>> DAVID NASSER: About a year ago, Loui Giglio
and the folks from Passion were here with us, and they were leading for a full day. Today is a bit of a full-day revival as well
with Pastor Levi. But we were getting the morning time with
Pastor Louie and then the evening time with him, and that usually means our guest doesn't
have to immediately fly out. Or we don't just get a quick lunch and we
get out, and so we had hours and hours of just talking about life. And one of the conversations that we always
love to ask when we have outside guests come in, is we love to ask, so many times, “Who
is someone that you see God has His hand on?” We knew at that time— Good morning; are
you coming up? Come on up. Hey, give it up for President Falwell, everybody,
come on. >> JERRY FALWELL: Sorry to interrupt you,
David, but we're doing a tour. George Rawlings and some of his company executives
are here. And you remember, he's the one that donated
the $5 million for the Rawlings School of Divinity, the new tower that’s going up. And he brought, surprised us. He brought $2 million more this morning. So please— David said you can interrupt
anytime you want. But I just wanted you guys to show him your
appreciation. I'm in the middle of giving his group a tour
of campus, but I wanted him to see, and all of his executives back here, to see the convocation
in session, and we'll get out of your way. Sorry to interrupt! >> NASSER: Hold on; don't leave Mr. Rawlings. Hey, Mr. Rawlings, hang on one second. Can we just stop? Can I just say, you pay for this event to
happen? You enable us to do so much ministry and so
much missions, and we love having you as a partner as well. Can we thank him one more time—just an incredible
hero? Thank you, sir. Would you like to say a few words? >> GEORGE RAWLINGS: Wow, this is just breathtaking
to see such fine looking young people. And I love this school. I love the Falwell family. We probably have at our company in Louisville,
Kentucky probably 8 Liberty grads, and they do great. They make probably about $3 million dollars
a year each. No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing. You've got a lot to look forward to. Thank you guys! >> FALWELL: George's father was the president
of the college that my dad attended, Baptist Bible College, when he attended in 1952, and
George's brother was my father's roommate, and so we have got deep, long ties, and we're
so honored to have you back at Liberty. Thank you, George! >> NASSER: Amen. Just in case you missed it, that is two million
reasons why that needed to happen right there—two million reasons. What an incredible gift. Wow! Anybody want to be there one day in life where
you can just bless a school with $2 million worth? Anybody want to be there? Most of you won't, but, hey, it's awesome. All right, hey, let me get done with the introduction
with real quick. Like I was telling you, Pastor Louie Giglio
was with us about a year ago, and when we asked him—and we always love to ask our
outside guests—like, who is somebody that you've met that God really has His hand on,
that God really uses? The very first person that Louie Giglio brought
up was our guest today. He said, look, there is a young pastor who
has a multi-site church that he started in 2007 with his wife, Jennie. He said that they're now in Utah, but not
just as a local pastor, really as a voice and as an author God has risen up this guy. He said I can't wait to have him at Passion,
introduce him to our tribe. And we immediately began to see God just bring
him about and in front of your generation. Levi Lusko, our guest today, like I said is
probably no stranger to you. If you were a part of the Passion movement
last year, you know that God has used him greatly just in speaking to your generation. The O2 experience is one of the things that
he leads out in, but he's also a best-selling author. He's brought with him a gift today. Every one of us are going to get a download
of the new first chapter of his upcoming book that's going to come out in February. But he's already authored a best-selling book
called Through the Eyes of a Lion. I've asked him to share the heart of this
book. After we're done, Pastor Levi is making himself
available at the book table, so he'd love to meet you, sign a book, if you'd love to
do that. Come on; put your hands together for Levi
Lusko, everybody! Love you, bud. >> LEVI LUSKO: I did not bring any millions
of dollars, but that was awesome. So, that was really cool! Thank you so much, Liberty, for having me
here. Thank you so much, Pastor David. It's a great treasure that I would get the
chance to come and be with you. Come on, look at this. This is fantastic. Come on; give it up. This is just amazing already to worship and
be in this atmosphere and see all this. We've been looking forward to coming for a
very long time, and as Pastor David mentioned, I just finished another book. I spent most of this year—began it on New
Year's Eve of last year actually—a book on relationships, and sex, and dating, and
marriage, and the mercy waters that are our love life. And the book is called Swipe Right: The Life
and Death Power of Sex and Romance. You see what I did there? And, I think we have it on the screens here. If you text your email address to that number,
434-533-5800. It won't offend me at all if you take your
phone out and do it now or take a picture of it now. What we're going to do is we're going to email
you a free chapter of it before the book goes out anywhere. And really the heart behind this book was,
I wanted to help people to regret-proof their marriage beds and their death beds. That's really the heart of this book, so that
