Church From Space With Astronaut Shane Kimbrough & Pastor Levi Lusko

[Music] shane thank you so much for taking some time to link up with us today how are you doing man we're doing great it's really great to to talk to you levi and talk to fresh life so i'm glad glad we can do this today well on behalf of everybody at fresh life and our online family and everyone joining in thank you for taking time out of a very busy schedule up there uh and to everyone at nasa we're so grateful for facilitating this and letting us just have a moment to get a peek into your life there on the international space station yeah huge thanks to the ground team i know they've been working with your team and we're glad to do this and i want to welcome you all to the international space station my gosh so we're in a series as you know called look up talking about the power of hope and hard times and i thought it would be appropriate to literally look up because there you are in the space station above us 250 miles uh going around the planet once every 90s or so minutes what i just can't even fathom that it's just incredible yeah we're we're in a pretty special place obviously um just getting the incredible view we have of planet earth is just out of control and then when you look the other way look into deep space and you see the billions and billions of stars out there it's just it's just mind-blowing i mean it really is it's really a special place to be now shane uh of course i have to say this because you're in space and you're flying around in microgravity uh is there any way you could do a flip for us because you're wearing that fresh shirt and just to see you uh do do a flip just the boy in me has to ask oh my gosh incredible thank you so much i just had to channel my inner you know lost boy and ask you to be peter pan for just a quick minute because that is your daily life up there my pleasure glad to do it now shane uh when we were with you last we were of course separated from glass and with your family at a distance because like the world has discovered in these last couple years quarantine is important when there's a disease but for nasa that's been a way of life for a very long time going all the way back to the apollo pro program there was quarantines before launches so i mean that's kind of how you keep uh the space station free from germs right exactly right and it's been usually about a two week quarantine and that's historically the way we've done it to make sure again that we're staying away from the general public and we don't you know get sick or or take anything with us that once we get up here in a very closed environment uh if somebody's sick everybody's gonna get sick so we have been doing this quarantine process like you said ever since the apollo days and it's been very effective to maintain health and stabilization up here on the space station and for jenny and i and my kids who were on the beach in cocoa beach uh that day watching you launch april 17th we had been looking forward to for so long but honestly even though i was four point some miles away at the viewing area i was devastated emotionally by the experience of that rocket launch i can only imagine what that was like for you uh is there any way you could put us into your mind as you're lying there on your back on that falcon 9 rocket in your dragon capsule and about to blast off just what that what that felt like yeah absolutely incredible obviously that's a the whole day is uh an interesting day as you remember as an early morning launch i think we got up around 10 30 p.m we're on a weird sleep shift to be able to meet that uh six or so a.m launch and uh maybe about four hours before launch we walk out of the building in our spacesuits and head to the launch pad just prior to that we get a little special moment with our families um so that was real you know kind of an emotional moment and then we get in in tesla's because we're flying with spacex of course and drive to the launch pad and then uh in my tesla it was just megan mcarthur and i one of my crewmates um along with the driver and then the other two crewmates were in the one behind us and then we got to jam to some music on the way out there and just kind of relieve a little bit of stress maybe that's going on or just enjoy really the moment uh and then we climb in the vehicle get strapped in about two and a half to three hours before the launch and those two and a half to three hours we're doing some work in there with running checklists and getting ready to go but there's a lot of down time so we had a lot of fun with each other played a few games along the way and then when it was time to go we were all ready and once we felt those engines light there's nine engines on the falcon rocket we felt those light and super powerful and it was just incredible i think we all started smiling and laughing and shortly after that we started accelerating and uh took us about nine nine and a half minutes to get to space so we went from zero to 17 500 miles an hour in about nine minutes so that acceleration was incredible to feel and the power of those rockets uh was pretty fantastic oh my gosh and the second stage uh i remember we talked on the podcast before you went that you had heard the second stage was a kick in the pants which is just a hilarious frank sinatra kind of like line uh did it did it live up to the the hype yeah it did it was it was pretty special we once we hit main engine cut off from the first stage you kind of float for a little bit you're a little bit weightless until that second engine kicks in a second stage engine kicks in and it really threw us back in our seats and gave us a nice kick in the pants to accelerate even more yeah i like referring to one million pounds of thrust as a kick in the pants that is just you too a t the calm under that kind of intensity now that's been something that you have had a part of your life and obviously you have the right stuff but you were an apache helicopter pilot in desert storm so thank you again for your service in the united states army on behalf of our whole church and country thank you very much well thanks levi it's an honor to serve our nation first in the military and now at nasa uh and really now i'm serving all the humanity being a part of an international crew up here and we were doing things for the entire world so it's a very special thing to to be able to serve amazing and uh what i was going to say was having that helicopter war intensity you know life and death hanging in the balances that kind of got bred into you and then obviously you had that in your personality but then you flew on the space shuttle back in 2008 and then again on the uh russian soyuz rocket in 2016. so i'm sure it never gets old but this was a third time's a charm kind of a situation could you maybe just walk us through a little bit of the difference in flying in the shuttle some of those watching have seen the space shuttle launches maybe on tv or even in person some watching and then of course the the one that you did from russia that was probably a very different experience and then