How Faith Endures

Well good morning. It is wonderful to have you with us today. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and today I want to talk really about one thing and it's summarized in two words. Long run. Say that with me out loud. Long run. Say it again. Long run.

A few years ago, Wired magazine ran a story about a man named Dean Carnazes. You might have heard of him. Dean, to celebrate his 30th birthday, went bar hopping at some bars near his home in San Francisco. Now remember that San Francisco, all right? So he started with beer, ended up with tequila, drinking alone. He was, by the end of the evening and the early morning hours, as Wired magazine puts it, slobbering, drunk, and completely disgusted with himself. He longed to change, but he had tried and nothing was working.

Well, he walked from the last bar to his house in San Francisco, and as he was about to go in, it's about one in the morning, he notices on the porch an old unused pair of his running shoes from his college days. They were moldering, so he decides he's gonna put them on and start to go for a jog south. The next day he calls his wife to pick him up at the 7-11 at the corner of Swift Street and Mission in Santa Cruz, right here near our church, right? Amazing that he ran that far. His life began to change from that very day. It was, as he puts it, listen to this, like a religious conversion.

Dean ended up being one of the greatest ultra marathon runners ever known in American history. Just as an example, for fun one summer, Dean ran 50 marathons on 50 consecutive days in 50 different states. One summer he ran the New York City marathon and placed really high, and after the marathon, he decided he would run home to San Francisco. So people naturally have asked Dean, what have you discovered about life, you know, with all your experiences with ultra marathon running? And in Wired magazine, he gave this quote and I love this. He said, "Somewhere along the line we kind of as a people, as a culture, seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Any goal worth achieving involves an element of risk and pain." Would you agree with that?

When I read that, I thought to myself, what a great definition that is of living faith forward. I want to invite you to grab your message notes that you got when you came in. They look like this. You can download them if you're online at TLC.org/notes. Faith Forward is the name of the series, as Adrienne mentioned a few minutes ago, that we started just about three weeks ago. It's a series going verse by verse through the 11th chapter of Hebrews in the Bible, and we wrote a book that ties into this. You can pick up today, you can also grab it online at TLC.org/faith.

That is also where you can sign up for small groups that tie into this. You can sign up for daily video devotionals that you can get texted to you at 7 in the morning wherever you're at, or you can follow them. You can subscribe to them on YouTube or on our website too. We have all kinds of components to this to make it an immersive experience in order to build up your faith, to build up your confidence, to build up your hope.

And today we're gonna look at the story of Moses as told in Hebrews 11:23–29. So if you have your Bibles, if you have a Bible app on your phones, you can open that up as we dig into this. These verses are really all about one thing, endurance. Say that word with me out loud. Endurance. Say it again. Endurance. People need to learn endurance so much right now. People are so tired.

You know, I read that the percentage of people who were quitting their jobs has never been higher. The percentage of pastors who say they want to quit their jobs has never been higher. Check this out: in a recent survey I saw, it was an anonymous survey of hundreds of pastors. It was 60% that said, "Yeah, I really want to quit my job right now." There's an epidemic. The percentage of people leaving their churches and saying they are never returning has also never been higher. I could go on, but somebody called it the era of giving up. And the worst-hit age demographic is 20 to 24 year olds who usually are filled with hope, filled with dreams about their future. But after the last year and a half, it's the era of giving up. We all need to learn the secrets of endurance.

Now, before we dig into these verses, just a quick recap of the historical context. Remember, the book of Hebrews in the Bible was written to first-century Jewish Christians. Most Christians in those days came from that Jewish background, of course, and they had started strong believing in Jesus as their Messiah, but they were losing hope and tired of waiting for things to get better. This Jesus thing had seemed so promising, but things are just getting worse. They're getting beaten up by persecution. They're being ostracized. They're suffering, and so they're thinking of quitting.

And in Hebrews 11, the author of Hebrews gives them reasons to go on by telling them stories from their own Jewish history and scripture and traditions about how all the great heroes of faith, all the great movements of God have, in fact, started small and grown slow and seemed impossible at the time. And in these verses, he gives principles in Moses' life that show the secret of endurance. And when we look at these things, I just want to encourage you, if you feel like quitting, you can endure. You can keep going. You don't have to quit, and I think if you stick with me after the next half hour or so, you are going to leave here filled with more confidence, more hope, and less inclined to quit because of these principles we're going to learn here today.

