Elevation with Steven Furtick - Stacking Strength (Wade Joye)

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

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This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message. Feels awesome today. My name is Wade Joy. I'm the worship pastor here, and I have the incredible honor and privilege to bring God's word to you this weekend. I am so excited about what God, has given me to share. But first of all, how awesome was that message from Pastor Stephen last weekend?

The pressure to perform. And if I'm being real, I feel just a little bit of pressure being on this stage right now where the greatest preacher on the planet preaches every single weekend. That sermon last week, it helped me so much to live out of a place of purpose and not trying to perform for other people. And in fact, Pastor Stephen was in a meeting with our campus pastors and a lot of our church leaders this week. And he was really encouraging us as we talked about that message when we look at ministry to always lean in to what is most helpful for people, not what is going to impress an audience. And when he said that, it made me just extra thankful for all the sermons that he's preached that have helped me love God more, help me trust the Lord more fully, help me believe that God can actually use

somebody like me. So if anything in this ministry has helped you, can you just appreciate what God has done through the church? So God has given me something that I hope helps you. And if you can just remain standing as we look at our main text today, it's found in Nehemiah chapter 6. And I was studying this book with a lot of our worship leaders earlier in the year. And God just began to illuminate some truths in my heart that helped me a lot. And if you don't know about Nehemiah, he was a leader who led a remnant of Jews back to Jerusalem out of exile, and he was tasked with rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. The wall was broken down. The city was vulnerable, and God had given him this great task, but he faced a lot of opposition. He faced a lot of setbacks, and that's

kind of where we find him right now, Nehemiah chapter 6, and it says this, when word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Gasham to Arab, and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall, and not a gap was left in up, though up to that time I had not. set the doors in the gates, San Ballot and Gresham sent me this message. Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plane of Ono. Side note, nothing good happens in a place called Ono. Just trust me there. But they were scheming to harm me, so I sent messengers to them with this reply. I'm carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop will I leave it and go down to you? Four times they sent me the same message and each time I gave them the same answer.

Then the fifth time, Sam Ballot sent his aid to me with the same message and in his hand, was an unsealed letter in which was written. It is reported among the nations, and Gresham says it is true that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports, you're about to become their king, and I've even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem. There is a king in Judah. Now this report will get back to the king, so come, let us meet together. And I sent him this reply. Nothing like what you are saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head. I just gave you a new Bible verse you can quote to some of the people in your life.

And they were all trying to frighten us thinking their hands will get two weak for the work and it will not be completed. But I prayed, now strengthen my hands. So the title of today's message is stacking strength. Stacking strength. Come on, let's pray together. Lord, I thank you for the strength that flows from your word. God, I thank you for the strength that flows from your presence.

So, Lord, right now, I pray that you will speak a very specific word. to everybody under the sound of my voice as your word is preached. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, come on, give a couple hugs, Memorial Day hugs, as you have a seat. So I had a bit of an old man's rite of passage recently. Last week, I turned 43. It was my 43rd birthday. Thank you. I share a birthday with the great Holly Ferdic. I'm much older, though. And I've really been praying to get that George Clooney anointing, because I want to believe that I'm going to get better age, that the gray in my beard makes me look more distinguished, makes me look more handsome, that I'm in the wisdom zone with all this experience. But every day, my body is telling me that

that is a lie, because everything hurts. I think my knee hurts right now. But a couple months ago, I was in a meeting, and I started to get this just stabbing pain in my right side. And I had to wait it out a little bit, because I don't know if you're like this, but I'm the kind of guy that I can't Google any symptoms I have. I can't go to Webber. because I automatically go to the worst-case scenario possible, even like one little sniffle, and I think I'm done for. Or I think I had this like disease that's only in 2% of the population in Brazil, and somehow it's found its way to me in Charlotte, North Carolina. But this stabbing pain, it wouldn't go away, and I couldn't even focus. And it reminded me of when I had my appendix

out about 15 or 20 years ago. But since my appendix isn't there anymore, I realized something was wrong. And so I started to sweat in the meeting. I started to pace around. I couldn't concentrate, so I just had to leave. And I went to the emergency room, because I knew something serious was actually wrong. So once I navigated the glorious place that is the waiting room of the emergency room, I made it back to the doctor. I started to talk through my symptoms and where the pain was and where the pain was spreading to, and I'll save you those details.