even maybe how those two compare to this most recent one absolutely yeah they're three i've been very fortunate to fly on three different spacecraft um all very different um different you know in size and in power the space shuttle was massive um true icon i mean probably the most complex vehicle ever built by any human and uh it's an american vehicle of course so very patriotic kind of thing that the amount of thrust there is about seven and a half million pounds of thrust off the launch pad so compare that to the million with spacex so the first couple of minutes on space shuttle on the launch we are rocking and rolling and shaking around like you may see in the movies or would imagine and then once the solid rocket boosters come off and then you're purely accelerating then it gets a little smooth the soyuz launch i would say was um the tamest of all of them is nice and smooth all the way up and then spacex the rocket was kind of uh somewhere in between so we had we had some some big moments of rocking and rolling but uh then it was just pure acceleration for a lot of it too so very different styles of of launch uh in different vehicles in general wow now third time multiple spacewalks of course different missions each time uh this last mission you guys have done you personally have done two different space walks being out there working on the solar arrays and lots of things didn't go right you had a issue with your suit and kind of had to go back in and come back out again nothing was going like the plan was and then on august 1st the entire space station had something go wrong when it kind of got into a dangerous trajectory and wasn't quite looking good for a little while how do you remain calm under pressure and not freak out when something like a space suit shuts down for a minute yeah i think a lot of that goes back to my training like you mentioned earlier in the military we're we're used to you know thinking of the worst cases and training for the worst cases and hopefully those never happen but we're prepared for them if they do our training at nasa really is no different we train not just in the u.s and nasa but at all the space centers around the world in europe and in japan and in russia as well with that same kind of intensity and training for the worst case scenario that these incredible smart engineers can think of and then we're ready for those and so when something like that happened um in early august up here when uh the space station was literally tumbling out of control our crew got together very calmly like we were trained and then everybody kind of took their role in what they were supposed to be doing and so i really rely on our training a ton and i did the same thing in the military and up here we have the good fortune most the time of having an incredible ground team in all the mission control centers around the world they're also helping us now during that event in august we didn't have that luxury for some of the time because we were tumbling so fast that the satellites couldn't pick up our antenna so we couldn't talk to anybody so we were kind of on our own for a little bit but that's again where the training kicked in a lot of our personalities kicked in our crew is we're no strangers we've been training together for over a year before we get up here in some cases two or three years and so we know each other we know each other's strengths and weaknesses and we know how to rely on each other in those kind of situations incredible and praise god i know that was one of only four such events that have ever happened like that in the 20 years that the space station this flying laboratory has been orbiting our planet so unbelievable and we're so grateful you guys are safe um this is an interesting time when it seems like so many different private companies are entering this space sp sphere uh bezos people have watched with blue origin and of course richard branson could you maybe help those watching kind of understand how different we're talking in the apogee of those two vehicles how high they get up from the planet versus where you're at in low earth orbit yeah sure first of all we're really excited of anybody getting involved in space travel with all these private companies now it's really really incredible for all of the space business so we're very happy for them richard branson as you mentioned flew he went up to 50 miles and uh and i think bezos just had to outdo them so he went to 53.2 miles and to put that in perspective again we're about 250 miles above the earth their flights were very short just a few minutes uh in that weightless regime before they headed back to planet earth uh where we're up here for you know about 200 days at a time um so very different we're not competing with them or anything but it is a new era of space travel and we're really excited that private citizens now are starting to fly and hopefully it'll become more available in the next few decades to the common person wow it's not a competition but you are winning um and i think it's amazing and and obviously god bless both of them and it's just like you said the more the merrier and the more people will be able to do it um you've been up there for months this mission the plan was over six months you've already done six months i i can't even imagine the man versus himself battles i know you spend two hours of every single day keeping your body strong but what do you do to keep yourself mentally strong and just dealing with literally being in a space station for six months plus well first of all we have an incredible crew up here so we all get along and we have fun with each other and we make sure we're keeping it light even though we're working really hard all day so that helps and then in our free time our down time we have a chance to you know call our family call our friends to stay in touch that definitely helps the mental side i think you you need some time away and time alone up here and so our sleep stations or our crew quarters are very private and so those are places you can go literally to get away from everybody else and it's a very important piece of this and everybody has kind of different hobbies and things they do up here whether it's watching a movie or watching tv or reading a book or just looking out the window or taking pictures of planet earth those kind of things keep our minds going and keep us healthy and i know you're personally like i am a person of faith uh what part has that played in spiritually speaking keeping strong while you're while you're up there well we've got really great connectivity now i've been able to watch several of my favorite pastors live sometimes and sometimes recorded i get things your the fresh life and passion sent up to me every week so i get to enjoy you guys that's really really great for me personally just to stay connected with you for one and then you know hear the good word um you know once or twice a week which is fantastic i also have a personal private time devotional every day where i read through devotionals or you know just reading the bible to me has really been very important