♪♪♪ Dave Sumrall: Hey everyone,
my name is Dave, and my wife Kate and I pastor ITOWN Church. Thank you so much
for joining us. Now listen, if you aren't a big
fan of church or maybe you got burned by someone at church or
just had a bad experience, give me just a couple minutes
before you change the channel 'cause I'm hoping you
experience something a little bit different. We're not here to beat you
up or make you feel guilty. We're here because there is hope
that is found in Jesus Christ. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I
shared a message with our church about hope, and I wanted to
share that with you today. Check out this message
called "Hope For Today." ♪♪♪ Dave: Our theme verses,
Hebrews chapter 6. The Bible says that we have
this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm
and secure. And so, we've been taking this
journey for the last four weeks talking about, with my tiny
little undersized anchor, how we have to have
an anchor in life. Because our souls, we
learned in week one, is where we process
the world. So, our souls determine
how we think, how we feel, and
what we desire. And what happens so many times
is that we get into storms in life because every
one of us have storms. In fact, Jesus even
promised, "In this world, you will have trouble." And so, we get in the
midst of storms and we don't have
hope in life. There's nothing
anchoring our souls. And then what happens
is we start to think the wrong thoughts. We start to have
the wrong feelings. We start having
the wrong desires. And then on the other
side of the storm, we've made a disaster of our
lives because we didn't have anything holding
us firm and secure. We have to have hope. We have to have a vision
for the life that God has called us to live. But hope we learned in week one
is not just some kind of wishful thinking, it's not just a
fairy tale, it's not dreaming of something and then
hoping it will come to pass. No, hope we defined from
the Scriptures is a confident expectation based
on something solid. And so, we talked about how God
has made promises to us in his Word, and then he promised that
he would fulfill those promises. The Bible calls that an oath. God said, "I am going to come
through on the promises that I've made for your life." And if you get into your
Bible, you'll find that there's promises all throughout
it about your health, about your finances,
about your children, about your relationships,
about your marriage. God has a plan for your life. Hope, hope, hope that whatever
you're walking through, no matter what storm you're
facing, that you could be confident that a better future
is coming because your God turns all things
together for the good for those who love him and are
called according to his purpose. And so, we've been talking about
how there's so many things that steal our hope, we've been
talking about the things from our past that mess
with us, and how it's difficult sometimes
to navigate that. We talked about how
our relationship with God helps fuel our hope. But I felt this weight as we
close out this series that God really wanted to do a miracle
in the lives of our church. And those of you who may be in
a hopeless situation, like you're in a place
today that you really need divine intervention, and I've
been praying, like I said, all week long that God would
do a miracle in your life. But the first thing that we have
to understand is the battle that we are engaged in. Why in the first
place are we losing hope? In Ephesians chapter
6, the Bible tells us that our struggle is not
against flesh and blood. I love the fact that even
Paul was like, "Hey, the struggle
is real, everybody. I'm struggling,
you're struggling, everybody's struggling. It's real." But he says, "It's not against
flesh and blood," which reminds us that the battle that you're
engaged in may have human faces involved, but that's not
really the ultimate battle. It's not about your boss, it's
not about your neighbor, it's not about your children,
it's not about maybe your spouse or the person
sitting next to you. Don't look at them
right now 'cause that'd be
inappropriate in church. It's not about flesh and blood. You might feel like it is,
but it's not. The battle is actually against
rulers and against authorities and against the powers of this
dark world, against spiritual forces of evil in
heavenly realms. So, as believers, I need all of
us to take one step back and to think about life through a
little bit deeper lens, to understand that we are
engaged in a spiritual battle. And so, while there are natural
ramifications and there are natural consequences to
the things that we walk through in life, at its
core, everything in this world originates in
something spiritual. What would our church look like
if we began to understand that there is a spiritual
driving force behind everything that's natural? Well, here's what I know,
that we would begin to see the world through a
different lens and we'd probably have a
different response. In fact, jot this down at every
campus if you're taking notes today: Spiritual problems
require spiritual solutions. That's my one big
thought for you today. I want you to see that that
issues that you face and the struggles that you have, while
they have natural manifestations and natural implications,
they are originally spiritual. So, say this with me,
"Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions." Right, everybody
read it with me, "Spiritual problems require
spiritual solutions." Right, hold on a second. Look, I don't like
class participation. I never liked when my
teacher was like, "Hey, pay attention, take
notes, speak back." I never liked it. But I'm not in
class, I'm up here. And I have learned that if
you'll repeat this nonsense with me, this really good
truth, that it will help you. You may feel like it's crazy,
but I'm trying to get something into your spirit today. So, read this with me
