Are You Missing It? | Pastor Jeremy Foster

this weekend i'm reading out of philippians and we're going to talk a little bit about paul because paul had a secret everybody say i know the secret he had he had a secret um but before we jump into it i want to read i want to read another verse of scripture and before we talk about that i want to ask you this question and maybe it's just me i didn't think about this until this morning i'm right before the very first service and i thought about have you ever watched some of those old like 70s jesus movies and the reason you're kind of laughing is because you know jesus was weird in those movies you know what i'm talking about like he was gaunt he was super frail he moved really slow and his gaze was really intense and he would say he would be he would say weird things like father me like i'm not i ain't following you i'm scared to death of you hey if jesus is the 70s jesus i'm out okay i just if he's the jesus i've seen in something or or they would make him ridiculously good looking you know what i mean like jesus you're like hey jesus he's like yes you're like whoa you're stunningly handsome this is weird i don't believe jesus is like any of that i i think in fact the best depiction that i've seen of jesus is that new series called chosen i don't know if some of you guys have seen chosen like that jesus that jesus is awesome like in the first or second second episode at the marriage uh in the and i'm not telling you to watch it but go watch it it's way better than most of the stuff that you're gonna see on tv but it's amazing and um and he's picking on i think it's james john james and john are talking and and john's like james can't dance and that's why he doesn't want to go out and dance at the wedding and jesus is like harassing him he's like i want to see these dance moves that's the jesus i want to serve i want to serve the jesus that's making fun of your dance moves you know what i mean like that jesus is like really god you're doing the sprinkler really like come on i invented that come on i mean i want i i just have this idea like kids were attracted to jesus people were attracted to jesus you're not attracted to somebody you're scared of or freaked out by you know what i mean there are you ever been around somebody who just makes you nervous like right when you're around him you're like one time i was with a friend of mine and we we we were meeting this politician i don't remember who it was we were meeting this politician and my buddy was with me and he had never met a politician and so i introduced myself i was like hey how you doing i'm jeremy and he introduced himself and he goes hey how you doing i'm jeremy and i looked at him i said hey you're donny bro you ain't jerry he was so nervous he just repeated whatever i said my name is jeremy i'm like you're not jeremy bro there are people that make you nervous they make you tense you've been around that person just and then there are those people who when you're around them you've been around those people that you're just like i just like you you ever been around somebody like that that you're like man i'm so glad we hung out today i just feel so much better and they're like good i'm so glad you do and you're like yeah you're like give me a hug and they're like six feet you know whatever i mean just you had that moment you know this is what i believe we are supposed to be like philippians in the message version chapter 2 verse 15. i love this paul says hey look go out into the world uncorrupted a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living god carry the light giving message into the night that fires me up that's what i want to do i want when people are around me i want to just feel like i don't know what you got but you got something i just that's that light give we want to be in fact we said this from the beginning hope city there's a reason we call it hope city is because we want it to be a life-giving church you ever been to a church that's not life-giving have you ever been to a deaf-giving church yes some of you have been that's why you're here right now because when you leave that church you're like i just ah i am a horrible human they just tell you how bad you are and then dismiss you go in the fear of the lord i'm scared of you it doesn't mean that you're perfect you're not you're a wretched sinner just like everybody else but we just we want you to know that yeah you are but aren't you grateful for the grace and the mercy and the love of a holy god who doesn't leave you the way he found you i want it to be a light giving message but it's got to be more than just coming to church and getting that people need to get that when they come to you how do christians get this so wrong listen if you uh if you don't believe in jesus or or maybe uh maybe you're agnostic maybe you're just not really sure i don't know maybe there's something but i don't know i just can't prove anything or maybe you're a straight-up atheist you're like absolutely not this is ridiculous i'm only here because somebody told me to come uh and i don't want them to feel bad or i just want to come laugh at y'all or maybe you're just watching online and you're like this is weird listen let me talk to you for a second let's not talk to the christians okay because christians sometimes say they just don't get it okay but this right now i'm fixing to tell i'm facing to tell you guys why y'all have such a problem with christians okay this is the problem with christians okay i know christians who couldn't spell joy if you spotted them two letters you know what i'm talking about like they got the signs on the back of their car they say honk