Hope for the Valleys We Choose: Samson, Manasseh, and Peter

[Applause] all right well hello journey and everyone watching online uh if we haven't had the opportunity my name is Ryan I'm the youth pastor here Journey well the last few weeks we've been in a series called mountains and valleys because we see in Scripture that there are these moments in people's lives where you have really positive and lifechanging experiences and we call those Mountaintop experiences but then you also have valleys these seasons of low lows deep dark hurt uh and we see that in scripture as well and and so we've been talking about how do we navigate these Seasons or circumstances in life uh that are described as mountains and valleys uh last week our guest speaker Joel he talked about what it was like to live in the in between of those Seasons well today I'm going to be looking at three stories in the Bible

about a judge a king and a fisherman uh and they're all about The Valleys that we get ourselves into so there are times that we end up in valleys that are outside of our control there's nothing we can do to prevent us going into them right and uh an idea of this would be the Book of Job right where job is just selected to go through these horrific seasons and trials in his life all because God was was testing him now there are those circumstances for sure but there are also valleys that we get ourselves into and those are The Valleys that we're going to be looking at today but before we do I think it's important to pause and reflect on who God is for a moment because before we start getting into

some really heavy scripture I think we need to know that God loves us and I say that and we hear the word love and the reality is that word for us is just used in so many ways that it can become desensitized like I love church I love Jesus Jesus I love God but I also love football I love pizza I love you know and so love just has this variety of meanings in depth for us but when I say that God loves us that Hebrew word there is more than just a feeling that God has towards his people his creation God's love for us is a promise it's a covenant meaning that When God says I love you he's saying I am establishing a

relationship with you that's going to withstand the test of time I'm going to love you through the highs and the lows that I'm going to choose to be there for you and do what's best for you even when you don't deserve it or earn it that is God's love for us and he's always there for us now that played an important role in my life I've shared before that I didn't grow up in a Christian home and I want to tell you a little bit more about my story because it's important to know because to me it's The Valleys that I still live in today because of some of the things that I experienced as a kid now I grew up in a home where both parents didn't know Jesus they were young my mom and dad were young when

they had kids and everyone around them told them like your marriage isn't going to work your family's going to fall apart and they fought they fought to to provide for our family but here's the thing my my dad was raised in a pretty hard home his father was a marine and believed in discipline and and really my father experienced some really heavy discipline Growing Up So in his mind he raised us as a Young Man the only way he knew how he was raised now of course as an adult I understand that my dad was thinking like well I'm not going to discipline him like I was so it's a lot less but still the things that I went through in my home were were traumatic and hard but the thing that I saw from a young age was anger my father was angry

a lot and so wouldn't you know his oldest son would also be angry I just started doing what my dad did if he would come home and he had a bad day at work he'd be mad he'd be yelling he throw things so guess who was mad and throw things and do things now later on my mom would learn the solution to my anger was just food I'm not saying I was healthy but she was like I just feed him yeah you know I'm pretty sure that's what she told my wife you know when I was getting uh married to her he goes listen if he ever just starts getting grumpy just give him something to eat you know should have found that out earlier and again not the that wasn't the healthiest or wi this but but growing up that I was just around that my father was angry all the time and then disciplined me and and I

just remember I I would take all that anger and I would dump it on my younger brother my younger brother's 2 years younger than me and if I'm being honest life was great until he was born and you know like I was the baby I was just I got everything I needed when I wanted it and then all of a sudden he comes around and now he gets all the attention and I just remember growing up that I love my brother but man I was mean to him I'd fight with him all the time and yeah there was times where we'd brotherly wrestle or things like that but the majority of the time it was me physically attacking him mostly because my brother was smarter than me I mean he was he was just clever he had like that you know we call that Serpent's Tongue you know like he could just make witty remarks and my brain just couldn't

