Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through 1 Kings 19, emphasizing that God is with us even in our wilderness experiences. He highlights how wilderness moments can drive us to our limits, reveal God's provisions, and demonstrate His willingness to give us second chances. The sermon encourages believers to draw closer to God during difficult times, as it is in these moments that we can truly experience His presence and hear His voice.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Thank you for that. If you have a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available at this time. We're going to be in 1 Kings 19, if you want to turn there. And as you're turning there, we'll just give some introductory thoughts.
We are in a three-part series right now through Christmas talking about the thought of God is with us and what that looks like when we are going through different things in life. Oftentimes, Christmas time brings up just the different thoughts of what are we going to talk about?
How are we going to approach this year of Christmas? And through praying and through seeking the Lord and seeking what He had for us,
there was just a lot of difficulties in the life of the family of the church right now and a lot of different things we're going through.
And so I never want to be a bad news preacher, but at the same time, we have to understand there is the whole counsel of Scripture. And there are times where we're going to be going through ups and downs in life.
And the Lord, through His leading, led me to just sort of talk through some of those down moments in life and how God can be with us in those moments.
And so last week, we talked about the valley and how we go through the different valleys of life in order to get to the mountaintop experiences. And we made that statement.
We enjoy God on the mountains, but we get to know Him intimately in the valleys. We're going to build on that a little bit today.
But as we go through this and as we go through our valleys of life, we realize who God is and what He's done for us and how we can grow in our relationship with Him.
And we often need those valley moments in our life, the valleys that drive us closer to God, that drive us closer to each other.
As I often talk to couples and I tell couples, you're going to enjoy the high tops of your marriage. You're going to have some really cool moments.
But it's when difficulties happen in your marriage is when you grow the closest to each other, when you begin to rely on each other more and more. When me and Allison got married, I've said this story before, we moved to Idaho.
And we moved out there with hope and love and not a lot of money. And we realized that love and hope doesn't pay the bills.
And after you ran out of all your money and you've got about $14 left in the bank account, then everything's paid and you're like, well, I guess we'll eat soup tonight.
And tomorrow night we'll eat soup again. And tomorrow night we'll eat soup again because that's all we had. And so, but we had love. And in those moments, we began to grow closer to each other. And that's the same way with God. We want those mountaintop experience. We want those great things.
But God said there's times where you're going to have to go through the valley. You're going to have to go through the wilderness is what we're talking about today to grow closer to me. And so if you've got your Bibles there, we'll stand. I'm going to read Matthew 1.23.
It'll be on the screen for us. And then 1 Kings chapter 19 this morning as well. So let's stand out of reading of God's scripture. This morning the Bible says,
See the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son and they will name him Emmanuel,
Elijah's Story and God's Presence
which is translated God is with us, which is where we're getting our text verse out of this series.
And then in 1 Kings we get to the story of Elijah and an amazing story here that maybe you've heard before.
We're going to maybe pull some things out this morning that maybe you've never thought of. And so chapter 19 verses 3 through 12, Then Elijah became afraid and immediately ran for his life.
When he came to Beersheba that belonged to Judah, he left his servant there, but he went on a day's journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. And he said,
And then the angel of the Lord returned for a second time and touched him and said, And so he got up and he ate and drank. And then the strength from that, the food, he walked 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, to the mountain of God.
And he entered a cave there and spent the night. And suddenly the Lord came unto him and said unto him, What are you doing here, Elijah? Love that question. That's an amazing question. What are you doing here, Elijah? How often do we hear that from the Lord? He replied, And then he said,
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. God, I pray that you would have your hand of blessed upon the service this morning. Give me the strength.
You know that I've had a rough weekend. And I pray that you would help me this morning to preach with your power, with your glory, and that your name be lifted high. In your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. As we get to thinking this morning of God in the wilderness and what that looks like in our life.
I do miss the bigger pulpit. I like to put things around and I do feel constrained here.
