All right, turn in your Bibles to Romans 8. We're gonna get into Romans 8. Just tonight, last week at the 230 service, I preached a message that was unplanned from Psalm 121. And it was really a now word for many of the people in the room.
And it was all about this idea that we, in these seasons of difficulty that we go through as people, just living in our world, our broken world, there's these moments where we wanna get out of a season quickly. We just want, it's like, it's almost like you're in a prison cell of a season and you're trying to shake the cage, right? It's like a message that Katie gave many years ago of just like, get me out of this, get me out of this moment, give me out of this time. And I really believe that the 530 service last week was building off of the 230 service, but the Lord had a different remedy for the restlessness that was in the room of people having these negative circumstances and wanting the season to just be done, right?
And the remedy for us in the 530 service last week was the joy of the Lord is our strength, right? The remedy for the 230 in that same mode was, I need to know that the Lord's gonna be my keeper. I need to know that I'm gonna make it through because he's gonna help me, I just need help, right? And as I think about last week, coming into this week, I felt like the Lord was highlighting this reality of we're in this journey of, many of us are going through valley seasons, going through fires, and then some of us are like having the mountain top experiences, but I'll tell you this, you are gonna go through some type of fire soon.
You're gonna go through some type of valley soon and your circumstances, things aren't gonna get hard at some point in the future, right? Or if that's, I mean, if somehow you escape difficulty for even the next couple years, praise God, but if you escape difficulty, somebody close to you is going to go through it. And we as a people need to understand how do we make sense of it? And usually what I do, if you're like me and you've grown up in the church, maybe you grew up from Word of Faith movement, I did not, but some of you did, and you're like name it, claim it, let's go.
And there's this promise in the scriptures in Romans eight that says that the Lord works for the good of those who love him, right? So are you like me, or you take that, and you're like, well things are horrible right now, but you get ready, things are gonna get good. Cause he always is gonna just flip this thing, and he's got something up his sleeve. I don't, I've preached it.
You know, see, you're going through a hard time, but guess what, God's got something up your sleeve. There's good coming, and we have this idea that, hey, it's bad, but really soon, the Lord is gonna bless me, right? And so what I wanna do is I wanna get into that idea of Romans eight, because I think that what I found is a lot of times there might be like, you're going through a hard time, and then it just gets worse, and then it gets like even worse, and then bad, bad, bad, bad things start happening. And you're going, all right, I'm gonna just try to believe, but really when it comes down to it, you're going, this name and claim it thing, is it working?
I thought there would be a new season by now, and then you have to get confronted with, is the Bible true, do I even believe in God, do I believe God is good? What is this whole thing, right? And there's so many that have actually walked away from the Lord, cause they have this accusation towards God, of like, how dare you? How dare it be difficult for me?
How dare you allow trials in my life? How dare you, and then you read John 1633, and it's like one of the last things that Jesus says to his disciples. He says, in this world, you're going to have trouble with many kinds, lots of kinds of trouble. What a guy.
And then he says this, he says, don't worry though, I've overcome the world. And you're like, good for you, right? I'm so glad that you overcame the world, but I get trouble, right? So how does that work?
That doesn't seem fair. Okay, Romans eight, let's look at it. Romans eight, man, the Lord knows we're weak, so let's start in verse 26. It says Romans eight, 26, are you guys there with me?
Okay, I just want to know, okay, why the heck am I going through this? When is God going to turn it for my good? How is he going to turn it for my good? And I want it to happen now.
Are you, do you feel me? That's what I want. All right, Romans eight, 26. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness.
For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning stu deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of Christ, what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints. According to the will of God. Somebody say, I need somebody to intercede for me.
You don't have to say that whole thing. I just, I need somebody to pray for me. And we know, isn't that great, the spirit of God is praying for you. And we know that for those who love God, here's the promise, all things work together for good.
For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he for knew, he also predestined to be conformed into the image of his son, okay. And or that we might be the firstborn among many brothers. It started dying off because I just felt like it was good. And then he started getting into a different idea.
And I don't know what I think about the next idea. But I loved what he said about he works all things for the good of those who love him. I love that part. Makes me feel so good when I read it.
Take heart, I've overcome the world. I remember it when Katie and I were, we were a young married couple and we got married pretty early and then we had twin girls. Our girls are 14 now. I was at the barber a month ago and this guy walked in, I think he was maybe 20.
And he thought I was in my early twenties. He thought I was like 24 and 25. And I'm like, I've got 14 year old girls, you know? And that's awesome.