if you love jesus and you honk and they flip you the bird but you said home bruh i thought man i need jesus that's what you should wear on your car we we have this we have this marketing problem christianity has a branding issue you are the brand i've seen some of y'all at walmart you in the secret service you a covert christian you know what i mean you hiding behind ah get out of my way oh god loves you i'm a christian bless you hey listen when you go out into the world it should be light-giving it should be life-giving when you go eat you should leave a big tip and all the servers said hey man you should leave a big tip when you leave a big tip tell them you go to hope city if you don't leave a big tip tell them you go somewhere else i'm not going to name churches today [Applause] tell them you go somewhere listen we should be like how do we get this so wrong it happened a few years ago i had this revelation on how we get it so wrong it happened on an easter weekend we had rented the don coleman coliseum to have church in it was amazing it was our third year as a church i think it's 2017 we started in 2015 so we had to eastern 2015 eastern 2016. 2017 was crazy we couldn't fit in the high school we couldn't fit our other campuses so we got the don coleman coliseum to have church in how many of y'all remember uh church easter in the don coleman coliseum some of y'all and look how many people have come since then it's just crazy and uh and i remember that i remember that weekend um we had a run through on friday night because we had saturday services sunday services wild i remember showing on my way dunking dodge dunking right there text me duncan's on our team and duncan said uh hey pastor when are you going to be on campus i said i'm on my way right now he goes hey listen i'm just going to meet you at the truck i want to talk to you about something first before you go in well i know duncan and that meant there's a problem and we can't fix it and so you need to understand it before you go in because hey like i don't like to be surprised how many of y'all just love it you i don't mind a good surprise i like a good surprise like here's a new car i like that kind of surprise but like here's a problem that you walk into and have to immediately adjust in front of everybody now i need time to fix my face before i walk in i'm a pastor you know what i mean i'm supposed to walk in like hey god bless you may god richly bless you follow me as i follow christ i don't need to come in like you know so he comes out of the truck and he's like uh here's the uh here's the worship guide for easter which is a little guide for worship and we had to tell us all about our church it's like a full-color like four-page thing and he goes what do you think i was like man i've already looked at some of this this amazing team did an incredible job he goes just turn it to the back he said you uh you see anything on the back i said i saw it immediately this is a misspelled word very bold and i said how many of these did we print they said uh 15 000. i said we got to reprint he goes it that's why i'm here because we we can't that ship has sailed this is what we got and you remember i just i freaked out i was like how like our church is called hope city how do you misspell the name that's like misspelling jesus how are you gonna misspell the name of the church and we didn't misspell hope we misspelled city like like that's that's a like four five six word you learned how to write when you were a kid it's like city like just a quarter like city like we know and we didn't leave out like one of the dumb letters in there we left out the team so we weren't hope city we were hope see welcome to hope ce we hope that god blesses you this week as we learn how to spout i was so bad oh god over it thank god for duncan y'all give duncan a great big hey sit right thank god as i got hey i got better i was able i was able to walk in and the team was all they were like scared to death they were like here he comes here he comes guys just act normal just act normal and i walked in they were like pastor sorry i was like guys it's no big deal they were like he's so cool and i was like duncan duncan is so cool that's that's cool but you know we got through it we got through it and not a lot of y'all saw it because you don't read anything and in that week while i was looking at it because we threw all of them away except for the one that i kept on my desk and framed and every now and then i bring the creative team in and i say never forget um but i remember i was looking at it and while i was looking at it i was going how i was having another moment you ever been angry about something you were angry and you already got over and you just went back and got angry again i was angry again it was like a wednesday and i was like how could we get it so wrong and god spoke to me you ever had god speak to you in those moments and it wasn't audible i didn't hear him like my son that would have freaked me out but he was like look at it again i looked at it again and i took a pen and i put the tea in there i just squeezed it in and because of the way that i had to squeeze it in the crossbar on the tee had to go a little bit higher and all of a sudden i realized that we had spelled hope city without the cross and if you're not careful you can have hope and you can have all the other good stuff but if you remove the cross from the equation you will never get to where god has called you to go jesus has got to be the beginning the middle and the end and the challenge with many of us is we know how to do church we just don't have a relationship with jesus and so when we get in a tough situation we