you would regret-proof your marriage bed and regret-proof your death bed. The heart of it is that you would not play
the field, but harvest the field, because this world is full of people who need to be
reached before Jesus comes back. Come on, somebody! And if we would just focus on harvesting the
field and less on playing the field, then just in the perfect time God will bring that
relationship about. Through not you seeking that person, but through
you seeking God, He'll add that unto you in His good timing. And so, I hope you'll check that out, and
I'm really, really, really excited about this book coming out. I've been preaching this message at O2 experience
events for 12 years, and now to have it come out in a book, I'm really, really excited
about it. But the chance to talk to you today is great
privilege. And I want to talk about how sometimes we
can see things, but not see what we're seeing. Just as a really cheesy, simple example, the
next time you're driving down, or in an Uber, walking down the street, and you see a FedEx
truck pass by, see if you cannot help but stare at the arrow. Look at the logo right here, the FedEx logo. We see this a million times, but recently
someone pointed out to me that there's an arrow inside the 'E' and 'X.' Anybody ever
notice that before? All the graphic design students and art students
are like, oh, I've seen that. But if you've never seen that before, it's
blowing your mind. Blowing—like explosions happening inside
your head, right? Now here's what's crazy that I just did that's
going to mess with you for the rest of your life. You will never be able to see a FedEx truck
go by and not stare at the arrow. The moment I figured this out I've been like
driving off the road—like, the arrow, no! It was there! But see, it was hiding in plain sight, and
that can happen in life. The year was 1990. Show of hands, who was born then? Okay, a few of you, you're old. 1990, April 24 to be precise, that was when
Hubble Telescope was launched 366 miles above the earth into orbit around the planet in
what's called low earth orbit. I think we have a picture of Hubble right
here. This is Hubble. This is a crazy thing, because it's a space
observatory that is in outer space. Now, many telescopes exist that are on the
planet, that are pointed out to observe space. We have telescopes like the Griffith Observatory;
there's lots of them—telescopes that look at stars, that look at planets, that look
into the heavens. That's fairly common. But the goal was ambitious, of course, to
put one in outer space, and there are many of them out there, but Hubble is by far the
most powerful, the most versatile, the largest. And April 24th was when this dream finally
came to fruition. It had been a dream 20 years in the making,
and if you think about it, that's like a really gutsy thing to do, but it was important to
do it. Why? Because no matter how powerful a telescope
is that's on this planet, it will always be limited in what it can see, because it has
to look through the atmosphere to see the heavens. Now they compare that to you or me looking
through stained glass. If we look to the outside world through a
piece of stained glass, we're not going to see the world; we're going to see it through
the glass. That means we would see the dust, see the
pigment from the dye. We would see the glass itself. If there were any distortions or any warped
glass, we would see the world different because of the glass we're looking at it through. That's what scientists say. Trying to see the heavens from earth is like,
because the atmosphere functions like stained glass. You'll have air pollution. You'll have debris. You'll have dust. And even just the shifting pockets of air. Do you ever notice how when you look at the
stars in the nighttime, they seem to twinkle? We even have a song about it. "Twinkle, Twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are." Right? Well they say that the stars don’t actually
twinkle. I'm sorry to, like, destroy your dreams and
of your nighttime lullabies. They don't twinkle. There's no twinkling of the stars. They're constantly, like they're burning balls
of gas. Like great balls of fire, literally. So, they don't twinkle. Why do they appear to twinkle? Because of shifting pockets of air in the
earth's atmosphere. The point is, we don't see what's there. We see it through the lens. So, if we could get a telescope outside of
the atmosphere, it could look at the heavens unobstructed by the atmosphere, and send back
the information to us here on the earth. And they decided to call this project Hubble
in honor of the man who discovered that the universe is expanding. At least that's what Wikipedia said, so we're
going to go with that. Look, the whole R and D process was time consuming,
as you can imagine—20 years. At one point, the plan was for Hubble to take
the pictures onto film, or something like that, and then for Hubble to eject the film,
and for it to land somewhere in the ocean. And then they were going to have to go find
it to get these pictures, because taking the pictures is only half the battle. Getting the pictures is the other half. So, can you imagine the Coast Guard, and the
Navy, and NASA driving around in boats on the ocean trying to find the film? And of course, the year was 1990, so after
they found the cartridge, that's only half the battle, because then they had to go find
a Walgreens to develop the film, right? My daughter's 11. She like doesn't get that whole concept. Like there was a day after you took your picture
you didn't get to see them for some time. Like we would wait a week, and then they came
out with one-hour photo, and we were all freaking out. You had your pictures in an hour. You had to pay extra for doubles. The world is just radically different, by
