CONTROL FREAK | Week 1 | Sermon

Where God guides, he provides. Where God guides, he provides. Meaning, if God guides you somewhere, he will provide. You will have what you need to do what he needs wants you to do. You will have what you need when you get there. And what does that mean? Okay. I I believe that. I think a lot of us are control freaks. Meaning, you try to control, you freak out when you don't understand what's going on. And so even as we try to follow God, we actually suddenly reverse that big idea statement. We say,

where God provides, I'll let him guide. Meaning if I I I won't go down that scary Road. If you ask me, hey, I want you to do this with your time, but I don't have the time yet. You show me and give me the time, then I'll choose to do that. Money. I I will use my money for the kingdom as soon as you give me more money.

I will it's it's where you provide, then you'll get that's not how God works. It's called faith. What he's trying to do is get you to rest on him. We call out, you step out first, then he provides. And that's what happens in Matthew 14. What's happening is it's a famous passage. It's a miracle where Jesus feeds 5,000

men. It's about over probably 10,000 people

with very little. And most people focus on the miracle of, oh, so it just proves that God just gives to you and in your need. This miracle is the only one other than the resurrection that is recorded in all four of the gospels. There's a reason because it's more about what he's doing with the disciples than about the people he's feeding.

The story is saying more about what he's trying to show the disciples. See, what's happening in the story is John the Baptist just died. That's very emotional to Jesus. He wants to pull away with his small group, the disciples.

They've been serving and working and so he's gonna pull away. That's what's kind of the context that's going on. And then what we're gonna see is these people follow him. And in this section of Matthew where the religious leaders, so Israel has basically rejected him as the king and the Messiah,

it now opens up where he starts opening up and sharing the gospel with Gentiles and which is his plan all along. But this section also has more of him pulling away with his disciples and even in these moments, teaching his disciples. What you gotta understand is this idea of feeding these people

is the gospel of Jesus is the bread of life. But the point he's trying to make is his people, the church, the body of Christ, we are the ones that are going to do the feeding. He uses us. He wants us to be a part of it. And what we're going to learn as we look at this is

when you have God try to guide you someplace that he hasn't provided yet, we tend to freak out because we think he's the God of subtraction. He wants to take something from me. When in here, we're going to see he's the God of multiplication, not subtraction

if we trust him. So here's what's going on. Let's start in here. And as we read through this, since I said it is more about the disciples than even the miracle, there's three things right in this passage that we can learn about what we need to trust God with.

What we need to trust God with to be able to do this. To be able to really engage in the idea and embrace the idea that where God guides, he does provide.

And the first one we're gonna see is you need to trust God with what he asks. So what happens? Here we go. Verse 13. As soon as Jesus heard the news, John the Baptist died, he left in a boat to remote area to be alone. But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns.

Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat. So what's happening is they're cruising close to shore. So the people on the shore that they've already been serving and stuff, they see they wanna be around him more because he's healed. He's done stuff. They we want stuff. So they start running. They pick up steam and keep picking up people. They're going. But they're since they're close to shore, the shoreline curve, that's probably he was heading to this point out there that was away from everything to be alone. And they got there first.

And he's tired and wants to know, he wanted to be alone. He's he's God, but he's also a man. John the Baptist has died. It's emotional. He wants to spend time with his disciples and and and they're there first. You know what? This is like the massive spiritual version of what happens if when you have kids.

You have littles.

And, you know, they're they're annoying all day and they're exhausting. And then you finally then you have that day where it's tough. It's like rest of they don't wanna eat their dinner. They wanna do this. They don't wanna get them to brush their teeth. You get them a bath. You get them you go, you tuck them in. You

gotta tell them the stories. You gotta answer those stupid questions. You gotta do all this stuff. Because that's what being a parent is and you love your kids. Right? And then they finally and then they kinda said, will you just lay with me for a minute? And if you're dumb enough to fall for that trap,

they'll want you to do that till they're like 22 years old. I got caught into that with my kids.

So then you finally get them asleep. You're exhausted. You finally have your time. You're walking slowly. You walk out of the room. You go, oh, the kitchen light's on. So you detour to the kitchen. You finally get back to your room and guess who's in your bed with more stupid questions and demands.

