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A life-giving Jesus community for a new generation of people in Sacramento.
Join us every Sunday
Old Sacramento: 8:30 AM, 10:00 AM & 11:45 AM @ 1200 2nd Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
South Sacramento: 10:00 AM (English) & 11:30 AM (Spanish) @ 6528 44th Street, Sacramento, CA 95823
Online: https://www.youtube.com/projectchurchsac
00;00;00;06 - 00;00;20;14
Bob Balian
You all are in and have been in a sermon series entitled The Way of Decrease, kind of a nod of the cap to lent. Today we're talking about decreasing fear and anxiety. And if you're a person who has no anxiety right now or has no fear in the bonkers world we're living in, I want some of what you're taking because something's going on.
00;00;20;14 - 00;00;44;23
Bob Balian
We are living in an absolutely topsy turvy world right now. I open up my laptop this week, earlier, and logged on to the Washington Post, and the headlines were The war in Iran, Russians, Russia's continuing war with Ukraine. The job market's down, the stock market is down, people's outlooks are down, and nobody can afford to buy a home or live anywhere.
00;00;44;23 - 00;01;12;26
Bob Balian
It's sad. And you know how my people in my generation are always saying something smart about your generation and about your commitment to technology. And I did listen to Christy last week. She called teenagers, screen agers, and that is a great word to summarize them. And obviously my people in my generation are not screen agers, but they say stuff about you all like man, Gen Z and millennials, they live on their cell phones.
00;01;12;29 - 00;01;36;24
Bob Balian
And I'm like, yeah, it's the only place they can afford to live. So I get it right. I know there's a large percentage of people in this room who can relate, but living in the world we're living in, it's constant development and battles with fear, with anxiety, with tension, with pressure. And all of them usually hit people when they're going through severe stress.
00;01;36;24 - 00;01;56;21
Bob Balian
And so we're going to walk through a narrative in the book of Genesis today, when Abraham and Sarah were going through stress and insecurity and fear, and a lot of it, matter of fact, most of it was brought on by themselves. So we can't control the things that are external, but we can't control what's going on in here.
00;01;56;21 - 00;02;26;01
Bob Balian
Amen. Fear, panic, anxiety can cause us to make decisions we all regret. All of them negatively impact us emotionally and physically. And if we look back at our past, we would usually see that the decisions we've made, which caused us the most personal regret all happened at times when stress was at its highest, or in some cases when we were in times of major transition and caused uncertainty and insecurity.
00;02;26;04 - 00;02;50;29
Bob Balian
The maddening thing is that those bad decisions often lead to fear and stress themselves, which lead back to bad decisions. And it's kind of a never ending cycle. Today we're reading of a young lady named Hagar. Hagar. Anyone know Hagar for people in her cool. We're going to it's going to be new in this passage, Abraham and Sarai.
00;02;51;02 - 00;03;11;20
Bob Balian
At that point, God had previously promised them that he would make their descendants as many as the stars in the sky. But as of Genesis, Genesis 16, which we are right now, ten years later, still no children. They're frustrated. And I want to say this up a top Genesis 16. For those of us who haven't read it, it is.
00;03;11;24 - 00;03;21;09
Bob Balian
If it was a movie, it'd be rated PG 13 R okay, it's adult content. Are we still friends?
00;03;21;11 - 00;03;48;00
Bob Balian
Okay. All right. Cool. Let's walk through it together. Genesis 16 one and I'll be interrupting myself to paint the narrative. Now, Sarai, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children interrupt myself there. You can tell if this was a movie.
00;03;48;00 - 00;04;16;19
Bob Balian
The scary music would be kicking in right now. Being from jaws or whatever things are going to take a bad turn. Sarai is using her God given gift of imagination, but she's using it destructively. She's projecting her future without children and it's causing anxiety and fear. What she sees in her future is causing it. That. Excuse me. So she's developing a shortcut, developing a workaround.
00;04;16;26 - 00;04;32;28
Bob Balian
And anytime you have someone blaming God for their problems, they're headed in the wrong direction. Amen. So it's going to be a bad workaround. Sarai is saying the Lord has kept me from having children. In other words, God is not doing his job well. God is failing.