to stay grounded for one to to you know have the right perspective for two and then to hopefully just be able to shine the light to anybody i get to talk to up here whether it's my crewmates or mission control or anybody i'm talking to on a pr event like this wow incredible um shane we have a couple questions that we put on on social media and some of our fresh life online family put a couple questions so if it's okay i'll ask a few of these to you just kind of lightning round the first question came from instagram and it's and i love this it's so poetic is the silence loud that's the question i'm just curious is the silence loud wow well up here well inside on the space station um it's it's not silent um there's fans and things going and all the different modules to keep our equipment running um and we have communications with the ground teams all the time coming through our intercom system and our radio system and of course we get to chat with everybody just like you're in an office building or at your church we're chatting with our crewmates just like that so now i think they're they're talking about going outside and the silence out there now thank goodness in our in our spacesuits when we do spacewalks we have communication built into our helmets and our in our headsets that we can communicate not with just the ground but also our other crewmates either in the space station or that are out there with us very good um i know that you took off in a tesla like you said to the launch pad this is not from social media and it said reduce reuse recycle on the license plates of those three teslas that took you guys to the pad uh i'm curious even just seeing the earth seeing how fragile the atmosphere is this is personally what what what has it changed of your view of the earth from being out there you know i get a little bit um i think more this way every time i get the chance to come up here and it's to that we just have to take care of our planet it's the only habitable planet that we know of right now and the perspective we have up here we can literally see the fragile thin layer of atmosphere that's protecting everyone down on earth from living and dying and so it's made me want to be more aware in those three words you said that that were on our teslas are very important to i think do that and you know reducing carbon footprints and just taking care of our planet better because it's the only one we have so i just get that perspective literally every time i look out the window and see that thin layer of atmosphere so it's very humbling it's very striking of course it's incredibly beautiful but very humbling amazing shane you called me to when you got assigned to this crew and asked me if i would uh want to send something with you on the mission in addition to the t-shirt you're wearing the fresh t-shirt also sent with you a necklace and then the other item do you have those with you i do they're right here in my hands they're in little ziploc bags so that we don't lose them um and everything like this has velcro on it so that they don't fly away on us but uh yeah i have them right here okay so the first one's a necklace that has charms for each of my kids that i plan to give them when they turn 18 as a gift and those things have flown in space which is so special so olivia daisy lennox and clover those are your your gifts there that have been to space uh those charms that you'll get on your own necklaces but then also in your other bag shane you have a thumb drive that says on at the last supper on the moon right that's it and uh it's a full manuscript of of something that's special to you i know yeah it was incredible the god timing of it all because i had that day you called me finished a book that was equal parts saving my life in 2020 from losing my mind and also just something i felt was a god-given mission and i just finished the most ambitious publishing project of my life this book all about space and all about the moon and all about nasa and all of these it's equal parts my love letter to the cross for what jesus has done and love letter to space and the day i finished the rough draft you called asking if i could send anything to space it was just so amazing yeah so honored to have this up here and uh it's really really going to be special for everybody that gets a chance to read it so here's the official announcement january 11th this will be coming out and thank you again for the part you've played in it i quote you and i had to clear one thing up because i quote you in the book shane talking about the backflip that you guys would do on the space shuttle to make sure that none of the tiles were damaged for re-entry and i said in the book that that flip happened when you left the station but robbie told me she thought the flip happened when you come to the station so can you clear that up for us yeah it's on the way up to the space station we do once we get near the space station the space shuttle used to do a back flip and the crew members on the space station would then be photographing the tiles underneath and that's how we did that okay so we can fix that before we go to print well thanks again for bringing that up there one more question from social media and this question is how much training did it take for you to be able to be an astronaut well that's a hard one to answer because literally my whole life has trained me at some level to get to this point at least my professional life my education um that all prepared me to be an astronaut uh being in the army in the military prepared me to be a competitive candidate for the astronaut program and then being here once i've once i got here in 2004 as an astronaut it takes about two years to go through what i call basic astronaut school astronaut candidate school and so once you get through that then you're able to be assigned to a mission technically but usually it takes you know two to six more years after that before you get assigned to a mission and then once you get assigned to a mission you usually train about anywhere from one to two and a half years for that specific mission and so we're always training we're always learning uh when i get back from this mission i'll get into another job and i'll still be learning and still will train you know to prepare for a potential future mission so we never stop training and so it's kind of hard to answer your question there's no like oh you need two years and you're good to go you got to keep learning and getting better and better so that you can do your job as well as you can or support the others that are getting ready to go fly in space all your buddies so the training never stops amazing well shane i'm really excited to ask to join with me out here on the stage someone very special to you uh your wife robbie kimbrough who we wanted to surprise you with by bringing out here to be a part of this conversation we'll have to go upside down for that that's awesome oh he flipped upside down that's nice hello robbie uh fresh live welcome robbie uh shane's wife hello and look at him upside down like a bat he's smiling yep that's amazing