Continuing Our Journey to the Kingdom

What I'd like to share with you today is a continuation of a sermon that I opened the FISA Tabernacles with in our opening night service this year. The illustrations come from a book entitled Lewis and Clark and the Journey of the Corps of Discovery by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns.

While some of the illustrations I'll share with you today were used in that opening message, I don't want you to think that this is the same message that I shared at the feast, because I view this kind of as a part two to that initial message I shared. And so I just wanted to pass that along because we're in a time period where we're continuing our journey to the Kingdom.

And the illustrations that I hope brought encouragement to those in Lake Geneva, I feel in a different continuation because I stopped the story at a certain point in Lake Geneva, and I want to pick it up kind of where we stopped off and lay the groundwork again for you, but then continue the story. Because as we exit out of the Feast of Tabernacles, we're continuing our journey to God's Kingdom. And so I wanted to just make sure you knew this is not the same message. It's a different message just in case you've already listened to that first one, or in case you think about listening to it later. But in 1803, President Jefferson commissioned one of the greatest expeditions in American history. When Thomas Jefferson became the third president in 1801, so we're talking 224 years ago when he became president, the United States basically stopped at the Mississippi River. The land west of the Mississippi belonged to other nations, and it was under foreign control. But just before the journey began, the U.S. struck a deal with France to acquire a vast amount of land west of the Mississippi today known as the Louisiana Purchase.

The Louisiana Purchase consisted primarily of today's states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, half of Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Nebraska, half of Wyoming, southern Minnesota, South Dakota, part of North Dakota, and the majority of Montana. It was a huge amount of land. It was just remarkable that the United States was able to acquire this land and be able to expand westward. But in 1804, two men, Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, left what is today known as the St. Louis area, and they led a team of about 45 men to find the source of the Missouri River and a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Along their way, they also gathered information on the geography, geology, climate, and Native American tribes of the unexplored area.

Many of the challenges that they encountered were vast. If you've ever studied into it, you've ever read a book, it's almost unbelievable some of the things they encountered and were able to overcome. Right from the get-go, I mean, as soon as they left, they were starting to deal with these torrential rainfalls, flooding of the Missouri River, and the rain that just wouldn't stop. They were cold at times. They were weather-beaten. Everything was soggy. Anybody who's done tent camping knows how much fun that is, right? Those are the days you say, I'll never do this again, right? They started off this over two-year journey dealing with this type of weather and challenges.

They also, the very first winter that they experienced in North Dakota, they recorded the lowest temperature of their entire journey that winter, which was 45 degrees below zero. That was what, I don't know what thermometer they had back then that would go that low, but they had one, and that was observed on December 17, 1804. 45 degrees below zero.

You know how they would put many? They built a fort, and they had a winter camp where they stayed, and they would send out parties to just be on patrol, or men who would guard that fort.

Often, they would have hours that they would serve in these roles, but then as the winter came, as temperatures dropped, they changed it to where men would only be on one-hour shifts because of the cold. And in this case, when it got down to minus 45, the men were only able to be out for 30 minutes at a time. They also encountered hailstorms that almost knocked men unconscious, and some men came back with lacerations because of the hail.

They did suffer one loss, one human loss, on this journey, which is remarkable that only one person died, but this person most likely died from an appendicitis.

They also almost lost a man on this journey because he got lost in an interesting way. We'll put it that way. He went off. They were paused. They were stopped on their journey. And he went off to go hunting, kind of like a day trip. Well, he got mixed around. He lost his bearings, and when he came back to where he thought the men were at on the river, they were gone, or so he thought. So he started thinking that they went on up without him, continued up to Missouri towards the Rocky Mountains.

So he started hustling to try to catch up to them and never caught up because they were actually behind him on the river. So where he got turned around and rejoined them, he was actually ahead of their party, and he was going in the wrong direction.

He was lost for two weeks with hardly anything to eat and just dealing with the environment around him. And when they finally caught up with him, and he either realized what was going on or the party caught up to him, he was almost dead from starvation and other challenges. What's interesting is, as you listen to the audiobook or read the story, later on this guy got lost doing the same thing again. He should not have been the hunter that they sent out, apparently, but he did this not for two weeks, but for like two days. He got himself lost on another hunting trip, but it's just interesting.

But while they were on this journey to this new area of the United States, they encountered new animals that had never been seen by an American. They encountered ground hogs, which if any of you have been out west, and you've seen the prairie dogs, those little holes, they have an interesting chirp chirp noise that they make in communicating danger to one another.

They encountered ground hogs for the first time and couldn't really explain them. They also tried to bring one home because they wanted to send things back to Thomas Jefferson, and they were able to actually send back a few animals and some specimens of some other things while their journey continued. But they wanted to send a ground hog back because how awesome would that be? And so they tried to figure out how do we catch a ground hog? Anybody who's ever been out west, as soon as you approach them, they drop down in their burrow, and their burrows are vast.

