Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Beautiful. The name of that song was “show me your face”. Do you remember that song? Oh, it's so good. I just saw that this morning before we started singing. When we look into the face of Jesus, we really see our identity: loved, adored children. I was talking to my grandson, Cooper, yesterday; we were talking about God's love together. I don't know if you ever have any time from 6:45 to 7. Every evening, we are on zoom for 15 minutes some of us gather. Actually, we kind of sometimes just sit quietly before the Lord together, just adoring him. Cooper happened to be on with us. After it, he and I started talking about the love of God. And I said, "Cooper, you know how much I love you?" He said, "Oh yeah, grandma. Like that ouey- gooey love." I said, "God loves us even more than that. It's just so amazing. So help us to keep seeing your face, God, seeing your love.
We have visitors here today. We want to make sure you got a visitor gift. Make sure you got one. If you didn't get one, you can get one from Rachel at the back table when you leave. It’s so good to have Frank and Carol Mascherano here. You should take a gift too. You'll like it.
Brian: They are not old friends, but they are longtime friends.
Jacque: Long-time friends of Hope. And then we just want to make sure that everybody knows that next Sunday we are going to celebrate the life of our friend, John Colthy. At one o'clock, is the visitation time, and at two o'clock, the service begins. John was somebody— I don't know anybody that enjoyed life more than John and brought so much joy to this world. I'm looking right at Sandy. We just want to send him— he is already in heaven, but we are going to send them off with a great celebration. So please come and join us next Sunday.
Brian: Yes, he was full of life. He was full.
Jacque: I knew him since he was a kid and he was crazy, crazy fun.
Brian: Crazy fun. Full of life, full of life. Yesterday we celebrated the life of Jim Uzzell's mom and all the other Uzzell children: 95, Iolene Uzzell; what a wonderful life she lived. Her husband was in the military in World War II and was sent to Japan shortly after the end of the war. Through his exposure to all of the nuclear radiation over there, he contacted cancer. He died at the age of 39. She had six children. She was 37 and she raised six kids, five of them boys. Jim would admit, not the easiest boys to raise. They had quite the reputation around them. Jim was a great wrestler. He took some of that toughness out on a lot of opponents through the years on the wrestling mat. But what a wonderful life she lived; served the Lord faithfully.
There were like six families that came to know the Lord right about the same time back in the earlier days of Souls Harbor. Your mom and dad were one of them and Jim's mom and dad were another couple, Don Nelson who was great missionary to Alaska and there were the [inaudible 41:12], I think, [inaudible 41:14] and Joel Frank Holzer. These are old time names from people at Souls Harbor years ago. I really kind of feel like Hope Community Church has some of that Souls Harbor DNA in us. We were on staff there for 25 years. We are just so thankful for our heritage there and the great things that God did.
Jacque: We were planted out of that church.
Brian: Yes, we were planted out of that church. What a great life that Eileen lived and just the testimony of Jesus. Shortly before she died, she sent a voice message to one of her, I don't know if it was a grandchild or great-grandchild, I can't remember, but it was "when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be." She had her eyes fixed on the prize. I'm just so thankful for that kind of heritage that we have.
I want to encourage you today to continue on because life can get hard sometimes and we can get knocked down. Can't we, Misty? We can get knocked down, and the real issue is not, are we ever going to get knocked down or not? But the issue is, what are we going to do? How are we going to respond to getting knocked down? How are we going to respond to disappointments and setbacks? I would like to begin by reading Ephesians chapter 6, and I'm going to change the portions of scripture.
Jacque: I realized you gave that.
Brian: Okay. All right, so you have that and Jacque—
Jacque: I had to make some phonetic notes for some of the names in the scriptures. I said to Brian, "I've got to tell me how to say these names."
Brian: So anyways, I want to start with Ephesians chapter 6, very well-known portion of scripture, but sometimes we focus so much on— this is a portion of scripture that talks about the armor of God. We focuse so much on the armor; we forget a very important part of this verse. Let's read it.
Jacque: Therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes—
Brian: It doesn't say if the day of evil comes, does it? It says, "So when the day of evil comes."
Jacque: You may be able to stand your ground. And after you've done everything, stand.
Brian: After you've done everything, to stand.
