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Turning your Bible to Jeremiah chapter number 18. I have a message I hope will be a blessing to you. I've titled it Made Again, The Blessing Beyond the Breaking. The Blessing Beyond the Breaking. Jeremiah chapter 18. We're actually going to start in verse number one. Jeremiah 18, verse 1. And how many of you guys you've come through some breaking before in your life? Some real difficult challenges. Maybe you had a loss in your family, a dad or a mom or a spouse. Maybe you were fired from a job, or maybe you used to have financial health, and that health is no longer there. Maybe you had dreams of one day doing something great, and then all of a sudden everything shifted. And that house and that family and that white picket fence all of a sudden is a studio apartment behind somebody else's house, and you don't have the kids there, and everything changes. Maybe for you it was you were going to play a you know a sport, and all of a sudden things shifted and adjusted. And now you don't have the same ability like you used to. And in this message, I got to thinking there is a blessing beyond the breaking. And the breaking is how God reforms us, he reshapes us, and he guides us forward for his will. Jeremiah chapter 18, verse number one, the Bible says, the word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord. So it's a word from God to the prophet Jeremiah saying, Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. So he's telling Jeremiah, go down, and I'm gonna give you a visual illustration as you're watching something. How many guys have ever done that before? You were out and about, maybe you looked at ants or you looked at a boat going down, you saw the ripple effect, and God began to speak to you about some things. Does that happen to you guys at all? That happens to me all the time. Well, I'll look at something, and God is speaking to me some wisdom and some insight over some situations. Well, he tells Jeremiah, go into this position. I want to speak to you through this illustration here. And uh he says in verse 3, Then I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he wrought a work on the wheels, and the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. So he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make. And I I I love this illustration that God gives to Jeremiah because you can imagine the potter reforming that clay, and then all of a sudden he gets it to a spot, and then he puts his hand and he mars the whole thing and readjusts that that pot. How many of you guys, God's done that to you before? He he marred you, he completely changed your life. And that can be very challenging, especially if you start getting familiar and used to and desirous of a of a certain form and a certain method, a certain lifestyle, a certain way that you have in your mind things are gonna be. And sometimes we can forget, I'm I'm not the I'm not the potter, I'm the clay. I don't get to call the shots. I listen, how many of y'all got to choose which family you were gonna be born into? None of us. Did anybody in here get to choose how tall you would be? No, I would have chosen taller, okay? Uh we my point is this we we we don't get to choose a lot of things. And yet many times we think we're in control. But I want to remind you that God is sovereign, He's the creator of everything. He is the potter, we're the clay. It's his kingdom come, his will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. When God wants to redirect your life and all of a sudden it looks like it's a detour or a divine interruption, it's important you remember like God's in control. God's guiding you. A year ago, some of you guys would have never imagined you'd be in this place right now. Five years ago, you would have thought, no way, I'm gonna be talking about God and Christ and going to a Christian church. No way. Ten years ago, you just roll the tape back. You'd have been like, no, no, no. But it's God who led you to this moment. And it's God who's positioned you, and it's God, how about this, who allows the marring to take place, the breaking to take place. And so the general theme of this message, at least the essence of what God has deposited in my heart, is we can go from grieving to growing. We can go from being wounded to winning in the gospel. We can go from broken to being a blessing. God doesn't always put our lives back together the way they were. Sometimes he reshapes us into another vessel. How many of you guys you're different today than you were five years ago? Yeah, we're different. And there's some haters out there, oh, you change, you change. They'll be like, don't ever change. That's impossible. All of us should be changing and growing. Healthy things change. And if you're growing in Christ, the insight, the revelation, the development that He's giving to you is going to cause you to think different thoughts and become more grounded, more wise, more compassionate, more kind, more strength, more grace. There's a lot of development that happens as God takes you on this journey. And sometimes He reshapes us into another vessel, transforming our pain into purpose, our limitations into opportunities to preach and to abound in grace and our brokenness into deeper dependence upon Him. Life can be very hard, can't it? It can be very challenging. You could be one moment on the mountaintop and the very next moment in the valley. Thursday night I