Rebrand | Week 1 | Bill Bush

And so she was able to be faithful. And we're gonna see that when we have been given a happy new life, happy new life doesn't mean we don't have problems, that we don't have suffering, that there's not struggles. All it means that if you know Jesus, there's a purpose in it. If you don't know Jesus, there isn't.

And that's what we're gonna see. And where we're gonna be is we're gonna be in the book of Romans still. We were in the book of Romans in our series we did before Christmas.

And we're gonna start off. We're gonna be in Romans chapter five. Because if you were here for the last series, we saw the first four chapters of Romans. It was written by a guy named Paul to a church in Rome, hence the name Romans.

And and and what he was doing is he was gonna go there. He wanted to go there to teach, and he wrote this long, really strong theological letter that walks through and and talks about what does it mean, why do you need to be a the first two chapters is why do we need Jesus in the first place? And it says that everyone is a sinner. Everyone we did as a pre Christmas series because it says, basically, everyone's on the naughty list,

and you can't get to the nice list by being good. It's only through the love of Christ by grace, the fact that he came and died for us and then resurrected that he gave us this new life. And it's an undeserved privilege that we're given, and we accept it only through faith.

And then the next two chapters in there in that series was says, okay. So what does that look like? How do you do that? And when we accept Christ, it's it says that uses this term that we are justified. And justified is is a legal term in the Greek that means, like, to be pardoned.

A legal term that basically you're you're tried, and it doesn't mean you weren't guilty. You've actually probably did do it, but you've been declared justified. And in legal terms, when you're pardoned, from a legal point of view, your records show you never committed the crime.

And when you put your faith in Jesus, all of our sin, we've now been justified by Christ's righteousness. He took the penalty. He did it for us. In other words, that means when you know Christ, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus. We're absolutely forgiven. Well,

now this chapter five starts to take that apart and says, what are we supposed to do with that justification? What's it supposed to look like? How do we live it out? And that's really what sanctification is. It's we start to grow into the life that we've already been given.

And so chapter five, I'm only looking at five verses today. But to summarize all chapter, and I'll challenge you go back and read it. It's two parts. The first 11 verses talks about the joy in justification. It talks about these things we should rejoice in. We need to make a choice to rejoice.

And then the last half of the chapter is an illustration. He goes back to the whole thing of why we need Jesus again because it always comes back to Jesus. And what he's saying is he talks about he compares Jesus to Adam. You know the story of Adam and Eve?

And what he's trying to say is you gotta understand how powerful this is, why we're justified, and why it's something we should rejoice. It's because by one man, Adam, we didn't just make mistakes. We all became sinners that are separated from God with no hope. So death and pain and struggle and eternal separation from God entered through all of us through Adam.

But by one man, Jesus, life and hope, eternal life came through him. And the reason that's important to understand to go back into these first verses is this. A lot of us have a misunderstanding of how God views us. You see, when God looks at human beings, he only sees one of two people.

He either sees Adam or he sees Jesus when he looks at you. And that's why there's only one way to be made right with God. That's why all religions do not take you to the same place.

Because in Adam means I'm still fine. And in Adam means I even if you're trying to be a good person, I'm trying to be a religious person. I'm trying to make myself. That's being in Adam. That's on your own strength, and you can't do it.

So Jesus when you accept Christ, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus because you've been justified. That changes everything. That should change everything. And that's why we're gonna talk about here only applies if you put your faith in Jesus.

And so now I just wanna look at these first these first five verses and then we'll take them apart because there's a couple things I wanna point out. So let's read it.

Romans five starting verse one. Therefore, since we've been made right in God's sight by faith, that's justification, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand. And we confidently

and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character. And character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this will not this hope will not lead to disappointment,

for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. So right there in those five verses, he lists three things we should rejoice. And rejoice is a choice.

We need to choose to rejoice in these three things. That's the first thing we should be doing with this justification, with this new life that God's been giving us. We need to make a choice to rejoice in that. And the three things that he talks about hope, our hope in the fact that Christ did die for us and we have this new life.

We the second one, the one I'm gonna spend the most time on is because this is one that confuses us. We should rejoice in our suffering. What?

And then the third one is it it is to rejoice in God himself, in our relationship with God. And, ultimately, you realize this is three levels of spiritual maturity is what he's describing. The first thing we usually celebrate

we find out that we were separated from God, but now God loved us and died for us. And if I just put my faith in Jesus, it's a free gift. I didn't earn it. I'd add that he just did it, and all I have to do is accept it. That's the first thing we celebrate. That's the first level.

