David Stockton 2/28/21 David Stockton 2/28/21

A Discerning Heart

Well welcome to Living Streams. We’re going to be in First Kings. So if you want to grab a bible and turn there. First Kings is super old, so old. It’s like major old, old, old writings. So old that, if you’re cool, you would never even pay attention to them. But we’re not trying to be cool. We’re trying to be correct. We’re trying to find the Lord in it all. This is the Old Testament.

Series: A Kingdom Divided
February 28, 2021 - David Stockton

Well, welcome to Living Streams. We’re going to be in First Kings. So if you want to grab a bible and turn there. First Kings is super old, so old. It’s like major old, old, old writings. So old that, if you’re cool, you would never even pay attention to them. But we’re not trying to be cool. We’re trying to be correct. We’re trying to find the Lord in it all. This is the Old Testament. There are a lot of people in society who wouldn’t call it the Old Testament, they’d just call it the Tanakh. But in our testament structure of the Christian church, we have Old Testament and New Testament. This is old, Old Testament. It’s not even like new Old Testament.

But these words, it’s so amazing how much truth and health they have for us today and what we’re dealing with in our super advanced, 2021 culture, where we know the answer to everything now, or at least can ask Siri what it is. But in this passage we talked about last week, that there’s lots of connections to today. There is uneasy transfer of power. There’s debates and divisions over taxes. Yeah. Political issues. There is building of walls, whether we should build the walls around Jerusalem and fortify them or not. And there’s a continuous redefining of who God is and what his role is in society.

We, as Americans, the framers of our nation said some phrases that still stand strong today. “One nation under God” is something that we claim. We also put “In God we trust” on our money. Which is just hilarious, right? Because, what do we really trust in, right? Sorry. I thought that was funny. You can laugh. It’s church, but you can laugh. But if it’s just a bad joke, you don’t have to laugh.

Anyway, the word God there, when the framers of our nation were using that word, yes, there’s some debate about how they felt about God, but there’s no debate about whether they were talking about the Judeo-Christian concept of who God is. But nowadays, when we say, “One nation under God,” or “in God we trust,” our politicians, our presidents, and our society as a whole, have done a lot of expansive work to that word, God.

And that was true of what was happening in Israel in that day. Israel was God’s nation. They were the nation of Yahweh. They were rescued by Yahweh from Egyptian slavery. Yahweh, the burning bush God that became a burning mountain God, that defeated all of the gods of Egypt. And it basically carved out a space in Israel, in the land of Canaan, for his people, and defeated all the gods of Canaanites. He had established himself as the God above all gods. And Israel knew that and believed that and accepted that.

But now, as we follow the history of First and Second Kings, what we’re seeing is that God is kind of being redefined. And, in fact, we mentioned last week that, like we have a cross in here that represents Jesus, that represents that Jesus Christ loved us and died for us. And if God was willing to send his own Son to die for us, how would he not be willing to give us every good thing so we can rest as sheep following the Shepherd and really say, “I shall not want.”

And we look at this cross and we’re reminded that Jesus told us that if we really want to follow him, 90% of the time, and maybe even more—I’m just too scared to say it—we’ll be dying to ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying yourself. Denying your desires. Putting those things secondary to the word of God. That is the life of a Christian. And this cross is here to remind us. But this cross represents something to us.

And in Israel’s day, in First King’s day, in their worship places, they never really took down Yahweh or the worship of Yahweh, but they started to add other things. They put a little something for Baal over there. A little something for Asherah over there. And basically, they just started to redefine the name of God and redefine what it meant to worship God. They thought, if we’re going to get the goodness of the Yahweh God, why don’t we get a little goodness of Baal god? A little goodness of Asherah? We’ll get a lot of goodness.

Not realizing that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a jealous God. That doesn’t mean he’s like that weird girlfriend or boyfriend you had in junior high. What that means is, he’s jealous like a wife would be if a husband decides he wants other wives also. It is right for that woman to not stand for that. It’s a righteous jealousy. And God is jealous for you. He doesn’t want to be one of your gods. He says, “I’m the whole thing, or I’m out.”

And what happened in Israel is, they continued to say, “We want more than just Yahweh.” And at one point God said, “I’m out.” And they fell into destruction and captivity and exile and lost everything.

That’s the story of First Kings. Jeremiah was the writer of First Kings. And Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. And the reason he’s known as the weeping prophet is because he was called by God to prophesy to Israel during all this time. And he was telling them, “Hey, don’t add other gods. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” And every time he did they would just take him and put him in prison, or stick him in a pit or something. Or just reject him or laugh at him or make fun of him. That was basically the history of his prophecy. He was speaking the words of truth, but they were not receiving it as a society.

And then Jeremiah sits down, now that they’ve all been destroyed or taken into exile, and he’s writing the books of First and Second Kings to remind the generations to come of what took place in Israel, God’s chosen, holy people,, and how they basically prostituted themselves to other gods.

I mentioned last week that image of the frog. If you take a frog and put it in boiling water it will just jump out because it’s hot and it doesn’t like it. But if you take a frog and put it in a cold pot of water and then bring it up to boil, the frog will stay in there and die. Again, I’ve never tried it. I’ve heard it’s true. But I do need to apologize to everybody. Because last week I talked about it. The whole time I was talking about a frog. I was talking about Jeremiah. And I never once mentioned that Jeremiah was a bullfrog. And I actually had people come up to me afterwards and said, “Dude. You could have just said it one time. I couldn’t get through the rest of the message because you didn’t say it.” So Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Got it. Everybody’s cool with that. Sorry. I should have seen it. I should have made a. joke. But I missed it. My bad.

Which, by the way, brings me to one other confession. For all those who came to the Christmas Eve service, I was wearing a sweatshirt that my wife got me. It’s a picture of Jesus and on it, it says, “YOLO, J/K, BRB.” So to translate, that means, “You only live one. Just kidding. Be right back.” So that’s what it said. But I was wearing a coat over it that basically was obscuring a lot of the letters. So you saw it. And I’d point over here and you’d get that part. Then I’d be like ‘over here’ and you’d get a little bit more. But you could never get the whole thing at once. And I mentioned in one of the services, but I didn’t in the others. So you never got it. Total mistake. Messed with everybody’s brain. I hoarded about that a, too, afterwards. Those are the people I love to hear from, honestly. It’s so fun. Because it’s like, “Did you hear anything I said?” No. It’s more fun that way.