And so the men thought, well, we can dig one out. And so they started digging, and then six feet down in the ground, still never reaching their den, and shoving a pole the rest of the way down and never hitting bottom, they realized this is going to be more challenging than we thought. So they thought, maybe we can drown one out, which was actually somewhat successful. They did actually use that method over and over, and finally somehow got one to come out and was able to corral it and capture it, and they sent it back to Thomas Jefferson, who ended up putting it in what was, I believe, the National Zoo at that time in Philadelphia, where it could be viewed by other people.

But they encountered ground hogs, prog horn, mule deer, white-tailed jackrabbits, things that they had even a hard time describing, the American elk and the coyote, just to name a few. One of the new animals, the most extreme animals that they encountered was an animal that still today strikes fear in anyone out west that encounters one.

They encountered their first grizzly bears. Now, what was interesting with this account is they met Indian tribes along the way, and as they made their way further west, one of the tribes described and gave them a warning of this voracious animal that they would encounter that was very difficult and very too very difficult to bring down and very dangerous. And so Louis and Clark and their men were geared up. They had their guns ready, and when they encountered their first grizzly, it must not have been a very big one because it, or I can't remember if it was the size or if it was the shot, but they brought it down pretty easily.

And it was either Louis or Clark wrote in their journals that night that the stories that the Indians shared were vastly overblown and that because of their primitive weapons is why they encountered such difficulty with their animals. Then they encountered grizzly number two, which ended up taking 10 shots from their rifles, five which went through the lungs of the bear before they finally brought it down. And they went on to account other stories of being chased off the riverbank and flipping their canoes, men throwing their guns away just to get whatever they could to get away from these bears, bears that chased them up trees.

And then it's funny, in Louis's journals, there's no more accounts of their victories over these animals because he realized that it was true what the Indians had said about the grizzly bears. But one of the other stories that I found interesting and actually comical was as they would journey down the Missouri River going west, they would often encounter forks in the river just like we would see on a map or anything else.

And part of their journey was to stay on the source of the Missouri because they were trying to map where the Missouri originates at the foothills or in the Rocky Mountains, the source at the Continental Divide. And so they always had to figure out which fork is the right fork. And so sometimes they would come up to a fork, they would send a scouting party maybe out ahead who would then see the fork and then take maybe a day or two to venture down one fork to see which way it's leading and things.

And on one occasion they did this while the men in the larger boats continued the journey upriver. And the the scouting party realized which fork was the Missouri and they put a post in the ground and they nailed a sign to it so that when the rest of the crew got up they would be able to know which way to go to continue going. But like the scene from a cartoon, a beaver came along, ate down the pole, and knocked the sign down. And so when the men arrived there was no sign and they took the wrong fork for a while until they realized things were wrong and then reoriented themselves.

It was one challenge after another that they continued through, but eventually they made their journey to the origin of the Missouri River, which was one of their goals of this journey.

I share this because we have just closed out the annual Holy Day season that God commands his people to observe yearly. Whether we traveled away from our homes, whether we observed these days in Flint, or turned into the messages from home, we reached a milestone of the year in God's Feast of Tabernacles in his eighth day. We have navigated our lives towards these days since the spring holidays began way back in April, and so many different events have occurred in our lives over the last six months. Something that fascinates me about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and ties also into the sermon was the two times that they overwintered in specific locations. The winters they encountered forced them to build forts or semi-permanent locations that they would spend the winter months in as they continued on their journey. It was impossible for them to move forward because the winter was just too much, so they hunkered down and they remained in one location through these rough winters. The first winter that they encountered was in 1804, and they stayed at Fort Mandan, which is located in south central North Dakota. That's where they encounter the minus 45 degrees low temperature. The second winter in 1805, they stayed at Fort Cat's Hop near the Oregon coast, and so in these two winters they had to hunker down. This is not something that we're overly familiar with today because we have modern cars, we have modern transportation, we have houses that have heat. If we were to travel by car from here to California, it still takes a few days driving, but along our journey we stay in comfortable lodging today. We make a lot of miles. The wintertime could be dangerous, but often we can navigate around it, or we can navigate through it if we're careful in how we go. And so having to take a journey across the wilderness where we would actually have to find a fort or build a fort in their case, and then stay at for several months, is not something that we would have to do today.