I want water. I want this. I'm scared. I don't like, you know, and or they'll ask you some scary, ominous, deep philosophical question that you've never even thought of. And you're like, how does a three year old know to ask that? And you just I don't know. That's what's happening. Jesus was tired to kinda pull away.

But when they show up, it says,

and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. He loved them anyways. He loves us even when we're pushing it.

But he says that evening, the disciples came to him and said, this is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the village and buy food for themselves. So they're stuck there all day. They're tired. They thought it was gonna be alone time.

And they're saying, yeah, you know what you should do? They really need to eat. Maybe you should when someone says it's time to send them away to eat, what does that mean they want? We wanna eat. Put the kids to bed so we can be done. And they ask him that. And so he says in verse 16, that isn't necessary. You feed them.

Like 10,000 people there. They said, you feed them. He asked them something. And think about how impossible that sounded. As

a matter of fact, they did what most of us do. When God asks through his word or through I say, hey, guys. Here's what I'm gonna challenge you to do as followers of Christ and been parts of this and being a disciple and being a part of this church.

And if I give you an ass that says, hey. I want you to do this. Feed the people. Which, by the way, this is an example. He's teaching them how to be the church. We're supposed to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. So he's asking them to do this.

What we tend to do, and when I say we, as I point at you, all these fingers are pointing back at me. I struggle with this too. It's a mutual throat punch right now. It says, verse 17, but we have only five loaves of bread and two fish, they answered. We have five pita and a couple fish sticks. Their answer wasn't okay.

Their answer makes sense to us. What they said was we don't have enough. It's not gonna make a difference. It's it's and then again, if they're saying that's all they have, that means they don't even have enough to eat.

And I said this is in all four gospels. Matthew was a tax collector. He just bottom lines this stuff. He gets right to the point. If you take all the other scenarios,

we know actually how that played out when he said feed them. It says, he looked at Philip and first he said, you feed him. Philip, how much would that cost? He's like, the math isn't mathing.

And then he's like, we would never have. We would have to be the US government and just make money if we were gonna do that. You know? And and and so he's like he's like, it doesn't work. Andrew, apparently, when he first asked him, he's a man of action. He runs out, Meansville, and finds out, does anybody have any food in the crowd? And he brings back a kid. So the the kid is the one that had the the food.

Let's think about that. 10,000 people run out there, and one boy, little boy is like, yo, this is gonna take a while. I should bring some snacks. Maybe he's hypoglycemic. We don't know. And he's like, you can have it. And the way they say it in the other gospels is when they said, this is all we have. It's more like,

yeah. You know what? It's impossible. This is all we have, but it isn't enough. And if they said that's all they had, guess what it meant? It proved my point where I think they were hungry too. They didn't even have any food with them.

But Jesus said, Feed them. Something you gotta understand about if you're gonna follow Jesus.

First, last week's message is more critical for you to understand. If you don't understand how much he loves you, this kind of stuff will never make sense to you. And you'll constantly say, I can't because, or I won't because, or I will when he gives that to me first.

And you're going to miss out on the incredible adventure of what God built you for.

God always asks us to do something that we do not have the resource for.

And the point is not to be a jerk. The point is he's going to do something if you trust him. And that's the point of why he puts us in these situations. Because a matter of fact, it said he did this to test them. Test them how? Test them is like, do you believe in me or do you actually believe me?

And what he's testing for is he's pulled away because he knows he's going to go to the cross. And he picked these guys for a reason. They are going to start the church. This miracle and story is actually a lived out version

of what Jesus' last words to his disciples that echo to us today. When he leaves, he goes, in this era, here's the mission. You're gonna go make disciples and teaching them to honor me and be what I built them to be, baptizing them, lead them to Jesus.

And then in Matthew 22, he says, love God with all your heart and love others. In other words, the gospel and the mission we have. Jesus didn't die for you and me just to make our life easy and feed us in miraculous ways. He invited us to be a part of a family business. We're a part of the family and he's given us a mission.

This story is Jesus showing them how to be the church, how what he wants for us, not from us. But if you have a subtraction mentality versus a multiplication, all you see the asks from the Lord, and especially

here's how it hurts my feelings is I'm the one that preaches the word to you and says, here's what God has asked us to be if you're gonna be a Christian and be a part of the church. You see it as trying to take something. But if you understand God's love, last week's message,

and you understand that where he guides, he provides and he does it that way on purpose, you understand he's giving you an opportunity to grow in your faith and so you can trust him and not worry about anything else. And what has he asked us to do?

