Faith is the Foundation

Well good morning. Welcome to this foggy morning at Aptos. My name is René. I'm one of the pastors here and I just have a question for you. How many of you, it's been an amazing three or four weeks of whale watching out there. We've had like three humpbacks that have made Capitola their home and just by show of hands, how many of you have seen these whales out there at one point or another? A lot of you. They're so easy to spot. You just go right out to the sidewalk and look at, in fact, I'll tell you a little story.

About three weeks ago, I'm driving to work here. I live in Santa Cruz but I was driving to the church and I usually go the freeway but if I've got enough time, I love to drive along the coast. That new East Cliff one-way section is so gorgeous by 41st there and then I've drive along the cliffs in Capitola and down where you can see the village and you can see the wharf and I'm looking down in my car and I see whales frolicking, cavorting on my way to work and I pull over and I thought to myself, you know, I don't really, today, I don't really have an appointment or anything. I don't have to be like on time to work and so I thought I'd get a closer look at him out on the wharf.

So I parked my car, I walk out to the wharf and it's true, they were literally just right past the kelp forest there by New Brighton Beach and I thought, they have kayak rentals here and they're only 10 bucks an hour and so I texted, is it okay if I come in an hour late? Oh yeah, yeah, that's okay. So I thought this is awesome. So I hop into this kayak and I just paddle over there literally in 10 or 20 minutes. I'm literally approaching whales in my kayak and there's only a couple of other kayaks out there. I see a whale at first maybe, you know, 300 yards away, a safe distance and that's close enough for me, alright?

So and the look at that, well this is awesome to be living here where that can happen and then I look up again and the whale's about half that distance, it's about 150 yards closer and I thought, okay, I'm gonna paddle back to the wharf now, you know, he's coming after me and then I look up again and I'm thinking, I wonder how close he is to me right now and you see this front pew of the church? I look up and literally I'm sitting in my kayak like this and the whale surfaces that close to me and this is a picture of that whale on screen right now. This is not a picture I took, I'm not stupid enough to bring my camera out on a kayak, but the guy next to me was because he was a professional photographer, Matt Hoffman out here in Capitola and he snaps this picture, this is the picture and I was so stunned and the whale comes up like this and then he swims under my kayak, under me and pops up right on the other side of me and then he does it a second time, pops up on the Capitola side and swims under me again.

I'm not even Pentecostal and I spoke in tongues. It was such an amazing experience. So I told Matt, I said, are you gonna put these pictures online? He goes, yes, so I said, I'm gonna send them to all my friends. So I did the social media thing and I'm blasting my friends, I'm texting them, I'm saying, this is incredible. You have to get out there and see the whales. It's unbelievable. Go out because they're not always there. I mean you guys know, most of you have lived here for many years, they're not always out there, they don't come that close every year and when they do, they disappear within a matter of days.

I said, even if you don't rent kayaks, go out to the cliffs, watch the whales. So as far as I know, you know how many of my friends took me up on that idea so far? That was three weeks ago. One, exactly, one. And now these are good people, these are my friends that either says something about my persuasive powers or lack thereof or just human nature, you know. It's just human nature that there's something this cool and quantity is this limited and yet people say things like, well, you know, I'm a busy guy. It took me an hour, one hour of renting a kayak for ten bucks. You know, I'm cheap, I'm not gonna do it longer than that and you can do it. I'm not made of money. It's ten dollars! I'm going crazy saying you gotta get out there.

I was out there yesterday and they're still out there frolicking around so if you can, you know, rent a kayak, steal a dinghy, I don't care what you do, get out there and see these whales. Now, why am I leading the sermon with this? Because I what I want you to do is I want to explain to you how I'm feeling this same way about all the stuff that's going on right now at church. It's the coolest stuff. I think it's stuff you're gonna remember for your lifetime but it's all going to be done by Thanksgiving. Over! I think we're in a historic time but it'll be done by then.