And he looked at me and he said, oh, you've got a kidney stone. Some people have had, I heard some of those groans right there. You feel my pain. And, you know, I knew my day of reckoning had finally come for all the soft drinks that I drink. So if you know me, on a good day, I drink about six Diet Cokes or this healthier soda called Zevia. Six a day. Most days, most days I'm more in like the 10, 11, 12 range. I know, just bring on all the judgment. I was ready for it. It's my vice. But thank you.

But if you multiply six soft drinks a day times 365 days a year, times 20 years that I've really kind of been doing this, that equals one very painful kidney stone. And so as my doctor and I were talking, he then said what I was waiting for him to say. And he said, do you want morphine? And he then said, you know, having a kidney stone is the closest a man will get to childbirth. I know all the women are just rolling your eyes. think we're a bunch of wimps. Then we are. I am. And since I'm not into natural childbirth, I said, give me all the medicine you can. Give me the morphine. I am ready right now. So,

once I got that, I was good to go. I was feeling better. They did some tests, and they said, you have a three millimeter kidney stone, which is a medium-sized stone, six millimeters or more we'd consider a large stone, and then we do the procedure to break it apart, and it'll pass much easier. And so I was just waiting to find out, how are you going to get this out of me today? because I've heard horror stories about passing this thing, and I do not want to experience that. And all they did is gave me some muscle relaxers, some pain meds, and a filter to catch it in, and said, this will come out sometime in the next two to three weeks. That is not what I wanted to hear, because three millimeters might sound small to you,

but it was a mountain to me, and I needed God to move that mountain right then. I was praying every prayer of faith I could possibly pray, and thankfully the Lord heard my cry and in his mercy the next day. it passed. But I never knew that something so small could stop me dead in my tracks. Something three millimeters could shut my system down because small things make a big impact. And honestly, that's been the motto I've lived by. I mean, that's the short man's motto right there. I've always, any story where the short guy is the hero I love, that's why I love Lord of the Rings. I can relate to hobbits. It's awesome. Any story in the Bible where, like, you know, the giant is slain with the one small stone

or the mountain could be moved with faith the size of a mustard seed or a kidney stone. I cheer about that. I love that. But it also can work the other way. And this is the way that we don't cheer about as much, where a decades-long friendship can be ruined by one betrayal. Or one mistake can have dramatic implications for your entire future. and Galatians 5'9 and the Passion Translation says,

don't you know that when you allow even a little lie into your heart, it can permeate your entire belief system? See, I want to be the guy like Nehemiah who does great things for God. I want to be the guy that builds the wall. But there is one little lie that makes me feel like a failure over and over and over again. See, I know all the promises of the world. scripture and that all God's promises are yes and amen for me and Christ Jesus. But there's one little lie that looks like the truth that has taken up residency in my heart. And it makes me feel

like I can't do anything that matters for God. It makes me think that God is using other people more than he's using me. And it stops me in my tracks time and time again. And this lie is so dangerous because it sounds a lot like the truth. And it's this. And maybe you struggle with this as well. But the lie I tell myself all too often is that my greatest impact happens when I take giant steps of faith. So my greatest impact happens when I take giant steps of faith. And maybe you don't struggle with this the way I do, but I feel like God only uses me when I take the big risk. When I take the huge step of faith, if I'm being honest, I feel like God only uses me the two times a year I'm on this stage preaching. Or some of you know about how my kids were born and they had a lot of

medical issues, and we prayed for miracles in the hospital, and we saw those miracles, and I felt like God used me then. But what about every other day that seems really, really ordinary? I read a study on the Internet, which, of course, means it's true. That said, the average person gets 15 days of perfect happiness a year. So I don't know how they define perfect happiness, but no matter what, that's just depressing, right? Right there. So two weeks of happiness a year, and I realize that I kind of think of faith that way, that I might get 15 perfect faith days a year where I can actually see God using me,

I can see the evidence of it, I feel like I'm in the faith zone, and that just makes me feel so defeated because what about the other 50 weeks of the year when I'm in meetings, when I'm answering emails, when I'm chauffeering my kids to and from their practices? How is God working in my life? then have you ever felt like that? Have you ever wondered, am I even making a difference in the ordinary and mundane routine of life?

