Section 2 Move the Mission Rally (Part 2)

Hello. Section two. You know, I didn't grow up here. I grew up in Africa. And I was convinced that I was never going to love Missouri. Okay? I told my parents I didn't want to live here because it sounded like misery. And I said that I was never going to love it no matter what. And wouldn't you know it, I love Missouri. I love this district. I love its people. And I am so, so honored to be with you guys tonight. I spent some time with the youth staff of APC last night. And can I just say, wow.

I was so grateful to be with people who are so anointed and intelligent and thoughtful and who love their youth group a lot and who love their hyphen a lot and who have a lot of belief in who you guys are and who you're becoming. And I would not just say that. I would just say I spent some time with your youth staff and that would be it. All right. I mean everything that I said. You are truly blessed with the best here at APC and I thank God for it for you. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, you should.

Um, here are some things that happened in my life this morning that I just feel like maybe I should share. Another thing that I feel like I should maybe share with the praise and worship team is that we are definitely going to go back into song number two at the end of this. So, we're having a praise party. Amen. It is time to celebrate. Um, song number two is of course Yes. Thank you. Okay, good. I was like, I've already forgotten. So, hopefully they have a list somewhere. Just kidding.

But, um, here are some things that happened in my personal life this morning. Is it okay if I share some things that happened in my personal life? I am um a teacher and I also honor the um wonderful pastoral staff here at APC because they knew that it was the first week of school and they still let me come here and handed me a microphone. So, thank you Jesus and I am very very grateful for all of them. But um I woke up this morning, I went to make my coffee. I'm not fancy so it went in the cure egg. I pushed the button. I had not put a cup there.

And uh then I went to leave my house and I had already opened the garage door, but I forgot. You'd think I would have noticed the sunlight. Um but I forgot. And so I closed the garage door upon myself today. And then I spent um quite a bit of time having a lot of high schoolers look for some keys that I may or may not have been holding. And that is what has been going on in my personal life today. I have always desired to be more of like a cookie cutter person. You know what I mean?

Like I just love lines and everything working out and things being orderly. And it just turns out that I'm a lot more confetti than I am cookie cutter ever. And uh my nephew was dropped off to me today. Just full disclosure, I thought he was dropping by. He was dropped off. But I was very excited because he is my favorite person on the planet. And I was like, "[name redacted], come with Melly. We're going to print out your notes." This is how he walks. I'll be concerned when he's in high school. I'm not right now. He's three. So, we go to print off my notes.

And I um I was just wanting to make so sure that I was saying what the Lord wanted me to say tonight. And I up until, you know, the time I get up here, I'm like, "Anything you want to change, Lord? Let me know. Speak through anything." And [name redacted] um he was walking back and he looked down at my notes and he said, "Um, Melly, I was thinking that maybe this should not look like this." And I was like, "This is the moment from the mouths of babes.

The Lord is speaking." And he said, "I was thinking maybe this could look like painted dogs and dinosaurs." And I was like, "It could, but maybe it wasn't the Lord speaking." You know what I'm saying? Speaking of my nephew, I would love to tell a story about his mother, my sister. Now, are you guys going to tell her I did that? Maybe don't. Okay, this is an agreement we can make together. You're not going to do that. Okay, so being in a relationship with me, I will just tell you, is like constantly dodging maybe truth bombs and love grenades. All right.

So, I am upt often in the middle of the night and I'll be like, "It is 2:00 a.m. Do the people that I love know that I love them? I should call them. I should call them right now at 2 a.m. My people have learned to silence their phones. They have asked me to send voice memos. It works out well. But I it's not really easy for me to dis like to hide how I'm feeling. Okay? Like I will talk about it. I will write about it, sing interpretive dance. I mean, you're going to know. You're going to know how I feel about things.