What am I talking about? Last weekend, as Mark briefly mentioned, we launched this 2020 Vision initiative and we handed out brochures. If you didn't get one, pick one up because what we're doing just for the next five weeks now is on Thanksgiving weekend we're asking people to bring in four-year pledges to what? Well, we hope to do, there's three components of the first phase of this. We hope to build a children's building for the kids. You saw the youth choir up here? Our kids ministries are exploding right now. For Cruz Kids, which is our day camp program in the summer, we had to turn away 1,200 applicants to Cruz Kids. That's how much we're running out of space. It's just exploding.

So we're going, we need to build a children's ministry center, we need to put the youth in the gym as a youth center because of all the stuff that's going on and not just for us. We've been involved with this orphanage, Little Flock orphanage over in India. They need to have a community center. Let's build it for them and not just for kids. Let's also raise enough food to help supply second harvest for the holiday food drive and let's all make the food for the poor and for the kids in India. For our kids, let's make that all three components of the first phase of this 2020 vision project.

And so we're asking people to consider how they might pledge on commitment weekend. That's the weekend before Thanksgiving for the next four years out to give above their regular offering. Why do I say this is historic? This is how all these buildings on this campus got built with just four or five year pledges and then they had no debt, no mortgage. We've been enjoying them all debt free and mortgage free ever since those pledge drives that built them and that's what we want to do for these three components as well. But it'll all be over by Thanksgiving. So I encourage you if you haven't yet, pick up a brochure. They're in those bags and get involved in this and not just the 2020 vision.

We also last weekend launched the faith building series and this also has just five or six weeks left to go. It also ends on Thanksgiving. So if you didn't get a book, these are free. They're 40 day daily devotions that we wrote with small group lessons in the back. Pick up a small group DVD and in those DVDs you'll see video lessons shot in our living room where we go into depth, further depth on the faith topics that we cover in the weekend services. Grab this stuff because you don't want to be left out of this thing where quantities are limited. I think this could be an amazing faith-building adventure for our church and I want you to get into it.

Now the books I understand, we have about a hundred of these left so this isn't like cheap Christmas presents for you and all your friends. Pick one up for you if you didn't get one last weekend and get involved in this just amazing five weeks. I think that our church is going to be a part of right now. Now why are we doing all this? Why talk about faith? Why do faith building? Well because frankly there will be times in your life when the bottom is gonna drop out. There will be times in your life when it feels like all your supports are gone. When it feels like you cannot go on. When you're gonna need the support of something stronger than you and bigger than you and wiser than you and better than you and faith is the only thing that passes muster. Faith is the only foundation that will get you through those times.

So grab your message notes that look like this in your bulletins that you got as you came in and let's talk about this. Whether you're watching on video over in Munskey Hall in the venue service or on cable, on cable you can download these message notes on our website. You can get the PDF for these at www.tlc.org and you can also get all the daily devotions for the faith book and all the small group videos on our website as well. Just click on the faith building icon and you can get all those and it's all for free.

Now each weekend in this series we are looking at another classic verse from the Bible on faith that'll change your life and here it is this week. I want you to say this verse out loud with me. Let me hear you. The righteous will live by what? Faith. Say it again. The righteous will live by faith. There is one big idea in this message and that's it. So say that with me again. The righteous will live by faith. Now you'll notice here there's no verse reference. Usually there's a chapter and verse reference right? There's no verse reference to this. You know why? Because this line is in the Bible over and over and over and over again. That's how important this idea was to God to get through to you.

But what does it really mean? Well to discover the meaning behind this which is the key just to everything in life not just your spiritual life. What we're going to do today is we're going to go back in time and see the first time this ever appears in the Bible and look at the context and then go forward to the New Testament and see the three key times it is re-quoted in the New Testament because each one of those three key times is going to teach you something that's going to absolutely change your life. And we have to do this because here's the problem. These days we misunderstand what it means to live by faith. We think live by faith just means I got to be like the little engine that could you know. I think I can. I think I can and so he could. Or Maria in the sound of music right. She said I have confidence in what? Me. That's right.