was in the I was in a softball game, you know, and I was hitting and making diving plays, and the next moment I'm at a at a hospital, praying over uh over a widow and a family, over the uh sudden death of a father, a patriarch, a dad. And my point is is that it's it's it can all change so quickly. Right? This life is a vapor. It's here today, it's gone tomorrow. One of the challenges I think we all face, and I'm gonna give you some tools here that's gonna help you for your heart, but also hopefully it will help you to minister to other people. Because in this life, we are going to have tribulation. Isn't that right? That's what Jesus said in John 16. In this world, you're gonna have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. Now, here's the challenge for us. Many times we go through troubles, tribulations, grievances, sorrow, and we don't know how to emotionally cope with it. And so what happens a lot of times is we'll self-medicate, we'll distract ourselves, we'll get into alcohol, drugs, other relationships, we'll just try to get busy so that we don't have to focus in on the pain or the misery of the loss. But those losses are actually lessons that God wants to develop inside of us to make us more like Christ. How many of you guys, there are some situations in your life you really would care not to think about? You'd be like, no. Well, we're gonna think about them a little bit. Sometimes God, God wants us to look at those areas so that we can actually get some growth from it. Now, listen, I'm I'm a positive person. I'm the happy-go-lucky, like, let's go, let's block the bad, let's harness the good, you know, let's think the right way and be happy. You know, I like to live on that side. But I got some friends, they live on the other side. And they balance. We balance each other a little bit. Well, if life is only party time, well, what do you do when it's funeral time? Do you just not go? And there's a lot of times we we avoid certain seasons and eras and and situations in our life because we're ill-equipped. We just, we never got the emotional development of a mature believer in how to properly walk through this in a good way. And so today I want to give you some tools that will help you in your journey when you're in some of those hard spots, or maybe you have a family or friend that's in some of those hard spots, when the vessel is getting marred, it's being changed, it's being broken. There's pain, there's sorrow, there's grief. So if you're taking notes, uh, number one, number one, acknowledge, acknowledge the pain. Acknowledge the pain. You cannot heal what you hide from. You think about this, there's a lot of times people they grew up in a broken home and maybe there was uh rape or molest or some sort of trouble. If you're always running from that and you're upset and angry and bitter, you're sending off a certain vibe by not confronting it. You can't heal if you're hiding from it. You can always tell when somebody's starting to heal because they're like, yeah, let's say they were a drug addict. They'll be like, yeah, I used to be. I used to be a drug addict, I used to be stuck on this. They're not afraid to discuss it because they're not still in it. They're they've overcome it. You can tell when somebody's starting to get on the healing side because they're they're willing to confront it. And so if we refuse to acknowledge situations like grief, you won't grow from it. I love the proverb in Proverbs 13, 12, it says, hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it's a tree of life. A lot of times people are suffering from hope deferred. I wanted this. I wanted this job, I wanted this situation, I wanted this health, I wanted this. Does anybody want something out there? Like, does anybody have any hopes and dreams and ambition and drive? Like you should. All of us should have that type stuff, right? Where it's like, God's put some stuff in my heart. But when you get going in life, life just beats the the ambition right out of you sometimes, doesn't it? It just beats you down, and you're just like, man, I just I'm barely out of bed today. Anybody out anybody there today? You barely made it, right? To the house of God, but hey, you're here. You're here, praise God. When it comes to pain and grief, we need to we need to allow the process to take place. A lot of times people are afraid to cry, they're afraid to show their emotions. You're not weak because you're showing your tears. In fact, I would submit to you, Jesus wept. And it's perfectly okay and acceptable and normal when you're going through loss or brokenness or disappointment for you to live in lamentation. For you to be like, man, my I I just I'm in a really bad spot right now. And I my heart's broken into smithereens. And if you have friends that are just like, oh, just get over it, don't talk about it, that's not helping that person at all. The person needs to be able to bring out their emotions and unpack them to be able to fitly frame them in a good, healthy way. And if you're stuffing it, then you're not going to be giving the savior any glory. And so grieve what once was, yes, lost loved ones, relationships, dreams, opportunities, and expectations. Let the heart breathe. Like be honest about it. Um, acknowledge the pain without allowing it to define your future. And here, this is the challenge. If you're stuffing it, then you're you're still carrying it with you. And a lot of times we have pain in our life, and