And so, when I arrived at Indiana Bridal College, I was not okay. I was not okay because I already knew I was not getting that MRS degree there. Okay? I knew that because I looked around me and saw who else was there. And I was like, actually, I think I'm good. Anyway, so I arrived at Indiana Bridal College and I was like fresh off the boat from Africa. I did not know anyone. I was not cool then. I'm not cool now, but I really was not cool then. And um I was not okay. And the thing about that is that people began to notice that I was not okay.

It may have been the sobbing at the lunch table. I'm not sure. But they began to notice that I was not okay because I am not my sister. I am not perfect in all of my ways like she is. And people know what's going on with me. And um then my sister came to school and I have already mentioned that she's perfect in all of her ways. And I was just waiting. I'm like this is my moment. First of all, her 4.0 GPA will surely suffer at least a little loss. It did not. I was like, "She will be overwhelmed." She graduated with a four-year degree in three years.

She took secular college classes on the side. She was not overwhelmed. I was like, "At least people will know me." People were saying, "Oh, are you Candra's sister?" And I was like, "I have been here." She was voted the student body secretary immediately. And furthermore, to anger me even further, she was fine. She was absolutely fine all the time.

And months passed and I was like, "Well, surely being ripped away from our culture and our people and everything that we love and everything that we know will make some sort of dent." And she was like, "No, I'm fine. Please pass me my foul folders. I'm going to class." Oh, that's where he gets it from. Okay. So, she is absolutely fine until one fateful night, she goes to the music club Christmas party and she comes home and she throws open the dorm room door like she was me. And I was like, "Oh, it's time.

It's happening." And she threw herself upon the bunk bed and she was crying so hard she couldn't talk. And I was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. is something troubling you per chance for the first time ever in our lives? And uh she was crying so hard that she couldn't really talk. All that she was saying was, and I quote, and I was like, that is not English. And it's not twe either, so I don't know what's happening. And I was asking all the people that were with her. I said, "What what was going on?" And they said, "We don't know. We can't decipher this.

She's just upset." And I was like, "Oh, that's too bad." And I asked her again. I was like, "Cange, I need you to try to calm down." I really didn't. I was excited. She was upset. I know you can't tell. So, I'm just telling you plainly. And I was like, "I need you to calm down.

Please calm down and try to slowly tell me what you're saying." And she said and I said, "Candra, are you saying trees?" And she said, "Yes, trees." As it turns out, she had been to a Christmas party at someone's house and they had a big beautiful house and they had a Christmas tree in every room of their house. And to her, this was the American dream. We grew up in Ghana. It's not our fault. All right? It was like clips of Hallmark only. So to her, it was the American dream.

And she just realized she thought that she would never make enough money in order to have a Christmas tree in every room of her house. Um, when when I do make money, I feel like that's not what I spend it on, first of all. But she was so set in her mind that she had to look like she was supposed to. She had to be like she was supposed to be. She had to fit into those Instagram frames. You guys still have Instagram? I don't. I was hacked. It was the best thing ever. I was delivered three years ago.

But, you know, she wanted something to have to put in those Instagram frames right now. and she wanted it to be as shiny as everybody else's and for it to look as good as everybody else's. Now, she is now a licensed therapist and she can't afford a Christmas tree. So, that is the testimony for that. But the truth of the matter is it wasn't really about the trees, was it?

I think more often than not, we also, all of us, can't help but get caught up in where we should be and what should be happening by now and the car we should be driving and the grades we should be making and the friends that we should be having. And if we had friends and we were cool enough, they would not all go to play pickle ball without us. And we just spend so much time thinking about what this life is going to look like. And we all have our Instas story ideas and Pinterest perfect dreams.

And sometimes, more often than not, life does not work out like we thought it was going to. And while you might want the perfect job or house or plan or spouse or textbook worthy school life and magazine worthy home life and the perfect Christmas tree, that doesn't always work out, does it? Maybe you too are sometimes more confetti than cookie cutter. I hope so. But the truth of the matter is that God views things differently than we do. And I'm so glad that he does. I am so glad that he does because he does not mind a mess.