And in case you're going really you're quoting Maria in the sound of music. René you have to hand in your man card. Listen let me show you this one. How about George Foreman right. 20 years after he loses his heavyweight title. 20 years later he fights for the championship again. And anybody remember how old he was? He was 50 years old. Just a few days ago Mark Spurlock turned 50. George Foreman. George Foreman is his new hero here because I mean you know George Foreman is 50 years old. He's fighting a guy 19 years younger than him and he wins the boxing heavyweight world championship at 50. And they interviewed him afterwards. How'd you do it? He said you just got to have faith. You just got to have faith. Faith that you can do it.

Now it's awesome to be that confident right. That kind of confidence will get you far. But when the Bible talks about faith it goes even deeper than I think I can. Because sometimes you know you can't. It goes way deeper than I have confidence in me because sometimes you've lost all confidence in you. It goes way deeper than you just got to have faith because sometimes you don't got faith in you. And to understand the depth of what the Bible means here I want to go back to the very first time this line is quoted in the Bible back to Habakkuk. Now many of you are thinking I have never heard of that word before in my life. You're thinking Habakkuk sounds like the noise my cat makes when it's coughing up a hairball. Okay let me explain to you. Habakkuk was a guy who lived 600 years before Christ and when he wrote the little three chapter book of the Bible that bears his name his country was crumbling all around him.

The key word there was just uncertainty. There was political confusion and uncertainty. There's disunity in the nation. There are enemies waiting outside the walls to attack and his writings read like the personal journal entries of a man having a dialogue with God in a time of real trouble. So to give you the context for how he uses the line the just or the righteous shall live by faith let me give you a 10,000 foot overview of the book of Habakkuk. It's got a very simple three-point outline. It's three complaints to God from Habakkuk. First complaint he says hey God life stinks what's the plan? Ever feel like that? He's sort of whining to God that he does not like the way things are going and so he wants God to do something life stinks right now what's the plan?

God's answer he basically goes here's the plan. God says if you really want to know here's the plan and it's this things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better. God tells him Babylon on the army is gonna come in the Babylonians are gonna drag a bunch of you off to captivity lots of people are gonna die. Wow and so Habakkuk second complaint to God is don't like the plan not loving that plan God. Habakkuk even goes here what yours why that's a bad plan let me just point out to you why that's stupid and God I am he literally says I'm gonna wait on the wall of the city and dare you to answer me God because my logic is irrefutable about how that's a bad plan and God does answer him and his answer is basically trust me.

God says look you ask that's the plan and if you don't want to know the plan don't ask about the plan alright but there's only one plan and if you don't like it you can hate it you can fight it you can disagree with it but you're not gonna change it so I recommend trusting me and then Habakkuk comes up with this brilliant idea in chapter 3 his conclusion he basically goes yeah I think I'm gonna shut up now God says trust me he says I will and that's the whole book of Habakkuk the end. What are you doing God? I know what I'm doing. Are you sure you know what you're doing? Yes I'm sure I know what I'm doing. I guess you know what you're doing the end and it boils down to this Habakkuk's theme is faith at the top of page two of your notes.

Habakkuk has to learn to trust God trust God when he doesn't like what God is doing trust God when he doesn't get what God is doing trust God when he struggles with his own life and with the life of those around him that's what faith is when he says the righteous will live by faith that's what he means in fact here's the key verse of Habakkuk. Habakkuk 2:4 God is speaking back to Habakkuk here and he says look at the proud they trust in themselves and their lives are crooked that doesn't mean that they're criminals it literally means their insides are crooked they're they're they're not right inside their lives are crooked but the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God basically very simple verse God says there's two kinds of people those who trust in themselves those who trust in God those who live by faith in their own good clever ideas and their own capabilities and have confidence in them and those who live by trust in God.