because we don't deal with it, it we carry it into the future with us. You can be grateful for what remains while grieving over what you lost. You can have both emotions. You can have sorrow and hope. You can have grief and comfort. That can all happen on the inside of you. You can grieve what was while trusting God for what will be. You can have a broken heart and be in church today. Everything can be falling apart in your life and and God can still be good. He could still be on the throne, and he is. He's big enough. God is big enough to handle your emotions. God's big enough to handle your problems and your disappointments and your failures. That's why if you're struggling today, run to the Father. We're gonna sing that at the end of the service. Run to the Father. Just empty it all out. It doesn't matter how small or big it is, just unpack it out of you. You don't need to carry it with you. Cast those cares. And so, number one, acknowledge that pain, confront it, walk with it, let God help you with it. Number two, accept God's sovereignty. When I say God's sovereignty, I mean you know God calls the shots from the beginning. How many of you guys have read the end of the book? You know what's gonna happen. Right? Praise the Lord for that. We win. If you're a Christian, you win. If you're not a Christian, you lose. So become a Christian. Amen. We've read the end of the book, we know what's gonna take place, and so God is sovereign. He it's going to happen no matter how much you fight against it, his sovereignty will take place. Trust the potter even when you don't understand the process. One of my favorite verses is Romans 8.28, and it says this: it says, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. God is still good when life is not. Not everything that happens is good, but God can work through everything for his good purposes. Divorce, disappointment, death. Let's face it, those are painful and they don't feel good. And it can break your heart in a million trillion pieces. But that doesn't mean that God's not good. God is still good all the time. His hands have not abandoned your vessel when the marring is taking place. Surrender your expectations of how life should have unfolded. Some of you guys are walking around and you're living in resentment and you're carrying a grudge because life is not happening for you the way you want it to happen. And as long as you're holding on to that, you're actually pushing away your blessings. You're not qualified to receive the new blessings as long as you're holding on to the grief of past failures. Which is why I'm telling you, you have to be willing to give all of that pain and failure and disappointment to God. And some of you are like, well, he did this, so I'm not bringing it to him. Okay, so you're gonna you're gonna pay because you're unwilling to emotionally address the issue? It's not gonna hurt God. God is God. Now, sure, it's gonna grieve his heart a little bit, but in the end, you you end up hurting your own life and your your blessings for the future. So surrender it to God. You say, what does that look like, preacher? How do I do that? Lord, I'm so mad right now. And does anybody ever get real with God? I'm so upset. This was supposed to happen this way. It's it didn't. I'm so oh, and and the deeper and more you want something, and the more buildup you had in your expectation for the fulfillment of a certain thing, when it gets marred or dashed to pieces, the more the heart gets fractured and there's fragments everywhere inside the soul. And so that means that work of grace is gonna, it's gonna take a lot more than just a one little prayer went to church and it's all better. See, sometimes people think, well, I go to church and and I I check it off the box, and so I'm you know, I'm saved, so everything's good. You could be saved and your life can just be, and heart could be totally jacked up. Right? And so what we're getting at is is this concept of emotional intelligence, spiritual maturity. And you're not gonna have emotional intelligence where you can assign different emotions and understand how they work with each other, and you're not gonna have spiritual maturity with God and with others until you really look at, okay, how am I feeling about this loss? How am I processing on it? The other day I was counseling somebody and I was bringing up the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign. It's appointed in amend once to die, and after this to judgment. Y'all know we're all gonna die, right? One day. All of us are. And bad things happen to good people. God is still good, but bad things still happen to good people. And all of us, listen, none of us are gonna get out of here alive. Now, we're gonna get out of this church, Lord willing, alive. I hope. Please, Jesus, right? But but my point is this there's gonna come a day when you're gonna take your last breath. And maybe your loved ones will be around and maybe they'll not, but listen, that day is going to happen, and God is still good and God still knows when it is, and we need to accept that God's sovereign. It's gonna take place. Surrender lordship to Jesus. I'm not God. He is. God, however, you want to shake this out, I'm gonna trust you with it. What feels like the end of your story may become the beginning of another chapter. So maybe you're at a bad end of this chapter. You ever been like watch binge? Does anybody binge watch shows like Paramount Plus or Netflix