Storms and Anchors - Connor Grim

[Applause] [Music] oh man i didn't think i was gonna cry [Music] man look around man how faithful is god [Music] we're here we're back seriously i want everybody for a minute just take a look around hopefully you're three three seats apart i can't see you um so i won't be able to tattle on you but just turn around for a minute take it in i think it's so easy something i was reminded of man all week this week as i was preparing is how much did i take advantage of nights like this how routine did this become to me how much of a job was this to me and it's taken away for 10 months am i so long to be with you guys like i'm not trying to sound weird like you know like new testament epistle weird but like i missed you guys i love you guys i feel this burden this weight as a friend as a pastor to like walk alongside of life with you guys and listen i know that church is in a building i know that church isn't a service but isn't it just true there's something special when the people of god get together in a room to lift up the name of jesus it's different it's just special and so tonight that's all we're gonna do like andrew said we're gonna lift up the name of jesus and i know when he asked the question um if there's any new people in here i saw a couple hands raised so i'll introduce myself my name is connor i'm one of the teaching pastors i'm also in charge of our incredible volunteer team can y'all give it up for the volunteers and y'all have no idea if you've been around for a while you've heard me say this and i've missed saying this i've even like practiced in the mirror sometimes in the shower not to be too weird but um getting ready for this listen i know there's a lot of people in here that come in with a lot of different life experiences and maybe a lot of different views of the world and spirituality but you're going to learn really quick that i'm a jesus guy we're a jesus people i believe that jesus is every single thing that he claimed to be i believe his word is completely true and i believe that jesus is king that he is lord and there is not one false thing that he has led anybody who believes him into and i know that's a bold statement i know that can almost sound offensive at some point but here's my challenge if you're in here and you don't know jesus or you don't believe in jesus or maybe you're not i don't know you got questions about his word or whatever i just want to offer this challenge to you maybe tonight just for tonight let your guard down a little bit all right just soften your heart and just consider i'm not even saying you have to buy in all the way although i think you might but just consider that jesus is as good and as kind and as loving and as merciful as we believe that he is and that he's shown in my life and so guys tonight it's my honor to talk about jesus to only talk about jesus and i cannot wait to dive in we're going to get our bibles out real quick we're gonna dive into the word we're gonna pray and we're gonna jump in if you don't have your bibles uh you can look at the screen it's been a while give me some give me some grace here we're gonna go to first peter chapter one verse three all right and it's going to show up on the screen and this is what it says it says praise be to god and the father of our lord jesus christ because it is in his great mercy that he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of jesus christ from the dead and into an inheritance that will never perish spoil or fade this inheritance is kept in heaven for you who the who through are shielded by faith in god's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time in all of this you greatly rejoice though now for a little while you may have to suffer grief of all kinds and trials these things have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold which perishes even though we're fined by fire may result in praise glory and honor when jesus is revealed though you have not seen him and this is peter the apostle peter who knew jesus who walked with jesus talking to a church talking to you tonight he says this though you have not seen him you love him and even though you don't see him now you believe in him and you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the end result of your faith the salvation of your soul in hebrews chapter 6 19 it says this we have a certain hope like a strong unbreakable anchor holding our souls to god himself our anchor of hope is fastened to the mercy seat which sits in the heavenly realm beyond the sacred threshold come on somebody come on keys give me something and where jesus our forerunner has gone before us the title of my message tonight is this storms and anchors storms and anchors let's pray and we're gonna dive in jesus what an honor man if all we do tonight is lift up your name it's worth it if all we do is sing of your faithfulness it's worth it god i believe that you have put a word on my heart to encourage to challenge to call people forward to remind people of your goodness and your faithfulness and so tonight god we lower our guard we invite you holy spirit to say speak to us pinpoint something in our life that you want to change that you want to call out that you want to encourage and god we give you all of our time all of our attention it's in jesus name we pray and everybody said amen and amen you may take a socially distanced seat how about that hey fair warning tonight when i prep for a message i'm normally around 12 to 13 pages of notes and i'm at a solid 17 so buckle up all right might be here for a