Crises of Faith

Happy Sabbath, everyone! I was standing here thinking about all the things I've seen over the years go wrong during music. At one time I was at the feast. You know, me being a song leader is sort of funny. I mean, I think the notes on the page are general suggestions, so I, you know, and I'm leading songs at, and I can't remember what feast site it was. There was about 6,000 people, this was years ago, and a hundred-piece orchestra. And, you know, it's, wow, there's a lot of power up here. I mean, they do what you tell them to do. It's amazing. There was a professional musician that was actually a, he, when he would, he led the orchestra, and he said, you just have them do what you want them to do. You want them to lead it longer? You want to go faster, slower? They'll do whatever you say, and they did.

But it was, it was the last song, the whole orchestra didn't come up, so there were four keyboard players and four people on the drums. And I'm leading the last song and feeling, okay, I got this down, I'm doing pretty good. And in the monitor, I heard this clanging, horrible clanging sound, and I looked, and one of the keyboards had collapsed, and the other three keyboard players had stopped playing to grab it. And I look over, and there's four drummers going, so this is what I did the whole time.

And we just sang, and the six thousand people never knew, as they just, just keep hitting it, boys, and we'll just get through this somehow. So you just never know what's gonna happen. It's nice to be here, we're down here, because our daughter Jennifer had some back problems. It started a few weeks ago. Jennifer is a tough person, so you know, she gets in pain, it's like, oh, it'll be okay.

One time, she, her appendix burst, and she was in pain for a week, and finally it got so bad she went in, and they said, well, you could have died! You know, your appendix burst, and she was really sick for a while. So she finally went in when she got to the place where she got into the hospital, and she was basically paralyzed. You know, the pain was so bad, because she had a vertebrae that had moved, and was pushing against the spinal column, and pushing so hard, you know, the body's designed to protect itself, so basically the pain paralyzed her.

So she couldn't move anymore, or she could have really hurt herself. And she goes in, and they had to shave that a little bit, and move it back, and it'll take six weeks for her to heal, and get it back. So she's doing okay, but she's moving around the house very gingerly. She has to lay down every two hours. She has to get up and walk, you know, do so many minutes of walking around her apartment, and so we're there taking care of her. And I'll probably go back in a week. I don't know how long my wife will stay, and then her sister will come up, and you know, our other daughter, and spend some time with her, but we'll get her through the situation that she's in.

So, you know, it's just one of those things, but I'm not surprised that she waited till that point to finally do something about it. But just to give you some update with what's going on in television, people always have some questions. We are going to go on to two networks. We haven't been on a network for a long time. You know, when we were on Newsmax, it was unbelievable. We had never had anything like that happen.

Mr. Armstrong used to, I think, his in the heyday on television. Of course, he spent $22 million, but you know, if he spent, I think, $19-20 dollars...where's Ray? Is that about right? Oh, $19-20 bucks per response was pretty good. Yeah, we were getting $1.59. And now we didn't have the numbers. You know, we didn't have 3 million people watching this. But just we could extrapolate it out from the surveys that had been done in the past and the Nielsen ratings in the past.

And you know, we had, for a very small amount of money, we had 80,000, at least 100,000 people watching. And we were getting these great results, and then we got bumped off. So, you know, that happens. But we are going back on to a Word network, which is interesting. We've been on Word before, and when we used to do the public appearance campaigns, we always knew Word networks has a very large black viewership.

And we would have almost entire congregations come to watch us and interact with us. And many of them were Sabbath keepers. They were black churches that were Sabbath keepers. So, and we're also going on I24, which is a internet, it's out of Tel Aviv, and it's really an international network. You can get it on some US, I don't think it's more than about half of US cable companies carry it, but it's really international, which is a nice way to reach a lot of countries where we can't reach otherwise.

So, we're excited. We've never been on that before, and we'll see what happens of that. So, pray about that. We don't know. We, you know, it's out of Tel Aviv. It's run by a Jewish organization, and we first, fortunately, we caught it. The program we were going to send to them to review was Jesus is the only way. And fortunately, someone caught that maybe that's not what we should introduce them to us with. So, but we set one of the Ten Commandments.

They said, this is fine, no problem. Of course, they cover, they have a lot of Christian programming on, so there's no problem anyway. So, pray about that. We'll see what happens. Another project I've sort of been involved in that's very interesting, which is going to affect everybody at some point, is the Council has an Education Committee, which does some things, but they decided what they wanted to do was review every educational project that the United Church of God has done since it began.

And that's education for ministers, education for the different weekends they have, women's weekends that were, you know, basically the Home Office helped organize, online programs that we've done. And so we have spent months reviewing everything we've ever done. It was absolutely overwhelming. I couldn't believe the amount of things that we've done. And almost all the projects died after a while. You know, they started with some big push.

We had one for young adults that had about a two-year big push and then just died. It just sort of died out. And so we're looking at all these projects, and some of them are very successful, some weren't, and how we need to go back to a more detailed, just biblical education, living education, and different things for the church, and even some different weekends, young adult weekends, and things that have some Home Office backing, and bring in teachers.