at every campus, spiritual problems require
spiritual solutions. Read it again,
spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. One more time,
spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. All right. Now, every time you see that
throughout the message, I want you to read it with me 'cause
that's our theme for today. The problems that you face,
the issues that you're battling, they are spiritual
in nature, and it requires
spiritual solutions. So, we're going to go to James
chapter 5 if you want to--if you're taking notes, you want
to turn in your Bible if you actually brought
one with pages. James chapter 5. You'd be one of one,
but it'd be awesome. James chapter 5. All right, we're going to be
in verses 13 to 16, we're just going to walk
through this text. James highlights some things
that actually come into our lives as an attack from
the enemy to steal our hope. We're going to talk about
what the Bible says should be our response. He starts off by asking
this question, "Is any among you in trouble?" That word "trouble" means
pressure, adversity, affliction. Here's the word that we're going
to use, one of the first things the enemy uses to
steal your hope is just simply stress, stress. You know, we all
have problems in life. And typically, we have a natural
response to those problems. Now, I'm not saying that
we shouldn't have a natural response, I'm just saying that
we need to think deeper about the issues of life. Like when someone begins to make
a difference for God, they make a decision, "We're going to put
our marriage back together, or we're going to start serving, or
we're going to attend regularly, or we're going to start giving. We're going to begin
to make a difference." Typically, what happens
is their life starts to fall apart around them. And they come to this
false conclusion, "I must be doing
something wrong. Something must be off in my
life for me to have trouble." No, nothing could be
further from the truth. The reality is you're
doing something right and now resistance, spiritual
resistance, is coming. But to that spiritual
resistance, we usually only have a natural response. "Well, I need to
organize the schedule better. I need to make sure that I
put these things in place." And even as your pastor,
I'm ashamed to admit that's my first response. People come to me with problems
or issues, and I want to-- I want to give them a solution. Here's some practical steps.
Here's a phone number to call. Here's a relationship you need.
Here's a book to read. And while all those things
are fine, those are great, we need to first have a
spiritual response. We need to understand
that it's a spiritual issue. Like in the Sumrall household,
every time the church is getting ready to take ground
or do something for God, we have problems that happen. Now, people may say, "Well,
that's just coincidence, you're making something up." But I've lived through too many
coincidences to believe that it's just
coincidences, all right? So, with Easter or Christmas,
or like if there's a special service, we're trying to
accomplish something deeper spiritually in people's lives,
or like the three years we've been building this building,
all kinds of things, they'll come against you. And Kate and I have to
laugh and step back and go, "You know this is
spiritual, right?" Like this is--there's
something deeper to this. Like when your dog dies, and the
water heater breaks, and your car breaks down, you get
fired from your job, and three friends walk out of your life,
you have to take a step back and go, "Okay, hold on, I must
be doing something right. There must be something
spiritual happening." Like this last Easter,
first of all, let me set up the second story
with the first. We have a very large vehicle
for our family because we have
a big family. We have a million kids and
we like to take their million friends along with them. So, we have this car called a
Nissan NV, it's basically a bus. And it seats like 12 people, and
so it's great for us because all the kids can have a
friend and we can get around. So, we were actually camping. And on our way home
from fall break, we decided to stop
for Cracker Barrel. Come on, somebody. I can taste it right now, mama's
French toast breakfast, whoo, it's good. Get you a couple three extra
eggs, some turkey sausage, and then only count half of it
in your macros, that's how you do it. It's good.
Oh, so I could eat it right now. I'm hungry for
some county kitchen. Anyway, so we were at Cracker
Barrel, and we were at our travel trailer
attached to our car. There was a mall next to Cracker
Barrel, so I parked over there thinking I was keeping things
out of the way 'cause it's a big ol' long
rig, all connected. And when we came out,
the cop from the mall gave us a ticket on our car. He didn't like where I parked. I thought where I parked
was way out of the way, but he said, "You're
blocking traffic. Please don't ever
park here again." Thankfully, he didn't fine us,
but that mall cop gave us-- I just lost everybody. Mall cop gave us a ticket. And I wasn't offended
by the fact that he didn't like where I parked. I was offended by the way he
filled out the ticket because under "Description of Vehicle,"
he didn't put Nissan NV. And it says it right on
there, he put "Church bus." Jerk, church bus? This is my personal
vehicle and it's connected to a travel trailer. What church is dragging
a travel trailer around? All right, so that gives you
the idea of how big our car is. So, I was dropping the kids off
for school the week of Easter, the church bus, and I was
backing into the spot that I always park in in the
driveway with that car. And all of a sudden, the car
quit moving, and I couldn't figure out why, I wasn't really
paying attention to be honest. It's early in the morning,
dark, you can't see anything. So, I did what every man
does, I just gave it a little gas, you know? Seems logical to me.