But if you put yourself in the shoes of these men, like I did here in the story, and if we consider the time of the year that we're in about to get to the colder months, the time between the last Holy Day and the first Holy Day of 2026, I think there's some similarities that we can run into. At times, the men were bored because there was only so much work to do, right? There's only so many patrols one wants to be on. There's only so many supplies that they could make as they continued their journey. It was the same old job over and over again. On the Oregon coast, this is their second winter overstay, they turned seawater into salt for their return journey. Anybody ever turn seawater into salt? It takes a little bit of time, right? You got to let that water evaporate, and it's wintertime. It's going to take even longer to evaporate, but that was one of their jobs. They had to sew new moccasins and clothing, and they even turned whale blubber into different sundries they would need in the future. So they had tasks and jobs, but it wasn't the adventure. It wasn't the exciting tasks that they had been doing as they had navigated across the country. There was disappointment at times that more progress wasn't being made, right? Because these men aren't the men who just sit back and are looking for the easy way out. They're adventurous men. They want to tame the wild west, and yet they're stuck in their forts, waiting for the snow to melt, waiting for the weather to change. There was no new adventures. There were no new animals to explore. Anything exciting they would jump at, but there wasn't a lot that was exciting as they overwintered. In South Dakota, they were dreaming of what would come next, because remember that first day in North Dakota, excuse me, I said South Dakota, it was North Dakota, they were only part of the way into their journey. They still had visions of meeting, seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time. What other animals would they encounter?

But yet they were stuck, right? They were not able to move forward. They were not able to find those new adventures. They were not able to cross the Rockies and to get to their final destination. There was a sense of, when are we going to get going again? When are things going to change? And so overwintering, I found it interesting, would have been a place that I think would have been emotionally challenging to be in, because you have hope that things will be different, but right now, you're in the middle of winter. Right now, there's not a lot of hope. So a few questions for us to consider today. Where are you in your journey of life? Where are you in your journey of life? Another question, as we enter the winter months ahead, what ideas or plans do you have in store for your time until the spring holy days? What are you going to do with your time? What do you want to accomplish before Passover? Or where do you want to be by the time that Passover comes in the spring? Another question, what will you use to continue your journey to the kingdom?

What supplies have you brought along for your trip? What things do you need to get in order to get ready when it's time to start moving again into the next holy day season? I'd like to explore these questions with you today as we consider our own personal journeys to God's kingdom.

Let's open our Bibles in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11. In the middle of Hebrews 11 is where I'd like to go in verse 3. But in the middle of all these names listed, we often refer to Hebrews 11 as the faith chapter because it lists the men and women of faith, those heroes of the Bible. But in the middle of this section here, the writer shares a reminder of the homeland in which we all must maintain a queer focus on. Notice verse 13.

He says, these all died in faith, not having received the promises, that's the promise of eternal life, that's a promise of being with God in his kingdom, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, they embraced them, and they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

We are on this journey to a new homeland, a new spiritual home that God has called us to embrace, and just like our forefathers, just like the saints who have gone before us, they sought that same homeland and their vision was on it. Verse 15 says, and truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return, meaning God wasn't forcing them on this journey. They could have quit at any point and went backwards, if that's where they just decided to go. But verse 16 says, they didn't do that. It says, but now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. We are each on a journey to our heavenly destination with God.

The road is narrow, and it's often winding as we live a physical life, but nothing in this life is the end goal. Everything we encounter or accomplish in this physical life is a mile marker on our journey with God. As I mentioned earlier, the Lewis and Clark expedition would eventually find the source of the Missouri River, which was one of their goals. The men celebrated this accomplishment. This was a huge turning point. They, because they had spent days, months on the Missouri River, deciding which fork to take to stay on the right course. And if you've ever looked at a map, I'd encourage you to look at a map of the Missouri. It's all over the place. There's times it goes directly north, which if you were on a trip to go west, why would you go north for days? Maybe if you kept going north for days, maybe you're on the wrong fork, all of these ideas would start to come in your mind. And so for them actually to make it to the source of the Missouri River, which was in Montana, was a huge accomplishment. Enough to celebrate, enough to write home about, enough to quit the journey and go back and say, maybe somebody else can take it from here, right? We've blazed the beginning of the trail. Maybe the next group can finish it on out west.

But that's not what they did. Their pinnacle goal of the trip was to find a passage all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And what hit like a ton of bricks was the reality of what still laid ahead.

When Lewis and Clark envisioned the Rocky Mountains, they thought they would be very similar to the Appalachian Mountains here on the eastern side of the states. But if you've ever traveled through the Appalachian Mountains and then traveled through the Rockies, you know that there's no comparison, very little comparison between the two.