Anyway, Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Weeping prophet. The two hundred to three hundred years of decline in Israel’s history as they were forsaking Yahweh by adding other gods. We mentioned last week some of the gods, some of the idolatry that’s trying to work its way into the church. Obviously we have to talk about greed and pride. Jesus himself talked about the weeds that choke out the good seed: the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. We want to talk about that. I want to add to that list a couple of forms of idolatry trying to work its way into the church right now. One would be American nationalism. One would be American progressivism. If you don’t know what I mean by that, but those are two political agendas that are borrowing Christian language, that are trying to hijack Christianity and use it for their own gains. They are camouflaging as Christianity, but they are really evil, deceptive idolatries. And one is housed on the political left and one is housed on the political right. And many of us bit into that idolatry last year and we need to repent. We need to get back to what is true and what is right and watch out for those things. But I’m offending both sides, so…either everyone’s angry or everyone’s happy. I don’t know.

One last thing before we jump in. This is a little timeline. It’s one of the most helpful things that I’ve ever received in studying the Bible, getting these timelines. This is one for First Kings and Second Kings. It’s so important. United Kingdom. Divided Kingdom. At the beginning of First Kings, Solomon is king. In Israel, Saul was the first king. Then David, then Solomon. And all twelve tribes were united in one kingdom called Israel. And then, by Solomon’s day, Israel had really become world-power status. David had conquered everybody. They had peace all around. Solomon was wise. And then Solomon’s son was Rehoboam.

But Rehoboam thought it would be good to tax everybody and kind of be this really strong dictator presence, because that was what Solomon sort of was. But Rehoboam wasn’t able to cash the checks he was writing, so to speak, so the ten tribes of the north—it wasn’t really a civil war, it was more of a civil ‘peace out.' “We’re out. We don’t want to be part of you guys anymore.” So the ten tribes of the north made Jeroboam their king. They retained the name Israel. Then the two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, they became the kingdom of Judah. So as you read through, you read about the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

They are actually kind of united in those twelve tribes, but they are divided as a nation now. And then Israel was in the north. They were conquered by Assyria around 722 and then in the south, Babylon came and exiled those in Judah in 586 B.C. and that’s where you pick up new prophets and new books in the Bible.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on. So 1 Kings 3, Solomon is now king. In chapter 2 he was firmly established, even though there was not a peaceful transfer of power. And this is what he does in his first acts as king, according to the writer of First Kings.

1 Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. 2 The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. 3 Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

So there’s tons of foreshadowing going on right here. Just so you know—you don’t have to pick it all up now—but when it talks about one of the very first things that Solomon did was marry a daughter from a foreign king, that is the beginning, that was one of the next thousand of these kind of relationships that Solomon would get involved in. And it didn’t end up being a good thing, just so you know.

And then the high places. People were sacrificing at high places. There wasn’t a really clear, consolidated idea of where and how to worship Yahweh. People were making up their own thing a little bit.

And then Solomon was actually doing what at the Lord asked him to do. He was following the commandments passed down by Moses and David adhered to, except one big thing. He was worshiping in the high places.

4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. 5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

So there’s this moment where Solomon is not doing everything quite right. But the Lord is still faithful to show up to him and he says, “Solomon, ask for anything and I’ll give it to you.” And Solomon decides that want he wants to ask for is he wants a listening heart, a discerning heart, a heart that can listen and hear, and find God’s perspective, find what is true and right, find what is true and false. And as you keep reading, the Lord is so pleased with what Solomon asks for, he kind of goes off for a little bit. He’s just pumped. He’s so pleased at what Solomon is doing, that he says, “Solomon, not only and I going to give you a heart of wisdom, I’m going to give you a heart of wisdom that is better than anyone that’s ever come before you, and better than anyone that ever comes after you. And in addition to that, I’m going to give you power and wealth and all these others things, because that’s what I thought you were going to ask for.” Not really. He’s God. He knows what he was going to ask for.

He was so pleased by what Solomon asked for. It meant so much to God that he was doing this. In some ways, I think it kind of made God feel like Solomon was also a man after his heart, just like David, his father. We talked bout what that meant last week. But I think, and Dan Riccio was helping me with all this—he’s a guy in our church that’s a scholar and he helps me a lot—but he kind of unpacked this for me.

Why was it so pleasing to God for Solomon to ask this? And what he drew out of there was, basically, what Solomon was doing was refusing to set himself up as the judge of what is right and wrong. He was basically in this thing saying, “God, I don ’t know what to do. I’m this little child. I need a heart that can listen. I need a heart that can hear you. I need a heart that is submitted to you. Because you alone can see things right and true. And you alone can know what is just and right.” And by refusing to do this, he was honoring God. He was worshiping God. He was giving God that highest place. Not only in his own life, but in the nation of Israel.

And for us, if we really want to follow the Lord, we will have to continually refuse to take the throne of our own lives. We will have to ask he Lord to help us be those who discern what is right and true, not determine what is right and true, if that makes sense. In our society, we don’t want to listen and learn. We want to yell and scream and say, “This is right and true.” We want to determine. We want to throw off the bondage of the oppressive, antiquated scriptures that God has given us, so that we can determine for ourselves what is right. And that was not Solomon’s heart at all, and it pleased the Lord so much.

And the second thing that pleased the Lord so much was his refusal to just be about what pleases him, or what is popular in society. He was saying, “God, I don’t just want to know how to please myself, or how to please the people. I want to know how to do what pleases you.” And, again, our society is totally given over at this point to “whatever pleases you must be the right thing. Whatever is most popular must be the right thing.” And that’s absolute idolatry. And the refusal of those things brings honor to God. It’s worship to God. It pleases his heart.