And so they've been looking at that and reviewing it. And we looked at there was a period of time in United where all those things were coordinated, and amazingly coordinated, and the reason why they actually had somebody hired to just coordinate educational programs, and that included ABC and everything.

And this one person coordinated everything. So they're looking at maybe creating a position where someone just does that again. And so the Council's been looking at it. They asked for Mr. Kubik to supply three guys to help out with their project. So Steve Myers and I and Mark Welch all got thrown into it. We didn't volunteer for it, I can tell you that. It's just more work. But so we got thrown into it, and it has been a very interesting progress or program to review everything we've done and how many just huge projects we've done. We still have a few that have been going very well.

Most of them are ministerial training online. So I think once that gets reviewed, put together, and somebody is brought in to just coordinate it all. Coordinate it with the pastors. Coordinate it with the regional pastors for regional things.

Coordinate online programs. I think we're going to be able to slowly begin to build something that's going to be helpful to everybody. So it's a very interesting project. And like I said, I'm only in the formation stages, so I may be out of it here soon. I don't know once they move on with it. But it's been amazing how many things we are doing.

So that's something to pass on that I think it's interesting. Most people don't know it's being done. And there's been a lot of hours reviewing whole notebooks. Entire notebooks of educational programs that were started lasted a year. And then the person who was running it lost interest or something. And it just died.

Of course, COVID has hurt a lot of things. COVID has set everything back. And of course, in our country has gone through such an enormous change in so many ways over the last two years. Everybody's reeling because you realize we're never going back.

I don't mean to be negative, but I think we realize that. I've been really keeping up with what's going over in Ukraine because it's interesting to me. This is a historical cycle that's happening over and over again. I mean, Ukraine has been part of Russia, not part of Russia, part of Russia, not part of Russia. The Russians say, you know, it would be like if Texas seceded from the Union and the rest of the Union said, no, you can't do that. You belong. You're part of us.

That's how they see it. The Ukrainians say, no, we're independent. We're an independent nation. So it's an interesting viewpoint from their viewpoint what's going on. As far as what NATO is going to do and just all the things are going on, what US is going to do. But it is a historical cycle which will set in motion a lot of things. I don't know what will happen at first, but I do realize one thing. Mr. Putin plays chess.

NATO's playing checkers. The US is playing tiddlyweeks. On a strategic view. We're just getting beat. He's basically going to be able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and he'll make his decision when he's going to. Because whatever he does, the decision will be what's best for Russia. I understand. I'll just bring this up. This is what I was going to talk about. Russia is in a desperate situation. Desperate countries do desperate things. What do you think the population of Russia is? Anybody guess? I can tell you what I used to think it was. A couple million? A hundred million? Hundred thousand?

Two. Two. A hundred and fifty six million. You know, when in World War Two, it was one of the biggest countries in the world. They had 150 million people in it. Of course, it didn't help that they lost 30 million during World War Two. They lost 20 million in their own civil war. They lost 3 million during World War One. They had a starvation during the 30s. I mean, that whittled them down. When the Iron Curtain fell, whole sections of Russia, at one point Belarus, although they've absorbed it back, and Ukraine left Russia. Russia right today, the nation of Russia, has 147 million people. It's less than half the size of the United States. And their demographics are much older. They don't have a lot of young people. If they don't grow in population and resources soon, they will not be a world power. The only thing that makes them a world power now is 6 million nuclear, I mean 6,000 nuclear weapons. That's all that makes them a world power now. And they have oil, lots of oil. So they have to do something. And the Ukraine has 40 million people, and it used to be part of Russia, and it can feed the world practically with grain. It has coal, it has oil, it's like we need you back. That's their viewpoint. And they're so desperate, if they don't get it back, all they have to do is project where they are about 15 years from now, and they will be a world power. I mean the United States per capita income is somewhere around 35,000 per person. There's an American money as 11,000 per person.