But I say that because it's like, we were babies having babies is what we felt, you know? It's like Katie could have been on MTV's 16 pregnant, probably. I never saw the show but I heard about it. All right.
So anyways, we're young, right? We're young. We've got some kids, we've got some toddlers. And we feel like the Lord calls us to move to Colorado.
We go on the word of the Lord and honestly, all of our life was wrapped into this. Like if God says it, we're gonna go, right? And so we've prophetically got this word. We're moving our whole family.
We're packing up the U-Haul and we go to Colorado. And honestly, things just start going downhill. And things start falling apart. We get there, the ministry says, oh, you're here.
You know, like they're surprised. It's like, yeah, I'm here. Just moved like a thousand miles to get here and here. And they're like, oh man, you just missed it.
Like you just missed the opportunity to join staff. You're gonna have to wait six months to actually join staff. So then I go into construction. I'm working at a construction job.
We're just kind of in the season of isolation. I have a little bit of family, but it's, it's, I mean, we've got twins that are three months old and they won't sleep, you know? And so low on sleep, there's, I'm literally, you guys, Katie's finding me like, no, I'm hallucinating because I have so little sleep. I'll just say that, I won't give you the details.
But I'm like, not in my right mind, okay? It's nothing weird, it's just like funny. So I'm, listen, I know I have to say it, okay. Katie will like look over at me like in the middle of the night.
It's like midnight, you know, we went to bed three hours ago and she sees me and I'm just like burping. But it's not a, it's not a baby. You know, I'm burping a candle right next to her. Okay, she finds candles in the crib.
I'll swaddled up. Like, I don't know when this happened, but there's a candle in the crib swaddled. Excellent swaddled job. So we're just like surviving, right?
We're surviving, just trying to get through every single day. We had, we had, we were doing great financially because of like generosity from our wedding and there's all these things that happened. So we felt like we had a good stable financial situation, even though we were arriving in Colorado and then we couldn't get hired at this ministry. And so, and so we had $10,000 plus of savings and it's like, that's a lot of money, right?
For a young couple. And then it was time to join the ministry. I'm gonna breeze through this. It's time to join the ministry and then you couldn't work another job in work at the ministry.
So there was this timeframe where you didn't have any income but you had to start raising missionary support. Long story short, we burned through all of our cash. Now it's like month to month, we're gonna try to survive. Then a couple months into it, we find out about a need that somebody has, they want to, their car breaks down, they're a family of like a lot of kids.
And we hear about this and we go, well Lord, we've got a van. And we had just saved up money to actually purchase our one vehicle. And it was a Honda Odyssey. You guys, we were riding low in that many.
I was 23 years old, auto doors, woo, light blue. It was a nice, it was a nice Odyssey. Anyways, there we are. And we decide we're gonna give this van away.
It's our only car. We're gonna give this van away to this family that had their vehicle breakdown. So, but I remember us having a conversation the night before we gave it, we were, oh, it was so fun. Giving is so fun.
And we were just talking about it. And we had so much joy in our giving. And it wasn't the Lord telling us like, you have to give this van. It was like a joyful offering to give our van away to our brothers and sisters and the Lord.
And it was just so fun to surprise them. But I remember having a conversation where we were talking about it. And we were talking about this Romans passage. And we were just like, well, we know we're gonna get an Escalade.
We know we're gonna sew this thing. And we're gonna get the Escalade. I don't know when it's gonna show up. I don't know who's gonna give us that Escalade.
But it's like Katie's dream car. And I don't know, is that your dream car still? For sure, yeah. And she's like, I don't know if there's probably gonna be spinners, you know, it's just gonna be like nice, right?
And so we're going, we're gonna give this, we're gonna get an upgrade. You won't even believe, we're gonna get this. This is gonna be amazing. And then it never showed up.
One week goes by, two weeks. Now we're like three months in. Where's the Escalade? Where's the anything?
About three or four months in we get given generously a Hyundai Elantra. And the Hyundai Elantra is so like, some of you guys have Hyundai Elantra's list. And this Hyundai Elantra is not like your Hyundai Elantra. Okay?
This was like unsafe to drive on the freeway for our family for anyways. All that to say, we were walking to work, we were hitching rides to go to the grocery store, there wasn't any buses close by, we couldn't take the bus. And things started going south in the ministry, there's almost like a church split that happened. Then we're staying there, then over time, we're like faithful there, we moved to Colorado and Minnesota, I'm sorry, we moved back home to Minnesota.