Jacque: Stand firm then, stand; stand, stand. Stand firm then with the belt of truth, buckled around your waist.
Brian: And then it goes on to talk about some of the other aspects of the armor of God. But what I would like to focus on is after you have done everything to stand. Really what this is saying is you get knocked down, what are you supposed to do? Get back up, get back up. It's hard to fight when you are on the ground. It's much easier to fight when you are standing up isn’t it, much better balance, much more mobility, much easier to respond. Sometimes we get blindsided; sometimes we just get hit really hard with something, and it knocks the wind out of us, knocks us down. Maybe our mouthpiece goes flying over here, whatever. Go get it, put it back in your mouth and get up.
Many people give up too easily when things just don't go their way. They just do or when they face some kind of adversity. Instead of persevering, they give into fear or they give into discouragement. They give into that feeling of being overwhelmed. Let's face it; we've all felt those feelings, this feeling of being overwhelmed. We've all felt it. I feel it. I feel it almost regularly at times. But to obtain all the purposes for which we were created, we have to find strength through adversity. We find strength through adversity. You know what? You get stronger when your muscles resist the force against it. That's why I remember the coach of the New York Giants, as they won the Super Bowl, he said, “That's why we lift all those weights.” That's that weight is the resistance. The more that muscle lifts that weight, the stronger that muscle becomes.
And so we get stronger when we resist, we find strength through adversity. The word find, to find actually implies seeking. It implies seeking; it implies working or laboring, being diligent. How many of you realize this? Strength doesn't just come because you can breathe. I've been breathing my whole life and I feel weaker today than I did, like 15, 20 years ago, like Jeff was talking about. My breathing doesn't make me stronger. I have to work my muscles. I have to keep walking. I have to keep exercising. I have to keep persevering.
We may have been knocked down, but you know what? We are not going to stay down. We are not going to stay down; from victory to victory, from victory to victory. There is a place of victory for all of us to live in. The fact is victory doesn't mean that everything that we want to happen will happen. Life isn't that way, is it? The Christian life isn't that way. That's the fantasy life. That's the fantasy life.
The key for us to be successful in life is not that we can somehow find immunity from knockdowns or immunity from disappointments. The key to being successful in life is to always, emphasize, always get back up. Always get back up. You've gotten up a lot during your life, babe. You've gotten up a lot. I've gotten up a lot and you know what, we are still here. We are still here.
Jacque: It is amazing we are still here on this corner. It is. We are still here standing.
Brian: If we learn how to get back up, adversities then can never keep us down. As this scripture says, after we've done everything to stand after we've done everything to stand. We are not going to give up. We are going to keep praying. I love the prayer thing that Jeff has started. Pastor Jeff, it was his idea, just wanting to ask for more of God. I'll be honest with you; I have actually, since we've been praying, what two, three weeks— the time flies so fast. We've been praying just for a few weeks from 6:45 to 7 virtually every night, and all we do is we asked for more of God, more of his presence. I can find his presence. I am sensing his presence more weightily with me; not in a heaviness, but in a strength kind of weight and in a peace kind of weight.
I am expecting greater power to be among us because of the presence of God. I believe that we can keep believing. We can keep on hoping. I would just simply say this to all of you who are here today and those of you who are watching by live stream: if you are wounded, or if you are broken, come to Hope Community. Come to Hope Community Church, and lift up your eyes to receive hope. Hope Community Church was given a prophetic word when we first began. It was like a commission in a sense of part of what we were to be. We were to be a healing center.
There are a lot of wounded people. Obviously, it's wonderful when we can experience the miraculous and physical healing.
I was talking to a gentleman yesterday who has a sister who, when she was born, was diagnosed with a very, very rare blood disease, and she was given 0% chance to live. Everybody that has ever had this disease has died from it, everybody in the whole world. She is still alive today. Her parents prayed. She went to Catherine Coleman’s meetings. She had prayer all the time. She is like the poster child for what could happen with someone who gets this disease. This is the power of prayer. This is the power of hope. This is the power of our God who can come and heal us of our inward sicknesses or diseases. He can heal us over our physical diseases, our spiritual diseases. There is no sin that's so great God can't forgive it. There is no place of fallenness that's too far for God to redeem. And so I'm so thankful today that hope community—
Jacque: Can I say something?