we just thought while uh while shane's away for six months and thank you robbie for your sacrifice and all of that uh we would have you out to montana our plan was a spa day for you but instead we dragged you through the woods and got you nice it was the best i want i prefer that so much more sweaty and dirty you brought us some nasa swag of which i've got one of shane's patches here and so i thought we'd have you together just for a moment because when we were with you guys for the launch which was the last time we were together we got to be at the wave across event where shane gets to be with the family from a little bit of a distance you're quarantined with them of course and then we all had a prayer and a song and i just you just your emotional reaction to all that oh my well jenny thanks to jenny because she she started the worship i mean we were all kind of just dumbfounded and just seeing all the family in one room together at the hanger the spacex hanger and jenny just you know spontaneously started to sing and praise god and it's what we needed in that moment and y'all being there and just with all the family and being able to worship and praise god right before z or shane went to do all this it was it was exactly what was needed in the moment and we could not have asked for something better it was awesome shane what was that experience like for you there that moment that that singing that waymaker song it wasn't it was just the whole event was emotional because you know i'd been through it and i just knew how special those moments are with uh your loved ones and family right there in front of you about 10 feet away and then of course like ravi said when jenny started singing it it was you know it was just an emotional moment um i think robbie and i were holding hands and we just started squeezing each other very tight and really hold on to that that one last kind of moment together as we worship together wow and i know robbie has in her hands a book that you have up there in space as well a devotional the focused life i was curious just for a moment shane what what is the experience like staying connected because i know you guys are planning your daughter daughter's wedding taylor's getting married in november which i was curious shane what is more nerve-wracking a spacewalk or the thought of walking your daughter down the aisle uh yet to be seen as this will be my first um but yeah i think it's gonna be it's obviously gonna be a special moment and uh we'll have to see if i can hold it together or not and your daughter um is uh is one of your three children of course you guys have caitlyn and taylor and zach all amazing kids so maybe just shane could you speak to for a moment to staying connected because not everybody's going to deal with space travel but everybody deals with distance so shane how do you stay connected to your wife how do you stay connected with your kids when your your job takes you literally 250 miles up yeah we i would say we have it pretty good up here honestly i get to talk to robbie every day i call her on the phone every day we get to chat and just stay in touch so that's really important for our relationship for one um and then just for her to keep me up to date with whatever is going on on planet earth as well our kids we get to video chat once a week so usually on saturdays or sundays we'll get a chance to do a video chat with everybody so with robbie and all of our kids on the same screen for me even though they're all in different cities nasa does a great job of pulling them all together so we can all be be together for about an hour or so every weekend and then usually during the week i'll get a chance to call the kids you know once or twice on top of that to stay connected with them they're all very busy they're all in school right now and but it's still great to stay in touch with them and just you know kind of be connected and that's really special and again we have really great technology up here to allow us to do to do that i know folks in the military don't have near this capability and people are getting deployed all the time and so i feel for them even more for for many reasons but one is the connectivity that we're really blessed to have up here anything you doubt on that no i mean it just it does our heart so much good to be able to just see his face once a week and just show them the dog and the backyard and just the house and the normal life and all of that so and and all the family being on the screen together um just it's good for us and it's so cool that you guys are reading the same yeah that's right yes that you all gave us yeah everybody's got this i think we're we're close on the same days but it's nice that we can reference the psalms and the proverbs and and the different things that we can do together incredible that you guys gave us so cool well shane thank you robbie thank you on behalf of our whole church family i would love if i could just say a prayer for you guys we're grateful for what you're doing it matters i hope everybody in our church family will get the iss tracker app where you can see this space station go by with a naked eye on a dark evening and think and pray for the safety of everybody aboard and we're really really grateful for what you guys are doing every single person on the space station and at nasa sacrificing to make this possible to extend the borders of possibility all the important experiments you're doing and everything that god's doing through you guys thank you levi and thank you fresh life well father thank you for shane thank you for his spirit his heart thank you for his mind and everybody aboard the space station serving from the different countries and the way it's a picture of heaven every tribe tongue language and nation represented in your kingdom and there on the space station all these different countries and space agencies coming together and we do pray for your hand to be continually upon it and upon every single astronaut and cosmonaut up there and we pray for you to bring them safely back home to their families thank you for the work that they're doing and thank you for the way that it reminds us all to look up and we pray for your hand to be upon robbie and their family through the rest of the mission until you bring shane back to them and we just thank you for the faith that links us up together and we pray this in the name of jesus amen amen amen thanks again i got to do another one for you awesome yeah come on a flip on the way out thank you so much shane come on let's hear it can we get up for shane one more time and robbie kimbrough shane and robbie we love you what a privilege what a pleasure now this is all a part of this conversation these 35 days of hope and we spent much of last week in the story of joseph and walking through what hope looked like when he found himself in the pit and in that pit he made the decision to not stare at the pit he was in but to lift his eyes and to look up and to keep his heart centered on god even when for the next years years his life was full of pain and betrayal and even when it looked like he was