or whatever? And it's like, oh man, I'm totally into this thing and I'm binging this sucker, right? And then and then it ends on like a cliffhanger in a bad spot where the bad guys like winning and the good guys like down, and you're like, no, you know, and you're yelling at the TV, you know, how dare you! And then you look, and another one doesn't come out for like a month or whatever it is. You're like, oh, I can't live with this, right? And it's those cliffhangers. You might be in one of those moments right now where it's not the end of the book, it's just the end of this chapter, and it's it's a terrible end, and it's just like it's it's it's it's building up the whole you know uh storyline. And you have to be able to say, okay, God, there's another chapter coming, there's something else coming. Now, when you're trusting God's sovereignty, write this down, number three, number three, attack the strongholds. Okay, so part of post-traumatic stress, part of dealing with uh situations in our life that that hijack our minds and and color our view and give us a faulty lens, part of that fractures us on the inside. And we can believe the wrong things about God and we can believe the wrong things about other people. And we can carry guilt and shame, the woulda, coulda, shoulda's. If I would have done this, I should have did that. Does anybody have that happen play out in their head? If I would have just did this, this, and this, and and now I'm beating myself down and I feel so guilty because I should have did this and I didn't know, and and and now you're you're you're hurting yourself more. And so when you're dealing with stress and anxiety and and situations and the wulda, coulda, shoulda's are are hijacking you, you have to enter back into your heart and mind and go, okay, God, help me break the strongholds, help me break the fortified lies, help me to bring up the imaginations, help me to bring back the historical data of what happened in my home and what happened with my family, and help me, God, to unpackage this thing and to break the strongholds so that the vision that I have of my family or that situation is not distorting the way that I see my future. Which means this, you have to have a ton of courage and a ton of faith to be able to enter in, to look inside your own heart with God and say, okay, that's a lie, that's a lie, that that thing was put to uh to rest or buried in the wrong way. I have to dig it back up because I'm not viewing it the right way. This is the hard work of being a Christian. And this is why so many people go to therapy and they're taking medicines because they don't understand how to do this spiritual work of unpackaging the the the what happened in the past. And so, as long as you're stuffing it down with medicine and alcohol and all this other stuff, here's what you're not doing. You're not able to process, you're not able to feel, you're not able to look at some situations and say, No, I'm not gonna let this hold me down any longer. The Bible says this in 2 Corinthians chapter number 10, verse 4 and 5. For the weapons, oh, how many of y'all love weapons? I love weapons. I got an AR at the house. I love it. It talks to me. When are you gonna take me out and play? Soon. I walk by my nine millimeter. Hello there. When are we gonna play? And my 38. Eight specials over there, hello. You know, they talk to me a little bit. I like weapons. Okay? Well, we have weapons as Christians. They're spiritual weapons. And he says this: for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, meaning they're not physical. But they're mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. So these weapons that God gives to us prayer, fasting, repentance, truth, faith, all these weapons, they have the ability to enter into your mind inside your heart and look back through the past, and they have the ability to break anything that Satan is using to hold you down. And so he says right here, casting down imaginations. How many of you guys, there was a situation in the past, and it plays over and over and over and over and over again in your head? It's an imagination. And what that is, is it's it's it's an idea that's hijacked the vessel. And so it'll come back and come back and come back again until you confront it. That's why if you have a recurring dream or a nightmare, Satan can plague you with that until you look at it through the lens of scripture and break those fortified lies. And so he says our weapons will actually help us to cast down. Cast down, I wish I had something, I would just rip it down, right? That's basically what he's saying. You have the power to rip down things inside your heart and mind. You don't have to give place to every thought in your life. You don't have to think, well, all men are bad all the time, and all women are bad all the time, and my life is terrible, and my future is bad because this happened in the past. These are strongholds that are playing inside of you. And so we're supposed to break them down, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. When you attack those strongholds, God will give you some victory. Don't let yesterday's pain imprison tomorrow's possibilities. See, some of you guys, you're living, you're living in misery because of a situation in the past that you have not appropriately dealt with. And you're letting that pain imprison you. And you can't move forward in new relationships and new health and new things in your