We're raising support, but we're not doing anything that demands that somebody give us funds. And there's no clarity, like what are we gonna do? We're raising, I don't know why people are still sending money. Cause we don't deserve it.
And we're month to month living in Katie's parents basement, thank you Kim, we're living in their basement. I'm trying to be like the man of my own home and I'm like in the basement, right? And I'm so grateful, I wanna know just, I realize that there's privilege there that I even have a basement to go there, right? And so I'm grateful for all of those moments that we had.
But what I'm trying to paint a picture of is it started going south and then it started going even more south, we are going into credit card debt. Katie's not aware that we're going into credit card debt, but we are. Then I start a business, we're Katie and I start a business and it's taking off, finally, this is our moment. But I didn't, I just didn't know to tell my tax professional that the business was taking off and that we were getting more income.
And all of a sudden there's a 14, April comes. And there's a $14,000 tax debt and we don't have that money, right? And all of these, it's like here we go, finally good is coming and then it's like, ugh, crashing burn again, right? And then Katie gets pregnant and it's like chronic illness and all of these pressures are coming in on us as a family.
And it's like we're so grateful that we're pregnant, but then I know that you're chronically ill for a long time. And in these moments of pressure, and I'm not saying that this is like really hard and it's harder than your story. There's so many stories of pain, so many stories of difficulty, so many trials and trauma that's in the room. And so I want you to not compare your trial with my trial because there's other trials I'm not talking about and I know that there's trials that you don't have an opportunity to talk about today.
But I'm just saying their life is not easy, life is hard and sometimes it gets harder before it ever gets easier. And sometimes you get kicked while you're down and you gotta ask the question, when is this gonna end? How is it gonna end and what do I do? And as I look at Romans eight, I see he's gonna work all things for the good of those who love him.
And when I think that I think better health, I think of vacations, I think of more money. When I think of good, I think of blessing according to the world, right? So I'm like, okay, more convenience, more friendships, more escalates, more better behavior from kids, more sales, more less stress, more fun, more getting invited to the party, more love. That's what good is.
And then we're like, well, why am I not happy? I thought I was gonna be happy. And as I was going through that season, my definition of happy started changing. And it started getting worked out of me that God doesn't exist to make me happy.
And your friends don't exist to make you happy and your spouse doesn't exist to make you happy and your kids don't make you happy. They bring joy, but you know what I'm saying. And so when I look at this, look down at Romans eight again, everybody looked down at your word at the Bible and I want you to look at where this thing goes. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he destined.
And what is your destiny that he has planned out for you? It's to be conformed or like clay is molded and shaped. That's the word in Greek. It's like a shaping and a molding to the image of his son.
What does that mean? It's almost like the picture of a block of marble and you're chiseling out the face. You know, like chiseling out an image of a person. And so we are shaped and conformed into whose image, Jesus image, when the Apostle Paul is writing Romans eight, what he's saying is, you're, I'm gonna work this out for your good and your good is to look like me, is to become transformed into my image, conform and shape into what I look like, when I go through trials.
When I go through trials, you're like, how many of you know that Jesus life wasn't a walk in the park? How many of you know that he basically went through trouble all the time? He just navigated difficulty, navigated betrayal, navigated rejection, navigated being misunderstood, navigating accusation, navigating being hunted. And the list goes on.
And we're like, but that was you, but I'm an American. This is the greatest country in the world. You, we have a current in the current, in the church, and the current in the world is you deserve good and everything in the world exists. That's what we've been marketed to.
Every single one of us have seen marketing every single day of our lives that has this message, you deserve to be happy. And this is going to make you happy. So it's like, you deserve it and this will give it to you. That's what has been marketed to us forever long you've been alive.
So there's a current of this is happiness, this is good. And then we start seeing that there's a different definition of good. And the definition of what's best for us is that we get shaped and conformed into the image of Jesus so that we look like him when we go through hard things. And I started realizing that when I was going through that season, do you know what happens when you get that pressure and the fire starts like the heat starts rising.
The storm starts happening. Do you know what happens is all of the stuff that's underneath the surface, it starts bubbling up. Oh no. And you're like, wow, I didn't know that was there.
That was ugly. What I just, I mean, that's not me. I don't know what that was, right? And it's because there's been pressure and it starts pushing up all of the root systems of pain and undel with mindsets that are anti-god, that are actually sinful mindsets that we've been in and when it's all flowers and roses and sunshine and life is great.