Brian: Yeah. Give me a sec. Hope Community Church is a place that is cultivating this.
Jacque: Absolutely. I wanted to say this because just this morning I was listening to some worship before I came. I think the song is "let the truth be told." I think it is Chris Rice. There is a line in it that speaks to this. The church should look more like a hospital that the wounded and the sick and the hurt would come and they would be healed.
Brian: We've treated church— we have thought of ourselves too much like consumers instead of givers and servers. So we go to a church to consume something. After a season, it's like shopping at the same store and I want to go someplace else. After a few years, you get tired of that store and you go someplace else. God never intended church to be a place of consumerism. He did expect church to be a place where we did receive things, but the receiving is in how we give. The receiving is how we get connected to each other as the body of Christ.
Jacque: And that we love one another, and that we come and we are honest and we are open and we share each other's burdens, and we pray for them.
Brian: So there is hope today. There is hope for the hopeless. We sing that in the worship song: there is hope for the hopeless today. You might feel like your circumstances hopeless. You might feel as though you prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing ever happened or nothing ever changed, and this is just your lot in life. I'm just asking you to ask of God largely because we have a large God. We have a big God that is well able to do abundantly above and beyond what we could ever ask or imagine or think so. I would like you to read a verse from Hebrews about having confidence in God here and what will happen when we put our confidence and trust in God,
Jacque: So do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded.
Brian: How many of you would love to be richly rewarded? I do. I do. And you know what? We are richly rewarded. This scripture says if you and I will keep our confidence in God, we will be richly rewarded. In due season, we shall reap if we faint not. People can put you down on the outside; it's going to happen. It's going to happen all your life, but they can't put you down on the inside. They can't put you down on the inside. We have to learn how to say these things will not get me down. This will not steal my joy. If one door closes, God is going to open up a bigger and better door for me. I remember Misty called us just a few weeks ago. She went to work. She was working really hard, and for some reason they let her go. She called us and said, "Okay, God has got something better." Within like three days or something like this, she had another job making more money.
Jacque: And she is still there.
Brian: And she is still there, right? So the enemy can knock us down, but he can't knock us out. The enemy can knock us down, but he can't knock us out. God will open up a bigger door for us if we just keep our confidence, keeping our confidence in him. I will say this: circumstances can be sad. To me, it's very sad that— my feeling is that we lost John way too soon. That's my feeling. That's my feeling. There are other people that we could say the same. There are things in life that are very sad, but they don't have to cause us to lose our joy. There is a difference between the joy of the Lord and having the emotion of sadness in our hearts.
Sadness is just something we experienced when we have a loss. If you lose a child, if you lose a spouse, if you lose a friend, if you don't feel sad, there is something wrong with you. God made us to have that feeling, but we don't have to lose our joy, and we don't have to lose our purpose. Nobody can make me live with a negative attitude. Nobody can make me live with a negative attitude.
Jacque: We choose that.
Brian: We do that. Nobody can make me feel inferior without my consent. Nobody can make me feel inferior unless I give them the consent to do that. So I want to look at a model here for us today on how we are to respond to disappointments. Last week, I just briefly mentioned this situation with King David. He and his, I think, 600 men were off honoring the Lord, doing the battles, possessing the land, and while they were away from home, a bunch of Amalekites came in and ransack their village, their town and stole their wives, stole the children, stole all of their possessions. So here's the story. We find it in 1 Samuel chapter 30 verses 1 through 6.
Jacque: From the NIV. David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had rated the Negev and Ziklag, and they had attacked Ziklag and burned it and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Ziklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and daughters taken captive. So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep.
Brian: Because they were sad. I mean, this is a very sad thing. If you come home and your children are kidnapped, your wives are kidnapped, your possessions have been stolen, you are not going to have a smile on your face.
Jacque: They probably had no hope that they would get them back.
Brian: They had no hope. They had no hope. They were very sad. They began to weep. They began to mourn. They cried. They cried so hard, they had no more strength left.
Jacque: David's two wives had been captured: Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him. They were angry too.