00;04;33;04 - 00;04;33;11
Speaker 3
At.
00;04;33;11 - 00;04;50;00
Bob Balian
Guarding. So I'm going to do something about it. Excuse me, anybody have allergies? I'm so sorry. First of all, I'm not stoned.
00;04;50;02 - 00;05;06;18
Bob Balian
Okay, I am battling allergies right now, so if I'm coughing. I'm so sorry. It just hit me. Oh, you're sorry Christy. So wonderful. Give it up for your pastor Christy, one more time.
00;05;06;21 - 00;05;11;25
Bob Balian
Oh.
00;05;11;27 - 00;05;15;20
Bob Balian
Somebody over there thinks it's an emergency.
00;05;15;22 - 00;05;42;16
Bob Balian
She says go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. I'm making a workaround. I'm going to carry out my own plan because God is failing. And my plan is for my husband to sleep with my housekeeper. How many of us know that's a bad plan? Fellas, fellas, get your hands up. It's a bad plan.
00;05;42;18 - 00;05;59;04
Bob Balian
How many of us know and agree that when we try to force God's promises on our own time, it's a bad plan. We continue. Abraham agreed to what Sarai said.
00;05;59;06 - 00;06;37;08
Bob Balian
Biggest understatement in the Bible ever. Sarai tells her 80 something year old husband, I'm going to have you sleep with my haughty Egyptian maid servant. And Abraham goes, well, sweetheart, I'm all about the team. If that's really what you want me to do, I'm in. Okay? I'm committed to making you happy. Bible says so. After Abraham had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife.
00;06;37;11 - 00;07;03;14
Bob Balian
He slept with Hagar and she conceived when she knew he was she was pregnant. She began to despise her mistress. So the terrible plan goes. As Sarai wishes, Hagar gets pregnant. Then, like anyone with any sense of all could have predicted, this totally poisons the relationship between Hagar and Sarai. The Hebrew there means she literally was looking at her like she was little.
00;07;03;17 - 00;07;07;28
Bob Balian
And the Bible goes on.
00;07;08;01 - 00;07;38;15
Bob Balian
Then Sarai said to Abraham, you are responsible for the wrong I'm suffering. I put my slave in your arms. And now this. She knows she is pregnant. She despises me. So after a bad plan, an attempt to control God goes bad. Sarai does the eight Eve to Adam thing. She blames Abraham. Put my smoke show hottie Egyptian maid servant in bed with you.
00;07;38;18 - 00;08;06;11
Bob Balian
She got pregnant and now she hates me. It's your fault, Abraham. May the Lord judge between you and me. Your slave is in your hands. Abraham said, do with her whatever you think best. Abraham says, my name is Bennett. I'm not even in it. He quotes the great biblical lyricist DMX.
00;08;06;13 - 00;08;16;18
Bob Balian
Y'all going to make me lose my mind up in here? Up in here? Y'all going to make me act a fool.
00;08;16;21 - 00;08;28;21
Bob Balian
Okay, second service was better. Okay? Second service was definitely not overly saved. Okay? They listen to DMX a little bit. Okay.
00;08;28;23 - 00;08;49;00
Bob Balian
May the Lord judge between you and me. Your slave is in her hands. And then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. Now everyone's insecure. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to shore. And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from?
00;08;49;00 - 00;09;07;25
Bob Balian
And where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress. Arise, he answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress, and submit to her. The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count. The angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now pregnant, and you will birth to us.
00;09;07;25 - 00;09;28;05
Bob Balian
Give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael. For the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. Let the Lord add a blessing to the reading of his word.
00;09;28;08 - 00;09;54;26
Bob Balian
Rochelle, the great pastor of Life Church, wrote a book called The Christian Atheists Believing in God as if he doesn't exist. And he says, when we live by faith, we believe that God has everything under control. But when we start to fear, we live the way we live, says the opposite. That's what's happening in the text. People, mistakenly and incorrectly think that they are control.
