Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "I'm Here" | Sunday Service | March 2, 2025

Transcript

"I'm Here" | Sunday Service | March 2, 2025 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

0:58
SPEAKER_00: I want to give a message this morning called I'm Here.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: But I want to start with this.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: I want to know how many of you have ever broken a bone in your body.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Never, never.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: No, how Drew's like, yep.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh how many of you any of you ever sprained something?
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Anyone like like never done anything?
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Like your body is fine.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, see, those are the people in my life.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: I I have hurt my elbow in the past when I was playing baseball.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: It's about the only major injury I've had.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the only person who's broken a bone in my family is my seven-year-old daughter Collins.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you this story about how this happened.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: We moved, my family moved houses this summer because I live in a house that's provided by the church, and so uh that means when they want you to move, you move.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: And so we got a honestly a pretty nice upgrade of a house, if we're being just totally real.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: A pretty nice upgrade of a house.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: But we we did that process of like moving anybody moved in their life.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: It's terrible, right?
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Like everything about moving sucks.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: You have to pack all the stuff up, then you have to take it over, especially like when you're moving in town.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever moved in town?
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're moving in town, you like know that you're immediately gonna unpack it, but it's still gotta figure out its way into the vehicle, right?
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So we did that and we kind of did it slowly, to be honest with you.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: My in-laws did a majority of it because it was during the summer and I was traveling a lot.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And um the last day that we were going to say goodbye to the old house, because that's an emotional time, right?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Like you're like, ah, for us, that house is the house we moved into when we moved here during COVID.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was the house that Dylan, who was a month old really at the time, moved into, and then she kind of grew up and she moved from um you know the crib to a full big girl bed, like in that house, and we had these memories in that room, right?
2:54
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we just we wanted to say goodbye to it, so we went for the last time to say goodbye to it, and there were a few things because of how our lives are that were still left to be moved, like some things that we had boxed up or whatever and hadn't quite moved.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: And so one of those things was a two-pound weight, like a hand weight, you know?
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh I know, it's two pounds, you know?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Right?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we we it was this two-pound weight, and it was kind of sitting in the corner, and we were kind of going through some final stuff in the garage, and and our girls who were seven and four now, they were six and three then, were uh running around, and six and four actually then, running around, and they started um playing with the weight, the little two-pound weight.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what kids do, is when they see something, they play with it.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, our family has this bad habit of buying a whole bunch of toys for them, but if you've ever played with a kid, you know that a cardboard box will work just fine, right?
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Like they'll play with anything.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: So here's this two-pound hand weight, and they started picking it up and kind of tossing it back and forth, and then all of a sudden, we hear, we're in the garage, we hear from the living room this blood-curdling scream.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: It was Collins.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: It was Collins.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: And she just started screaming, she runs, runs, runs, runs, runs, and my wife, who's the most incredible person in the whole world, goes and finds her and grabs her and just holds her like real tight.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: At this point, we don't know what happened, right?
4:28
SPEAKER_00: We we to be honest with you, with a six-year-old, it could be like a literal open wound, or her four-year-old sister might have said something mean, right?
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Like the same scream from both of those things.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: But but there was something big that had happened, so she just grabs her and holds her tight, and I'll never forget this.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: She's racking her back and forth, and she says, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: I can't get that visual out of my mind.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you this morning a God who says to you, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show you this passage from Deuteronomy.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: This will be on the screen, and you can open your Bible as well if you want.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Deuteronomy is in the Old Testament, uh, in the first five books of the Bible called the Torah, Pentateuch, yes.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been to uh Bible study where we've been talking about Moses, and this is not in the Exodus passage, but it's the Deuteronomy passage that references the Exodus passage.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: So some of this language may seem familiar to do to you.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Hear now the reading of God's word.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: The Egyptians treated us terribly, oppressing us and forcing hard labor on us.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: So we cried out for the Lord to help for help to the Lord, our ancestors' God.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: The Lord heard our call.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: God saw our misery, our trouble, and our oppression.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm with awesome power and with signs and wonders.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: He brought us to this place, and he gave us this land, a land full of milk and honey.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: May it speak to us, may it speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, oh God.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: You are a rock, you are our redeemer.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: We love you.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: The visual of my wife holding my daughter, just rocking her on the ground, saying, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest with you.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm the one parent, and there's always a parent in the relationship, who just goes, they'll be okay.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you probably can think of which parent in your life or which person in your life is just like, ah, just deal with it.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: I am the deal with it parent.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm the parent that goes, like, whatever it is, it's not that bad, right?