He's asked us to point people to him by loving him like them in this story. And how do we go about doing that? He wants us to become like Jesus. And how do we become like Jesus? After I understand the love of Christ, we live from his love, not for it. But what does that look like?

Well, if you look at all the commands in the New Testament and what is our mission and what he's called us to do, the what we're supposed to do as a disciple can be summed up in in three words. I was a youth pastor for ten years, and I realized I had to be really simple, straight to the point, and tell dumb stories in order to engage teenagers. I started this church, started working with y'all, and I realized with you, I gotta keep it even more simpler, more to the point, and tell even dumber stories because we are worse than teenagers.

Because we've learned more bad habits. And so the bible, you can sum up his mission in our life as know, grow, and go. And if you say no, n o, I won't grow, eventually, you're just gonna go.

And the idea is to know. Know Jesus. We gotta know his love first and foremost or else nothing else makes sense. You won't trust anything else he asks you to do if you don't know his love.

But how do you continue to get to know? It's not just one time. We continue to understand and get to know him more. The word for know in scripture where Paul says, we need to know Christ more is a word that means intimacy.

It means time. It's like being in a committed relationship and you continue to get to know. How do you get to know? There's two ways scripturally that we primarily draw closer and get to know Christ. Public worship, private practice. When you come into this room, you're not going to church.

This is the body of Christ gathering to declare the word of God to get to know Christ. And one of the ways it says we get to know him in public worship is when we sing and we pray. It draws us in. It helps us grow and get to know him more. This is our know environment.

But there's also private practices. This is the only time you're in the word. You need to be privately in the Bible during the week. Because here's what happens when we get to know him through the word of God. When he asks us to do crazy stuff and we're afraid it's not gonna work out well for us, you read in scripture,

he's done this all through history. And the people that listened, it turned out great. Even if they had to sacrifice, it was awesome. He has always provided where he's guided, and it gives you confidence and courage. It also lets you know what he really wants you to focus on.

And what he challenged us to do is then grow in community. Christianity is a team sport. We're the body of Christ. Bodies don't work well when there's a part over there, a part over there, and a part over there. You know what you call that? A murder scene.

And we need to be together and we grow. So we need to be in circles, not just in rows. Why?

Well, one of many reasons is because we have the incredible power of self deception as humans. We need other people to speak into our lives. But there's also this huge encouraging thing. Just like the word of God, when you get in a group with people and you're all a little bit different, there's

real life stories like in the Bible that if you're wrestling with something, someone else has probably already wrestled through it and they can encourage you.

But you know what? We like to get into a circle as the same stage of life, same stuff, and we just want to have fun and we want to talk about our opinions about the Bible, but not actually challenge each other. That's not community.

So we get in our little group. I love the groups over. It's like it's all everybody's just married, new married. They're all having their first kid. When you're all together, all have your first kid, you start freaking out. You bring your kid. Like, I don't know what to do. There's like liquid

comes out of every hole in this body of this child every now and again, and it's I'm exhausted, and I'm confused by the mystery of all mysteries. How can a baby sleep eighteen hours a day, yet you are absolutely exhausted?

And and and they're like, what do we do? And they're all looking at each other. I don't know. I got the same problem. Is there, like, an Amazon return policy with these things? But you know how you fix it? Get one set of grandparents in your group,

and it goes away. People are afraid. I'll be like, the young people don't want us. Young people, we wanna be you guys need each other.

That's the body of Christ because they'll say, don't worry about that and whatever. And then they'll they'll become your best friend, especially we live in a world where so many people have moved far away. A lot of you don't have extended family near you. We need to grow in community.

And ultimately, what he's challenging the disciples to do in this moment, because they know him, they're getting to know him, they're growing, they have each other, they're in community. He's teaching them how to go. Go and live intentionally. And God has given us a mission

and he's called us to be intentional with our lives about that mission. What are we to be intentional with? He needs us to understand he's in control. We're just stewards. We're not owners. And there's four things that we have that wants us to be intentional with. There's our time. There's our talent.

So God has given us time. We're breathing. He's given us talent, especially if you know him, if you've accepted Christ and his love. Do you realize the Bible says flat out, you have been given at least one supernaturally empowered spiritual gift from the Lord in order to serve your church.