00;09;55;02 - 00;10;23;07
Bob Balian
We think that many times, as Pastor Craig is saying, we actually create our own fear when we choose control over surrender to God. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but it's true. When we choose our own controlling ways in life, instead of surrendering to God's will, we make decisions to try to grasp onto the illusion of control. We are never in control of anything at all, ever.
00;10;23;10 - 00;10;55;26
Bob Balian
We only think we are. We think we're pushing the right buttons. We think we're pulling the right levers, but we never all. We like to think we're running our universe. But to decrease fear, we need to choose surrender over control a different way of defining faith is living without scheming, living without plotting. When we genuinely trust God and our faith in him is unwavering, we don't create shortcuts.
00;10;55;28 - 00;11;21;27
Bob Balian
We don't create workarounds that get us to an end before God wants us to get there. So for values to help decrease fear and anxiety, and they're only values that work on the inside, nothing's going to change what's going on externally. Number one. Number one, a concern for the glory of God, a little counterintuitive, a concern for the glory of God.
00;11;21;27 - 00;11;47;06
Bob Balian
In other words, are we willing to go through some of the uncertainties of life with a positive attitude because we know that God is doing something through the uncertainty? And are we willing to step aside from the spotlight and allow God to shine when he gives us our wins? Those two things should be hallmarks of Christians. Why would God use Abraham and Sarai?
00;11;47;07 - 00;12;13;20
Bob Balian
Why would he make them wait so long to have their baby? Abraham was ultimately a hundred years old, so Wright was in her 80s. Why the wait? So God alone would get all the glory, right? No, nobody's going to give Abraham at 100 years old, credit for having a baby at that point. Right there, going there had to be a miracle, right?
00;12;13;22 - 00;12;35;26
Bob Balian
That's why God wanted it that way. But Abraham, also in his 80s, got Hagar pregnant. And that was not God's plan for Abraham. It wasn't a part of his perfect plan. It was only a showing of grace to Hagar that they procreate at Ishmael. So even though God graced Hagar out, it wasn't his perfect plan. It was rise of devious shortcut.
00;12;35;29 - 00;12;57;08
Bob Balian
God let Hager know, I'm going to bless you with many descendants. But this first one, Ishmael. Oh, he going to be a problem, right? And he's going to cause fear and anxiety for a whole lot of people. Those journeys on which we've stayed the course and not attempted to create our own shortcuts, keep stress and anxiety down. Okay?
00;12;57;08 - 00;13;27;24
Bob Balian
Number two, a willingness to wait. A kind of God ordained wait. Our personal compliance to wait on God decreases our anxiety level as a society. Been saying this all day and I'm sorry I keep saying it. As a society and a species, we no longer seemingly possess the ability to wait on anything in any setting. We hate slow Wi-Fi.
00;13;27;26 - 00;13;52;28
Bob Balian
We hate waiting for a table at a restaurant. If it takes too long, we'll walk out and leave, right? We hate to wait in traffic. Everybody is angry on the road now. It used to be that only 2 or 3 people had road rage. Now everybody is driving their hunk of metal with an anger and a ferocity you never see, because traffic is a form of waiting, right?
00;13;53;02 - 00;14;11;14
Bob Balian
We hate to wait in traffic so much that nobody will let you merge into the next lane. You speed up a couple car lengths and you're going to slide in. What do they do? Speed up and don't let you in. Right? I learned in living in Las Vegas, excuse me in Los Angeles. And my daughter still know this as well.
00;14;11;16 - 00;14;35;29
Bob Balian
You have to fake out people to change lanes. You're going to go left, turn on your right blinker, look to the right, and when they get casual, you move in right. You get in that lane. We're waiting at the grocery store. All of us have gotten so frustrated at the grocery store, we don't wait in the grocery lines anymore for the checkers.
00;14;36;06 - 00;14;54;28
Bob Balian
We all go to the automated section. Anybody with the automated section down with me? Yeah, most most of us are. I mean, I thought I was a pastor for a living, a check, so many groceries at rallies. I got a part time job there, you know what I mean? I was employee of the month in February. Man. I check groceries all the time.