realize something is missing can i tell you this i've gone through hard times i've gone through hard days i've gone through hard situations but nothing is missing i've had hard moments i've had tough circumstances happen to me but tough circumstances are not in me because god is faithful and where i'm going is greater than what i'm going through and greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world and when we get that it changes everything paul paul is a master at responding to bad situations with a christ-like perspective you ever just had a bad day it's just a bad day you just have a flat tire you ever had a flat tire at a good time no you've never had a flat tire at a good time like well man this is the perfect day to have a flat tire i just pulled into the tire shop and oh it went flat perfect so glad i was here no no you're always on the interstate somewhere you're on your way to work you find out you don't have a spare can't find the triple-a number didn't pay the bill what do you do in the middle of a bad situation paul paul tells us in philippians chapter one how to how to deal with it he says this verse 12. and i want you to know my dear brothers and sisters that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the good news now here everybody say here just so you'll understand he is in prison everybody say in prison so i want you to read this verse of scripture in the context of this is what we call a prison epistle he wrote this letter in prison it's a bad pla and by the way just so you'll know a roman prison's way worse than a houston prison it's just it was a bad bad place to be and he says for everyone here including the whole palace guard this is not hyperbole everybody knows they know that i'm in chains because of christ and because of my imprisonment you can hear the joy rolling off of the pen as he writes most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak god's message without fear oh it's so great guys i'm in prison whoa yeah what are you talking about i can get frustrated when i'm in the 20 items or less aisle and somebody in front of me has 42 items you know who you are stop it that's i'm not even going to take another offering for that right there that's just extra how is it that he has so much joy in the middle of so much pain and by the way he's in what theologians believe and historians believe is the is the mammartine prison which is not just it's not just prison it's the worst roman prison you can be in you can still go and you can still look at the cell over there in uh in jerusalem or around that area in israel you can look at the at the cell where they believed he was it's a bad place to be there's it's the inner cell it's the lower cell of the gel and then they have a hole in the ground google it the mammotine prison they have a hole in the ground and they would put a rope around the prisoner and lower him into the hole it's solitary of solitary of solitary confinement he was an escape risk not because he had escaped because they were scared that angels would come and get him out i mean that's a bad dude right there like they're not worried about the mafia they're like hey it ain't gonna be the mafia it's gonna be it's gonna be angels they're not gonna come in with guns they're gonna walk through walls it's cool they're 12 feet tall you just want let's put him down in the hole and in this hole of of of of the mammoth in prison cloaca maxima flows through that means the great sewer and the reason that they kept the prisoner with the rope around his waist is because when it rained in that area they would pull up in that area of room they would pull up the prisoner so that he wouldn't drown in the sewage this is a bad place and this is where he writes it from everybody even all the palace guards know that i am in here because of christ do you know what theologians say theologians say that they had to change the guard every hour on the hour because if they left a guard too long outside of paul's cell paul would preach to them so much that he would convert them to christianity that's how much joy and peace and love and grace he had in his life now here's my thing how how do you get that way where you realize your problems don't dictate god's power how do you how do you get to a place where you realize hard times cannot steal my hope well paul tells us in philippians 4 a few chapters later he says this verse 12 i know what it is to be in need and i know what it is to have plenty i've learned the secret everybody say this secret i've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well fed or hungry whether living in plenty or in want he's saying listen i've found the secret to contentment now contentment here's what it means contentment means a state of peaceful happiness now that's not what contentment means to a lot of us contentment to a lot of us means well obviously man i just learned how to be content what does that mean i hate my life but ain't nothing i can do about it and we're just stuck turning you never say i'm stuck i'm stuck put it in the chat i'm stuck turn to somebody else tell them i'm stuck i'm just i'm stuck hey nothing about you i'll be just stuck you ever been stuck in a bad situation just stuck i used to live in west monroe louisiana we call it west fun road come on somebody west west monroe louisiana and west monroe louisiana is quite possibly the stinkiest town that i've ever been in and if you've been through west monroe louisiana you know it if you've hit it on i-20 between shreveport louisiana and jackson mississippi when you drive through west monroe you know because they have a paper mill there and that paper mill there it stinks it's bad it's