Brian: Yeah. So here is what they were saying: If we would have been home instead of out doing what you said, God wanted us to do this wouldn't have happened. We would have been here to protect our family. Isn't that our natural response? As soon as something goes wrong, we are looking for somebody to blame instead of the real enemy. Instead of the real enemy to be our focus, we look to someone who is closer to us. And so they blame David and they wanted to stone him.
Jacque: Each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters, but David found strength in the Lord, his God.
Brian: David found strength in the Lord. He turned to God. When we are disappointed, that is where our strength needs to come. Our disappointments always are strengthened when we turn to God. So then we go on to verse 7 and 8.
Jacque: Then David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of a Ahimelek, bring me the ephod. Abiathar brought it to him and David inquired of the Lord.
Brian: Here is what David's going to do: They are in this place of, like what should we do? What do we do? Do we just crawl under a rock and die or are we going to inquire of the Lord? That's what this whole ephod represents. Abiathar was the priest, and David says, "We need to hear from God. We need to hear from God in this disappointment. We need to hear from God in this setback. We need to hear from God in this time that we've been knocked down. And what does God have to say to us? What should we do? What should we do?" And so he inquired. He sought the Lord. He inquired to the Lord, and this is what—
Jacque: Shall I pursue this raiding party. Will I overtake them? "Pursue them." God answered. "You will certainly overtake them and succeed in this rescue."
Brian: So David sought God, and God said, go after them. Sometimes we have to go after what the enemy has stolen. Sometimes we have to go after the enemy. We have to be very intentional about the things that we have lost because of the schemes of the enemy. We see then in verses 9 through 17, this process where David now has 600 men that with him, and he is going to go after these Amalekites.
Jacque: David and the 600 men with him came to the Besor valley where some stayed behind. 200 of them were too exhausted to cross the valley. But David and the other 400 continued the pursuit. They found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David. They gave him water to drink and food to eat, part of a cake of pressed figs and two cakes of raisins. He ate and was revived, for had not eaten any food or drank any water for three days and three nights.
Brian: A couple of interesting things here: Egypt has always kind of represents and sin in the scriptures. They found this Egyptian that was just there by himself, had not eaten or had anything to drink for three days. So David is trying to figure out, well, who is this guy? What's he doing here, et cetera. So this is what happens.
Jacque: David asked him, "Who do you belong to? Where do you come from?" He said, "I am an Egyptian, a slave of an Amalekite."
Brian: So here he was; he was a slave to one of the Amalekites. And what had happened?
Jacque: My master abandoned me when I became ill three days ago. We raided Negev and the Kerethites, some territory, belonging to Judah and the Negev of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag.
Brian: Ziklag was where David's town was, David’s city.
Jacque: David asked him, "Can you lead me down to this rating party?" He answered, "Swear to me before God that you will not kill me or hand me over to my master, and I will take you down to them." He led David down where they were, scattered over the countryside, eating, drinking, and reveling because of the great amount of plunder that they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from Judah.
Brian: Here is what ends up happening: what the unrighteous throw away, God will redeem for his glory. This slave was tossed aside. He was cast aside by the Amalekites. He got sick. Well, let's just leave him out here in the desert to die. Don't take care of him. David and his men come upon him. They revive him. Isn't that what God always does? He brings restitution. He brings a revival. He brings restoration. They brought him, in a sense, back to life, and he led them to the camp where the Amalekites were, where they were going. What the enemy had thrown away, God used to actually defeat the enemy. I find that very interesting here. Finish reading this.
Jacque: So David fought them from dusk until the evening of the next day. None of them got away except for 400 young men who rode off on camels and fled.
Brian: The young guys ran, the old guys couldn't and they were all defeated. So if you are an old guy, you better learn how to fight because running isn’t going to work. Here is an interesting—I liked the line in Don Potter song in the spirit. He said, can there be a real victory without wrestling on a real fight? We are wrestling principalities all through the night, and just by praying all through the night. This is what David did: He began his battle at dusk. He fought all night long until the very next day at dusk, the evening of the next day.
Jacque: All night and all day.
Brian: Yes. And at the end of that 24 hour period, what ended up happening? David recovered, what?
Jacque: Everything.
Brian: Everything let's look at verses 18 and 19.
Jacque: David brought everything back.
