Out Of The Cave | Chris Hodges

[Applause] come on give jesus some praise everybody now give him what he really deserves everybody all right give your neighbor a little high five or something say so glad you came to church come on tell them you glad you came to church come on tell your second choice on the other side you need some church tell them just you made a choice you did everybody it's good to be home i said it's good to be home ain't no place like home pastor jonathan it's been four decades i've been a part of this church for 43 years and i got saved here at 15 years old over at the north campus and just it obviously has changed my life i went to the christian school here i got i got pastored and mentored by my pastor she's been my pastor brother roy was my first pastor for the first five years and brother larry's been my pastor for the past 38 years sir i honor you today and love you with all my heart sister melanie love you love you love you and uh just delighted to be back home and jonathan uh on behalf of all the overseers my brother we are very very proud of you you're leading extremely well come on church show some love to your pastor yeah we're proud of you we are very very proud of you and couldn't be more excited how many all know we made the devil a little mad about new orleans isn't that right but i believe i watched a message last week that says we taking the land you know that's what we gonna do so i get to brighten your day today and talk about depression come on somebody all right and so i i'll try to make it as fun as i can i love humor you know i i'm from south louisiana you know so we we laugh we eat and we laugh some more and so i'm gonna try to make this as fun as i can and but i really do want to minister to you out of first kings chapter 19 if you have your bibles and while you're finding that i am traveling with my wife of 35 years and come on miss tammy's in the house and so and we have five kids and now y'all we have six grandsons all boys i know where the grandparents at where y'all at where y'at were you at see they always make noise yeah that's because grandkids are better than kids y'all know that right [Applause] so if you don't have grandkids yet let your kids live better once they're coming hang in there just just hang in there it's it's awesome it's awesome all right well i'm very excited to preach to you today it really is a joy always considered a great honor to be back home i see familiar faces and just glad to be back in in in my hometown and at my home church today and so father we'd ask you just to move in this moment lord as we give respect and honor and make a room in our heart for your word and lord we know that this they aren't just these aren't just good ideas your word lights up our hearts it's a lamp to our life in every way it directs us sid it is the living word of god the word of god today god it has the power for its own fulfillment and we invite lord not just ideas to our minds but but a change to our heart and our life that we're never the same in jesus name and everybody said of good amen and amen well i do want to talk to you about this that actually pastor jonathan asked me to share on this topic story began actually right here in baton rouge um i was on staff here since i was 20 years old i'll be 58 in a few weeks and so i i living the dream on pasture larry's staff church growing doing great 1999 rolls around and for absolutely no reason at all i'm in depression i mean i have everything on paper said i should have been the happiest guy alive we were living in a house that we had built um up in zachary and just loved it we our families here i love my church i love my job i love what i do everything about it and i'm miserable on the inside and and i have to be honest with you before that i used to be pretty critical about people who were depressed i was like well dude just get over it man it's like choose to be happy like aren't you a christian or something like you know what i'm saying i was until i experienced it and the worst part of it was you don't even know how you got there and you certainly don't know the way out and that's why i use the metaphor of the cave of course elijah ends up in a cave of depression but to me the cave is the best description of what depression feels like because there's a way out you just don't know where it is and it's very disorienting and there's got to be bats somewhere come on somebody right you know just your mind make a butterfly can fly by that's the bat you know what i'm saying you're you're making up stuff now and it's and that's what it was really was like i didn't even tell anybody but tammy what i was going through in fact i was coming to work doing what i was supposed to do just smiling and you know i mean because i really had no reason externally to be unhappy just was miserable and so we always did 21 days of prayer and fasting you know and so and and i always did something i have to confess in front of pastor larry because he never asked us what we were fasting but i was fasting like broccoli come on somebody right and so i'm sorry but in tooth and i'm not even going to look over there y'all just go i'm just going to talk to y'all over here right so but in january of 2000 um that's the first time i did a water only fast because i was that desperate in fact i told the lord if you don't help me i'm gonna give you 21 more days if you don't help me i was going to go check myself into some kind of facility or something i mean i was i was that bad and no one knew except for tammy and so on on the 17th day of that fast i got a picture of me preaching on a stage in another city and i didn't know where it was um actually made an appointment right after that to go spend time with pastor larry and melanie and and and just shared what i saw and he said it's time for you to lead your own church and i said well i don't even know where to go do you put out resumes