And and that's what you know, we had like four to 600 people do that over the Christmas services. They said yes to Jesus. Four to 600 people entered into an eternal relationship with God. Obviously, was none of you guys.

You're the worst. Actually, you're my favorite service. Don't tell the other ones. Mainly because you're the last one. I get to go home after this. But still, that was a joke. Okay? But what they don't tell you, if you're one of those people that raised your hand, sorry to give you the bad news, problems don't go away.

You're still gonna suffer. There's still gonna be pain. But here's the point. If you're an Adam, there's no purpose in it. If you're in Christ, we're gonna see when we take this apart. God wants to do something with it. And ultimately, it's designed to take us to this level that what we'd rejoice in the most

is the fact that we're now friends with God. And it's not just what he gives us or doesn't give us or what he takes away. It's it's just the fact that we have a relationship with him now. That's what we should be celebrating the most.

Not a transactional relationship of what he does. It's more of I just love that he loves me. And you rejoice in that.

So that's these three things, and they build in and they do. So what does that look like? Let's take that apart in these verses. The first one, we rejoice in hope. Why? As it says in verse one and two, because we have peace with God.

We rejoice in hope because we have peace in God. Look at verse one and two again. Therefore, since we've been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into a place of undeserved privilege.

We have a privilege we do not deserve at all. Where we now stand, and because of that, we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing in God's glory. We look forward to this relationship with God. We look forward to our life. We look forward because of this this peace we have.

So what you gotta understand is what he's saying is we can rejoice in the fact that if you know Christ, God is not at war with you anymore.

You actually are at peace with him even though we still sin, even though we still disappoint. Think about it. Do you

feel that? When you come to church, is that your view of God? When you think about coming here and worshiping and you hear God's word and, yeah, we should be convicted by God's word over hey, God. I know he wants to go to this, but there's a difference between conviction and wallowing in shame and guilt.

Conviction says, hey. I need to trust God and go this way. Shame and guilt says, fail or other people failed me or I'm mad or I'm frustrated, and and and we don't. And so in other words, we we need to realize and embrace and rejoice.

In other words, wrap our arms around and celebrate the fact that God's not at war with me anymore. I'm at peace with him. And how do you know that? How do you know when you're at peace? What do I need to embrace in that? What do I need to realize? What does it mean to be at peace with God?

Is it means that he is no longer your judge, and now he's your father. If you're in Christ, God's not your judge anymore. He's your father now. You're part of the family. If you're not in Christ, he's still your judge. You see, here's the weird thing. We we we get this misunderstanding

as Christians and people come to church. We think that every human being is a child of God. The Bible doesn't say that at all. It says the opposite. Every human being is a creation of God, but only those who put faith in Christ are a child of God.

So if you are not in Christ, if you're in Adam, you still sit under the judgment of God. You are he is your judge. If you put your faith in Christ, that undeserved privilege, we get to be a child of God now, and now he's our father.

So the weirdest thing in our culture is this. All of us tend to fall for this lie that says we're all the children of God, but then we all act like God's our judge. So as a believer, we approach God with this wrong type of fear.

It's not the fear you should have for a heaven for a earthly for a father, that respectful awe. It's more of I I I don't wanna get busted by the judge. And you know what? When you go before a judge, what do you want? A good lawyer.

Because you wanna go even if you are guilty, you gotta find any loophole you can to try to minimize. You wanna plea bargain. You wanna do a deal, or you wanna just get off scot free. So we come to church with that mentality instead of confidently and joyfully going before our Lord even in our sin

because he's a good father. Now I know some of us get hung up on that because we live in a culture now where many people in this room and online, you didn't have a good father. Some of you didn't have a father at all. So that when you hear he's your father, not your judge, it sounds like I'm saying the same thing.

Because you either had a nonexistent or you had a very judgmental, angry, abusive father. So you gotta understand. Don't get confused. God is a good father, a perfect father. And if you didn't have a good father, I I it's tough. But you can have the perfect father in him.

I was blessed by having a great father. So I get what it's saying here. My father wasn't a judge. He was a dad. That didn't mean that I didn't have to listen to what he said. It says in the Bible that the beginning of all wisdom is fear of the Lord.

What that means is this respectful awe. You should fear the Lord in the right way. Just like I would fear my dad in the right way. Out of awe and respect, and he knew he's doing. And he also said, hey. I'm the authority in your life while you're a child.

And he would say, I'm preparing you to make your own dumb decisions when you're 18. And if I argued with him too much, he's like, you can do whatever you want once you're 18. But he would he would and you know what? But and my dad was awesome. He would couple things he did that was a great father.