00;14;55;01 - 00;15;24;23
Bob Balian
But when I say wait, I'm not just talking about waiting for the sake of waiting. I'm talking about waiting for God on certain things. I'm talking about waiting on him. There are special times when God just wants us to wait on him spiritually. Situation. We feel like God is telling you, wait here, don't make a move. I want you to think about this as though it's w e I g t.
00;15;24;24 - 00;15;47;08
Bob Balian
Wait. Okay. Like I'm going to. I'm going to put my weight on the Lord right now. I'm going to rest on the Lord. He can have the weight of this. Maybe you're in a tough place financially. Somebody you know came to you, you plotted a little something, right? You're going to do a little, little something shady. You're going to come up financially.
00;15;47;10 - 00;16;04;11
Bob Balian
God's going now. You don't need that. Put your financial weight on me. Rest on me. Maybe it's a person and they're pressuring you relationally. And they they're trying to get you to hurry. They're trying to get you to cross a line. They're trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. God's saying you don't need to do that.
00;16;04;14 - 00;16;27;13
Bob Balian
Wait on me. Put your relational weight on me and just hold on. Waiting many times is a part of building up your spiritual immune system. When we rightly wait on, God is developing our resistance to discouragement. We've all seen situations where some people are physically in the same place at the same time. Two of them get sick and two of them don't.
00;16;27;16 - 00;16;49;12
Bob Balian
That's because somebody's immune system was stronger and were stable. Immune systems strengthen spiritually, keep us from making bad decisions. Same thing spiritually, two people in the same family can't go through the same thing, and one of them is falling apart and the other one is going, God, I still trust you. God, I still look, I know you're going to come through.
00;16;49;12 - 00;17;18;03
Bob Balian
For me, it's all about the spiritual immune system being stronger in the one and mature faith is willing to wait on God for God's will, for God's way, for God's glory. We all need to stop the controlling and the plotting and the scheming, and let God do it his way. Man, you smelling what I'm cooking right here? The smell of what?
00;17;18;03 - 00;17;25;29
Bob Balian
I'm stepping in over here. Right. Number three, obedience.
00;17;26;01 - 00;17;33;23
Bob Balian
Obedience. Everybody say it. Obedience. Why don't you like saying it?
00;17;33;26 - 00;18;02;21
Bob Balian
People who have a developed faith deferentially obey God and obey his way. They don't just roll with whatever is culturally acceptable, because while things might be permissible, it doesn't make them a good idea. It doesn't make them wise. For example, Abraham's day there was not the prohibition against adultery or polygamy, but that didn't make adultery or polygamy okay.
00;18;02;21 - 00;18;26;17
Bob Balian
In God's eyes, it still wasn't a good idea. It was. It was a wisdom issue back then. It was not wise. I want to drill down on this obedience thing. So if you check it out, check back here with me. Our capacity to be obedient is determined only by how well we've been tending to our inner being. Amen.
00;18;26;17 - 00;18;49;02
Bob Balian
By myself. How well we've been nurturing and feeding our inner self. That's why Caleb and Kristi encourage you to continually do that. How well you've been nurturing and feeding the inner self. And if you haven't been tending to your soul, you're in harm's way. Let me explain.
00;18;49;05 - 00;19;13;09
Bob Balian
When you see people's lives get devastated because someone at work or someone at church, or someone in a marriage, or someone in a school crossed a big dark line, they behaved in a way that not only caused the people around them a bunch of damage, but they behave in a way that nobody would have ever expected. It. It caught everyone off guard.
00;19;13;09 - 00;19;40;10
Bob Balian
Almost everyone who said anything about it was like, I can't believe they were doing that. The reason those things happened is because they had a large gap. They had a large gap between who they were portraying themselves to be on the outside and who they really were behind closed doors on the inside. They let everybody see one side of them, and very few people see the other side of them.
00;19;40;12 - 00;20;07;22
Bob Balian
We all have a gap, every single one of us. We have to pay attention to it and do the work on our souls so that we're shrinking our gap because we aren't doing the work consistently. The gap is increasing. Believe it or not, eventually you and I can become one of those people that others are talking about, saying, I can't believe he did that.
