Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
We started a series couple of weeks ago.
We were calling it the Three Wise Women of Christmas.
We talked about the three wise Men and in fact, there's no real
historical precedence to think that there were 33 wise men.
There was, you know, big entourage.
But we, we make a lot of the wise men, but we don't talk
enough about the the women of Christmas.
There are three characters that were very key to what God was
doing in the Christmas story. Of course, Mary, she gets a lot
of press and rightly so. I mean, she yielded her life.
We're going to, God willing, look at her next week. 2 weeks
ago we looked at Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah and this
week what I want to look at is another woman of Christmas by
the name of Anna. We often don't think of her as
one of the women of Christmas but the fact that she was part
of the Christmas story. And in fact, we could call this
the three power couples of Christmas because we have
Zechariah and Elizabeth, who God used to bring John forth.
And then Elizabeth, who was the cousin of Mary, actually
mentored Mary through the pregnancy process.
And there's a reason for that. There's all of these individuals
were connected in what God was doing.
And then we have the the, you know, of course, Mary and
Joseph, they get a lot of press. We'll we'll deal with them next
week. But this week I want to look at
a, a couple called Simeon and Anna.
Now, some of you, if you know, you're Bobby, you're going to
say, wait a minute, pastor, you're stretching that they're
not a couple. Yeah, in the truest sense of the
word. You're right.
They're not married. They're they, we don't have any
reason to believe they knew each other.
But the Bible and the narrative connects them together.
There's something that God was doing through this couple, the
the first couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth and Simeon and Anna.
So here's our point. Here's where we're going with
this, that God never works in a vacuum.
He doesn't. When Jesus arrived on planet
Earth in the infant form, the initial invasion of the Kingdom
of God on earth, it didn't just happen in a vacuum.
There were things that were going on in the background.
The backdrop of this story was very, very important.
And the fact is God never moves in a vacuum.
What we see as the visitation and actuality, there's always
preparation before the visitation.
There's things going on in private before we see the public
manifestation and the people that are the private players, if
you will, the people that are part of what God's doing in the
background often don't get talked about, but they need to
because God is using these two couples to come alongside this
couple in the middle. And so we looked at Zachariah
and Elizabeth. We know that Mary, when she, you
know, they were cousins, when the Angel shows up to Mary, he
says you're going to you're going to give birth to a child
and he will be known as the son of the most high God.
And it always intrigues me that Mary didn't assume that this
would be the product of reunion with her fiance Joe.
She was already betrothed. They were going to get married,
but she didn't just assume, oh, I guess Joe and I are going to
have a baby for some reason, unlike her great, great, great,
great grand pappy Abraham, who when God said I'm going to make
you into a great nation, he thought I'm going to help out.
He had a baby with Haggar and we're still dealing with that.
If you know your biblical history and your modern Middle
Eastern conflict history, you know what I'm talking about.
But Mary didn't assume that. She said, how can this be?
And he said that the Spirit will come upon you.
And she understood that there was something supernatural about
this. It wasn't a prophecy about the
future. It was an invitation to
something now. And so Mary would became
pregnant. She became by the Spirit of God
as a virgin and she carried the Christ.
But the the Angel at the end of that, he said, and by the way,
your cousin Elizabeth, who's not been able to get pregnant, she
is with child right now and she's in her third month.
And so with that, the Angel tied her pregnancy.
Why did he mention that? Why was that important for her
to know? Was it just encouragement that
hey, you know, there's a lot of supernatural activity going on
here. I believe it's more than that.
Immediately Mary went to Elizabeth and she stayed with
her for six months. So the first six months of
Mary's pregnancy was the final six months of Elizabeth and she
was being mentored. So you have these three couples
now. I find it fascinating.
And I want to encourage you when you read the Bible, always look
for patterns, look for connections, look for things
that are showing up that look like patterns.
And you may not have understanding about it in the
moment, but write those things down because God wants to show
you things through the patterns. And so I've been, I've been
meditating on this, just asking the Lord what the deal is with
these three ladies because they all have, there's a, there's a
circumstance surrounding their family life that was unique.
So you have Elizabeth and Zachariah, She here, Elizabeth
is a woman well along in the years.
She's already past menopause. She's past her childbearing
years. And so she is a woman that
longed to have children. She's married, but they were
never able to have children. And we know they wanted children
because when the Angel comes to her, he says, or to her husband
rather, he says to Zachariah, your prayers have been heard.
So these prayers from decades ago, we're now going to be
answered. So there here was a couple.
She was married but never was able to have children until now.