Brian: He recovered everything.
Jacque: David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, including his two wives. Nothing was missing younger, old boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. David brought everything back.
Brian: What David did was, after the enemy had stolen everything from him, David inquired of the Lord, he then pursued, he overtook and he recovered all. He inquired of the Lord. He then pursued what had been lost. He overtook the enemy and he recovered all. Instead of sitting around and sulking and mourning and thinking about all that he had lost, David encouraged himself in the Lord.
I was thinking about this. Do you know that I've never been discouraged after going to the Lord? I've never been discouraged after spending time in the presence of the Lord. Sometimes there is a heaviness on me from the battles and from the weariness of just trying to navigate how we should be as a church, and I'll just sit down at the piano and play a praise song, or just spontaneously play something of worship to the Lord. And in just a few short moments, my heart is encouraged. My heart is full of get up. My heart is full of, we can do this; we can do this.
David encouraged himself in the Lord and he put his armor back on, is really what he did, and he brought the attack to the enemy. Oftentimes we sit around waiting for God to change our circumstances, thinking that when God changes my circumstances, then I'll be happy. Or when God changes my circumstances, then I will worship him. I'll have something to worship him about, or when God changes my circumstances, then I'll have a good attitude. But we have a marvelous story in the Book of Acts where it was just the reverse. Paul and Silas didn't wait for the circumstances to change for them to worship the Lord. I would like to read that from acts chapter 16, verses 22 to 26.
Jacque: From the NIV. The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. To think about that. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in stocks.
Brian: It's bad enough that they were beaten. I'm sure they were bruised and probably bloody, and now they have put their feet in stocks. They can't move. They are stretched out. I can't imagine it feeling any worse. You are in the inner most part of the dungeon, the jail. If there was ever a time Paul and Silas could have thought, "Where is God?" it was that time. What did they do about midnight?
Jacque: About midnight.
Brian: And midnight is symbolic of the darkest time of the night, the very darkest time, in a sense, of their lives. The very darkest time of the night, what did they do?
Jacque: Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.
Brian: They were Praying and singing hymns to God. They were worshiping.
Jacque: They were worshiping, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
Brian: You know what, when we are down and we are knocked down and we still have a worshiping heart, others will notice. Others will listen. Others will watch to see, what are they going to do? And this is what was happening. These other prisoners were listening
Jacque: And suddenly— I love the suddenly of God. Suddenly there was a shake, such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose.
Brian: When we worship, do you know what happens? Our chains come loose. Our bondages start to be loosened from us.
Jacque: We are set free.
Brian: We begin to be set free when we will worship, when we will worship. They were in prison on the outside, but on the inside, they were free. On the inside, they were free. They began to worship when they were down. They began to worship when they had been rejected, not only did the magistrates bring this against him, the whole town, the crowd, they were against them because of the preaching of the gospel: this crazy thing about a man being dead and then now he is alive. That's what they were being beaten for. They were rejected and they worshiped when they were rejected. When they were treated unjustly and when they were treated unfairly, they worshiped.
Jacque: And they prayed.
Brian: And they prayed. When they did, their chains fell off, their bondages fell off.
Jacque: And everyone else's too.
Brian: And everybody else's too. And they became free as well as all those around them became free. Obviously the jailer thinks there is been a jailbreak. They are all there though. Paul says, "Don't kill yourself. We are all here." The jailer basically comes in, says, this is a miracle, and he takes Paula Silas to his own house. He takes them to his own house. That's what happens here in Acts 16, verses 29 through 34. We'll read that.
Jacque: The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, “Believe in the Lord, Jesus. And you will be saved, you and your household."
Brian: God is interested in more than just one person; he wants the family. He wants the family saved.
Jacque: Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds. Then immediately, he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole household.
Brian: So God saw them while they were being beaten, and God sees you when you are being knocked down. God sees you when you are being not treated fairly. God sees you when you are being treated unjustly. God saw them when they were being beaten. God saw them when they were put in prison. I really believe that God was waiting to see if they were going to get up on the inside. Were they going to get up on the inside? Were they going to stand up on the inside? And they got up on the inside by their worshiping of the Lord. They got up and worshipped the Lord.