And then the writer goes on and tells us a story to show and demonstrate how Solomon received this gift, that it wasn’t just kind of ethereal, like, “Oh, Solomon. You’re so smart now.” But he gives us a story of how this worked out in practical life. He talks about these two prostitutes.

They were sleeping one night. It sounds like they might have been int he same home. Maybe the same brothel or something. And they’re in there. They both have newborn babies, which again, brings all kinds of things to mind. Challenges, difficulties. But even worse than that is, they go to bed one night, and one of the moms rolls over and smothers her child to death, and wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes she has killed her own child. And in that moment of heartbreak and despair, she decides to do something. She takes the dead child and lays it next to this other woman and takes her living child and comes and puts it next to her without anyone knowing.

And so, in the morning, when they wake up, this woman finds out that there’s this child that she was sleeping with is dead. But as she looks at the child, she knows, as only a mother can know, “This is not my child.” And as she looks across, she sees her child with this other woman. The woman is saying, “No, no no. This is my child. You’re just saying that because you’re upset because you killed your baby.”

And whatever happens, this very street-level, small town kind of situation spreads out into other people who hear about it. No one can tell what’s going on. Ultimately, these two prostitutes have this situation that’s so hard to know what to do, and so heart-wrenching, it spreads across all Israel to finally make it into King Solomon’s courts. It basically makes it to the Supreme Court. No one knows what to do about this heart-wrenching, difficult situation.

And this is what Solomon begins as a king to deal with and decide upon. And so, in this moment the whole court is gathered together and Solomon is presented with the case. He’s got to decide what to do. And some of you know the story, so you’re cheaters. Stop cheating for just a second. And just catch how intense this moment must have been.

In some ways it seems like a moment that maybe we’re dealing with right now. When we have people with genuine gender dysphoria or challenging sexual desires that ago against so much of biology and society. And they don’t know what to do. And it’s very difficult. It’s been difficult since the desires or the confusion first showed up. And now we’re living in a society that is saying all kinds of different messages about what is right and true. And in a society that basically is saying the word of God is old and oppressive and should be done away with, or just interpreted to serve whatever you think is right.

It’s a tough situation. It’s challenging because it’s real and painful, and it’s hard. Do we stick with what the word of God says very clearly from beginning to end? Do we take what God wrote into the fabric of humanity about gender and marriage and family? Or do we allow something within us to go, “No. Maybe that’s not true.” Or, “Maybe that’s not true for me.” It’s very, very difficult.

Or think about what’s going on in the black community, as they experience all this confusion and hardship, some of what Michael described. That’s just one story among many. They look around and they’re not quite sure where they fit in society. They look around and they see other people experiencing things that they don’t know if they’ll ever be able to experience. They see people with their own color skin going through struggles. And we have to figure out what we can do to help the situation. And some people are saying we should go this way, some people we should go this way. All kinds of different offerings are being offered, some of them in line with biblical values, some of them way off and even against biblical values.

We have to decide, “What do we do?” And the first thing I want you to realize is King Solomon so he’s got to decide this thing. But he could also just write this off, ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen. He’s still king. But for you and I, we are called to be a kingdom of priests. Kings and priests of God. We are supposed to be salt and light in this world. We need to go into situations like this and bring the truth and love of God so that justice can actually happen. We don’t sit around and wait for society to figure it out. They never will. We have the Spirit of God. We’ve been cleansed with the blood of Jesus. We have the word of God. And we need to be going and finding situations and not shrinking away from them, but begging God for the wisdom to actually do something that helps. It’s our call. That’s what Jesus did.

So Solomon, in this situation of impossible, no way to know. Solomon didn’t know what was right. He didn’t know who was lying and who was telling the truth. But he had asked the Lord for a discerning heart. In this moment, something came into his mind. Not what was true or what was right, but a way to find out what was true or right. So he calls to someone and says, “Bring me a sword.” So they bring him a sword. At that time there were a lot more swords lying around, I guess. If I just said, “Bring me a sword,” I don’t know how long it would take for me to actually get a sword. But it was quick. He got a sword.

Then he walks down to this little baby and he says, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to cut the baby in half and I’m going to give half to that mom, half to that mom.” And you can almost feel the collective sigh in the room, “Great. Our new king is absolutely insane. This is not going to be good. How could he do that?”

If the media was there, think of all the story lines that would go out. And as he lifts that sword to go chop that baby, one of the moms cries out and says, “Please stop! Just give her the baby. Please do not hurt the baby!”

Solomon puts the sword down and says, “I’m going to make my ruling now. Take this baby and give it to the woman that was willing to give up that son’s life just to protect him. Because she’s the true mom.” And everyone in the room didn’t have to debate what was true and right. They didn’t have to wonder, “Oh, was this really right?” Everyone in that moment knew exactly what was true and what was right. And they all rejoiced.

Solomon’s renown obviously spread as a great king of wisdom. But this is, and I mean I don’t know how else to say it, this is what we as the people of God are called to do. To be salt and light. To execute justice in our world. To right the wrongs in society. Just like Solomon was able to do in this moment. Just like Jesus, the one we’re following, did time and time again when they came and put him in an impossible situation. “Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law says we should stone her. What do you say?”

And Jesus was able to create a moment, come up with another option that caused everyone to know that God is in this place, and go home with their pride and their judgment that was false, and this woman to walk free and to know the love of God.

We are the Church. We are the Bride of Christ. We are his sons and daughters. This is our call, to walk in this way. So how do we do it? How do we do it? Well, first I think we’ve got to pray and ask the Lord for a listening heart, a discerning heart. Absolutely. And then, after we’ve done that, we’ve go to go to this place where, when we are faced with this situation, we’ve got to listen. A discerning heart is a listening heart.

So when someone comes to you with something they are carrying, you don’t immediately say this or that, you listen to what’s going on. You hear them out. And you listen for what the Lord is saying. And in this moment, somehow the Lord put in Solomon’s mind, Get a sword. Pretend to chop the baby. Then you’ll find out what’s true.