You know this is ultimately what it all boils down to either trust in your own ideas or you trust in God now this little verse Habakkuk's key verse Habakkuk 2:4 has just resonated all throughout human history as people have gone that is that is a really profound statement it's got so much depth to it in fact there are three key times that line is re-quoted in the New Testament each time it's teaching something slightly different and I want to show you those three times right now and they're all wrapped up in Paul's story Paul was very impacted by that verse in Habakkuk now if you don't know Paul his first name was Saul then he changed it to Paul he's a major character in the New Testament he was a religious leader in the first century who trusted in himself even though he would have said he was trusting in God but Paul was focused on morality and religiosity that's his story he was focused on morality and religiosity his logic was well God is moral and God is like into religion and so if I'm super moral and super religious then I'll gain God's approval God's gonna like me.

Paul is so scrupulously moral and scrupulously religious to the point where he's even imprisoning and improving or approving of the execution of people he sees as religious heretics he's one of those one of those super fundamentalist that that's against everybody who doesn't believe exactly like he believes I mean he is just he says in the book of Philippians chapter 3 he says there wasn't anybody on earth who could have gone on at this morality and religion thing harder than I did stronger than I did he was I was I was a zealot of all zealots until one day Paul has a vision of Jesus Christ that literally knocks him to the ground and he realizes I have been getting this whole relationship with God stuff wrong because in all my morality and all my religiosity I've been focusing on myself and not on God and I've been becoming proud which is the root of all sin and so I was really the chief of all sinners because I was so proud and so arrogant.

And Paul realizes three key truths these are the three main times of back at two fours quoted in the New Testament and jot these down because if you don't get these three things you'll misunderstand everything else I say about faith in the series first Paul realizes I'm saved by faith I'm saved by faith not by trying hard to do better Galatians 3:11 Paul says clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God because and here's one of the places where Habakkuk is quoted the righteous will live by faith. So what's this verse mean let's drill down a little bit when he says law he's talking about the religious law God's commands in the Bible now let me ask you something God's commands God's law like the Ten Commandments are they good or are they bad are they good or are they bad they're good right God's commands are good in fact even if you don't agree with God's commands even if you don't believe the Ten Commandments come from God I'll show you how good God's laws are you hope that people keep them in a relationship to you right you hope nobody kills you or your loved ones you hope nobody bears false witness against you you hope nobody lies to you you hope nobody covets your stuff and so God's commands are good.

Now let me ask you another question do we perfectly keep God's commands no is it possible for us to perfectly keep God's commands no the Bible is very clear about that so the problem is not God's command God's commands are good but we're bad now what happens is this some people like Paul say well okay I'm bad but the law is good so I'm gonna work really hard to be good by doing the law by keeping the Ten Commandments and all that stuff and then I'll be good and I'll get to heaven because God will look at my spiritual resume he'll go wow you were better than most people you beat the curve and so I'm gonna let you in now Paul says here in this verse you know what it's impossible to have a saving relationship with God that way why not I'll tell you why one of two things will happen the first is you just might do better than the rest of the people around you at keeping the law of God and my guess is a lot of us in this room probably fall into that category frankly you've even thought to yourself a little better than average right if truth were to be told the irony is what happens then is you become proud and the Bible says that's the worst sin of all is to go yeah you know what I think I've kind of got this being a good person thing down because then you forget your need of God and pride and arrogance leads to all kinds of heartache and violence and judgment and arrogance and character flaws.