I just need to tell you guys today that I thought it was a good idea. Here's my fourth confession of my day. I thought it was a good idea that like I would take 29 high schoolers and I would give them a bunch of glue and confetti and paint. It was a gallon jug of glue and I thought this will go better than it would in the fifth grade because they're in high school. And an anti-estimony I was wrong. I thought wrong. And um my teen teacher, she was like, "Are you good?" Because she just felt like I was retreating into the recesses of my very dark soul.

And I was like, I am because things are sticky. This is not good. I mind a mess. The Lord does not mind a mess. He views things differently than we do. In fact, if he were to pick out a tree for Christmas, I think that he would do it differently. In fact, long ago, God did pick out a Christmas tree, the very first one, and he chose something different than I would have. Isaiah 1:1 says, "A chute will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit." So God chooses a stump to build his family tree on.

And he decorates it with this crazy cast of characters. And these are not the people that your youth pastor would pick to be camp chaperones or your choir leader picks for the solos. These are people that had lives that were a little bit messy. And there were five women specifically. And he chose five different women in particular to decorate this Christmas, this family tree with. And um nobody in the village would have voted an unwed pregnant teenager most likely to succeed, but God did. That seems like a mess to me, but he doesn't mind a mess.

The woman who carried his child out of scandal, her new husband guilty of murdering her old one. She traded an innocent man who was so honorable he would not enjoy the charms of his wife on his surprise leave home because he was still in solidarity with his own men on the battlefield for a burntout king too big to be bothered with battle bored on his balcony. And the woman who was the wife of one man became one of many. And she miscarried her only only silver lining.

But the good news was that David was not the only one who wanted Ba Sheeba because God wanted her too. And it seems like a mess. But he views messes differently than I do. The widowed foreigner Ruth would perhaps be considered the most noble of the bunch. But she did not belong there at all. It was taboo that she be included. And who would even give her a shot unless the Lord willed it? and the son of a prostitute, a foreigner herself, became a kinsman redeemer and helped sire a line that would eventually redeem all of us and make us kinsmen of Christ.

Hashinclusive, but messy. And speaking of Boaz and his mother, I really do feel that we gloss over her profession a lot, but Rahab was a prostitute and two men on the run just happened to stumble into this den of illreute. And I would be like, "You have climbed in the wrong window. Leave quickly." Because that is for sure messy. But the Lord doesn't mind a mess. He knows how to use it. He knows how to use the messiest situations and the worst mistakes. And this woman named Tamar tops this all off.

God and his infinite wisdom tops off his tree tops off his tree with Tamar. And it's my favorite story in the Bible. And I'm about to tell you why. Now, my mother taught us the Bible. And my mother is an Old Testament gal because she is an old lady. And um she loved to teach us the whole Bible. So like for example, the whole of the Old Testament. She was obsessed. So for example, let's say you're in this room and you still think maybe that babies are made by baking cookies. Okay?

So she would talk to us about the people in the tent baking cookies and the spear went through both of them. All right? And I was like, "Mom, this is not a bedtime story, please." And she was like, "It is in the Bible. We are reading the Bible." She's an old lady from the south. And so she told us the story about Tamar. The story of Tamar takes place in Genesis 38. And it's kind of this meanwhile back on the farm thing that happens right in the middle of the story of Joseph. So Judah is one of Joseph's brothers and he is self-s serving. He's kind of meh.

The only good thing that he's done so far in the narrative is that he said when they threw him in the pit, he was like, "Actually, let's not commit to killing him and let's not commit to letting him go. Let's just throw him into the pit." So just kind of a wishy-washy person. And Tamar is married to Judah's son. And the Lord says that, the Bible says that he was so wicked that the Lord took his life.

And so in that time, it was the culture that if you were married um to the first son of the family and you didn't have children, he died, you had to get married to the second son. I love my brother-in-law, but no. All right? So, I'm glad that culture has changed, but that was the culture in that time. So Judah gives her um the second son to be her husband. And the Bible says that he was also so wicked that the Lord killed him. And here's the thing about this.

