You guys ready to get into the word a little bit? I've got just a quick message tonight. Obviously, you're looking at the beautiful worship team that is just killer. Are they not the best ever?
We're so thankful for this team and the team that is leading next week. They're on the platform just because we're going to do, I'm going to talk for like five minutes, and then we're going to jump into remembering what God has done personally in our personal lives and just going to have an extended time of reflection for us to look back at this year and go, Lord, what did you do? And so I just want to do a little bit of remembering together, even in my short message. At the start of the year in 2020, we had started the same series.
Do you guys, do any of you guys remember the same series? We started it, and I promise we're going to finish it someday. We're probably going to finish it in the new year. We started the same series.
We talked about the Holy Spirit. We talked about tongues and praying in tongues, and there's so many people that got baptized in the Holy Spirit, started praying in tongues this year, and we talked about power and authority. How many of you guys remember the bounce back message? That was this year, and then COVID hit.
Oh my gosh, and all of our kids came home, and school got canceled, and do you remember the first time when we had quarantine? It's like everybody stayed at their houses, and they didn't leave. You know how funny that is? Like now people get exposed to COVID, and it's like, yeah, I'm quarantining for 14 days, and they're like, yeah, we're doing a game night tomorrow night, and then we've got Chipotle that we're going out.
You know, it's like, wait, aren't you quarantining? It's like a completely different definition of quarantine. Some of you guys are like, no, I actually do stay at home for 14 days, but then others, as I'm saying that, you're like, yeah, yep, that's me. My 14-day quarantine is not exactly a quarantine, okay, but man, it's been such an interesting year, but once COVID happened for Grove, as a community, we felt like the Holy Spirit said, I don't want you to do online services throughout COVID.
I want you to actually dive deeper into what I've already said, and if you remember, we started posting messages. We started doing daily soaking sets every single day, and it was so powerful to just worship together and be spread out, and then COVID continued, and we as a city, the eyes of the world was on our city with the murder of George Floyd, and the grieving that we joined in with and carried as our community, but also our city, and what that looked like, and I know that so many of us just stepped in, and not only stepped in to listen and learn and lean in in the process, but also stepped in to just figure out how can we be safe, and also how can we serve, and how can we just be the hands and feet of Jesus, and all of that, but I think the biggest thing that came out of that was the heart of justice, for God to just kind of start infusing so many of us, infusing his heart of justice into our hearts, and so it's a continuation, it's a continued process, but that happened, and it seems like so long ago, and yet it was just yesterday, and then the roller coaster continued of restrictions, you know, where it's like, we just had a roller coaster of year, you don't know what's going to happen, right, and elections happened, oh my goodness, wow, and it feels like they're still happening, right, and so, yeah, the students said they actually are, and it's like, yes, I know, okay, oh man, see, do you guys remember a couple months ago, I was like, remember, the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side, we just think like, 2021 is going to happen, and everything's going to be amazing, you guys are so silly that you think that, so silly. Psalm 42 is, I just want to share really briefly from Psalm 42, and in that passage, David, he's really burying his soul, and he's in this place of difficulty, and a lot of the musicians and singers, I feel like they're looking at David's life, and they're writing this psalm in this place of worship, and they give language to the king and what he's experiencing, and in this passage, in verse 6, many of you guys probably recognize the first verse, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, oh God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God, when shall I come and appear before the Lord, my tears have been my food day and night, and then it continues, but I want to jump in, in verse 6 here, it says, and my God, my soul is cast down within me, and then he says, therefore, I remember you, and I think so much of 2020 has been, man, my soul is cast down within me, it's fallen, it's downcast, and it's like my chin falling, and I'm in self-focus mode, and then David says, but I'm going to remember you, and that's something that we talked about, that bounce back message, I'm going to remember you, I'm going to look up, after I've thrown up and got all this junk off my chest, and really been raw before you, I'm going to look up, and then David says a couple things, when he remembers, he remembers three things about what God did, and he says, from the land of Jordan, and of Hermon, and from Mount Mazar, and he gives these three examples of what he's remembering about what God did, and the first is Jordan, and it's this memory of God, right before Joshua leads the people into the promised land, the Jordan River dries up, and the waters, just like the Red Sea, the waters get pushed back to the edges, so the people of God could walk into the promised land, and it says in Joshua, this is a moment where God was proving that he was going to send his presence with his people into the promised land, and so David is going, you were with us, your presence is promised, and he's celebrating that, your presence is with us, then the next thing he talks about is Mount Hermon, which is actually an area that they conquered in the promised land, and it was the Amalekites that they conquered, and so he's saying, David's saying, you conquered our enemies, and then lastly, he's talking about Mount Mazar, which is, oftentimes scholars believe that that's where the commandments of God were given to the nation of Israel, and so he's saying, I remember you gave us guidance, you gave us truth to guide us in health, and a lot of times I think that in these moments, when we look back at 2020, when we look back at difficulty, maybe we're experiencing difficulty right now, it's our moment to remember the faithfulness of God, and