handle it so I'd just attack him and over and over growing up my mom would be like you can't hit him you're bigger you're stronger you can't do it didn't matter I never learned how to control my anger and so I fought with my brother most of our childhood all the way into our teenage years and it destroyed our relationship now here's the thing I L my brother I wasn't okay with anyone else trying to hurt my brother so if other people tried to hurt him I'd step up and be like I don't think so which I'm sure was very confusing to him like wait a second you're the one so there's this weird relationship where yes I loved him and I cared for him but man I didn't know how to control my anger and I took it out on him and it destroyed our relationship

and then in high school when I was 16 years old I Found Jesus I surrendered my life I became a Believer and my life began to change that anger that rage that had been in me since childhood began to go away I started finding peace and in my mind I thought oh well now everything's going to be good my family's going to be great my relationship with my brother's going to be great but the damage had been done my brother didn't like me I remember the last last time my brother and I fought and the reason I can remember is because it was my graduation day so here I am 18 years old he's 16 I am getting ready to go to the high school to walk in my graduation and my brother I'm in the kitchen my brother

comes into the kitchen and he comes by and he gives me this shoulder you know and I was like whatever you know okay now just before I get into this is there something you need to know like our family like we fought a lot but we had a rule that rule was you don't hit in the face I don't know why that was the rule but that was just like here's the line you don't cross it and so we get into the you know we're in the kitchen I turn around I look at my brother and I don't know what he was thinking maybe because now he'd been in fights and he'd gotten bigger and stronger but he just looks at me he turns and he just throws a hook right into my face I think he was thinking he was going to knock me out or something I don't know but all of a sudden I turn and look at him and he sees that old look that I used to have and I see the look that he used to have of fear and he

takes off running to the exact spot he used to run as a kid in our house and I ran after him I chased him down wanting to hurt him in my mind just filled with rage and anger going all bets are off now he just crossed that line and I remember my sister ran in and stopped us she goes Ry you got to go go to your graduation get out of here I remember thinking that's it we're done I'm done our relationship is over that's a horrible memory to have on your graduation day this fight with my brother you see one of the many reasons that I love scripture is because it's relatable the Bible's not filled with examples of perfect people living perfect lives that honor God rather it's about a perfect God who uses imperfect people to fulfill the call that he's

given them am now one of the stories that we're going to read as I mentioned as a judge and this judge's name was Samson now let me give you just a little background of Samson before Samson was even born his mother was Barren and couldn't have children and an angel of the Lord appeared to her and said you're going to have a son and your son is going to be different he's going to be set apart because he's going to follow the Nazarite vow that's found in number six and so he says even now before he's born I want you to begin to live out this vow that's found in scripture and she's like well I don't know if this is from God so then he the angel of the Lord peers to her and her husband and then sure enough she gets pregnant and they have the boy and they name him Samson now according to this vow that Samson's supposed to live through he's supposed to not eat anything from the

fruit of the vine he's not supposed to drink anything that comes from fruit of the vine so that means no drinking wine he can't come close to or touch dead things and he can't shave the hair on his head so these are some of the things that are found in this this vow that's supposed to be over his life but when you read through judges chap 131 1415 you see that throughout Samson's life he disobeys these things actually there's one point that a lion comes to attack Samson and it says that the Lord comes upon him with strength and he tears the lion apart with his bare hands like woo it's impressive but here's the thing later he comes back to the corpse of the lion and bees have started to make honey inside of it and and so he reaches in and grabs the honey and begins to eat it then brings it home and gives it to his

parents and of course doesn't tell them where it came from because right there that's a direct violation of The Vow that he had made we see that Samson was attracted to the Philistines I mean the these were the enemies of God the people who had uh had control over the the Israelites at this time and so Samson goes over he like oh she's pretty I want to marry her and so he tells his dad go get her for me and so then they go and they throw a party a festival where Samson would have been drinking lots of wine and he does this also he can marry this Philistine woman we see throughout the story of Samson that he kills many Philistines actually one of the famous stories right he gets a Jawbone of a donkey and Slaughters thousands of Philistines tell me how do you do not