Their economy never came back from communism. So they have an interesting dilemma. Why do they have to lose? And it's scary when you have a country with nothing to lose. So anyways, I've been thinking about that lately, just watching what's going on. This is a cycle. You can see in history this happening before, where a European country had nothing to lose. And of course they see Europe as an enemy. They've never gone over World War I and World War II. They see it as an enemy, and they'll do anything to protect themselves from Europe, the rest of Europe. So anyways, keep your eyes on that. I don't know what's going to happen. I really don't. I can't tell you, because he's always a step ahead of everybody else, and I don't know where he is. But he's thinking everything out piece by piece. Now with all the troubles and things going on, here I am talking about world things, and you know it can get a little discouraging, a little frightening, a little worrisome. The last two years has been troublesome and difficult with COVID, with economics, and a lot of people, a lot of us throughout the last couple years, have had at one point or another some crisis of faith, because you realize my world's changed. It's still a good day, by the way. You got out of bed this morning, you had food, you had a car, you had heat. It's a good day today, so thank God for every day. Thank God for every day. But at the same time, it's a little disconcerting, and of course we've seen people get sick. We all know people who died of COVID. There's a lot of grieving going on because of people have died from COVID. And some of us had, I had it, you know. It wasn't fun. Well, I can't say that. I was so... my oxygen level was so bad, I would just walk around going, oh, I don't care. I mean, I just really didn't care. It was an amazing... I've never felt lethargy like that in my life. I could have died and I wouldn't care. No pain, no... I don't care. And then I found out later that they thought I was gonna die because it was so long. But we've all been through these crisis... this crisis, and it can create a crisis of faith. And that crisis of faith could go in a lot of different directions. I've seen people, and I've known of people, who just gave up on this way of life entirely. Just gave up on it, left the church, went out, became either Protestants or just... they don't really believe anything, just in the last two years. Because they weren't prepared for the crisis. We've seen other people become despondent and angry over having to wear a mask. And literally, you know, just... their whole life has been just filled with anger. And so we have fear, we have anger, we have anxiety, and everybody's felt some of this and going back and forth in all these different things. And because of that, there can be at times a crisis of faith. Crisis of faith of why did you allow this person to die? A crisis of faith in what's happening to my family. The stress on children is actually measurable in their brains. They've done studies now with children going back to school, and they can measure the stress for a lot of children. My wife said she watched something the other day that just... she said she was so... almost made her cry. They announced to this group of little children in grade school that they didn't have to wear a mask anymore. And half the kids tore them off and were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're all excited. And the other half were just terrified. Some of them because they said, but won't we die? And then she said, there were a lot of little girls who said, oh no, people will see my ugly face now.

I said, how sad is that? How sad is that? That that's what they learned from all this. So you and I have been struggling, and many of us have had some crisis of faith at one point over this. If you haven't, just wait. Now we say, if you have a crisis of faith or something wrong with you, the truth is, is that every Christian throughout their lives, what have points of, it's a crisis of faith, I don't understand what God is doing. God must not love me anymore. There's a problem here. What, why are you allowing this? Maybe this isn't true anyways. Or for some people, especially those who grew up in the church, it can be someone just brings a different view of the Bible to you, opens and reads a scripture to you, and says you don't know how to answer it, you think, well, maybe everything I've learned is wrong. I've seen that happen too, because the depth of really biblical understanding isn't that deep. There is a difference between hearing it at church and knowing it because God taught you out of the Bible. Those are two different experiences. You need to hear it, but you also need to know it in your own Bible.

So, crisis is a faith. A crisis of faith many times isn't a crisis of does God exist. You know God exists. It's who is He? Does He care? Is this way of life right? You know, there's been... it's amazing even in the Christian world, fortunately we haven't seen it too much in the church, divorce has skyrocketed among Protestants, Catholics because of COVID. They found out when they spent that much time together they really didn't like each other. Well, the stress of everything is just breaking people down. We're going to look at three kinds of crises we can have in our faith and why we have them and what we can learn from some biblical examples. Today isn't some deep into, you know, Greek meaning of Greek words, Hebrew words. It's just looking at some examples of some people who went through things like we do and how they responded and sometimes not very well. Let's start with Genesis 20. Genesis 20. And I'm going to read a lot here of this this chapter simply because the story is so fascinating and the way it's written here to get the whole the whole context of it. It's about Abraham. Now we know Abraham. He's the father of the faithful. Here's a man that is used in the Bible as the greatest example of faith. God said, leave your home and go someplace I'm going to tell you to go to and you've never been there. You have no idea how far it is. You're just going to go. He couldn't turn on the National Geographic channel and say, yeah, what does it look like over there in the land of Canaan? He had no idea how to get there, where it was, how far it was, I mean a reality. Oh yeah, you go this way, but that's not knowing where it is, right, or what it's like. He's just told to go there and he does. He's told to circumcise himself and his family members and he does. That's a lot of faith. So we come along here in chapter 20 verse 1. And Abraham journeyed from there to the south and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur and stayed in Gerar. Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister, and a bimalak king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. Now think about this, you know, why would anybody pay attention to some nomad? Well, Abraham wasn't just, you know, he and his family and a few goats and camels coming out of the desert. He had hundreds of armed men. Because in one place he fights a battle with kings from different cities. His tribe would have numbered into thousands. Who knows how far, you know, his cattle and his sheep and his...they may have gone on for miles. This is a nomadic world. There's cities, there's nations, but the Middle East was very much a nomadic place. People were moving. So when he comes into the city, everybody sees him.

Everybody knows him, or knows of him. And this is the tribe of Abraham. And he said to Sarah, now you tell them you're my sister. Which was sort of half true, because she was his half sister. And so the king says, that's a beautiful woman. Who is she? Oh, that's my sister. Wow, I would like to marry her. And so probably a couple days later, some people showed up, some soldiers escorting people with all this loot. Here, take this for your sister, and off she goes. And Abraham lets it happen. He simply lets it happen. You don't see him crying out to God. You don't see him saying, no, that, you know, she's only my half sister. You see him caving. The great man of faith. Caves.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, and did indeed you're a dead man, because of the woman who you have taken, for she is a man's wife. But Abimelech had not come near her and said, Lord, will you slay a righteous nation also? Did you not say to me she is, or did he not say to me she is my sister? And she even she herself said, he's my brother. In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have not done this. And God said to him in a dream, yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart, for I also withheld you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now therefore, restore the man's wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. Wow! So he was like, God is punishing the wrong man here, isn't he? This man actually hadn't done anything wrong. But he's making a point here. God is working with Abraham, and he's going to make a point with Abraham. So Abimelech rose early in the morning, called all his servants, and told all these things in their hearing, and the men were very much afraid. And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, What have you done to us? How have I offended you that you have brought on me in all my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done. And then I love this next statement. And Abimelech said to Abraham, What did you have in view that you have done this thing?