the way, than when I was a kid. I was born in 1982, and when I try and tell
my children—I have four daughters. I try and tell—yeah, four daughters. I'm a minority in a sorority, yep. Anyhow, when I try and tell my daughters about
what life was like for me as a child of the 80s, right, now I just show them Stranger
Things, but I've tried to describe for them like what things were like. And I would tell them, you know how on a Friday
night you want to watch a movie. So, you’ll ask permission, and then you'll
say, hey Siri. Fire up Netflix and show me My Little Pony,
right? That's how they watch TV. It was different for me back in the day. I had to say, “Mom and Dad, can we make
it a Blockbuster night?” And they would take us to Blockbuster. Oh, yeah! And then, listen. When I got there, I would peruse the isles. I would totally do some perusing of some isles,
and I would try and find a movie that caught my eye. And I would say that's it; that's it. And my mom would say, no. That's a new release. We're not getting a new release. So, I had to do the walk of shame to the 99
cent picks—the “hot picks” as it were. And I would find, I would find one there,
and I wouldn't know, but then I want to get that one. I would grab it, only to be fooled, because
there was not a video behind it. Because just getting it wasn't enough. There had to be one behind it. So, if you found one that was like an alternate,
like a maybe, you would sometimes hide it behind the documentaries. I'll save that one for later, right? And then you watch the movie at home, but
then you'd have to bring it back. I'm like trying to explain to my kids that
we would have to drive back to avoid a late fee. But we couldn't just drive it back. First, we had to rewind it to avoid a “be
kind, please rewind” fee. Like, we would sit there, and she was like,
what does that even mean? I'm like, like a tape cassette would rewind-she
doesn't get that either. The struggle was real, people. These tapes would get unspooled. You'd have to kind of crank them back in. I know Pastor David knows what I'm talking
about. The rest of you please do Google it at some
point later on in the day. And so, it was a very different time. And so, what's the point? I have no point for this diet tribe? I was just talking about Walgreens. Anyhow, so they figured out a way for Hubble
to electronically send the pictures back to earth. And everyone was very excited, because this
project was very expensive—$1.5 billion. So now Hubble's out there. It takes the pictures. They've sold this thing; they've hyped this
thing like crazy. It's going to be ridiculous the shots we're
going to get. So, they're all waiting at NASA for the first
picture to download. Unfortunately, they were using AOL, so it
was very slow. The image was loading very slowly. They're like, let's go get some food. Came back, halfway, ridiculous, right? Someone picked up the phone halfway through,
cut the internet connection. Anyhow, whatever. So, they get the first picture opened up. Everyone's on pins and needles. It opens up, blurry. The next one, blurry. All of them were totally useless. You see, there had been an incorrectly calibrated
optical component. Translation, Hubble was nearsighted—needed
glasses. They've done all the work to get this thing
out there, going around the world every 96 minutes, and because of a flaw in a lens,
less than 1/50th the thickness of a sheet of paper, Hubble was completely useless at
the purpose it was designed for, and they didn't know what to do. It would've been far too expensive to bring
Hubble home and fix it. And it was impossible to take out the damaged
component. So, it seemed like it was going to be a write-off
until someone had the bright idea to make an additional lens with the exact same error
only inverted. And if we'll put that on the front it, it
should cancel out the damaged lens. So, that's exactly what they did. They made an enormous lens with the same problem
backwards, and they flew this enormous contact lens out to space, and they had to get Hubble
to sit still and get a little solution in it, right? And when they got that sucker on, and it took
another picture, well, of course; the proof is in the shots that Hubble has transmitted
to us. Some of the most glorious photographs we've
ever had, some of the greatest knowledge we've ever had—the far reaches of our universe,
and the deep space field. They've found galaxies where they thought
there was nothing, all because of Hubble's vision being fixed. Now listen to me very carefully. When all the pictures were blurry and where
Hubble couldn't see things far away, it wasn't the Milky Way Galaxy's fault. It wasn't the universe's fault. It was a lens problem. Steven Covey, leadership guru, now the late
leadership guru, he once said that we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. We see the world as we are accustomed to seeing
it. I submit to you that oftentimes, what we are
seeing or what we think we're seeing is not always what we're actually seeing, because
we often have a lens problem, which is why, I believe, that we need to learn how to see
life through the eyes of a lion. And that metaphor for looking at life through
the telescope called faith—if we could get an observatory of faith inside of our souls. Why a lion’s eyes? Well, a lion has spectacular vision. They would consider what would be dark to
us to be bright as day. And they would see a long way away that we
wouldn't even notice are there. And they would say that looks like dinner
to me. Why do lions see so well? Because they have eyes that process light
six times better than the eyes of a human, and their eyes were built by God to handle
light. Like their pupils are three times bigger so