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And and as she's holding her, uh, and Alison's the opposite, right?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: She's just the comforter of all things.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Allison wants to comfort her no matter what.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's the gift that God has given her, and God gave me the gift of ignoring it, right?
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, that's just that's just the way that we parent.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: It's two different ways, parent.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had more of her way, uh, but I don't.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just like, uh, she's fine, she's fine, she's fine.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And and the blood-curdling scream continues on the entire time.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And I go to look down at her finger.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh boy, that thing was already severe purple, like deep, dark purple.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And this was seconds after it happened.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, that's a lot of blood flow, right?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's probably not good.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And so then that's I I started I started to have a little more empathy in my heart, just a little bit, because I'm the deal with it guy, but just a little bit more empathy in my heart to be like, ah, I think something's wrong.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, you all might have grown up like this, my kids sure do.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: If anything happens, if they get a tiny bruise, if some they accidentally scrape their leg, anything happens, what do they get to help with it?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: An ice pack.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: My girls love an ice pack.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: We have the blessing of having two refrigerators in our house.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else got that blessing?
8:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, you got that garage fridge.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you're not on the garage fridge yet, you gotta get on the garage fridge.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: It's the best, it's where all the drinks go.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: It's the best, what'd you say?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, that's fair.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you get that second fridge, and in that second fridge is is a freezer, and the girls know that that's where the ice packs are.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And so they go and they get the ice pack, and and though it doesn't matter what kind of problem uh is going on, right?
9:23
SPEAKER_00: They can fix it with an ice pack.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: It's able to be fixed with an ice pack.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this pain.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Because the thing is, Collins was in so much pain, she could not articulate what had happened.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever dealt with somebody who's in a lot of pain, whether it be something just simple like that or something more dramatic, like it's sometimes hard for them to articulate exactly what happened.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: They can tell you something hurts, or sometimes they can't even do that because they're screaming so hard, their brain is not getting to the explanation process, it's just getting to the indescribable process.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Some pain is like that.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Some pain doesn't have words to be associated with it.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering if there was ever a time in your life where you felt that type of pain.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's physical, but a lot of times, if we're being honest, a lot of that is mental, spiritual pain, social pain.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: You ever have you ever been just like out of it?
10:30
SPEAKER_00: And somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, what's going on?
10:34
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm in a really bad mood and I don't know why.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: I really like, there's just like this thing that's like on my heart right now, and I can't explain it to you.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I have no idea.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of pain that I'm talking about.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's really, really actually painful.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, like you're hurting, and you have no idea why.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: You're hurting and you can't put words to it.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Some pain is like that.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: And what do we do with the mental, emotional, spiritual stuff?
11:08
SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: We cry out for help.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: You ever noticed uh some of us can cry out for help a lot more easily than others?
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have this barrier, this wall that we put up, where we're just, we're not, it doesn't matter how much pain we're in, we are not gonna take that step over.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you in one thing this morning that I think we're gonna I'm gonna show you throughout the scriptures.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Crying out is not weakness, it's faith.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's really hard for us because our world teaches us to be stronger and stronger and stronger.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Our world teaches us to grow and grow and grow.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Our world teaches us to hide the pain, to hide all of the stuff in the back, and we're gonna put every our best foot forward.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: That's why Instagram exists.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that a lot of people, even in today's world where where like the emotional and spiritual health is a little more in the forefront of our lives, we still put our best foot forward online.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: We still want to post things that we're proud of and not that we're not.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: We st we don't we vulnerability is really hard to find on Instagram.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: It just is.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: Even when we feel like we're being vulnerable, we're like proud of our vulnerability.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Like there's this barrier that gets in between it like that.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's the world that we live in.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: That's the way we're encouraged day to day.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: But what I what I want you to hear is that crying out, this ability just to say, man, I am in so much pain.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I have no words to describe it, but I am in so much pain that crying out is not weakness, it's faith.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you how many times in scripture this has happened.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: This is Exodus 2.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: And you've, if you've been in the Bible study, you have remembered this.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: This is what Deuteronomy is referencing.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: A long time past, and the Egyptian king died.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: That would be the Pharaoh, if you need another word for it.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites were still groaning.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Hear that?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites were still groaning because of their hard work.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: They cried out and their cry to be rescued from the hard work rose up to God.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: And in my distress, I cried out to the Lord.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no, no, keep going back.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: There was one more exodus one.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, okay, whatever.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: They cried out and their cry to be rescued from the hard work rose up to God.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: We'll go with that.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Did you see where the Israelites are in such pain?