What in the world were you thinking, man? What were you thinking when you did this?

He's appalled. He had given Abraham honor as the king of a tribe, the ruler of a tribe, and thought he was taking his beautiful wife or sister to be his wife.

And Abraham said, Abraham tells why he did it, because I thought surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will kill me on account of my wife.

But indeed she truly is my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother. And she became my wife. And it came to pass when God caused me to wonder for my father's house. I said to her, This is your kindness that you should do for me. And every place, wherever we go, say of me, He is my brother. He had lied because of fear.

Other times He had shown such great faith. He had a crisis of faith that He didn't know what the solution was, so He simply made up a solution as to what we do. When we face these crises of faith, we will make up a solution, thinking that this will take care of it. But that's because His motivation was fear. We have all made very bad decisions at one time or another in our lives because of anxiety or fear or anger. We've all made some bad decisions later and said, Well, I should have trusted in God instead of punching the guy in the nose.

Then I would be laid up in the hospital because He beat the tar out of me.

Not that anybody's done that, but just making an example.

Because of our emotions, we sometimes, in these crises of faith, come up with a solution that is totally driven by an emotion. It doesn't even make sense. And of course, what happens is Abimelech does sacrifices to God, and this sort of plague that had come upon his family, God heals.

And then Abimelech basically tells Abraham goodbye.

It's been nice knowing you, but goodbye.

He had shown such great faith so many times.

And here he failed. And that's our first point, because all of us are going to have crises of faith that we don't handle very well.

It's just going to happen. Unless you're that incredible person that always, in a crisis of faith, does it right, right? But there's something that comes along. I've talked to people that I've known had great faith, and they've said to me, you know, though, there's always some time where it seems like it's just taken out of you, and you don't know what to do next. And it seems like God...it feels like God's abandoned you, or God isn't listening, or God doesn't care, or you just can't make sense of it, and you have this crisis of faith. And sometimes we make the wrong decision, and here is the lesson we learned from this situation, is that God can even use our failures of faith to draw us closer to Him and build up our faith. A failure of faith doesn't always mean God throws you away.

God didn't throw Abraham away. God said, son, that was stupid.

That was wrong. Now, you'll probably never be allowed to go into that city again. They don't want you there.

But notice He didn't punish him. You can imagine Abraham, after they took Sarah, he is probably crying out to God. What am I going to do now? They have my wife. If I go tell them now, they're going to kill me and my wife. They're going to take everything I have. They may kill all of my servants, which is my household. Because in the pneumatic tribes, when you were a servant or a slave, you actually became part of the tribe. It was a tribal issue. And so you were part of the household. That's why at one point Abraham said, my heir is my chief slave, because he was now part of the household. It wasn't like slavery, what we had here in the United States. It was a totally different concept in a tribal environment. And he failed. We always go to Abraham to show the successes of his faith. This was a failure of his faith. And God used it to strengthen his faith.

When we have a failure of faith, we're to go to God and say, I had a failure of faith. I did not believe the way I should. I did not trust the way I should. My decisions were made out of emotions.

And God will teach you from that. First lesson. Don't give up, you know, if you have a failure of faith. Just go to God and let him help you through it. Because you will now face, at some point, another crisis of faith, because they're going to happen. Our second example is in Mark 9.

Mark 9.

This is a favorite passage of mine. I read it quite often.

And it seems like even in a sermon, at least twice a year, I end up covering this, because there's so many lessons here. Talking about Jesus and his disciples, in verse 14 it says, and when he, speaking of Jesus, came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude with them. And immediately when they saw him, all the people were greatly amazed. And running to him, greeted him, and he asked the scribes, what are you discussing with them? Now one of the crowd answered and said, teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit, and whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So he spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, but they could not. So there's this huge crowd there. Oh, you're the followers of Jesus. Jesus says all these miracles. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you do a miracle. Oh sure, we've seen him do this before. So they said the right things, they did the right things, and nothing happened. Jesus looks at the disciples, he says, oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me.

He looks at the disciples and says, you just don't get it, guys. What weren't they getting?

I mean, Jesus did it. They believed in God. They believed God would do it through them.

So why didn't it work? Then they brought him to him, and when he saw him, immediately the spirit convulsed, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So he asked his father how long has this been happening to him, and he said from childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. He said, if you can do this, won't you have compassion on us? Won't you help us? And Jesus said to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.

So we can step back and say, if I just can work up enough faith, God will answer every prayer.