I feel like something's going to fall off and I'm going to lose my place. But by God's grace, we'll be fine. So we enjoy God on the mountaintops. We get to know him intimately in the valleys. The thought we want to add on today is this. We experience God in the wilderness.
So we go closer to God in the valley. But when wilderness time comes, we experience who God is.
Oftentimes when we are on a mountain, it is going through the valley to get to the mountaintop. But when we get to the mountain, what proceeds after the mountain is the wilderness experience.
As Terry talked about in the opening part, Jesus was baptized. One of the crowning proclamations of Jesus' ministry. He's standing there. He's got his disciples there.
He goes to John the Baptist. He's at the River Jordan. I've been standing there.
A lot of this message today, my mind was just flooding back of memories of me standing at the River Jordan. Me standing on the mountain where Elijah called down fire. Me going into Horeb and talking through it and looking at these places.
And Jesus standing there with John the Baptist, his disciples around him, he gets baptized.
And as he comes out, the voice of God comes from heaven and says, This is my son in whom I am well pleased. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove and lands on him.
And this crowning moment in all of Scripture where Jesus is declared the King of kings, the Lord of lords. He's God's son.
We see the Trinity in the picture. I mean, God is blessing the ministry here of Jesus. His disciples are there.
Wilderness Experiences and Temptation
Great things are going to happen. And then immediately after his baptism, he goes into the wilderness.
And he spends 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness to become tempted at the end of that. And you think, man,
God, why would you do that? Why would you send Jesus into this moment? And it's oftentimes where God built us up to those mountaintop experiences where he says, Okay, now I can trust you to go into this wilderness place. I gave my blessing to you.
I've helped you in this moment. I've given you the strength that you're going to need. Now go into this moment in time where you're going to have to rely on what you learned in those mountaintop experiences. You see, your deepest need becomes a gift when it drives you to depend on God.
Our deepest need becomes a gift when it drives us to say, God, I need you more today than I've ever needed you.
I want you to think for a moment about being in the center of God's will. We've heard this often.
I heard this all the time as a young person. Find yourself in the center of God's will. Anybody ever heard that before in here? Okay, a couple people.
Find yourself in the middle of God's will. Find out where God wants you. Put yourself in the center of it. And what does that really mean? What does it look like? Would it be a time of happiness or fulfillment?
Would there ever be a time where in the middle of God's will, would there be a place of discouragement and difficulty? Think about the children of Israel.
God called Moses to bring them out of Egypt into the center of his will in the wilderness away from everything. The center of God's will would eventually be for them to be in Canaan.
But for a time, the center of God's will was a terrible, horrible wilderness full of wars,
full of trusting in God, full of complaining because they didn't have what they thought they needed, God having to provide for them, complaining to Moses that the water was bitter and they had to throw the bush into the stream so it came fresh.
All the different things that they went through in this wilderness time. And God was saying, you're in the center of my will, even though all these are going through. Has God included this period of time of wilderness in your life?
Where maybe you are going through a wilderness of struggle, maybe a wilderness of hardship, maybe a wilderness of questioning, and it can be a place of problems.
And at the same time, this wilderness can be a place of purpose. This wilderness can be a time where the puzzles of life begin to be put in perspective from God's perspective and his perfect plan for your life.
I'm not a puzzle guy. Does anybody here like puzzles? I just don't, they're meticulous. They take a lot of time, a lot of patience.
You see the box of what a puzzle is supposed to look like, and they make all the different weird shape pieces, and you got to figure them all out. My wife and her dad are really good at it. He bought us a three-dimensional puzzle,
right? It was a Harry Potter hologram puzzle. So every piece, when you looked at it, it changed perspective from where you were looking at it. Hurt my eyes.
I spent like two hours on one little square trying to put it together. I gave up.
I woke up the next morning, and the whole thing was almost put together because her and her dad had been working on it all night, and they were enjoying it. And so I'm like, you know, maybe I can have some bonding time with my wife.
And so I broke out a puzzle that someone gave me years ago. It was a Miami Dolphin puzzle with a bunch of animals. And so we started working on it, and I think Hudson had gotten sick a couple of days ago and stayed home.