Before arriving to the Rocky Mountains, they had written back to President Jefferson that their journey over the mountains would take but maybe six to ten days, is what they estimated based on what the reports they've been told and what they thought they would find. But they grossly underestimated the challenge that lay before them. In reality, it took them seven months to make their journey across the Rocky Mountains. The expedition entered the Rocky Mountains in May of 1805. They encountered severe elements and terrain that many of us are now familiar with today, who's traveled out west. Because of the high calories burned from their effort and the difficulty in finding food, the group was starving. Lewis noted in his journal that there are only provisions for a time where, quote, a scant portion of portable soup, a few canister of bears oil, and about 20 pounds of candles, end quote. And I heard candles and I said, did they really just say candles? But if you think about what candles were made out of at that time, it was fat. It was technically fuel food. And so that's what they survived on for a time, not knowing if they're going to make it. When they finally made it across the Rockies and encountered the next Indian tribe that greeted them in a familiar way, they were almost starved. The men gorged themselves on the fish and the food that the Indian tribe had, so much so that they ended up getting very sick because they were so malnourished. They were what they call, is it refeeding syndrome, where like you eat so little that you have to slowly bring food back into your system because your body's just not used to having that type of food or those calories. They were sick for days because they just gorged themselves. They were so starving.

By September of 1805, the men were so desperate for food before they had met up with the next Indian tribe that they even resorted to eating one of their horses because it was at least meat. It was at least something that they could survive on. The terrain of the Rockies was most difficult. Since they had found the source of the Missouri, there was no need for their boats any longer until they got on the western side of the Rockies. So at this point, the expedition went out on foot and looked to meet with a new Indian tribe that they hoped would exchange some of their goods for their horses. They finally met up with the Indian tribe. They found an old trail that led them to a camp, and they were able to negotiate and to purchase a lot of their horses so that they could use the horses on their journey over the Rockies. But some of the trails were so steep that they had to traverse the trails on their hands and knees, grabbing hold of any rock, anything that was stable enough that they could just grab hold to to hang on. And even to the point that it was so steep that even some of their horses lost their footing, tumbled backwards down some of these inclines. Thankfully, no severe injuries occurred to the man or the horses while they were traversing the Rocky Mountains.

When the expedition crossed over and encountered the new Indian tribe, they were informed that this tribe of Indians had traversed over the Rockies at different times of the years to go out for hunting parties. And they knew a shortcut. They knew a better way to traverse back to the source of the Missouri River that only took about four to six days, normally. And these men had just finished the journey in seven months. And so it was disheartening in one sense because they said we could have been across much quicker, but then they realized, well, on the return, we'll take the shortcut.

I share all of this again, similar to Lewis and Clark, because we are on a journey to a land commissioned by our God. None of our journeys have been easy, and we've battled things, some of which we never envisioned would come across our path. And sometimes we are standing at the base of our own Rocky Mountains, unaware of how we're going to navigate this. Where do we start? Will we succeed? Will we make it? And wondering if this is just too much of a mountain to climb.

There are times when it feels like we are spinning our wheels or taking a winding route on journeys of life. Maybe we're struggling to understand why we're on the path that we're on. Why is there no solution or release in our difficulty? As we again consider the time of the year that we are in and look forward to our journey through the Michigan winter, I'd like us all to consider a few tools that we need to pack for our adventure ahead. First, we must pack perseverance. The Apostle Paul understood this idea completely with all of his journeys and his accomplishments. He also had some tremendous hardships along the way, right? He says five times that he received 39 cents stripes. This was the max that a Jewish person was able to put on to another person as commanded by God. God commanded no more than 40 stripes, and so to be safe they backed it down by one, just to make sure they didn't go over that number. Five times he received that type of a beating. He says three times I was beaten with rods. He says I was stoned. I was shipwrecked. And then he lists in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, he lists a whole list of perils that I'm not going to go through.

But to say that he had an easy breezy life is false. God called him on the road to Damascus. He put in his heart a desire to change and to walk in a new direction. And if this is God's calling and God's way, then why doesn't he make it easy, right? And yet Paul struggled. Paul went through a lot of difficulty. But Paul did not share all of this so that he could boast, but he shared it to remind the listener that he was a real person doing what he could do to serve as a minister of Jesus Christ and expressing that he was not going to stop his journey to the kingdom.

But he knew his strength was not his own. And continuing, let's continue this time, though, in Hebrews 12, he acknowledged where his strength came from. Hebrews 12 in verse 1.

It says, Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Paul loved to use the race analogy because I think internally it just fit for the journey that he was on. You know, some of us have a story we repeat over and over because it's so impactful to us. I think this was Paul's story because we're not going to turn there, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, he uses the race analogy again, talking about that he's not going to quit. He's going to continue running this race all the way to the end.

And so Paul references this need for us to have endurance as we continue forward in our journeys.

Now, where does one get endurance? That's the million dollar question, isn't it? It takes a mental fortitude. It takes digging deep at times to continue to endure through challenging situations.