I could disagree with him all I wanted. We could have a discussion. I could argue with him. And and and but if it came to one of those points, there were some decisions. I got older. He'd let me make more and more of my own decisions. But but if there were some decisions like, alright, get it some, but you're gonna have to trust me on this. And if he got to the point you had trust me, and if I kept kind of rebelling, arguing, saying I didn't wanna do it, he would look at me, squint his one eye, and say, son,

are we at war? Because I'm not at war with you. I'm at peace with you. I'm your father, but it seems like you're attacking me. You're you're you're taking your little third world army, and you're crossing over into my sovereign territory as dad, and you're you're you're throwing your sticks and your rocks at me.

I don't wanna be at war with you. But you're a third world country, I'm gonna have to do a proportionate response, and I'm a nuclear superpower. And here's what's crazy. He said that as calm as day. It wasn't an angry father. It wasn't like, you're gonna respect me. It wasn't abusive.

It wasn't hard. He calmly looked at me and just said, you're gonna force me to do some course correction with you. That's what discipline is. That's what a good father does. You know a good father doesn't mean do whatever you want. A job of a good father, if you didn't have one, is to give you discipline

until you have self discipline.

And here's the other thing he said, if you ever blow it, don't hide from me. Come to me first. There might be discipline. I'm gonna help you correct, but here's the deal. If you come to me, I can help you. I'm not looking to hurt you. I'm not looking to punish you. I'm looking to lovingly get you to the better place.

When you walk in this door, when you read God's word, when you think about praying, how does God feel to you? And there's a lot of us in this room that you've known Jesus for your whole life. And sadly enough, you're stuck on seeing him as the judge who's disappointed

when you did it wrong and then owes you something when you did it right. Instead of a father who loves you unconditionally. And when you're down, when you blow it, instead of hiding, run right to him. Because peace is not the absence of conflict. It's the presence of Christ. That's the first thing we should rejoice.

He's our father, not our judge. The second one, the one I wanted to really dive into because it's the one that confuses us the most is we rejoice in suffering. Why? Because it has a positive purpose.

Has a positive purpose. Verse three and four. We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials. For we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

So right there, he's talking about you can also rejoice when there's pain, when there's problems, when there's suffering. In the the the English translation, he says problems and trials. That's actually a description of one word in in Greek, the Greek word for suffering.

And that Greek word for suffering in there means this. It's defined as this. Anything that causes distress. So it's distress, not that stress. Okay?

I was just making sure you haven't checked out on me, okay? I know when I say something dumb, if I get groans or laughter, you're still listening, good job. But it's distress,

it's like, and what is distress? I literally, we were talking to meeting, I was like, what's the difference between stress and distress? So we looked it up. Peter was in there. He knows. And we're like, oh, distress is an inordinate amount of stress.

It's like, oh, it's distress. Like, it's like a lot of stress, like a stress that's crushing you.

And here's the thing. So when you hear suffering, sometimes we like to play that dumb game where where we we we judge other people's suffer oh, you think you're suffering. You think it like we like to do that in in in marriages,

especially with you. You have little kids. You come home from work, you're like, I had a hard day. Oh, you had a hard day. You feel like you gotta win. The game where you put your hands up the bat, and whoever can touch the bat last has they get to decide who bats first when you play baseball. Then you're like, oh, yeah. Oh, wait a minute. I would like like and whoever whoever's on top doesn't have to watch the kids the rest of the night or whatever.

It's like we can't handle it. We judge. It's like distra inordinate amount of stress is very personal to you. See, what you call distress, I might call Tuesday

and vice versa. And so it's really anything that causes you to just be under so much stress that it's affecting you. And so he's saying, but God says, you can rejoice in that too. Really? How? We'll look at this verse here. But first, let me give you two misconceptions about what that means.

What does it mean to rejoice in suffering? One misconception is fake it till you make it. To rejoice means, I just put on a smile. I act like everything's great. You know, I I get up in the morning and I go, hi ho. Hi ho. Hi ho. Hi ho. It's off to my horrible life I go, you know, that's not what it means.

That was terrible singing by the way. You are all under great distress having heard that. It also does it's okay to not be okay. You should talk to God about it. He's a father. He wants to hear your complaint. That's not what it means. It also doesn't mean you like the suffering itself. That's called being a masochist.

And and you don't have to say, oh, I like the pain. That's kinda like those of you guys that like working out for just the sake of working out. You like the workout? You need help. I've worked out since I was eight years old.