God's plan was all about the bloodline because he had a work to accomplish and he knew what he was doing. So his plan was all about the bloodline and in their perversion, these men were blocking that. So that's what's really going on there. And Judah, as probably any father might do, needs to consider giving Tamar the third son in his household. And he was like, "You know what? I think he's too young for you." Probably maybe he didn't want his sons to die. It's a thought, you know. He said, "I think it's too he's too young for you.

Why don't you go home to your family and um we'll let you know if anything changes." and he shoves her straight out of the story. So, she goes home and I cannot imagine her whole purpose in life is to bear children and she's back to being a burden on her family and I'm sure that she was labeled a husband killer. Completely unfair. I want everything about life to be fair and it's not always. It just isn't. But God has a plan all the time and God is for you all the time and God is working on your behalf all the time.

So this is where I need to put like a very big disclaimer over this story. Okay. What I am not saying is go ye and do likewise. This is not a part of scripture that we model our lives after. All right. Okay. The Old Testament things were different. But here's the thing. It was all about the bloodline and you can trace it throughout the Old Testament. Satan trying to get at that blood. In Tamar, she knew her God and she knew her job.

So what she does is she dresses up as a woman of illreute, a lady of the night, if you will, and she camps out at the gate and she waits for her father-in-law because she's heard that her mother-in-law has passed away and that her father-in-law will be lonely. And um she offers, how shall I put this? To bake some cookies with him. You guys remember that from earlier? Please say yes. Okay. Or look it up. It is in the word. Anyway, so she offers to bake some cookies with him.

And he's like, "Sure, but I don't have any payment." And um she says, "That's fine. That's good." And she asks him to give her the equivalent of his driver's license, his credit cards, and his social security card. All right? and he's like, "Oh, that's fine. Sure. What is wrong with this man? No one needs this advice, but if a person of illreute asks you to leave your social security card and your credit cards and your driver's license with them, don't do it." But he does it because up until this point, he has not been all that impressive. Okay?

And he's like, "I will leave this with you. I'll send someone with someone with payment, you'll give me my stuff back. So, whenever they send for the payment, whenever he sends someone for payment, it turns out that she wasn't there. Shocking. We all could have told him that, but he did not call any of us. I don't know that we'd be friends with him if he did. So, there's that. And months pass, time passes, and rumors start flying around in the village, and Judah hears that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, which sometimes happens when you bake cookies.

And he has not cared about anything. He's not cared about the word of the Lord in any manner so far, as far as I can tell. He's not cared about what's right. He's not cared about what's just. He's not cared about any of those things. And he flies into a rage all of a sudden because now he cares. And he says, "You bring her here here and we're going to burn her at the stake. You bring her here, we're going to burn her at the stake." And the people go and get her. They drag her to the middle of the camp.

And she does something that I do not consider to be a smart thing to do. She sends for Judah and she asks to speak to him privately. And sometimes when you know your God and you know your job, you're not following the same rules that everybody else with is. You're not following the same practices that they would. You're not thinking about revenge. You're not thinking about your own motives. You're more concerned with doing what is right. So, she sends for him.

And she says, "Hey, I don't know if you know this, but I have this driver's license and this social security card and these credit cards. Have you ever seen them before?" And he recognizes them. It um so happens that a teaching it rises up in Jewish tradition from this moment that says it's better to burn at the stake than publicly humiliate another person even if they deserve it. And she gives this man the only proof that she has of her own innocence right before she's about to lose her life.

And something incredible happens that I never would have expected. Judah starts weeping. He's completely convicted. He understands that he has done wrong and he is a completely different man from this point forward. You can look at it in scripture. It's the most amazing thing. He's an absolutely different man. And all of a sudden, when he was wishy-washy before and we didn't have a lot of good things to say about him or read about him before, it's like Judah this and Judah that and Judah and his brothers even though he wasn't the oldest.