But we know, as Paul stated, we don't do it on our own. Our endurance comes from the encouragement and hope that God places us in our heart, which leads us to these other two aspects that we need to pack with us on this journey as we make it, as we continue to pass over. Another item we need to bring with us on our journey is resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is the ability to deal promptly and effectively with difficulties. In an emergency, it's keeping calm, quickly assessing the situation and taking the right action.

It often involves devising a creative or ingenuous or unique solution. It takes being creative again, thinking outside the box, looking for other solutions to our problems, not just staring at what is right in front of us, but saying, okay, this is what it is. What options do I have here? What other things are in front of me? While Lewis and Clark did not write anything in their journals about resourcefulness, their journals did demonstrate a mindset of creativity and perseverance in the face of challenges.

Lewis and Clark scholar Paul Russell Cutwright wrote this on the role of the Cottonwood Tree on their journeys. He said, of all the Western trees, the Cottonwood contributed more to the success of the expedition than any other. Lewis and Clark were men of great talent and resourcefulness, masters of creativity and improvisation. And so, in doing some further research, the men used the Cottonwood Trees for a variety of uses. One was they used the Cottonwood to create dugout canoes. This is where they would fell a tree, shape the outside of the tree to be in the shape of a canoe, and then they would dig out the middle of the tree in order to put their goods and people inside these canoes.

And some of these canoes were 30 feet long. So, I mean, we're talking massive canoes that they would make out of some of these Cottonwood trees. Well, when they hit certain elements during their journey up the Missouri, one was the Great Falls that they would encounter. Well, they can't take your canoes, you can't go up a fall, so you got to go around.

So, they would take the Cottonwoods and they would take some time and they would build carts, kind of like pool carts that we would have today. But they would use the Cottonwoods to make the axles, to make the wheels, and then they built these carts that they could put their goods on and put the canoes on and then haul them around trails up these falls so they could continue their journey when they got on the other side of the waterfalls. That's another thing I didn't realize that the Missouri, you just think the Missouri is like a flat river that just flows nicely.

No, that had they have parts where they run into waterfalls. How do you continue your journey when you're staring at a waterfall and then you think you got one and there's more behind it? It's it's rough going, right? It's a challenge, but they didn't quit. They also used the Cottonwood as animal fodder during the winter because the inward part of the tree was soft enough and nutritious enough and palatable that the horses would actually eat that during the winter. They used Cottonwood smoke to treat leather and to make it more durable. That was a trade that the Indians showed them that they could do use it for.

And of course, they used it for building materials like their fort, the first fort that they built. They also learned from the Indians that the presence of Cottonwood trees signaled that a water source was nearby, which of course you need fresh water on your journeys. They also learned about medicinal properties of how the bark and leaves could be used for various ailments. In his book Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose describes a key lesson from the expedition. He says, under pressure you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training.

I'm going to repeat that again because I've found it profound. And it's something that we have learned and applied as Christians and as we continue our journeys. Stephen Ambrose says that under pressure you don't rise to the occasion, but you fall to the level of your training. I find that I just spoke to me because there's many times I think that as we go through our Christian calling on our walk, we feel like we encounter a difficulty and then somehow we rise to the occasion and we master the challenge in front of us.

But the reality is you can't rise if you don't have a foundation to rise on. You can't excel if you don't have a skill set to utilize and tools to build upon. And this is where it wraps back around to the spiritual analogy and what God is doing in our lives. We, over the years that we have sat here, over the years that God has worked with and has called us, we have built a tool case that we carry wherever we go, right?

A toolbox that is filled with spiritual tools that hopefully and lessons that hopefully we've learned along the way. I remember doing a lot of home improvement projects but not knowing the tricks of the trade that come with either knowledge that other people share with you or that you just kind of figure out on your own.

You're like, hey, that was a better way to do this project, right? But then you put it to memory and then it becomes part of who you are, part of your training. And as we have lived life, we have propped each other up with stories of accounts. We have pointed people to God's Word and said, yeah, I understand the challenge you're going through. Let's do a Bible study on this topic or let's look and find encouragement from God's Word. We have built a set of tools that we carry with us and that tool case continues to grow as we go through other challenges, as we encounter problems, and as we continue through life.

And so that's what I loved about the quote that he drew from their journey. Under pressure, you don't rise through the occasion. You fall to the level of your training.

Considering our own spiritual journey, what resources do we have at our disposal for our aid? When we need to be resourceful, what are you and I supposed to draw on?

One aspect is, of course, God's Word. Turn with me to Proverbs 3 and verse 5.

You could put these as maybe sub-points for the second section. We're going to very quickly go through just a couple of scriptures, but God's Word is one of the sub-points that we can draw on to be more resourceful. Proverbs 3 and verse 5 again.

Proverbs 3 and verse 5, he says, Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lay not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes, for the Lord, fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones.

