fully persuaded.

Are you fully persuaded?

God has power to do what he has promised.

Just become an expert on the promises of God, believe me.

Don't dwell on the problem, don't dwell on the pressures, don't dwell on the people, you dwell on the promise.

There's a little girl a few years ago.

Remember the movie The Perfect Storm?

When that storm came up the East Coast, there was a hurricane that married uh uh uh and several storms and it was horrible.

It also hit the east coast, uh all along up the east coast, including the Jersey coast.

And uh uh a guy was out with a six-year-old daughter and he hadn't consulted the weather.

I had good friends who were sailors and they always consulted the weather.

I don't know why he didn't.

He didn't consult the weather.

The storm was not apparent when they went out He was out about six miles out when the storm hit them, capsized the boat, the life jackets floated away with the boat.

He and his little girl are in the water.

In this pretty violent time.

He says, honey, you say remember I taught you the pool at home?

How to float on your back?

I want you daddy wants you to float on your back and I'm going to swim for help.

Six miles.

I'm going to swim for help.

She says, okay, Daddy, and does what she learned in the swimming pool back home.

Well he got a ways But obviously he wasn't going to make it the whole way, but thankfully Coast Guard ship saw him picked him up.

Five hours after he leaves his daughter.

They shine the spotlight on the water where he thinks it might be, and there she is, floating on her back.

Later they said, little girl, what how how did you do that?

What were you doing?

She said, well , I did what my daddy told me to do Because she said, my daddy said he would come back if I did.

And my daddy always does.

What he says he will do.

My daddy always does what he says he will do The path of God is lit by the promises of God, and you plant both your feet on a promise and don't move.

However bleak the storm looks.

Finally, don't you love those words?

Of course Paul said that and then wrote two more chapters.

I won't.

This is the bottom line from what we saw in Ezra tonight.

The work of God is all God's work.

You said, duh.

Not so duh.

We don't always act like that.

The work of God is all God's work.

When he says it's time.

It's gonna happen.

Galatians chapter 4, verses 3 and 4 say, When we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world, but when the time Had fully come, the King James Version says, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

They'd waited for a Messiah, they'd given up on a Messiah, but it wasn't time.

When the time had fully come, He does.

He comes.

Our little um dear Chinese granddaughter, Jenna, Rick and Lisa's little girl adopted from an orphanage in China.

She's about three years old.

She loves it, even then she still does.

She loves to get dressed up, loves to dress pretty, loves to be pretty.

And um And Jenna, I think, uh, they were looking, she and Lisa were looking through uh pictures of a wedding that had just been at their church.

And um, of course, she saw the bride. you know, looking the best she probably ever was gonna look.

And um and she said uh she said mommy look at her and she said well honey that's okay she said you know someday Someday you're going to meet a man who loves Jesus and and one day you'll marry him and you'll have a wedding and you'll get to be all dressed up like that.

She said, how about next Sunday?

No, no, no, Jenna wouldn't really be a good idea to do it this next Sunday.

Let's let's wait.

There's a couple things that ought to happen before that.

You're three years old, all right?

Um so It wasn't it's not the right time.

And some of us were like, uh God, how about right now?

Huh?

How about right now?

Now would be a really good time, wouldn't it?

He goes, yeah, you think so.

But I make everything beautiful in its time.

That's Ecclesiastes chapter 3 and verse 11 says he makes everything beautiful in its time Now here's what you can do.

You have two choices.

You can wait for a full term or you can have a premium.

What do you want to have Do you want to rush this?

Do you want to say God's taking too long?

I think I gotta make it happen.

We gotta make it happen, people in this room.

That's why you've been successful.

You're gonna make it happen person.

You gonna try to make this happen?

Fine, you'll have a premi.

Premiums don't always make it.

Premies aren't nearly as healthy as full-term.

Why don't you wait till this baby's full term?

Oh, what needless pain we bear.

All because we do not carry.

Everything to God in prayer.

We limit God when we humanize, when we humanize what's got to be supernatural.

I may have told you this.

I don't know if I have, but the other day, uh this in the past year this happened.

Um Doug was out with the family of tailors, by the way, who he told the bus got to have eight years old in a couple weeks And uh thanks to some of you praying for him here, that eight years ago, as he said.