And so she stayed home with him, and she texted me. She said, hey, when you get home, the puzzle's going to be done.
And she had taken all these pieces, and she was able to put them together into a beautiful masterpiece of what it was supposed to be like.
And oftentimes in our wilderness moments, we are looking at the pieces all completely scrambled around, and we're trying to figure out how, God, are you going to take all these scrambled up pieces and make them look like a picture? And it's through the time that we go through experience in life,
does God take that piece, and he moves it over here, and he puts it where it needs to be. Takes the piece from way over here, and he brings it in. Oh, that's where that fits. And we begin to look back, and we see through time, I see how that works.
I see how that was weaved into my story so that this could all work out in a way. You see, when we go through the wilderness of our life, you begin to question, God, is your wisdom right?
Is what you have for me right now, is this the right thing for me? And maybe you've even gotten that place where you say, God, I need more of your guidance. Maybe I've misread God's guidance.
Maybe I put my own guidance into a position where I thought that I was right, and God was wrong, and I began to go down a wrong path.
I was talking to a pastor just a couple of weeks ago, and he's retiring, and if I said his name, you would know who he is. But he looked at us pastors, and he said, you know, he said there was one ministry that I left, and he said, looking back on it,
it was a me move, not a God move. And he said, I never want to get to the place where I make a move that is a move about me and not a move about what God wants me to do.
He said, I look back, and I see that the church I left, after I'd been there about six or seven years, I should have stayed a little longer. And I left because it was for my own benefit and not what God wanted me to do.
And oftentimes, this is where we're at in our life.
We go through wilderness moments, and we begin to second guess or second question what's going on, and we say, God, how can I figure my way out of this?
And so when we begin to look through this, and we learn from what Elijah went through, Elijah, he learned this wilderness example in his life.
God used him in one of the most powerful, massive ways that we've ever seen in Scripture.
Every Sunday school lesson that a kid goes through between the ages of kindergarten and fifth grade, they will talk about Elijah calling down fire from heaven. Because it's the coolest story for every little third grade boy that ever gets to experience Scripture. And they're like, yes.
They just got to call down fire from heaven and consume up an altar. Like, that's the coolest story you get to tell.
And this is the story that we know about, and we know that what happened here, and it was one of the most amazing sights to stand up on the top of this mountain and sort of see where they
gathered the water from and how they had to go down the mountain to get the water and come back. And I wish I could preach that message right now. But Elijah did this, and then as he's preaching this and as he does this, the king comes out, Ahab, and Jezebel, and he says,
we're going to kill Elijah. The same Elijah that was on Mount Carmel were coming after you. We're going to kill all the prophets. We're going to kill all the Israelites that are prophesying in Jesus' name. And Jezebel sent word to Elijah, hey, you did a great thing, but by tomorrow's end, you're mine.
Imagine Elijah in this moment. You just did something that no one else ever in Scripture, and we know, will never happen again.
Called down fire from heaven, consumed an altar on the voice of you saying, God, bring down fire.
And one woman comes at you, and you get scared. The verse says, Elijah became afraid and immediately ran for his life. Imagine this. You're on a mountaintop experience.
Something that is greater. I mean, you've experienced a miraculous encounter with God, God working in a mighty way, and someone says one thing, and it sends you into desperation and despair.
Has that ever happened to us? Have we ever been doing things or living our life, and one person come into our life, and all of a sudden, our life goes into despair? Our life goes into desperation. We just don't know how to put the pieces back together. And this is where Elijah's at.
We can learn from what Elijah did and what God did through Elijah's life when we are in the wilderness.
So the first point we're going to look at is wilderness moments, and we're going to sort of push through the first four and spend more time on the fifth one today, just so you know.
So wilderness moments drive us to our end. Wilderness moments begin to drive us to our end. You see, there's an end to every one of our lives. There's an end to our patience.
There's an end to our suffering. There's an end to all of it. But what happens is when we enter the wilderness, we begin to see the end of sort of what we can handle. See, we can only handle so much on our backs.