But then the second thing that could happen is you become discouraged not proud discouraged frustrated you develop this picture of God as an unpleasable boss God tells me to do all these things that I can't do now I do the best I can but I fall short every time and I know he's not pleased and he's gonna zap me and he's gonna take away his blessing or something and you become very discouraged in listen in fact what happens is most people who try to be moral and religious flip back and forth between those two extremes and you know how I know this because I do that and my life was a record of that really of going you know what I think I got this thing down I'm certainly better than my friends better than that guy over there he's a weirdo you know and then you go oh no I can't do this I'm so stupid I'm so stupid stupid and then you fall into distortion you go no I'm gonna do better I think I can I think I can I think I can I'm gonna do it then I fail again I'm such a worm and you go on the cycle and it's listen it's when you finally hit the place that I got to as a pastor at my first senior pastor at up at Lake Tahoe where you hit the wall and you throw up your hands and you say I can't do this I'm a faker I can't do this religion thing it's then that Jesus shows up and if you're listening you hear him say but don't you see I've got it all covered already my righteousness is a gift to you it's all grace you can stop trusting yourself and just trust me stop trusting in your goodness and trust mine stop trusting in your efforts and trust mine stop trusting in your wisdom and trust mine I have already taken care of everything because I love you so just receive it just can you trust me that I've taken care of it the big idea here that is just blowing Paul's mind is this Jesus Christ was crucified for you so you can stop crucifying yourself and just trust him and this is this is so brilliant because it means that you can be assured of heaven you can be assured of salvation if you just put simple trust in him.

I love the way Tim Keller puts it he says it's not the amount of my faith it's the object of my faith that saves me not the amount of my faith trying harder to work out more faith it's the object my do you get how that works I want you to imagine this picture this two people boarding an airplane these two guys now imagine one of these two guys has almost no faith in the airplane almost no faith in the pilot he just has enough faith to get on board but he's full of fears about flying he's gonna sit on that plane worried the other one has great confidence in the plane and in the science of flying and in this particular pilot because he knows him personally but they both get on the plane and they both fly safely and they both arrived safely one person had a hundred times more faith than the other guy but they were both equally safe and they both got to the same place it wasn't the amount of their faith it was the object of their faith the plane and the pilot that got them safely to their destination.

Now one guy is gonna have a hundred times more of a pleasant trip than the other guy he's gonna be happy and relaxed the other guy's gonna be worried the whole time but they both had enough faith to get on board and Paul realizes that's all you need to start your relationship with God it's all by faith I'm saved by faith I start by faith then number two I grow by faith I grow it's not like I'm saved by faith and it's back to my own efforts again I grow by simply trusting in God tell you a story 1500 years after Paul that little line from Habakkuk just explodes in the life of another very religious and moral person his name was Martin Luther Martin Luther lived around 1500 and he was a fairly wealthy guy in Germany who decides you know what I want to be real moral and real religious and the most moral and religious thing I can think of becoming is a monk then God will approve of me for sure so he becomes a monk then he says not only am I become a monk I'm gonna give away all my wealth and so he does and then he says not only am I gonna become a monk but because I'm a sinner and I deserve punishment I'm gonna punish myself all the time and I'm gonna sleep on an uncomfortable bed and I'm gonna eat horrible food I won't eat anything that tastes good to me he literally makes that vow and then he says and I don't deserve joy in my life so I'm gonna never laugh again ever to show how pure I am and every day I'm gonna go to confession all day long as I've got so much sin inside of me and he becomes just obsessed with being moral and religious and righteous and studying the Bible he's this brilliant genius moral and religious guy and he's getting more and more sad and he gets to the point where he's nearly at the edge of a nervous breakdown and then while studying the book of Romans he sees this verse where Paul quotes guess what Habakkuk again and Paul says look at this verse for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith from first to last just as it is written the righteous will live by faith that phrase first to last that's key you don't start with faith and then go on to your own beating yourself up you start with faith and you just continue with faith that God's got another control and you just are motivated by to follow him because he's awesome and you live out of gratitude not out of guilt and this explodes in Martin Luther's mind and here's what he wrote in his diary the day he read this he says I began to understand the righteous lives by a gift of God namely by faith as it is written he who through faith is righteous shall live.