13:42
SPEAKER_00: They're in total slavery, and what do they do?
13:47
SPEAKER_00: They cry out to God.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: This this happens, uh, David, you'll see in the Psalms, does the same thing.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: This is the psalm passage.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: In my distress, I cried out to the Lord.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: This is David talking.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I called to my God for help.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: God heard my voice from his temple and I called to him for help.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: A second time I cried out to the Lord.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: He says this multiple times.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: I cried out to God for help.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: God heard my voice from his temple and I called to him for help, and my call reached his ears.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Very similar to what happens there.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Here's a uh Psalm 34.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: When the righteous cry out, the Lord listens, it says.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: He delivers them from all of their troubles.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: One more from Psalm 40.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: I put all my hope in the Lord.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I promise.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: He leaned down to me.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was magical.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: He leaned down to me, and he listened to my cry for help.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: In the Exodus, we have God's own people who are in such distress and pain that they can do nothing else except to cry out to the one who created them, the one who has promised to take care of them.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: In the Psalms, we have David, the man after God's own heart, who says, Man, I was in such pain and turmoil that the only thing I could do is I could cry out to God and God heard it.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing he does.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: There's an entire book in the Old Testament called Lamentations, in which they lament.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: That's where they get it from.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Where they lament the loss of their temple, they lament the pain that their community is going through, and they just lay it out on the table as a lament.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps maybe the most important place that we see this in scripture is in Matthew, where Jesus is on the cross.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: The Son of God, God Himself, is on the cross, giving his life for us, and he's hanging up there in not only physical pain, but man, this is political pain.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: This is emotional pain.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And he says something.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Put this up there for a second, Eli.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 27.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Says something that'll I want it to stick in your mind.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the Son of God on the cross.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And at about three, Jesus cried out with a loud shout.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: This is not Eli like the one right on the slides right now.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: But Eloy Eloy would be the word you'd see.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Lama Sabactanai.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Which means, thanks for translating it, Matthew, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
16:53
SPEAKER_00: That very cry is the exact same cry of David in Psalm 22.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: My God, my God, why have you left me all alone?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Why are you so far from saving me?
17:09
SPEAKER_00: So far from my anguished groans.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: There are walls that we put up in our lives toward the rest of the world.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: I might submit that Christians tend to be the worst at this.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Because Christians, I think, have this mentality, like, I just want to have it all together, particularly with their faith.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, I just want everybody to know that I have a strong faith, that I'm cool, everything's going on, I have faith in God.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And what we see is God's chosen people, the man after God's own heart, in fact, God Himself, at the moment of the most immense pain, doing nothing but crying out to God in hopes and in faith that God would hear them.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's the promise that God would hear them.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: What I love about uh, and I'm gonna show you some language here in a second, but what I love about this also is that this this idea that God hears you is actually way more than just like hearing versus, you know, you've you know the difference between hearing and listening, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: It's that kind of dynamic.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It's far more than just hearing it because God doesn't just hear their cries, God steps in.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: You saw that in Exodus.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 2, we saw people who were just in the deepest, darkest parts of slavery, and they heard their cry, and it says, then God heard their cry and answered.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: In Psalms it says, Hey, God heard their cry and answered.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: God heard their cry, stepped in.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word for this is ra-a, say ra-a, ra-a, ra-a.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: That's the Hebrew word.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And it it is, it does mean hear, listen, but it's really kind of a shallow definition.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: It means not only to hear and listen, but to do something about it.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: To do something about it.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Colin sat there in my wife's lap.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: And she heard, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: And then we decided we probably should do something about it.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: It is definitely turning very purple.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: We ended up taking it to the doctor, take well, we took her along with the finger, uh, to the doctor, and uh we ended up going to TOC, which was a fun experience, and uh they did all kinds of x-rays, which I was very nervous about, and they determined that she had broken all the little pieces right there at the end of the finger.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And this poor girl had to start first grade in like, I don't know, less than a week.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And so they put a splint on it to keep her from you know, kind of hurting it, whatever, and a little bit of pain medication, which she hates with a vengeance.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever had to give medication to a child, you know what I mean.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh and we started to make those decisions as parents.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: What can I do about it?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: What can I do about it?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: A few of you may have been in situations before, you may have been at times in your life where you just felt like, man, I'm in such pain, and I honestly, can I just be real?