You and I have tried to figure out this thing called life our own ways, and at some point, we got tired of trying to do it alone and by ourselves. This is where we finally submitted, finally gave our life to God through baptism, and said, I need to go in your direction, because my way doesn't work. And so, we realize that the only way we're going to be resourceful is by relying on God's Word. Another subpoint, another aspect that we have to take with us on our journey to be more resourceful is prayer. Turn with me to Psalms 50 and verse 15.

We're going to stay in Psalms for these next two aspects, but Psalms 50 and verse 15, as it relates to prayer. There's a gazillion scriptures we could turn to, to drive any of these points home, but I just want to share a few. Because we're talking about challenges, we're talking about difficulties, we're talking about what is going to get us through to pass over to that next milestone, that next time of refreshing that God gives us.

And with prayer, he says here in Psalms 50 and verse 15, it says, Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. He says, Call upon me when the difficulty is too much. Call on me when you're just feeling out of sorts. And he says, I'll deliver you, so that we can then turn and glorify God in the way that he provides and the way that he answers our prayers. And so we pray to him. We're asking for his guidance. We're asking for his wisdom. We're asking him to show us things that we can't see right now. And that's the hard one, right? Because so many times in life, we see the problem right in front of us. We see the difficulty, we see the challenge, and we want to hit it head on and say, Well, if God would just make it go away, or if God would provide an easy solution or provide the right answer that I'm looking at the right answer that I think is right in front of me, then we'll deal with it. We'll get through this.

But sometimes in our prayers, we need to shift our prayers to say, God, if there's something else that I need to see right now, help me to see it. If there's another angle, if there's another life raft that you want me to look at, if there's another door that I keep banging my head on this door, thinking this is the only door that I can walk through right now, the only door that's going to provide a solution to go forward, but I'm not going anywhere. If there's another door that you want me to turn the knob and open to test, to see, show it to me, and then the hardest part?

Pauseing and seeing if God provides another answer to that prayer. Sometimes these prayers can be answered quickly, and sometimes they can take a while to discern where God wants us to go and how He wants us to navigate these journeys. It doesn't mean that our next day we still have to get up, we still have to eat, we still have to maybe go to work, we still have to do our normal things, but we can pray this prayer. This is part of that resourcefulness. This is part of the tools that we have on our journey. The third sub-point is humility before God. So we have His Word as a tool, we have prayer that is a tool. Humility needs to be one of the tools that we lean on. Turn with me to Psalm 34. This is one that sometimes I think we could look over and maybe not even consider a tool in our lives, but if we're not humble before God, I think so many other aspects we miss of what He wants us to realize or understand about the journey that we're on. Notice what is written here in Psalm 34. This is a Psalm of David, so notice through his journeys and through his own difficulties, he often wrote about them in ways of the lesson he learned or the things that God did for him. Notice what David writes here in Psalm 34, and we're going to start in verse 4. He says, I sought the Lord and He heard me and delivered me from all of my fears. Verse 6, this poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Now, I'm going to pause here for a second. This is easy to read, right? And just say, oh, I just pray to God. If I just lean on God, He's going to deliver me just like He promises. Do you think that in the moment that David was going through these trials, he felt God's deliverance? He didn't, right? When he was running from Saul, when he was doing these other things, when he was wondering, is God going to hold up his part of the promise of establishing him as the next king, did he feel this like this vitality? Was he rejoicing in God's deliverance?

Not in that moment. Again, I believe he wrote this later on when he saw the way that God worked, the way that God delivered. And he said, taste and see. Try God and see if He will help you through this. Because he says, blessed is the man who trusts in Him. Continuing on in verse 13, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. Those are the things that we fall back to when we feel like we're just spinning our wheels. I hope that we don't entertain this too much, but our human nature side can easily overwhelm us to where, you know what? Our tongue goes to evil. Or our lips speak deceit. We have to remember that we have to, even in the midst of difficulty, even in the midst of trial, even in the midst when things are not going the way that we have prayed or that we wish they would. We have to depart from evil. We have to seek peace. We have to pursue it, which means go after it. Seek after it. Work to gain it. And sometimes these things are hard, but we don't get an easier route just because our route is becoming more difficult. Right? You got to embrace it. You got to go forward. As these men face these different challenges, including the Rocky Mountains that was right in front of them, they could have got a sour attitude. They could have got a bad attitude. They could have said, Lewis and Clark are crazy. We should all go different directions. I'm heading back home. They could have done those things, and it would have derailed the entire journey. It would have derailed what God had, maybe for us on a spiritual level, what God wanted to achieve down the road. This is why we can't go back to evil. We can't speak deceit. We have to fight against our own nature when, even as we've prayed, even when things are don't seem like they're going the way that we wish they would, we have to go forward and we have to keep our mind as clean as we can. Verse 17, he says, the righteous cry out and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all of their troubles. And notice, this is where the humility aspect comes in. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and he saves such as have a contrite spirit.