And we're supposed to use it. He's also given us treasure, resources, and he asks us to take percentage of it and give to the movement. He doesn't ask for it all. He says, it's all mine,

but I want you to give me. And and the what the percentage is less important than the than the order. You give first, not last. You don't pay all your bills, do all your stuff, and then figure out what you're gonna you give what he asked first and then trust him to provide. And then there's our testimony.

We have a story. If you know Lord, he goes, you realize the goal of God for you and me is to go feed someone else. If you have been a Christian for a long time and you have never led someone to Christ, you are missing out on the most awesome thing that God has allowed us to do.

Don't make your faith just about you and your personal issues because that's what this crowd did. We know from John and the other disciple, what happens is after he feeds them, I'm not spoiling spoiling the story for you. I think we know where it ends.

What he does is he says he pulls away and he leaves because he says he knew that they wanted to make him king, which sounds really confusing because, like, wasn't he weren't they rejecting him as king when he's presented? Like, now they want him to be king and he's because when he comes back, they run out and try to make him king and you find out why. He says to them, you only want me to be king because I fed you. In other words, you don't want the king of kings. You want Burger King. You want it your way.

And they prove it. Right? If he says, he goes, no way. If you want us to believe in you that way, then perform another sign. Dance, monkey. In other words, hey, feed us again. Give us some more. And if you keep providing what we want, then we'll let you guide.

And then he says, you don't understand. And he starts giving this illustration about you must take of my body and my blood And all he's talking about, you're sinners and I'm gonna die for you and there's a plan I have. And when he says that, not only do they reject him, it says in John six six six of all things. John six sixty six. It says, on that day, many of his disciples. He had more than just the 12. The 12 were the inner core. He had more than that. It says many of them abandoned Jesus.

Why?

Because, like, wait. Wait. What he just said we're gonna have to do? I thought I was in this because he's the Messiah king that what he's really gonna do is deal with our political problems. Gonna get rid of Rome, gonna make our economy better, make Israel great again. You know, all these things he's gonna do, and that's what it's all about.

And if he's not gonna do that, he's talking about dying, I'm out. And then Jesus turned to the the disciples at that point and says, how about you guys? You gonna go too? And they said, Peter, as knuckleheaded as he can be, says, Where would we go? You're the ones with the words. You're the one with the words of life.

How about you? Where are you at on this? Because look what he does next. If you gotta under you gotta embrace what God has for us. You gotta trust that where he guides, he provides, and you gotta trust with what he asks you to do. And then you have to trust him with what you have.

Verse 18, right after they said, but this is all we have, he says, bring them here. He said, bring them here. That's the living intentional part. He's like, I trust you with what you ask, even though it doesn't math out. And how you trust him is then just bring him what you have.

And what he wants is all of us. He wants us to understand his love and embrace. But then he specifically asked for stuff. He wanted the fish and loaves. I just talked about what he asks from us. Because he has a purpose. He's gonna do something with it that we can't do with it.

He's going to do something we can't do on our own. Will you trust him with what you have? Will you make that? If you know Jesus, are you going to do it or are you not? And do you know what?

You're missing out. And the reason you keep missing out is you're stuck because you've never done it. And so you get stuck in this cycle. You get to this point, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that. And you never get to see what's gonna happen if you do.

In a lot of us, the reason we can't do that is the first step you need to do is unchain yourself from stuff that's holding you back from being able to do it. A lot of the reasons we can't is and so we won't really comes in the places because we're

doing something else that's preventing us. We're stuck in a habit, a hang up, an addiction. We need to deal with those things. And one of the things that keeps us from like, hey, I don't have the time to serve. I'm too busy.

A lot of men. I can't read my bible. It's I'm busy. It's hard. I can't serve. You know, I work a lot. Yet, I'll be honest, guys, here comes a throw punch, but you're watching porn, looking at porn like couple hours a day.

Deal with that. You got a couple hours back. Same with money. You can't possibly expect me to to give up front. I can't pay all my bills. A lot of times, that's your fault. You bought a house you can't afford. You're driving cars that you don't need.