minute okay um i want to talk to you guys about a movie that i really liked when i was a little kid growing up and now i'm going to date myself when i talk about this real quick before before i say that actually i want to preface this with something i know that when you wear a mask it almost feels like a shield like you don't have to laugh or clap or whatever you can just sit and be stoic and like weird can i just can y'all give me a little bit it's been almost a calendar year for me so even though you got a mask give god as much praise as you can um but i'm gonna date myself with this movie okay how many people in this room have heard of the movie twister twister come on all right check this out twister came out in 1996. now i have to ask a question in here and i don't know if i really want to know the answer or not how many somebody knows where i'm going how many people in this room were born in or after 1996. oh my gosh that is most of you okay all right i was eight in 1996 okay i was eight years old and the movie twister had just come out and i mean some of y'all probably don't even know what this is it was the time of the vhs anybody familiar with the vhs is kind of like retro old-school to like have in your room now it was the time of the vhs and so vhs there was a thing when vhs's were out blockbuster was the thing anybody remember blockbuster i literally think there's like one more left in america um but blockbuster and when you went to blockbuster you rented a vhs and you watched that thing till the gears fell off because it was five or six bucks before you got to see it again so there's a time in life where you rented a movie you bought a movie and you watched it like 30 times before you got tired you roll into blockbuster and you're like i need that twister i need it now that movie's hot and i'm going gonna watch it 30 times before i bring it back and this is a total side tangent it has nothing to do with my message but as i was thinking of this i i was kind of thinking how many people know the one high school boy that worked in the blockbuster or even better like the local video store and you got to watch his evolution like as the years went by and here's what i mean i'm not even kidding this is a true story i'm not going to say his name because he used to live on my street and still might back at home but there was a kid that worked in our local video store and i watched him evolve um as i would go and rent movies and he started as just like the normal happy-go-lucky hollister uh air apostle american eagle kid right he gets a year or two in high school and he enters that blink 182 phase you know where he like kind of wears the chains he's got that haircut that swoops in front of his one eye he's angry about his dad that has done nothing but provide his whole life you kind of watch that like kid evolve and then no live ours our our video guy evolved into the vampire stage now listen this was before twilight this was when vampires were dangerous like this kid this kid i'm not exaggerating you i don't know if they were real or if he filed his teeth he he gave himself fangs like that kind of vampire like kid so that has nothing to do with my messages everybody knows that one guy that works at the video store that evolved from normal to blink 182 to vampire okay but i remember walking in saying hi to the vampire kid getting twister and being like this is it baby this twister was my first grown-up movie it was my first pg-13 movie that or maybe independence day with will smith but if you all know independence day go watch that right now but so we get we get the vhs we're going home and i'm like this is amazing i am an adult i felt so cool because i got to watch twister with my parents now for the 90 of you that have never seen twister and were born after it came out it is a very simple plot it is about tornadoes it is about a group of people who study tornadoes and their goal is to create some type of system that lets people know when a tornado is like forming near their town so they can go and be safe but to do this they have to put their self in the tornado's path they have to like put their self in harm's way so that they can i don't know they had these little things that looked like almost like light bulbs that they would send up into the tornado and it would somehow get all this data but they had to put themselves in harm's way and y'all at the time this movie was cutting edge like these storms would start to form and you'd be like oh it is about to go down and like roofs of homes would be like ripped off you would see cars like chucked across the street i think there's a scene where there's like a cow that gets like stuck in it and like lifted and chucked but ironically there's also a scene where an f5 tornado which is like the biggest most deadly apparently is coming and the two main characters are in a field maybe five feet in front of it like running through the field with like if you're in a tornado that's two miles wide i think five feet you're gonna get sucked up into that thing just just saying but the movie was so freaking cool and i remember as an eight-year-old i was like man this is amazing and i would go into my school and i would like you know kind of have a little like strut about me and be like hey you see twister yet oh no you're too scared figured you're scared of everything you know like nah man my parents let me see twister and let me tell you it is amazing i thought twister was the greatest thing on planet earth until a storm would start to brew the wind would pick up a little bit you'd hear