But uh and and uh what happened was that uh Doug was out of the room And uh um Anna came in with Taylor and his little brother Sam, who was a year old.

Sam knows where food is.

He always can identify the food, he's a hatchcraft, he identifies where the food is in the room He also has a tremendous ability to gain access to that which you think a one-year-old would not be able to gain access to.

He has been called Sam the Blamber.

For that reason, he is also a fairly good demolitions expert.

So What happened, I got a picture sent to me.

I got taken on a cell phone.

Here was the picture.

See there was a lemon meringue pie up on a shelf.

No way Sam could reach that.

Anna comes in, has to go to the bathroom.

She leaves the room.

She says, um, she says, Taylor, you're in charge.

Taylor's playing a video game.

Uh I get the picture of a lemon meringue pie next to Sam splattered on the floor and Sam with a fork.

I have no idea how he got the fork.

She's a very this is a hunchcrow boy.

He's very dedicated on the food thing Doug walks in.

First thing Taylor says is, guess what, Daddy?

I'm in charge.

Yeah.

Yeah good.

Hash kid, you wanna own this, baby?

Look at this mess, and I stopped laughing And I said, how many times does God walk in and I go, guess what, Daddy?

I'm in charge.

He goes, I could tell.

Look at this mess you have made while you were in charge.

Yeah, we gotta make it happen because we can't wait for God.

But you realize the work of God is all God's work.

Would you leave this alone?

Zechariah, who was the other preacher boy that was sent to this this generation?

I bet you didn't know this where this this was spoken.

You've heard these words at church, but you bit I bet you didn't know this was part of a sermon to Ezra's generation.

This is the word of the Lord to Zerabbabel, not by might.

Nor by power.

That word in the Hebrew is military might.

You have the it's not about any any method you've got, baby.

It's not about any weapons you've got in going to get this one done Not by power.

That's human ability in the Hebrew means human ability.

Not by your method, not by your ability.

It ain't gonna happen that way.

It's gonna be by my spirit.

Are you ready for it to happen that way?

Because that's the only way it's gonna happen.

Don't you mess this up Zerubabel, you're a good leader, you're a prince, you're royalty, don't you mess this up.

It's gonna be by my spirit.

And here's the wonderful hope-giving promise of the book of Ezra.

I love this, and we'll come back to this our last day.

Ezra stands up and says, he has granted us new life.

To rebuild and repair.

I want you to claim that as a promise for yourself.

God is going to give you new life to rebuild what needs to be rebuilt and repair what needs to be repaired.

It is the promise of the people who stand on the promises of God and realize the work of God is all God's work.

How do you join God in the bigger thing he's doing?

Some of you are obsessive, compulsive people, and if I don't tell you what's here, you'll like come up to me afterwards and go. wait a minute I didn't get my money's worth work was in the blank so let me just do this real quick don't try to produce the promise yourself you can look up the verses for yourself don't try to produce the promise That was tried in the Bible.

Rebecca had been promised that that her younger son, that doesn't happen, her younger son Jacob will get the blessing, not Esau, the older son, which is how it was always done.

Isaac's dying.

Oh no, Isaac's dying.

And Esau 's still got the blessing.

Oh boy.

God promised it.

But I better help God.

I better help God keep his promise.

The guy who gives the blessing is about to die.

And God hasn't done it yet.

Oh gee, I better do something.

So she fakes it and she makes Jacob smell and feel like to a blind, almost blind father, like Esau the hunter And it works.

She deceives Jacob into giving him the blessing.

Yay!

I helped God.

God kept his promise.

A little help for me.

God kept his promise.

No, Rebecca.

No.

No, you have just started a war in the family.

Two brothers who will hate each other.

The boy you love, your favorite Jacob, is gonna have to flee. and be gone for 14 years and you'll be dead before he returns.

You will never see him alive again.

Your doted on son.

And you have made a mess, Rebecca.

Oh yeah, it was the outcome I said.

Yep, Jacob's got the blessing.

Guess what?

Isaac lives 20 more years She looked at the small dot, looked at the situation, said, I'm going to produce the promise.

And ruined it.

I put down here five people who are most likely to mess up the plan of God.

