[SPEAKER_00]: Greetings, this is Dr. Darrell Hall, past of the Wake Community Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining our podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited today as we continue our wayfinder series, and we conclude our message, looking at the woman at the whale.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing how the Lord met her in a moment and interrupted her life and changed her.
[SPEAKER_00]: so that she could show others the way to life with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find these notes on the Bible app.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also transcribed as you listen to this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your Bible, turn me to the book of John chapter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's study guys, work together.
[SPEAKER_00]: John chapter four verse twenty eight, the word of the Lord says, so the woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the people, come see a man who told me all the things that I have done.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the Christ, is he?
[SPEAKER_00]: They left the city and were coming to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse number thirty nine, it says, now from that city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who did what church, who testified.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may be seated in the presence of the living guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to continue our wayfinders series.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would just thought in mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: left him up, left him up.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you holding onto that you thought you needed to be fulfilled?
[SPEAKER_00]: But even though you've been holding onto it, it's still left you empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you unwilling or unfraid to release?
[SPEAKER_00]: to the lower, because you thought you needed it for it to give you what you need.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, all of us have been in a place in our life where we held on too tight to a thing, a person, a title, an opportunity, a possession, a reputation, an idea of ourselves,
[SPEAKER_00]: that we held onto for dear life, thinking we needed to maintain contact with it so that it could ultimately sustain or fulfill us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not until you have a true encounter with Jesus, can you discover that the things that left you empty were never meant to be held on tight to, they were meant to be let go in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: knowing that only the Lord Jesus can satisfy you at a so deep level.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, that's one of the very clear principles we see in this story with Sister Girl in John chapter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing I love about the Bible is it tells the truth on the people who are in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we kind of appreciate from Genesis to Revelation is that there is only one perfect person in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody from Genesis the Revelation has issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody from Genesis the Revelation has character flaws, personality quirks, and stories that they would otherwise be ashamed of if it had not been for God's grace who redeemed them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only person in Scripture who is without flaw is Jesus and Jesus alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we find in this story, the woman at the well, is the same thing we found the last couple weeks in the story of John, the baptizer, and that is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to be perfect for the Lord to use you, but you do have to be real.
[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta be authentic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be honest with the Lord as the Lord interjects his will into your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not until we get to the place where we can be honest at a solely level about why we grasp and hold on to the things we refuse to let go.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not until we can be honest about that that we are in the position, not just to become who God has called us to be, but then to do what God has purpose to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord has a purpose for all of us, unique purposes, and a collective purpose to point people to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you don't have to be perfect to point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus, if you had to be perfect to point, John the Baptist couldn't say behold the Lamb of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you had to be perfect to point, the woman in this story couldn't say y'all come see a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: who just told me everything about myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all, the Lord interjected himself in her life at a point where she was hiding and playing daylight because of shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shame will do that, won't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Shame will make you think you can hire and playing daylight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shane will make you play in people's faces, thinking they can't see what you're trying so desperately to hide.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shane will make you try to avoid accountability and community for fear that some facts about you may actually be true about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shane is a disagreement between the facts and the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact is I did this, or I have done that with the truth is, I am God's son, I am God's daughter, and the robe between the two can cause me to respond to the facts with shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this woman was hiding in plain daylight, y'all is high noon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can't get no brighter than noon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she decides to come to the whale and noon to get water.
[SPEAKER_00]: to us that would make logical sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seniors go, it's the hottest time of day going into the afternoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when you need water.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the custom of women in that community was to come to this same well in the evenings after the sun was going down to draw enough water in the evening to last for the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So because she knew that this was the schedule of the women in the community, she decided to make her schedule opposite of their schedule.