First to get better over my asthma, and then I kept in sports, and then I got used to it. I keep doing it. I don't enjoy the workout. You know what gets me to workout? I enjoy how I feel after I'm done. That's why I do it. That's what it's saying. To rejoice in it is like, hey. This is not gonna be pleasant,

but I know it's gonna be purposeful. Because God promises he's do he'll do something through it if I allow him. And he says right here what he'll do. There's three things he says. And the key to being able to do that is to understand what it really is. Why can we rejoice? The keyword is in suffering.

It says we rejoice too when we run into problems, when we're in it, when we run into it. The in is the keyword there. What that means is we're not rejoicing because of the suffering. The problem itself is not a good thing. The pain itself is not a good thing. We're not re because of it. We're not rejoicing for it,

and we're not rejoicing that it's happening. What we're rejoicing is in the suffering, there's something on the other side. That's what we're rejoicing. We're rejoicing that because of Christ, the world can throw anything at us. We can be have the worst problems and suffering in the world. And God says, if you trust me,

I will give you something through that.

You'll come out the other side with something in that. You'll be able to make it through. It's kinda like what Joseph said in the Old Testament story in Genesis where his brothers were jealous of him, and he kinda brought it himself. He's a little bit arrogant when you read. And then they they beat him up. They're gonna kill him. Like, oh, we can't kill him. Well, so we feel bad if we kill him, so we'll sell him into slavery. Like, that's better.

And then over the next twenty years, he's either a slave or in prison. But then God works through all of that pain. He ends up becoming the number two man in all the land of where he's at in Egypt. And then his whole family is suffering, and he's in a position to save them.

And when he does, they realize who he is. They feel terrible. They bow down. They and he goes, don't worry. What you meant for harm, God used for good. That's what it means. And think about it. If if you're willing to suffer we all are gonna suffer and have problems and pain. If

you trust Christ, you're gonna get something at the other end. So if we're gonna have pain no matter what, why not go down the pathway that's gonna produce something? Why not get to the other side?

Why not do that? It's the in, and it is. And and and he and he he basically describes these three words in here that says, here's the three things it can produce. The first one is endurance. And that Greek word there for endurance literally means this, ability to stand up under pressure.

So it develops your endurance. You can handle more pressure. You can you can handle more. You can it basically it's it's I believe God created some of our human body things to mimic what he's trying to teach us spiritually. And, like, back to the New Year's resolution of exercise, if if you train to get stronger,

you have to push yourself. If I just pick up a weight I can already do, and I could do this all day like Captain America, and I do it my three sets of 10, and I come back and do that, I'm gonna be no stronger ten years from now. Matter of fact, as I get older, I'll probably start getting weak. But you have to make it hard.

You develop that strength, that endurance. If it's same with into running distance. If you go out and try to I've never jogged, and some of you do. You make the biggest mistake. You get up. Alright. It's time to get in shape. I haven't the only time I've ran is to the refrigerator,

and I'm gonna start off by running five miles today. Anybody do that the first of the year? You probably haven't ran since. You start with, I'm gonna run to the end of the street, and then I'm gonna walk for a while. Then you kinda wog,

walk jog, then you're jogging. And then at some point, if you keep going, all of sudden you're like, I can run 10 k. No problem. And not stop. And guess what? Running the end of the street's now easy.

See, when God puts you through pain, if you if you if you trust him, it makes you understand you can handle more pressure. And you realize that the problems actually make life easier in the end? My dad taught me this. He goes, bushes do hard things. I've taught you. That was our family

motto because he knew that when you choose to go into the hard stuff, it makes the regular stuff seem easy. And the moderately hard, not that hard. So the more you go through the hard, the more life actually feels better. Because all of a sudden, what used to stress you out like that is not a problem anymore.

We then that's one of the blessings. We get the endurance, and but here's the thing we struggle with. We buy another lie as believers that's just not biblical. We say this, God won't give me more than I can handle. That's not in the Bible. It's in one verse when it's talking about temptation.

Says God won't let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But guess what he says right there. You know why? Because he says he always provides a way out. In other words, even when he says he won't let you be tempted beyond what you can handle, it's still beyond what you can handle.

It's what he says is, I'll give you the way out. The bible is very clear. God always puts us in scenarios that are more than we can handle on purpose.

Sometimes you're in the most suffering and it's the hardest when you're leaning in and trusting God the most. And if you have this idea that God's not supposed to give you more than what you can handle, you see that struggle as as God being mad or or God not being there or God failing you. He's actually blessing you.

Sometimes when you lean into what God wants you the most, that's gonna feel the hardest. Look, Paul who wrote this also wrote this in second Corinthians.

He's talking to the Corinthians and saying, hey. Here's where he's been on his mission. Trusting God. God using to write half you know, two thirds of the testament, plant all these churches. And he's describing one of the places that God guide him. He says, we think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia.