This man's response, if we truly understand it, is a response you and I are going to have occasionally in our crisis of faith. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

I can only go so far. There's a humility here before God that says, but I can only go so far.

I can only believe so much. I can only trust in my limited little way, and you must help me go the rest of the way. So much of the time we're trying to do this ourselves. You and I can't convert ourselves. We can't heal ourselves. We can't do anything. If Jesus says, I can do nothing except the father in me. If Jesus said that, where are we? Where are we? And this man understood something. I, as this human being, can only go so far. Lord, help me with what I don't have.

And Jesus saw that the people came running together.

Now notice, he didn't tell the man, oh, you of little faith. He told the disciples you of little faith. He looked at this man and said, you get it. You understand.

And he said, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him, deaf and dumb spirit, I command you to come out of him and enter him no more. Then the spirit cried out, convulsed with him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him, why couldn't we cast him out? We said the same things. We did the same things.

And notice what he tells them, because this lesson of this man saying, I believe, help my unbelief, is an issue they had to deal with. And he said to them, this kind could come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. In other words, what he tells him is, you have to be so close to God that God does it. Prayer, drawing close to God, and fasting. Fasting is a very important way in which we draw close to God. He says, you know, you can't do certain things just because you say, I cry out to God.

You have to be close to God, and God does it. And it's the same way with our faith. I mean, I've heard people say, well, the reason that people don't get healed all the time is they don't have faith. There's a problem with that thing. I mean, you cannot be healed sometime because you don't have faith. But I've seen lots of people with a lot of faith not get healed.

What we're looking for when we're fasting is we're not seeking... Remember, when we fast, it is not to prepare God for our will. It is to be prepared for God's will. That's a totally different thing. When we fast, we're being prepared for God's will. So, the young man's...

The father said, I can't do it. I believe. But you're asking me to go someplace I can't go.

The disciples said, well, we went there. How come it didn't work? He said, because you really didn't. You didn't draw close to God enough that God did this.

There's another place that shows the same point that is a very positive example is Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 1. I find Nehemiah a fascinating person, a fascinating book in the Bible.

Nehemiah 1 verse 1.

Words of Nehemiah, the son of Hekaliah.

It came to pass in the month of Chislev in the 20th year I was in Shushan, the citadel.

And Hanonai, one of my brothers, came with men from Judah, and I asked him concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. Now, understand at this point, Nehemiah didn't return back. Many Jews had gone back to the Promised Land. They had gone back to, you know, from the Babylonian captivity, and they were there in Jerusalem, where they were supposed to rebuild the city and rebuild the temple. And Nehemiah is the cupbearer of the king. Now, the cupbearer is a very interesting job. You are the most trusted person in the kingdom. The reason why is when you serve the wine, you have to taste it first to make sure it's not poisoned. I mean, the easiest way to kill the king was to have a cupbearer who was willing to die. Taste the wine, slow poison, you know, slow poison. No problem. Give it to him. He drinks it, and he dies with him. So he's very trusted. He has no power, but he protects the life of the king every day. And that's his job. And so he wants to know what's going on in Jerusalem. You know, all our brothers, so many of them went back, and their families, and what's going on.

In verse 2, he says, or verse 3, and they said to me, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. And it was, so it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept and mourned for many days, and I was fasting and praying before God of heaven.

Notice what he's doing. I don't know what the answer is. I have no solution. The prophecies aren't taking place. They were supposed to go back and rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

Where's God? But notice what he does. He doesn't try to fix it himself.

He prays. He fasts. He draws close to God so that God will do something. Something that he doesn't know the answer. I mean, I've tried to fix so many things in my life where I found out later if I had asked it had been a whole lot better. I'd just asked God to wait. But you know, rushed into things. I don't need to find out. That wasn't such a good idea.

Verse 5, And I said, I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God, you who keep your covenant and mercy with those who love you and observe your commandments, please let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, that you may hear the prayer of your servant, which I pray before you now, day and night for the children of Israel, your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Now, I stop here. I want you to see something. Nehemiah just didn't go and say, you know what?

I understand. Most of the Jews are really, really sinners. They're not really righteous.

And God, there's so few of us righteous people around. There's so few of us Jews that are actually righteous. That's not what he said. He identified with the people and with who he was. And why was God's covenant not being fulfilled? Why? Because in this case, it was a national problem.

People had gone back and they were not fulfilling what they were supposed to do.

He says, both by Father's house and I have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you, and I have not kept the commandments, the statutes, or the ordinances which you commanded your servant Moses. Remember, I pray, the word that you commanded your servant Moses saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you from among the nations, that if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out into the farthest parts of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling place for my name. Now, what he's saying is, you said you would bring us back and you have. And we haven't totally repented, so please bring us to repentance and fulfill the promises you made. He could have said, you know what? We're going to go do it. Just let me loose.

Just get me out of here from being the servant to the king and let me loose, and I'll go take care of it, and I'll get the people mobilized. We'll do the work of God. We have failed a lot when we'd say, I'm going to do the work of God. You know who does the work of God? God. We just get to participate, that's all. We just get to participate. Our conversion isn't because we convert ourselves, God converts us, and we get to participate in it. So who does the work of God? God.