As husbands, as fathers, we can only handle so much when it comes to bills, when it comes to decision-makings, when it comes to organizing our family and figuring out life, and we get to the point where it's just a breaking point of our life. God knows that. He understands that.
And sometimes it brings us to a wilderness to understand what that breaking point is. And when we look at Elijah, we see that he seems exhausted.
He gets to the end, and he says, he came to Beersheba where he belonged to Judah, and he left his servant, and he went a day's journey in the wilderness, and he sat down under the broom tree and just said, God, I've had enough. God, I can't do it anymore.
Can you relate to that? Can you relate to the exhaustion and the tiredness that Elijah's experienced here, where he just sort of just gets to the end, and he says, God, I'm depleted. There's nothing left.
I've had enough. I just want to be done. I just want to be done with what you're doing in my life. I just want to move to the next phase of whatever you're going to do. Just let this season be done.
As I was reading through that and just sort of meditating on those thoughts, my mind came to, again, Psalms 23.
This last week I mentioned it, Psalms 23, where it says, the Lord is my shepherd. He makes me lie down in green pastures. Why does God have to make us lie down in green pastures? Right? Because we are pushing away from it. And God says, no, no, no. You need this green pasture.
I'm going to push you. I'm going to make you lie down. I'm going to make you trust in me because I understand that I need to restore your soul.
There needs to be a time where we get to that point where we say, God, I need the physical rest. I need the spiritual replenishment in my life where only you can do these things.
You see, God, when I looked at this, God didn't look down at Elijah and say, Elijah, sit down for a minute. It's time for me to preach a sermon to you.
It's time for me to rip your face off, Elijah. He didn't do that. I almost wish he would have because then it gave me a little more leeway to preach a little harder. He didn't rebuke Elijah. He didn't say, Elijah, you wicked heathen.
You don't trust me. I just laid you do these wonderful things. Really wish he probably would have rebuked him. All of a sudden, that's sort of how my dad mind is, is rebuking needs to come in. He just sort of looks at him and says, Elijah, where's your faith at?
He just sort of looks at him and says, you're talking about you've had enough and your ancestors and just sort of looks down and says, how do you even have any faith right now? But what God does tell him is in the next verse is to eat and rest.
And I think oftentimes we neglect some things that we think are so fundamental in our lives.
And God just has to come in and remind us that there are green pastures for us to experience. And there are great things in our life that we just need to experience while we're in those moments. Even when there's wilderness moments.
Number two, wilderness moments allow us to see God's provisions. Verses five and six, they lay down and slept under the broom tree. You see, often in the American church and in the American society, we fail to see the need of God's hand.
God's hand is working every day of our life. You see, back in the early days of the church, they began to see God work and move every single day of their life. They began to see where a need happened and someone sold everything they had.
They distributed among the people that were in need. And persecution came and the church scattered.
But these groups of people stayed together and they worked together. And God began to bless them. And even you look back, even the 18, 1900s, I talked to some of these guys and ladies that have lived 80, 90, 100 years. And I asked about the simplicity of life before technology and before automobiles.
And they just, you know, we didn't go but about five or six miles away from our home. Everything we needed was just right there. And I often think of the simplicity that life was and the times where they just trusted God.
And they said, God, we need this and we're going to trust in you. And God provided for it. But in today's society,
man, we're on the move. We're always going. We're always doing things. We've got basketball practice and football practice and sports and dance practice and grandkids performances and plays here.
And I'm not saying any of those things are wrong.
But all the time we get these things in our life that begin to stretch us so much that we fail to see God's little movements and God's little provisions in our life. You see, when we face the wilderness experiences, we begin to see God's hand at work.
We begin to see God working in the intimate details of our life. We begin to see that, God, I'm struggling here.
And we begin to pray as a family and we say, God, I need you to answer this. And then we see the answer because we're slowed down enough to see what he's doing. We begin to see the answers to those small prayers.
We begin to see God working around us and through us and in our lives. We begin to get the rest for our soul and even the little thing of the food for our body.