what do you do you know i don't i don't know and he said god will give you supernatural love for a city until he gives you that stay here but if that ever happens i want you to go there and plant a great church and and the rest is history and again sir i thank you for your godly wisdom in my life show them some love everybody you know and so actually that was my only real bout of depression i write about that solution i'll talk about here just a little bit but i write about in chapter 13 of the book just how how vision actually is probably the best thing to get you out of a cave of depression you know when when the lord restored the fortunes to zion we were like those who dreamed and our la mouths were filled with laughter our tongues were songs of joy i mean when you god puts a dream in your heart i promise you you're going to have some joy back on the inside again and that's one of the solutions for sure and so anyway i've been there been in birmingham now 20 years planning planning this church having having a good time and in 2018 uh there were three pastors who'd committed suicide in america i didn't know any of them um but i read the last that happened i read the story and y'all it's like i knew the brother personally uh it impacted me so greatly i was grieving someone i did not even know and i and i we were in a series at highlands where i was answering questions that they had given us from easter time so every easter i i had the church say hey tell me topics you want me to teach on and and so we get these questions well a lot of them around anxiety and depression and things like that so i thought you know what i'm going to study first time ever a message on depression i never even studied it i knew god would have to have something to say about it but i didn't know what it was i did a week's worth of study which was not nearly enough and i brought a message in that september on depression it became the most rewatched message on our website times 100. and i knew i'd i'd hit a nerve like oh wow wow this is like something people really are dealing with so a few weeks later i was speaking at a pastor's conference and i tailor made it to fit preachers and same thing happened um just the response was overwhelming and that's when i decided i would take some time to really do some real research and when i say real research study god's word i always believe god has an answer come on somebody right i just do but but but but i also wanted to know uh you know the secular opinions and i read a bunch of studies and i wanted to actually i took trips to go talk to psychiatrists and psychologists and explain this to me let me know really what's going on here and try to do my homework anyway the book kind of came out of that the manuscript was due in march of 2020. anybody remember that month and it just wonder if anybody and so actually uh i i asked the publisher i said can i have a few more months because we were just busier than they were trying to figure out how to have church online and all of that and the whole world was felt like it was falling apart and anyway and and so uh 2020 uh kind of ended up in the book i'll just tell you that much i had a i had a pretty rough about a month of much of what your pastor's been through recently and it was just one of the hardest things i ever went through and that was my only really second bout of real depression and i'd never considered taking my life ever but i actually thought about i'm very embarrassed to say but last june i i came this close to ministry suicide i was i was done i was gonna go do something else it was just that that very difficult for me and i got very honest about it in chapter three angie's favorite chapter and that's because that story that story's in there is probably where i get the most vulnerable in the attempt of letting my vulnerability um let people open up their lives to what god can do for them and so i really pray that it touches people and i know 2020 probably your whole life's been tough in some ways but 2020 in the words show my picture in the words of julia roberts everybody 2020 was rough on all of us in that right i told you i had to have a little humor i'm so sorry all right take it down take it down pick it up i'm so sorry y'all if y'all don't laugh every once in a while give me an a man shout me down i just i gotta have some i just do i'm so sorry all right so but let me say this to you if you are in any kind of an emotional or soul your soul is not in good shape right now um let me just make sure we're clear in our theology and that is that god never intended you to cope with that that god's plan isn't for you to have that the rest of your life and that's just your thing now because i want to just remind you in john chapter 12 verse 46 jesus said i have come into the world as they said out loud as a as a light so that no one who believes in me should say the rest of it should that's right that's god's plan for you light not darkness and that's where we're headed with this now before we go there let me give you two little qualifiers that i always like to mention on this uh because there are some very real biological and genetic parts of depression so in the study the studies that i've done there are easily easily 30 percent of people who are depressed that are there by nothing that's happened externally or in their life no choices no traumas it's just in other words the mind is just a part of your body and it can be sick just like any other part of your body can be sick so like my eyes aren't totally good that's why i'm wearing glasses right now right and nobody's thinking funny of me you're not thinking there's something wrong with me there's just a part of my body that doesn't work at peak efficiency the mind is no different but if we allow biology to be the only discussion we're going to miss something because because if i've learned anything that depression is not a malfunction