He says, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

The righteous are going to deal with their afflictions. God did not say, if you're righteous, everything's going to be easy breezy. That would be lovely to find in Scripture. If you ever find it, let me know. I'll make a sign and we'll have it printed up and we can all take it home. Right? But he says the opposite, that we're going to the righteous are going to have to battle.

These men who were on their journey, they weren't doing anything wrong themselves, trying to explore the West, but they had their trials in front of them. But God says, if you will draw near to me with a broken heart, if you will really humble yourselves and have a contrite spirit, he will be near to us in his presence, his spirit, his hope, his help will be our guide as we continue forward on our journeys. So part of our resourcefulness is considering other ways that God may be leading us through our challenge. And that comes from understanding his word, from our prayer life with him, and from our humble spirit and attitude that we have with God. Because he can use our toolbox to give us creative and new ideas. There's been times I've stared at my tools trying to figure out how am I going to fix this broken whatever in my house with what I have in front of me. And the pieces are not coming together until I pray about it. And then God says, well, have you tried this? Or have you remembered that this tool you had or this box of screws, that is the perfect solution. And all of a sudden, I'm like, that's it. I can now move forward. I've got a solution. But it takes becoming resourceful. And that only comes from, again, God's word from prayer life and from being humble before our great God.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was constantly scouring for food and new sources of food on their journey. Do we hunger for God's direction and will for our lives as if our life depended on it?

That's a question for us to consider. Do we hunger for God's resourcefulness for our life, for his will, for our direction, as if it was the next meal that was going to keep us from starving? I have to admit, it's hard to constantly be in this frame of mind to truly and inwardly hunger in this way. But we have God's words with which serves as this source of nourishment. But regardless of the difficulty, we have to be resourceful, leaning on the tools that God gives us on our journey, and we must rely on our training. I'm running out of time, but I want to get to the third element that we need to bring on our journey, which is hope.

Hope is a vital tool because it provides the fuel to our entire journey with God.

On overcoming future obstacles, Meriwether Lewis wrote this in his journal, I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils. I will believe it is a good, comfortable road until I am compelled to believe differently.

So you could say he was an optimist, right? He believed that whatever next day presented would be a positive day, a good day, until it presented itself in a way that he had to acknowledge it was going differently. This is an aspect of hope. What is hope? From the Webster's New World Dictionary, hope is defined as a feeling that what is wanted will happen.

It's a desire accompanied by expectation, so feeling that what is wanted will happen.

And so we have to ask ourselves, where do we place our hope? If we're honest with ourselves, we can probably admit that we've often placed our hope on physical things of life that we have some degree of control over. But as we age, and as we learn a few things, a thing or two about life, we realize how failing it is to place hope on anything other than God.

Barnes notes on the Bible describes hope this way. Hope is a compound emotion made up of a desire for an object and an expectation of obtaining it. If there is no desire for the object, so like, let's say, a health trial, right? None of us wake up saying, I want to have a health trial. He says if there is no desire for it, or if the object is not pleasant or agreeable, then there's no hope, right? We don't hope that we wake up tomorrow with a health trial. So that's not an... you have to have both sides of it. If there is no expectation of it, but a strong desire, there is no hope. So for example, if I want to win the lottery, so I can have an easier and better life, but the reality is, am I going to win the lottery? We can't place our hope on something like that. So according to Barnes notes, there must be these two components of this emotion in order to have hope in something. And so for a real hope, that expectation obviously has to be based on truth, not just hope that is empty or misplaced. Turn to me to 1 Peter 1 in verse 3. I want to work through just a few passages, two passages, talking about hope that we get from God and the reminder of what God's hope is. 1 Peter... excuse me, I might have said second, but I think I said 1 Peter 1 in verse 3. So we need to pack perseverance. We need to pack resourcefulness. We need to pack hope on this journey.

1 Peter 1 verse 3 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, so this is coming from God, has begotten us again to a living hope. Not a dead hope, not a lost hope, but a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and it does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God. Don't ever lose sight of that. Regardless of what you're going through, regardless of the trial, regardless of the overwhelming rocky mountains that stand right in front of you, don't ever lose sight that you are kept by the power of God. He says, through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. But he says that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love, though now you do not see him yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. We have to keep our focus on this truth that regardless of what we go through, regardless of the difficulty, we have to keep our vision on that end goal. Had Lewis and Clark and his team not kept their vision on the Pacific Ocean, they would have never made it. They would have lost their hope, and they would have got caught up in the challenges, the different things that they did not expect, because nobody had gone this trail before. It was not like you or I had gone it, and then we write back letters and say, this is the difficulty at mile marker X, you are going to hit this. So we mentally gear ourselves up. We are like, okay, I have got my backpack full of tools, I have got my mental fortitude, I am going to just tackle this challenge head on. They woke up every day not knowing what that day is going to bring. And is not that our life so many times? So we have to keep our vision. We have to recognize we have a living hope that we cannot let cool off, we cannot let chill out, we cannot let, I do not even want to say it, we cannot let it die. We have to keep it alive, and we have to keep it well fed, and we have to keep it burning bright. And the only way we do that is to keep our vision on the things that we are going through is not being lost by God.