That stuff, you know, I got no cares in the world, it's great. I'm actually pretty righteous in how I live. And then you start going through a trial and you are not yourself, right? All of those moments, the Lord is wanting to actually name, for me, for me, okay, we're in that season and I've got so much self-pity, feeling sorry for myself.
You wouldn't even believe it. I'm just, oh poor Josh. That's like what's going on internally in my mind is poor me. I'm the victim.
There's literally a victim mentality that is so ingrained in my soul that I don't even know how to get out of it because it's so constant in that season. And when that happens, the only answer is to look at God and have him shine his light into my soul and begin to like uproot all of that, okay? Look, let's turn in our Bibles to Corinthians. I want us to turn to 2 Corinthians 3, 18.
Lord, help us. Holy Spirit, would you just help us to understand how we are to go through these difficult seasons and how you want us to think. Because we know if you renew our minds, then our lives get transformed and we need transformation. I need transformation, I know that I want to look like you and it's my destiny to be like you.
2 Corinthians 3, 18. We all with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord. And as we behold him, what does behold me? And just like look at him, take him in, meditate on him.
As we look at God, as we behold him, we spend time thinking about him. We behold the glory of the Lord. We are being transformed, changed, molded, conformed into what? His image.
That's what we just read in Romans 8. We get changed into his image. So I'm thinking through, okay, I get good and my good is to become like God, become like Jesus and how Jesus goes through trials. So that's my good.
Is I get transformed to become like Jesus through the trials? Are you hearing me? And the way that that transformation happens, the way that that conforming happens into his image to look like him, is through beholding him. So this is what I'm doing in this season.
You know the season where Josh is in self pity mode, right? I start thinking about, because when you're in self pity mode, because you're taking care of somebody that is chronically ill, do you know that that person feels that? Some of us are caring for our parents, some of us are caring for our children, some of us are caring and it's your job. It's your job is to care for those that are in high need.
They feel your self pity. And so I think Katie back in that day was feeling the brokenness of my soul and I knew it was there too. And what I needed to do was I needed to look at him, because I needed some transformation. I need to be conformed into his image because that is the good that he has prepared for me through the trial.
So I start meditating on Jesus and I start listening to Dan Moeller. Everybody say, whoo, I start listening to Dan Moeller. And he paints this picture of Jesus on the cross and he plays out a whole monologue of Jesus on the cross. Being in self pity.
How dare they do this to me? Do they not know that I'm the creator God? How dare they put nails in my wrist? They betray me.
Look, it's John's the only one that's at the foot of my cross, then a bunch of Mary's. How could this be? I love them day in, day out, I'm the God that's sustaining every single breath and now they're mocking me and wagging their heads at me. Who do they think they are father?
And by the way, why are you pouring out your wrath on me? You should pour out your wrath on them, right? It's like we can't even picture it. It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't compute in our brains because we know he is love. Is that right? And your destiny is to become love. Your destiny is to be transformed into his image, to look like Jesus when you're going through the fire, to look like Jesus.
And Dan, another thing he says, my gosh, you need to listen to Dan Moller. Oh, because then he goes into so many times, Christians get squeezed and everything but Jesus comes out when they get squeezed. That resonates with me, with the pressure, and the heat, when the waters start rising. Why, when I get squeezed, does Jesus not come out?
I'm a Christian, aren't I? I'm being transformed from, what does this say? One, look at verse 18, from one degree of glory to another. So I'm going from glory to glory.
This is my good. This is your good. You get to go from glory to glory. That doesn't suck.
So I started meditating on this and it completely dealt with all my self-ad. Now, do you know that self-fity comes knocking at my door? That's what sin does. Sin goes, hey, hey, we're old friends.
I don't know if you remember me, but I really do a good job of comforting you when you feel like life's unfair. Let's just hang out for a little bit. I'm looking through the keyhole. Who is that?
Oh, no. Hey, buddy, hey, oh man, I barely even remember you. You're at the wrong address. He's gone, he went, that's me.
Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, your old friend. Oh, yeah, he's not here. Yeah, he's gone. No, he went from glory to glory now.
I don't know where that guy is, right? Let's go. Are you turning your violence? See, in these moments when we're going through trials, do you know what we need?
We don't need self-fity. We need 2 Corinthians 1. Look at this. See, this is the picture of transformation.
So this is how it works. I want to show you how God working for the good of those who love him and conforming them into his image, how it works, all right? We're almost done. I promise.