some rain start to hit the street outside the wind blowing through the leaves a little crack of thunder over here a little bolt of lightning over there and you would find me laying under my bed praying in tongues asking god to deliver us from the storm that is about to come twister was so cool until a real storm approached my life why why was i so afraid when it was so cool so honorable for me as a kid to watch this movie because i had been exposed to the potential that a storm could bring i had been exposed to what a storm could do if it hit my house hit my life it the storm could prove to be more than my house could hold and if the winds were strong enough it could rip the roof off of my house it could prove to me that i was not prepared enough and i didn't anchor down or find security enough to stay safe in the middle of a storm i knew the damage that a storm could bring because of the movie twister and i was thinking about why a and the year we have all just been through and coming back to young adults and if we're honest i feel like we could all agree that it feels like our souls our emotions and our faith just feels like we've been weathering this storm trying to hold on that we didn't ask for it we didn't want it but a storm just blindsided us and came through and we have just been doing all we know to hunker down and survive think about it like think about it for a second if you would have told me every single thing that would have happened in the past calendar year i would have thought you were making some type of sick and twisted joke like for real like and i know there's been a lot of memes about it and there's a lot of things out there about it but just for the sake i don't know if this is overplayed or a little tired but i just want to recap 2020 for you guys for a minute so that we can kind of understand what's just happened to our our mental health our spiritual health our emotional health and this isn't going to be everything and this is in no particular order but follow me for a second we kicked off the year by losing basketball legend kobe bryant and his daughter gigi in a helicopter accident wildfires ran rampant through australia california oregon and colorado tragedy struck our black communities as many young black americans were murdered including ahmad aarberry brianna taylor george floyd and many more leading to protest in social justice movement social justice movements and marches that we haven't seen the likes of since the days of civil rights and i pray that we continue to grow as a people in a country to love the way that jesus loves and include and accept and see the dignity in every human being rumors of a new virus surfaced coming out of wuhan region of china and by march 2020 over a hundred and fifty thousand confirmed cases of covid have been verified in the united states and also shout out to every single nurse and doctor that put yourself on the front line to do whatever you could to keep us safe we love you and we honor you and we are grateful for you because of covid flights and travel were cancelled or postponed businesses and entertainment including professional sports coffee shops malls the restaurant industry were pushed to online services minimum capacities or takeout only stay-at-home orders and quarantine orders were given by the government in hopes of flattening the curve how many people have heard of flattening the curve which started a wave of people working from home children going to school at home and parents for the first time balancing a job and trying to educate their children at the same time due to stay at home orders netflix hulu hbo max and many other streaming services saw record subscriptions and introduced us to characters and so shows such as tiger king how many people know that dude love is blind anybody love his blind that one blonde chick she was kind of weird right while many of us continued to watch the classics new girl the office r.i.p on netflix parking rat parks and rec breaking bad whatever your choice is murder hornets were a thing um yeah that was like a real thing that came through a murder hornet that sucks right people had an insatiable appetite for toilet paper kovid has nothing to do with your bowels but apparently you need it and that guy was awesome in taking every single toilet paper that costco offered we ended the year with a presidential election which is never stressful and now terms like quarantine social distancing contact tracing exposure have all become a part of our everyday vocabulary i think it is safe to say that 2020 was a storm that blindsided us and turned our world completely upside down and it makes me think about what the apostle peter was writing to the church in his letter in 1st peter peter is writing to a church that is going through the middle of trials and persecutions and as i was studying for this there were multiple governments and multiple regions that saw christianity as a threat and weren't just trying to shut down church but if you proclaim the name of jesus or attended church they were trying to literally take your life from you so this this group of people in this letter knows a little bit about suffering they know a little bit about what it's like to go through a storm they know what it's like to have their world turned totally upside down and peter says this in first peter he says in all of this greatly rejoice though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief of all kinds and trials that's to put it lightly he says these things have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise glory and honor when jesus is revealed first off peter says rejoice even though you are suffering trials how many people your first response to lack of toilet paper coronavirus uh murder hornets whatever was i'm feeling like rejoicing right now anybody anybody feeling like when 2020 hit i just got to give god a shout of praise that is exactly what i thought but but peter's telling this church that knows a little bit about suffering that knows a little bit about going through a storm in life he says rejoice and he says this is why you can rejoice and he says this he says these things have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith may result in praise if i were to write a bible which i never will and give you a translation i would i would phrase what peter is trying to say like this storms will come and when they do they will prove where your faith actually lies and your faith when in the right place is worth more than gold and will result in praise and so tonight i want to talk about storms for a little bit because i believe if you are in here and you have a breath you have just walked out of one of the most stormy seasons that we have ever experienced in our generation as a human race i want to talk about storms and what what are some things that storms can show us in our life what are they here why does god allow them god doesn't cause storms he doesn't bring storms but he allows storms why does god do that i think the first thing is this and peter says in his letter he says storms prove storms prove if you're taking notes write that down because you're going to get a better house in heaven amen peter says this he says you've suffered trials of many kinds but these things prove the genuineness of your faith storms prove how many people know it's real easy to put on a front until life just comes at you how many people know you can juggle some things girls you can put on the makeup you can you can do your hair you can get your hair did you can put on the new outfit but just that right moment when that final thing comes man you are just breaking down you don't care you are crying fellas how many know like we can shoulder some stuff for a while but there is just a breaking point that we have that is just too much for us storms prove something and then what they prove is that you can put on a facade for so long until life hits you right because it's easy to believe that god is your provider and your source until you get a phone call saying hey i'm sorry our company is downsizing and we can no longer have you as an employee right it's easy to say god is my source of my supply until i'm let go for my job it's easy to believe that god is all you need until the other person calls off the relationship because they don't see it going anywhere and not only is god all you need now god is all you got right anybody single in here and loving it there we go okay it's easy to believe that god is all i need until god is all you got right it's easy to believe that god is going to keep you in good health and protect you until the diagnosis comes in right it's easy to believe that god is my healer when i'm fine and i'm in good health but when that diagnosis comes man it proves something it's easy to believe that life is about having fun hooking up posting on the gram going out doing what i feel until 2020 hits you can't do any of that anymore there's something about a storm that just cuts through our facades and proves what's really deep down on the inside of us it proves where our hope is really anchored to something about only a storm season can prove what is deeply on the inside of you i remember when my wife and i found out that we were pregnant i say we like i helped i did one thing [Applause] get your minds out of the gutter i prayed okay no we're pregnant um and my daughter's actually one how crazy is that the last time we were here i lifted her up like an irresponsible father and now she's one years old she chipped her tooth today by the way that's awesome but i remember erin was pregnant and we're at that point where we had to find a daycare now that sounds cute that sounds cool like oh you're starting a family until you realize how expensive daycares are now don't let the 2001 silver honda civic and the 10 chain fool you okay you don't enter into ministry to make the money you don't enter into ministry to make the big dollars and as we were going around and we were looking at different day cares man we started thinking like oh okay like can our daughter watch herself like how soon is that how soon does that happen um but but we started getting prices from different places and we had a couple favorites we had we had a top of you know a couple people on the top of our list and we're going around and i managed the money in our house and i quickly realized that if we never ate out and i don't mean go downtown l5 couple drinks eight out i mean mcdonald's dollarman you ate out if we never ate out if i never bought another article of clothing shoes socks whatever underwear like we were gonna have to make our own underwear if i never bought anything new we would still be in the negative every single month if we put our daughter into child care and so we simply just didn't make enough money to do it and aaron at the time my wife was pretty passionate about wanting to stay at home and be with her first couple years but we didn't even make enough for aaron to for that to even be a remote possibility and so we were stuck we couldn't afford daycare my wife couldn't stay home with our child even though she really wanted to and we