We were crushed and overwhelmed, but God didn't let us go beyond our ability. Nope. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure. When some of you are in a struggle right now that is beyond your ability to endure,

and you think it's God's mad at you or God's not there, have you ever thought you should be rejoicing?

Because when you come to the end of yourself, you get to the beginning of God. And we thought we would never live through it.

We often says we use the phrase, man, I it it about killed me. I thought I was gonna die. But we know that's kind of a state saying that it was really, really hard, but didn't really think we're gonna die. That's not what Paul's saying there. They almost died.

They almost got killed doing what they're supposed to do. But then he goes on to say, but God got us through. When you lean into what God wants for your life, you're gonna struggle. And it's not a problem with God. It's a blessing.

God is developing endurance. Why? Because what does endurance do? What does it go on to say? It says endurance helps us it then endurance develops strength of character. So when we get more endurance, we have the strength of character. That word for character literally means something that has been tested

and is now proven reliable. It's a term they use with goldsmithing and silversmithing when you wanna make a more pure metal. What you gotta do is apply the problem, the stress. You heat it up. You throw it in the fire. And then impurities rise to the top, you can scoop them off.

And they say, how do you know when you ask a goldsman? How do you know when the metal is perfectly pure? It's when you can see your reflection on the surface of it. Well, guess what Christ wants to do in our lives once he's already justified us. When God looks at us as a Christian, he sees Jesus.

The rest of our life is actually making us into Jesus. He wants to see his reflection. He wants us to be like Christ. So he's giving us that character, tested and proven. Let let me show you. Hebrews chapter two verse 10. God for whom and through everything was made

chose to bring many children into glory. That means he chose to rescue us. Many. It's anyone who comes to faith in Christ. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader fit to bring them to their into salvation.

He's talking about what Christ did, and he says, God, through Jesus' suffering, he became the perfect leader. That almost sounds like Jesus wasn't perfect until he suffered. That word for perfect there doesn't mean what you think it means. From the princess bride. That word doesn't mean what you think it means.

Inconceivable.

That's the word for character. Christ was already perfect in our understanding of perfect. But because he came and took the cross, he proved he proved that he was the only one that could.

He proved he was the only one that could do that. He can bear under that pressure and be the reliable one that could do it. He's the only one.

And that's what God wants to do with us, perfect us. He was already perfect, but he wants to build into us to be more reliable. Why? Because that last word, hope. Says we then have this confident hope. This confident hope. That hope, that word for hope means confident anticipation. You see, the more you endure

and the more you have the character that's reliable that becomes more like Christ, like I said, in a sense, the easier life gets even if the problems don't go away. Because you now have that confident anticipation. Because you've experienced

over and over again what's on the other side of the suffering. You've experienced the growth. You've experienced the character. You've experienced the ability to bear under the weight. And you've experienced that God has been the one that's done it. That God's bailed you out. That God is a father, not a judge. And you've experienced and you've experienced him more and more and more. And that builds your confidence going into the next one. So all of a sudden, life makes more sense.

You have the confident hope because now you've experienced more what it's like on the other side. If you've had children, you get it. Especially if you're a mom. You know, mom, you're the one that has to to bear the brunt of having the children. It's a it's a painful process, ain't it?

Dad's pain begins after you bring the kids home. But but think about it. If you look at that, you're willing to go through that, especially if you're in Arizona. You're willing to if you timed it wrong and you're like nine months pregnant in August, you are a miserable human being at that moment. And yet you did it. Why?

Because you got drunk the night before and what made a bad mistake? Not talking about that part. But if you chose to be a parent, you go through the pain because you know what's on the other side. And it's hard. But have you ever noticed that moms like you you've had multiple kids?

You start to have more confident anticipation. You're you're just kinda used to it. You you get better. Like, with with our three kids, they all were born like, my my first child, Micah, we didn't know anything about what's supposed to happen. Carrie was in labor for fourteen hours,

and then it turned out she was born, and she turned out she had popped a lung in the process, the baby, Micah. And so I finally hold her, which there was, like, 30 people in our room. I was like, this is weird. I was like I was like the thirteenth person to hold my own daughter. Then I'm holding her, and she turned blue.

And I'm like, something's not right. Call the warranty department. And and and I was trying they look like, oh, no. And all of sudden, they they roll her out of there, and I followed them. My wife was so exhausted. She had no idea what's going on. Turned out she had to be in ICU for ten days, almost died. So

we left the hospital without our child the first time we had a child. That's not how it's supposed to work. And then we had to drive thirty five, forty minutes to the hospital every day to see her, but she also had jaundice. Had to put her in this this little fishbowl thing, and they had this

line running into her chest that was sucking air out to make her lung re expand. And then they had the blue light on her, and and then so the only way we could even touch her was you reached in with those little plastic hands. We couldn't even hold her for the first five days.