It's it's we make decisions. And sometimes we need to unchain ourselves from that, and it frees us to move forward. But the reason I'm saying is is is the reason that these messages land like a like a, you know, a belly flop to a lot of people in this room

is because you think he's a God of subtraction and you think I'm trying to take something from you when God's actually trying to give something to you. He's inviting us to do something and be a part of something that he could do without us, but he refuses to because it's a blessing. It's a blessing.

And so what we need to do is trust him with what he asked, trust him with what I have. And then finally, this is the cool part. If you can get to this point, you choose to do that. And as you're doing it, it's because you're making a commitment to say, I trust him with what he'll do.

I trust him with what he'll do before I even see it. I will trust him with that because look in verse 19

after they bring it to him, he says, then he told the people to sit down on the grass. Jesus took five loaves and two fish, looked up towards heaven, blessed them, And breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples who distribute it to the people. They all ate as much as they wanted. And afterwards, the disciple picked up 12 baskets of leftovers.

And he'd gone and say 5,000 men with the kids, you know, and and the women is about 10,000 people or so, We're fed. So this was an impossible situation. He asked them to do the impossible. He's gonna ask you to lean into faith and do the impossible. And it's simple. Bring what you have.

And and then he's gonna multiply. He's the one that does the hard part. He's the one that provides, but he wants us to do it. And look what he did.

And you know what? To prove the point that, you know, I provided not only for them. I took care of you. Apparently, what they only had that food from the kid. That means they didn't have any food either. Guess what they left with? They had 12 baskets left over. He's they imagine that. He prayed. He starts breaking the food. Imagine. This is how I think I would think in that moment. And this is sometimes when I say, hey. Are you gonna God with your time and your money and your life? What I you hear the same way in this scenario I hear. Like, how is that gonna work? Like, did Jesus they were probably thinking what I would think and you would think, is he gonna take

And that's how much food everyone's getting? That's the law of scarcity. We think if I get that, what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna have enough for me. I'm not gonna be able to do Because you thank God that we live in the law of scarcity. There's only so much. And if I give, I don't have enough.

But he's the law God of not subtraction, but multiplication. He broke it up, broke it. It says, they ate till they were full. He's like, it's basically said they ate the whole crowd, 10,000 people ate till they were stuffed fuller than a tick on a hound dog.

I drove through West Virginia on my way to New York too, so I picked up some vernacular.

Amazing. Imagine what it was like for them. They first thought, this isn't gonna work. Everyone's gonna be mad at us. They're gonna starve. And they kept having more. They kept having more. They kept having more. They kept having more. And then at the end,

these baskets were big ones, the ones they described. They weren't like little baskets. There's probably each of those 12 baskets had a 100 times the food they started with. And here's a cool little point. 12 baskets, how many disciples were there? 12. Philip, mister of the math's not mathing,

here's your giant doggy bag to take home. Peter, Andrew, they all left with a basket of food. God not only did something amazing through them that they got to be a part of, he took care of their needs too. And that's what we have to learn. When God asks us to give and serve and do that, he doesn't need our money.

And it's really on its own, us trying to it's not gonna do anything. But when you let him have it and he prays right, he starts giving out and he starts and handing and we start giving Jesus to other people and we do what he wants with it, it'll keep coming and we will be fine.

The whole point is to turn your can't into I will trust. Because you know what? When you say I can't, you're right. You can't. But you're missing out on what God wants for you. And the cool thing about trust what it'll do, this builds. Once you learn to do it a little bit, it's always scary.

Every time you're back to, oh, this is gonna be hard. Because sometimes what God wants us to do is to drive through a storm with the way of it. And it's gonna be hard.

But we know how it turns out. And when you start to actually look forward to what it'll do, even when you're scared, that's what helps get you through the next time. You start to go, I don't know. Every time we built a building at this church, it was terrifying and we were in a moment like, I don't know how this is gonna work, but we trusted God and it worked. And guess what? All three times, it's worked differently. That's a frustrating thing.

God's like, you're not gonna make a formula out of me. They're like, you're gonna trust me and I go, I know. Now he trusts and then we're gonna get this. I trust him, like, it's not getting that. It's not gonna work. And he's like, see, you trusted the formula, not me. Bam. It came a different way.

Now we if you're a control freak, you hate that. If you're a control freak, you have one way you drive to work. And

if someone you're going there and you're a control freak and you're driving in with someone else, they go, no. You should turn right on that street. No. I don't do that. No. You really need to turn right. And they're fine. And it but inside, you're judging them. They could've done it better.