really bad i don't know what else they're making in there but i've never smelled paper that smells like that like it is it's so bad it's so bad it's just bad this is bad i remember one time we were in church my dad my dad we had a church over there and uh this choir came to town and and and we usually have between 500 700 people 800 people on a sunday morning they're all there for this choir and this choir is awesome and they're swaying back and forth they're doing the thing and the choir director gets up and he addresses the audience he's like what a great day we have in the presence of the lord he goes by the way i just got to tell you this is the stinkiest town i've ever been in now here's the problem the problem is that town knows its things but it denies its thinking and here's why because most of the dudes work at the paper mill and the paper mill doesn't stink the paper mill smells like money that's what they tell their kids dad this thinks well son it smells like your education what smells like me dad i hate this stinky town well it smells like your stinky car that you want me to buy when you turn 16. that's what it smells like to me it smells like green stuff son smells like bread and butter hey if that's bread and butter i never want it ever this dude said this is the stickiest town i've ever been in that night 42 people came to church all the rest of the people didn't come back because they got offended because they like the stink in fact you can live in [Music] you can live in west monroe so long that you don't smell it anymore and one of your friends can come in from out of town and be like hey you got to be good friends to ask this hey was that you like no bro that's the piper mill and some of us have been sitting in stink for so long that we don't smell it anymore i wonder what god is trying to deliver you from that you have learned how to live with and god is desperate to deliver you please don't accept something is as normal that god didn't give you at some point if we're not careful we'll just get stuck and maybe you're stuck marriage started great but now you can't hardly stand each other you used to love your job and now you hate it even our faith i've met believers who love jesus and at one point they were on fire but now they are away from their first love how do we get set free well first you got to know you need to be free and here's a little test for you the three question test if you're taking notes write this down the first thing you do is you start faking it you start faking it how you doing i'm fine i'm fine where you guys going this summer fine and some of you are better at this than others guys we're not so good at it right like if we don't like a dude he's going to probably know it right like you're not going to look at him be like what's up brother how's it going god bless you you're going to look at me like you're just going to chin check him like what's up you know ladies y'all freaked me out though y'all have an ability it's weird it is amazing i i've seen it firsthand before it's just shocking to see another lady that you you can't stand but you don't act like you can't stand her you act like you love her hey girl how you doing it's how good is it come on give me a hug oh you look so good i like your dress where'd you get that frog you look so good and she's walking off you're like hey call me look at her you look like she been shopping at goodwill broke self walking up hugging me so bro she's like the little old lady who lives in the shoe stuff she don't live in a shoe she live in a flip-flop [Music] just thank you i worked hard on that one i had to memorize it just just faking it just going through the motions the sad part is sometimes not even those that are closest to you know that you're stuck they have no idea that you're faking it you've put band-aids on bullet holes for so long just to cover it up but you're bleeding internally it is not my job as a pastor okay listen i struggle with this because i'm an encourager and i love to encourage people but it is not my job as a pastor to only encourage you it is also my job to expose you to you to show you that hey there's some holes in your life that if we don't fix that then listen the bible tells me it's important for me to do that jeremiah said this verse chapter 6 verse 14. he said they dressed the wounds of my people as though it weren't serious peace peace they say when there is no peace this text is written to pastors and ministry leaders who are telling people oh it's okay oh you're okay when they're not okay listen it's okay to not be okay as long as you actually know you're not okay the challenge is you're not fooling anybody but yourself when we act as if somehow we're all fine when we're really not fine first corinthians 10 12 says so if you think you are standing firm be careful that you don't fall this is why we have groups this is why you need to get in a group this is why you need to be around other people so you can open up to some people can i tell you all this i don't open my whole soul to y'all on the weekends you're welcome that would be terrible but i opened my soul to my group and i really opened my soul to my dad my dad's my accountability partner he knows the good the bad and the ugly and he still loves me that's a good thing you need somebody in your life who's spiritually stronger than you who you can walk up to and go i got shot i need help can you please help me deal with this instead of acting like everything's okay god deliver us from social media syndrome where we live by a highlight reel and show nobody the behind the scenes footage a few years ago i posted a picture it was that same year that same