come in contact with dead things when you're killing them with a Jawbone so here is Samson who's actively kind of gone against this vow that had been placed upon his life to the point where he comes to the second relationship with another Philistine woman named Delilah and the leaders of the Philistine people come to Delilah and they say Delilah we're going to make you rich we're going to give you all this money if you just tell us what Samson's weakness is and so three times she asked Samson what is your weakness and three times he lies to her and he says Ah it's this it's this it's you know my hair Tangled with leather and braided this way so she does all these things and every time the Philistines come and then what happens he breaks free and defeats them and we read this story and we're like man

Samson you're an idiot like how many times like how did you not know Delilah was trying to betray you like literally every time you told her that's what happened and then all of a sudden the Philistines came but we're going to read this passage right now and then we're going to realize why Samson did what he did so Judes 16:1 15-22 and she said to him how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me you have mocked me these three times and you have not told me where your great strength lies and when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him his soul was vexed to death and he told her all his heart and said to her a razor has never

come upon my head for I have been a Nazarite to God for my mother's womb if my head is shaved then my strength will leave me and I shall become weak and be like any other man when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart she sent and called to the Lord to the Philistines saying come up again for he has told me all his heart then the Lords of the Philistines came up to her brought the money in their hands she made him sleep on her knees and she called the man and had him shave off the Seven Locks of his head then she began to torment him and his strength left him so we see this right this this situation come up again and we think Samson why how could you be so foolish but when you look at

the context of his life right God never left him before God never took the blessing that he had given to him away right like he touched dead things but God stayed with him kept his blessing upon him he went in and married a Philistine woman an enemy of of the Lord's people and yet God stayed with him he drank wine and broke that part of the Covenant so you can see how for Samson he took these steps of Disobedience without any real consequence he kept going because well why not so he finally gets to the point where he's he's kind of beaten down and warn down by Delilah to the point where he's like I don't care anymore this is

this is it this is the truth but what happens is this his strength does leave him verse 20 and she said to the philistin she said and she saidthe Philistines are upon you Samson and he awoke from his sleep and said I will go out as at other times and shake myself free but he did not know that the Lord had left him and the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles and he and he grounded the mill in the prison so here is Samson's Valley that that he finds himself in he has this blessing that God put upon his life removed it's taken away and then he's imprisoned by the very enemies that he was called to defeat to protect God's

people from so the very purpose that was placed upon his life before he was even born has now been removed and now he has to actually serve them he lost his purpose he lost his calling his whole identity was stripped away because of his continued Disobedience so he finds himself in this Valley of Despair and hopelessness all because he continued to just live into the Disobedience he knew what the vow meant he knew the scriptures but he actively chose to live for himself until finally he crossed the line that he couldn't

undo the next story we're going to look at is the story of a king his name was Manasseh but before we talk about King manasse it's important for us to know a little bit about his father and the situation that was happening before he came to power manasseh's father was King Hezekiah Hezekiah was a disobedient king that led Israel astray but during his Reign Hezekiah was humbled by God and through through his humility he decided that he was going to tear down all of the altars to false gods he was going to tear down all of the the false worship and shrines and he he took it away and tried to restore Israel back to following Yahweh but before he died he had a son

we don't know how much of that his son saw of the idolatry we don't know if manasse was alive and and able to understand oh well the nation of Israel was worship worshiping all these false gods or whether he only saw the repentance of his father but what we know is that the consequences of hezekiah's actions had an effect on clearly the leadership and his son because we see this in 2 Chronicles 33: 1-9 verse one Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to Reign let's just pause there because I'm a youth pastor that's a middle school student student that's a junior higher 12 years old I can't imagine one of my my students on on Wednesday night