And so when God works different every time, it's a wrestling match every single time. But then it starts to build your confidence. And then it becomes an exciting thing like those movies where it starts there's the dark times for the heroes. And if they do it really well, they set up a moment. You're like, I do not see

how on earth this is gonna work out. And then you get to that final scene. And you're like, what? Endgame. Cap standing all by himself.

On your left. Bam. We like movies like that because we're built to be like that. But we don't understand that's what God wants to do with us. It builds your confidence to step into the fear and trust him with what you have. And then you get to see what he'll do. So once again, I ask you this question. Do you believe God

or just believe in God? They're different things. You consider and say you believe in God and not trust him left and right. Or are you gonna believe him? Because it's only when you believe him, you get to experience the other side of that.

And here's what you gotta understand. If you're afraid about something and usually in our culture, it's the time and the money thing or it's the sin thing. It's the thing I'm stuck to and chained to that I just if I dealt with this, I'd probably be free to do this.

But the reason we don't wanna let go of something is we're afraid of what God maybe have. I'll never be happy if I do it God's way. You think he's just taking something from you. But you have to embrace this last thought here. Jesus wants something for you, not from you.

What he asks us to give is because he's gonna give something and do something through us that is way more multiplied than what I was gonna do in my own control freak way of living my life. That's the bottom line. Let me give you one little example to wrap this up.

And then what I'm going do is challenge you. What's the next step? My next next step I would challenge you to is as you think about it,

think about God's word and maybe the stuff we said, Holy Spirit speaks to you. You probably have a list of things that you haven't you believe in God, but you haven't believed God on. You just you just and I'm I'm not I'm not saying you're willfully saying that you constantly can be trapped and feel like I just can't.

That's a lie too. Just give him what he asked and you might have a list. And here's what my advice to you would be on that list. You might know how do it all at once. Start with one. But I would start with the scariest one. The one that scares you the most first. You know why?

If you start little and go up, every one of them is terrifying. You start with the scariest one, the rest of the dominoes fall. It's easier. Hey, if I saw God work through that, I can trust him on this. I can trust him on this. I can trust him on this. Just pick one because he does want something for you

in all of this, but you have to trust.

I have a picture up here I wanna show you. When I went to New York, I went to Lake Placid. There's the hockey rink I was in. And if you see the second one, that's a banner in that hockey rink. It says home of the nineteen eighty Miracle on Ice. Anybody know what the Miracle on Ice was? Yeah.

Anybody watch the movie Miracle? It's like twenty years old now. It's it's a story about the nineteen eighty US men's hockey team, Olympic hockey team. And what was going on at the time, 1980, height of the Cold War, and and and back then kids,

professionals were not allowed in the Olympics at all. If you got paid to do anything remotely close to sport, you're out. So The United States was stuck with because we didn't have these adult leagues. It wasn't really dry. Like, there wasn't any way to really be an adult and play competitively very much.

The it kinda peaked at you played college, and you either went to the NHL or you got a job. You know? You just did that was it. And so NHL players can't play. So our team had to come just from college kids, 18 to 22 year old. And Europe had more developed, like, amateur kinda leagues and stuff, And Russia, particularly,

were professionals. They cheated. Well, they found a loophole. Their entire team for years was always put in the army. They joined the army, and they were classified the army's amateur hockey team. Yet they were paid, supported, and they were older,

very mature. They were so experienced. They hadn't lost a game in twelve years that they even played the NHL all star team, but right before the Olympics and beat them six to nothing, which is an absolute thrashing in hockey.

So now you have the US team that's gonna come in, and they're not even predicted to get out of the first round because it's just it's just a bunch of college kids. And then they act they had a little bit more doubt because the coach that became the coach of this team, Herb Brooks,

who ironically was on the ninth the last guy cut from the nineteen sixty US Olympic hockey team, which was the last time they had the Americans were good and won a gold medal, he just missed it. But now he's the coach. And he comes in and he had a plan. He wanted to play a hybrid model.