easter easter 2017. i think i have that picture this is the picture that i posted on instagram and everybody's like oh that was sweet so precious carla was running around she wasn't in this picture gunner wasn't born yet look at jack just hugging dad but you know why he was hugging dad like that look at jillian's face that ain't a real smile that's a you just got threatened smile that's it you ain't looking at the camera literally this is what i said to her right before this picture was snapped if you don't look at that camera right now the easter bunny ain't coming and you ain't getting no chocolate ever and jack went oh he's okay daddy but but i show you this i don't tell you the chaos of what was really going on but somebody needs to know the chaos in your life somebody needs to know hey i've been faking it and i really need help i need somebody to help me you got to open up you got to be honest the second thing you'll start faking the second thing is you'll say things like i'll just deal with it later he'll just deal with it later look ah i got too much going on i just cannot deal with that now you ever said that to your kids can y'all go crazy later dad's dealing with too much i can't deal with you right now could you have you ever said this could you have picked a better day can you wait until tomorrow i'm dealing with enough today i'll deal with it later i'll deal with the problems in my marriage later i'll do with the challenges in my career later i'll deal with my problems parenting where i end up blaming the kids for my own dysfunctions later i say things like what's wrong with you when it's really what's wrong with me i'll deal with that later i'll deal with the challenges in my life my relationship with god my sin habits i'll deal with that later and at some point you got to deal with it now the problem is we try to deal with it all at one time instead of daily all right jesus said give us this day our not our weekly bread not our monthly bread and for sure not our yearly bread give us this day our daily bread a few years ago it was probably 10 years ago maybe more than that i decided that i was going to go to the gym i was going to decide i was going to get a gym membership have you ever equated a gym membership with being healthy i immediately after we paid the money i felt better i was like how you doing got a gym membership you know why are you so happy yeah i'm getting ready to start working out have you started yet not yet i'm going to and i remember i went uh have you ever overplayed your own ability like thought you were tougher than what you are i went i went and my wife was like you need to take one of those classes and i was like okay i've never done a class but i was on the weightlifting team in high school which means nothing because it was only part of my 10th grade year okay but i still say that i was on the weightlifting team and some of you are like that i was on the football team now you were on the bench that's where you were but i went in and they had this class called body pump anybody ever done body pump yeah you should raise your like ah you can't hardly lift your hand right now because it hurts so bad i didn't know i had no idea it was an hour-long class i was like i can do anything i can do anything for an hour it's an hour long class i'm gonna go into body pump i see these little things that you step on and they have all these little light weights and i'm telling you i was the youngest i was the youngest person in the gym and the strongest person in that room it was all ladies and they were all twice my age and when i say twice i mean your boy was in his early 30s twice they were twice my age they didn't dress like they had leotards on and stuff it was very it's unnerving they were all super sweet like oh hey handy come on in here you get on in here right now come on in here yeah we're gonna make you a spot right here they were excited it was like church they were excited to have a guest i came in they made room for me and this lady goes she might want to pick up your weights right over there and i looked and she had 10-pound weights and so i went over and i got 25s how y'all laughing i set them down and she looked at me she goes you might want to drop weight i'm like how is granny telling me i need to drop weight i'm like i'm good i literally said that through i said i think i'm good and then we started body pump body pump is high intensity high intensity interval training where the person in front of you squat squat and squat and knees and knees granny was killing it hey hey hey for a minute and a half i was too but after a minute and a half those 25s felt like 65s and i looked over at granny she was killing it she was like you can do it i was like i can't i know why they call it drop weight because i dropped the weight right there i tried to do it without weight and in about four minutes i was hands on the knees just just sucking there i didn't even make it the whole class i left granny was like come back i was like i hate you discourager of the brethren i mean it was bad i was i was relying on a year's old experience i was relying on high school ability in my 30s and some of y'all had a relationship with god years ago and now you're trying to do heavy lifting and you just got to get back in day to day can i tell you i hope this takes some pressure off of you you're not going to be able to lift it all today you may not even read the bible today that's okay just talk to god today start somewhere try your best to get unstuck deal with it today don't say i'll deal with it later well everything will work out the key word there is work at some point you've got to work got to work it out well