How do I know? Why do I think that? Well, because the fact that the Christian Church exists proves that what the author of the Hebrews said worked because those people didn't quit. They kept going, and that's why we're here today, and I know it's gonna have the same effect on you.

Now, before we dig into these verses, I just want to go back again to last Sunday afternoon. You saw the video of people being baptized. Let me just give you 60 seconds of some of their testimonies. I think this is gonna inspire you. Listen to this. I've been contemplating if I wanted to get baptized and bring Jesus into my heart for years, and it's been kind of a struggle actually. For a large portion of my life, I've lived very, very far away from God. I put career above everything else and put God so far in the back, put family so far in the back. I was raised as a Christian but never really put God first in my life.

A couple years ago, I had come to the baptism and my mom was kind of trying to get me thinking about it, but then I had decided I didn't want to do it then; I wasn't ready. In ten days, I will have two years of sobriety, and I owe it all to the Lord and my faith, and so I'm just super grateful to be here. When I was at my lowest point, I think God kind of shook me and woke me up and really inspired me to have a connection with him and to make a dedication to have a relationship with him.

A couple years ago, I got really bad like depression, and I was able to just stick through it, and God really helped me through it. I've been sober for five months. I'm getting married, and I decided to get baptized to dedicate my life to Jesus. It's really awesome to put God first in my life. I feel amazing; I'm so happy. My heart just feels so full right now. I feel really light, like there's been a weight lifted. Moving forward, I really feel like that was such a wonderful step that needed to happen.

Isn't that fascinating? Now multiply that by about 40, and you can see why it was so thrilling to be there and hear all these stories for the baptism, and every one of them was really like this. They all had something in common, right? I don't know if you picked it up; there was some crisis that turned into a catharsis that led them to shift their identity from the way they were living before to being a follower of Jesus, and this step of faith has meant everything to them, right? And many of us are here today because we've taken that step of faith in some way at some point in our lives.

But here is the question: now that these beautiful people have been baptized, how will they endure? That was the first step of faith, but how are they going to keep taking the next and the next and the next? Because if you were baptized—and I recognize some of your faces here last Sunday—I have to tell you now things get tough. It's not always gonna be rainbows and unicorns and roses, right? Things are gonna get hard. This is what the original readers of Hebrews were going through as new converts. So how do you keep pressing on?

Well, we're gonna look at the story of Moses as it's laid out in Hebrews. He talks about what Moses endured first of all, and then we're gonna go back and look at how he did it. What Moses endured and then how he did it. Five times the author of Hebrews says, "By faith Moses," and they're all around five crises in Moses' life. It started with childhood trauma. I mean, talk about childhood trauma. Verse 23 says, "By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were afraid of the King's edict." Now, to the original readers, the original Jewish Jesus-following readers of Hebrews, they were like, "Oh yeah, that's a great story," but to a lot of us, maybe you're new to all this Bible stuff, and you're like, "What is that? Why did they have to hide a baby for three months, and what's the King's edict?"

So let me just give you some quick historical background here. About 3,500 years ago, the Hebrews, the Israelites, were slaves in Egypt. They've been slaves for 400 years, and the Pharaoh at the time becomes afraid of their numbers. So he decides to decimate their population by commanding that all the male Hebrew slave babies should be drowned in the Nile River. But Moses' parents respond with faith, and what they do is they make a basket, they light it with pitch so it's waterproof; it floats, and they hide the baby among the bulrushes of the river. According to the author of the Hebrews, for three months, they're going there and they're taking care of the baby and feeding him and so on, and his mom and his sister Miriam are helping out. Why? Because they're trying to avoid the soldiers who want to kill all these babies.

Then unexpectedly, plot twist, one day Pharaoh's own daughter shows up at that spot for a swim and discovers a baby, and her heart goes out to this little one, and she adopts him as her foster mom. So ironically, Moses grows up in the Pharaoh's palace as the grandson apparently of Pharaoh, the prince of Egypt. In fact, his own mother ends up secretly being hired as the nanny. Moses has no idea the nurse who takes care of him when he is a little baby. Now at some point, he's gonna find out the truth, and it's probably around age 40, according to Stephen's speech in the book of Acts in the Bible, and that's when, of course, he goes through a serious identity crisis. I mean, imagine the conversation. "Yeah, you're 40 years old, Moses. Uh, yeah, you know you're not Pharaoh's grandson?" "What?" "Yeah, yeah, and you're not even Egyptian?" "What?" "And that lady's not your mom?" "What?" "And your nurse, that's your actual mom?" "What?" "And your people, not the royal family; it's the lowest caste slaves slaving down there for us?" What is Moses gonna do with all that information?