One of my favorite passages of scripture, and it should be all of ours needs to be this: and it came to pass. It didn't come to stay. This came to pass. When you come into an adversity, when you come into a difficult time, when you come into being knocked down, you need to say, “And it came to pass.” It didn't come to stay. It came to pass. Your adversity is not here to stay today. Your disappointment is not here to stay. And of course, we are going to get knocked down. Of course, our faith is going to be tested. Of course, we are going to face adversity, but don't let that blankety-blank screaming voice of the accuser with his annoying personality, take control of your life.
Jacque: Control of our thoughts.
Brian: You can fill whatever you want in the blankety-blanks. Don't let that screaming voice of the accuser with his annoying personality. He is so annoying at times. Don't let him take control of your life. You get up, you get up, you get up and you start worshiping and watch the chains begin to fall off. Watch the chains begin to fall off. We have one more scripture that I would like to read to you. It found in Psalm 51, verse 10, and then we are going to have communion together real quickly.
Jacque: Create in me a pure heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Brian: So David is praying, "Lord, my heart needs to be cleansed every day; create in me a clean heart, oh God," but he didn't want it to end there. He said also renew a steadfast spirit in me. Renew a resolve to never quit. Put in me, Jesus, in my heart, a resolve to never quit a steadfast spirit in me, a resolve to never quit. There is a strength that all of us can find that actually will only come through adversity. It will only come through adversity. There are victories that are only going to be meaningful when they are obtained through something very difficult to come through.
At the end of the day, the strength that we need, God will give to us, if we will worship him, if we will stay steadfast, if we will keep her eyes on the prize, if we will do all we can to stand. I expect every single one of us to get knocked down. I believe in all of you and even all of you who are watching today. I believe in all of you that you have the wherewithal to get up and keep going and keep fighting. Get up, keep going; keep fighting.
Lord, create in me a clean heart, but father, also put in me a steadfast spirit, a spirit that won't quit, a spirit that will say I will never quit. I'm going to labor faithfully for Jesus until the very day I breathe my last, just like Eileen Uzel did; 95, just like your mom. "Do you know the Lord?" she will say to someone. She is 96. “Can I talk to you about Jesus?”
Jacque: She writes letters.
Brian: She writes letters to people, two or three letters a week to people just telling them how good Jesus is. She is in her one little room now in a care facility, hardly has enough strength to actually make it from the chair to the bathroom. She doesn't, but whatever strength she has got, she is using it to fight the enemy and to encourage other people, and she is not going to stay knocked down. And so thank you Lord, today. Thank you God that you can give us the strength; you expect us Lord to do all we can to stand in. Once we just make that little effort, like the prodigal son on his way home, and you ran out to get him; once we just make that effort to start to get up, you pick us up. You lift us up. You want to see if on the inside, we will begin to stand up and as we begin to stand up, you will lift us up, oh God.
And so father, I thank you that Jesus pressed through the most difficult time in his life, in the garden and through his beatings all the way to the cross. I thank you, Jesus, that you modeled for us, and Paul and Silas model for us, and king David model for us, how we are to handle disappointment. There is a get up that you want to have inside of every single one of us. Come on, let's get up. Let's get up. We can do it. We can do it. We can pursue and we can overtake and we can recover all that the enemy has stolen. Maybe the enemy has stolen some years out of your life. Well, why don't we begin to pray that God will add to the years that the locusts and cankerworm have stolen? We can pray that. Hezekiah was told that he was going to die and he went to grab the horns of the altar and said, "Lord, I want to live longer," and God to added 15 more years onto his life.
And so let's not just give in to what the culture says. Let's not just give in to what the analytics say. Let's go to God and let's say I'm going to believe in you, Lord. I'm going to ask largely of you. I'm going to ask largely of you of God, because you are a big God. You are bigger than any mountain. You are bigger than any problem and you are bigger than any enemy in my life. The cross of Jesus Christ and his resurrection is what gives us the victory today. It is what gives us the victory today.
So father, I thank you in Jesus name for your cross, for your blood that you shed. If you don't have a communion emblem— I'm one of them. Paul, if you could bring Jacque and I a couple of communion. If you don't have any community emblems, just raise your hand and we'll make sure that we get you some communion emblems today. Thank you, bud. Thank you.