of the mind it's a signal it's trying to tell you something in my case in 1999 it was actually trying to tell me god had something else for me and thank god pastor larry had the wisdom to be able to see it and say it say look it's just because god's trying to get you to do something else he's trying to show you something so i want you to approach it that way that what you're going through may not be all bad it is bad but you don't it but it may be a signal of something that needs to change in your life can you hear a good amen everybody okay the second thing that i would want you to hear is to everybody that's gone through this quietly like i was and that is i'm urging you not to see this as a point of shame i would want to say it to you this way it's okay to not be okay it's just not okay to stay not okay but it's okay and i think for years the church in my opinion has not done a great job embracing those who have struggled we have looked at them and said well you lack faith well maybe they don't they just don't know an answer they don't know where to go and i think we need to be more embracing we need to reach out more i think the church ought to lead the way on this topic can i hear a good amen everybody right i really do so i would want to say that to you but but i really believe there are some biblical solutions so i was trained here and i was trained by uh miss melanie's dad who i think i outlined a hundred chapters in my lifetime under his leadership uh when i was in school here and so when i read the bible i see points i can't help it i mean they're just there all the time right and so i was reading first kings 19 and there are clearly five steps actually i think there are six things that elijah did to get in a cave of depression and there were five things he got he did to get out of it and i had to choose today which list i was going to give you because we don't have time for all 11. so i thought do i give them the six that'll get you in or the five that'll get you out i chose the six that got you in all right that's where we're going to go today i i preached this in two messages at our church and i did the six that get you in the cave of depression and then and we were just getting ready to start the the second week and this old guy came up he's an old country dude pastor chris pastor chris he said last week it just really resonated with my heart i just love now i know now i know how you get in that cave of depression he said but my lord i had to i had to come back to find out how to get out of there you know so i'm gonna help y'all out of there you got to get the book to get out of there but i'm gonna help you to find out uh how we can end up in it so let me set it up let me set it up first kings 18 there's probably some of the best preaching material in the bible it's where elijah defeats the prophets of baal and ashrae 850 prophets it's god consumes this water-soaked sacrifice y'all have heard that sermon and then in just a paragraph later uh he prays and ends a three-year drought he had these two massive spiritual victories and we pick up the story in chapter 19 and now ahab told jezebel everything elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword so jezebel sent a message on facebook to elijah to say that's about honestly there it was no bigger than that so what happens here is no bigger than a comment on instagram this is what this is it's a it's a threat from someone who really was never going to be able to do it god was always going to sustain elijah but she puts this she posts this comment may the gods deal with me be it ever so severely if by this time tomorrow i don't make your life like like one of those you just killed in that previous chapter and elijah all that courage in the previous chapter ran for his life and when he came to beersheba beersheba is the place of the oath that would be the place where he's told god i'm going to serve you no matter what and now he's changing his mind when he came to his beer sheba he in judah he left his servant there big mistake and while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness he came to a broom bush sat down under it and prayed that he might die he became suicidal i have had enough lord take my life and then you get this comment i'm gonna talk about it in a minute it's out of nowhere i am no better than my ancestors what does that have to do with anything we'll talk about in a second but we see elijah making some bad decisions really based off of one comment and that's how quickly it can happen and i see six things i'm going to give them to you very very quickly i won't have time to really do any of them i really could preach a message on each one of them but i just want to just introduce this to you so you can understand because the first that is clear in both secular study and in biblical study and that is the first cause can be what i call life imbalances meaning your life's out of order so it doesn't matter it doesn't really honestly the choices you're making in your lifestyle or what are what are getting you there i read this one book uh he's not it's not a christian guy but i thought it was fantastic a guy named johann hari he wrote a book called lost connections and he made this statement that just resonated with me he says we need to stop talking so much about chemical imbalances and more about the imbalances in the way we live our lives the truth is if your life is out of control and going in so many different directions and if your choices are bad let me say it this way if you're watching netflix to three o'clock in the morning every night you're gonna get depressed when ninety percent of their stuff has an m.a rating and you should be in bed come on everybody get your beauty sleep they're just you can make some choices simply simple as that which by the way it's interesting because i don't have time to preach it to you today but the first thing that god did for