being like all right I'm King in charge of everything now right there red flag number one no but but we see he's he's young he's 12 right he's a year from you know in their culture being an adult of being a man and yet he's given the authority to rule over the kingdom of Judah and so he begins to Reign and then it says he reigned for 55 years years in Jerusalem this is a fact that's important to know because this shows that he was the longest reigning King ever in the nation of Israel more than any other he reigned the longest verse two and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to the Abominations of the Nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel for he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down and he erected altars to the baale and

made an ashro and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them so his first act as king is to undo all the the good and repentance that his father had brought to Israel and decides that no we're going to bring back all the idol worship we're going to restore these these high places to to worship the Bales and the the idols and false gods verse four and he built altars in the house of the Lord of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem shall my name be forever and he built altars for the hosts of Heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord and he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the son of Hanan and used fortune telling and Omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums

and with necromancers he did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking him to anger so here is a man who is so consumed with his own way that he decides that he's going to take these places of false worship and idol worship and put them in the temple that Temple that we talked about just a few months ago the this place that God said I am going to put my presence here Yahweh The Great I Am The God Who spoke in all creation came to be that God said this is where I'm going to to be with you as a people right here in the holy of holies this will be a place of worship this is where every Other Nation

will look and see me and Hezekiah takes that Holy place and puts in idols and altars to other gods and this angers God but what we see is that he did much evil in the sight of him we ask why why God why does this man get to be the longest reigning king in Israel because his choices didn't just affect him they affected the nation that he led verse 7 and the carved image of the idol that he had made he sat in the house of God of which God said to David and to Solomon his son in this house and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of

all the tribes of Israel I will put my name forever and I will no more remove the foot of of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers If Only They will be careful to do all that I have commanded them all the law the statutes and the rules given through Moses Manasseh LED Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more evil than the Nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel this is a pretty horrible King the fact that he did more evil as a king of Israel than every other Pagan nation of that time even more than the people that came before him I mean here is a man who sacrificed his own Sons a man who took an image of himself and put

it into the temple this to be worshiped here is a man who who was more concerned about himself than anyone else so we look at man's Valley his Valley begins from the moment that he decides that he's going to live life for himself and neglect the teachings of the Lord that his father had left him but his choices and consequences don't stay with just him they affect everyone that he has authority over and he leads them astray as well we see that manasse tries to fill the void because there was a void there he tried to fill it but instead of filling it with the God who his father had instructed him about he chooses to use things like sorcery and mediums and Fortune telling and we like to think that the

Bible's not relevant these are things that we are still trying to fill our lives with today there are people out there who are using sorcery mediums fortune telling all these things to try to fill some spiritual void that they have within them and we think that like oh no we're enlightened we got it we wouldn't fall for that again but after all this evil God hands manasse over to the the Assyrians you see Manasseh one of the reasons why they believe he served for as long as he did is because he went with the Assyrians with whatever they said the Assyrians were the enemy of God's people I mean these were people who did some pretty horrific things to to the Israelites some of the things that we see in the Old Testament is that they would kind of take some of their

people capture them and skin them alive and I mean these are just some of the the evil practices that the Assyrians did to them and yet Manasseh did everything to to to please them to be buddies with them to be loyal to them and yet it came to a place where the Assyrians captur manasse because even after living in his full self-indulgence and depravity he would end up leading himself and the nation to this Valley and here was a man who was put in a position of authority to lead people for god well let's now turn to the new New Testament and we're going to look at someone who fail the law in his time as a disciple of Jesus all right surprise surprise it's Peter you know like we know but here's the context of what

we're about to read with Peter see Jesus has just been betrayed and arrested all his disciples have fled they're scared here's Peter who in his last moments with Jesus took out a sword and hacked off the ear of one of the soldiers trying to arrest him and Jesus rebukes Peter picks up the ear and heals the guard so you got to understand like what Peter must have been feeling here he is trying to defend Jesus and then he's rebuked for how he was defending Jesus so he runs like the other disciples scared afraid confused and so he fle not knowing what to do or how to help and then we come to this passage