And and and and the the nurses there said, you know what? When she almost died, but after day five, she just had to stay. It got better. And the nurse says, what are you doing? Go out. Have go out to dinner. Have a date night. Get sleep. This this is this is the rare opportunity you have to make this into a good thing to prepare, but it was terrible. Around us, three of the four babies right around us died while we were in the ICU.

It was a terrifying, horrible experience. Then we took her home. Well, that made our second child a lot easier. But he came a little bit traumatically too. He was the opposite.

There wasn't for we barely got to the hospital in time. God, they couldn't even get a doctor in the room fast enough. The doctor comes running in, and as he said, alright, the next contraction you have, I want you to she went, and out came my son. Basically, he ran in with a catcher's mitt and caught him.

And then I he was in there for like five, ten minutes left. And then I got the bill for him. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I could have done that. If we would just lollygag for five more minutes before we went to the hospital, that would have happened in the parking lot and I would have saved a lot of money.

So that was traumatic. And then you know what happened so fast, she got no pain meds. Not not even a nothing at all. 100 percent that. And you've seen my son's head?

He looked like Jack in the Box son.

I felt the pain that one because the only thing she could do was squeeze my hands. My hands still ache when it's cold outside. She broke things in my hands.

She was like, ah. I was like, ah. And I was like, and and and and and and and then he pops out and you're like, woah, woah, woah, this is weird, this one's different. He needed a haircut, full set of thick hair. And he wasn't just just hairy, he was furry.

I held him and instead of him turning blue, I'm like, did we have a kid or a puppy? All he needed was a gold chain. He was like, how you doing? How you doing? I was like, what just happened? It was crazy.

No family got there. We had to come. We're they we called them and said, we're going to the hospital. They all showed up like hours later thinking it'd be a while. We already got the you know, holding them, and they're like, what just happened? If that had happened first, that would have been very traumatic too. But after

our first child, that one's so bad. And by the time I get to the third one, the doctors are like, alright. You apparently have kids fast after that first one. So you're forty minutes from the hospital. He goes, I'm working this Saturday. You're not due till the next Wednesday.

You're close enough. Let's just schedule it. Come in on Saturday afternoon. We'll induce. Some of got packed up, did her hair, did her makeup. We got in there, got all plugged into the pain killers and all that because two out one out of three, she had drugs. The other first one, she had some, but it was weird. But she's like getting all ready. We called the parent and let her know, hey, this is where we're gonna go. I mean, had to I was supposed to preach on Sunday. It was so set up. She's like, mom's here, this is that. And she came out so calmly and smoothly that she was like, just go home. Go home. Get some sleep. You're preaching tomorrow. I preached the day after my last kid was born. You know why? It's just the third kid now.

And we scheduled it. My wife was a trooper. It was like no big deal. But it still was hurts. It's still painful, but it wasn't as bad. See, there's a blessing in that, that you get that confident anticipation that every time now, like, oh, this is terrible. But you know what? Every time I've trusted before,

on the other side, there was something valuable. So you start to get more confidence in the hope, and that's how it works. That's the process. You know what's interesting about this process? Is it works both directions. So the first thing we rejoice is the hope in the fact that, hey, Christ died for me. That's awesome.

And then I learned to to rejoice. I rejoice in that. I rejoice in in the in the suffering because I know that it'll produce these things if I allow God to do it. And then the third thing is then I produce that confident anticipation.

Well, then you know what happens? It then bounces back the other way it helps you. So one leads to one leads to one, but then that confidence hope helps you to the next time you experience problem to say, okay. Now I can handle this. I can I I'm I can rejoice in this problem more because I know what happened last time, which then helps me to rejoice in that hope of being friends with God and knowing that he's my father? And then it goes back down and helps me to go back down out of it goes like this.

That's the process. You know what looks like that on an EKG machine or whatever it is? A heartbeat.

Looks like life. But if I trust God, if I choose, because rejoice is a choice. This isn't automatic. Just because you know Christ, you're not guaranteed those three things. You can derail it yourself.

Just throw the list up here. Don't know how to spend a lot of time on this. These are all through scripture. There's six attitudes that'll cause defeat in your life even if you go through problems.

Rebellion. I'm just gonna keep living life my own way. And then God's like, are we at war? I'm not at war with you, but you keep fighting me. So alright. I'm gonna defend the border,

and you're gonna have problems that are just problems of God that some of you have had the same issue happen a million times because God's trying to get your attention. And you you you you've done the definition of insanity. You keep trying to do the same thing the same way and get expect a different result. Resignation.