life because you keep giving place to that imagination. Perhaps maybe you're still angry at somebody. Maybe you're holding a grudge or you're bitter or you're upset at yourself. See, the devil doesn't care if you get mad at God or you get mad at yourself or you get mad at somebody else. He just wants you to hold on to a grudge. Because when you hold on to a grudge, it it distorts your spiritual vision, it stunts your spiritual maturity, and now you can't even see what you what you're doing. You'll be hurting people and you won't even know it. And if you're in here and you go from relationship to relationship, church to church, work to work, and you have a track record of failed relationships over and over again, and you just can't get close to people because you think it's their fault. Listen, if everywhere you go you have a problem with people, the other people are not the problem. Because the common denominator is you. It's you. And if you're the problem, you can also be the solution. But you have to be willing to say, okay, there's something wrong with me. Has anybody got something wrong with them? Has anybody got something wrong with the person next to you? No, I'm kidding. All of us can have some problems on the inside. We need to recognize destructive assumptions and beliefs. We need to confront guilt, shame, disappointments, and hopelessness and hopelessness. We need to reject the lie that your past determines your future. We need to bring our thoughts into captivity to Christ. Don't allow what happened to you to become the lie that governs you. Like I could say, you know what, I grew up in a broken home. My dad was a drug addict, my mom was an alcoholic, my sisters got into prostitution and gangs, and I think maybe I'm just going to be a loser for the rest of my life. It's the cards that I was dealt. And I could fall into that pre predisposed predisposition and just be like, well, this is my lot in life. I just, I guess I have to just do this. Well, that's giving place to the devil, and it's it's not actually allowing for any ownership and individual soul liberty to say, you know what? Yeah, that stuff happened to me and around me, but I get to change. How many of you are glad you can change? Man, I'm so glad that my future is not determined by my dad's destructive uh uh habits. I'm glad that God gives us the ability to say, I'm not gonna live that way. I'm not gonna live how that is. I'm gonna follow Jesus and I'm gonna actually wanna have healthy relationships. I actually want to have a healthy church life. I want to have healthy children and enjoy quality relationships, and I'm gonna find out the destructive patterns that self-sabotage and hurt other people, and I'm gonna root all those things out, and I'm gonna do the hard, heavy lifting on the inside of myself so that when I do show up to others, I'm actually a blessing. That's hard work. That's a lot of hard work. And by the way, it's not a one-and-done thing. It's not like salvation. Salvation is the work of a moment, right? It's one and done. But sanctification is the work of a lifetime, and so that's why we go to church week after week. That's why we read our Bible every single day. So we can say, okay, God, create in me a clean heart. God, is there any strongholds inside of me? God, please remove it out of me. God, I'm getting angry or upset at that person. God, rip it out. And you've got to go on in and say, God, please, I don't want what happened, what this person said or did, or what I did or said. I don't want that to hold me down, God. So free me, God, cleanse me, anoint me, strengthen me, God. I want you. I don't want my past failures. I don't want my past sins. I don't want to live in rage and anger, God. I want to live in holiness and purity and righteousness and sincerity and in truth. So God, fill me with the Holy Ghost. That's the hard work that you're doing every day in the prayer closet with God. So you got to attack the strongholds. Number four, number four, assume personal responsibility. See, as long as you say, well, you know what, I'm a victim, I can't do anything about this, you know, this, you know, the wife or the husband did this, the son or daughter did that. Um, I it's not my fault, preacher. It's not my fault. As long as you blame and shame everyone else, then you can't make any good choices for your life. So you've got to get to this spot where you're owning failures without allowing them to own you. See, sometimes the marring is a result of God sovereignly readjusting our life. And sometimes the mar the marring, the brokenness is because of our own stupidity. Right? How many of y'all have made some stupid decisions? How many have made some bad investments? Right? Yeah. This is part of life. You're not, you're not God. You can't see everything. You're not omniscient. So part of this process of trauma and failure and loss and disappointment is realizing I need to, I need to own my mistakes. Where did I mess up? Where am I going wrong? Where did I get off? The Bible says in Proverbs 28, 13, he that covereth his sins shall not prosper. So if I'm constantly the problem, but I'm saying it's everybody else, I'm covering my sins. I'm not taking accountability. If I'm always late to everything all the time, and I'm blaming everybody else, that's a problem. If I never can pay my bills on time and I'm blaming uh the guy never paid me over there, and that lady didn't do this over there, that's a problem. I'm not