Well, verse 24 says, "By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin." He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking forward to his reward. Now, just to give you an idea of what he was thinking of when he was thinking of the treasures of Egypt, I want you to think King Tut. Now, King Tut was not the Pharaoh of Moses, but he was in the same dynasty, around the same general era, the same general culture. The biblical chronology seems to place Moses at the time of what's called the Ramesside dynasty, all the Ramses-related Pharaohs, and King Tut was related to the Ramses family, so he's in the exact same dynasty.

Now, we know him because in 1922, of course, explorer Howard Carter famously discovered King Tut's tomb pretty much intact, and like all the pharaohs, Tut was buried with all his favorite stuff. Think of the pictures that you have seen from that tomb. The Egyptians really did try to take it with them. He had his favorite chair, his favorite necklace, his favorite golden flip-flops. You know, you might need those in the afterlife, right? So when it says Moses left the treasures of Egypt, this is the kind of stuff that's talking about wealth that probably no one that any of us know lives like this right now. And Moses stepped out of his golden flip-flops and chose to identify with the poorest of the poor, entered a new life. But that just led to his third crisis, which was total rejection.

I mean, first, imagine how his upper-crust society must have called him. Can you imagine? "You ungrateful, unpatriotic, anti-Egyptian, unappreciative person. You know, unappreciative of all the privileges you've had when you were raised." I mean, imagine the scorn that must have been heaped on him. And then it gets worse. Verse 27 says, "By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the King's anger. He persevered because he saw him who was invisible." Now again, the story would have been clear to the original readers, but why did he have to leave Egypt? Well, there's a great story behind it. Moses is about 40; he realizes he's not really Egyptian; his people are these poor slaves, and he rolls up his sleeves and decides, "You know what? I think I'm kind of their Savior. I know a lot of stuff; I'm gonna help them out." So he shows up to where they're working, and the Bible says that he saw an Egyptian—there's a whole story told back in Exodus 2—he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and he hit him in the sand.

Well, the next day he shows up, and he sees two Hebrews fighting, and he asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew? Let's all get along." And that man responds to him sarcastically, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" And Moses goes, "Oh, everybody knows what I did," and these Hebrews don't want me as their ruler and judge. They don't trust me. I forced myself into that role; they don't want me. And when Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses—that's why Moses had to flee. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian for 40 years. So now Moses has nothing—no palace and no people. Why? Listen carefully, because in the zeal of a new convert, Moses forgot to do God's will.

Yes, we need to do God's will, like, you know, free the oppressed, you know, fight for justice. He wanted to do that, but he forgot to do it in God's way and in God's time. You know, the Bible says in the book of James, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God, and that's one of the most often forgotten Proverbs of the Bible these days. Because right now, people—and it doesn't matter whether you're left, right, or center—people have a lot of anger to burn, and we need to ask ourselves, do I want to be right or do I want to be righteous? If your goal is just to be right, be on the right side of every issue, you're just gonna, you know, bull in a china shop your way through every relationship you've got because you're just gonna prove to everybody how right you are. But if you want to be righteous, this is so hard, isn't it? To exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in your life, to be godly, then you're going to take a different approach. You're gonna be humble, you're gonna be gentle, you're gonna be patient, and Moses had to learn that lesson. The Bible says later Moses became the humblest man on earth. Well, he didn't start that way; he had to learn it for 40 years in exile.

And then, you know the story, God calls him when he's an old man through a burning bush and he says, "Moses, now you can go back and you can take up that role and go set my people free." And Moses says, "Not me; been there, done that, got the t-shirt, no, I failed at that, and I'm not doing it again." And God says, "I'm gonna be with you." And Moses says, "No." And in the Faith Forward book, I go into much more detail on this, but Moses eventually does get back to Egypt. So now finally, having learned all these lessons, do things go right? I mean, now he is going to do God's will in God's way and in God's time; he's gonna be in the center of God's will, so things are gonna go smoothly, right? No, next point, he gets even worsening trials.