Well, I have to, and God has really been helping me with this passage from Nehemiah, break down that lie and replace it with a truth. Because whenever you get rid of a lie, you have to replace it with something that is true. And so what God has been teaching me is this, and I want you to hold on to this. If you get nothing else from this message, I want you to walk away with this. And that is that my greatest impact doesn't happen through giant steps of faith. but rather through daily steps of faithfulness. God doesn't just move through the dramatic. He does do that, but more often than not, he moves through the daily, the day-to-day. See, Nehemiah took the giant step to build the wall, but what inspires me about his story

is how he persevered in the day-to-day obedience, even when it's hard. And so that's what I want us to talk about today. There's three principles in this passage that are helping me a lot to believe. that God can use me even when it doesn't seem like it around me. And I hope to help you to you. The first is this. And if you're a note taker, go ahead and write this down. The impact of finishing is greater than the excitement of starting.

The impact of finishing is greater than the excitement of starting. See, even though it doesn't say it explicitly in this text, I have to believe that the people in Jerusalem were feeling energized because the wall look to be complete. I mean, the walls were high, they looked strong. I imagine they were standing there trying to get just the perfect selfie with the walls in the background to post on Instagram. They were feeling energized by the progress. But there was one detail that you might have glossed over, because I did it first in the first verse of this chapter. And it says this, when word came to Sambalit, Tobaya, Gession the Arab, and the rest of our enemies that I had

rebuilt the wall, and not a gap was left in it, though up to that time I had not set the doors. in the gates. See, there wasn't a gap in the wall, but there was a pretty big gap where the door should have been. There was a pretty big gap where the gate was. There was a lot of progress that had been made, but the work hadn't been completed yet. How many of y'all were here for a series that we did about a year ago called Gates of Change? It was an awesome, awesome series. I loved it. Some of you did, too. And we learned in this series how important gates were to ancient cities. They were the place of commerce, of trials, proclamations from kings. A lot of stuff happened at the gate, but it was also the most vulnerable part of the city

because it was the part that enemies sought to conquer first, because if you could control the gate, you could control the city. So no matter how high and strong and mighty these walls were, the city was still vulnerable because the gates weren't in place. The work wasn't done. So we love to start things, but finishing things is a different matter. And we used to experience this a lot back in the early days of songwriting for our church 10, 11, 12 years ago. First of all, y'all know nothing about old school elevation worship.

But Pastor Stephen commissioned us to write songs. And me and Chris and the rest of the team, we had no idea how to write worship songs. So anything that had remotely rhymed, kind of had a melody to it was somewhat scripturally accurate. We would just test it out on the poor people of our church. It was not FDA approved yet. It did not have the official worship song stamp of approval. But the church was patient with us. It served its purpose in that time.

But it was a huge blessing when Pastor Stephen got involved in the songwriting process because he would say, okay, that's not a song. That's an idea. That's a rough draft. We need to take this round two, round three, round four, five, round ten. Because he wanted us to really dig to find what was most meaningful for our church to sing. And that's why there's a song like resurrecting that means so much to our church. But it took a year to write.

And I remember, you know, nine months and ten months, and Pastor Stephen was trying to find just the perfect line for that fourth verse that would just elicit faith when we sang it at our church. And so now our team is on a European tour. And when they get to the fourth verse and sing the tomb where soldiers watched in vain, was barred four or three days, his body there would not remain. Our God has robbed the grave. There's going to be shouts halfway across.