We begin to get to see. You see, we get in such a fast pace and a rushed world that we fail to see God working in our lives. And God says, I'm providing those moments and those provisions in your life, but you just need to take a step back and see how I'm putting those pieces together.
Scotty says it all the time in our Sunday school classes, is the forest is so big that you fail to see the trees. I think I'm saying that right.
You fail to see the trees that are in front of us because the forest is so big. And this is how it is in our life is God says, I'm working these little things out in life.
And you just see this massive forest in front of you and you can't see the little things that I'm working out.
And the wilderness experience allows us to slow down a moment and see the little things that God is doing.
God's Second Chances
Number three, the wilderness moment. Show us that God gives us second chances. Aren't you glad that God's a God of second chances?
Man, aren't you glad God's a God of third and fourth and fifth chances? Man, how many times have I messed up and God rebuked me, but then said, hey, I still need you.
I still want you to be my son. I still want you to be someone that's going to do the work of the saints. You know, I'm often reminded that when I messed up, my dad didn't discipline me and say, okay, you're no longer my son.
My dad disciplined me and brought me in and loved and cared for me and said, you're still my son. I still love you. This past week, they implemented a discipline chart in Hudson's daycare. And so he's got green and he's got blue and he's got orange and red.
And he came home and he said, dad, I'm on orange and he's laughing about it. And I said, well, Hudson, that's not a good thing because it means you were bad today. And if you're bad at school, that means you get a spanking when you get home. And he's all laughing.
I'm having fun. And so I told him, I told his teacher, I said, now when we pick him up, you need to let us know what color is on. So I came home the next day. It was good.
But I think it was Thursday. I came home and Howie said, because it was a late, it was Wednesday when I came home. It was Wednesday when I came home, it was late. And she said, James,
Hudson needs to tell you what color he's on. He looks at me with a little smile and goes, I was on red, dad.
And I said, Hudson, that's not good that you were on red. And so we took him into the bedroom and sat down on the bed there. And Allison sat down with me. And I sat down with him and put him on my lap there. And I said, Hudson, why were you on red?
He said, I wasn't listening. And I said, well, you know, when you're on red and you get spankings. So I bent him over my knee, took my hand out, didn't get the paddle this time. And I gave him three licks.
And he bawled like you thought I cut his leg off. The world was coming to an end. He didn't know what was going on. One of his first real spankings, you know. He's not in here. I can pick on him a little bit. He starts crying. He's bawling. I picked him up.
I said, well, you can go to mom once you stop crying. So he stops crying. I told him I loved him. I gave him a hug. I didn't say, Hudson, you're a little longer my son. Get out of my house. No, I loved him.
I cared for him. I told him I loved him. And he goes to mom. And he cries a little bit more. And then finally he comes over to me, gives me a hug. I love you, dad.
That whole night, he snuggled with me. And I put him to sleep that night. Normally, Allison is the one that puts him to bed. He loves sleeping with mom. He loves sitting with mom. You know, kids are like that. But that night,
because he knew dad cared about him and knew dad gave him a second chance, he came and he loved on dad that day.
Next day, I picked him up from daycare. Dad, I was on green today. I got a sticker today. That's the first thing he said. Why? Because we gave him second chances.
God didn't get to this moment in Elijah's life and say, well, that's your last time. You're done. I'm done with you, Elijah.
He just says, what are you doing here? What is the good that you're doing here? And he said, wake up. There's a second chance I'm giving you. You're not done with your mission.
And the more I read through scripture, the more I am amazed at the second and third and fourth and tenth times where the Lord goes to people and he gives them chance after chance after chance. I wrote down just a couple. Peter's denial. Peter denied Jesus.
He stood out there outside the courtyard when Jesus was being crucified and beaten and whipped for our sins.
And those people came to him and he denied Jesus three times. And Jesus came to the boat after he had resurrected from the dead and looked out and said, Peter, what are you doing out there? Come on in. I'm waiting for you.