Moses goes to the palace and says, "Hey Pharaoh, it's me, your long-lost foster brother. Let my people go." And Pharaoh says, "Yeah, good to see you, bro, and no." And just to show you who's boss, I'm gonna make them bleed, and he makes things worse, and he truly oppresses them. And now the Hebrews hold a meeting, and they tell Moses, "We don't want you to be our leader anymore. You showed up and made things even worse for us." So then Moses prays about it and says, "God, what are you doing?" And then finally, do things get better? No, now they turn into a nightmare. There are plagues, frogs crawling over everything, hail and locusts, and ecological upheaval and climate disaster winding up in a plague of death. And in a moment still remembered by Jewish people every year at the Seder, God says, "By daubing the blood of the Passover lamb on your doorposts, the people can be saved from death." Hebrews 11:28 says, "By faith he, Moses, kept the Passover and the application of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel." And do you see how important this is for the original readers of Hebrews? This foreshadows how we are perishing but can be saved by simple trust in the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

So finally, the Passover happens, and the people get up and they walk into freedom. They are out of Egypt. Crisis averted. And from now on, everything's gonna go smooth, right? Absolutely not. The fifth point is impossible problems are ahead—a whole series of them where it looks like all is doomed. And it starts with this: Pharaoh says, "Okay, you can go," then he changes his mind, chases them down, and now Moses and all the people have the Red Sea in front of them, Pharaoh's army, the best army in the world, the biggest superpower in the world at the time, behind them. They are trapped; they are powerless, and now they're all gonna die. Not just the firstborn; they have no hope except for a miracle of God, and that's what they get. Verse 29 says, "By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned." Now that makes it sound so easy, right? The people were like, "Yeah, after seeing all those plagues and miracles and experiencing the Seder, we now have the faith to just keep on going. God's gonna make a way for us." But that's not the way it was. They responded just like you and I.

Here's the people when they see the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them. In Exodus 14:11, they said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?" And that's a joke because, of course, Egypt is known for its graves, you know, massive graves. "What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die here in the desert." The Israelites were not going, "Yay God!" They were saying, "Boo Moses!" So do you see the point of the author of Hebrews? He's going, "Listen, like your greatest hero of faith is Moses. You think he had it easy? No! Look at all the things that Moses had to endure, most of these happening after he decides to follow God." And maybe you can relate to Moses and these original readers of Hebrews. Maybe you feel like, "I did what was right, and it all went wrong. You know, I took that first step of faith on the right path, and then the path went right off a cliff. Yeah, I thought after I got baptized, when I got sober, when I accepted Jesus, when I started seeing a counselor, now things finally are gonna go smooth." And the author of Hebrews is saying, "You don't get it. That's sometimes when things get harder because now suddenly there's opposition. Now you're fighting; now you're swimming upstream."

So let's look at how Moses endured. Would you say the word endure again out loud? When they say it, endure. Endure. Look at somebody next to you and say endure. Go ahead, say endure. Endure. Somebody needs to hear that. So how do you do that? Now, to be clear, there were times that Moses really wanted to quit. I love this one because in Numbers 11:11, he says this to God. Can you relate to this? He says, "Why are you doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this? You've made me responsible for all these people; they're not my children." Now look what he says next: "Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms as a nurse carries an infant?" Now stop right there for just a second. Who was raised by someone who did not conceive him, who was carried in arms by a nurse who was not his mother? Is Moses hearing what he's saying? He's describing his own childhood here. But how classic is that? So often when we're overwhelmed, we don't want to show other people the same exact grace that we ourselves have received, right? I do that, and maybe you do that too.

And Moses concludes with this: "This job is too much for me. How can I take care of all these people by myself? If this is the way you're gonna treat me, just kill me now and end my miserable life." I want to show you this because I don't want you to think of Moses—the people, original readers of Hebrews, they knew this story—but I want you to see this in technicolor here because I don't want you to think of Moses as like, "I never want to quit, Lord. I just trust you completely." Listen, faith does not mean you always feel the feelings, right? Serene and happy and joyful and in love with God and the world. It means you endure in spite of your feelings. How do you do that? Moses chose to focus on three things. Three phrases in these verses that we just read reveal how Moses endured, and we're gonna wrap up with these real quick.

First, he chose to focus on long-term gain. Long-term gain. It says he regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than all those treasures of Egypt. The word regarded is kind of a weak translation here; the Hebrew word means he assessed. It's an accounting term. He weighed the value; he did kind of a profit-loss comparison. You know, okay, following God, treasures of Egypt, and he concluded following God is of greater value in the long run. Here's what Moses knew: all of life is a trade-off. All of life is a trade-off. You're trading every breath you're breathing; you're trading that moment and what you're experiencing then for something else that you could be experiencing. And so what you have to ask yourself is, is this trade-off worth it? And Moses concluded, "While you know in the short term the pleasures and treasures are more fun, in the long term, following God is way more worth it." Now here's the thing: everyone does this assessment eventually. You know when most people do it? When they're dying. "Wow, did I live my life for what was really worth it?" I encourage you to do this assessment before then. Don't wait; do it now. Choose to focus on long-term gain.