and Matthew 26 29- 75 says now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard and a servant girl came up to him and said you also were with Jesus the Galilean but he denied it before them all saying I don't know what you mean and when he went out to the entrance another servant girl saw him and she said to the bystanders this man was with Jesus of Nazareth and again he denied it with an oath I do not know the man so now an oath is is swearing before aidia and so essentially what Peter is doing here is saying I swear to Yahweh that I don't know the man that's a big deal verse 73 after a little while the

bystanders came up and said to Peter certainly you too are one of them for your accent betrays you then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear I do not know the man and immediately the rooster crowed and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus before the rooster crows you will deny me three times and he went out and wept bitterly think about this Valley that Peter finds himself in because of his fear because of his pride because of his failure he lies he denies knowing the very person who gave him purpose the one who called him to something greater than him I mean here is Peter who had the Mountaintop experiences literally he went to the top of a mountain and saw

Jesus transfigured he saw Moses and Elijah he was with Jesus in the moments he stepped out of the bo of the boat and walked on water Peter saw miraculous over and over again and yet here he is denying Jesus and not just denying not just lying and saying oh I don't know that guy actively swearing saying bring a curse upon me and my family if if I'm not telling the truth and we know he wasn't and when the roofer crows he remembers what Jesus had said that this is exactly what was going to happen and so he runs away now you might be thinking man let's

not invite Ryan to preach anymore this is just sad these are hard passages you could have picked anything in the Bible and you chose these three stories I picked him because it's true even thousands of years later we continue to make choices that lead us into valleys we find ourselves in these places of hurt and despair we find ourselves feeling alone or abandoned or we find ourselves resentful or filled with pain and we we think why why am I in this Valley how did I get here but don't worry because church we have something

that can get us through any Valley and that is hope we have the hope of God's love remember that love that I talked about that love that's not a feeling but a promise because we have a God who says I will be with you even at your highest highs and your lowest lows even when you think you're all alone even when you feel like the world is coming down on you I am here and I am with with you and I can give you a light that can bring you out of any Valley and all three stories today they had hope Samson's hope he found humility in his imprisonment he came to the place where he prayed to God and said God if you will give me one more time the strength so I can fulfill my purpose and defeat

my enemies and you know what God does he listens he hears and then he he does Samson has given his strength he takes down the pillars and 5,000 of God's enemy are destroyed in one moment more than he had killed previously so his purpose is restored manasseh's hope see Manasseh when he's imprisoned by the Assyrians he's humbled he prays out to God and he repents and here's what we see in Chronicles that he is heard by God manasse the man who offered his sons to be sacrificed to a foreign God manasse the one who led an entire nation astray one of the worst kings to ever lead and rule over Israel that King that

man humbled himself cried out to God and was heard and God restored him God brought him back to Israel to lead and so what do he do he takes down all the altars like his father did he restores worship back to Yahweh now the people that would continue to struggle but manasse ends knowing who the Lord is being called back he had hope he lived into the promise that there is a God who is with us despite the most horrific failures we can make and then there's Peter see after Peter's failure he went back to what he knew he felt like he had ruined any

relationship that he had with Jesus so he defaulted to going to to be a fisherman so the next thing we see Peter he's he's fishing he's on the the boat with his buddies and they're like hey that's Jesus and Peter's like Jesus jumps out of the boat swims doesn't wait to row in like everyone else he gets to Jesus he's so excited to to be again with with his Lord to have a chance to to make up for the the failures to to repent and then what we see is Jesus Jesus offer Peter that opportunity Jesus says do you love me do you love me do you love me then feed my sheep and then this is how Jesus ends that moment with Peter despite all his failures despite all the things that he did wrong he looks at Peter and says