elijah wasn't spiritual it was physical so when the angel of the lord visits elijah we'll that's in the book we'll study you have to study it yourself but the first thing the angel lord said you know what the first thing the angel said you think if an angel visited you you would think he's gonna say something like repent pray you know worship sacrifice something you know spiritual you know what he said you're gonna love this this is god's prescription he said hey go take a nap can i get a better amen everybody just go take a nap and wake up and eat and when he woke up and ate you know what he told him next you know what go sleep again and when he woke up he says hey what let's eat some more y'all that's the word of the living god can i get i love that because that's what i love to do i'm giving you permission today everybody to sleep eat sleep and it says strengthened by that food he took the rest of the journey and sometimes our lives are so out of order we can't even complete the things that god wants to do on the inside of us i was convinced i needed to fast i needed to slow my life down to really maybe hear something from god in that fast of 2000 that he had been trying to say to me the entire year i was depressed are y'all listening to me but my life was was not in a position where i could actually receive from god i love this quote from another guy that i researched a guy named steven lardy who wrote a book called the depression cure he says we were never designed for the sedentary that means sitting in one place in front of a computer all day indoor socially isolated fast food laden sleep deprived frenzy pace of modern life you're not designed for that you do those things you're going to end up in that place so what do we do well the bible again has all the solutions i mean science loves to take credit for things they've discovered of what god has always been saying for thousands of years but in the book of ecclesiastes chapter 4 verse 6 the bible says it's better to have one handful even though you have to it's better to only have one handful and have some tranquility peace than to have two handfuls and you have toil and a chasing after the wind but i have two hands yeah but it's probably not good to fill them both up i teach people live live one handful kind of a lives just you don't not everything that is doable is sustainable y'all listening to me a lot of us have created a life we can do but you can't keep doing and stay full of the peace of god come on say amen right there that was worth it right that'll help you just in itself but the second thing that elijah did it says it says that he left his servant there and some for a lot of people your cause of depression is isolation and loneliness that's why i'm so excited about the b groups that are starting today listen to me look at my eyes and hear this every campus b groups are not a program of this church they're designed to save your life they're not a luxury they're they're they're a necessity because you weren't designed to be socially distanced now you can be physical i never liked it the first time i heard that phrase the first day they came out with that in march of 2020 we need social distancing like i get what they meant physical they meant don't get so close because i don't want to get what you got right but we actually needed to be more socially connected than ever before it was a bad choice of words i think it's actually i think it was the wrong word i actually called uh governmental leaders and said would you please say physical distancing not social because actually we needed each other you weren't designed to do life alone in fact i'll prove it to you know the first problem in the bible wasn't sin it was solitude the first thing that god ever said wasn't good wasn't what happened in chapter three with the devil it's when he saw man all alone again look in my eyes and hear this church it's not good for you to be alone you were you're designed to do life with one another romans 12 says it this way since we are all one body in christ read the rest of the verse out loud together with me we belong to each other and each of us needs turn to your neighbor and say you need me some of you married couples had more intimacy right there than you've had in 50 years you're welcome so there you go all right don't have enough time to talk about it but it's a big deal psychiatrists say we're the loneliest society in human history when we used to do so much together we actually heard we we do things as a team he says we're doing it less and less we become more independent listen don't do you that's the new thing well you know dude you just do you that is the worst don't do you do we do us do the body come on let's do this let's do the family let's do it together here's the third one y'all get anything out of this so far all right just just trying to help you this is real practical remember he said i am no better than my ancestors what in the world you thinking about them for i mean you should be thinking about jezebel and all but don't third one comparing ourselves with others we live in a culture of comparison you're looking at stuff on instagram by the way that ain't real y'all know that everybody when you see people [Music] that ain't what they look like 10 minutes ago y'all do realize that right and what you'll end up doing is comparing your miserable life with their highlight reel and the next thing you know you're depressed because i don't know that we're supposed to know all that stuff honestly and we live in a culture now if you want to know what your neighbor had for lunch just go look on their instagram it's on there right were we supposed to know what everybody had i don't think they were personally but we in this it's being fed by this this narcissism really and the culture that we live in this lack of identity that's critical it's one of the solutions by the way if you're not clear in