Look at 2 Corinthians 1 verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort. So it's like if you behold the God of all comfort, if you encounter the God of all comfort, if you get to know the God of all comfort, look at what happens. Who comforts us in all of our affliction and troubles and difficulties and hard seasons so that we, so he does, he comforts us so that we may be able to comfort those who are also in trouble and affliction and difficult seasons with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted by God.
There's so much comfort there. So this is the picture. I'm going through something hard. Now I experience God's comfort.
Now, how do you experience God's comfort? Will you take a little bit of time to be comforted? You like let him comfort you. Rather than comforting yourself with self-pity and medicating yourself pity with sin.
And then you're in the cycle of feeling sorry for yourself and you feel guilt and you feel shame. And now you're in this vicious cycle. And you take a break from the God of all comfort for a couple of days because you have shame and guilt, because you keep on going to wells that leave you running dry. And you actually are created for the well that will never leave you running dry.
Are you hearing? Where we go? We go to the wrong well. We go to the pig slop and there's a well that we can drink from that's going to actually become living water flowing through us because we've been changed into his image.
But we encounter the God of all comfort. It's like, I'm going to let you comfort me. You are the God of all comfort. So that's the holding, right?
So I'm trying to help us understand you behold to become. But then it's like how? He spent time looking at him. Sometimes it would surface like, oh, that was selfish.
And when I take selfishness and I notice that and I go, this is not what it means to be a son of God. This was not like Jesus. And then I bring that to him. And I want to know from him, who are you?
It's like show me who you are because I want to be like you. Because this is how I'm responding, but I want to respond like Jesus, right? So I'll maybe have conversation or I'll meditate. What I was meditating on was Jesus on the cross, not being self-pityed, right?
And then, but anyway, so this is how it works. Behold him, I experienced the God of all comfort. Now I'm being changed into his image because I experienced it. Now I can give it away.
In other words, now to the world and the people around me. When Katie is late, she doesn't want to be laying on a bed for seven months, not even being able to get up because of how she's feeling. She doesn't want to live that way. And now, because I'm looking at him, he's comforting me.
Now he's changing me into his image. So I look like him to her. So I'm getting, my image is getting changed because I'm starting to look like Jesus, right? This is like Joseph.
When Joseph, you remember the story where he gets betrayed by his brothers, his brothers sell him into slavery. Then he's working in the Egyptians household. Then this woman tries to seduce him. He carries integrity and character.
She wrongfully accuses him of doing inappropriate things with her. Then he gets sent to prison. Then as he's in prison, he's forgotten again and again, again, year after year after year. How many of you know it's getting worse and it's getting worse and it's getting worse and it's getting worse.
But look at what Genesis 50 says. Turn in your Bible, so Genesis 50. Okay, I'm trying to connect a couple dots and I want to really be clear. You're going through a hard time.
You're going through trial. Your upgrade is not the trial ending. Your upgrade is being transformed to look like Jesus so that the next trial that hits, you're going to look like Jesus. Jesus said you're going to have many troubles in trials.
But he said, I have overcome the world. So then when you encounter Jesus through and in a trial, listen, he helps you to be an overcomer too because you're getting transformed into his overcoming image. Okay, that's what Joseph experienced. Look at verse 20, verse 19.
So this in this scene, his brothers show up. He's just been away from them for over a decade. They are anticipating he is going to get revenge. And look at what he says, as for you, in verse 20, we're just gonna jump to verse 20, as for you human evil against me, brothers.
But God meant it for good. Do you hear Romans eight? Do you realize Romans eight is just quoting Genesis 50? Here, here, okay.
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive. Okay, the picture is Joseph goes through all these hard things. There's a famine in the land. He leads all of Egypt.
Just stick with me. We're all here, right? Listen, Joseph goes through all of these hard things. At the end of this trouble, in tribulation that he goes through, he has the revelation that all of this was not even for his good.
It wasn't about him the whole time. It wasn't about him the whole time. It was about the second commandment. It was about the first commandment and the second commandment.
There's no third commandment that says, and it's about you. It's just the two greatest ones. So what am I saying? When you go through hard things and then you get transformed into looking more like Jesus, what happens is all of the world around you, it becomes for their good.
Okay? Yeah, you get blessed because now you look like Jesus and you're transformed into his image. But when it's all said and done, your life isn't about you. It's about loving him and giving him your whole life and be holding him and then becoming like him because he's deserving of a family of brothers and sisters that look like their older brother, Jesus.
That's what it said in Romans eight, that we would all be like our older brother, brothers and sisters that have been shaped into his image. He's worthy of that first commandment. And then second commandment is that we would love people the way that we're loved. So your transformation and what's the good that's coming for you is actually you be transformed, becoming love and it's going to benefit the whole world around you.