And it's Judah who sticks up for their father and Judah who makes that impassion speech to Joseph on behalf of Benjamin. Genesis 46:28 says, "And he sent Judah before him to Joseph to point out the way before him to Gan." 1 Chronicles 5:2, Judah was the strongest of his brothers. First Kings 12:20, when all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remain loyal to the house of David.

Matthew 1 vers2 says Jacob and calls him the father of Judah and his brothers. You've all heard send up Judah, I'm sure. But my favorite thing is in Ruth chapter 4 when the people of the village gather to bless Ruth and Boaz. They say, "May your house be like the house of Tamar and Judah." And that's not all because eventually a rumor breaks out in Nazareth and there was a man who had every right to publicly humiliate his fiance, but that was not the tradition in his family. And he puts her away quietly.

And God of creation trusts the fate of everything into those carpenter hands. And he says, "My son is going to be birthed into that house because a woman named Tamar had the courage to fight for a bloodline that stretched all the way to the cross. The blood that washes away my sin. The blood I overcome by." Tamar and Judah, it is not a cute story ever. And it is definitely not cookie cutter in nature. It's messy. But Judah's life, it never began in a cookie cutter way. Anyway, Judah's mom was married to her sister's husband. Terrible idea. Terrible plan.

I could have told them. They didn't call me. And Leah, the Bible says, well, let me put it this way. Rachel was real cute and Leah was sweet and fun to hang out with. All right? And Leah, she just wanted her husband to love her. She just wanted her husband to love her. And the story takes place in Genesis 29:31-35. And she would give birth to a child, and she would name the child something like, "Surely the Lord had looked upon my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me and nothing would change.

And she'd have another baby, and she would name it something like, "Because the Lord hath heard I was hated. He hath therefore given me this son also, but nothing would change." Another one. Now this time will my husband be joined unto me, I have borne him three sons, but nothing would change. Nothing ever changed until she gave birth to a baby named Judah. and she said, "This time I will praise the Lord." The thing about it is I don't know that there's any record that her husband ever loved her the way that she wanted him to.

He does eventually say, "Bury me next to Leah." And that just tells me that when he finally chose her, she was dead. You know, but that's not the point. The minute that she chose praise in her mess, she attached herself to a legacy that never died. The minute that she chose praise in her mess, the greatness of God's glory and his kingdom was able to be born through her. Praise always gives birth to more of Jesus. Always. And it didn't matter so much that she didn't have the cookie cutter life that she wanted.

Do you see how the thread of divine design is woven throughout all of this mess? And it is. It is such a mess. I think we could call it like tor tales of the Old Testament and it would sell probably. But it is the truth that God can use anything at any time, anyone. No matter what you come from, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've been through, no matter what your circumstances look like, God can use you at any time. He doesn't mind a mess. He doesn't mind a mess. And it's all about the kingdom and it's all about the bloodline.

And when you go through life and you have a plan and it's not working and it's not working and maybe this time and maybe this time you're going to try one more time and maybe it's going to work and I'm not just talking about my love life and you're thinking that maybe you have made a mess and you are a mess. Just know your God. Just know your job. Hey Judah, God takes wimps and he turns them into warriors. Hey Leah, God sees you. And I'm so grateful that the willing, undeserving give birth to the greatness of the kingdom.

It is a mess, but he views messes differently than I do. He doesn't mind a mess. And I'm so grateful because crucifixion was for sure messy. It was messy. But he hung on a tree for you and me because he views trees differently than I do. And Judah, Judah, who never could quite bring himself to do the right thing, the wishy-washy mess of a man, this is what the Bible says about him. Judah, your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's son will bow down before you. You are a lion's cub, Judah.

You return from the prey, my son. Like a lion, he crouches and lies down. Like a lioness who dares to disturb him. The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until he to whom it belongs shall come. And the obedience of the nations shall be his. A total mess. A total mess. But the Lord delivered salvation through it. There is no mess that he will not deliver salvation through. There is no mess that he cannot deliver salvation to. And I am not saying go and make your life a mess. Please don't.