more light can come in. The pupil is the hole that light enters the
eye through. They have a higher percentage of rods than
cones. You know the rear wall of your eye is covered
in these photo receptors called rods and cones, and cones can handle color; rods can handle
shape. So, lions have more rods than cones. That means that they're better with shape
then they are with color, so that's fine. Don't ever invite a lion to H&M to pick out
an outfit with you, but they're fantastic in seeing stuff far away. Now lions don't have much use for color, but
they do very much need to see shapes and silhouettes—especially when they hunt at night. Oh, and there's this. Lions have a reflective backing on their retina. It's coated in this surface that shines light
back out—which is, by the way, all cats have this, why cats’ eyes glow when a photo
is taken of them. Have you ever wondered, why do cats eyes glow? Because they're demon possessed, people. That's not it, but we can make a case biblically
for it. I just think—No, it's because of this reflective
coating. So, light that comes in shines back out. But here's the cool thing about that. That allows them to use any light they get
twice. They get to use it once on the way in, once
on the way out. And if you ever notice a photograph of a lion
like this one here, lions always have a white stripe under each eye. Isn't that beautiful? It's not just pretty though. It's functional. You see, like an athlete would smear black
under their eye playing in a sunny condition, on a sunny day—oh, by the way. We're going to really find out who loves Jesus
tonight whether it's Jesus or the World Series game seven at the community. I'm excited to preach tonight, and we'll find
out if you love God or carnal things—if you're there or not. Well, I'm really excited. I've got a message on my heart. I can't wait to be there and be a part of
that. But in a sunny game, like the Cubs, some of
them would smear eye black on. That's to minimize glare. Well, God smeared eye white under the eyes
of a lion to maximize glare so that even if it's the faintest moonlight, whatever is there,
it would be directed right into their eye. What's the point? The point is lions don't have access to more
light than any other creature. They just are built to take advantage of the
light that's there. I don't know when the last time you went to
the optometrist was, but I remember the last time I went they made me have those drops
put in that dilate my pupils. Is that just not the worst thing in the world? I begged for them not to do it. I screamed. If I had filled my contact lens prescription
three days before the one-year expiration mark, I wouldn't have had to had it happen
at all. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Like if you get that one last prescription
you can get by with another six months, and then whatever. Don't judge me; I'm stingy. So, I had to get the appointment. He puts the drops in my eye. Now all of a sudden I can see things far away,
but not stuff close up. Well when you're like a lion, you have perpetually
dilated pupils; they're opened up a lot wider. And I believe, listen to me very carefully,
that is what needs to happen inside of our souls. The book of Ephesians says that we need to
have the eyes of our understanding enlightened, that we might receive the spirit of wisdom
and revelation. To have the eyes of a lion is to have God
dilate the pupils of your soul so that you can see things far off as crystal clear. But stuff right up here, all up in your face
like how many followers, and how much money, and who said what on Yik Yak about you, whatever. That the things of this earth would grow strangely
dim in the light of His glory and Grace. That Jesus Christ would so do a work in your
heart that it would stretch something wide on the inside, that you would see things you
didn't see before like God's promises, and His plan, and His purposes, and His presence. You didn't notice it before, like the FedEx
arrow. But now you're seeing that; that's all you
can see, and stuff you used to pay attention to before—you don't focus on that so much
anymore. And that when you encounter pain—even then,
when God seems far—by faith you would believe, and know, and see that He is near. This is not theory to me, but this is experience. I'm not just in the lecture talking about
it; I've lived this out in the lab, my family and I, in the lab of our lives. You see, my wife, Jennie, who I think's watching
on the internet, so everyone say hi Jennie! She and our four daughters, Olivia, Lenya,
Daisy, and Clover-those are our girls—11 to 4. We, in 2012, experienced a massively difficult
time. Let me back up a little bit. You heard that I live in Montana. We pastor a church that's in Montana. I got a woo from Montana. Is there Montana natives all up in this place? Amazing. There are less people in the whole state of
Montana than in this room, so that's really awesome. And so, we moved there in 2007 to start a
church, and that's 10 years ago. And we, as we preached the Gospel and tried
to build up the church of Jesus Christ, we've seen God do amazing things. We've seen our dreams come true, but we've
also lived out our nightmares. You see in 2012 we were five years into the
church plant, and we were getting ready for Christmas. It was five days before Christmas. The day was December 20th, an I spent the
whole day writing a sermon I was going to preach at our church on Christmas Eve. And you know Christmas is the most wonderful,
magical time of the year, and that's exactly how I felt about it the moment I finished
my sermon. I got that thing done. After you finish a big paper, all of the sudden