[SPEAKER_00]: To come to the well at a time where she knew nobody else would be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she was avoiding people on purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't want to have to face some of the women who's men, she probably started.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't want to have to hear the murmurings and the whispers as she walked up to the whale and the closer she got to the whale, they stopped talking like they weren't just talking about her.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can feel when you walk into a room and people was just talking about you and all of a sudden they're not talking and you like what was all talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Her shame is calling her to hide, but the Lord Jesus interrupts her in the middle of her shame, and He changes her so amazingly all that she becomes a wayfinder before she fixes the wrongs in her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her and Jesus talking, come to find out, she don't have five husbands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means she can get a man, she just either can't keep on or don't like the ones she'd been getting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she'll play her because the text says she had five husbands and then once she went now, it's not her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she don't have five husbands.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's living with a man now who is not her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Jesus interrupts her life and changes her heart, she don't even go home and stop shacking first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all like, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not glorifying it, the point of making it is the things that you run from, the things that you ashamed of, the look and change you in a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And before you can fix, what other people think is broken, the Lord already started using you to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: She and he have time to get to go home and say, hey, boo, look, just ain't gonna work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a new man, a new man, yeah, but not a kind of man like the kind of man you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, I got a new man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got, not a splack of belly, but a savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know, keep not knowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know, you know, our K, our K. Yeah, but this ain't going to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found a new man, but this man satisfied my soul in the way that you and no other man ever could have.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before she could have that necessary conversation, she was already pointing people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think sometimes we miss the fact that in the complexity of our humanity, grace has this divine efficacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make us a credible witness, even when we know our own issues in our own shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: And regardless of where we find ourselves on the spectrum of humanity between John the Baptist and the woman at the well, both of their stories and the opening four chapters of the book of John show us that when Jesus interrupts your life, he can repurpose and redefine your identity in a moment
[SPEAKER_00]: and use you immediately as a wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say, wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first two points we cover last week, looking at this woman at the whale, that a wayfinder is someone who testifies verse thirty-nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And her testimony was a result of this interruption she had with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus interrupted her life, that interruption revealed her ignorance, that ignorance opened her up to receive new information, that information became insight, that insight became inspiration.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, she's at the way to get water and she's interrupted by somebody being there, she didn't expect to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whenever the Lord is ready to take us to a new level in glory, He'll always start with a divine interruption.
[SPEAKER_00]: That interruption could be good, that interruption could be bad, but the purpose is all the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: To reveal to us our own ignorance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, ignorance in and of itself is not a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ignorance is just a fact of not knowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: ignorance becomes an issue when I try to cover up ignorance with pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when Jesus reveals her ignorance, she responds and religious pride about where the appropriate place to worship is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is not until she can break through the pride that she can come to contact with this new information that the one she's speaking to is the Messiah, the Savior, the sent one who's come to redeem her and those who are anticipating his coming by faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: That information gives her insight or revelation that is more than just knowledge you can get from a book, which then inspires her to go and appoint people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we look at this cycle, it's not just the cycle we look at from the top.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll see this circle here on the screen how this cycle happens, but if you flip that circle on a side, you'll notice that every wrong takes you higher in glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord is ready to elevate you in maturity, take you higher in revelation, make you more like him in character, and interruption will reveal your ignorance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will thank you no God to you go through something that makes you doubt everything you thought you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will get to an experience that you will wish on your worst enemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will realize the resources I've been pulling on up until this point is not enough to answer this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to handle this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, if you were to gain me that, I would have knew how to handle that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this, I don't know how to handle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes me think about a personal story.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my sisters is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all know I'm the oldest of four of my mom's kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the only boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got three younger sisters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Way behind this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Way behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can't bully her in front of people just because I'm the big brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna pay for that later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Punch till the arm.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she called me and we were talking this week about just our childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, as you grow up, you start to think back on your childhood and retrospect to things you experienced that you ain't quite understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the time, she was born.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was twelve years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I essentially took care of her and it's so stormed to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, y'all, I was well accustomed to being around women.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a mama, an auntie, and a grandmother.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had three younger sisters that I helped to care for.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Ebony got pregnant,
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted a son, but if it was a girl, I would have been cool, because I've been taking down hair, doing plants.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I found out she was pregnant with the son I prayed for, then I got nervous, because I'm value of man myself, but I don't have no expertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: of helping a young man become a man when I'm barely a man myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And interruption can reveal your ignorance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, Lord, had you gave me that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I could have did that, but you gave me this, so not why I need you like I never have before.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the Lord will take you to a new level.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why he'll give you an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all rhythm of the area of your expertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why he won't let your resume be too much for you to rely on in a moment of opportunity that forces you to trust him to give you the insight you need now to reveal ignorance, which opens us up to new information.