had no idea what we were going to do and so i did what every great man of faith does i prayed i fasted i sought god no i'm kidding i panicked i absolutely panicked you can ask my wife i literally like so already we rent out we have a basement we rent that out to somebody but we had this room that we had set up for a nursery and we were so excited and so i was like pricing out like how much can we get for the nursery is that going to be enough to offset can we have somebody live with us we only have one bathroom so that'll kind of be awkward especially with a crying baby and like it's gonna feel kind of like commune cultish so maybe we don't want to like do that aaron and i started looking into getting second jobs um but you know we love what we do and so we wanted to really kind of fully invest and make sure we were present here we honestly talked about moving do we need to move like is this just god telling us like you need to get out of here you need to move to the middle of montana or iowa or wherever god has not been to yet and where homes are a hundred thousand dollars and you can like afford to live like do we need to do that do we need to sell our place and move in with your parents and i'm not kidding my wife can attest to this there's a season of life where i would wake up in the middle of the night just sweating and i felt like an elephant was like sitting on my chest and i couldn't breathe and i would get panic attacks because at the end of the day i looked at our budget and i cut out everything that we could possibly cut out i mean literally i took our grocery bill down to genuinely like beans rice and eggs and we could not afford it and i was just panicking and my wife in that moment you ever know when somebody's like too like so optimistic and encouraging that it's annoying like every time i'd be like babe i don't know what to do like this isn't a real thing like we cannot do this should be like babe honestly i know like i i see your little spreadsheet that you've pulled up like i i feel your sweat in the middle of the night like um but hey listen god's been there for us before and i know god's going to come through babe god knows exactly where we are he he knows exactly what we do he knows exactly how much we make he's going to come through he's going to be good just cool as a cucumber she's just chilling and i kid you not man about two months before we had our little girl we get a phone call and a daycare that we love that was on the top of our list of places we want to take our daughter called us and said listen we know your situation we actually go to your church and we just felt god lead us to say that we wanted to give you half off of your child care we wanted to provide an opportunity for you to maybe save a little money and i remember hanging up that phone call and just crying because we could do that we could do that with a little extra and in the middle of one of my most panicked moments of like i'm about to be a dad i'm about to be a father i'm not just a husband anymore like i got a little girl that thinks i have life figured out and i have nothing figured out right now like in the middle of one of the most trying seasons of my life i get a phone call that says god is coming through and in a storm listen in a storm my faith in a storm my faith proved not to be as strong as i thought it was but my jesus proved to be more faithful than he has ever been that i could ever imagine my jesus proved that he knew everything that i needed before i needed it he proved that the days of my life were written out before i even took a breath and any challenge any problem that i would ever face he already provided the solution god showed to be faithful when i was faithless because i know two things storms will prove two things to you it'll show you what do i really believe about god when things get tough but it will also show you that god is unreasonably faithful when you are faithless second timothy says this it says if we are faithless god remains faithful when i am faithless when i have nothing left to give when i can't conjure up a bible verse when i can't conjure up a prayer when i can't ask god when i can't even think when i am at the end of my wits my jesus remains faithful to me and listen it says for he cannot disown himself he cannot disown himself listen why a storms are going to come and maybe in this season of life you have wavered in your faith maybe this season has beat you up and tossed you around and messed with your mind and messed with your head maybe in this season of life your faith has wavered and you started to doubt god's goodness and god's kindness can i just remind you that he is faithful jesus is always faithful and listen it is not because you deserve it it is not because you have worked for it it is not because you have earned it it is not because you have sinned less today than you did yesterday the bible says he is faithful because it is just who he is and he cannot deny himself he cannot disown himself so on your worst day he will be faithful because that is who god is and storms will prove to you where you really believe where your faith is really placed in that moment it'll prove to you what you really think about god when the trials come and the tribulations come and the storms come but it'll also prove that jesus is unreasonably faithful it'll prove him true over and over and over again the first thing that storms do is they prove the second thing that storms do is they expose man to anybody feel like 2020 might have exposed some things in their life anybody feel a little