the world because of that line and how it elicits faith in people's hearts. But that didn't come with the song idea. That came after a year of work. You see, starting is fun. Starting is exciting. We love to launch the business. We love to ask the girl out. We love to celebrate our kids' first steps. And in fact, celebrating first steps is awesome. We go nuts here when somebody makes their first step of faith committing their life to Jesus. That's why we exist as a church. celebration. You know, when you're making your vows at the altar on your wedding day, hopefully you're celebrating if you're not, you're not making a good decision there. But how many of you know saying those vows is one thing? Living out those vows 15 years later

is a completely different matter. You know, you have about a hundred of your friends and families celebrating you on your wedding day. They're not there with you in your living room 15 years later when you and your wife can't even speak to each other. So you thought building or planning the wedding was the wall. The wall was building a marriage. That's what takes work. Making the baby is fun. Trust me, I've got some babies. And it's fun. Raising those babies in their middle school years, their high school years. I haven't hit that yet, but I heard it's a lot of fun. But trying to show them what it looks like to be a man or woman of God when you feel imperfect yourself and you don't feel like you have your stuff together, but you're trying to be there for them and love

them in times where they're not very lovable. Raising a child is hard. It takes work. Coming to church one time is awesome. We are so glad you're here if this is your first time. But to actually have your life change the way God wants to change your life, it takes being here consistently. A lot of you heard about e-groups earlier. That is the power of an e-group. It's getting people in your life consistently. And can I be honest with you about one thing? This is some therapy for me. I used to hate that word consistent because people would use it to describe me. And they would say, Wade is just so consistent. And the way I translated that is, Wade is so boring.

I hated that word. I didn't want to be the consistent one. I wanted to be the guy that was exciting and had a quick wit and was so insightful and was the life of the party. And Wade's a great singer. But instead, I got Wade's just consistent. Sounds so lame. It's like, you know, the girl, she has such a great personality. I never wanted to be the guy with the good personality. I wanted to be the hot one. Now, some of you married the hot one, and 30 years later, you wish you married the one with the good personality.

Just look straight ahead at me. We're good. We'll get through this. But what I am learning, what I'm learning is that Jesus celebrates consistency. Because consistency is powerful. It might not be flashy, but consistency actually changes things. Consistency makes a huge difference. I mean, I had that stupid kidney stone because I consistently drank Diet Coke every day for 20 years. Consistency makes a difference. This church is built on consistency. Consistent volunteers who serve every single weekend when you feel like it and when you don't. We couldn't do it without you. This church is built on consistent generosity, people who give and prioritize God through the tithe in plentiful seasons and in hard seasons. See, the church is built on consistency. And I feel the

benefit of that and the impact of that in my family, because my daughter, my youngest daughter, Sidney, she gave her life to Christ this past Good Friday, which was awesome. How cool is that to do that on Good Friday? And it made me so thankful for all of our E-Kids volunteers who showed up consistently to show her what it looks like to love Jesus. And they showed up to serve when she was behaving, and they showed up to serve when she was not behaving. She was not going to get a gold star that day. You showed up to serve when you were feeling like it. You showed up to serve when you didn't. And my family is different and changed because of you. So thank you. On behalf of all the families at Elevation Church, I want to thank the unseen heroes in our E-Kids department.

Consistency makes a difference. And I also think it's important to go. God, because our culture doesn't celebrate consistency. Our culture celebrates convenience, leaving the hard thing to chase the thrill of the new thing. But I think God wants to show what it looks like when a people actually stays in the hard thing and makes it better, who can honor their commitments when it hurts, who can do the hard thing consistently over and over again, who don't just chase the new thing, but do the old thing with a new passion. So turn to your neighbor, speak this over yourself, say, I am consistent. I like the sound of that. All right, the second principle is this. The path of least resistance is rarely the path of obedience. The path of

least resistance is rarely the path of obedience. So one of the things I heard a lot growing up in church to justify decisions, and I said it, I heard it a lot, maybe you've heard this too, is I've just got a peace about it. Have you ever said that? No, it's not a trick question. It's okay if you have. I got a girl dumped me one time because God gave her a piece about it. And I thought God was big enough to have some peace to go around and give me a piece and give me a little bit of a heads up, but he failed to do that that time. But it made me feel so unspiritual because most of the things I felt like God wanted me to do, I rarely felt peace about. In fact, they usually scared me to death. And I think Nehemiah probably didn't feel a lot of peace in the situation he was in.