00;20;07;22 - 00;20;29;25
Bob Balian
I can't believe she did that. That's that gap getting big. And here's the troubling thing. Most of the time, people aren't able to catch their own gaps widening. So as your gap keeps growing, so does your capacity for duplicity. We don't want that. Amen. And the next thing you know, you crossed a major line. So let me give you a cheat code.
00;20;29;28 - 00;21;01;25
Bob Balian
This is how you can kind of catch your gap widening. Start paying attention over the next several weeks to the narratives you're creating about yourself and the people around you. When you start developing narratives about yourself and the people around you, you start sharing them and the narratives you're creating about yourself. And those people are continuously getting challenged and disagreed with, like, that's that's not why that's happening or that's not why he or she did that.
00;21;01;27 - 00;21;28;05
Bob Balian
It's a telltale sign that your gap is growing, because it's tip off that you keep telling yourself something different than what's really going on in reality. What's that monitor that developing ourselves spiritually will shrink your gap. Not tending to your inner self will always make your gap grow. We still friends. Good. There are no shortcuts to the perfect will of God.
00;21;28;05 - 00;21;55;19
Bob Balian
Your back to our story. Sarai has a bad idea for a shortcut to start a family. Abraham consents to the bad idea. He's a part of it. Hagar gets pregnant, causes mass jealousy, mass insecurity and anxiety and all of them. And the Bible says in verse six that Hagar carrying baby and all runs away. So when did Hagar stop running?
00;21;55;21 - 00;22;20;08
Bob Balian
It's when she recognized that the presence of God was with her. That's when she stopped running. Bible says in verse 13 through 16, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her, you are the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. Verse 15. So Hagar bore Abraham a son, and Abraham gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born.
00;22;20;10 - 00;22;48;12
Bob Balian
Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar born. Ishmael. Great moment in the Old Testament when the God of the universe breaks through time and space, speaks to this obscure, traumatized maid servant. I mean, for goodness sake, nobody asked Hagar in this narrative what she wanted. She she was dragged through it all. Hagar is in a terrible place.
00;22;48;13 - 00;23;08;27
Bob Balian
He had to be traumatized. But the God of the universe lets her know that he loves her, knows her name, and when Hagar realized that God of Universe knew her name and cares for her, her fear diminished, her anxiety decreased, and she can start to think and act clearly like we all can. At that point, God says, Hagar, I don't just know you.
00;23;09;00 - 00;23;29;02
Bob Balian
I'm going to use you, I need you, you have a call. I have a purpose for you. And it's such a special moment that Hagar is the only person in the Old Testament that actually gives God a name. You are the God who sees me. Super cool, super cool moment in the Bible. God let her know that she wasn't overlooked.
00;23;29;05 - 00;23;51;27
Bob Balian
She wasn't unheard. She wasn't undervalued, even though a lot of people around her were doing that. We can all relate to that at some point. Amen. All of us can at work, at school, in a family, sometimes even in church. Unfortunately, we can all feel left out and discouraged at some level in terms of, you know, where you're born and your family.
00;23;51;27 - 00;24;07;11
Bob Balian
I've been talking about this all day. There are different levels of discouragement. Let's do a little a little audience survey at this point, a little audience participation. Give me give us all a loud cheer. If you're the oldest child in your family.
00;24;07;13 - 00;24;27;27
Bob Balian
Very solid. Very, very solid. You firstborns are natural leaders and you're expected to be natural leaders. And sometimes you're expected to do that too soon in life because you're expected to have great advice to your younger siblings, right? Because you're the first ones to screw up in the family. And so they need to know what to do when they screw up, right?
00;24;27;27 - 00;24;33;22
Bob Balian
They're always asking advice. Give me a cheer. If you're the middle child and.
00;24;33;24 - 00;25;03;16
Bob Balian
Lots of middle children, lots and middle. Tell us this earlier. 3 or 5 and five and wow. Okay. All right. That's someone who is squarely in the middle right there. Right. Middle children, you're so overlooked. I want you to notice there is a disorder called middle child syndrome. There is also a nationally recognized day called National Middle Child Day.