For me and my wife, one time it was, Go to Belize and see what I have for you there. It was like, “Whoa. We’ve got a one-year-old daughter. We can’t just be going to Belize. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got all kinds of people telling us that.”

Then the second time the Lord told us to go, I had a kid in a wheelchair. You can’t just go places with kids in wheelchairs. It didn’t make any sense. But we had this idea that we were supposed to go.

Solomon had this idea. But he also had the courage to walk in it. The courage to try it out. And so he got the sword and he went for it. What came was a revelation that made it clear for everybody that it was right.

And by God’s grace, we’ve come back from Belize. Everyone that knows us, that knows our story, they’re like, “Yeah, I think that was right.” Now you say that. Telling us, “Don’t do it.” Now you’re saying, “Oh, yeah. That was the Lord. That was great.” That’s the way it goes sometimes.

But one last thing. We’ve got to pray for a discerning heart, definitely. We’ve got to make sure we listen when he Lord is speaking to us in each and every situation. And we’ve got to have the courage to walk those things out. So that not only us, but everybody else can see what the Lord’s doing.

But one last thing that we cannot forget is that Solomon asked for a sword. He asked for a sword and, in the scriptures, it’s very clear to us in Hebrews chapter 4:

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

What we have in this book right here, whether you like it or not, whether it adheres to your desires or not, whether it’s popular in society or not, this is the sword that we have to cut through the crap. This is the sword that we have. And this is not this sword’s first rodeo. Societies come and go but the word of God has stood forever, and will withstand whatever our society decides it wants to do. This is living and powerful. We’re reading a book that is thousands of years old and it’s speaking right to the core of our society today. It’s alive. And it is powerful. And it is trustworthy. You can stand on this. And it is becoming more and more unpopular, more and more resisted, and more and more offensive—not because anything’s wrong with this. But Solomon used a sword.

And Jesus is doing the same thing with us. He’s telling us we need to use the sword. When you look at Jesus’ life. When the devil came and tempted him. He gave him three temptations. When we read those temptations, it’s almost fairytale. But those were falling right at the core identity that was in Jesus. He was hungry. He was God. And the temptations actually kind of went right at the core of those issues. And yet, Jesus Christ answered every single one of those temptations with a scripture that actually came straight from the Old Testament. He knew how important in the day of opposition, in the day of temptation, to use the word of God and know the word of God.

For us, as people, if we want to get it right in 2021, if we don’t want to be blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine, we need to know the word of God. We need to stand on the word of God.

There’s one organization I’m investigating right now, especially in the idea of justice. They’re called the AND Campaign. There are all these social justice organizations that are basically resisting or anti-biblical values. Why can’t it be social justice and biblical values? Why can’t we understand that our biblical values actually command and demand us to do social justice. But also, if we try to do social justice without biblical values, we’re just causing more harm than good. There are lots of organizations like that right now.

Solomon used the sword. Solomon prayed for a discerning heart. He listened to see what the Lord might say. He walked courageously in that. And he never forgot to use the sword.

Will you guys pray with me? I thought it would be good for us to just go to our knees right now if you’re able. Online or in person, just spend a moment coming before the throne of God, our Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, Who has never spoken a word that wasn’t true. Who’s never thought a thought that wasn’t beautiful. Who’s never done a single thing that wasn’t for our good.

Father in heaven, you are holy. You see everything clearly. You cannot be moved. You can’t be manipulated. You cannot be deceived. And you are so hungry for justice. So we, Lord, we ask that you would give us a discerning heart. I pray for each person right now that is touched by one of these difficult situations we’ve mentioned, someone who is feeling all of the burden of the divide of race in our country, whether it’s their own personal feelings or someone they love, I pray you’d give them a discerning heart, Lord. That they’d be able to do something beautiful in their community, just like Solomon did on this day.
I pray for those with gender dysphoria, or are dealing with sexual attractions that don’t fit in line with your scriptures. I pray you’d meet them right where they are, that they’d know that you’re for them, you love them, and you are a great rewarder of those who honor you, no matter what the cost is.
We need your wisdom in our day. Jesus, we thank you for your words and your life example.

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Guest User 8/4/19 Guest User 8/4/19

Keep Chasing Jesus

Good morning, friends! It’s good to be back. I got all my family in a big, white van and we conquered Texas. Drove across the belly of the beast. It was fun. We hung out with some friends. And now we’re back.

We’re going to finish up our Generational Blessing series today. Hope you enjoyed some of my pastor-preacher friends the last couple of weeks. And this is John Youngstrom. He has been our executive director over everything, administration, facilities. Facilities is what he’s one a lot with us.

David Stockton
Series: Generational Blessing

We’re going to finish up our Generational Blessing series today. Hope you enjoyed some of my pastor-preacher friends the last couple of weeks. And this is John Youngstrom. He has been our executive director over everything: administration, facilities. Facilities is what he’s done a lot with us.

As you noticed, we had videos of people sharing what the Lord has done over the seasons of their lives. John is too macho for videos. He doesn’t believe in that stuff. Not really, I’m just making that up.

But he’s going to give us a little taste The Lord is stirring some stuff in his heart. He’s going to share that and what the Lord has done over the generation of his life.