So he was confronted with this rumor at this time that could have gotten him killed. And I want us to look at verse 6 so you can see it. It says, it is reported among the nations. And Gashim says it is true that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. So here we have this rumor that he's building this wall just so he can revolt against the king of Persia. So if that rumor gets back to the king, Nehemiah is dead. Now, if he goes to the plain of Ono to meet with these people who've started the rumor,

they're setting a trap for him. If he goes and tries to refute the rumor and set the matter straight, he's dead there too. So it's a no-win situation for Nehemiah. I have to imagine that he was tempted to take the path of least resistance would be to kind of get out of town quietly, go find another city, go find another wall to build. But the path of least resistance would also be the path of disobedience. I don't think Nehemiah when he was sitting there thinking,

God, I know you called me to build this wall, and I'm facing this opposition, but I'm going to trust you anyway. I don't think that was a peaceful decision. And it reminded me of something Pastor Stevens taught us, and that is that peace rarely comes before obedience. Peace is a byproduct of obedience. Peace comes after you obey. We can't wait for our emotions or our feelings to validate God's voice

when we know His Word has told us to do this, when we know His Spirit is leading us to fight for something. So you're praying for guidance and you're praying that God speaks and you know that you see this in His Word and you know you should take this step and you know you should stay in this relationship and fight for it. But you're just waiting for this feeling and this emotion to tell you it's okay. And fighting for something is not a very peaceful thing. And God has called us as a people to fight for love, to fight for reconciliation, to fight for peace.

Changing this world is not an easy thing. And peace doesn't come until after. we obey. It is a hard thing to forgive somebody when they hurt you. It doesn't feel very peaceful to take that step and to do it, but peace will come after the reconciliation, and that takes work. You know, some of you high school students, it's not a peaceful thing to stand up for the kid who's bullied and isn't treated with any dignity or respect, but you have no idea what that simple act of courage would mean in that person's life. But it's not a peaceful thing to stand up against your friends. some of you made commitments at the end of the year to give and to begin to prioritize God through tithing,

and now these bills hit that you weren't planning on. And it is a hard thing, and it hurts sometimes to honor your commitment to God. But God always promises that he will bless us when we are faithful and we will trust him and when we obey. And if I'm telling the truth right now, sometimes I use peace as an excuse to get out of doing the hard thing. So I've said, I've got a peace about this, and it's given me the excuse to leave the hard thing when really what I was feeling was relief, not peace. Relief and peace are not the same thing. And some of you might have walked out on commitments, walked out of relationships, and you claimed you had peace, but you really just felt relief because you could wash your hands of the problem.

God is calling us to be people who fight for peace, who are willing to do the hard thing, who don't wait on the emotion because sometimes those opportunities do not last forever. And I learned this the hard way. See, I have two amazing parents. They raised me in church. They raised me to love God. They set a great example for me. And they moved to Charlotte to help us with our kids and their medical issues.

I love them a lot. But a lot of people don't know that my dad is really my stepdad. He married my mom when I was seven and adopted me when I was 16. for all intents and purposes, he is my dad. He is the example and the role model of what a man of God looks like. I love him so much. Yeah, you can clap for my father. I didn't know my biological father that well. I didn't see him much after the age of four. We lived in California right after I was born with him, and he was basically a con man, a white-collar criminal. He was in and out of prison for money laundering, heavy cocaine user, had a double life behind my mom's

back, had countless affairs, very violent person. And once my mom figured out who he was, she left him and moved to the East Coast. And about five or six years ago, I began to get this sense, this leading from God, this prompting, that I should reconnect with him. And just try to build a relationship, be some source of light in his life and share my faith. And there was zero percent of me that wanted to do that. It felt awkward. It felt weird. I couldn't even get to the bottom of the depth of emotions that I felt about that. And so I really thought God on it. I didn't want to do it, but I knew it was something he was prompting me to do, but I kept putting it off until it felt right. One day, I'm just going to feel that it's right, and I can pick up the phone and make the call. One day, I'll get a

peace about it. So October 2016, my mom calls me and said that he had passed away. And I remember I was in my office in a meeting with John Bishop, and I just, poor John, I just broke down crying. And I never expected to grieve over somebody that I didn't know the way I grieved then. But I was also grieving because I knew I would never get that chance back to obey, to share Christ with them. And it wasn't even something huge that God was asking me to do. It was one simple phone call that could have had a dramatic impact. on his life. And thankfully, God is a God of mercy. He's a God of grace. And so he helped me come to terms with that and realized that there's other people that could have shared Christ with him too.