[SPEAKER_00]: to have the revelation of who he is in this season so we can go to another level.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what this woman experienced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she immediately started going to point people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we ask, what is a way for someone who points people to Jesus like this woman?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who can be a way finder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody can.
[SPEAKER_00]: If John the Baptist and the woman at the well can point people to Jesus, you can too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't think of two people, more unalike than them, and they create for us the polarities on this extreme of humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a man on one side and then a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a Jew and a Gentile.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a rabbi and a religious person.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got somebody who been born, who was born saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had the Holy Spirit in him prenatal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got somebody who just met the Lord Jesus, who's still got a boyfriend at home that she ain't told, he got to move out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell them the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in both scenarios, these humanity, these humans, and their own uniquenesses, are used by Jesus to point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a third question.
[SPEAKER_00]: When do I do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, where have you saying to me that God will interrupt my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then use me, even in my imperfections, to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you do this, it's not a matter of colonos time, it's a matter of Cairo's time.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you point people to Jesus, it's not a matter of nine, thirty, eight, and on Sunday morning, time you can measure, it's a matter of spiritual timing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Lord will give you an assignment in a moment that you couldn't predict, but in that moment you sense, this is a time for me to point people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I know Rave when I'm in that time?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know you in a time when the Lord wants to use you to point people to him, when you can let go of what you used to hold on to, thinking it would fulfill you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says she's got a water pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse number, twenty-eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the woman did what y'all left her water pot and did it what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Went into the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just left the city with the water pipe because she thought she needed the water pipe to get something she needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: She comes to the whale with an empty water pipe thinking, I need this water pipe to quench my thirst.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without this water pipe, I can't get my knees, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets to the whale, sees a whale sitting all the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, get me something to drink.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, you don't have a water pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, yeah, I don't need one.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you knew who I was, you would ask me and I would give you living water.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, hold on now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about this water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't have the order from this way, and even though I feel up this water pot, it keep me thirsty.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, if you drink when I give you your never thirsty again, the minute she tastes it, when Jesus had to offer, she dropped the water pot, realizing you can't fulfill my need anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: What water pot saw you holding onto?
[SPEAKER_00]: What empty things were you refuse to drop?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you think you need it to fulfill you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's empty as a picture that you're empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can let it go, Jesus will associate your soul on the level that there's no person on earth or no thing you could accomplish that can give you that deep sense of peace and significance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know you're in a win moment or a Cairo's divine moment when you're fulfilled on the inside in a way, nothing from the outside could ever do.
[SPEAKER_00]: She dropped the water pot because she realized she no longer needed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She dropped the water pot because she realized she just learned something that the people she knows needs to know too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, sometimes I think we think we got to have all this knowledge or all this, you know, we got to get to this level whenever it is before God can start to use us to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the truth is, as I'm learning, I can be a teacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm growing, I can help somebody else grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's impossible to completely learn everything I can about the Lord anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I might as well start teaching as I'm learning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a good sign that you know it's time for you to point somebody else to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many of y'all by short hands have learned anything new since you've been a part of this church?
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones with your hands down, my bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones which are hands up, that's a testimony that you at that Cairo's moment, that divine opportunity where God is going to bring you into influence with people, that the things you've learned, you can then enter and teach others.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can already start pointing people to Jesus as you come to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the fourth question, where do I act as a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Aira, how do I know where God wants to use me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we all got our own different.
[SPEAKER_00]: spheres of influence.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have our own different areas of expertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I know God is using me in this way to point people to him in the same way he may be using you as a preacher to point me to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That where is not just a question of geography, I will try to hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a question of station.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the truth say station.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm explaining what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look what this verse says in John chapter four verse twenty eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says the woman left her water pot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at her wear and went wear into the own into the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that city done just represent the geographical point on a map.