And then second, Moses focused on long-range perspective. Long-range perspective. It says he was looking forward to his reward. That's very motivating. Tony Evans is a pastor in Dallas. He and his wife Lois have been married for 49 years until Lois recently passed away after a long illness. Tony says one of the last things that she ever said—she was on her deathbed; she hadn't communicated for a number of days—and then suddenly her eyes opened and she said with a smile, "My award! They're going to give me an award!" And shortly after, she went to heaven and got it. There is a reward. First, Jesus said it's rewarding in this life: "Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added unto you." And there's a huge reward in heaven: long-term gain, long-range perspective.

And then third, choose to focus on long-lasting power—the power of God. That's what kept Moses going. It says he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. Now wait a minute; how do you see somebody who's invisible? What this means is he was reminding himself who God is. We had a pastors and wives conference here on this campus Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week to try to encourage pastors from a variety of churches around Northern California who came here, stayed in a hotel, and then had their meetings here on Twin Lakes Church campus. It was great to meet them all, but honestly, it was heartbreaking to see how many are struggling, how many just want to quit. But one of them said something that I really resonated with. Listen to this: he said, "I feel like what's happened to the eyes of many Christians over the last year and a half is that Jesus has gotten smaller. Covid got bigger, social ills got bigger, politics got bigger, Jesus got smaller. But we need to remember we have big problems, yes, but Jesus is still bigger. Amen? Jesus is still bigger!

Let me be blunt here. You know what is going to grow bigger in your imagination? What are you talking about? What are you thinking about? What are you reading about? What are you scrolling about? What are you watching? That is going to keep getting bigger in your mind. And so many Christians today are letting the world, social media, the news media, entertainment ignite their imaginations and set the agenda for their thought lives. But let me just say this, if I can be so bold: that is on you. Churches can't provide people with free Bibles, as we do, with books to help you study, with daily devotions. We can text out daily video devos; we can have weekly services and Bible studies and so on, and most churches provide resources like that. But if you, instead of focusing on Jesus and focusing on the Lord's power, are finding that 95% of your attention is taken up with the problems of this world, that is on you. You need to take control of your thought life, and you are in a battle. And let me say this: you are actually being targeted because you're Christians.

I don't know if you saw the Facebook leak to the MIT technical journal a week and a half ago where an internal study revealed that 19 of the 20 top Facebook pages that were Christian in 2019 were actually controlled by Eastern European troll farms. Did you see that? 19 of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages were not run by Christians or churches; they were run by Eastern European troll farms. Why? They were reposting incendiary news stories because they knew that Christians were apt to forward those, pass them along, get outraged. They don't care about Christians; their goal, of course, is to undermine democracy here. But they knew we were likely to be captured; they knew we were likely to forward this thing that made us mad. Don't be—I don't want to say what—don't be a sap. Don't let yourself be played by people who do not have your best interest in mind or our best country's interest in mind or our church's interest in mind. They're trying to undermine all of that. You have to take control of your thought life and choose to focus on Jesus Christ, fix your thoughts on the Lord as Moses did. Think of the long run.

Look back at these three points. This is very personal for me this week when I say that there are times that I want to quit. I'm not kidding you. Criticisms, problems, pressures—sometimes it just feels like too much. So this week, I'm preaching to myself, and maybe any dearest too. And you know what? I feel like I heard God saying to me through his word this week something like this: "René, you know why you sometimes want to quit? Because you are thinking short-term. You're being distracted by problems that are really short-term problems and people who have short-term perspectives and short-term temptations, including the temptation to quit. Don't try to solve temporary problems with a permanent solution. Think long run. Think long-term gain, long-range perspective, long-lasting power." Listen, maybe you want to quit right now. I get it. But in the long run, you will be so glad that you did not say long run out loud again with me. Long run.