everything's great. So, I was excited for the next day. Friday in our house is family day. We do Friday family day, and I had made a
reservation at a nice restaurant, and I was going to take my second born daughter, Lenya,
to Target so she could buy a Christmas present for her sisters. And we had this whole day planned—so much
fun, so exciting. And by the time I finished my sermon I was
ready for that to begin. And that night my wife Jennie, she was wrapping
up Christmas presents, and putting the bow on them. And I was watching Home Alone, because how
many of you know that has to happen every holiday season? And all God's people said amen. So, I'm watching this movie, and my wife's
wrapping, and then we go to pick up our daughters. They were being babysat at their grandma’s
house. And as we drive there, I say to my wife. I said, "Jennie, I just feel so relaxed right
now. Sermon's done. Christmas is coming. One of the girl's big present was the day
after Christmas we were going to fly to Disneyland, and we were just so excited about that. So just talking about that all, and as we
go to drive them up, the moment we pull up at her mom's house, where the girls were at,
her brother, Jennie's brother, comes running out of the front door right as we drive up. And he says, "Lenya's not breathing well!" And it shattered the calm. Now I've had asthma since the third grade. Lenya has asthma—Livi, asthma. It's just normal. Any asthmatics here at Liberty? Raise your hand. Come on; this is your moment. When do you get to own it? Come on, asthmatic and proud. Come on, gangsters for life. We're going to get together after this service
and puff our Albuterol. No, we're not going to do that. That would not be an appropriate thing to
do at all. But we could. We have a prescription. Whatever, don't judge our journey. So, listen, ever since the third grade I get
a little wheezy when I run. I take a puff of my inhaler; I breathe better. That's just been life for me. But this was different. This was different. This attack Lenya was having was different. Now Lenya, five-years-old, beautiful little
girl, kindergarten, amazing. She's the most energy of all of our daughters
and the naughtiest of all of our daughters by far-just naughty, and mischievous, and
fun. In fact, the name Lenya means lion. We didn't know that when we picked it. It was just my god mom’s name, but then
we found out her name meant lion, so we nicknamed her Lenya lion, and that's what we called
her. And she was just a ferocious little cub—so
much fun. And so, Lenya is not breathing well, and the
asthma medicine's not working. And now I have her up on the kitchen counter,
and I'm doing CPR, and we're praying desperately. And we have 911 on the phone, and they're
telling us to do what we're doing. I remember my Red Cross training. I'm doing CPR, and my breath is filling up
my daughter's lungs. The ambulance comes, and we get taken to the
hospital, the whole thing. But here's what happened: In my arms, with
my breath in her lungs, my baby girl leaves this world and goes home. She went home for Christmas. It was the most horrendous thing, and the
most surreal thing, and the most "this is not happening thing" that I've ever been through. It was painful. It was cold. It was terrible. We were afraid, but we weren't alone. I don't know how to say this to you except
that God was with us in those moments. And like the Bible says, we walked through
that fire and we weren't burned. We passed through deep water and we were not
drowned. There was an anchor for our soul that held
us sure and held us secure in the midst of the most awful thing I could have ever dreamed
of. And I came to tell you that God will be with
you when you face difficulty in this life, but that doesn't mean it will be easy. That doesn't mean it will be pain free. It was like this: we were hurting with hope. And two don't make sense to each other. They seem like they cancel each other out,
but they don't. But hurting with hope still hurts. And God's not afraid of our grief, and God's
not afraid of our pain. We have a God who entered into our grief,
who entered into our pain, who took it upon Himself. And it was only from those days ‘til now—it's
only been our ability to look through the right lens at what we were seeing that allowed
us to continue on. It was only looking through the right lens
that allowed us, the day after Christmas, when we were supposed to be taking off on
an airplane to Disneyland—that we stood in a cemetery and watched that tiny white
box be lowered into the ground, and watched the plane take off over our heads that should
have taken us to California. That we were able to go through that and continue
to bless God's name, and to continue to trust him, and to continue to believe that He is
good, and that He does have a plan, and that He is in sovereign control of the universe
that we could say, like Job said long before we ever thought of it, “God, you give and
you take away.” It's only looking at it through the right
lens that we were able, my wife and I, to fall to our knees in the emergency room and
hold Lenya's hands, but raise our hands to the heavens. And say God, you're still good, and just as
we dedicated her to You when she was born, so even now we dedicate her back to you. Only looking at it through the lens of faith. And I believe my assignment, if you believe
in such a thing—I would even describe it as a mandate from heaven—has been to take
what He gave us and take what He's trusted to us, and to try and do our best to bottle
it up to share with you, so that no matter what kind of pain you face, no matter what
kind of loss you've experience, no matter what has been taken from you in this life,
because pain shows up in all sorts of different ways. But that my prayer would be that the tear