exposed by 20 just me my own okay okay all right good i'm making sure anybody feel like 2020 exposed some things right maybe maybe there's some things in your life that you didn't know were there still right maybe you thought you had dealt with some things from your past maybe you thought you dealt with some trauma you did a good job dealing with it and then 2020 comes and quarantine comes and you you can't talk to anybody see anybody and some things start to get exposed in your life from a storm storms have a way of exposing our fears they have a way of exposing our insecurities and have a way of exposing our vulnerabilities i remember when kovid first really hit like it wasn't just this thing out in seattle which i went to seattle seattle's weird so i'm like okay whatever it might stay there when covet hit i remember going to costco but like kind of ignorantly it was just our normal everyday costco run get ezra chicken nuggets get my wife chicken nuggets um more mac and cheese for my wife um you know just do our normal thing i remember pulling up into costco and for the first time that i can remember in my life seeing a line out the door wrapping around the building like okay chicken nuggets must be on sale this week or so or something like that uh i remember standing in the line and i remember waiting and getting in and just being like what is going on and some people wearing masks and some people weren't because that wasn't a thing yet and like and i remember walking into costco and seeing costco like the land of milk and honey costco like more than you could ever ask for imagine or need costco with empty aisles of food and like no chicken no eggs no milk no chicken nugget like nothing and i remember pushing this cart in like a moment of panic like hit me i remember like my brain went into like survival mode and i was like oh my gosh like what is going on and so i ran because i'm a meathead and grabbed some protein and and i was like okay and then ask my wife we still have it i have this little plastic bin where we have these two giant like 50 pound bags of rice i don't know we don't eat that much rice ever but i was just like why are there empty aisles and i was you know like and somebody was like trying to grab another bag and i'm like kicking them in the face like don't touch my bag of rice bro i see you but i remember i had this moment of panic the storm of this disease that nobody had ever heard of or knew what was going to happen or it gripped my heart and it exposed some fear in my life to where we were eating rice for the next six years but like it reminded me of a story in the bible luke chapter eight and you don't have to turn there i'm going to summarize it for you real quick jesus and his disciples are on a boat in the middle of the sea of galilee jesus had just been teaching performing miracles um doing his jesus thing in all these towns and he was like hey i want to go over to the other side of the lake i want to go to the other towns and kind of do the same thing and so jesus and his disciples get on this boat and it says that jesus was tired and so he took a nap right and so while jesus is on a boat in the sea of galilee taking a nap a storm hits now i don't know if anybody has been out in open water like the ocean or lake in the middle of the storm i have one time i was out in the middle of the ocean with some friends on a boat and a storm just came in it is the most terrifying thing in the entire world and so these guys are out in the middle of a giant body of water and a storm hits and the bible says that is so bad that waves are crashing over their boat it's tossing things left and right i'm sure they're just holding on for dear life and they're looking around they're panicked they're like oh my gosh we are about to die and so they do you know only what's only logical they run to jesus who is asleep uh in the little hole the bible says on on like a cushion now first off you have to be god if you can sleep through a storm that is tossing everything around right like how do you sleep through that jesus is just chilling taking a nap but they wake jesus up and they say hey i don't know if you know what's going on or not but there is a storm that is about to sink our ship and we are all about to die and so jesus gets up it says he walks out to the front of the boat he does his jedi hand wave or whatever you know i don't know why i just pictured just being like but it says he rebukes the wind and the waves how many people have gotten that old school grandma grandpa rebuked before jesus goes a little old-school pentecostal and rebukes the wind and the waves and they stop and the disciples it says they've been with them for such a long time but they're like oh my gosh who is this guy that even like his words can stop a storm and jesus hears them knows what they're thinking i mean he just made a storm stop so he probably knows what they're thinking and he looks at him and he says hey where is your faith and what i don't think jesus is saying in this moment i don't think jesus is necessarily reprimanding them or rebuking him or rebuking them i think what he's asking them is simply this why do you have more faith in the storm than you have in me in this moment the disciples had a choice do i put my faith in jesus or do i put my faith in what is happening around me it took a storm to expose in them that even though they had jesus in the boat sometimes we have a tendency to put more faith in what is happening around us than who is in the boat with us sometimes no matter how many times we read our bible these