about to get out being forgotten about and how easy it would be to be disillusioned and as we move into the second week now talking about what it means to look up in hard times we're moving our attention to david and david like shane is experiencing in space and like you and i are all going to face in life dealt with times where he felt isolated where he felt all alone and maybe just maybe he felt panic creeping in to his heart i can't imagine what it must feel like at times even though i know shane is incredibly grateful for the opportunity but to have that feeling of i can't get out of here even if i want to and that kind of like terror that would at times maybe show up in the midst of a night's sleep i know david sure felt like that when he was a young man a prophet came to his family's farm and singled him out out of all of his siblings and he had a lot better looking buffer braver brothers and out of all those boys the prophet chose him he wasn't even included his dad didn't even think the opposite of joseph he was the anti-joseph where joseph's dad doted on him the most for being younger david's dad didn't even include him when the prophet was going to pick a king out of his his boys david wasn't even invited to to be at the table or in the conversation meaning his dad didn't even think that he was king material but david didn't care he was just happy to do his job and to take care of those sheep and when a bear would attack him he would beat the bear down when he didn't have bear spray or anything he just took the bear down with his bare hands and slingshot it's just amazing he just had this heart to put himself in in harm's way to take care of those sheep that's how seriously he took his job the same when a lion would come and then a servant came and said david your dad needs you there's a prophet none of your brothers have been picked they want us he wants to see you just shows you that if you just keep your your heart on what god got in front of you right now when god wants to exalt you he knows how to come and get you where you are you're not out of his sight you're not i just my life has been proof of that i remember one of the if i'm honest with you for a moment i hope i'm always honest with you but if i'm just laying myself bare let myself bare for a little bit when god first called jenny and i uh years ago these now almost 15 years ago the dream of moving to montana and start fresh life church we at the time were ministering in southern california and god was doing things through our lives that we were looking at going this feels like what we dreamt about when we were young this this feels like what we've been called to do we were preaching at events and lots and lots of people would come and when i first thought god are you calling us to move and start this thing called fresh life in montana the rational side of my brain said levi you've been called to reach a lot of people there are not a lot of people in that state so it just doesn't make sense a wise voice spoken in my life and said this is not god's will there are more cows than people in montana and so why would you move away from opportunity move away from what god's doing when it doesn't seem like that makes sense and i couldn't argue with the logic but i couldn't deny the holy spirit was speaking to me you are called to do reach a lot of people and move to montana and how that's going to work i don't know and and we've just watched god uh open doors and create opportunities without us trying to make them happen just be faithful and with what's in front of us and it always makes us marvel when we get to look up and go oh my gosh this this this chance this opportunity and and god just does his thing that's david's story just taking care of the sheep now he's being anointed to become king and his brothers are all looking on like what in the heck just like the world's going to look on when as you continue to do what god called you to do he finds you he promotes you he blesses you he gives you more than you deserve i'm just telling you that's our god so don't leave the sheep that's the sermon don't leave the sheep to stay with the sheep do what you're called to do with all your heart you take care of that that little classroom you take care of that little opportunity you do that that what feels like a little thing right now but you just keep doing it that etsy shop that youtube channel that thing you're working on i'm just telling you just do with all your heart and you watch god just continue to to weave and and and move and and change and bless well now david's anointed y'all he has the oily clothes to prove it right oil ran down his head that's how they got kings ready for their assignment and he's sort of thinking like what's a king going to do next pretty soon his dad said hey david i think those sheep are hungry oh and you know what he did went back straight to the sheep and there he was when his brothers were all fighting a war that david didn't even get to be a soldier in his dad said hey david your brothers the soldiers are hungry need you to bring them some cheese and bring them some bread and he's like oh cool i'm the king aka pizza delivery boy and david said cool how much do you want me to take where are they going to be and while there his brother is fighting this battle this giant starts making fun of god starts making fun of israel and david says is anybody going to do anything about that and they said well the king says he'll he'll bless anybody who does he goes well i can't let god be talked about that way so he goes and does the same thing to the giant that he did to the lion and the bear you see he didn't know when the bear attacked the sheep that he was in training for a fight that he didn't even know was coming but had he not been faithful back then when no one was watching in the field he wouldn't have had the confidence to face the giant with the entire army watching we are always in training everything's a test training never ends it builds shane was faithful in the helicopter desert storm and didn't know how that would impact later opportunities open up other doors when he was a little boy he had the dream planted of being an astronaut listen to youtube this week i did a conversation with robbie privately what's it like to be an astronaut's wife that's the real question right we need to hear more from ravi and she's going to talk about yeah that's amazing you're doing a spacewalk i'm doing laundry and how do we have the right heart because this whole thing what astronauts mentality and thinking how does it apply to life on earth and i like the juxtaposition of the moment we're in because civilians just got back from space four of them jared and dr proctor and chris and haley this this inspiration four mission doing what has kind of been the thing ever since neil armstrong landed on the moon who by the way was a civilian and everyone sort of forgets that oh civilians have never been well the first guy to walk in the moon was and i love the idea that normal people can do this stuff and i love that god does want to work through your life and god has