soaked pages in our journal and the lessons God's given to us bottled up as we wrote the
book and as we speak about it might be a benefit to you in the difficult things that you face
in this life that is summarized so well by the word Saturday. Friday, the day Jesus died, Sunday the day
He rose, but Saturday the day in the middle that often time gets overlooked. It was a day in between promise and fulfilment. And to some degree, before Christ returns
and the lion and the lamb lie down, and before every tear is wiped up from every eye, and
death, and disease, and the devil are all done away with forever—until that day we
live in some degree, all of us, in a spiritual Saturday. In a time of melancholy in between promise
and fulfilment—when things God has said will be are not yet completely as they will
be finally. And so, as we navigate our way through our
own Saturdays, I want to give you three different kind of takeaway truths from this talk that
I hope would bless you and give you strength and encouragement. The first is this: write it down. Don’t rely on the naked eye. I think we have them going up on the screens
as well. Don't rely on the naked eye. The naked eye is what you can see in the human. It's what you can see in the natural, but
we must use that telescope of faith, use that lens of faith. And that's what Paul describes for us isn't
it? In 2 Corinthians 4 where he says, "That is
why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are
being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won't
last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly
outweighs them and will last forever! So, we don't look at the troubles we can see
now; rather, we fix our gaze." Everyone, say: “fix our gaze.” Come on; say it as a prayer to him. Say, “fix our gaze,” because if your gaze
is broken if all you look at is stuff of this earth. You need your broken gaze fixed by you fixing
your gaze on things that cannot be seen. "For the things we can see now will soon be
gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever." Listen to me carefully. Rather than relying on our naked eye, if we
will believe for God to breathe on our souls, to dilate our pupils, to give us that telescope
of faith, we will be able to see the invisible, and then we will be able to do the impossible. Everything changes when what you see is there
is not what you believe, because you believe in what God says is there, and that's the
key. You see, God's word is how we get faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God. And that's why it's so important that we hear
God's word, and we trust what He has said over what we see. And you have to consciously do this. I describe it in the book as like putting
on a pair of glasses. When I wake up in the morning I can't see
until I put my lenses on, and every day we have to choose to do a lens change. And moment by moment sometimes we've got to
do a lens change. Sometimes we care so much about what people
think and so much pressure is put on what phone we have, or what car we drive, or what
our parents do, and we put so much pressure on here and now. And the same applies to pain. This morning when I woke up, our number as
a family is 1,413 days since Lenya left, days since Lenya went home. And so here I am today. I woke up in Virginia, and I look back 1,413
days to when I was last with my little girl, and felt her arms around my neck, and got
to take her on daddy daughter dates, and kiss her, and tell her stories at bedtime. 1,413 days separate me from her, and that's
hard, because she feels like she's drifting so far away from me. And every day I wake up I feel like I'm getting
further from her, but that's by the naked eye. If I look at it with faith, God's word says,
Levi, Lenya's not in the grave where you last saw her. She's with me in Heaven, where you're going
over here. So, you're actually, every day you get up,
you're moving closer and closer and closer— I'm 1,413 days closer to my daughter than
I've ever been. I'm moving in the right direction, but only
if I look at it with the right lens. So, what you have to learn to do is the choice
you make consciously. The Bible calls it taking heart. Taking heart; taking heart. Take heart it says in Scripture. Take heart. Listen, your heart will get lost if you let
it. You have to choose to take heart, to choose
to take heart. And when you do that, you look at loneliness,
but you go—ah, God I hear you saying I am with you always even unto the end of the age. I feel lonely, but I'm not alone—lens change. You have to do a double-take. Like, you know, at the beach? No, that's a different kind of double-take
you do. Listen carefully. Stay with me, attention, swipe right. The right kind of double-take is when you
see something that stresses you out, but you look away, load up a promise from Scripture,
and look at it again. Where you look at death, but hear God saying,
“I am the resurrection and the life.” Where you look at loss, where you look at
devastation, where you look at bankruptcy, and you hear Him saying I am your shield;
I am your exceeding great reward. When you look at that situation again and
dare it to scare you. When you look at it again and dare it to frighten
you. When the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords
and the God of Angel Armies, the One who was dead but now is alive and is alive forevermore
has your back and holds your life! And He is your life and the length of your
days, and He wants to bless you, and He is always for you. You've got to look at life through the right
lens, not the naked eye. Second thing, jot this down—so important. You need to train for the trial you're not