I am saying it doesn't matter if you have. It doesn't matter what you come from or what you've done or what's been done to you. You are called to a purpose. You are a part of this messy masterpiece. There's a book that I kept in the fifth grade and now it is in a place of honor in high school because I don't think anyone will really want to read it because it really is a first grade level book. But it's called Betty Confetti. It's one of my favorite possessions. And I really identify with Betty. She wears a tutu. She has a cute little bow and a ponytail.

Walks like this. Just kidding. And um she is very bad at art, which is actually the real reason that I identify with her. Betty is terrible at art. And everyone else in her kindergarten class is great at it. She's not. And uh she is just shredding her art project one day. She's tried and she's tried and she's running her paper through the um her art project through the paper shredder. And she realizes when she's doing that that all of these beautiful pieces of what she thought was trash becomes confetti.

And then all of a sudden her mistakes are a party, right? And she says, "Confetti is just trash that chose a better life." Sometimes I look at the confetti and I'm like, "Same. I'm not much on my own. I could never be worthy on my own. I could never earn salvation on my own. But he gives me the ability to choose a better life. He gives us all the ability to choose a better life. And I'm so so grateful for it. I read a book at the beginning of this year by Jerry Jones and it was about what you do when life is unfair and he just it's a short book.

It was a beautiful book. He wrote about Leah from the story in the book though and he talked about how she was demanding for her circumstances to change and she was thinking that life was so unfair. And then he wrote this simple sentence that had me sobbing in the floor. He said, "But the Lord loved Leah. This was going wrong. This was not working out. This was not what she wanted it to be. But the Lord loved Leah." And you know, for the first time in my life, when I read that, it's like the love of the Lord was enough.

that I didn't need him to prove that he loved me by giving me things or working everything out the way that I wanted him to or fulfilling promises that I'd written down in my prayer journal, but that he already loved me enough that he put on flesh and he stepped into this messy world and he hung on a cross so that he could spend eternity with me and I could spend eternity with him. Maybe everybody that I want to love me doesn't love me, but the Lord loves me.

And I realized that a new almost for the first time when I read that in January and it has absolutely changed my life. Absolutely changed my life. He has a plan for you. No matter what labels you've put on yourself or what other people's have put on you, he has a plan for you. You don't belong to what you've done. You don't belong to what's been done to you. You are bought with a price. You are his. You are his. and he is doing something wonderful with your one beautiful life. You guys can come up here and get ready. Thank you.

I uh was driving and the song Good Good Father came on my iTunes shuffle and I reached for the skip button because I've attended a Father's Day service since that song came out and I have heard it 80,000 times. And uh the Lord kind of convicted me and just kind of asked me to let it play and like really listen to it. And as I was listening to it, you know, I've heard a thousand stories of what they think you're like, but I know when you've come to me in the night and you have been with me when no one else has been there.

And um I realized that I had been comparing him to this list of people that I knew, people that I knew that had let me down. And I had decided somewhere in my finite mind that because they had let me down, the Lord had let me down. The Lord does not let us down. He doesn't leave. He doesn't turn away. He doesn't let us down. And if you are not able to grasp the truth of that, then you might need to stand up in your spirit this evening. A time that I had to do that was not too long ago.

I was just going through it and I just could not believe what the Lord said about me. No matter what, I just couldn't do it. And so I just um kind of had a meltdown and I sent Kristen who is here to the store and I said, "Get sticky notes." And she said, "How many?" And I said, "As many sticky notes as you can find at the store." And we just spent hours writing the word of God and what he said about us on these sticky notes and putting them all over the walls and put them all over the walls.

And when I got up, I was able to see in the morning all the beautiful things that the Lord said about me. And I hope that you know what the Lord says about you. I hope that you know that you are victorious no matter what. I hope that you know that you have a hope and a future. I hope that you know that you were made for purpose on purpose. I hope that you know that there is nothing that you can do that can rip you out of the palm of his hand. I hope that you know that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.