great plans for you and so david discovered that if you're faithful god will just keep opening up more opportunities but don't let your big dreams keep you from little jobs done well with all your heart to give god the credit even after goliath is dead you're thinking dude king me right that's what you're thinking you're thinking king me but instead the opposite happens david began to be hunted by the king who grew jealous of him even though david never wanted to do anything but help the king ever want to do anything but bless the king the saul launches on this massive massive smear campaign to discredit david and to hurt david and soon david has to leave his home and go on the run and he ends up joseph was in a pit david ends up in a cave and there in the cave he was presented with opportunity after opportunity to kill saul because saul has a serio it's like almost like a it's a scene out of the john grisham novel okay like harrison ford and tommy lee jones it's like it's a manhunt and and now he's in this position where he could kill saul who was hunting him because he was hiding in the back of a cave and saul came to take a nap in the cave and and david's friends his he's got this bad like sons of anarchy crew who's rolling deep with him and they're like where your right or die bro and when they see saul they're like dude you could split that punk's throat right two in the chest one in the head this this cat's gotta go down and david says i will not sin against god there's not a greater test i can imagine you know how joseph had the chance to give revenge on all his brothers so did david here i think it's a great test when we're given a shot like that what will we do david says god wouldn't be pleased with it god wouldn't be blessed by that i will not lift my hand against someone that god appointed and he did not take saul's life that day or the next time the same thing happened you see my point in all of this is just like shane was in training for missions that were going to come and and even his first space shuttle mission it was just a temporary assignment they called it the extreme makeover space edition because their job was to bring another bathroom and to bring a another module for the gym up and he was just going to stay there for a little while he was sleeping in the space shuttle and then go back home he had no idea he would get another mission and when he got the next mission it would be a six-month assignment where he would live in the house he had been working on he thought i'm doing this for other astronauts it turned out it benefited him isn't that so cool so two hours a day he's working to deal with the effects of microgravity on the human body which is really devastating for the body unless you counter affect it so that's why he works out two hours a day so he doesn't come home shriveled and anemic and sickly and with his bones deteriorated and losing all kind of muscle mass and so but every time he's doing a set of bench press on that special machine that he works out on which i can tell you does not involve weights it's all magnets because it would weigh nothing look 900 pounds dog right it's all like magnus is super fascinating to me as you can tell contain yourself levi but he's he's doing it on a gym he thought he installed for somebody else give your life away and in so doing you will find it we never know when we're being measured for a larger opportunity in god's hand and david throughout all these things and i'll just bring this to a landing because you're going to get to spend it all week long and in this devotional if you have it and if you look on the fresh life reading plans on youversion if you don't have it yet joining on tv or wherever you can get it and join us in this soap journal journey through 35 days of hope david comes out of this thing and as god promised he is anointed and appointed king over all israel second samuel chapter 4 and 5 a full 27 years after that day in first samuel 16 when the oil ran down his brow there was a space between what do we do when there's a space between promise and fulfillment no you might not get to the space station i might not get to mars all right maybe maybe you can if you have a billion dollars please buy me a seat i would love to come with you but let me say this we might not get to space but we all deal with the space between promise and fulfillment a dream given and a dream realized and in those days we have to remember there's purpose in it that's what it feels like sometimes crazy and purposeless and god's forgotten and where what's happening here the space between has a purpose and the purpose is for you to be developed so that when the dream's realized it doesn't crush you listen to me carefully if the light that's on you is is brighter than the light inside of you it will destroy you and at times the reason god doesn't allow us instantly to get to what we are qualified for by our gift today is because he knows that your gifts can take you to places where your character can't sustain you and had david been given the crown that he was destined for when he was in first samuel 16 perhaps he would have become a king like saul and not been a man after god's own heart who would do all of his will it was the cave days that formed and forged in him the kind of character and integrity that he would need down the line and then just to be completely pragmatic some of the best songs ever written have been written in the darkest places see also the book of psalms which shane and robbie and their kids have in that beautiful little leather bound book we were able to give them and that is this psalm after psalmist the psalm was david pouring out his heart because his life was hurting so much so here's a practical application for the sermon are you hurting today sing songs are you weary today turn to god that's what david did i wanted to read you a portion of one of shane's favorite psalms i emailed him and said what psalm is your favorite of david's i'd love to read one in your honor on this day he said immediately psalm 37 and in psalm 37 he was wrestling with the idea of people who seem like they're evil doing really well well people who are trying to be like good in their life like getting crapped on all the time by circumstances and if you've ever ever felt like that this isn't a church where you have to pretend like everything's okay it's okay to feel sometimes like life's crapping on you all right and sometimes it really does david was struggling with that when he wrote do not fret because of evil-doers nor be envious of the workers of iniquity for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb trust in the lord and do good dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness delight yourself also in the lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart commit your way to the lord trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass he shall bring forth your righteousness i'm speaking this over you today as delight and your justice as the noon day rest in the lord and wait patiently for him do not fret because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass cease from your anger and forsake wrath do not fret what does it do it only causes harm the steps of a good man are ordered by the lord and he delights in his way though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down for the lord upholds him with his hand i have been young and now i'm old yet i have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his descendants begging bread he is ever merciful and lens and his descendants are blessed but the salvation of the righteous is from the lord he is their strength in the time of trouble and the lord shall help them and deliver them he shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him would david have had the perspective and seasoning in his soul to be capable of such words had it not been for the incredible difficulty that he faced in this 27-year long period where he dealt with what you're facing today many of you the space between and so to me the invitation for us that that shane has to live out when the space station goes tumbling can you even imagine out of control loses verbal communication with houston and they calmly come together and formulate a plan even though every single one of them know there's a possibility of having to to be jettisoned out in a capsule a life raft i mean just all but staying calm and talking and sticking to the plan and remembering the training and that's the power of his hiding god's word in his heart and his personal devos and staying connected with his family and by the way how challenging was that i talked to my wife every day and i talked to my kids every single week i'm like goodness gracious some of us are like we're doing well if we even on earth not in space uh do that and and so that's amazingly challenging but but all of those things that he's doing on a regular basis watching church each week being grounded in a community the song tucked in his heart before the launch and the way that was ringing out still in his actions in those moments all of these things we can apply you're dealing with craziness your your life as well but you can choose to hide god's word in your heart you can choose to make sure you're working hard to prioritize staying in sync with your family and i know in the youtube video on wednesday we'll talk with robbie about it actually can be more challenging when he gets home soldiers deal with ptsd after they get home when life's really crazy you can be in the calm moments later on that you start to feel what you were doing in those days and the body keeps score and all of those things but we can choose to learn to put these things into in into action and the invitation is to hope and i love that when we read this from david we know that he went through things where he didn't know exactly what was going to happen next hope isn't you saying i know what this is going to look like as i keep following god hope is just saying i know that god knows this is not some formula this is not an atm machine we're not promising you you put your hope journal in the machine and push these buttons and here's exactly what's going to come out this is messy and in real time it's frustrating y'all i'm standing in a room i have shed thousands of tears in we we are speaking this in in the room where we had my daughter's funeral so this is not some message preached in some pie in the sky it could hurt someday i'm telling you sometimes it hurts like hell but hope works there too hope shines there too and in the cave and in the pit and in the the reality of being on a broken planet with a fragile atmosphere it's declaring that we have a glorious god who is still king and his son defeated the power of the grave when he rose up on the third day and so we can sit and say i will not fret i will not fear because what will that do i love what david said do not fret it only causes harm how can you make yourself taller by worrying can you color the change of your hair by stressing no you can't but our god sits as king and so hope says i don't know why god would let this happen i don't know what he has planned but god come what may i will follow you i will worship you and our simple decision to not fret and to hold on to peace and to believe in the power of the confidence of a brighter tomorrow that's hope it's an act of defiance in the face of the chaos that at times sits there in front of us taunting us so we will choose to look up to set our minds and our hearts and our attention and our focus on things that we cannot see with the naked eye [Music] and i believe especially for those of you whose hearts are heavy who are dealing with grief today or wondering where is god in your situation today the pain of divorce the pain of sickness the pain of abandonment someone who's betrayed you or really hurt you this is the perfect place to hold hope this is the the ground zero for us to look up and to rebuild better and to rebuild stronger we're gonna be smarter and we're gonna be better versions of ourselves because of these things and i believe that hope's invitation in the cave and that's where we're at this week we're in okay fine in that space between we have the chance to say god you're developing me so when you bring me on the other side i'm i cherish i choose to cherish this brutality [Music] because of who it's making me to be what you're doing in it you didn't send the evil let's be clear but you're sure as heck going to override it and overwhelm it and what man meant for evil i dare you to believe god you're going to use this for good two invitations as we close this worship experience and what an honor what a day thank you for being here thank you for being here as my day is has been made my life has been made this is amazing and all the excitement moving forward to january and i can't wait to talk to you more about that it's going to just it's going to be awesome i'm i'm so excited but two invitations first is an invitation a chance for anybody to say today i feel a bit like david levi the isolation the loneliness the fear i mean i feel like i'm about ready to do something foolish because we can all get out of the cave somehow or other if david cut that that king's neck he'd got out of that cave but he refused to so this is a chance for you to go i feel like killing my soul or i'm just tempted to do something dumb or i'm just fretting today i want to give you a space in time to in the presence of the lord to admit that church online every single one of you i believe god is sending this message right into your situation in boston and in rhode island and then or is that in the same place that's massachusetts in rhode island and wherever else you might be portland and salt lake city and and all across the world and hi beyond the world i gotta remember to start throwing that in every once in a while i'm tempted to forget um the second invitation goes to anybody today and you're here maybe you heard astronaut you're big on space nasa and all the stuff or you just bought a shirt of urban outfitters and so you kind of look like you are into it and you're here not quite so sure about this jesus thing and i just wanted to quickly speak