Now, as an example of that, each week in this series we're hearing a faith story from somebody here at TLC, and this week, before we wrap up, I want you to hear from somebody who's had to endure a lot. Back during the lockdown, I interviewed this person, but her story applies so perfectly today. Would you welcome back Sarah Bentley? Put your hands together and welcome Sarah as she comes up. You saw Sarah up here on the worship team. Sarah is also one of our pastors. Sarah, you had to endure a ton. It's interesting; we talked about marathon runners. You were a distance runner yourself in school, had to learn endurance. Well, that was put to the test for you starting a few years ago with just a train of difficulties. How did it start?

Well, for us, it started in January of 2005 when I actually suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, so a bleed in my brain caused by a clump of blood vessels that leaked. And what resulted after that was brain surgery to remove that clump of blood vessels and to remove the excess blood, and the effects of that surgery were profound. My short-term memory for a while was dramatically affected; my emotional affect was affected, and the doctors couldn't assure us that that was gonna come back. So we kind of sat in that unknown, and it was very scary—very scary. And it didn't end there. What was the next challenge that you faced?

Right after that, really? Yeah, a couple years later, when our first son was three years old, we decided we wanted to expand our family and so started to try for a second child, and that was 2013. And in the span of one year, we suffered three miscarriages back-to-back. And the doctors looked at us and said, "We have no idea why. You're healthy; first pregnancy was fine." So they basically kind of diagnosed us as this unexplained case of secondary infertility and said, "You can kind of keep trying if you want, but there are no guarantees." And that was terribly difficult—so hard. And at the same time, when your father was still a young man, I knew him well; he was a close friend. He battled cancer valiantly, but then he lost that battle. And tell us a little bit about that.

Right during that same year of all those miscarriages, my dad had already been diagnosed and did have cancer. We were able to get pregnant at the end of 2013, and then our second son came in September of 2014. But right before he died—or I'm sorry, right before he was born, two weeks before Luke was born, my dad passed away from cancer, so he lost his fight with cancer and never got to meet this sweet baby boy that he had prayed for for so long. And we were heartbroken. Now that wasn't the end of it for you because we've all walked with you over the last year and a half or so with something else that you've gone through. Tell us a little bit about that.

So then in October of 2019, I started to have some strange muscle weakness on one side of my body, went to the doctor, and was diagnosed as having a seizure disorder completely unrelated to the stroke. And that has set in motion a whole course of doctors' appointments and analysis and all kinds of stuff, and I'm now on medication to help with that. But the effects of the medication are not pleasant, and if you have seizures and you take medication, you probably know all about that. But those effects are ongoing and long-lasting, and so now it's daily a fight really to just continue going even though the medication makes me feel kind of crazy. I'm grateful that I have it and that it can control the seizures, but it's not easy. And you downplay it a little bit, but there's serious side effects, including crippling migraines and more. So it's been almost like that bullet point of Moses's life. Like, you know, you dedicated your life to the Lord to serve him; you went to seminary, became a hospital chaplain, and then a pastor, and then all the wheels come off. So what has been your key to endurance through all of that?

Yeah, there's a verse in John that really has been a bedrock verse for me, and it's John 16:33 that says this: "This is Jesus speaking. He says, 'I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world.'" And I love that Jesus doesn't mince words here. He tells us flat out, "It's gonna be hard; you're gonna have trouble." But then he says, "But you can have hope because I have overcome that." And not only does that mean that we can have hope now when we put our focus, like you talked about, towards the presence of Jesus and the power of Jesus, but it means with that long-term perspective in mind that we realize this life is not all there is, that we have heaven to come where our bodies will work and trouble will not be a part of the scenario. And so there is hope now, and there's hope for the future.

That's great. Thank you for sharing, Sarah, and thanks for all your great ministry here and all around the hospitals in our area. Let's thank Sarah for doing a wonderful job. You know, I started with the story of one endurance runner; I'll wrap up with another: Marla Runyon, who is blind. And listen to this: a two-time Olympian has won four national marathon championships and six other marathons. Did I mention she's blind? One reporter asked her, "How can you run toward a finish line you can't see?" And I love her reply: "I can't see it, but I know it's there." What a great description of living faith forward. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me?

Lord, I believe that there are people listening right now who are ready to give up, just ready to quit. I pray that you'd give them the strength to lift up their eyes and see the long run, the long-term gain, and long-range perspective, and an everlasting power that they have in you. And I believe there are people listening right now who have reached the end of themselves, and this is the moment they finally turn it over to you and say, "Take my life; I choose to follow you," like those people who were baptized to follow Jesus. I take that step of faith today. In Jesus' name, amen.