00;25;03;18 - 00;25;25;23
Bob Balian
It's the day each year that the nation recognizes the trouble middle children are going through. And if you didn't know it existed, you are celebrating it appropriately, right? That's life as a middle child right there. Right? Give me a cheer. If you're the youngest child in your family. Oh, yeah. Me. Look at me, look at me. I'm so needy.
00;25;25;23 - 00;25;30;07
Unknown
I'm the youngest one. Yeah, yeah.
00;25;30;09 - 00;25;58;15
Bob Balian
And again, so overlooked. Right. Many times. Yeah. And obviously there are so many other settings that we could talk about where we get overlooked, under heard and unappreciated. But we need to learn that if our self esteem, if our self esteem is based on the wrong things like our position or our persona or our popularity or our possessions, then we're going to struggle with uncertainty and we're going to struggle with anxiety.
00;25;58;17 - 00;26;24;10
Bob Balian
But if it's based on what it should be based on, which is our proximity to God, if God is close, then we have a real foundation. Then we have something to lean on. We see discouragement easily because in the material world we see the things that discourage us so visibly. But we have to think about the invisible God working in the invisible realm, working the invisible battle on your behalf.
00;26;24;12 - 00;26;44;00
Bob Balian
When we're not close to him, we don't think like that. But when you're close to God, then you're fully aware that God loves you and you know that he's continually working on your behalf through anything you're waiting on him on. One last thing I will close. I know you guys got to get to the lunch. I feel you, I'm hungry too.
00;26;44;06 - 00;26;47;17
Bob Balian
Where y'all going? As a matter of fact.
00;26;47;19 - 00;27;21;08
Bob Balian
Nobody wants to let me know. It's all good. It's all good. Okay, okay. Iron horse? Yeah. Just went there the other night. Man. Have the business. Wow. Iron horse baby. My line about that. Fantastic. Okay. Sorry. The last thing that can suddenly help you decrease fear and anxiety. Concentrate on your call. Now focus on your call. Focus on the thing that God has called you to do for his kingdom, especially if you're not in full time ministry.
00;27;21;11 - 00;27;53;14
Bob Balian
People that are fully committed to their role in building the kingdom don't have time to think negatively that they're so busy trying to fulfill their call and do everything else they have to do in life, that fear is the last thing they have room for. Now, I'm going to tell you one quick story and then we'll close and my daughter Taylor and my wife Letty, are probably sick and tired of hearing the story, but I can specifically remember the last thing the last summer recharge.
00;27;53;17 - 00;28;19;08
Bob Balian
Excuse me. Winter retreat that I took my youth group on as a volunteer youth leader. We're driving to a bunch of cabins in the winter, and I've got my daughter, Taylor. She was a couple decades younger, right than sorry. And I got like, six other kids in the SUV, and I'm on the phone with one of the moms because one of her kids had to stay back because they had a game.
00;28;19;10 - 00;28;47;01
Bob Balian
So her parents are gone, and that kid is going to stay overnight with grandma and grandpa. So mom wants me to talk to Grandma and Grandpa about packing for the kid for the retreat. They're coming the next day. And again, I was insane this all day. But I don't mean to be disrespectful at all, but how many of us know that at some point, kids are probably in less danger without Grandma and grandpa?
00;28;47;03 - 00;29;10;05
Bob Balian
Right? At some point in life, I was like, I know you're only 13, but you can drive better than both your grandparents, right? So I'm going to follow Grandma and Grandpa trying to get this kid pack for tomorrow while I'm driving. And in the meantime, our pastor's daughter, Leah, who was like family to us. And she was really tight with Taylor.
00;29;10;08 - 00;29;36;00
Bob Balian
Leah's in the front seat and Leah is our D.J. for the journey. Right. And I don't know if you remember this one, but usher had just come out with this song. Yeah, right. And we all know the words to. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's like the only thing in the song. Right? And so all the kids in my truck are learning the words to this new song.
00;29;36;03 - 00;30;00;17
Bob Balian
And most of you know, the words of that song aren't exactly glorifying to God. And now we're on, you know, time 57 listen to. Yeah, because Leah's running it back and they're all singing while I'm on the phone with grandma, trying to explain what to pack for this kids. So every four minutes grandma is here and picks up A-town down and and a little bit later she's hearing Ludacris go take that rewind back.