Then you've got this other couple, Joseph and Mary, They're
just engaged. They, they don't even in the
biblical sense know each other. They've never consummated their
relationship. They're good Jewish believers.
They they haven't, you know, she's still a virgin.
And the Angel comes here and said, you're going to have a
baby early. You're going to have a baby not
only before you're married, but before you've ever known a man.
Whereas this couple has been married for decades.
And then now they're beyond the childbearing years and they're
going to have a baby. And then we have this third
lady, lady who is Anna now Anna it says we're going to read
about it in a moment here. Anna it says that was she was
married for seven years, then lost her husband until she was
84 years old. So from her the death of her
husband until she was 84, she never left the temple.
It meant that that's she just spent all her time at the temple
night and day, praying, fasting, and she was known as a
prophetess. And so she has spent all these
years. So we have one couple who they
were married, she had a husband, but she was never able to have
kids until there was this divine intervention.
Then we have another couple, they're just engaged.
And now she finds herself pregnant before time.
And then we have this other gal. Not only did she not have a
child, she lost her husband. And it ties her and this
gentleman named Simeon, not not relationally, but their
narrative, their story together. And so it's intriguing.
There's a pattern here talking about their unique family
dynamics and all that they're going through.
And I'm what I'm proposing to you this morning is again, God
never operates in a vacuum. There's always many things going
on in the background. And these two bookend couples
are paving the way for what Mary's stepping into these two,
this, this couple, they had to wait well beyond the normal
amount of time to have a child. And Mary entered into this thing
early. Why is that?
And I'm proposing to you that there is a generational
connection and there always is whenever God's moving afresh in
planet earth, whenever there's a fresh move of God, there is God
is operating behind the scenes. And so this couple, they, they
had to their, their delay was a divinely imposed, OK, some of
you been crying out for something and you feel like God
is saying no, but he may not be saying no.
He may be saying not yet. And the reason he's saying not
yet is because there's something being paved.
There's something being removed. And what Elizabeth and Zachariah
would give birth to was the man known as the greatest of
prophets in the Old Testament. He was a unique man.
He was a great man. And in actuality, he paved the
way for Jesus ministry. So whereas this couple, they
were told no all these years, the divine delay was divinely
imposed. And rather than getting
frustrated and offended and thinking, well, God, you know,
God's forgotten about us, God doesn't care.
They stayed in the faith, they served faithfully only to end up
giving birth in their latter years.
And there's a reason for that because they, what they were
going to give birth to was connected to what Mary would
give birth to. And that's why the Angel said,
hey, by the way, not only are you pregnant, but your Baron
cousin Elizabeth is in her third month.
There was a connection between these two things.
So what Elizabeth carried John the Baptist, according to
Isaiah, would pave the way. He would be the preparer of the
way for what Mary would carry the Messiah.
And so there was this connection.
And so that's why Mary, when she found out she was pregnant, she
found out her cousin was pregnant.
What'd she do? She hightailed it over and she
lived with her, her cousin Elizabeth through the final six
months of her pregnancy. She was going to be mentored by
someone older. Now I want to preach to the
young people here. God, often what God will do is
he will, he will cause the previous generation to pay the
price. They will have a divine delay.
God will tell them no longer than normal so that you can
enter in quicker than normal, so that you can move into
something. And you've got to always be
careful because we tend to put this way.
Anybody ever read about Charles Finney?
You know who Charles Finney is. If you've never read about him,
get his autobiography. Don't get the abridged version
because they kind of extract all the supernatural stuff out of
it. You need to read the the his
autobiography because he's an amazing man.
Saw a tremendous move of God known as the Second Great
Awakening in the United States and the Northeastern area of our
our United States just burned with revival.
There were 50,000 people a week getting saved at the height of
this revival. And back then the population of
the United States was much lower.
And we tend to know about Charles Finney and the great
revivals that he was. He wrote in his autobiography.
He said, I loved this phrase. He said it was as though a
pervading conviction registered upon the public conscience.
What he's talking about is there was an environmental presence of
the convicting power of God, so man could not live comfortable
in their sin. They were living under
conviction and people would people would be hanging out on
the street and someone would curse and then they they'd
apologize to each other. None of them are believer, but
there was just this pervading conviction.
What most of us don't know is that Charles Finney was the Mary
carrying the revival, but there was an Elizabeth and an Anna
behind the scenes in the form of a man named Father Nash.
Father Nash happened to be a Presbyterian pastor who, while
he was pastoring, got saved sitting under Finney's ministry.