John Youngstrom:

When I was twenty years old, I was newly married to Amy. We were in the Air Force. We both became Christians about a week apart. The thing that really burned in my heart was to know Jesus, to hear his voice. Throughout the whole Bible, we can see the Lord talking to people and directing people. And I’m like, “I want that for me.”
We’re no different than anybody in the Bible. Jesus says in John 10:27 that, if we’re his sheep, we’re going to hear his voice. And then we run from him, right? No. It says we will follow him. That’s my heart’s desire.
Being in the military, about every four years or so, we had a decision to make about reenlisting or taking a new assignment. We would always pray about it. There were times when we said “no,” and times when we said, “yes,” and different things like that.
So, after around thirty-three years in the Air Force, we were retiring. We were vacationing here and met with the Buckleys. The Buckleys are the founding pastors. We had gone here in the 1980’s and we had a relationship with them. He said, “Hey, you should come work for us. You should come be our facilities director.”
Our hearts leaped. It was something we were praying about, what we were going to do. And the Lord led us out to Phoenix. We just plunged in. We didn’t put our toes in to see what Living Streams was like. We just did a cannonball in here. And this place has been so gracious to us—you guys and all the people we work with. Just wonderful. And we’ve grown a lot. My wife has blossomed. I’ve blossomed in just all kinds of ministry.
About a year ago, I started getting stirred in my spirit. I’m like, “Lord, what are you doing?” Kind of like in the Old Testament when the cloud would start to lift. You know, there were like a million Israelites. East, west, north and south. And the cloud would start to lift, and they’re like, “We’re moving again. Go through the stuff. We’re going to have to start back.” And they’d take all this time to get everything together. And they’re putting together the poles, put it through the ark, you know.
And the cloud hadn’t left yet. Well, about three weeks ago, we were visiting my parents in Missouri and it became pretty clear to her, then me, that my parents are in their nineties. They need some help. We feel called to go assist them. You know, older people are not like kids. You know one day your kids are going to get potty trained. It goes the other direction. And you’re like, “Mom’s never going to get it back.”
And that’s a big task, but we feel like the Lord’s leading us back there. So that stirring and getting ready, which we didn’t know as I watched the Lord add pieces to Living Streams, raise up people out of the congregation, raise up people that work here to help me do different things. And it’s like there’s a person involved in everything I’m doing. So, it’s not like there’s going to be a big hole. There’s going to be like tug-of-war, you notice when someone’s not pulling, but it’s not going to be a rout or anything. The Lord’s really good.
So, we’re moving to Missouri when we sell our house. So we’re going through our stuff. It’s one of these deals. I say, “Can I throw this away, honey? You don’t need this anymore.” And she says, “Can I go through your tools?” And I said, “Keep it.” That’s where we’re at. And you guys are a real blessing to us.

David Stockton:

All right. Thanks, John. Amy, will you come on up. John and Amy have been awesome in a million different ways. They have really invested, like he said. It’s neat to see what they’ve done. John, on the practical side. He’s obviously cared for the facility—saved us lots and lots of money. Got a lot of systems up to date. And Amy, first service, when I said, “Amy, would you come up here,” she went “gasp.” It’s not her favorite thing. But she has definitely taken up the torch for us in prayer and prayed for us, and sends me emails all the time to encourage and tell me what the Lord’s been saying.

It’s going to be a gap, for sure. But when they were telling me this, and when I was thinking about what God’s trying to cultivate in our hearts through this sermon series is exactly this. Not that everyone is supposed to move—please don’t! But just that they would hear the call of the Lord to something like this and feel like God cares just as much about this as he does, maybe doing some big mission or church plant. There’s all these great things, but I think this is beautiful as well in the economy of heaven, that they are going to go care for John’s parents and be there for them.

We’re going to pray a blessing on them and obviously you can talk to them after the service about any of that stuff.

Lord, Jesus, I thank you so much for these two. I thank you for what they have placed in our hearts. I thank you for this last five years of assignment that they’ve had. And I thank you that you’ve given them a new assignment. I thank you that, in retirement, they’ve received more challenging assignments from you than not in retirement. And I just think that’s beautiful, Lord. And I pray that they would continue to have the strength, the hope and the patience to keep chasing you, to keep chasing your presence, chasing your glory. And I pray that there would be a great, big, generational blessing that is imparted to them and all the people they care about as they go on this task. And I pray that there would be a lot of joy in it. I thank you for them, Lord. And keep changing our hearts into the hearts that please you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Thank you, guys. I think it’s so honorable what’s going on there.

The Bible is very clear that we’re all going to die someday. And there are a lot of people who don’t believe the Bible tells the truth. But on this one, it’s not that hard to go with the Bible because everybody dies. It’s been going on for a while. And yet, the Bible has a different perspective about death that I think it fits with our Generational Blessing. Psalms says that it’s precious in the eyes of the Lord every time one of his faithful servants dies. Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

We all know this kind of Easter verse that says, “Where, O grave, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Because Jesus has come to take all of the darkness, danger and sting and pain out of death, when he rose from the dead. And our life here in this context, in this season, in this frame, is very short and small and brief. In James, it says that our lives are just a vapor. There it was. Gone. In light of eternity. In light of the life that God has planned for us after this life—the next life. If that is everlasting, and you compare that to what these seventy, eighty, ninety years are, this is so brief, so small. And death is actually a graduation.

What the Bible also teaches about death is that it is appointed once for a person to die, then after that comes judgment. And the grace of God, and the cross of Christ, hopefully, is permeating enough to where we’re starting to understand that, when God talks about judgment, he’s actually wanting to judge you so he can find the good in you, so that he can reward you. That’s God’s primary reason for judgment. To get you from Kindergarten to first grade, or wherever you might be at. That’s what the judging is. That’s what the testing is. He’s wanting you to bring you to the new next place.

And yet, it is true that God’s judgement does come toward wickedness, rebellion and sin, no doubt about it. And it’s heavy and painful. But if we’re really honest, we actually want God to do that, as well. Just like when I was driving across Texas with my family, and, yeah, I was camping out in the fast lane a little bit. I was going too slow, I wasn’t paying attention. And I was getting passed by one car, and then I got passed by a second car. It was the second car when it dawned on me that I should probably get out of that lane.

They didn’t know I had been driving forever. And the second guy that passed me, he was right to kind of like, “Hey, man, you shouldn’t be in that lane.” I get that. I’ve done the same thing. He was not right to say those things and to show me those fingers and all of the other things he did. I had gotten the message. I didn’t need all the exclamation points.

I was right to not say anything or to do anything with my vehicle. I don’t know if I was right about the things I was thinking inside my mind and heart. But I can tell you that there was a great moment when, all of a sudden, he realized that there was a police car about five cars ahead of us and he slowed down really quick as he got up to them. I’ve never seen this before, but the cop slowed down, more than him, popped right behind him, pulled him right over. And I didn’t say anything or show him anything as I drove by. Which was great. Which was really great.