These are our COVID friendly communion emblems. And so we thank you, Lord. What a wonderful thing. As I said on Good Friday, that the Passover wasn't so much about reflecting on their past. The Passover was a big door that was opened for Israel to go into their future and the cross and communion today should be about us going into our future. What does the future hold for you? What does the future hold for me? For people like Jim whose mom has passed away, he has got a new normal he is going to go into in his life.
What is maybe a new normal for you in your life? What is the future for you that God has for you today? But I know this: because of the broken body of the Lord, we can go into that future hole. We can go into that future with sound mind, and healed. So whatever it is that you really need today for you to go forward in wholeness, let's ask God to do that for us today. Shall we?
Father, I thank you for your broken body that you broke for us. You took the bread and it was emblematic of your body and you broke it. And you said, “This is my body, which is broken for you; eat this in remembrance of me.” Let's eat the bread together, shall we? After he had finished eating the bread, he took the cup and he blessed it. This was very significant because he said, “This cup represents my blood, which is shed for the remission of your sins.” I love that word. I've said it many times here at Hope. I love that word remission. It doesn't mean to cover. It means to eliminate. It means to remove. All of our sins were removed.
Prior to the coming of Christ, sins were forgiven, but they were covered. The word atonement is like a kind of— a word for atonement is covering. Our sins were covered by the blood of the lamb, but they were kind of underneath that cover. But when Jesus came, he removed it all. He removed our sins as far as the east is from the west. There is no memory of them any longer. God has no memory of our sins. The devil remembers our sins and he tries to remind us of our sins. And it hinders us from going forward into what God has for us. But God doesn't remind us of our sins. He doesn't remember our sins. He doesn't hold them against us. So what voice do you want to listen to today? Let's listen to the voice of God who says your sins are removed as far as east is from the west. That's why we drink this cup. That's why we remember so that we would go forward into our future full of excitement and full of freedom with the chains having been broken off of our lives.
And so father, I thank you for the blood that you shed in the life of Jesus. You sent your only son that we could be forgiven, that our sins could be completely wiped, removed as far as the east is from the west. As you met with your disciples on the night that you were betrayed, you took the cup and you lifted it up and you blessed it, and you said, "This is my blood, which is shed for you. Drink this in remembrance of me." And so we drink this together, Jesus, in remembrance of you.
So we bless your holy name today, oh father. There is none righteous like you. You've dressed us in your righteousness, Lord. You've taken our sins and you washed us clean. You removed the unrighteousness in us and put a robe of righteousness on us, Lord. Even though our sins were as dark as scarlet, they are now removed and we are as white as snow. I thank you today, Lord, that we are invited to come into your presence to worship you, and that you've done all that is necessary to reconcile us to you and you've shown us that even though we've been forgiven, the enemy can come in and knock us down, but Lord, you want to see, is there going to be a getup in us.
Lord, we make a covenant to you today: we will get up and we will worship you. We will go to the house of the Lord and we will worship you. We will go into our closets and we will worship you. We will go into our workplaces and we will live a life of worship for you, Lord. While we are driving in our cars, we will worship you, Jesus. May my life be a hymnal of worship to you today, Lord. We give you all the praise and the glory because there is none as worthy as you, oh Lord. There is none as worthy as you. You are the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega.
We thank you, God, that you will call us home one day; what a great family reunion that will be. But until that moment, we will gird ourselves with the armor of God. We will put a belt of truth around our ways. We will have a breastplate of righteousness and a shield of faith. Our feet will be trod with the preparation of the gospel. Lord, we'll put the helmet of salvation on our heads and that, Lord, we will pursue all that the enemy has stolen and redeem it back for your namesake, Lord. And we will love, Lord, as you love. We will commit ourselves to being as you. So I thank you today that there is victory for every single one of us in the darkest parts of our life, and in the one thing that maybe we have been praying for, for years, there is still victory there. We pray that today will be the day for the victory to be won. This, we pray Jesus in your name and for your sake, everybody said, amen. Let's lift our hands, shall we? Stand together.
Now, may the Lord bless you, and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace. May you have a getup in your heart that you've never had before. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Take time to visit with each other.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 4-18-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.