follow me he once again gives Peter the invitation to become the disciple that he knew Peter could always be and from this moment on there was a difference you see we make choices every day and sometimes we make choices that go against God we we choose things that are not good for us we give in things that lead us into valleys but like these stories and many others in scriptures we too can find hope we see this in in Isaiah 40 it says this but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength they shall Mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint Our God not only loves us to the point that

he's committed to to be with us through the highs and lows through our darkest valleys he also says he'll be our strength he'll give us what we need to get out to rise up but there takes a response from us we can't just expect God to fix the things that we've broken we can't just expect God to restore the relationships that we've hurt no there is there is something that we must do and what we see in these different stories is that people respond with humility the first thing we need to do is humble ourselves we need to lay down our pride our anger our fear we have to Humble ourselves to say okay Lord I was in the wrong or what I did led me to this place but I don't want to be here anymore and then that takes us to the next part

prayer calling out to God for some of you maybe that prayer is just silent in your head where you're like Lord I need you again I need you to to help fix the things that that have been there Lord I need you to be present with me I need you to help bring me back to you and for some of you that prayer is going to be a cry of desperation that prayer is going to be like God I need you God I have forsaken you Lord I have done everything against the will that you have for my life but Lord I recognize now that it is you and only you and Lord I need you back humility prayer and then repentance we have to be willing to walk the other way to say you know what I'm not going to live into the the ways of the world anymore I'm not going to live in to the addictions that have been drawing me away no I'm going to walk towards God because the longer I walk

towards God the ler that thing becomes I look at my relationship with my brother over the years as adults we've been able to restore it we have a better relationship now than we've ever had growing up I love my brother I've sought that forgiveness I we've actually processed growing up in those situations we were in now it doesn't fix the things that I did and the relationship that we had but we've chosen to not let that relationship just wither and die we've chosen to stand up to restore so that we could be better Brothers going into our later years of life now I know that's what it was for

me and still is for me today I I deal with this anger it's always going to be there I think sometimes we think that the consequences of our Valley will just go away and we'll never see them again but the reality is we're always being Sanctified we're always being renewed in God so I'm thankful for the people that God has put in my life to continue to help me grow to continue to Humble me and this process it never stops we see that in Philippians 1:6 when he says I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ friends we will always be working on the stuff but we have a God who is faithful to continue to work with us until we're

restored in Perfection so today whether you're here in person watching on TV or online and through this entire sermon you felt that inside of you you know the struggle that you've had that you've buried deep right because whenever someone has a sermon like this talking about the consequences of the choices we make it's right there and so many times we come into this building and we try to put on a mask we try to act like we got it together I'm good I'm I'm forgiven and you are you are forgiven but if we we don't ever deal with the things that are inside of us then we're never going to fully be restored we can never fully repent because if we just keep hiding it and bearing it or pretending like it's not

there then we're not really dealing with it so maybe today you came in and you have an addiction or you've been lying to your spouse or to your family and it's been this weight that you've been carrying and it's just been weighing you down and anytime someone mentioned something like it it's just a reminder of the stone that's been wrapped around your neck your soul is heavy and you feel helpless shameful today I want you to know that you have an opportunity to choose humility to cry out to God and to take a Next Step will it be hard 100% yes it's never easy bringing out the stuff of our life it's never easy to be like hey I'm addicted it's never easy to to step out

and be like I've been lying about this but I'll tell you what church on this side of Heaven I'd rather do the hard things now the things that yeah they may make the relationship tough you may have to earn back trust for the rest of your life you may have to do things that are hard but you'll do them because they are honoring to God because someday every single one of us will be before this holy God and he will look at our lives and is he going to look at us and be like you made the hard choice you did it because you had a relationship with my son he he told you that by by living a life of integrity and honesty and and authenticity others got to see who I am because of