yet in. Train for the trial you're not yet in. I love the Scripture Proverbs 10:25. It says, "When the whirlwind passes by, the
wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation." Storms, when they show up in our lives, they
reveal what kind of a foundation we have. That's what Jesus said in Matthew 7, right? Whether we're building our life on sand or
stone, we find out when the storm passes by. Storms are a terrible time to make preparations,
agreed? Like you see the tornado coming—Oklahoma
tell me. You see the storm coming. It that where it's like, oh, I see a tornado
coming. I think we should build a bomb shelter, right? Yeah, say hi to Dorothy for us, pal. Right? You're going to Oz—two tickets to not paradise! So, that's what happens when you don't have
preparations made. But the Bible says that when your life is
built on the rock you have an anchor for your soul. You have a firm foundation. The whirlwind will pass by, but you're good. You're taken care of because of what you did
before the storm came. Here's what I want you to know. New revelation to look at your life with. Right now, you are in training for a trial
you're not yet in. This is your prep time. This is the time for the two-a-days. This is all the time you're ever going to
get ready for whatever storm is six months from now, for whatever storm is two years
from now. I know you have a Google calendar, and you
can see what you think's on your calendar for next year, but let me tell you something:
there's also another Google calendar called reality. And we weren't in grief until we were. And we weren't in pain until we are. Like there's not even a name for what we went
through. People who lose their spouse—widow, widower. Children who lose their parent—an orphan. But what do you use to describe a mom or a
dad that's had to bury their child? It's not a word. Maybe it's appropriate, because no word can
describe such pain. But we were in training a year before that
came. We just didn't know we were in training. So what we can do is if we will look at our
lives now as the time to train for whatever difficult day is coming, we will take preparations
beforehand that we'll be thankful that we've done when the storm shows up. There's a group of smoke jumpers, which is
firefighters that jump out of helicopters into fires, right? And I heard about their creed. The creed for this group of smoke jumpers
is, "Do today what other won't. Do tomorrow what others can't." If you'll be willing right now to do the hard
work of training, of walking with Jesus, because there's no Amazon drone that can deliver sanctification. And there's no shortcut, just add water, Hot
Pockets, Starbucks Via for getting that relationship with God deep into your soul. You've just got to get alone with Him, and
trust Him, and put those words into your soul. You've got to trust and memorize God's word
and let Him teach you a new song to sing called worship so that in the trial, in the difficult
day, your muscle memory will be honed. And you won't have to look in the concordance
for a Bible verse on grief, or suffering, or loss, because you will have so hidden them
in your heart that you will not sin against Him. You’re in training right now, Liberty, for
a trial that you're not yet in. This is the only chance you're going to get,
so get ready for it. Man, that's why it's so important that you
are careful about what people you put into your life. There's nothing that will determine the outcome
of your life more than who you do life with. If you want the right people in your life
who will hold you up, and the right people in your life that will have your back. And it's important that you develop a robust
theology of suffering now. If all you ever knew was that God is good,
if all you ever knew is that God is for you and not against you, then all of a sudden
you encounter life that chews you up and spits you out, and where is your God who wants to
bless you? But if you understand that it is in the midst
of difficulty that God wants to work all things together for the good for those who love Him
and are called according to His purposes, and that suffering, and difficulty, and evil,
they don't blindside Him. They don't. It's not like He got confused and took His
hands off the wheel for a second. But He has a plan even in pain. And that, matter of fact, your most impossible
pain can unlock your most incredible power, that when difficult comes, you're ready for
it. You knew it was coming, because Jesus said
in this world you will have trouble. In this world you will have tribulation, but
be of good cheer, or take heart. I have overcome the world. When you understand that pain, and evil, and
difficulty, and death, and loss is a part of the equation, and that God is going to
use it to subdue all things to Himself and to His plans. So when it comes you're on your tiptoes. You're not going to get knocked down like
you were on your heels. You're on your toes, because you're a lion,
and lions never walk flat-footed. They're always walking, running, standing
on their toes, and when you're on your toes, you're in the ready position. And when you're on your toes you can limbo
lower now. When you're on your toes you can Morpheus
with the bullets going over your head. Hello somebody! You can look like a butterfly, sting like
a bee. You're a fighter on your toes. You're understanding difficulties coming,
and the Devil wants to oppose whoever God uses. Isaiah cut in half, John the Baptist decapitated,
God's own Son nailed to a cross. When God uses you, get ready; that's a bullseye
on your back. And you're ready for it, because you believe
God's going to use even it to use it for His glory. Paul, stone him—with rocks, not weed—important