owning my end of what I can do about it. Right? If I say, you know what, I'm out of shape and the donuts, I it's not my fault. The donuts are talking to me. Right? I love the donuts. Hello, eat me, eat me. Have you ever seen me over here? We need to acknowledge our own failures and poor decisions. Because until we do that, we can't change. So if we acknowledge them and accept the responsibility of it, we can confess it and be like, oh yeah, totally. I was a jerk. Oh, you know what? I overeat, and that's why I'm 50 pounds overweight. Or, you know what, I haven't been praying and taking care of my walk with God, and so that's why those F bombs came out of my mouth. Am I talking to anybody yet? You gotta get to the place where you're like, no, I see it, I recognize it. It's a problem. It's a big problem. I want to make restitution where it's appropriate. I want to learn from my past mistakes instead of repeating them. You know, if you don't ever play the tapes back, then you're gonna keep making the same mistake over and over. Right? So you've got to run the tapes back, okay, why did this relationship mess up? What did I, what was my part of contributing to this failure? Is there a skill? Is there a development? Is there something that I could do as a result of that failure that I can harvest that lesson and then go put some practice in so I can develop some ability? So if this happens again where there's a fight, I'm cool and calm and I know I won't overreact. I have some mechanisms on the inside of now that are built inside of me where I breathe. See, there's some tools that you can pick up so that you're not making the same mistake. How many of you guys, when you're starting to get into the heat of the battle with maybe a loved one, and you've said some stuff in the past that were very hurtful, that you've learned that you cannot speak when you're so full of anger. So what do you do? Do you take a walk? Do you go, hey, time out? I'm gonna say something that's gonna be harmful. I need to go pray. I need to, I need to go walk with God, I need to go let off some steam, I need to go to my emotional processor, be with God, I need to cast my cares, because if I stay here right now with you, you're gonna get my sharpest, hardest words, and it's gonna be very hazardous. So when you start feeling that, those emotions rising up inside of you, instead of destroying your relationships, you recognize with awareness the emotions, and you're like, hmm, I can't right now. I need to go do this. And you have some things in place that you process through so that when you do come back in, you're in a good, healthy mental space. Isn't that good? And it's not just with anger, it can also be with letdown, it could be with guilt. Every emotion has a certain skill and a tool that you can develop awareness on the inside of you, and you can have some coping mechanisms to develop relational health. What I'm saying is you have a part to play in this that you can get better. Turn to your neighbor and say, hey, you can get better. Now tell me, tell me, tell me. Yes, I know I can. I know I can do better. Let me give you number five. Are you all enjoying this so far? Just some tools, just some tools to help you. I know it's not like earth shattering, preaching off the rafters, you know, uh preaching so strong and so hard, the paint's falling off the wall. But but you know, I would rather give you some tools so that if you're struggling and you're having some breakdowns and some trauma, or maybe you're dealing with somebody, you can you can walk yourself through it. Or maybe you can walk somebody else through it. You know, I was on the I was on the phone the other day. Listen, when I'm not preaching, I'm working out, and if I'm not working out, then I'm counseling, and if I'm not counseling, I'm I'm gonna be surfing. But I'm typically gonna be doing something like that, either something physical, or I'm gonna be helping somebody preaching the gospel. But one of the blessings is often I'll get phone calls, I don't know what to do about this, or I'm having panic attacks here, or I'm stressed over this. Part of my job is to sit there and go, okay, unpack that for me. Talk to me about that. And then when they start expressing over the phone or sitting at the at the table, I'm just listening for their heart. And they're letting stuff go. And I, by the way, when people are unpacking, you're not judging. You're not attacking. Because the moment you judge and attack, they clam up and shut down and they build up defenses. And so part of this is you're developing trust with people, and the better you you get at this, the more people God will let you serve. And so when they're bringing it out, you're saying this, okay. So here's what I'm hearing. You're saying this, and you're you're you're using the repeat method to make sure that you understand their heart and the emotion that's tied to what they're saying. Part of being a pastor is having that spiritual intuition and intelligence to look through and unpack the events of what that person's going through and assign spiritual uh values to each little thing that they're going through. And this is an art, it's a science, and it's a calling, and it's an anointing. And it's not just pastors that can do this, but pastors are called by God to do this. But as Christians, we should be listening for what people are feeling and sensing and assigning spiritual uh value points to what they're going