[SPEAKER_00]: That city also represents the station or status of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus called her out of that he was now sitting her back into.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that geographically, this city is psychar in Samaria, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: S-Y-C-H-H-A-R.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in Samaria, it's region of the promised land that was right in the middle of Galilee in the north and Judea in the south.
[SPEAKER_00]: Samaria, this place where Samaritans lived, these mixed breeds of people that pure bread Jews didn't want nothing to do with.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know geographically where she is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just geographically where she is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what this place represents about where Jesus just called her out of.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord just set her back to the exact place she was running from in her shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sooner than she tried to run from this same town in shame is she back in that same town pointing people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is your where?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that place you said when I leave here I ain't never coming back.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of us that's a geographical location.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that means you move back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying that means you may have purpose to influence there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for others of us, that's a status in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you left a certain status in life, you said I ain't never coming back to this level of life again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once the Lord and God me out of this, I'll never return it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But the place you vowed never to return or the place you running from in your shame, maybe the exact place Jesus wanted to use you to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Lord wants to show them through you that the shame they thought they knew about you don't master glory that's being revealed.
[SPEAKER_00]: How they gon' see the glory of you today, if all they remember is the shame of you yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it may take courage to go back to a place you said you never go to.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may take courage to go back to a place where people knew you once as.
[SPEAKER_00]: But knowing you once as is only occasion to get to know you again now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to reintroduce you.
[SPEAKER_00]: in a way that is far above their imagination, thoughts, or ideas about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as long as you keep running the shame, you may miss the opportunity for the courage you displayed to give them courage to do the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what's interesting?
[SPEAKER_00]: The people we ashamed of, probably also ashamed too.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just use the facts.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do know about us to hide the facts we don't know about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: People who like the shame people,
[SPEAKER_00]: are really saying for real.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I have the courage to return to a place where people are holding shame over my head to reintroduce who God is making me, you never know how my courage may become contagious and challenge those I was afraid of to have the same courage to step out of their shame to.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just geography, it's station, it's status.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where you were and who you were when the lower found you
[SPEAKER_00]: That is also where your assignment to point people to Jesus could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, my geography is Atlanta.
[SPEAKER_00]: And y'all know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I share some of this last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could take my sons back to Harris' home projects while I grew up, but praise the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: They told those projects down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, Jesus, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could take them back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: My elementary school is still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to Dining Rush Elementary School in the heart of Western Atlanta.
[SPEAKER_00]: It don't look the same around it as it did in nineteen ninety-three.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the geography has changed, but the station hasn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was my station?
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Lord found me, I was a product of teen parents, a hood kid in the middle of Atlanta, who was a little bit bad and a little bit smart, who needed to be redeemed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that the Lord, I'm blessed me and let me get all these degrees.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got the doctor in now and I'm leaning to church now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I can't forget?
[SPEAKER_00]: That I was a little hood little boy born from two team parents, right in the projects in Atlanta, Georgia, because that station is my assignment.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I love hood keys.
[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite child is like, imagine like a little nine-year-old boy who look a little dangerous and a little scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he got this managed thing about him in his eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he may have like three silver cap teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my favorite child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's my station.
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand him intuitively.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need no book to understand his culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see him because I am him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm obedient to pointing people to Jesus, who are from the same status and station, I'm from, I get to see them meet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He changed me from, and they get to see them meet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's gonna make them into them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know your assignment is to place God, call you from, cause those are people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't nobody gotta tell you how to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: You speak that language.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know their culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: They trust you intuitively.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all cut the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just born again.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever struggled to know Lord, what's my assignment?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are you trying to use me?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord may ask you where did I find you when I saved you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did I redeem you from when you thought you was lost forever?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did I pull you out of the darkness into the marvelous light?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where I pulled you from was I changed you might be where I'm sending you back to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Preach their home because that's not just a place of geography.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a station of status in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've been talking about money in a couple of weeks, so get ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna be awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been in a lot of debt, and you got out of debt, you know where your wear is.