But the car didn't move. So, then I got out thinking,
well, I must--some of the kids must've left something out. I'm running over something,
only to find that my children had lowered our
Goalrilla basketball goal like they're not supposed to,
down to seven feet. And we don't have just like
a little basketball goal, this is Sumrall household,
basketball is important. So, we have a full size
regulation backboard, which extends very low when you
put the goal down too low. And it was just at the perfect
height to hit the top of the church bus, as
I was backing in. And so, it had created this huge
dent in the back of the car, and I'd pushed the basketball
goal out of the ground and bent the entire arm of the
basketball goal. Now listen, this
is not a tiny goal. Like when I bought it, I was
like, "I want my whole family to hang on the rim at the same
time and nothing to happen. Like, we need something
strong baby, 'cause we're going to
abuse this thing." And so, it was like the biggest
one you can buy, and the whole thing pushed it
right out of the ground. And I got out of the car
and I wanted to say some things that'd probably get me
fired from my job. And you might say, "Well,
you're just dumb for not checking what
was behind you." And you would be right, but at
the same time, I'd take a look at that and realize everybody in
my family that week was already puking, it's like
living in a frat house. You know, 'cause it just
happens, doesn't matter how much we pray, everybody
gets sick, it's Easter. And I just went inside and
laughed with Kate about the fact that it's Easter. And I'm happy to report to
you that a few days later, the basketball goal was fixed. And a few days ago, we just
got the car fixed 'cause that's how we roll at
the Sumrall house. Stress. We have adversity and hardships
and affliction that we walk through in life, and the Bible
tells us, "Are you in trouble?" He doesn't say, "Go to a
seminar, learn time management, work out your relationships." No, he says, "Let them pray."
Why? Because read it with me,
spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. We need to think a little bit
deeper about the stress and the pressure that
comes into our lives. I promise you you'd
have a different response. Here's what I've learned, where
you stress the most reveals where you trust God the least. 'Cause God says
you're not supposed to be carrying that anyway." In fact, Jesus invited us
in Matthews chapter 11, "Come to me, all you who
are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Verse 29, he says,
"Take my yoke upon you." That's something that joins two
things together to create work. Jesus says we're supposed
to be doing this together. "I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you'll find rest
for your souls." "Don't exclude God,"
is what he's saying, "from the everyday
pressures of life." You know why? Because it's a
spiritual problem that requires a
spiritual solution. Here's the second one, back
to our text, verse 14, he says how about sickness? You got anybody who's sick? Because that's the second great
enemy of your hope is sickness. If the devil can't stress
you out enough, then he'll get you to a place of
physical sickness. And I want you to know
that sickness entered the world through sin. Now, let me be clear
about my theology today. I am not saying that if you
are sick that you are in sin. I'm not saying that all
sickness can be traced back to a specific sin. That's not what
I'm saying at all. Now, it's very obvious there are
some things that you do that are outside of God's will that you
pursue that lead to sickness. Violating God's law,
pursuing sin, some of that will lead to
physical sickness. But not every time you're
sick is it an indicator that you're in sin. What I am saying is that sin
did not exist in the world or in mankind until Adam
and Eve opened the door for sin to enter the world. And now we live
in a broken world where sickness
is a reality. But at the same time, we
need to understand that it is a--originated as a
spiritual issue. So, we go back to our text,
James 5, he says, "If you're sick, your answer
should be to pray. Call for the elders of
the church and pray. Anoint them with oil in
the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith
will make the sick person well, and the Lord will
raise them up." Why? Read it with me, because
spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. Yeah, the Bible
says you should pray. Now, I'm not saying don't
go to the doctor and don't take your medicine. Again, please hear me,