I really do feel like this is the key that allowed Lewis and Clark to continue going through, even though they encountered downturn and twist and turn the whole way. It had to be hope.

Hope is an extremely powerful tool for the Christian. With it, we can continue battling through all sorts of situations because we understand the big picture and we maintain confidence that God sees and understands our challenge. You and I are so blessed to have our minds open to the scriptures that we can explain the plan of God and that He has the hope and the plan for all of humanity. Because of this, we have a hope unlike anything else this world offers, because our hope is based on God. And so this has to be that mindset that we carry with us as we exit this holy day season and we continue to the next one when it arrives. Let's consider next Hebrews 6 and verse 10.

Hebrews 6 and verse 10. My Bible titles the passage beginning in verse 13. The certainty of God's promises.

I love that subtitle. A different translation that I was looking at titles that God's promises bring hope. Hebrews 6 verse 10. It says, For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you had shown towards His name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. God's not forgetting the things we've gone through. And so sometimes when challenges hit, we ourselves can be discouraged because maybe we feel alone. Maybe we feel left out. Maybe we are wondering where God is at in our moment of need. But He's not unjust and He never forgets what we have given up or what we have sacrificed in this life and what we have done for Him.

It says, He has not forgotten our works. Verse 11. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that we remain diligent, then that you do not become sluggish, but you imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

The new living translation for verse 11 and 12 say this, Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true. Then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God's promises because of their faith and endurance. Really like the new living translation for verse 11 and 12. Because we can all think of people who have gone before us, who they battle tremendous challenges, and they finish their weight race. These are examples that we're encouraged to follow because of their faith and endurance. They ran their race. They're waiting for their resurrection, for their Lord to return. And so we have to run our races to the very end. Verse 13. For when God made a promise to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely, blessing, I will bless you and multiply, and I will multiply you. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men swear, indeed swear, by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them and into all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly through the errors of promise, the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, that we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.

And he says, this hope we have as an anchor of the soul. This hope for you and me, this tool that we're going to pack with us on our journey, is the anchor that stabilizes our life. Without it, we're like a ship out at the sea being tossed in turn. The flooding of the Missouri was great at times, and the men had to bail out and drag their canoes up the river because they couldn't transverse the water itself. There's times where just they had to dig deep and they had to have that anchor in their lives. Now, that's a physical group of people, a physical journey.

We have this anchor of the soul, and it's the hope that we have that God is good, and he will see us to the end. He will help us in our difficulty. This anchor, this hope, is sure. It's strong. It's steadfast. It's immovable. And when we place our hope in God, then it does something for us spiritually. It brings us a courage, and it brings us assurance and confidence as we go forward. And this anchor is a great analogy for everything that's going on around us at times in our lives, whether it's society, whether it's our neighbors, whether it's school, whether it's work. Things swirl all around us, but why are we not swirling with it? That anchor is why.

Remember the definition of hope again. Expectation of good to anticipate and to have that confident expectation of what God wants us to receive. So, again, we must maintain hope on this journey because without it, all things are lost. As we conclude, the Lewis and Clark's expedition to explore the West is viewed as one of the greatest success stories of early America.

Because of what they accomplished, the expansion of the West became a possibility as this nation grew. The expedition mapped vast territories and it documented new species, and it established a route to the Pacific that spurred fur trade and strengthened U.S.'s claim on the Oregon Territory.

It's also a complex story, as it involves a period of land loss and relocation of many Native American tribes and people. But we are ambassadors for a kingdom and a way of life that is still yet to come to this earth. But when it arrives, Jesus Christ will usher in a new way to live that will transform the entire world. God has called a small flock of Christians whose role it is to be a light to the world of this future kingdom. The question, another one for us, what legacy will you and I leave behind? I trust that our legacy will be similar to Lewis and Clark and the men who accompanied them on their expedition. Despite the hardships they encountered, they never quit on their journey. They continued to move forward, even if at times each mile forward was a painful and difficult step. None of us know what this next year will bring for our life, but we know we will not go on the journey alone. We also know that our Father has equipped us with tools that we need for this journey. May our exploration be a success as we cross our own Rockies and enter into His kingdom.