who you are the devil is happy to define it for you [Music] and now you're looking for somebody else and looking at someone else and in the words of president teddy roosevelt comparison is the thief of your joy it'll steal it right it'll steal it away and so what do we do well again the bible the bible has a lot to say on the topic galatians chapter six let's study this verse together it says each one should test their own actions in other words when you're when you're thinking about what you're going to stand before god for don't think about your neighbor think about you then they can take pride and that's a holy pride in themselves alone without say the next word without comparing themselves to someone else for each one should carry their own love you just you think about you you think about what you're responsible for so i have this new thing that's brand new to every every uh we still do the 21 days of prayer and fast things start every year and and during that time i actually call the people that i am under so i have my pastor larry i talk to him like pray over me give me a word if you got one i call our other overseers then we have our trustees and i'll call them we had a trustee had a word for me this year starting the 21 days because on the 21 days one of the things that i do is i get off of all media so for a lot of you you know food you do we do food fasting but some of you would benefit more greatly from what i call a media fast i call it a soul fast like the things that feeds your emotions which is coming usually from all things media like don't turn your phone on for 21 days some of y'all are breaking out in hives already just at the thought like turn it off right just don't look at don't look at the news for 21 days i mean honestly i mean some of y'all would never know there was stuff going on unless you read it seriously and so he start he said he said i know he says i know you're doing this so fast i know you're off media he says he says i want you as you go through it i want you he says i want you to think about things that you should never go back to and he called it selective ignorance this is my new word bachelor selective ignorance like select the things you're just never going to know about select i just when some people did you hear some no i don't i don't i didn't know that and i promise you i'm a lot better better off not knowing come on somebody right just where you're supposed to know everything so i got off i've been off of i've been off of social media for about almost a year now and i got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart where down in my heart come on baptist y'all know that song right i'm serious and just me uh news not not watching it only reading it so i get the facts but not the commentary come on somebody right just and i just i'm just throwing that out there to you that you you might have find that there's a whole lot more peace out there to be found if you're not really always just checking what so-and-so is doing and reading and watching everything it's just something for you to consider here's the fourth one it's very much tied to the third one they actually go hand in hand because when you compare psychologists say you end up in this thing called ruminating ruminating so rumor so i'll just teach you something a ruminating animal is an animal that chews its cud so if you ever seen a cow he ain't put his face on the ground for an hour but he's chewing he does that side jaw thing and there's just chewing right and it's called chewing the cud and and what they do then this is gross i'm just going to tell you before i tell you it's gross okay so just get ready but they eat grass they chew it they swallow it they throw it up in their mouths and chew it some more and then they swallow it and they regurgitate it again in their mouths and chew it some more that's called a ruminating animal how many all know every time you swallow it and bring it back up it don't get better it is worse right and they say now look at me they say that we do that with our thoughts so when you ruminate you're taking your situation that's bad but you chewed it you swallowed it but you brought it back up and it got worse now the thing didn't really get worse you made it worse by ruminating on it it's called self-talk and it's one of the most unhealthy things you can do but i have to process it pastor chris yeah that's why i want you in a b group because what we were created to do because when you're in the middle of it you're so confused about your situation you will turn a butterfly into a bat and i'm not saying your situation's not bad i'm just saying that if you end up in self-talk the devil loves it there that's why watch this that's why when the devil when the bible talks about spiritual warfare in second corinthians 10 that we have power to demolish strongholds the next line says so take captive every every thought and make it obedient to christ that's the opposite of ruminating you're taking your own counsel now and chewing and swallowing and regurgitating it and it gets worse and worse and some of you right now are in some self-talk and you've made a bad situation worse and you've even convinced yourself of some things that just are not true and it happens to the best of them now i'm going to bring some confession here here it goes that happens to me every sunday night we can have 60 000 people on a sunday baptized 2 000 people a thousand get saved one comment i'm driving home and i think about it on the couch all day long i could sit there and think about one sentence i wish i wouldn't have said i had that opportunity man chris you shouldn't have said that you should have said this and the more i think about it it and honestly my the worst time i'm coming off my spiritual highs just like elijah did he had those two great victories he noticed he got those attacks right after great spiritual victories when he's his defenses