time heals all things no no it doesn't some things only the holy spirit heals and if you don't deal with it now it grows into a major problem i'm talking to somebody right now because you have you have felt like i'll just deal with it later it'll work itself out and it will not work itself out the bible says some things will grow here's what hebrews 12 and 15 says see to it that no one misses the grace of god and the no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many you mean it started as a little bit of anger a little bit of just frustration and righteous i was mad at somebody who did me wrong but because i didn't deal with it it's grown into this monster now that overtakes every area of my life where's all the single people at where you at single people every campus online raise your hand hold them up high keep them up high that's what you're working with at this campus look around there you go good crop over here at west houston all right look around y'all go check the crop at katy all right woodlands is coming all right it's a different crop all right i am the real pastor guys this is it that's it that's it okay all right so listen single people if you're single or maybe maybe you're engaged and you're or maybe you're dating somebody okay and you didn't raise your hand you're like i'm not single cause i'm dating someone but you're dating somebody you're not married yet if you're not married yet and you're dating somebody who's angry they're just angry break up you're welcome here's why because if they're angry now they will only get angrier as time goes on and you will never be able to close an account that you didn't open there's married people in here right now going hey man this is so good i love you because i can't forgive you and i can't apologize for something i didn't do to you you have to at some point deal with it all right turn to your neighbor and say deal with it just deal with it ephesians 4 31 says get rid of all bitterness rage anger brawling and slander along with every form of malice get rid of all bitterness rage anger some of y'all that just means get rid of social media all brawling and slander along with every form of malice i read that in the greek that word that phrase get rid of literally means get rid of what does that mean deal with it at some point deal with it or your children will be dealing with your anger and your frustration and everybody else will be paying for something somebody else did and we can never close that account you got to deal with it or ultimately it will cause you to do the third thing and that is you just you just give up just give up i'm just done you're here but you're not here that's a terrible place to be it's not an easy place to be in a situation where you just i'm here but ah you don't know what i've been through and you don't know the pain and you don't know the heartache and you don't know the struggle if you knew who i really was you knew what i'd really done if you knew what i was really involved in you wouldn't apply any of this to me that's what you say and you begin to write yourself off and here's why because you have confused the tension between external transformation and internal transformation and there should always be a tension there we should have things that we do to try not to do the stupid things we want to do okay you should have somebody now this is going to be very controversial to some of you but if you're married your spouse needs to have access to your social media accounts [Applause] [Music] they need to be able to look at it in your email and now if you've if you're married to one of those somebody's literally still clapping over there [Music] [Applause] listen if you're married to one of those weird people who is a stalker status on your spouse that's not what i'm talking about he's like well you put a comma in this email to this person and like you need deliverance but you need to have somebody to help you stay accountable and i think all of that's good you need to have some software in your house to keep some things accountable for your kids and all that all that's important but please don't think it takes the place of internal transformation because what happens is you begin to rely on you and not on god you begin to try to achieve your relationship with god instead of receive your relationship from god now i'm trying to achieve grace i'm trying to achieve mercy and what happens that means every time i fail i fail and i lose mercy and i lose grace and i lose god's righteousness the bible says our righteousness is as filthy rags but it also says we are the righteousness of god how in christ jesus so it's not my righteousness that does it it's his righteousness that covers me and i cannot achieve that i can only receive that and the only way that i can receive that is to lay down my life at his feet and say i cannot do this alone i'm going to do my best but i'm going to let you cover the rest i do my best and grace covers the rest this is so important for us to get john 5 39 jesus said this you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life these are the scriptures that testify about me yet you refuse to come to me to have life can't tell you this i love that you have a relationship with the church that's good come to church go to a group that's important go through growth track we have a two-step process you can do it online or you can do it at one of our campuses you go through growth track you discover your purpose get on the dream team that is awesome i love it that you do that i hope you kind of like me that's not bad i like my church and i like my pastor but that doesn't save you i mean i'm cool paul said follow