Now check I love this out check this out here I felt that I was all together born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates here a totally other face of the entire scriptures showed itself to me and out of his understanding and experience came the whole Reformation and you know what human history was changed again from to every corner of the globe why? Because of this line the righteous will live by faith say that with me again the righteous will live by faith we're saved by faith we start with it we grow by faith and then the third time it's quoted in the New Testament we learned that I also endure by faith I end I keep going not by my own effort but by faith I endure now listen this is huge because some of you this right now right now is one of the hardest seasons of your life some of you have been wanting kids so badly and you can't have babies and some of you have children and your children are ill or they're ill tempered and they're driving you nuts you know or but it's tough right now some of you want so badly to be married and some of you wish so badly you weren't married you know that can be tough too in life some of you are not in good health some of your finances are not in good health you've been unemployed some of you just lost loved ones and for you there's this third place that line is quoted in the New Testament this is in the book of Hebrews we're not sure who wrote Hebrews possibly Paul but look at this verse this is for you do not throw away your confidence it will be richly rewarded persevere so that when you've done the will of God you will receive what he has promised for and here it comes again the righteous will live by faith.

Do you understand what he's saying there he's saying life is it's kind of like it's a story it's kind of like it's a movie and right now maybe you're 10 minutes in and to throw up your hands and curse the director and walk out of that movie because the hero is in trouble doesn't make any sense because your life's a movie that's going to go on into eternity so don't leave loud now because you don't like the ending it's premature it's just premature the story is still unfolding see Habakkuk when he first wrote that phrase he was in a place like you he looks around and he says God this does not look like you're good and this does not look like you're in charge but by the end of the book he comes to this great place where he says I'll trust you last verses of Habakkuk he says though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will be joyful in God my Savior the sovereign Lord is my strength he makes my feet like the feet of a deer he enables me to tread on the heights so who is his strength who is it shout it out the sovereign Lord see you don't start with faith in him and go on to confidence in you you start with faith in him and you continue with faith in him even when the fig tree does not bud even when it doesn't seem like it's playing out even when loved ones die even when you're dying because you can't get through that by having confidence in you you only get through that by faith in the sovereign Lord faith is the foundation for life.

Now this is all kinds of awesome implications about confidence today that we're gonna be playing out as we look at verses for the rest of this series but you gotta understand how faith in the sovereign Lord is the foundation now before we close I don't want you to just take my word for this every week in this series either live or on video we're gonna hear a faith story to show you how this is for real and so I'd like you to welcome with today's faith story Lucy Brooks who's going to come up on stage right now put your hands together let's welcome Lucy.

Now Lucy has actually a broken foot so I'm gonna help you get up here Lucy and I'm looking forward to hearing you thanks.

Thank you. In the spring of 2000 my husband and I started taking a comparative religions course at Evergreen Valley College. The instructor depending on which religion we were discussing he would bring in somebody to share their beliefs with us. When the evening came that we were discussing Christianity pastor René was brought in and he talked about grace this was interesting to me I'd never heard this he was saying that it was a gift from God and that it was given freely to all of us. He also said that Christians don't have to earn their eternal reward on their own merits that when they accepted Christ they had a desire to do what was right but that their works did not earn their salvation. This was in direct contrast to what I had learned over the years in churches I had always been taught that my works did count that while I needed a personal relationship with God in the end my works were gonna play a heavy part and that have any relationship with God was not going to be a guarantee.

So this was really intriguing took the notes put them away forgot about him two and a half years later a friend of mine was talking to me and she said you know even if you're not attending church you still need to be praying regularly and I realized she was right and I also realized that if I was going to reconnect with God I also needed to find a church but all the churches that I was familiar with left me feeling very uneasy left me feeling like I just didn't measure up and I didn't want to return to them and I started thinking about what pastor René had said and thought if he's right about this grace thing then maybe that's where I need to go maybe that's the connection I need to make he was the only one I knew who knew anything about this so I contacted him and asked if he would tell me more about it and he was willing.