men were with jesus watching the miracles watching the healing watching the fish and the loaves be multiplied and they are in the middle of a storm and a storm exposes in them that sometimes we put more faith in what is happening around us than the person who is in the boat with us why can i ask you all a simple question how many of us if we're honest had more faith in what 2020 could do to us than what jesus has already done for us how many people this past year and listen i'm in this camp had more faith in what 2020 could do to us than what jesus has already done for us i know that's me there were some things in my life that this past year the storm of this past year exposed in me that i didn't like there were some things that i was wrestling with that i had to confess to my wife and my friends there were some things that got exposed that showed me that i don't really trust god with my finances the way i thought i trusted god with my finances there were some things that god exposed that i don't know if i trust god with the protection and the health of my family the way i thought or the way that i said i did storms have a way of exposing things in us but i want to ask what if when we're exposed instead of being down and defeated we use this as a wake-up call what if god doesn't cause storms but he allows storms to come as a wake-up call to your soul that maybe you have been placing your faith and your hope into the wrong thing maybe god allows a storm in your life to show you that the thing you thought would anchor you through anything in life isn't strong enough it wasn't designed to withstand the things that is being thrown at you what if instead of running from storms running from when we get exposed we can embrace it and we can say god what do you have for me to learn i don't like this season i'm not reveling in this season i'm not glorifying this season but i know if you brought me through to this season you will bring me through this season so god do your work in my life here's what i know and man you guys can begin to make your way on up storms prove storms expose and storms require an anchor storms require an anchor why as much as 2020 sucked and it sucked there's going to be more storms ahead in your future there's going to be more trials there's going to be more tribulations there's going to be hard things in life that you have to walk through can i ask you this question what are you anchored to really what did 2020 show you that your soul was anchored to what did this past year prove to you that what like what do you cling to when life gets hard when the world get turned gets turned upside down what was exposed in you about where you place your hope or where you look to find joy what is that one thing that you keep on going back to and back to that you know you shouldn't go back to when life gets hard and things just don't make sense what was exposed in you what did you find out your soul is actually anchored to i was talking to my wife about this message and she said something that honestly is kind of obvious but it was sort of profound like in the moment i think it's pretty profound i was talking about the message and i was talking about anchors and i had this really cool illustration that honestly probably isn't a good is a good thing didn't happen because i could have fallen off the front of the stage if the anchor didn't actually work the way it was supposed to but she said this she said it's crazy that god gave human beings that are made in his image the ability to create and design things uh anchors that are specifically designed to hold steady and withstand and whatever a storm could throw at you it's amazing that these things are actually designed to hold you steady when when the waters of life start to become a little choppy when waves start to get a little too big for you to handle i was reading um on boat.com now listen that sounds kind of weird but i swear it's like really authoritative um i was googling like boats and anchors and storms and all this stuff and and it said and i also read this in other places so it's not just boats.com but but it said that when a storm comes out at sea you actually turn the ship towards the storm you turn the ship towards the waves and you drop anchor and you have faith that the thing that was designed to steady you and hold you will do its job why a in the past year if it has shown us anything it's that god loves rap god loves hip hop man speak to us lord what do you have to say god sounds like lecrae that's crazy if 2020 showing us anything is this is that most of the things that we cling to so dearly in life were never designed to steady us or withstand a storm that would be thrown at us listen your job well it is amazing it is a good thing and it is a gift was never meant to be your source or your supply your relationship no matter how awesome and god honoring it is was never meant to be your source of joy or your source of peace less than no amount of likes that you can get on a post or whatever was supposed to be the thing that gives you your sense of accomplishment and identity no election was supposed to be the thing that gives your soul security and your mind peace alcohol and pornography can only numb what jesus can only heal listen there are things in life that we anchor ourselves to and when the waves start to start to crash and the wind starts to blow they become exposed as things that were never designed never made to hold you steady in a storm but listen i know one name i know one name who is strong enough that holds you steady i know one name that