He's he's a pastor, but he's not even a believer.
I mean, he intellectually believed he was not converted.
And Finney stirred things up. There was, I remember reading
one story where he was preaching and he was staying at the
pastor's house. He got to the pastor's house
that night and the wife she, she started yelling at the pastor at
Finney, how dare you speak of this, these types of things in
the services. If God wants to save me, he will
save me and when he's good and ready.
And she was just agitated under conviction and she stormed out
and the pastor looked at Finney and said see what your preaching
is doing to my congregation. She ended up getting saved by
the way. But what they, what happened is
Father Nash would go into a city in advance.
He'd go in two, 3-4 weeks in advance.
He would get a hotel room and he would lock himself away and pray
through until he'd had a breakthrough.
And he'd send send message to Finney, hey, we're ready.
Finney would get there and he'd say, can his father Nash staying
here? He'd go to an inn.
They'd say, yeah, this guy Nash, Yeah, he did Register here.
And he's been in his room the whole time.
He's never come out. And it's kind of strange.
There's weird noises coming out of his room, but he would pray
this thing through and then Finney would go in and it just
tremendous moves of God. Entire cities were saved, so
much so that 100 years later that sociologists were still
measuring. Secular non believing
sociologists were tracing cultural, cultural impact,
things that were part matter of fact.
They did a study of the kindest city in America.
This is about 30 years ago. And they found that Rochester,
NY was the kindest city in America.
And the way they found that out is they would have people go in
and pretend they were blind and they drop money that kind of ask
for help. And I believe it was about 30
years ago and they found it was the kindest city in America.
And these non Christian sociologists traced it all the
way back to Finney's revivals. That lasting impact.
It was an amazing move of God. But when Father Nash passed
away, Finney stopped traveling because the impact of his
preaching had diminished. And so whenever God's moving,
there are numerous figures, numerous people involved.
Whenever God uses you, there are other people that were being
used by God to prepare you behind the scenes.
And it just may be that you might be the person behind the
scenes and not the person carrying the thing.
And so we always need to realize that we are interconnected.
And so when Mary was got pregnant, she went to Elizabeth
and she walks in the door and Elizabeth says, when I heard
your voice, my baby leapt within me.
And when God is doing something fresh in your life, what you
need to do is you need to find other believers that are a
little farther along than you are.
And when it's a God ordained relationship, I'm telling you,
your babies will jump when you talk.
You'll feel that witness within you that there's there's a
fueling of what the dreams, the things that you carry.
My spiritual mother, she I worked for her.
She was worked, she ran the kitchen at the Bible school I
was in. And so she started disciple and
we finally, I'd show up for work.
She should just sit down. I'll do the dishes, read this
article. And then she'd preach to me and
I'd read, reading these articles, but we'd go out for
coffee, we'd meet at McDonald's. And she was an old woman of 29.
I was 19. She was this real old gal.
But here's the thing. She used to tell me, some of you
have heard me say this before, but she used to tell me, listen,
Dave, you can either make your own mistakes or you can learn
from mine. And I thought, hey, she's paid
the tuition on that. I'm going to learn from her
mistakes. That is, that was a wise thing
for her to tell me. But she had an uncommon
relationship with the Lord. And the reason is she had been
through some hard things. And So what, when she was 16
years old, she got pregnant with with her boyfriend.
They got married, then they had another daughter immediately.
She had two daughters. And I believe by the time she
was 19, her husband had abandoned her.
And so I met her ten years later.
Again, she was this aged person of 29.
But because of what she'd been through, and she didn't allow it
to make her bitter, she tied into God and really sought the
Lord. And she had an uncommon
relationship. And that is who Anna was.
Let's, let's, let's look at this.
Anna had gone through some uncommon things and it made her
a tremendous woman of God. All right, look at a verse 25 in
Luke chapter 2, verse 25, it says now there was a man in
Jerusalem. So we're we're looking at the
wise women, a Christian, but we're going to look at the power
couples. OK, so we're going to start with
Simeon. This morning there was a man in
Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and
devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.
So let's just pause there. Jump with me to verse 36.
So in 25, it says there was a man in Jerusalem and explains
him in his circumstances in the scenario in which he runs into
Jesus. And then in verse 36 and it
says, and there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter
Ephanuel of the tribe of Astra. What is it talking about?
It's tying these two people together that there was this
aged man named Simeon and this aged widow named Anna.
And so although they're not connected relationally, they
were connected in the purposes of God.
So let's jump back to Simeon. I love this.