are down i learned that too by the way after i left bethany uh the the first first time i ever left bethany i just got in ministry graduated from from gulf state's bible college i got sent to colorado to be a youth pastor and so as in colorado you do a lot of skiing there so i took used to taking van loads of kids to go skiing really just administered to the kids in the van there and back two hours up two hours down it's not as fun as you think it is by the way because they hurt themselves non-stop these teenagers are always like everybody somebody's hurt all the time so as a youth pastor you have to you you ride the chair lift up you ski down you check the infirmary that's what you do you know you ride it up check the infirmary so anyway i spent the whole day in the infirmary is anybody here you know so that's what i did i'll never forget a discussion i had with one of the paramedics there though he said 90 of all ski accidents happen in the last hour of the day and in the last hour of the day you're you're overconfident and you're tired and that's why the enemy loves in my case sunday nights had a good day i'm tired and i let down and now i'm thinking and i'm ruminating and that's the devil's playground well praise god i know i know it now and i have the weapons of warfare in the name of jesus and i can take captive thoughts and my thoughts captive and i can and i can tell tammy hey this is a vulnerable time for me and now honestly the enemy has no no place there in my life whatsoever but i want to help you with the same thing because that's happening to you guys as well it happens to all of us and that's why we have to make sure that we're thinking good things the bible says in philippians 4 you know this verse finally brothers and sisters whatever is true whatever is noble whatever is right whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things and the god of peace will be with notice netflix is not on the list instagram's not on the list come on somebody right the god of peace will be with you so my question to you how well are you controlling well i'm depressed yeah but how well are you controlling your thoughts because that's the enemy's playground brian tracy another guy that i researched he's actually a motivational coach he said 95 of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself and it's so true oh let me give you two more really really quickly is this helping anybody at all two more okay i love this one and it's the inability to process pain in a healthy way now listen to me you're gonna have pain because we're on this thing called earth right somebody said well my lower pasture be more positive i'm positive you're gonna have pain you can't avoid it it's going to happen in fact jesus gave it to you as a promise in this world you will have tribulation nobody has that verse on the refrigerator that's my verse right there and i just love that but no but it's gonna happen his plan was never for you to avoid it it was planned for you to overcome it so you're gonna have it the question is what are you going to do when it happens now this is where a lot of people are making bad choices statistically speaking 2020 made it exponentially worse because drug addiction went up 19 in march 29 in april and 42 may so we got so bad we sat home in lockdown and started drinking stuff taking stuff depression medication went up 300 mental health hotlines went up 900 percent that's what's happening so you're going to have it the question is what are you going to do when that happens this is my favorite part of the book for me i loved it because it's what happened to me in 1999 and that is when you have pain god uses pain so that you can share that pain and the victory over it to help somebody else going through the same thing that is that's why look at me look at me that's why every one of you are qualified to be a minister every one of you that's why everyone if you're qualified to be a small group leader because you're supposed to take you're not supposed to have a perfect life you're supposed to take your pain overcome it and stay in this sit with people and say yep i know exactly what you're going i understand that let's pray together let me show you what i did my favorite study in the entire uh book was this guy that i should have known i'm embarrassed that i did not know who he was his name was victor frankel he's a jewish psychiatrist who had a practice in austria after the holocaust the world war ii so he survived it none of his family did every one of them were killed in the holocaust you can imagine the trauma he himself was going through and and so he opened up a clinic with with holocaust survivors watch this every one of them were suicidal every single patient he had in his care suicidal having gone through that horrible holocaust and he came up with he called logotherapy again he came up with it yeah no god has been saying this he had three things listen very carefully that every person that's depressed or suicidal needs meaningful work a community of friends to do it with and the ability to take whatever suffering you've experienced and use it to help somebody else this is the word of the lord that wasn't the word of victor franco the jewish psychiatrist you're look at me you have meaning and you weren't supposed to just pay bills you were supposed to have significance not survival you're created to do something you go talk to the people who are parking cars today taking care of babies today ministering to your children today playing instruments today they're the happiest people at bethany i'm just telling you and that's why i'm encouraging you come to the nine o'clock serve at the 11 o'clock service come to 11 o'clock serve the night i don't watch i'm not what cause bethany need help no you need help i tell people i don't need you to serve at our church because we need it's working good without you i'm so sorry to tell you that but it