Peter came in and Jesus forgave him. He gave him a second chance. Think of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even the destruction that happened, God was willing to save that nation for 10 righteous souls.
And Moses or Abraham came to them and came to God and begged and pleaded for that number to come down and come down and come down. And God continued to give second chances and multiple opportunities for Sodom and Gomorrah to repent. I think of David's sin.
David, who sinned with Bathsheba, who did a horrible thing, who killed the woman that he had an affair with, killed her husband on the battlefield.
And yet God, after that, still said that he was a man after God's own heart. Because of the repentance and the brokenness that David came before God. I think of Samson. Samson who had strength like we've never known before.
Who could whip a thousand men and not even break a sweat. I preach a message for 20 minutes and I'm sweating to death up here. I think Samson would be able to do this with no problem.
And yet he had a woman that came in his life and he failed and he sinned. And at the end of his life, he said, God, give me one more moment, one more time where I can just honor you.
And God gave him the strength. And it said that in his last defeat, he killed more men under the righteousness of God than he did his entire life. God gave him a second chance.
Desperation in Wilderness Moments
Maybe we're here this morning and we're thinking, God, I've done too much, done too much wrong. And God says, no, I'm here to give you second chances. Wilderness moments number four bring us to desperation.
Brings us to a place where we get to the point where we say, God, you are all I need.
You see, he runs away and he begins to take an account for his life. Look at what he says. He replied and said,
God, I've been very zealous for you, the God of the armies. But the people that I have been serving, they've abandoned your covenant. They've tore down your altars. They killed your prophets with the sword. And I'm all alone.
And now look, they're here to come kill me. Sometimes the desperation in our life drives us to realize and to see who God really is. You see, God meets Elijah in his need.
God came to Elijah in the cave and he says, what are you doing here? He asked him this question, what are you doing, Elijah? Elijah? And Elijah replies with his statement,
his eloquent statement. The Israelites, they've done this wrong. They've torn down altars. They've killed your prophets. I'm alone. They're coming after me. I'm ready to take my own life. I'm done with this.
And God steps in, in the desperation and says, I'm right here with you. I am right where you need me to be. And oftentimes, as we're going to look at this last moment, we look for God in the wrong places. Because number five, wilderness moments prove who God is.
This is the good news of the story here. They prove who God is in our story. You see, what happens is, is the wind comes and this wind is so powerful. It says it's shearing the mountains off to the side of the mountain.
And it says the Lord was not in the wind. How often is it that we look for a sign from God? And the Bible says the signs are from a wicked and perverse generation. And God says, don't worry about the wind that's around you.
And the earthquake comes and Elijah says, maybe he's in the earthquake. And he says, no, I'm not in the earthquake. And then this massive wildfire comes.
When we were in Idaho, wildfires ran rapid in Idaho and Washington and Oregon. And they would run all over the place. And we'd always be in wildfire alerts. And they're dangerous, man.
They can whip up a thousand acres of land in just a matter of no time. And this wildfire comes in. And Elijah looks and says, you've got to be in the fire, right? You just called down fire from heaven. Remember just a couple of verses before?
I was on top of the mountain. Fire came down, destroyed everything. God, you've got to be in the fire.
He said, no, I'm not in the fire, Elijah. You see, the earth and the wind and the fire, God said, I'm not in any of it. God wasn't in the remarkable, but God was in the ordinary. God stepped in in the ordinary whisper and said, that's where I'm at.
I'm the still small voice that's behind you. You see, when we're overwhelmed by stress and we're overwhelmed by anxiety in our life, we want God's voice to overpower everything.
And God just says, I'm going to sit back. I'm going to try to talk to you in a quiet, small, still voice.
I often wonder why didn't God step out and speak in a bombarding voice like he did for God, with Jesus when he was baptized and said, this is my son who I'm well pleased.
And everyone heard that. Why didn't God step out and do some powerful way? As I begin to understand this a little more, it's because he wants us to know him and experience and trust him. You see, when God whispers, we have to be paying attention.
We have to be paying attention to where he's at. And we have to be close enough to hear.