00;30;00;17 - 00;30;25;09
Bob Balian
Lil Durk got the beat and I better stop right there. But you know what I'm talking about right? And grandma's looking at me like, are you really her youth pastor? Like, come on. But all that little trivial, seemingly meaningless stuff, when you do as a volunteer and you're serving your church and the people of your church, God uses all of that stuff continually.
00;30;25;12 - 00;30;46;01
Bob Balian
God blesses it. God puts his hand on all of that. And when you're playing out your purpose in the kingdom, you get re-energized. There's a kingdom kind of confidence that comes over you when you're fulfilling your purpose. Now, I want to say this as I close and I'm going to pray, and then we'll all go grab something to eat.
00;30;46;01 - 00;31;08;10
Bob Balian
But I know many of you are walking through a difficult season right now. And I don't want to minimize that. And I don't want to make light of that at all. And this next thing I'm going to say sometimes is tough to hear, but it's the honest to goodness true. God wants to develop us more than he wants to deliver us.
00;31;08;12 - 00;31;36;09
Bob Balian
Keep keep telling yourself that until you know it. And God, God's going to deliver you. Whatever your season is just a season. He's going to deliver you. But he's he's using this to develop you. He's using this to make you stronger, to build you up. And we all need that. Amen. And so while you're thinking about that, what you found reverence and I'll, I'll pray for you right now.
00;31;36;11 - 00;32;06;15
Bob Balian
Dear Lord God, thank you. Thank you for your word is alive and powerful and sharper than a double edged sword. And we pray that you let it penetrate today. And, Lord, as we're lifting our thoughts up to you right now, I'm praying for everyone in the room that's going through a difficult season. Can you help them think about and maybe even maybe even write down later on today?
00;32;06;18 - 00;32;28;29
Bob Balian
What is it that you feel like you're losing control over, right? That thing down and imprinted on your mind. If you feel like you're losing control and it makes you feel like you want to grab on and grasp on to something even tighter and tighter and tighter, you know that your children. Is it a relationship you're in? Is it something financial?
00;32;29;01 - 00;32;37;13
Bob Balian
Are you trying to control people at work because of something you feel like is slipping away?
00;32;37;15 - 00;32;44;09
Bob Balian
Are you overly attempting to control your image or your status?
00;32;44;11 - 00;33;13;21
Bob Balian
What is the person, the thing, the event, whatever that you're trying to control? Give it a name. At some point, write it down. Because here's the question for every single one of us is this something that is truly ours to control? Or is this something that I'm supposed to just trust the Lord with all my heart, lean not on my own understanding with and in all my ways acknowledge him?
00;33;13;24 - 00;33;30;12
Bob Balian
Is is something that isn't even controllable. And you or I, trying to control something that isn't even mine to control. Write that down. Pray about that. Give it to God.
00;33;30;14 - 00;33;54;17
Bob Balian
And just over the next couple of weeks, just just see what God does. See how he decreases your fear as you surrender more and more. See how anxiety subsides. I pray this for all of you. Lord, allow this to happen. As we walk through those doors, we see how this is now my mind a restaurant with your spirit in Jesus name.
00;33;54;17 - 00;34;04;05
Bob Balian
All of God's people said Amen. Sister Ginger.
00;34;04;08 - 00;34;07;17
Chrissy Cole
Thank you for being a part of our online community here at Project Church.
00;34;07;18 - 00;34;10;29
Chrissy Cole
We hope that this message and the whole service bless your life.
00;34;11;02 - 00;34;27;07
Caleb Cole
Yeah. And if it did, we want to ask that you would do something for us. First of all, if you're not already subscribed to our YouTube channel, be sure to subscribe. Like this video. But also, we would ask that you would consider financially supporting what God is doing through Project Church. You can give in a variety of ways.
00;34;27;10 - 00;34;42;16
Caleb Cole
You can text project to 97,000. Right now. You can give to our Church Center app, or you can give on our website project church.com/give. Thanks so much for being a part of our online community. And once again God bless you guys. We'll see you soon.