And sometimes we think we're doing it. You know what we're like? We're like the flea that's riding with the back of an elephant, and they cross this bridge, and the flea says to the elephant, boy, didn't we shake that bridge where we crossed it?

Now we're just the flea, but that's the point. We have to be where we're supposed to be. We have to be in the right relationship with God, so God will do that work, whatever it is in our lives. And conversion is the most important thing.

In the end, that's the purpose of every one of us, is to be called to be converted to be his children in his kingdom. Nehemiah didn't rush off and say, let me get the work done. What he said was, how do you fulfill your promises? This is what you promised, but we're not doing it right. We're not doing so good. What do we do? He says in verse 10, now these are your servants and your people whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. And then he goes on in this prayer, and it's to God. You're the one who does this, and I don't know what to do. And he just prays. He fasts.

He's like the man saying to Jesus, I believe but help my unbelief. I can't fulfill what only you can fulfill, and I can't make it happen. I can't be righteous enough. I can't have enough faith. I can't be smart enough. I can't know the Bible enough. You have to do something that I cannot do. Chapter 2. And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the king said to me, Why is your face sad, since you're not sick? This has nothing but sorrow of heart. He says, I know you're not sick, but I've never seen you look so bad, look so down. What's wrong with you? And notice what happens. What is his reaction? He said, Oh, I have faith now to speak to the king. So I became dreadfully afraid.

It is normal human reaction. He's having a crisis of faith. He's been praying. God, what are we supposed to do? How are you going to do what you promised to your people? I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Nobody knows what they're supposed to do, but it's not being done. And he fasts about it, and he prays about it.

May the king live forever, he says. Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies in waste, and his gates are burned with fire? Now you'd think the king would say, you know what? You're just a slave. How dare you say that to me? I mean, you have to understand, Artaxerxes, like all Persian kings, were worshipped as a god.

No one talked to them like this. Why are you so down? Well, I'm down, my lord, because you're not praised as much as you should be. Okay? That's what he was used to hearing. What he hears is, I'm down because my country is where I came from. It's not being rebuilt, and it's in shambles.

And notice what God causes Artaxerxes to say. Then the king said to me, what do you request?

And now we have another chance to say, just let me go do it, and I'll fix it.

Notice what D.M.I.A. says. So I pray to the God of heaven.

I all know he asked me a question. God, what is your will? What is your will? What is it you want done?

And I said to the king, if it pleases the king, and if your servant is done, found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it. And interesting enough, the king says to him, the queen was right there beside him in this verse, how long will your journey be, and when will you return?

And then it pleased the king to send him. His answer was, well, you got to come back. I need you. I trust you. But if you need to go do this, go do it. Now that's God doing that, you see. That's not Nehemiah doing that. That's God doing that. And now Nehemiah had a job to go do.

But it was God who did it. And that's what in Mark 9 and Nehemiah 1 and 2 we see.

God uses life situations to help us grow and trusting him, but that is only possible if we are already humble before God. I believe I help my unbelief. What do you want me to do? I better pray about this. Okay? There. That's a humility before God. It's not like, I know, I know.

It took me the longest time in life to figure out God was never going to ask my opinion.

I waited for years. And he's never going to ask. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter at all.

I don't have anything to contribute that way. I mean, I have a bigger idea than God.

So I don't have anything to contribute to giving my opinions. But what we can do, all of us, as God works in us, is that we have a humility before God so that we are willing to say, I believe, help my unbelief, or willing to say, I don't know what we're supposed to do.

I don't know how to handle everything. But instead of running out in pride, I'll simply come to you and I'll ask you, and you will guide me. And I trust that you will show me your will. Your will. You will show me your will. You know, this is hard for us. You know why?

Because many times we don't really want God's will.

I have not prayed for God's will, I just admit, sometimes in my life because it's like, but God, I'm afraid of what your answer is going to be. Well, you know, it was going to happen his way anyway. So I might as well just accept it and move on. It's like, no, no, if I go ask, what if he says no? What if he says no? Then he says, well, yeah, but he knows what he's doing, so if it's no, it's best. That's not easy. It never is. We have the crises of faith as we struggle with God. So that's the second lesson, is that this trust is only possible if we're humble before God. And that humility requires prayer time. It requires fasting. It requires seeking his will. And then our last point is that we have to resist that when we don't get the answer we want, we think the problem is with God. You know, it's interesting when the, the, you go back to Deuteronomy, when Moses sent out the 12 spies. And two of them came back and said, it's great, it's just like God said, we can go take it. And the 12 came back and said, what do you mean we can take it? There's armies there. There's giants there. I mean, big people. There's walled cities. Anybody here know how to take a walled city? You know, we can't take this land. Anybody here know how to build bridges? We got to get across the Jordan River just to get there. We have no way to do this. This is impossible. What's amazing is the response of so many of the Israelites. Now remember, it had been a year before that God had brought them out of Egypt. It had been a year before that he had done the plagues. It had been a year before that he opened the Red Sea. Over the course of the year, he had done 10 different miracles, including giving them manna every day, six days of the seven days to eat. He gave them water. He got them where he said he was going to take them. They were led by a pillar of fire at night in a pillar of a cloud by day, and it was still there. Understand, while this is going on, the pillar is still there. And they listened to this bad news, and here's what they said. The Israelites concluded the Lord hates us. You know, the problem is God just doesn't love me. God doesn't love us.