[SPEAKER_00]: People in debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been struggling with anxiety, trying to make everything work, and be this perfect patio, this perfect peater, and you've had a meltdown in private, where you had to acknowledge or complete the pinnacle.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know where your wear is?
[SPEAKER_00]: People who trying to fix it all on their own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your wear is where he found you.
[SPEAKER_00]: when he changed you, because you understand that, like nobody else can explain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's number five and I'm gonna let you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should I act this away from you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine, all right, where else are you saying it?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord can use me even in my humanity to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also say that the Lord may interrupt my life sometimes to get my attention and teach me something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord may send me back to somewhere I said I would never return to show his glory to cover my shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where I wish I'd do this, like what's the motivation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this sounds like a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just proud of myself for getting up and coming to church today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you John tell me coming to church, I know nothing, no more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like this new church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to go back to the old church when coming to church with enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: The why is in the story in a way that if we read it too fast, we'll miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse number thirty nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says now, from that city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who watched all testified.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, those are two verbs, two action words.
[SPEAKER_00]: believe and testify and there's a direct connection between the level of her testifying and the level of their believing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their believing in the beginning is directly proportionate to her testifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole reason why she testified is so that they too might believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here's also what John says, the whole point of the book of John is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at John chapter twenty verse thirty through thirty one.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are two verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's read these together on the count of three one two three.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples which are not written in his book.
[SPEAKER_00]: But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by you may have, yeah, you see that?
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole point in the book of John is to increase belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: John says, if I wrote down everything, Jesus did, it would be too many books to even fit in all the libraries in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: can he write it all?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using hyperbole to help us understand that the things that have been written were divinely selected.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I wrote everything, it would be too much for us to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this stuff I wrote so that you might watch our church believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when she testifies, they believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: John tells the story of this woman out in the whale so that as we read it, we might believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question of why I should be a wayfinder is because people need something real to believe in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you know people who need something real to believe in?
[SPEAKER_00]: Belief is one of the most beautiful capacities of the human soul, because belief can shape reality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your belief or faith is so precious that it is worth more than silver angle.
[SPEAKER_00]: The capacity to believe is one of the most beautiful parts about being a human being, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you can believe something and even before it happens, you can be convinced it happens and act your way into it happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot believe you are a good father.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot actually be a good father, but then believe I'm gonna be a good father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell yourself, every day, I'm gonna be a good father.
[SPEAKER_00]: From this day for them, I'm gonna be a good father.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what you're gonna do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe yourself into the action to become in reality, what you were not before, you started believing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a power belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: is worth more than silver and gold, but belief can create silver and gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't believe me?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a business idea to serve and impact the lives of people in need, believe it's a good idea, work to make the idea happen, and it can produce silver and gold in prosperity for you and the people you love.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctor can look you dead in your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's say the diagnosis is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the same x-ray, read the same chart, look at the blood work, understand all the medical facts, but believe that you are healed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that belief that you are healed can change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much so that the doctor can understand how what they said, they can't say no more, because what they saw, they don't see no more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anybody in this house who can testify?
[SPEAKER_00]: God, thank you!
[SPEAKER_00]: Forgive me, belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe is one of the most beautiful capacities of being a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith, belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: is something we cannot shake because we must worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the frustration.
[SPEAKER_00]: The frustration is not that belief is not a beautiful capacity.
[SPEAKER_00]: The frustration is putting belief in something that ain't worthy of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many times
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you been mad at yourself for trying to believe something you knew wasn't true?
[SPEAKER_00]: And trying to make something you knew it could never be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you realize even though my belief is precious, my belief can't force somebody else to be when I thought it was going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, you say, I'm going to never believe in nobody else ever again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are you going to do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: belief is one of the beautiful capacities of being a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is not belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is where I place my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when she goes and she's testifying, she's testifying the people who got this human capacity to believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the effects of hope and joy that comes as a result of putting your belief in a worthy place.