through. And then part of what happens in my mind when I'm listening to people is my mind, because I'm in the Bible all the time and I read through it all the time, when people are talking, my mind is going through the catalog of scriptures on everything, whether it's guilt or shame or fear or anger or rage or love or lust or whatever it is. And part of what's happening to me is the Holy Spirit's using the word of God to go, and He's giving me all the verses so that way I would know how to give them light in their darkness. Okay, so let's go a step deeper now. Number five, when you're going through brokenness and trials and you're helping people through it, number five, appropriate God's sufficient grace. How many of you guys you're in a situation right now, you just you don't like it? You don't like it. There's some situations that are super painful, they're very uh angering to you. Well, in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, it says this Paul's dealing with a thorn in the flesh. Some people think it's his eyes, based off what he said in Galatians. We don't know for sure, but the the guy was killed several times. He was stoned and rocked to death, he was shipwrecked night and day. I mean, he'd live a rigorous life, preaching and teaching and persecution, and it wasn't like he had like all the modern easy niceties that we have. And so he's dealing with some pain in his body, and the Bible says this in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, when he's asking God to heal it and to take it away, God says to him, My grace is sufficient for thee. For my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Here's what God says to him. Paul, I know you want me to heal you, I know you want me to take away that thorn, but no. Have you ever had God tell you no? He'll tell you no. And it's just a good reminder that you're not God, he is. And you're not sovereign, he is. And he is going to make some selections in your life that you didn't choose. And in those moments when he tells you no, he's getting you to depend on him and his grace and his goodness and his kindness. And in that limitation and in that infirmity, and in all of that weakness, you're to not get angry and upset. You're to cleave to him and say, Okay, God, fine, if you're not gonna do it, I'm gonna love on you, I'm gonna accept my situation, I'm gonna surrender to you, God. Let your power flow through me, let your grace flow through me, God. Lord, even though if I lose my platform, it doesn't change my purpose, oh God. So help me to love on you in this restricted area. Help me to love on you and be a blessing to others, even though I can't control some of this stuff. Appropriating God's grace in situations that you cannot change. Paul had a thorn. You know what Jacob had? Jacob had a limp. The Bible says in Genesis that he wrestled with God and God touched the hollow of his thigh. That one event changed him. Absolutely changed. Do you have any moments in your life that you this changed your life? It changed you on the inside. And maybe before you used to be able to do something, and now you're you're moving a little different. You're walking different, you're talking different. Maybe there's a little bit of a brokenness on the inside that maybe you were so full of yourself before, but now you're a lot more hesitant and a lot more thoughtful and considerate before you engage. It's just part of how God changes us. God did not remove Paul's limitation, but he did supply him with grace. Our limitations can deepen our dependence upon God. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Sometimes the place where you feel weakest becomes the place where God's strength is the most clearly displayed. So, what is it for you? Are you ready next time somebody in your life calls and says, it's all falling apart? I'm gonna kill myself. I'm done. Are you ready to help that person? Because you need to be. But before you can help others, you have to get the help first. You have to know how God's grace is sufficient. Let me give you number six. You're listening very well today. Yeah. You're gonna come through some situations at the end of some chapters and at the end of some nights, and number six, advance into your morning. M-O-R-N-I-N-G, morning. In Psalm 30, verse 5, the Bible says, For his anger endureth but for a moment, in his favor is life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Some people in the church right now, it's nighttime. It's a winter season. It's brokenness, it's pain, it's darkness, it's it's affliction, it's trouble. And I love this verse because it speaks to the thought that it's not gonna last. After every night, there's a day. Right? Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. One of my favorite phrases, whenever it's going bad for me, is this too shall pass. Say that with me. This too shall pass. You're on the top of the mountain, everybody singing your praises, this too shall pass. It's all gonna change. It's the one common denominator with life. You don't have to walk the way you used to walk. Listen, if if if you're expecting your body, ladies, to look like it did when it was 16 after four babies, there may be a problem. If you're expecting you to run and jump and do all this other stuff when you're in your mid-60s the same way you did when you were 20, there's a wisdom issue there. Right? There's a wisdom issue there. Things are gonna change. Don't don't don't hold back your future, the great future and the good seasons up ahead, because some some really disappointing uh chapters in the past. And I and and don't stuff those chapters away like they never happened. Like look at them and be like, yep, that's part of my journey. Hey, uh, check out this scar, check out this scar, check out this scar. Has anybody in here got some scars? We've got physical scars, and we have emotional scars. We have relational scars, we have financial scars. Though every single scar has a lesson tied to it. And if you're always hiding your scars, and I know I'm I'm as vain as the next person, when I got they cut cancer out of my face right here and right here, I'll look and I'll go, man, I see that, that's so messed up. I look ugly. You know, you know how you do that, right? Well, maybe not you, but but those are those are stories, right? And the broken bones, the mishaps, all the disappointments, those are all stories. And if you're stuffing those away. Way and you're unwilling to look at them, here's what you're not doing: you're not giving God any opportunity to put grace inside those things. Now, watch this, watch this, watch this. You can be 40, 50, 60 years old, 70, 80, 90 years old, and have a traumatic event that happened back here that you didn't deal with. But it's not too late. You can you can by faith be all the way down here in age and transport in your mind and in your heart with prayer to be able to bring back a chapter, a season in your life and relish the good and learn the lessons and appropriate grace into it. Can I show you how I did this with one situation? I used to be so mad at my parents and so mad at what they did. And then I realized when I was about 22 years old, that I can't live in anger and rage and move forward in a healthy relationship as long as I'm letting what happened when I was eight years old control my life. And so I had to go with the grace of God to transport back, look at those situations and say, I forgive my dad. I forgive my mom. I honor them, even though what they did was dishonorable in some situations. I'm gonna obey you, Master. They're human like I'm human. It was their first time, like it's my first time. I'm not endorsing their sin, but God, I give them mercy like you've given me mercy. I give them grace like you gave me grace. And now when you appropriate grace in past situations of trauma in your life through prayer, now you can come all the way down here in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s and not have the chip on your shoulder. You're not carrying it the same way. And as long as you're that that dad or that pastor or that minister or that spouse, and as long as you have that animosity over their failure or their their judgment or whatever it is that however they wronged you, as long as that is still inside of you and you haven't appropriated grace inside of it, you're stuck. That event has power over you. And the only thing that's supposed to have power over you is the Lord Jesus Christ. And a lot of times if you bring up a sore subject and somebody doesn't want to talk about it, it's because many times they haven't emotionally processed it in a healthy way. I said, You dating? She goes, uh. I said, What happened with the last one? See, all these grunts and movements and facial expressions are indicators uh of what's happening in the heart. And so I sat down and developed a talk, a little relationship, and we slowly started unpacking what happened with that last relationship. I was able to show her that as long as she's holding a grudge or anger towards him, she's not fit to receive a new relationship because she has unhealth inside of her body. And so while we're not justifying any of the evils that happened in that situation, we are releasing and forgiving. You have to release and forgive if you want to be able to reach out and receive the new grace or the new relationships in your life. And some of us we're holding on to what used to be. This happens for all of us, and I totally get it. It's hard for us to have the courage to look at it, and then to have the faith and the hope that if I do look at it, there's actually gonna I can I can get a positive outcome from it. Now, look up here real quick. You're not going to change the event. If the person died, you're not bringing them back. If they're gone, they're gone. If the relationship is over, if the financial is gone, it's gone. Listen, you don't go back in order to change history. You go back in order to change your own heart. And by you getting your heart in a good emotional spot and appropriating grace, you put yourself in a position to live in wholeness, in healthiness, in forgiveness, in grace. Now the devil has nothing on you to hold you back, and now you're free to love other people in a way that you don't need them to complete you. You already have completeness in Christ. You're offering healthiness to others. So, in closing, there is a blessing beyond the breaking. God's gonna change us, He's gonna mar us. There's gonna be some things that take place in our life. You don't have to surrender your future because your past wounded you. You can have the scars, you can have all everything that took place, you can walk through it in a good way. Be wounded and still walking, be limited, and know that God's grace is sufficient. You may not be what you used to be, but you're becoming all that God wants you to be. The breaking is not the end, the potter is making me again.