Listen to what he says, a man named Jerusalem whose name was
Simeon. Now, a lot of scholars surmise
that Simeon was the. Let me see if I can open this
up, this little note I had written one time.
There are many who believe that Simeon was the son of a famous
rabbi by the name of Hillel and the father of Gamaliel.
Now many of you will remember Gamaliel because Paul was was
disciple by Gamaliel and he was a famous rabbi.
And he also was the one who stood before the Sanhedrin and
cautioned them, remember, when they were coming against Jesus?
And he said, hey, guys, just be careful because in coming
against this guy, you may find you're coming against God
himself. And he was rightly discerning
that was the case. That was Gamaliel.
And so many believe that Simeon was, you know, in the
generations of that. And he was a man of the Spirit.
Listen what it says, whose name was Simeon.
This man was righteous and devout, waiting for the
consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon
him. I love that he was anointed to
wait. Some of you need an anointing to
wait. It's one thing to wait.
It's another thing to wait with the anointing.
There is an anointing to wait. I remember years ago a young
couple that I I'd known for years, they came to me and they
said, Pastor Dave, they said we're, we're, we're leaving the
church. They're still serving the Lord.
We're still in touch. We write, you know, they, they
live out of state now, but This is why they said, they said we
just, it's too hard to wait for the promises of God.
They said, man, God has given us promises and we've been waiting
nine months and we've still seen no movement.
And they said, and you talk about promises God gave you 20
years ago. We don't, we can't do that.
I appreciated their honesty. I was a little disappointed in
their approach, but the fact is you need an anointing to wait.
We need to protect the promises of God.
We need to cultivate those promises because all of our
hearts can become faint. In fact, I would propose to you
that the reason we see these two people, Simeon and Anna, run
into Jesus along with Mary and Joseph, see Mary as as she's
conceiving by the Spirit. She goes to Elizabeth so
Elizabeth can encourage her and mentor.
But once she's given birth to this child, we're kind of going
after Christmas this morning. They go to dedicate Jesus at the
temple, and it says that Simeon was stirred by the Spirit that
day. He'd been waiting for the
consolation of Israel. What it's saying is he was been
waiting for the Messiah to arrive.
And the Lord had told him, you will not die until you lay hands
on the Messiah. He will be born before you die.
And that morning it says he was stirred by the Spirit.
The Spirit was upon him and he had been waiting.
He'd been anointed to nurse that promise.
Mary had been pregnant with something, Elizabeth had been
pregnant with something. But make no mistake about it,
Simeon had been pregnant with something for a long time and he
was about ready to give birth. A guy giving birth.
Let's just say it guys, most of us couldn't handle that, OK?
But anyways, we honor you women, OK?
So, but Simeon is carrying something, and that morning he
was stirred and he went to the temple and he saw Jesus.
Put that picture up there. Guys, some of you have seen this
picture before. I'm not sure.
I don't know if it was by Kincaid or what, but I love that
picture and it's Simeon dedicating Jesus.
Look at that tear coming down. This is a man who's carried a
promise for decades. Just keep that up there.
He's he's been carrying this promise for decades.
He'd been anointed to wait. And that morning he woke up and
the Lord said today's the day, go to the temple.
And when he saw the baby, listen to what his prayer is this this
so moves me. Listen to this he as it had been
revealed in by the Spirit of God that he would not see death
before he had seen the Lord's Christ and he came in the spirit
into the temple. So he's in the spirit that day.
He's being led by the Spirit. And it says when the parents
brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom
of the law, he took him in his arm.
So the parents had come to fulfill the the dictates of the
law and dedicate their first born son and Simeon.
So I mean, you know how people come up.
I'm one of those, hey, can I hold your baby?
And people let me usually because I'm a pastor and they
trust me and I can I hold your baby.
And so he scoops the baby up and listen to what he says.
This is beautiful. Keep your eyes on that picture.
Listen to this, Lord. Now you are letting your servant
depart in peace according to your word.
What he's saying is God, I'm ready to die.
I have been living for this moment all these decades, and
now I've laid my eyes on the promise.
This is what I've been living towards, and I could die a happy
man. That's the Dave Olson version.
I could die a happy man. You see what Mary was carrying
in a physical pregnancy. There was this couple, Simeon
and Anna, independently of one another.
But the Spirit of God ties them together in the narrative.
They had been praying this thing through.
They were the father Nash for the finny birth of Jesus.
They had been praying behind the scenes.