would work it worked better with you but it's more for you i'm telling you i mean the apostle paul y'all he had it rough the brother listened in first corinthians 11 all this stuff he had happened to him five times got those 39 lashes that nearly killed jesus he got it five times beaten with rods snake bit i mean shipwrecked i mean he was stoned i said that to one guy he goes well at least he got a little relief like no bro it ain't this it was like rocks like you know you it's not that kind of stone my brother i told y'all i have to interject the humor i'm so sorry watch this but he said these are light and momentary troubles no they're not these were hard and lasting a long time troubles but it didn't feel that way to him don't miss this their light and momentary troubles achieving for me a glory that far outweighs them all why because i have my eyes fixed not on the scene things but the unseen things these are temporary those are eternal he had he found he found purpose this is what got me out of the cave in 1999. i'm telling you and so that's what ju that's what viktor frankl not one patient by the way committed suicide under his watch not one why because he helped them find purpose that's what by the way the angel of the lord that i don't get to teach you today one of the things that he did for elijah he didn't even answer his complaints he goes okay look stop all that go anoint this person go anoint this person in other words get back to work and it was that it was that sense of purpose i think it's the greatest if you make me only give you one that's the one i give you you need meaningful work with a community of friends and take whatever suffering you've experienced that use it for the glory of god i'm out of time but i'll tell you the last one and no doctor no psychiatrist no book had this one no one i'm the first one that i know of to write that this is a cause of depression and it absolutely is and 100 is that's spiritual warfare like jezebel just wasn't jezebel wasn't just a person it was a spirit and and jezebel does two things i'm not talking about a person i'm talking about the spirit watch this fear intimidation and it'll make you do some crazy things and think some crazy thoughts when you're either afraid or you've been intimidated by someone it's a spirit of the devil and for a lot of us so i'm very very grateful again i'm so sorry to be so oh thank you thank you but i i truly am i i probably text pastor larry every month and say i'm so grateful for my heritage how i was trained here how i was mentored as a young person here i really am but one of the things i learned around here is prayer and i learned spiritual warfare i learned it and i've learned that it's better to be proactive than reactive and for a lot of you are waiting for the house to burn down before you figure out where the water faucet is i'm just telling you and you need to learn how to use use what you have at your disposal before the enemy happens seriously so let me see it this way and i'll close this what if i told you i got some information that tonight somebody's got a key to your house and you don't know it and when you're fast asleep tonight about three o'clock in the morning is when they plan to come in tiptoe right up to your kids bedrooms put duct tape on their mouth and you're never gonna see them again and that's happening tonight what would you be willing to do i'm going to answer the question for you ain't going to sleep and you'll probably be prepared to introduce to them two of your friends named smith and wesson come on somebody right it's pro i'm just saying it might be you you'd be you'd be geared up okay well i'm going to tell you something you have an enemy right now and that's why the bible says be self-controlled and don't go to sleep be self-controlled and alert your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour that's fine resist him stand firm in the and learn how to overcome the enemy i want to pray for you right now i just feel the presence of god here heads bowed eyes closed you're here and you just you've been going through something you haven't even told anybody but you're going through something your soul's just been disturbed and you just i really believe god's going to use this as a as a springboard for you to come out of that cave of depression and darkness at every campus right now let me before we hand it over to the campus pastors or those that are leading the services let me just pray for you father i pray for every person at my home church bethany god i'm asking you lord god just to give them hope let them see the light out of the cave lord i thank you lord god we are gonna make some choices and we're gonna live our lives better and put ourselves in a position where we're stronger over our enemy but god i'm asking you right now in the mighty name of jesus rescue them lord i thank you god you're gonna bring light into every dark place god and you're you're bringing hope where they've been hopeless and god i've speak life to their souls right now why so downcast oh my soul put your hope in god today i thank you lord as we've gathered as a body of believers and reminded ourselves of who you are god we're leaving here with victory and a song in our mouth and laughter in our voices today god and god we are victorious over our enemy we do have our eyes on the purpose that you've called us to god i speak to every group that launches today god thank you father we're going to be better together we're going to grow together we're going to protect each other together lord and i thank you god you're doing that in this place in the mighty name of jesus in the mighty name of jesus and everybody said a good amen come on give god some praise together everybody

Channel: Bethany

Views: 1,087

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Id: _RObgXjnBo8

Length: 42min 38sec (2558 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021