That's just white knuckling it. I'll just get through this on my own. You can do it for a while. It won't last. One of my personal favorites, murmuring. That was also a personal favorite of the Israelites in the Old Testament. That's a fan that's a King James version of complaining.

I like murmuring because my kids would be complaining. I'd say, stop murmuring, and then they get all confused. What's murmuring? And they got all interested in what murmuring was. And guess what? They weren't complaining why I explained it.

Some of the psych classes helped me as a father. Worry. Worry's useless. Worry doesn't accomplish anything. It makes you focus only on the problem and never look at the solution. You know what you should do when you worry? Worship. Rejoice. Worship God. But most of us, when you worry the most, run away from God the most.

And some of us, when we worry, I I I I have a I'll worry, and then I get mad and I try to fight it. We're all like that. But sometimes, I have people that that that that that they'll be nameless, my wife. And and when she gets really worried, she's mad when I don't worry because she thinks I don't care.

Like, we somehow equated worry with worth of the problem. The more I worry, the more I care. No. The more you worry, the more you get stuck at staring at your problem. That doesn't mean you care more. It means you're distracted more, and you wear yourself out. And you know what that leads to? Self pity.

And the problem with self pity is circle self. When you accept self pity, all you care about is yourself. You become the ultimate eeyore. Well, I know God loves me and everyone that knows Jesus, but apparently it doesn't work for me. And you know what's what drove all this? This is the key to them all, fear. Ultimately,

fear is driving all of this, which is what made Adam the Adam. When you go back to Adam and Eve, really a fear. What was their fear? I can't trust God. All of that comes back to, I can't trust God. And that's why we struggle when we have problems.

Because we think, well, God wouldn't give me more than I can handle. No. He will. He won't give you more than he can handle, which forces you to rely on him. So in the end, we we we just need to do this last one, rejoice in God. That's the answer. We just need to get to that point where we just rejoice in God.

Look at verse five.

And this hope will not lead to disappointment for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the holy spirit to fill our hearts with his love. And then if you've reached verse 11, I'm gonna jump down to verse 11 here.

It says, so now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has has made us friends with God. He didn't say anything about rejoicing because we don't have problems. He didn't say anything about solving all this stuff. He says what we ultimately rejoice in is that we're now friends with God.

And we have the love of God, and we have the Holy Spirit. You realize that's the first time in the book of Romans love and the Holy Spirit are mentioned? Is when we realize we're justified that if you're in Christ, you now have the love of God, the holy spirit, and you're God's friend.

That's what we really need to rejoice in. In other words, this is the fact that it's trying to say here. This is the fact that it's trying to say here. Suffering is ultimately it's the evidence of God's love, not his wrath.

It's the evidence of his love, not his wrath, if you're in Christ.

So you gotta decide. There's two responses. You gotta decide which choice you're gonna make, which response. You can either go with why or help.

What do you when you're struggling right now, do you get stuck on why? Are your prayers, God, why is this happening? Why would you do this to me? Why did you let that happen? Why did you do that? Why are you not doing this? Why won't you do this? Why won't you make them do that? Why don't they do that?

Why is a useless question. Ask Job. Go read the book of Job. He went through some tough stuff. God allowed it in his life, And he all he wanted was why. Why? God owes me an answer to why. And if you read the whole book, all 50 chapter like, never told him why. But in the end, he revealed himself to Job.

And Job, at the very last chapter says, before I knew of you, but now I've before I've heard of you, but now I've seen you. You gotta understand that the ultimate goal of our life is not for God to make us just happy. It's for us to be holy. It's that he wants us to rejoice in the fact that he's our friend now,

that he loves us, and you can trust him no matter what. So instead of why, ask for help. And it could be help get me out of this. It could be god. Be honest with him. He's like a father. Hey, god. Can we get past this? I don't know if I can handle this. But if you turn off and say, but god, help me

get to that other side. Help me endure. Help me have character. Help me hold on to that confident hope that will get me to the other side so I will be stronger because of this. That's the better way to go. That's the choice to rejoice, to choose to look to him. In other words, that process I was talking about,

you gotta choose to surrender to the process. That's a term I use for for for for for something that I struggle with in this in my life. Like I said, don't judge people for what they think is suffering. One of the things I hate the most, I have the most stress about is traveling.

Now don't get me wrong. I go lots of places. And and and I like having traveled. I like being new places. The thing that causes me the stress that I hate that it just gives me so much distress is the act of getting to and getting back from places. Is there anyone else out there like me?