we have doctors. The Sumralls get physicals,
we get blood work, we have medications,
we're not crazy. Don't be crazy, all right? I'm not teaching
you to be insane. I'm teaching you to understand
that at its origin, this is a spiritual issue. So, while we walk the path to
health with all the wisdom that God has given modern day
medicine, at the very same time we're going to call on the name
of the Lord and believe that miracles are for today, and that
we can lay hands on sick people, and the Bible says
they will get well. We believe in God's divine
intervention for healing. In fact, Mark says it
this way, "These signs will accompany
those who believe." Not those who have healing
ministries, not those who have a special anointing, not those who
are called to fivefold ministry, just anybody who believes. Anybody who believes,
they will lay hands on sick people and
they will get well. That is in your Bible, you
do with it what you want. I believe that's for today. I believe we can lay hands on
people and they'll recover in the prayer of faith. That not us, not our prayer,
and not oil, and not any magic moment, and not some
12-step spiritual process. But God, that God
would heal you. It's the Lord who
raises a person up. And you say, "Why doesn't
it happen all the time?" I don't know, I'm not God,
praise the Lord for that. I don't have all the answers. Sometimes people are divinely
healed, and sometimes they walk a path to healing, and sometimes
that path to healing ends in heaven, where the Bible says
there'll be no more sickness and there'll be no more pain. And I don't know why things work
out the way they do here on this earth, but I do know that
sickness entered the world through a spiritual problem,
and that the Bible invites us to have a spiritual
solution, that we would pray. And the promise of the Word
says that God would intervene. And I just choose to believe. I choose to stand on that
promise and stand together in faith today that you'll be
healed from whatever sickness you may have plaguing your life
'cause the devil's trying to use it to steal your hope, to keep
you from the life that God has called you to live. There's one more that James
highlights in verse 15 and that's simply sin. Sin, of course, is a spiritual
issue, but if you allow it, sin will steal your hope. You'll start to hear the voice
of the devil that'll tell you, "You're never going
to be good enough. You'll never live the life
God's called you to live. You'll never be free. You'll never fix
your relationships. You'll never change,
people don't change." And so, we have to understand
that it's a spiritual problem and that it is a problem. We have to call it what it is. Romans chapter 6 says,
"The wages of sin is death." That word "death"
means separation in the Greek New Testament. And so, I'm not saying that if
you make one mistake that God cuts you off forever, that's
not at all what I'm saying. And I grew up in a great church,
it was theologically sound, but it was a little more bent
towards the hellfire and brimstone side of life. We didn't really talk about
grace ever, but so I got saved every Sunday for 15
years of my life. Come on, somebody, you
all know that church. Like I don't know
what heaven is, but I am definitely
not going to hell. Burn for all eternity,
no thank you. I'll be naked and float
around in a cloud and play a harp, cool. I mean, that doesn't
sound great, but it's better than burning. Those flames feel hot and
I can feel it now, and I'm not sure if I sin, but yeah,
count me in, right? That's not what I'm talking
about, like you have-- God will walk you on a
process of sanctification, getting things out of your life. What I'm talking about is when
we're like, "I know what the Word says, and I know what
God says, and I know that it's a sin, but I'm going
to do it anyway." When you pursue that
unashamedly and unrepentantly, that will separate you from God. It creates separation in
our intimacy with him. And so, the Bible says, "Hey,
that's a spiritual problem. It requires a
spiritual response." "If they've sinned, they'll
be forgiven, so confess your sins to each other
and pray for each other so that you can be healed." Prayer has to be involved in
that freeing process, why? Because spiritual problems
require spiritual solutions. And that's the problem with sin,
to be honest with you, we have a natural response. All these things, we tend to
have natural responses to only. You know what the natural
response to sin is? Religion. Let's get law in place.