So as I came to understand what grace was really begin to understand that I was saved by grace I accepted this gift in Romans 3:28 in the message it says what we've learned is this God does not respond to what we do we respond to what God does we finally figured it out our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade and I learned that that's exactly what grace was I needed to respond to what God had done not wait for him to respond to me.

As I accepted Christ I learned that because of the blood of Jesus I was accepted exactly as I am and that I was loved unconditionally that he sent his son to die for me because he wanted a relationship with me. I learned that he created me to be me that was big I couldn't get enough information about grace three months after I accepted Christ my husband's company folded this was not good news our son and I were college students our daughter was about to leave for a private college and we had no income. I immediately turned to God and said okay we this this isn't gonna work and he gave me peace a you know I won't lie there were times that I freaked out a little during the time that my husband was out of work but overall I had a sense of peace I knew we could lose everything that was material and we would still be okay and I knew that that piece only came from God it wasn't coming from within me.

In the end my husband was out of work for 19 months and when he got a job I realized I had just been given a crash course in faith and for that I was thankful. Over the years God has continued to teach me to listen to him and to trust him. I woke up one morning literally with the idea that I needed to look into grad school I had never considered this and so I knew this wasn't my idea and I said okay God if you want me to do this I will but I need you to open the door for me because I haven't been preparing for it and I'm gonna need you to carry me through because I'm not young anymore and you know this is gonna be hard God was faithful and he did carry me through he's caught me through brought me through the long process of becoming a marriage and family therapist and I realize even the times were really tough what I would remember is that he brought me here and he's not gonna let go of me he's gonna continue with me and and that's exactly what he's done.

It's sometimes I feel out of my element and then I realize that's because I can't do this by myself I can't he has to be with me and he is he guides my thoughts he guides my words and helps me to work with the people I work with. I also recognize that some of the life experiences that I had are the very life lessons that have led me to be able to work with some of the people I work with and like Joseph said in Genesis 50:20 God has used for good what others meant to harm me. In August of 2012 my husband was laid off again and immediately I started thinking okay I'm still not at a point where I can earn money working I'm still working for free and we don't have another 19 months we can't do this for 19 months and I immediately turned to God of course and said God I need you to help John find a job and and please do it soon and God made it clear that I could ask for help with the job I could not ask for the time frame he made it clear that was not my call that was hard for me because I thought okay wait you're slowing me down here and that makes me really nervous.

I continued to pray I have to admit it was literally a day-by-day decision to put my faith in God that he was going to bring us through but I did in the end my husband found a job very quickly and we literally came out ahead financially because he was out of work I know that was God that it couldn't be anything short of that but it again reminded me I need to trust God a friend sent me a comic recently that shows Jesus standing on the beach with someone and Jesus saying where you see only one set of footprints is where I carried you where you see the long groove in the sand that's where I dragged you kicking and screaming.

Now I know that God doesn't literally drag me kicking and screaming but I think I do my fair share of kicking and screaming anyway right now God has been making it clear for a couple of months what the next step is for me and and I've been hesitant you know I'll start to step out and then the enemy starts fighting back and I back off and I've realized this is just foolishness on my part because God has been so faithful where he leads me he will take me but I have to step out in faith. I'm still struggling with that Ephesians 2:10 says for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do I know that he has prepared me and I know that he is waiting to carry me I need to follow the pace that he's setting and I need to stop kicking and screaming.

Thank you.

The bottom line is this in all these verses trust God the rest is details right trust God everything else is details you start with faith in him you end with faith in him and you grow with faith in him in between so let's ask God for that kind of faith would you pray with me Heavenly Father thank you so much that you have a plan help us to live my faith in you for that plan every day and God it's my prayer for any today who may not know you that they would simply trust in you through your son Jesus who showed himself to be the most trustworthy person ever so help us to place our faith in him and to walk with him and to trust him to the end and God for those of us who need an encouragement or a refresher in our faith because we're growing weary we're losing heart I pray that you would send that through your spirit right now we trust your God and your good and we pray this in Jesus name amen.