Again, that is a joke or whatever. But the truth is that we want God to punish wickedness, rebellion and sin. We don’t want him to punish it whenever it’s us. But when there is real evil in this world, which there is, devastating, breath-taking evil, we want God to rise up. We want him to do these things. So the judgment of God is actually something that is a good thing. And it’s something that, if we’re going to have the right perspective for generations of blessing, we’ve got to understand this broader perspective.

In the first message, I kicked it off, I talked about Psalm 90, where it says Moses is teaching and saying, “Lord, help us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And teaching us to number our days is coming to that humble reality of understanding how finite, how brief our life is. When we’re young, it’s just a joke. You say your life is brief and it makes no sense at all. But everyone you talk to that is in those latter years of life, they consistently tell you, “I don’t know where the years have gone. It makes no sense to me how quickly it has gone.”

It is so brief. And so we’ve got to gain this understanding. We’ve got to find a way to believe what the Scriptures say—hear about life and the way the Scriptures teach it so that we can make sure we’re not missing the blessing in the generation right here and right now.

When I say “generation,” we have to define that word, too. We’ve kind of defined it three different ways. If it’s been confusing, then now you know why. The three ways different ways we define “generation” is like Jim Watkins taught in the first video. Zero to twenty seems to be a generation of our lives that is different from twenty to forty. Twenty seems to bring a big change. And then forty seems to bring a big change.

I was looking at the lines on my forehead as I was driving to church today. I was just like, “Those are deep, man. Oh, no. I’m just going to get more of those all the time? Wow.” Stop staring at them right now. Look over here or over there or something. Don’t stare. But then, sixty, I’ve heard, seems to be a big shift in life. And then eighty a big shift in life.

So we have generations in that. You want to find what is danger and what is the curse and what is the blessing in those seasons that God has planted there.

We’ve also talked about generation as far as your age demographic. There’s the different generations. There’s one of them that we make fun of all the time. What’s that? Millennials. Sounded like millennials were saying that. Come on, we make fun of Millennials. It’s fun to do, for whatever reason.

But we actually make fun of everybody. I mean, the Generation X kind of snuck in there. I think there weren’t as many of them, or they’re just not very loud, so they didn’t get made fun of as much.

But, Baby Boomers? Give me a break. They’re all crazy.

And then you’ve got the Traditionalists, who we don’t make fun of anymore because we want to honor them and they’re old. But they can’t hear you anymore, so feel free. And even if they can hear you, don’t worry. You can just outrun them if they get mad. They’re not going to catch you.

And then there’s the Generation Z that’s coming up and we’ll make fun of them too, once they figure out what’s wrong with them.

But that’s another way to define generations. Each generation has been passed down some sort of idolatry, some sort of problem; but then they also create their own problems. And yet, there’s also a blessing in each one of those. I believe the Millennials are going to be the greatest missionary generation there ever has been. And I’m saying that with truth, but I also can make fun of them in the same way. Because they love to live off of other people’s money, and they don’t want to work for their jobs. No, just kidding. But no, I’m saying that seriously. And see, I can’t tell a joke because it takes away. But I really believe it’s true and I hope our church is totally going to be a part of that belief and we’re hoping to see it happen here.

The third way that we defined generations is your family legacy—hat has come before you and what you’re passing on to those coming after you, whether that be in society or in your actual family tree.

I heard a quote from John Adams last week. He said, “The best time to start raising your children is five generations ago.” That’s a good time to start. And that’s a very biblical perspective. That’s a “teach us to number our days” perspective. That’s what we’re trying to get into our hearts in this fast-paced, youth-worshiping culture that we’re living in, that is so different from the way the Bible teaches.

With that being said, we want to make sure that we are finding the blessing, and the Lord is teaching us how to use our days wisely. With that, I want to go to 2 Kings 18, and then we’re going to go to 1 Kings 15 and 2 Kings 12. The reason I’ve just taken a selection, it’s actually this reoccurring kind of thematic way the Bible talks about the kings of Judah and Israel. I want to read this to give us some perspective and then we’ll run from there.

1 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah[a] daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.[b])

5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. 6 He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. 7 And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.

So it’s a description, an accounting, 1 Kings, 2 Kings,1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles are recounting—they’re telling the story of the kings that came and went in Israel, those who ruled. So they’re talking about Hezekiah, and they’re saying he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to his father, David. And then it goes on with a list of how that went. 1 Kings 15:33-34

33 In the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king of all Israel in Tirzah, and he reigned twenty-four years. 34 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the ways of Jeroboam and committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.

So here’s a second one. Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to his father, David. Baasha did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to the sins of Jeroboam. He followed in that line. And now, we’ve got this third one. You didn’t think there could be a third category, but there is. 2 Kings 12

12 In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother’s name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. 2 Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him. 3 The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.

So here is another category. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, however, he didn’t remove the high places, the idolatry of his day. He didn’t follow the Lord as David, his father, a man after God’s own heart.

So there are these three categories, which I think are interesting. As we’re facing judgment and we’re trying to figure out, “Lord, where’s the blessing? How can we be the biggest blessing?” I think this is what we need to understand, that God is wanting us to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, and to remove idolatry from our lives.

Now this chart—I love this chart—first the kings of Judah and Israel, look at this and get a perspective. We’ll get it bigger in just a second. Saul, David and Solomon are the top three. Those are the kings of all twelve tribes of Israel, when they were all united. Then you have the kings of Judah, which are the southern two tribes, and the kings of Israel, which are the northern ten tribes. Because after Solomon, the nation was divided. Not as a civil war, but just not together anymore. They did fight each other later on, but it was just kind of a sepration that happened.

So we’re going to go through those kings.

This is 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles all in chart form. So here on this side we have the kings of Judah. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs sideways, thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down. I love this chart. This is so good for me.