If we're not close enough to hear God, we'll never hear him. You see, the devil shouts lies in our life. The devil tells us that we're not right.
The devil tells us that we've done too many things that are wrong. The devil says that you are never going to be used by God. And God whispers the truth.
And God says, I'm here for second, third, fourth chances. I'm not going to do it by shouting louder, but I'm going to do it by calling you closer to me.
Because the closer we get to God, the more loudly we hear his voice. You see, in that moment, in that small illustration with Hudson, I could have yelled over his crying. I could have told him, son, stop crying. Listen to me.
And you know as well as I would if he had continued to cry louder. But by me being calm and me calming my attitude down and saying, son, once you're done, I'll take care of the rest. And he calmed down and I talked to him in a still small voice.
He was able to hear the father's love toward him.
And that began to work in his life in a clear calling for him to become closer to me. Just as God looks at us and says, I want you to become closer to me. If only you'll just abandon all the distractions that are around you and draw closer to me.
See, he's with us. He's here today. The Bible says he's never going to leave us and he's never going to forsake us if we draw closer to him.
As Terry comes and plays our invitation to him, I want to read one verse out of a Psalm chapter 34. Because this verse spoke to me so much this week and has been encouraging my heart.
And has encouraged my heart through this passage of in the wilderness. Because oftentimes we forget that God is with us in the wilderness.
The Bible says that the Lord is near to the broken hearted and he saves those crushed in the spirit.
You see, when we go through broken hearted times, the Bible says I'm near to you. And when God is near to us, we get to hear his voice better. I'm so thankful that God says I want to become near to us.
I want to be close to those that are crushed in the spirit. Because we're going to go through times where we're going to be crushed. We're going to go through times where life's not going to make sense. Our hearts are going to be broken.
And we're going to say, God, what are you doing in my life right now? Just as Elijah, who went through some amazing things,
said, God, what are you doing in my life? Man, you just allowed me to destroy all the prophets of Baal. You allowed me to purge all of the wickedness in the land. And now you're sending Jezebel after me?
And God says, I'm near to you. God says, I'm here to save you. If only you'll turn to me. As I've been studying through these couple of passages that I've been planning to preach, this one thought has come to my mind.
Choosing God in Hard Times
I'd rather be on the wilderness with God than on the mountaintop without him.
The more I study, the more I live my life, if I would rather be in the hardest moments of my life with God near to me in the brokenheartedness, than on the mountaintop where everything is great and God is nowhere near me. Because in those hard times, God is there.
He's going to give me the deepest need that I could ever imagine. On the mountaintop, yeah, things are great around me, but I have no source of peace. I have no source of comfort. And my soul is longing for something greater when we're away from God.
Your deepest need becomes your gift that drives you to depend on God.
Where are you at this morning, church? Church, what do you have that the Lord can help with? What struggle are you going through in your life that God says, just abandon the voices of the devil that are around you and draw near to me so that I can help you this morning?
Maybe you just need to slow down a little bit. Maybe your life's going 100 miles an hour and God says, just slow down for a moment, push the brakes a little bit, and clearly look at who I am and what I've done for you.
Maybe today you're living in darkness and you need to trust in the Lord by light and trust in Him and what He's done on us through sending His Son in that baby in a manger to die for our sins.
Maybe it's going from darkness to light to this morning. Whatever the need is that you have this morning, respond as you see fit. Let us pray. Lord, we love you. God, I thank you for what you've done. Lord, I thank you for this different Christmas message that you've led me to.
Lord, I didn't know why when you led me to this a couple of weeks ago, but I'm understanding more.
Lord, I'm trusting you more. And as much as I wouldn't have maybe planned this, maybe I'd have planned a Mary Joseph Jesus messages. Lord, you're working in our lives.
And I pray that you would help us this morning to fully draw closer to you, to abandon the earthquakes that are in our life and the fire and the storms that are around us and just get to the
moment where we draw closer to you, where we hear your small voice in our life, and we begin to trust in you more. Help us this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
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