The impatient who can't wait.

The planners who always got a plan.

The persuader who thinks he can talk it done.

The controller, the control freak, who always has to make it happen, and the rigid person who can't flex with God's movement.

They always got to figure out how it's got to be.

Second way, or another way to join God in the bigger thing he's doing is don't stop believing because you're waiting.

You serve a fourth quarter, 11th hour God.

And he often shows up at 1159, believe me.

Which it almost is, so we're almost done.

Thirdly, don't settle for what's expedient instead of what's right.

Don't settle for what's expedient. instead of what's right.

Many times it we do the easy thing, the quick thing, the convenient thing, and we mess up the right thing.

Always decide based on the big picture, not the immediate situation.

Do not decide based on the dot.

Decide based on the canvas.

And make prayer your primary method for getting things done.

Doug told me the other day that, by the way, Taylor prays like no child I know.

Often when I'm gonna speak, Taylor will pray for me first.

I loved your tailor pray because he never prays twice the same.

You know, some because the Lord bless the food, some of us.

Lord, thank you for the world and all our blessings.

Amen.

You never know what Taylor's going to pray.

He prays the most original, beautiful.

He's got something going with Jesus I don't understand fully.

It's a beautiful thing.

Doug says, you know what Dad, you know how Taylor prays?

He says he prays like it's already done.

Like he says, Jesus, thank you for the good dreams I will have tonight.

And thank you that and you know whatever he's praying for, he prays like it it's already done.

And Doug said, I I I was gonna instruct him, and then I went, wait a minute, he's instructing me You know what Jesus said?

Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe you have received it.

You haven't.

Believe you have received it and it will be yours.

Did you get the tense of the verbs?

Believe you have received it and it will be yours.

Taylor taught us all how to pray.

Because we have a God who when he moves, everything moves.

And we ought to believe that you know what where we get peace?

From release.

Release is peace.

And so as I said, I I used to call home sometimes when I was away and I would get a serenade as soon as they as soon as Karen picked up the phone.

You say, it's nice that she sang to you.

No, she didn't sing to me.

Our canary did.

We had a canary named Cherokee.

We're a native work.

Our canary was named Cherokee.

And and when you put the cover on him at night. . .

He shut up.

Didn't say a word.

You said we've had a bird, you know.

Cover him up.

Sorry, she took that cover off in the morning.

He's jumping around the cage.

He's singing this beautiful symphony for you.

And I thought, what a picture of how a child of God should be in the darkest night.

Yeah, we'll go to sleep at night, but we wake up the next morning.

And the cover comes off our cage and our eyes open and we greet a new day.

We say this is the day the Lord has made.

There's a bigger plan going on.

This is part of a great plan from a God when he moves, everything moves I will stand on his promises.

I will believe I am living the plan.

I embrace the plan, not knowing the plan.

That's a key to the supernatural.

You want a supernatural outcome.

You embrace the plan you cannot see.

The old chorus says, God any rivers you think are uncrossable?

Got any mountains you can't tunnel through?

God specializes in things thought impossible.

And he will do what no other can do.

Let's believe that.

Let's pray.

Lord, um it's just such a phenomenal picture here Of how when your people are a mess and the world is changing and sin is winning Suddenly, God moves.

And things start happening.

And hearts open and doors open and wallets open because of a promise you've made.

Just because you had to keep a promise.

And you've got so many promises to keep in your word and you're good for every one of them.

I join David in Psalm 119 and say to you, all your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.

Yes, I do.

Lord, I pray for some people here who need some hope and need some help and needed to know the bigger picture surrounding their currently mission impossible situation.

Lord, we pray for a supernatural breakthrough.

But before you break through in the situation, I pray you break through in their heart.

Do in them what you want to do through the situation.

Then maybe the rest will fall into place.

So we look forward to walking with Zerabbabel and Jeshua and these guys who don't know too well.

Your servant Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah.

We'll take a little walk with them.

These next couple of days to find out how to be a part of a supernatural outcome Thank you, Lord.

Thank you.

You knew who needed to be here and you know why they needed to be here.

I pray for you'd give my friends a well-deserved rest tonight As we awaken to a day that you will have made again tomorrow.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.