clarification, college students. When Paul got stoned, he would use it as the
opportunity to preach. When Paul got locked up, He'd preach to the
prison guard. Paul gets ship-wrecked; he'll lead the whole
island to Christ. It was through his misery God opened up his
ministry. Which leads me to my last point. Let God use your pain. This is where I want to end. And that's where we find the power. Let God use your pain. Whenever you experience and encounter difficulty,
I dare you to believe it's actually an honor. It's an honor to hurt. It's an honor to be trusted with a trial. Charles Spurgeon once said God gives His most
difficult assignments to His most trusted soldiers. Long before that the apostle Paul talked about
the grace that it is not only to believe, but to suffer for His name. And I believe that part of the power comes
when in our difficulty we don't ask why. Why? It's because we didn't listen to God in the
Garden of Eden. Why? It's because the devil is a hater. Why? That's not helpful. What, God, do you want to do out of this? Who can I touch because of this? I want to speak into your heart right now. Pain is a passport. It will open doors and take you places you
have no business being otherwise. So, we're in the hospital now. It's five days before Christmas. My daughters are in the waiting room. Olivia, my oldest, is the only one who really
understands what's happening. She says where's Lenya? And we have to tell her she's with Jesus in
heaven. Daisy and Clover too young to understand. They'll hear about this as they grow up, and
they are. We get in the car to drive home, and I look
in the rear-view mirror, and there's an empty cars seat now. The hardest thing I ever did was put the car
in reverse and drive out of that space. And my wife Jennie is watching. She says to me, "Levi, you need to go back
in the hospital. You forgot to invite all of those people to
church." She hands me invitations to our Christmas
Eve service—the sermon I wrote that day—and I go back in the hospital, only because my
wife told me to do that. Wi-Fi, she gives you the Wi-Fi; you do what
she says. It's called Wi-Fi. I have Wi-Fi. So I go in the hospital, and I hand the invitations
out. And I say, “If you'll come to church in
my daughter's honor—she's right behind that sheet, but she's actually in Heaven—I'll
preach.” I don't know how. I'm like crying. I mean it's a hot mess, but I told them come
to church. Most of them probably said, okay, thank you,
just to get me to leave the ER. Well, the respiratory therapist, who was the
wife of the emergency room doctor who tried to resuscitate Lenya and two of the ambulance
drivers not only came to Christmas Eve, but made decisions to give their lives to Jesus
Christ at those services. God could have reached them any way, but he
chose—through my wife seeing something I didn't see—that our pain was a passport. Your pain is a passport. We began with lion's eyes, that lions can
see far, because their eyes are built that way. Let me end with my daughter Lenya Lion's eyes. This is my little girl Lenya, right here,
lovely. The night Lenya went home, she was able to
give a gift—a gift called sight—through corneal transplants, the outermost lenses
of her eyes being donated to those in need. Two blind people, both in their fifties, were
able to receive sight—one of them each eye—and they, today, see life through the eyes of
a lion. And I believe if we'll trust the Holy Spirit,
the same thing can happen in an invisible way inside our hearts. Would you pray with me? All of us praying. If you're here today and you're in pain, if
you're here today and you've gone through some kind of loss, or hardship, or grief—it
doesn't have to look like mine. You just are hurting, and you want to be honest
before the presence of God about that, could I just ask you to raise up a hand in the air? All across this arena, raise your hand up
if you are hurting in any way. Maybe you've been raped. Maybe you've been abused. Maybe you've been neglected. Maybe you've gone through some sort of death
experience as well and you're just hurting, just debilitating pain—just raise your hand
up. Release it to God. Tell Him that you're—"I'm hurting. I'm hurting. I'm hurting." Thank you Jesus. Will you touch each heart? Would you touch each life? Would you give them grace? Would you give them strength? Would you open the eyes of their soul, that
they would see what they can't see and do what they can't do? Heavenly Father, would you just send your
Spirit like anointing oil running down their brow, running down their head, God, to their
shoulders, and their hands, and their feet. Strengthen the things that are weak. Give them courage for the fight. Give them peace. Help them remember they are not alone. I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. God bless you Liberty. >> NASSER: Amen. I do want to ask our resident shepherds to
make themselves available up here towards the front and our shepherds as well. If you sense that the Holy Spirit's really
spoken to you today and you want to just maybe stick around just a few minutes and talk to
someone, pray with someone, just know that they're going to be available to you. We would love to just be able to pray with
you and just let you know that you're not alone. John 16:33, I think was so beautifully laid
out for us today where Christ says, "Take heart. In this world you will have trouble, but I
have come to overcome it." And so we have peace that passes all understanding. Thank you, brother. Thanks for letting tragedy be made testimony. God's used you today, and God has honored
your daughter's memory by just being a testimony here in this room. Can we thank Pastor Levi just one more time? We love you, man. Thank you.