If he loved us, we would have this kind of trial.

We can feel God has abandoned us. We can feel God doesn't love us. And we're afraid to say it.

We're afraid to tell anybody we've ever felt that way. But in a crisis of faith, that's the problem. We feel that way. Why would God allow this to happen?

We have a woman, Lori Breedlove. I have struggled with God with this for two years now.

She was taking care of her six grandchildren and really taking care of them. They loved her. She took care of them. And she was exhausted because she was working all day, taking care of the kids all night. She was driving to work, fell asleep, wrecked the car, and woke up paralyzed. A couple weeks later, her husband had a heart attack and died. They came in and took away all six of her grandchildren and put them in foster homes. So she's laying in a hospital. And it's COVID, and nobody can go visit her. And she spent months alone, paralyzed in a bed.

Couldn't even, you know, I talked to her on the phone and she'd say, I can't even, I can't even grieve for my husband because I couldn't even go to the funeral.

And family members can't even get in the seat.

She now, two weeks ago, I did the funeral for her daughter, 40 years old and died.

And but Lori was there. She actually got out of the wheelchair and took a few steps.

Her one arm is moving. She can't move the other one.

And it's like, when does this stop? And I am asked God. And then I keep getting, I love her. You don't get it. It's in, you have, it's none of your business.

I love her more than you can imagine. It's none of your business. I don't like that answer because I, I feel like it is my business because I know her, but you know, it's not.

But we're supposed to wrestle with God. I think we're supposed to have crisis. I think we're supposed to have crisis of faith over things like that. We're supposed to say, why would you allow this to happen? God didn't do it. To happen. And God's answer is, oh, it all makes sense if you can see it from my viewpoint. But I can't see it from God's viewpoint.

And so I keep telling Lori, I, I keep, God and I have long conversations over this.

And the answer is, this isn't your decision to make. You're just, all you're supposed to do is love her. You're not, the rest of this isn't your business.

This is not easy answers, are they? Those aren't easy answers.

And yet, find another answer that makes sense. God is cruel. God doesn't love her. God's evil. I mean, what are the conclusions you come to? Or God says, I know what I'm doing. And someday, it'll all make sense. That either has to be true, or I don't even know how to relate to God, right? These are crisis of faith.

We're supposed to have these every once in a while. They draw us close to God.

They draw us close to God. And we accept how small we are. And we accept that we don't have the answers. That his view is so much bigger than ours. And it's not that God hates me, because God doesn't hate Lord.

And we'll talk on the phone and she'll say, I had a good day yesterday. Or sometimes I'll talk to her and she'll say it was a bad day. I just say, God, this doesn't make sense.

This doesn't seem right. And then she always comes out of it. There's these days she's showing that she always comes out of it and says, well, someday I'll get it. Someday I'll understand. And someday I'll realize that God with God is doing his good.

Once again, he didn't cause it. But he could have stopped everything along the way.

He has the power to stop everything. Christ is of faith, isn't it? Christ is of faith.

Those are real.

I don't know how we can grow without them. And there's times we have to step back and say, no, it's not that God hates us. It's the opposite. In a very little way, I can understand because I remember when my children, you know, know you have to pick up your toys. I'm not going to pick up my toys.

Well, you can not pick up your toys and not have to. Here's one. It was a big...we had this one a number of times. I'm not going to eat what's in front of me. And they were old enough to understand.

I don't like peas. I don't like baked potatoes. And I don't like hamburgers. Well, yes, you do. No, I don't. Okay, well, you have to eat at least a little bit of each. No, I'm not.

You have to eat so many peas, so much of the potato, because you haven't eaten anything. No, I want cake. Well, you're not going to have cake. In fact, if you don't eat some, you're not going to have cake. Period. And I can remember a couple of times, not our son. He'd eat almost anything. Here's skunk. Okay. But the girls could just get these, I don't know, attitudes. You know, they weren't going to eat it. Okay. You can't eat anything. Well, I want some pretzels. No, you can't eat anything. You either eat this. And after sitting there for an hour, may I be excused? Well, we're all up from the table. You're still okay. And all night long. I'm hungry. Well, here. Because Kim would just wrap it in foil and put it in the room. Here you go. No, I want, you know, potato chips. No, you're going to eat this. Then you can have some potato chips. But you know, some of the best talks I had with my girls was about 11 o'clock at night. Kim was in bed. And I'd be sitting there, maybe watching the news or something. And one of them would walk in and say, Daddy, I'm so hungry. I said, Well, do you want your dinner now? Yes.

Yes. And I'd get out the peas and then I'd say, you know, and it's cold, you know, we'd sit down and they would eat it and we would talk.