Let's get legalistic about this. Let's put--let's have more
guardrails and more rules. And while guardrails and
accountability and rules are all good, and they're major
functions of a functioning family and church and society,
those don't change you, that's just a natural response
to a spiritual problem. And so, what we have to do is be
honest with ourselves and honest with our God and say,
"I am broken by myself. And there's not enough rules and
there's not enough commitment that's ever going to change me. I need to be changed
from the inside out." See, too often we have this
false belief that we'll regain hope for life if we can
just get it together. We'll just get it
together enough so that we can get to God. But I'm here to tell you today
the most attractive thing to God is brokenness,
not perfection. 'Cause God knows that
perfection's not possible. We're human, and we're
flawed, and we will fail. What he's looking for is
brokenness and honesty. That's why 1 John says it
this way, if we just confess our sins, the word "confess" is the
Greek word "homologia," it means to speak the same
or to be in agreement with. So, when we confess sin, all
we're doing is saying, "God, you were right and I was wrong. Your Word is
right and I'm wrong. I'm going to confess my sin." The Bible says, "Immediately,
he is faithful and just, and will forgive us of
our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Now, I love this, and it's
very important because when we repent, the Bible says he
immediately cleanses us from all unrighteousness,
which is what makes us in right standing with God. That's that word
"righteousness." And as we close, we're
going to go back to our text one more time. Verse 16 of James 5
says, "The prayer." Remember, everything about this
has been a spiritual response, prayer, prayer, prayer. You're thinking, "Well,
my prayers don't work." No, the Bible says, "The
prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." So, all that means is that if
you just take a moment to get right with God, if you are
in right standing, if you'll confess your sin, he's faithful
and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness, which
makes you righteous, which means your prayers
will be effective. And you'll have hope, no matter
what it is that you're facing. Dave: The only way for you
and I to have hope is to get right with God
and put our trust in him. I wanted to share a
story with you about a young woman whose
name is Olivia. When she came to ITOWN,
she was like many of us, broken and hurting,
but God healed her and he filled her with hope. Check this out. Olivia: Came to ITOWN for
the first time, walked in this auditorium, and sat
in this chair right here. Growing up in a atheist
family, I didn't realize it, but I was carrying a lot of
hate and a lot of judgement, a lot of abandonment
in my life, a lot of voids that I didn't
know how to fill. I'd say from the outside,
it looked like I was a happy person, like I've always
tried to be positive just because my
surroundings were not. But from the surface, I
definitely think that people thought I was happy, but I
knew deep down that I wasn't. I'd been invited to
ITOWN multiple times, and my answer
was always no. And so, when my friend dragged
me here, forced me to come with her, I didn't want to be here,
was apprehensive of walking inside, felt like I was going
to be judged, that people were going to stare at me, that
people were going to not want me here, that I wasn't
going to be welcomed. And so, it was a lot of
nerves, a lot of anxiousness. And the moment that I stepped
out of the car and someone specifically said, "I am so glad
you are here," high-fived me, and instantly I felt love. Like, I felt true, genuine
love for the first time. I remember I instantly felt
this weight like come off of my shoulders, like I felt
like I can breathe again. Like I felt like everything that
I was holding on to for some reason, I had no idea why,
but for some reason, I felt like I could
let go of that. You know, it was such an
amazing feeling coming to ITOWN. And you know, throughout
the entire process, feeling loved for
the first time. And you know, my family isn't
the most congruent or, you know, well oiled machine as I would've
hoped growing up, but throughout the message that was preached
that Sunday, I've learned that God was my Father and that it
didn't matter what my family was like here, that there was
something that was supporting me and loving me and
encouraging me. And so, the fact that I had the
opportunity to give my life to that and to have
that forever, I was-- I couldn't believe the
honor that I had. I couldn't believe that
that was just something I could decide to have forever. And so, it was just a fulfilling
moment for me to come into a place, feel love for
the first time, and then have that forever. Coolest thing, coolest thing. If the Go team members that
served that weekend that I gave my life to Jesus were here,
I would just have so much gratitude for the fact that they
loved a broken 15-year-old even though they didn't know anything
about her, and made her know that there is a heavenly
Father that also loved her. Thank you for literally saving
my life and for taking time out of their schedule to make
the name of Jesus known. Dave: Just like Olivia said,
no matter what your family, your past, or your life has
looked like, you have a heavenly Father who loves you
no matter what, and he wants a
relationship with you. If you would, just bow
your head and maybe close your eyes right where you're at. And if you're ready to take that
step to surrender your life to Jesus, to have a real
relationship with your heavenly Father, repeat these
simple words after me. Just say, "Lord Jesus,
please forgive me today for all of my sin and
all my mistakes. God, I repent.
I surrender to you. Today, I give you my life,
in Jesus's name I pray." God, I pray for every person
who's watching today that you would fill
them with hope. Help them recognize
that spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. And God, I pray that you would
help us to put our hope in you, in Jesus's name
we pray, amen. Now, if you just made that
decision to give Jesus your life, I want you to know it's
the best thing you could do with your life, and I'm
so proud of you. You know, our church is
built for people just like you. We'd love to come alongside
you and support you in this new journey of faith. Would you take just a moment
to grab your cellphone and text the word
"hope" to 63566? I want to send you a very simple
text message that will help you identify the next steps to take
in your relationship with God. We don't save your
cell phone number, we'll never text
you again. Of course, you can find the rest
of this series on our website, it's called "Hope
in the Darkness." I would love for you to join us
for one of our Sunday services, but until then, I want you
to know we love you and we're praying for you. God bless. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ...