Up here you have Saul with the thumbs down, David with the thumbs up, Solomon with the black thumbs sideways. Then you have like a white thumbs sideways. Then, on the kings of Israel over here you have thumbs down, straight up, every one of them. Way to go. Awesome

Now pop up the next slide, which is the bottom half.

Over here on the kings of Judah you have thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs sideways, thumbs up, thumbs down and down bedoop, bedoop…..

Then over here on Israel you have thumbs down.

Now, those thumbs mean something. The key that they did on this chart, and again, I love this chart. Thumbs up means they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to their father, David. Thumbs sideways means they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not as their father, David, had done. They did not completely rid the land of idolatry. And then, thumbs down means they did evil in the eyes of the Lord, which, again, they did not remove the idols from the land.

So there you have it. We just conquered 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles. That’s it. But we have these three categories. We have these three different ways that we are doing our life. Sad to say, in these stories, the way that the king went was usually the way the people went.

The way that the father went was usually the way that the son went. And they’re using David as this kind of mark because he was not the father of all of these people, but basically, he was the king that all of them followed after when they became king.

And Jeroboam was the king that took over the northern ten tribes and basically, all of them that followed Jeroboam as king of Israel did wicked in the eyes of the Lord. And they say, according to the sins of Jeroboam. They connected to him. It was the generational curse that he passed down.

And there are a couple of different things here. It says they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And did they remove the idolatry. I want to unpack those things real quick for us.

Doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord. This is so important to me, that we understand that doing right in the eyes of the Lord is not just staying away from evil. We, as Christians, as the church, have spent way too long saying righteousness is just staying away from bad things. That is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. Jesus said, “Unless you have a righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

The righteousness that God is trying to produce in your life is not just something that will keep you away from wrong, but it will empower you to go into the places where there is wrong and make it right. That is the righteousness of God, where Christians, where the people of God are righting wrongs. That’s what the righteousness of God is all about. Not separating ourselves so much from anything could potentially be wrong in culture, and being this kind of isolating thing on this side. I’m not saying that we don’t have to remove sin from our lives and watch out for certain things. Definitely. But if it stops there, you haven’t yet found the righteousness of God. You’re on your way but you’re not there. And Jesus had a lot of words for the Pharisees who were in that mode. We have to do the things that God asks us to do.

That’s what I love about John and Amy, and their move right now. They are righteous. The’ve been made righteous by Christ. They’ve been walking a life of purity. They’re in this place, but they know that’s just the beginning. God gave them righteousness so that they can go into the unrighteous situations and—boom—make righteousness. And they’re going into a situation back home where things aren’t quite right, they could be more right. And they’re going there to make right happen. And they’ll do that, not just in their own family, but they’ll do that everywhere they go, as well.

We’ve got to understand that we’ve got to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Actually, the way the Bible describes sin is “to him who knows what to do, and doesn’t do it, to him it’s sin.” It’s just such a different way than thinking sin is just don’t do the things that are bad. It’s doing the things that God is asking you to do. That’s what he’s really looking for.

It’s like with my kids. I can’t stop them from doing wrong things. They’re bad kids. And they’re not even meaning to do wrong. They’re just breaking things all the time. I never taught them to do the wrong. They just know how to do it. And they love it. They think it’s so fun.

And what we’re trying to teach them is, “Hey, look. You’re going to do wrong. You’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not on purpose. But the most important thing is that you learn how to make a wrong right.”

And so we’re trying to do that. Like, “Let's go apologize. And then, if you broke something, let’s try to figure out how you can fix it. Let’s try to make it right. Because you’re never going to win the battle of never doing wrong.”

The other day, my daughter had made my wife mad, real mad. And all I know is I was in my room one time and she had put all these instructions for how to have a really nice peaceful evening, she had bought all these things. She had done all these things for my wife to kind of say, “Mom, I want you to go do all of these things, because I think you’ll love these things.” So, she knew she did wrong. Instead of just saying, “Sorry,” she actually figured out how to make this thing. And my wife went in there and she said, “This is amazing!” And whatever was wrong now didn’t feel so wrong and it was made right.

That’s the goal that God’s trying to get us to do. That’s what these kings were judged on. Did they do what was right in the eyes of the Lord? And it doesn’t matter if you’re seven or seventy, God has an assignment for you. And if you walk in it, not only will you be walking in righteousness, but you will be imparting a blessing to everyone around.

The second thing that they were judged on was whether ornate they tore down the idols of their day, tore down the Asherah poles, remove the high places, cut down a grove. I don’t even know what that is. But basically, they had to go and find the things in their lives that were not of God, or that were set in the same plain as God, and remove those things.

I remember being in Belize, in this town called Gales Point, where things move very slow. And I ran into a guy named Brother Hugh. And he was seventy years old. He was really the only adult male in the village that knew Christ and followed Christ, that we knew of. I remember him sitting me down one time in this very sleepy, slow village, and he said, “I want to tell you some things.”

And I was like, “Okay.” I mean, just being there, I’m already, “Why is everything moving so slow?” And then, when you talk to the seventy-year-olds in the village—whoa! It was like, “Hi…David…I want to tell you…about my life.”

I was just like, “Okay, man. Let’s do this thing.” But, whatever. I had time. And so he started telling me. And it was so interesting. I’ll never forget what he said. He started to talk about how, when he first started following Christ as, like, an eighteen-year-old, he said at that point he thought he was going to follow Christ. And the Lord would keep adding things to his life and building him up, strengthening him.

But he said what he has realized as he looks back, it was almost like he was carrying this wheelbarrow, and as he walked with God with this wheelbarrow, Jesus kept pointing to one thin in the wheelbarrow and saying, “I want to talk to you about that.” And they would talk about it, and eventually, it would be, “Okay.” And he would take it out of his wheelbarrow. And as soon as he did that, Jesus would be like, “Now what’s that thing over there?” And he would be like, “Well, it’s this.” Jesus would talk to him about that.

And he said, what he’s realized now that he’s seventy years old is that, following Christ has been a lot more unloading things than adding things. And he said, “First it was selling drugs. I felt like Jesus told me to stop selling drugs.”