to the invitation that's in the gospel for anybody to come to christ not just people who are religious people or jesus people if you are breathing god loves you jesus died for you on the cross he rose from the dead on your behalf he wants to put power into your casket hope inside your soul to bring you out of the grave to give you life while you're living here on this earth and i love one of the things i love today is we're in the japanese module by the way that we were in and all these wires one of the things i wanted dash in that i forgot to is do you really know what all those wires do it's like when i look into a cockpit i want to ask a pilot like do you know what any of that means you know what i'm saying like do you know any of those that button right there what does that one do busted right i wanted to ask shane like what is it i had him uh with the water that he was going to float the water out and drink it but the 25 minutes that nasa approved the satellite time for just went like that but one of the things i love about this is is we're seeing a false dichotomy torn down and the false dichotomy goes like this if i want to follow god i have to leave my mind at the door and science and faith are incompatible and let me just tell you something that is not true in fact john glenn the very first american to ever orbit the earth ever 1962 john glenn who got at the age of 77 to go back to space on the shuttle becoming at that time the oldest american to ever go to space and wally funk sort of destroyed that when she went up for her 15 minutes with bezos uh but john glenn when he got back to earth and was asked about the experience about what it did to be in outer space or inner space going to low earth orbit in his capsule as a person of faith i think the question in heron is like do you still believe in god when you go to space right being in a scientist and being a part like what does that do to your christian world view and here's what he had to say and i quote he said to look at this creation and not believe in god to me is impossible going to space at 77 he said has just strengthened my faith and so i just want to tell you today if a barrier to you to believing god is sort of thinking that that somehow doesn't work with science and somehow doesn't work with space and doesn't something doesn't work with with intelligence nothing could be further from the truth but there also uh is to those who would say like i i don't need to be saved because i'm so good or i've lived such a good life that's what i'm hoping for i don't believe in the idea of sin we've we've grown beyond that i would just say you must not have children all right because i'm just telling you we have to teach our kids to sin they do it really well all on their own and i think if we're honest with ourselves every one of us has a sense of guilt have a sense of i have hurt i have done wrong and so here's here's what god has done it's it's amazing to leave earth and go up that's awesome but how about god who sent his son jesus down to save us from our sin to save us from ourselves and when he rose from the dead on the third day and that stands the resurrection of jesus as a historical fact that very very few people who have looked into it with even a mind to destroy the the credibility of such an assertion have ever been able to walk away without absolutely shaking their head at the preponderance of data that exists to support the the statement that jesus christ came to this world two thousand years ago he died on the cross and he was seen by his followers many different times on many different days after the fact and they walked away from the experience prepared to go to their deaths believing that christ had risen from the dead when they gained nothing for such a belief and so here's the invitation if you've never given your heart to christ today's the day now's the time let him come into your heart and change your life and forgive you of your sins and give you the hope of heaven and peace while you live here below will you pray with me so firstly father to those who are hurting today thank you that there's hope not certainty of what it's going to look like but hope in you in the living god who raises the dead if you're here you would say i'm in a cave i'm hurting i'm lonely today i'm isolated today i'm i'm worried today would you raise your hand up letting god know just raise the hand up i feel like a bit like david today and i want some songs to come out of this season thank you jesus for these bless them may your favor like the oil that ran down david's head run upon them today your spirit in their lives may they feel like they are not alone for they are not you can put your hands down and now all around the world if you're here and you would say i want to give my life to jesus today i want to be saved from my sin today's my day i want to say a prayer and i want you to pray it with me because the bible says if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth you will be saved so let me give you language not as some sort of magic password but just your way of articulating that you believe that you receive that you were dead now you're alive in christ church family pray with us but if you're making this decision say this out loud right there in your living room every single location let god hear you let yourself hear you dear god i know that i'm a sinner i've done wrong things i can't forg i can't fix that i can't change that but i believe you can because your son jesus died for me and you raised him from the dead so thank you for new life i give you mine now with head still bowed and i still closed in a moment i'm gonna i'm gonna count down from five it's gonna be a little bit of a countdown and when i get to one if you just gave your heart to jesus either dedicating your life to him for the first time or perhaps as a rededication the prodigal son coming home i want you to shoot your hand up in the air raise it up high this is your way of saying this is real this has just happened i just decided to follow jesus when i get to one just shoot your hand up right there in your living room right there in the the gym on the stair master just shoot that hand up when i get to one god sees you you are not alone you're not orphaned you are loved he wants to use you to change this world four three two one raise your hands up raise your hands up raise your hands up we are celebrating in the room across the church across the world you can put your hands down we are so excited for this decision that you've made amen

Channel: Fresh Life Church

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Keywords: fresh life, levi lusko, look up, shane kimbrough, fresh life church, fresh life sermons, fresh life messages, 2021 sermons, levi lusko sermons, church online, online church, levi lusko messages, pastor levi lusko, hope, sermons about hope, messages about hope, nasa, iss, international space station, astronaut, interview with astronaut, nasa interview, space walk, astronaut interview

Id: uYXtj8jJFQ8

Length: 56min 2sec (3362 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021