how many of you guys remember, some of you were here the first Sunday back from COVID, do you guys remember this, August 2nd, our first Sunday back, and those were some tickets, it's hard to get tickets for that night, right, and you had to wake up really early at 8am, like every Sunday, and get tickets to go to church, and Katie and I sat up here, and we said, for so much of 2020, we've been thinking about what the enemy has done, but what has God been up to, right, how many of you guys were at maybe a family gathering, or maybe you were being good, but you were with family, and what was the conversation at Christmas dinner, there's probably a lot of talk about how difficult 2020 has been, how hard it's been, how much the enemy has done in 2020, well oftentimes we think about all of the negative things that have happened, and we give the enemy so much airtime, we give him so much airtime, and his job is accusing, his job is speaking lies, his job is to isolate and destroy, and he's done a lot of that, but if you remember August 2nd, we talked about what God's been up to, and tonight, I don't want to just talk about what has God done corporately, but what has God done in your life in 2020, there's maybe been a lot of difficulty that you've experienced, but what has God been up to with you, I think that it's a perfect opportunity to look back this Sunday, it's the last Sunday of the year, and we're gonna look back at, how about you and me, Lord, how has our journey been, what have you done in my heart, so if you have a piece of paper, or you have a phone to take notes with, I want you to write three things down, this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna take an extended time of about 20 minutes or so, and we're gonna reflect on 2020, I said at the start of the service that this is the end of Spectator Christianity, right, so we didn't come to church just to hear a good sermon and check the Christian church experience off the list for the week, right, we want to actually be engaged in our hearts with God, and you didn't come just to do the church thing, you came to actually connect with him, and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take time to reflect on these three areas, and if you're at home and you're watching the live stream, I want to encourage you to do the same and spend time doing this, but these three areas that I want us to reflect on and remember and think about right out as the Holy Spirit reminds us, the first is transformed, you can just write transformed, how have I been transformed or changed, says in Romans that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, and so what has God done, what has God spoken to you, what's a revelation that's actually stuck about who God is, about who you are, that you go, oh my goodness, you did this in my heart, or this message marked me and changed me forever, this moment actually unlocked my mind to think differently about you, and it's starting to bring transformation, as I've had this new mind-renewing truth that's hit me in 2020, so transformed, how have you been transformed, and maybe it's not like you haven't connected the dots, it doesn't feel like my mind has been renewed, I just, my life has been transformed, but it's helpful to connect the dots, why have you been transformed, okay, the second is miracles, what are some miracles that have happened in your year, I believe there's so many miracles that we've been maybe unaware of, but if we start going, Holy Spirit, remind me, what miracles have happened this year, maybe it's a breakthrough in a job, maybe you're financially, you had a financial miracle that happened, you didn't know how you're gonna make ends meet, and there was a check that showed up in your mailbox, maybe there's, you got a job, and you're going, man, I don't know how in this economic landscape I'm gonna get a job to even make money, or maybe there's a miracle, there's a healing, maybe there's a miracle if you experienced God for the first time in a certain way, or a family member, something happened, and a miracle took place, whatever it is, miracles, and then lastly, testimonies of his goodness, or his leadership, maybe a testimony of victory, or a testimony of his faithfulness, we overcome by the word of our testimony, so just remembering, what are, what are some stories of how, a testimony is a story, what's a story of his goodness, or a story of his faithfulness that you can look back on in 2020, so those are the three, transformed, miracles, and testimonies, and so why don't we do this, let's all, let's all stand, and I want to encourage you, you can spread out anywhere throughout the room just to get space, because we're gonna take 20 minutes to just be with him, and so if you want to, like, sit up front, if you want to go back, there's blue chairs back there, if you want to sit on the ground somewhere throughout the room, if you want to go in the balcony, but we can all just kind of start spreading out, finding some space for you and God to just connect, so ready, set, go, we can just go throughout the room and find our zone, you might even just sit right back down, because you want to sit where you were sitting, that's great, okay, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pray, but I want to remind us that fear forgets, and faith remembers, fear forgets, but faith remembers, and I believe that we're gonna go into 2021 full of faith, because we remembered, and so this is, this is such a valuable time for each of us, I'm just gonna pray for us now, and what's gonna happen is the worship team is just gonna play instrumentally, so you can just ignore them, and you can just lock in with the Holy Spirit and connect with him during this time, just ask him questions, and try to remember with him, just welcome him into this, sometimes we just try to think, and sometimes it doesn't work, and you just turn it into conversation with Holy Spirit, so Lord, we thank you that we have this opportunity to connect with you right now, thank you that I have the opportunity in this moment to spend time with you, and think about the year that I shared with you, Lord, I thank you that you're the alpha and the omega, you are the beginning and the end, and you're all up in the middle, you're in the middle, you are in the middle of 2020, and you are working miracles, you're changing us, you're bringing about stories in our lives of your goodness and your faithfulness, and so Holy Spirit, I just thank you for reminding us, give us some memories of your faithfulness, in Jesus' name.