Not height, not depth, not distance, nothing. There is nowhere that you can go that he can't reach you. That is the truth. It is what the word says and it is the truth. And um I just remember that we had done all that and I told my best friend that we' done all that and she is always so good to me and so sweet. And she was like, "It's so good that you did that. It's so good that you wrote the word of the Lord on the walls of your room." And she said, "But you know what? It's not enough just to do that.

You can't just write the word of the Lord or read the word of the Lord." She said, "It's not going to be enough unless you put the lies of the enemy under your feet." That it's great to have the word of the Lord up where you could see it, and you should, and we should, but that it's not going to be complete until you put the lies of the enemy under your feet. Do you know what the Bible says? It says that the God of peace will crush Satan. How does he do that? Under your feet. that the God of peace crushes Satan under your feet.

And I was tired and I wasn't sure what to do anymore. And I wasn't sure how to feel anymore. But I thought, "Okay, all right." And we wrote the lies of the enemy on sticky notes and I just started walking across them and I said, "I know that you are my God. I know that you are good. I know that you are for me. I know that you have a plan and a purpose. I know that what you start, you're going to finish. I know that every word that you speak is going to come to pass. I know that I don't have to lean on my own understanding.

I don't have to lean on what I feel. I don't have to lean on what I think. I lean on the word of God. And your word is true. And it is true for me. I know that you are with me. I know that you will never forsake me. I know that when I walk through the valley of the shadow, you are with me. I know that your purpose is going to be fulfilled because you are good. It's not about my goodness. It's about your goodness. I know that you are going to do what you said. There are things that we can know. There are things that we can know with assurityity.

No matter what you've done, I would not be talking about this tonight if I was not really feeling it. No matter what you have done that if you thought if we knew about it, the people that say that they love you would never be there again. that they would be so disappointed that they couldn't even look you in the eye. And I'm telling you, the Lord looks you full in the face. The Lord looks you full in the face. And you know what? He sees something precious that belongs to him. something precious that belongs to him.

There is not anything that you could bring him that he's not going to know what to do with. Nothing. There's not anything you could bring him that's going to separate you from him. Nothing. So I wish you'd come up here and hand it over. In Jesus name. Let your grace be felt in this house God more than any word that I could or any song that I could sing. Let your grace be felt in this house, God. These are your people. These are your children. And nothing that we could ever tell you would take you by surprise anyway.

So it is just my prayer that in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, that hearts would be open right now. You can let him in. You can let him in to those places that you were scared anyone would turn away from. You can let him in. Let every heart be open right now in the name of Jesus. You are constantly reaching for us. You are constantly reaching for us. So we reach for you. I reach back. I throw up my hands. I open my mouth. I reach back for you. I know that you love me and that you hear the cry of my heart. And I am reaching out for you.

And you never leave me hanging. You never leave me alone. You never look away. You are right there. You are right there. I just hold your hand and I let you into and I walk into with you places that I have been scared to let anybody into before because you are close. Because you are near. You are close and you are near and you are with me. And I thank you for it. I thank you for it. That it's not just something cute to say, but that it is true. There is no limit to your love. That is the truth. There is no limit to your love. That is the truth.

And when I draw near to you, you draw near to me. And that is always something to sing about. And that is always something to shout about. And that is always something to celebrate in my deepest, darkest night. That is always something to celebrate. You are good and you are with me and you are for me and I can clap my hands and I can move my feet because I know that you crushed Satan under them. And I thank you for it. I thank you for it. I thank you for it. And I just want to give you praise. I just want to give you glory. I just want to give you honor.

When it doesn't make sense, when people look at my surroundings, I know it's because you were there when nobody else was there. Only you know what you have brought me from. And you have been with me every step of the way. And I thank you for it. I thank you for it. We praise you for it. You are so worthy of all the glory and all the honor and all of our praise now and forever in Jesus name. Amen.