stands above the waves he walks on them when the when the storms of life come i know one man who walks on the storm i know one name that stands above every other his name is jesus he is our anchor in the storm hebrews says this it says we have a hope like a strong unbreakable anchor holding our souls to god himself jesus christ our forerunner who has gone before us our anchor and the storm peter calls jesus your living hope because he did not die and get buried in a grave three days later he kicked that thing open and got back up and proclaimed life to any broken hurting dead soul that needs a relationship with god peter calls him your living hope the book of revelations calls jesus your anchor that is faithful and true he is your kinsman redeemer your prince of peace the first and the last the beginning and the end the one that knows every storm in life that will be thrown your way and has prepared himself as a solid rock a good foundation a cornerstone that you can lean your life on and he will always be faithful always be true and will never leave his name is jesus he is the only anchor made to hold your soul steady in the storm young adults will you stand with me i got two simple questions as we come back you know it's a new year for us i know we're 21 days in but it's this is young adults first night why make this year the same as years past why allow your soul to be anchored to something that that will never sustain you that will leave you empty and hurting and listen you know what it is we all have our thing you go back to it over and over and over again you go back to that relationship you go back to that computer screen you go back to those dms you go back to that substance feeling like in a moment it'll hold you steady through something that is shaking your world but comes up empty every single time why not this year we just let it go and say jesus i don't know what needs to take place i don't know how to let go of this thing on my own but i know that it has failed me in every storm that i've gone through and so jesus i need an anchor that is faithful and true i need an anchor that was designed for this designed for healing designed for peace design for the human soul jesus i need you so young adults with every head bowed and i close i want to ask two questions first question is this how many people would say in 2020 god exposed some things in your life that you need to make right god exposed some things that you are anchoring yourself to that have let you down time after time after time tonight i'm going to pray and i want to ask that you just in your own words while i pray ask god to cut you free from everything that is not meant for eternity that is not meant to anchor you to become more in the image and likeness of jesus and that he would anchor you to the only true god jesus christ and for those of you in this room tonight that don't know jesus you were the people i was talking to at the beginning man if 2020 if life has just beat you up there's hope this isn't some empty promise this isn't an encouraging message this is good news about a person who is alive who reigns who sits on the throne of heaven and is coming very soon and he brings justice and peace and mercy and salvation for those of you dealing with anxiety that don't know jesus he's your hope for those of you that are dealing with addictions to pornography and substances he's your freedom for those of you that have come and you're just battling mental illness and depression man he's your source of peace for those of you that are looking for a job and maybe you feel like you have lack i promise you what god did for me he will do for you because he is no respecter of person he is your provider if you are in here tonight and you don't know jesus but you would like to start a relationship with him you would like to meet a living god not a theory a person would you raise your hand i want to pray for you too all across the room amen amen let's pray father god we love you so much jesus we believe in you god we believe in you you prove yourself over and over and over again and so tonight jesus i pray that for anybody that came in this room some things were exposed in their life over this past year they were anchored and tied down to things that have no eternal value god would they cut ties with them in the name of the power of the holy spirit in the name of jesus would you cut spiritual ties to things that are holding people back to addictions to pornography to alcohol to depression to drugs god i pray that you would cut those things loose and they would anchor their souls to the living hope jesus christ and god for those of you that don't know you but raise their hand and want to meet you god you know what you're doing you know how to have conversations with us you know how to come into our heart and so god i pray right now that those who confess their need for you would you meet them would you save them and would you bring them into this eternal hope that we have jesus we love you so much it is an honor to worship you tonight it's in your name we pray amen and amen i love you guys

Channel: Red Rocks Young Adults

Views: 285

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: connor grim, red rocks church, red rocks young adults, rrya, red rocks ya, young adult, young adults, denver, ministry, church, faith, christian, self help, motivation, bible, storms, peter, jesus, holy spirit, god, christianity, thursday, night, andrew matrone, shawn johnson

Id: J-WVn1P6SBY

Length: 51min 16sec (3076 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021