I mean, I I I just don't like it that much. It's hard, especially if you have to travel by air. I mean, I don't like flying. I know it's it's it's boring. It's it's complicated. It's it's like you gotta wait. They heard you in. And then you know what? I even hate it. I love that movie theaters now you pick your seat.

Because if I go to a crowded movie, I'm not calm until I know where I'm sitting. That's why Southwest Airlines, for what a great airlines they are, they stress me out.

Because they make you get in that cattle line, and you're like, alright. You're only in a group. This this to this. And I'm like looking, and I'm like, that person has a lot higher number than me. Why are they in front of me? They're cheating. You know? And then because you know what? I go, I wanna hurry up to get on the plane. I'm like, I just wanna get on to get the plane to get my seat. But then the problem, once I'm in my seat, I'm like, when can I get off this plane? And

it's terrible. And they took everything I hate about traveling, and then COVID came along. They go, how can we make this even more miserable?

And I'm just starting to feel the stress. And what I've had to do is I got to go that, you know what? On a lot of these trips, I need to surrender to the process.

I know what I'm going for, and I know I'll have great members. I know there's gonna be great things out of this. I just know that right now, I ain't gonna be happy about it. And when I surrender to that, somehow I'm able to manage it. That's what God's asking. Surrender to his process.

And I know that because I got two trips coming up. In March, I'm going to Zambia, Africa. I went to Africa, like, seven years ago. It's taken me seven years to say yes to even go back. It's like thirty hours of traveling. Just one way.

And then where I'm going, I'm gonna train pastors at a pastor's home. 600 pastors in leadership. That's awesome. And it's a blessing is because it's a guy that we supported our church. I've he'd been here in this church very long. He's preached a couple times. His name's Malanga.

And not only has he built up a church that we helped him build their first building and everything. He's got like 1,500 people in his church. He's raised up five church planters. They're starting a movement of churches, and I'm going to speak to these things. And that's awesome. But

I'm not looking forward to getting there.

And and and even there, we have to travel within the country. So there's travel within the travel. I gotta take the little flight, which I don't even what kind of planes do they travel around in over there?

But you know what? That's not even the more stressful travel I got coming up that I need to surrender to the process of. You see, on Wednesday, my wife and I are leaving to London. Because if you've coming for a while, my youngest daughter, the one that came into the world, out of the womb the easiest,

is leaving our home the hardest. She goes to the University of Greenwich and for a lot it was a debacle trying to get her there at the since September. So it ended up she stayed remote, but you can't stay remote anymore. So finally, she's going.

And we it was such a pain going before it would it was a pain to get it. We lost money on hotels. We had to pay more flights. We had to readjust them. We did and now we're fine. Matter of fact, I'm not even sure. I won't believe it until I'm standing in London, actually. But this is the it's time. And I gotta go travel

at this time of the year, but that's not really where the stress is. You see, this trip, my wife and I fly home,

and I have to come back without my baby.

That's gonna be a miserable flight.

Because how can I protect my baby when she's 6,000 miles away?

But you know what? That's the goal of parenting, is you raise your kid up in a way where they can go. Go where God's called them. Go what they've been wired to do. Go after their dream of what life should be. So I have to surrender to the process.

And then you know what God punched me in the throat on as I was even thinking about this message? He's like, apply the message to yourself, Bill. You see, even my fear of if she's 6,000 miles away, I can't protect her anymore. You know what God whispered quite loudly in my ear? He's like, who was protecting her here?

Yeah. I use you physically and most of it. Who really has got her? Do you trust yourself more than you trust me?

Ouch. Ouch. So, yeah, on Wednesday, I'm gonna surrender to the process. On Sunday, when I'm flying back, I'm really gonna have to surrender to the process. Process.

But I know with a confident expectation that this whole process God has done so many things in my daughter's life and in my life. So how about you? What journey does God have you on right now? What destination is he taking you towards? Are you going to challenge the process over and over and over again?

Or will you just surrender to it? Just surrender to it. So I'm gonna give us a chance. We're gonna close. This is our closing prayer. Just so we're gonna pray. Stand up. We're gonna do a praise prayer. We're gonna sing a song about God is good and he keeps getting better. But the key to that word he keeps getting better

is not that he literally keeps getting better. It's the more you rejoice in him and trust him, we realize that he's better than we even imagined. And if that is you, if you wanna surrender the process, make the words of this song your prayer. Amen? Amen.

I will sing of your love. Though the seasons come quickly, you have always been enough. Though the night make it dark, though the waiting seems long,

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and anything happening here at Rock Point.