me as i follow christ and if i stop following christ stop following me because it's never been about me it's never been about the pastor it's never been about the leader it's always for god's glory get a relationship with jesus and not just the church somebody online needs to hear that i love that you follow so many pastors and i think it's great and follow and listen to all the preaching clips but at some point turn social media off get on your face begin to pray and hear directly from the author and the finisher of our faith it's a relationship with jesus that matters most [Applause] what i love about it is you can't achieve it and he knew you couldn't i love how good god is and he just he just he just let us know hey i know how messed up you are i know how messed up you are turn to your neighbor say he knows he knows he he already knows some of y'all got scared just then when they said he knows you were like do you know he knows fine you i don't want you to know here's what romans 5 8 says but god demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners christ died for us what does that say he's enough even when i'm not it's already paid and i can't earn it i can just receive it so today i'm not going to stand in my own way of god's grace and mercy i'm gonna stand here with open arms and say god i trust you so how do we have this secret to contentment how do we how do i stand here with a smile on my face hey all of us went through 20 20. my dad preached a message one time i need to preach it i need to preach some of it sometime here pop he preached his message there was a movie called black hawk down about a skirmish in mogadishu somalia and in the book that detailed before the movie even came out in the book that detailed what happened one of the young sergeants or one of the young privates who was driving a humvee the guy who was driving the humvee got shot and so the sergeant grabbed him and said you drive and he looked at the sergeant and he said but i'm shot sir i've been shot and the sergeant looked at him and said everybody's shot get in and drive we've all been shot everybody went through 2020. we all have it in common the whole world quarantined all of us we all know what masks are and then we have the face shield people i call them the storm troopers you you know how about you see them walking through the airport face shield goggles i am your father i'm like okay i probably shouldn't have said that how do we make it through all of this hey it's not gonna get easier the world's not getting easier it's getting harder man's not getting better we just find new ways to sin how do we keep a smile on our face and trust god through it paul said it philippians 4 13 the next verse he says i can do everything how through christ who gives me strength what does that mean i'm going to let jesus be my filter for every situation i'm not going to get my joy from circumstances i'm going to get my joy from an internal source out of his belly shall flow springs of living water so it's something that comes from the inside of me and greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world so even when it's bad god is still good and i can still smile through the pain that verse of scripture is used out of context all the time to help you go apply for a new job remember i can do all things through christ it gives me strength and i like i'm fine with that and a lot of ballplayers use it hey i can do all things who cry i think that's great i love it but the context is in prison when it's hard and you're at the point of death i can still witness to the prison guards i can still have joy when i should not have joy they're getting ready to kill me and i'm still going oh man everybody in here knows that i'm in here for the cause of christ how are you doing that i can do all things through christ who gives me strength lord i thank you for each and every person under the sound of my voice i pray that right now in this moment god that you would remind them that you loved them before they even knew you and you love them through their sin and you know everything they've ever done and you know everything they will ever do and you have already forgiven them you're just waiting on them to receive it with nobody looking around right now if that's you if you're in that place you've been faking it [Music] maybe at some point you just decided i'll deal with it later or maybe you've completely quit if that's you nobody looking around just lift your hand and say that's me that's me thank you hands all over the room i want us all to pray this prayer together will you pray out loud with me and then then you can stay in your seats and our our campus leaders will come up and they'll dismiss you but let's pray this prayer will you pray with me jesus you're the only one who can save me i trust you with my life i believe you're the son of god you died and rose again so that i can live free so right now i repent of my sins i give you all of my failures and i receive your love i receive your grace i receive your mercy and i'm asking you jesus to be the lord of my life in jesus name amen come on let's give him an ovation of worship

Channel: Hope City

Views: 93,960

Rating: 4.9122257 out of 5

Keywords: Jeremy Foster, Hope City, pastor jeremy, jermy foster, jeramy foster, hope city church, church, houston church, hope city jeremy, jeremy hope, philippians, paul the apostle, content, ephesians, biblical sermon, inspire, inspirational sermon, inspirational message, local church, hope houston, city church houston, are you missing it, hope city, jeremey foster

Id: AdKRnZ_vc9U

Length: 44min 12sec (2652 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021