And so when he went all over the country and picked different college kids from here and here and here and here and here, they were all excellent players. Don't get me wrong. But they were not the 26 best hockey players in the country in college. He picked them for specific roles on how he wanted to play,

and he picked them because that he knew that they would be willing to work so hard because his plan involved, I am gonna get you guys in better shape than the Russians. And we

or you better be willing to work hard, and you're gonna think of me as a jerk because I'm gonna push you and push you and push you. And we're gonna play in a way you've never played before, which is gonna bother you and throw you off and scare you and you're gonna doubt it and you're gonna hate it. But I need guys that are willing to do that.

And the world said, well, not only has he got college kids, he's not even picked the best. What is he thinking?

And a matter of fact, there's a moment you could really start doubting. And and and and especially because this team came together, they're all so divergent areas. They didn't like each other. They had to go try to get along.

So this leader has this incredible plan. He needs them to trust him. He picks a group that wasn't the best of the best, and they start they don't even get along because they're so different. Sound familiar to the story we're just reading? Jesus comes along with a plan.

He doesn't pick the best of the best of the real he picks a tax collector and a zealot. Those guys would try to kill each other, literally. But he goes, he picked him for a purpose. He picked him for a reason. And then he said, you have to trust me and my plan. I know how to do this.

It would have been challenged because a week before the Olympics, they played the Soviet Union in a scrimmage, in a in a match, and they got beat 10 to three. So now it looks like, wow, his plan's stupid.

But they stuck together even though that coach worked them and worked them, And it seemed like all we're doing is sacrificing. All we're doing is sacrificing. But then they got to the Olympics.

And as Soviet Union went through their bracket, winning like eight nothing, 11 nothing, I think they won one fourteen to nothing. The US won one to nothing, two to one, three to two, five to one. They started getting better. And then in the semifinals, they got paired up against the Soviets.

And they had blown out every team they played. There's three periods in hockey going into the last period, and there's a break in between each period. So that second break right before the last period, they were losing, but only by one. It was close.

And Herb Brooks looked at his team and he gave an incredible speech. It's in the movie. But to paraphrase it, he basically said, guys, if we play this team nine out of 10 times, they'll probably beat us, But not tonight. You were built for this moment. You have skated with them. And look where you're at. Trust the plan,

and go take this. Because I am sick and tired of hearing how good that team is. They went out, scored two goals to none. And as the last ten seconds clicked off, you could hear Al Michaels hollering, do you believe in miracles? And they won, and they celebrated.

Most people don't even know and forget the fact that that wasn't the gold medal game. They had to play another game against Finland, which was really good. They were like probably a second ranked team going in, and they had beaten everybody pretty bad.

But now they went into this game considered the favorites. They had been the underdogs. And I think the pressure, the emotional drop off after winning the game that no one thought you could win, they went out that next game. And for the first two periods, they played the flattest hockey they say. They were down again.

And Herb Brooks gave a very different speech in that last rest period. It's my kind of speech. It's the way I like to preach. But it is the one that the players remember more and said that's the one that changed their life. And all he did was walk in and pace back and forth.

And then he finally stopped and he looked at him. He said, if you lose this game, you will take it to your graves. Now he added one more word in front of graves. I can't say it in church. And then he walked away, went out of the room, came busting back in, and said, to your graves. And that's all he said. They

went out there and woke up. And they say that last twenty minutes of that game was the best they ever played. Three goals to none. They shut them down, dominated them, and won the gold medal.

Because they trusted the coach, they trust the plan. And they realized he's right. What are we doing messing around? Why do we have doubts? Why do we have the fears? Let's just go out and skate the way we were built to. Let's go out and trust the coach's plan. Let's do his purpose. Let's go where he wants us to do. Let's trust this and let's do it. And they got to have fun. They got to be the best team in the world at that moment. And I am telling you,

there are many in here that are missing it, missing it, missing it.

It's third period.

And if you lose this game, you're gonna take it to your grave.

Just trust Jesus.

Just trust him and see what happens. Father, I thank you. My prayer is simple for me and everyone in this room. May we grab on to the fact that where you guide, you do provide, and it is a journey of joy. It's not about subtraction. It's about multiplication. It's

about what a real blessing is that you've saved us, you've died for us, you've invited us to be a part of what you're doing, and it is a joy and a privilege. Help us to embrace that and then watch what you do in our lives, in this community, in the world.

Take our five loaves and two fishes

and bring thousands upon thousands of people to you. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Love you guys. Thanks for being here.