that yes it was hard for you all the days of your life but you know what you were free you were no longer held to the LIE of the enemy the enemy wants you to keep these things bottled up and shoved down never to think about them because he want want you to believe that you have control over the sin in your life but there is a God who's saying I want to liberate you from that when the Bible talks about Sin it often refers to it as slavery we enslave ourselves to these things and yet we have a God who says I've liberated you I've freed you I've given you a pathway to freedom to live a life that shows the world that there is no oppression no value no addiction no struggle that is more

powerful than the blood of Christ that you can be redeemed restored so whether you're here you're dealing with sexual addictions pornography substance abuse alcohol abuse or trauma that you've Buri deep down inside of you whatever it is today I want you to know you're not alone because again that's a lie there are others who have been where you are who have gone through what you are going through who have felt what you are feeling right now and they are here to help and we wanted to make sure at Journey that we had a next step for you so what we've done is on our website Journey andb ben.com right on our homepage we put a list of resources and partners that deal with these different issues that we see every single day issues of addiction sexual addiction for men and

for women abuse so if you you came here today and this is something you're struggling with and you've just been trying to control yourself know that you don't have to there are others who want to help you through this so you can go to our website and you can check out those resources after the service but maybe you're here and you're like right none of those things none of those things are what I'm dealing with mine is so unique well then I want to encourage you reach out to a pastor here at Journey Don't continue to try to do this on your own God created us for Community right we say it all the time here at Journey we're better together I'm not saying it's going to be easy but what I am saying is you're not alone and and when you start to take

those steps of recovery you find Freedom but today if you're sitting here and you came to this place cuz maybe someone invited you or maybe you were like hey look free donuts and coffee I'm going to check this place out and you found yourself here here but you don't know who Jesus is and without Jesus you can never know the hope that I've been talking about and preaching about for the last 10 minutes because the world will try to offer you all these different solutions but there is only one hope that will not only sustain you through this life but will lead you into an eternal life after and that is Jesus and here's the thing with Jesus he's not about being good enough he didn't choose the good enough he chose the low and the broken he meets us right where we're at Jesus

never demanded hey go back get your life in order then come back and see me then we'll talk no time and time again Jesus receives people as they are in their hurts in their Brokenness redeems restores heals and then through it all through his death and Resurrection he finally gives us something that we could never achieve on our own that is salvation the Eternal hope that when this world end when this time ends for us on this world that we will be with God forever and that is not because of anything we could have done to earn it or buy it or achieve it all we can do is receive it it's called Grace God gives you what you do not deserve so if you're here today and

you're like I want that I want that you can have it this is what Paul says believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord that he died and was resurrected Ed confess with your mouth and you're saved that's it just believe that Jesus is who he said he is so this morning if you're here and you're like I can do that then congratulations welcome to the family you're saved there's nothing magical about it there's no secret prayer you just believe it and then when you do when you accept it your life begins to change you don't stay where you are is everything going to be fixed in an instant no I know I'm still dealing with stuff from my childhood I'm still working through things that are popping up in my life as a consequence for my choices but I have a god who's promised

to sanctify me along the way to continue to give me opportunities to repent to be humbled so Church let's pray this morning as we continue in worship Holy Father God You Are Holy and yet you love us Lord you love us so much that doesn't matter what mountain or Valley we're in that you've said you were there for us waiting for us to respond so God I pray that we would be a church that would live out humility that would be active in prayer and practicing repentance daily Lord may we be a church that reflects your son so when people look at our lives and yeah maybe they see the junk but Lord they see you fixing that

junk because you are a God who can heal and restore Lord I pray for those right now who are dealing with addiction Lord who are carrying a weight and burden that is not of you I pray that Lord you would lead them to freedom I pray that you would lead them to community that would transform their lives forever that Lord this would be the moment that they look back on and said it was on this day that I made a declaration that the enemy would no longer hold me captive but I would be set free in the Son and the blood of Jesus so Lord as we enter into your worship may we Proclaim boldly who you are because God God you are deserving of all our Glory thank you for your love for us and we pray this in your name amen [Music]