I’m like, “Okay. I’m listening.”

And then he said, “I was supposed to stop gambling. Then I was supposed to stop smoking.” And then he continued on and on, talking about the things that he was supposed to offload, or remove. And I’ve never forgotten it, because I think that is such an accurate picture of walking with Jesus. In two ways.

One is, if you’re not perfect, just keep walking with Jesus. If you’re having struggles, just keep walking with Jesus. You might be in more of a hurry than he is. Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate sin and he doesn’t want to remove these things. Absolutely. But it’s got to be him or it’s never actually going to happen. You have to really walk with him to find out what he’s wanting to do in your life. Because he’s the one who can actually get anything done. He’s the one that can change the leopard’s spots.

And the second thing is just that God is always going to have something that he wants to remove from you. You’re never going to get to a point where, all of a sudden, “Hey, the wheelbarrow is empty!” That’s when we move on to the next stage of life. Heaven.

I’ve kind of come up with this short, little thing. It might be helpful, or not. It’s not biblical but it’s been in my heart so I want to share it with you. It’s this concept of surrendering. As I’ve tried to put some generational blessing idea to some of these Scriptures, I’ve noticed that it seems like, and this is generalization, that God’s asking us to surrender our plans around twenty. “I wanted to be this, and now I feel like I’m going this way.” Or, “I was going to be this and this injury.” Or, “I was going to be this, but now she’s pregnant and I need to adjust.” Whatever it might be.

And this happens more than just at that time. But that seems to be a real big moment. And I don’t want you to miss what God’s doing there.

And then, when you’re forty, you surrender your power. You have to start realizing that you’re not going to grow in strength anymore. I think this is what midlife crisis is all about. We keep saying, “Oh, yeah, throw that job responsibility on there.” “Oh, yeah, throw that bigger job on there.” “Oh, yeah, throw the car on there.” “Throw the house on there.” “Throw the boat on there. I got it.” “Oh, yeah, throw marriage, throw a kid, why don’t throw another couple ofkids? Why don’t we throw on some foster kids?” “Why don’t we try this?” And we just keep going.

And then, eventually, our strength starts to go down, but our mentality keeps adding it, and then all of a sudden, for a guy or a lady, you’ve got all of this weight and you don’t have the strength to carry it. And you don’t have the humility to unload things one at a time; so you just run. And it all comes crumbling down. That’s not the way of God. There’s no blessing in that.

And then when you’re sixty, you surrender your position. And I’ve been watching some people that I really love and respect go through this. It’s painful to not be seen for what you know you have been and are capable of. Even though God still sees you that way. It’s a humbling thing. And you can fight it, but you’ll probably lose the blessing.

And then, surrendering your possessions, which is interesting. I had to talk to some eighty-year-olds for this. I think you possess physical abilities, and you’re surrendering to those, and having to adjust, come to terms with it. You surrender mental capabilities. Not quite as quick as maybe you were. And there’s blessing in that, if you can surrender. Surrendering whatever possessions you might have—a house, home, finances, clothes, I don’t know.

But there is constantly surrender happening. There is constantly this humility that we need to have as we approach the brevity of life, if we want to find the blessing and pass on the blessing.

I love what the ninety-five pieces that Martin Luther nailed to that church in Wittenburg, the ninety-five things that need to be corrected—ninety-five idolatries that he felt like needed to be removed in the Catholic Church. But the very first line on top of those ninety-five high places that needed to be torn down, he says, “All of life is repentance.” All of life is surrender to the mighty hand of God.

The one idol that I feel that God has brought to mind—obviously money, sex, recreation, that guy you’re with, that girl you’re with, an image that you have of yourself, comfort, possessions, food—we can make an idol out of anything. You can make an idol out of church. It happens all the time. But the idol that I felt God was highlighting and wanted me to say to us is the idol of convenience.

Because, ultimately, that’s what Jeroboam’s sin was all about. Up in the northern ten tribes, Jeroboam didn’t want all of the people to go back to the southern tribes, to Jerusalem where the temple was, because they might want to move down there. So what he did was, he made a temple in the northern ten tribes, and made a system of worship there so there was more convenience for all the people. But the presence of God wasn’t there. And all of the kings that followed him did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.

We’ve got to watch out for convenience. Convenience looks like this:

Prayers where we say, “God will you bless my plans? I really want to do this job.” Or “I really want to go to this place. God will you bless me there?” That’s not the way he works. He’s not a genie that we can just rub and say, “God, I want this, this and this.” So often, that’s what our prayer life is like. Just a bunch of rubbing on a lamp.

Another way it looks is, we try and make Jesus fit into our schedule. That’s a big joke, because he’s huge. It’s like trying to find the right time to have a baby. When it fits within your schedule and plans. No, that baby comes and—kaboom. All the plans and schedule, everything is gone and you just reorder from there.

We want God to bless us here and now, instead of saying, “God, take me to the Promised Land. Bless us here in Egypt, O God.” And God says, “No, I’m not going to bless you Egypt. I want to lead you to the Promised Land.”

And that’s what I love about John and Amy and what they’re doing, too. They would much rather just have God bless them here and take care of their parents over there. Burt God never asks us to do something that doesn’t require faith. We’ve got to learn those lessons so we don’t miss out on anything in this life.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we do thank you for teaching us, for caring about our souls even more than we do. For being the author and perfecter of our faith. For being the one who is in charge of our spiritual formation. The one who is leading us from glory to greater glory, in ever increasing measure, as we just take your hand and walk with you. Lord, please, in this moment, as we quiet our hearts before you, show us the idols in our lives right now—the idols in our families. The idol in our age demographic. The idol in this season of our life. Help us to tear those things down.

As you’re listening for the Lord to bring some things to mind, I’m going to read some definitions of idols from Tim Keller:

“What is an idol? It’s anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life, that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living at all.”

So, Lord, search our hearts. We want to walk in what is pleasing to you. We want to tear down the idols so that the blessing can be passed on. We want to keep chasing you, even if it’s inconvenient. Amen.

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