God never moves in a vacuum. Anytime you see God do anything
in anybody's life, there's other people involved that you may not
know about. But rest assured, there were
other people paying the price and often it's a generation
previous. Mary was a young version.
These two, these two couples were elderly and well along in
years. And the fact is God allowed a
delay in their life so that Mary could enter in early.
So I want to speak to those who are a little longer in years,
there might be have been a delay in some of the things you're
praying for, but God is faithful and it just may be that you're
paying the price for what the next generation is going to
enter into. And that is a noble thing in the
Kingdom, man, we are, we are indebted to some people that
held the line in this church. It was about 35 years ago now,
they almost closed this church. Heartland was on the other side
of town. There was probably 20, 25 people
left and it was, it was a struggling church and we almost
closed and there were a few people that held the line and
many of them have now passed on. There was Bill Culver, he was
here first service. He's still here.
One of the one of the last ones that are still with us, Jerry
and Kay Marlowe, they they're still with us.
There was Barb McAfee, who just went to be the Lord a few months
ago. But there were, there were
people who held the line here and there were they went through
some barren years at Heartland and stayed faithful.
And you and I are the recipients of that.
And we are actually reaping the benefit of their laborers.
And we're looking in this great thing we got going.
Yeah, thanks to them. And we've got to realize that
there's a humility that's required of us to honor the
laborers of those who have gone before us.
There is no such thing as the self-made man, the self-made
organization. There's always people that
deserve credit and honor, and it just may be that God has imposed
a delay on you so that someone else can break in early.
And they're the ones that that is going to be talked about.
But rest assured, when you get to heaven, there's going to be a
shared reward in these things. And so, but we need those
Zechariahs and Elizabeths. We need those simians and those
Anas. So listen to what it says here.
He said, Lord, verse 29 Now you are letting your servant depart
in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your
salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all
peoples, a light for revelation for the Gentiles, and glory to
all your people. Israel.
And his father and mother marveled at what was said about
him, and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, This is heavy.
Behold, this child is appointed for the rising and falling of
many in Israel and for a sign that will be opposed.
And then he mentions this and a sword will Pierce through your
soul as well. So the thoughts of many hearts
will be revealed. He was a man of the spirit that
had been carrying this thing. And just think about that.
This guy, he's not blowing smoke here.
He said, Lord, I'm ready to go home.
This is the moment I've been living for, and now that it's
fulfilled, I can go home. I've finished my assignment.
He understood his life, his prayers, his walk with the Lord
was intimately connected to Jesus breaking into human
history. And once it was done, he said,
I'm ready to go home. I've got my reward.
But he's not the only one. Listen to this verse 36.
And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Fenuel,
the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years,
having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a
virgin. So conservatively speaking, if
she got married as an old woman of 20 in Jewish culture, if she
waited till she was 20 and she was married for seven years, she
was and her husband died at 27 and now 85, she's had a she's
had decades of seeking the Lord. That's what's going to tell us
now some translations, because the the Greek is a little
unclear. It we don't know if it says she
spent 85 years in the temple or if it was 85 years that she was
when, when she blessed the baby, you know, when she blessed
Jesus. We don't know.
Suffice it to say there's a whole lot of decades going on
that she's walking with the Lord.
Listen to what it says of her having lived with her husband
seven years from when for when she was a virgin.
So she was married seven years, and then as a widow until she
was 84, she did not depart from the temple worshipping with
fasting and prayer night and day.
And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to the
Lord and speak of Him to all who are waiting for the redemption
of Jerusalem. So both of them, God prompted
them to come to the temple that very day so they could lay their
eyes on what they've been praying about, what they've been
fasting for, what they've been going after.
Let me give a shameless plug for the 21 day fast we're going to
be going into in January. We've been doing a 21 day fast
for I think 2324 years now in January, I want to encourage
everyone of you to pray about what how you should take part in
that fasting. Jesus taught in the Sermon on
the Mount. He said when you fast.
He didn't say if you fast, if you decide to be one of those
radicals, you know you're going to fat.
No, he didn't say it. He said when you fast, you do it
this way. There was an assumption by Jesus
himself that those who follow him as disciples would learn to
live the fasted lifestyle, learn to fast from time to time.
And so we're going to go into a fast.
It's going to start January 5th. And I really want to encourage
you ask the Lord how you should take part in that some form or
fashion. Let's set aside the beginning of
the year and dedicate it to the Lord and say, God, we need to
hear from you afresh. I always, always take note at
the end of January, there's worship, isn't is it's
heightened. There's a potency to the
worship. It's because everybody's coming
down to the end of the fast. God wants to speak to us.