So what's the, so you're saying my life isn't about me, you're onto it, we're onto it, we're getting somewhere. You mean my life is not my own? Yeah, I think that's what he said. It's the good news.
You die to yourself, you die to your old nature that was itself, your life was all about you and now you rise to newness of life and your newness of life is not to just have a good life and have good things and have convenience and wealth and friendships and behavior from kids that's really good and more sales and better health and less stress and more fun and vacation. It's not about all of that. It's not about the current of the American dream, what it's about is you being changed, transformed, looking like Jesus, becoming him, being conformed into his image. Why?
To actually benefit the entire world around you. It's for their good. It's for your spouse is good. It's for your future spouse is good.
It's for your kids good. It's for your coworkers good. It's for your neighborhoods good. It's for their good.
But do you know what I feel when I hear that? I feel like, let's all stand. But what about me mentality? For some of us, you struggle with actually always thinking about others and you never actually are gonna intentionally look at what's going on internally.
I'm not necessarily saying this for you. But there's this mentality that, but what about me being happy? And I promise you, it's the upside down kingdom. I promise you that when you start becoming love and being transformed, all of a sudden, you're gonna be way more happy.
You're gonna be way more like, man, that's a trial. Did you hear how much money is on our bank account? Man, I'm so glad I'm content in all things. Lord, I thank you that you're always providing for me.
And all of a sudden, I start encountering the Lord as a provider. I encounter the Lord as a generous leader and I go, okay, now I can navigate through this trial. And no matter what hits me next time, no matter what surprise hits me, I know that I'm built my whole life on the rock. All right?
Without vision, the people perish. Some of us are perishing through our trial and through our trouble. And I wanna give you a new vision, a new thing to look into or to see. Your new vision for your life is not to be happy as the world defines happiness.
Your vision is to become like Jesus. I know that's very basic. I tried to say it really inspiring, but you've heard that a thousand times, right? Oh man, we need his help.
Cause when I hear that I go, man, that's my vision. I was thinking something that would be a little bit more catchy, a little bit more inspiring than becoming like Jesus through every season, no matter the trouble that I look like him in it. But that's it. You get God.
That's your portion. You get God and then you get to be like him. So how do we do it? When you're hitting the trial, you look up.
Just kind of review. You look up and you ask questions like, who are you now that I'm here? What do you wanna say about yourself, Lord? Now that I'm here.
Now that I'm in this circumstance and they're doing this to me, how do you wanna reveal yourself? Would you just close your eyes? We're just gonna ask the Lord that question again and then I'm gonna commission us out. Lord, now that we're in this mess, now that I'm in these set of circumstances, now that I'm here, do you have anything you wanna say about who you are that is important for me to know?
What we're doing is we're beholding him because we wanna be like him in the season. So he's gonna start all over the room. He's gonna start saying little phrases about himself. He wants you to know some things about himself.
So all throughout the room, you just begin to ask, Lord, how do you want to reveal yourself to me? Now that I'm here, maybe you said things like, I'm your provider. Maybe you said things like, I'm the God of forgiveness. Maybe you started whispering about how he is the one that is unafended.
Maybe you started talking about how he's a servant of all. He'll say things like that. He'll say things like that to me. He'll just say, Joshua, I'm a servant of all.
And I go, I just put out your hands in front of you if you're willing. So just as a sign of Lord, I'm giving whatever. However, my attitude has been going through this trial, I'm offering, I'm giving that to you. And what I want is to become like you as you open up your hands with the Lord.
Lord, as we go through fires, as we go through trouble, what we want is to have the fire actually turn into a refiner's fire. Shape us, mold us. I want to be like you. Lord, I don't want to just know information about you.
I want to encounter you. I want to be transformed. I want to be conformed into your image. I'm not content with just having the title of a little Christ follower, a Christian, but then I'd not actually be transformed to become like you.
I want to be hold you and become like you. Thank you that I don't need to fix myself. Thank you that my role isn't trying to try harder. Thank you that my role is I look at you and you change me.
Pressures off, all I get to do is respond. Would you just say that to the Lord, Lord, I just want to respond? That's what your portion is. You can just respond to who he is and say yes.
It's a yes to him. All right, so I commission out all of these sons and daughters to become like their older brother Jesus. I bless them. We just strengthen them this week by your spirit, Lord.
I thank you that they get to be overcomers, just like you. In Jesus' name, everybody, sediment.