20:52
SPEAKER_00: I feel like God's distant.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us get in that situation where we get, uh, whether it's depression or whether it's anger or whether it's just, I don't know, whatever's going on in our life, or we just feel like God might be a little more distant.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, hey, I it's nice that like God stepped in in the Exodus.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: It's nice that God stepped in when God's heard the cry, but hey, I let me can I be real with you, Pastor Bryant?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Like, can I be real?
21:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that God's stepping into my life.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been there?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been there where you feel like I don't know that God's stepping in right now?
21:24
SPEAKER_00: What I love is that God does step in in so many ways.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And if you think about it, there are probably times in your life where God did step in.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: And you may not have named it at the time, but now that you're thinking about it, like, oh yeah, that might have been where God opened a door where I thought the doors were closed.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: But there are also those times where you're like, I'm just not sure about it.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the beauty of this metaphor.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Where God hears your cry, wraps his arms around you, and says, I'm here.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: You may feel like that right now.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a hard time in the semester.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: Spring break's coming up, midterms are now.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh you may be prepped for them or not.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: You may be liking your classes or not.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: You may be making grades that you want or not.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: It may be a time in your life because some of you are moving on to a uh a job or grad school or whatever else is next, and those things are not lining up the way you wanted them to.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Or there's an uncertainty in that.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know in the space where it doesn't feel like God's stepping in and it just feels like there's some emptiness, I want you to know that the promise God has made to us forever is I'm here.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And so we rest in that.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: The second thing I want you to know is that you are not alone.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: It feels like you are, doesn't it?
23:11
SPEAKER_00: It feels like you are.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to be encouraged that in those moments where it feels like you're alone, you're not.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it can be the people who you least expect it that step into your life in those moments.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, where did that come from?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: You're not alone.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it can be somebody being like, hey man, I'm going through the same thing, and I don't even remember your name, but like I just want you to know I'm going through the same thing, and you just find this out at that time.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear that you are not alone.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: But God is working.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: God is here in your life in that pain.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Just as God was with the Israelites, with David, with Jesus.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Those are the words of a loving parent, not the deal-with it parent.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I love my child.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: It's called tough love.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I would say they're also the words of God.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Let me encourage you one more thing.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: It can also be the words of you.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Because there is somebody in your life who's going through it right now.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: You may or may not know about it.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: They may have said something about it and they may not have.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe an ice pack will fix it, maybe not.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: But there's power in you wrapping your arms around them and saying, I'm here.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: You.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: You.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Not waiting for somebody else to do it, not waiting for somebody else to say something, not waiting for somebody else to be the comforter.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: You have a unique place in that person's life to say, guess what?
25:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm here, and God's here too.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: They're powerful words.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: That's uh, I had somebody ask me this week, why do we do communion every week?
25:52
SPEAKER_00: That's why.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Because the promise, the promise that God gives us, it's like God is here.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: God is here for you right now.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And you are able to be here for another person in your community, in your circle, and the people who want to know the, that want to know the love of God more.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: You can be here.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's all it takes.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take them explaining the problem.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take the gossiping of trying to figure out, you know, the mechanics of that relationship.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take any of that.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: It just takes the words, I'm here.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it's the beauty of coming to a table where Jesus gives of his body and his blood.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Because the disciples, and they didn't really know it, to be honest with you, they're not too bright.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: They didn't really know it, but they were about to go through it.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: They were about to be persecuted, all of them would be murdered for their faith.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And what does Jesus say the night before he's going to be murdered?
27:01
SPEAKER_00: He takes the food that they're eating, and he says, This is my body, and it's broken for you.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, This isn't me, I'm here.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: So he he gave thanks to God for it, and he broke the bread, and he said, Eat of this.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: This is my body given for you.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: I am here.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: He also took the wine that they were drinking, and he gave thanks to God for it.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: He said, This is the blood of the new covenant, it's poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: He says, As often as you drink and eat of this, remember me.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: As often as you drink and eat of this, remember I'm here for your sustenance, for your forgiveness.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over this meal.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Gracious God, we ask that you pour out your Holy Spirit on these gifts of bread and the cup.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we might be for the world, the body of Christ, redeemed by your blood.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Make us one with you, and one in unity with all of the world, until you come in final victory and we feast at your heavenly banquet.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: To you, God, we give all honor, praise, and glory.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Amen.