Take that time and set it aside for the Lord.
It's what Anna did and I believe the reason Anna and Simeon are
mentioned is because what the lifestyle they lived was
clearing the way for Jesus to enter human history.
Scripture says it was a Galatians.
I want to say it's chapter 4. Paul writes in the fullness of
time. God brought forth his son born
of a woman brought born under the law.
It says it's in the fullness of time.
That's a, that's a pregnant phrase right there.
The fullness of time. What is the fullness of time?
What he's saying is that time needs to come to fruition.
The fullness of time. There's the beginning of a time
and then there's the fullness of a time.
And when the fullness of the time is met, all the criteria,
all the purposes of that season are met and it triggers into the
next season. And in the fullness of time, God
sent forth his Son and inaugurated an entirely new age.
The Kingdom age was inaugurated then.
And now we're living in in between the this present evil
age and the age to come. And we're living in the reality
of both. So it's the already and the not
yet. There's this battle we live in
right now. But make no mistake about it,
the age started then. That's why Peter stood up at
Pentecost. He said this is that in the last
days he's quoting from Joel. He said this is that this is
what Joel said in the last days that will pour out of my spirit.
The last days began then and you and I are living in that and
we're living. It's already broke in, but there
had to be a fruition. The the fullness of time and God
will introduce things into your life and that the time has to
come to fruition in the fullness and I would give a little
theology of time here. Time from a biblical perspective
is not the hands on a clock or the date on a calendar.
It is the fulfillment of a purpose and so time is either
compressed or elongated depending upon the human
cooperation with God's will. So a season when the children of
Israel came out of that of Egypt, an 11 day journey became
40 years. Why time was elongated because
of human disobedience. And so God is looking for those
who will enter into his purposes.
God is looking for those that take the tragedy in their life,
be it a a Zechariah and Elizabeth.
They didn't get bitter. They didn't understand.
They just, they had a they had a just settled.
I guess we're never going to have children.
But then one day the Angel shows up and says your prayers from
decades ago are still coming before the throne of God and
it's time. And they were delayed all those
decades. Why?
Because what was going to come from them was going to be
something of great impact. Or you have an Anna who this
young young gal, all the hopes and dreams of a young bride,
marries, and seven years into her marriage she loses her
husband. But coming to that fork in the
road, rather than getting bitter, rather than getting
frustrated, rather than abandoning her face faith, she
dug in more and she sought the Lord.
And God began to use that what she was going through for the
purpose of bringing Jesus into the world.
Many times we don't understand the impact of what we're going
through, but it's a matter of keeping the faith and those like
my spiritual mother that I told you about, I, I've, I've tracked
this over the years often, especially single moms who
really go after the Lord. They have an uncommon walk with
God because they need it. And rather than getting bitter,
those that choose to seek the Lord, there's this depth to
their relationship with God, AW, Tozier famously said one time.
It's doubtful that God can ever greatly use a man until he
deeply wounds him. What he's saying he's he's not
saying that God just tortures you to see, you know, test your
faith. What he's saying is that there
needs to be a tenderness in our life.
And often it's those, those junctures in our life where we
go through something, the very thing that makes some people
walk away and say, God, if your friend like that who needs
enemies and they get offended, others respond to that and say,
God, I don't understand this delay.
I don't understand this death. I don't understand why this is
going. But I know this, I'm going to
keep seeking you. I'm going to keep going after
you. And that opportunity for
disillusionment actually is an invitation into revelation and
something deep in the heart of God.
And God is longing to release things into human history.
But there's always people that have to work behind the scenes.
I don't know if the frustration in your life, I don't know if
the crisis in your life, the spiritual warfare you're going
through right now. I don't know if it's because
you're going to give birth to something great or you're going
to be one of the players that paved the way for that to
happen. But I know this.
Not one tear is ever wasted in the Kingdom of God.
God will always use the pain you go through.
If you offer it up to Him, He will use it to open things up in
the human history. So I just want to encourage you
this morning, don't allow the enemy to cause you to be
disillusioned and frustrated with God.
If you are, take it to him and talk it through.
Don't turn your back on him because if you will, I'm often
some of the greatest revelation, some of the, the, the, the, the
the greatest revelation lies right behind what seems to be a
contradiction in the Kingdom. And if we'll press in, God will
begin to show you and he will give you an uncommon
relationship And what comes from you will be an uncommon thing
that will actually be the John the Baptist type thing that will
pave the way for Jesus to come afresh.
Let's stand. Thanks for listening to our
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