[SPEAKER_00]: right, but she testifies to something that is real so that the only thing that is real can be worthy of that belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my question to you is this, how many people you know put and they believe somewhere that is not worthy and they frustrated and don't know why, but you know
[SPEAKER_00]: because you found somewhere so real, you can drop your waterpies.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you found something so real in Jesus that satisfies your soul and you don't tell nobody else, that's like finding a great restaurant and keeping it to yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is unblad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a question in your real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you get some good food in your hotel, nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bro, let me get that black car, bro.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why aren't you being put me on, man?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't find some good food in our hotel, nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I telling the truth?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you find something real for your soul, how you cannot tell nobody.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not talking about religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about some real to put faith in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm oppressed this a little bit farther and then I'm gonna let you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's late but they can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should point people to Jesus because people need some real to believe in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should also point people to Jesus because even though belief is beautiful, belief is not enough in enough itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's talking to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, my ancestors worshiped on this mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did she tell him about?
[SPEAKER_00]: She told my their belief, their worship, their practices, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: My ancestors worshiped on this mountain, is what she says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, the time is coming and now it is, where those who worship the Lord don't worship Him in spirit and in truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she goes back to the city and say, hey, y'all, don't worry about running to the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found the one who created the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go worship him.
[SPEAKER_00]: If she don't go back to the city, people are going to keep taking a good belief and putting it in the wrong place.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many friends you've got who think that because they believe enough they can force wrong and be right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Belief is powerful, but believe can't make wrong right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And believe can't make right wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just because you deeply believe it, don't make it right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just means you put the right thing in the wrong place.
[SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to put the right thing in the right place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or else I could be using the right thing in the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all picking up when I'm putting down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all remember a couple of years ago, it's probably about twenty years ago now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm kind of in the middle of the age group, age gap in this, or I know it's all in the generation today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to the young kids, so if you, if you were high school in middle school, um, you know how we got phones and you can put in a GPS and it can tell you how to get when you're going, that just came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that it hasn't always been like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That just came out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So everybody in this room that's like over thirty-three is amazed about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That just came out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm older enough to know that just came out, but I'm young enough to have never needed a map while I was on a road trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, I ain't never had like no math.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just laid out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: You like, I'd never been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sheldon, you a math guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: See you a little bit older than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: And all me in the heart, I'm just saying, I'm not math-o.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, I'm not disrespecting my elders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to be old one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the only thing better than being young is being old.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your kids what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the alternative is not the alternative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be old as I can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean no disrespect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm young enough to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm too young to have ever used a map.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm old enough to know that a GPS is my alarm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a part of the Mapquist group.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all remember Mapquist?
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, you can tell a night button on Mapquist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody in high school looking to me like, Mapquist.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what math quest was, young people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go to a website.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, okay, nobody in the house be on the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all went away after God, after God.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, we had phones in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: The phone in the house was connected to a wall by a court.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody had to be off the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you get on the computer and you hear this sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: About eight minutes later you on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thrilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight minutes later you on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're trying to figure out where you're going, you go to www.mapquest.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: You hit enter.
[SPEAKER_00]: You put the address you leave in from.
[SPEAKER_00]: You put the address you go into.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you hit enter and it creates a map for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you print it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you had ink in your printer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you print it out, it could be two pages, it could be eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: You staple it, and you take the stack of papers with you to the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: You keep the stack of papers laying next to you on the seat, and you drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do everything that you might want to tell you to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I've never heard, I've never heard somebody say, I don't believe in MapQuest because a man made it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never heard somebody say, I don't believe this GPS is taking me to the right place because a man made that satellite.
[SPEAKER_00]: a man made this iPhone.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man made that printer that I printed these directions off of.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would get in your car and draw from point A to point B, and you would never have an issue that a man made anything you were using, and you didn't even know if that was actually leading you to the destination you was trying to get to, but you'll put most faith in my quest that you will and the B, I'll be early, yeah?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a man wrote it, but the Holy Spirit inspired the man to write it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's anybody in his house, we can give God praise for the fact that I'm going to follow your map to get to who you were, who you want me to be, where you want me to be, you want to give God praise for the fact that he left for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He left for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all the way finder is, if somebody who can stand with you in your lostness, and help you read your map.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man church, a man get a load of handcuffer praise if you want.