We'd just sit and talk and talk and talk. And then they'd say, you know, oh, I'm ready to go back to bed now. Okay. And there was no trauma. They didn't grow up to be serial killers. Okay.

But they must have thought there was a thought process and part of that, that this is the meanest people I've ever met.

All I want is a piece of cake. What's their problem?

And, you know, after the eight and we got a big hug, I got always got a big hug and a kiss good night and I'd go in and put them in a bed and it was a wonderful time. I enjoyed that, that time in the evening when they would come and we would talk and I would sit there and watch them eat cold food. And then usually I'd say, you want all this cake now? Okay. You know, make them a little piece of cake.

It's awful late.

It didn't make sense, but as an adult, teaching that little bit of discipline did make sense at that age. They were old enough to understand. It did. And it helped them become adults.

That's what God's doing with us. He's helping us become adults. But man, there's times it makes no sense at all. And it's okay to admit it. Because you'll see David admit it. You see Job admit it. You see all kinds of people in the Bible admit it. You see Jesus' disciples. What in the world does he mean? They're even arguing among themselves. Does anybody know what he means?

You see, everybody interacting with God at times says, I don't understand. And God says, ah, now you have to believe. And that's that final point. That final point is trusting God doesn't mean you're always going to understand. It doesn't mean you're always going to have everything alleviated. Although God does, we've lived blessed lives. We have lived blessed lives.

In fact, part of the our problem we're going to face is you and I have lived probably during the greatest time of physical blessings in the history of humanity. Nobody's lived like we have in the United States over the last 50 years. No time in history. What we have, what we eat, our luxuries, our buildings, everything. There's nothing like this. Nothing. We've lived so good, it's going to be hard just to even have a little bit of difficulties because we don't know anything else. But God doesn't promise that he won't give us struggles. In fact, the struggles and difficulties are part of our Christianity. And sometimes God's answer is wait. And sometimes God's answer is no. And many times it takes more faith to accept the no answer than the yes answer.

Sometimes it takes more faith to do that.

And just be thankful for the yes answers because he gives us lots of yes answers. Lots of them. Trust in God is strengthened by reading the scriptures and looking at these people, these people, and seeing, yes, they were just like us. They were just like us. Different culture, different time, but their experiences were just like ours. So we've got these major, these three major points. God can even use our failures to draw us close to him and strengthen our faith. When we have a failure, it doesn't mean he's just going to throw us away. It means he's going to say, okay, let's sit down and see what you learned from this one. Why didn't you trust me?

Second, God uses life situations to help us grow in trusting him. And that means this can only happen, this trust, if we're humble before God. We cannot let our pride get in the way.

It's not our righteousness. It's not our faith. It's not us that makes God work. It's God who does what he wants to do. And we participate. We submit. And that means we have to seek his will.

And sometimes that takes a lot of prayer and fasting. To seek his will. What is it you want? And then the last point, trusting God doesn't mean he's going to alleviate all sorrow or struggles or that we're even going to understand. Sometimes the answers wait. Sometimes it's no.

But in these weaknesses, we find strength. And the last little example I'm going to use is Paul, when he had some kind of ailment. And he says he went to God for three times, remember about it?

And God didn't heal him. Now, God, Paul was used to getting yes answers all the time. He healed people. God did all kinds of miracles through him. He got yes answers all the time. And God gave him a no answer. And he said, I learned from that. When God, I really realized, God said, no, my grace is sufficient. I'm not fixing this problem for you.

And Paul said, ah, I get it. It is in my weakness, that experience, his strength.

Sometimes it's in our weaknesses that we actually experience the power of God.

In our strength, we don't seem to need him. In our weakness, we experience it. We learn it, and we learn to trust him. So, the last couple years have been difficult at many levels.

It's not been the worst time in history. It's not the tribulation. These are the good old days compared to the tribulation. You'll look back and say, oh, the age of inflation and COVID was such a good time. But we're watching it. We're watching our civilization collapse. We're watching a civilization that no longer has any biblical basis. We're looking for a new hall in Murfreesboro, and we had one of the churches there that was a nice church and didn't have any icons. And they said, oh yeah, we'll rent to you, but there is one doctrine we require.

I thought, oh no. Now, I didn't, I wasn't talking to them. Women had called them, and she called me and told me. She said, one. And I thought, oh no, here comes the Trinity, you know.

No, you have to accept LGBTQ. If you do not, you cannot rent our facility as a Christian group, because you're not basically not Christian. It changed a little bit, huh? I'm already to argue the Trinity. I've got a whole new argument on my hands. It's a whole new world out there, that we've entered into. So, anyways, it is changing. But remember, it's God.

God, it's, He's never left His throne. The kingdom of God has always existed. It's just, He's let Satan have this for a little while. Right? I mean, God's kingdom never ended. He's still sitting on His throne. He's sending Christ back, and okay, it's enough. You're, you're out of here. I'm going to take charge of my earth again, and my people again. He's going to do that. He's going to send Him back. Remember that, because you've been called to be part of that. And it's not because of us.

It's because of God. And when we submit to that, we will grow, and we will become His children, and be prepared for Christ's return.