And the Lord did help bring me to a sense of peace about that. But I share this with you because I resolved in that moment that I wanted to be the guy that obeys those simple promptings from God, even when they're not peaceful. I want to be the guy that sends the text. I want to be the guy that makes the phone call. I don't want to just wait for peace to come. I want to be the guy that does the hard thing, even when it's not the peaceful thing, because we all want to build these giant walls of faith in our life, but those walls are built one step of obedience at a time. One brick after the other, and sometimes to pick up those bricks and stack them, it's a painful thing, but God will always bless it when we obey. Here's the final point.

don't mistake what is most noticeable for what is most valuable don't mistake what is most noticeable for what is most valuable so one of the biggest lies that has stolen my peace in my walk with god is trying to attach my worth with my accomplishments my value with what other people can see my value with the wall that i've built the work of my hands and you know here we have neomime who's the builder of the wall, the leader of the exiles. And I don't think he was feeling a lot of significance or value in the work that he was doing because it looked like it was in jeopardy. It looked like it might not get done. It looked like he might even lose his life because of it. And in this moment of weakness, he prayed a prayer that I think we would all do very well to pray

ourselves. So verse 9 says, they were all trying to frighten us thinking their hands will get too weak for the work and it will not be completed. But I prayed. now strengthen my hands. I used to read over that prayer, like it was some token prayer, like this is just some 2D story character. But what I love about our church is Pastor Stephen helps us see that the humanity in the Bible, that these were real people with real emotions. And so I tried to put myself in Nehemiah's shoes. And he had staked everything on building this wall. He was risking his life, and it looked like it was in jeopardy. And all he knew to do was to pray for strength from God. It had to be so tempting to quit.

It had to be so tempting to walk away. And I was wondering what kept him going in the midst of all the discouragement, in the midst of all the hardship. And I think one thing might be this, that he realized that God wasn't just building the wall that he could see. God wasn't just building this outer wall to protect a city. God was building this inner wall of faith in his heart. This inner wall of character, this inner wall of truth.

this inner wall of trust, this inner wall of realizing that his hope wasn't in how strong this wall was. His hope was in how big and mighty his God is. His defender wasn't some faraway king in Persia. His defender was the Lord God Almighty. God was building something greater in Nehemiah than what he was building through him. And God was also doing that for the people of Jerusalem. See, they had been sent to exile to begin with because they had trusted in false gods and lesser kingdoms. And God was building a renewed faith in them to trust in the God of Israel, that God was their defender and protector. Sometimes your faithfulness isn't just about you. It's about what other people see through your faithfulness. The way other people are encouraged by it, the way

other people are inspired when you go and you do the hard thing, even when it hurts, and even when you're weak. See, Nehemiah had to be tempted to quit, but he knew that his strength didn't come from retreating from the hard thing. His strength came from repeating the hard thing. His strength came from repeating the hard thing again and again and again. Strength wasn't in the retreat. Strength was in the repeat. Can you say that to your neighbor? Strength is in the repeat. See, God wants us to be a people that does the hard thing over and over and over again. It's the same principle when you work out. I work out maybe once a week at best. That's just enough to get you sore, not to build strength. If I really wanted to get stronger, I would work out day after day, after day, week after week,

after week. That would build my strength. It comes in repetition. It's the same with faith. It's repeated obedience, repeated surrender, repeated trust in God. So Nehemiah didn't just say, Lord, strengthen my hands and expect some supernatural strength to make his hand stronger. No, he knew he needed some stacking strength. So he picked up a brick, and he stacked it. Picked up another brick, stacked it. Said, Lord, strengthened my hands, got back to work, picked up another brick, stacked it. Accusation came, kept stacking. Discuragement came, kept stacking. And when his obedience met God's power, that's when his strength came. And that's when the wall was built. Because verse 15 shows us this. It says, so the wall was completed on the 25th of

a lull in 52 days. And when all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. So you might not think you had the strength to do what God has called you to do, but he promises that if you obey, if you keep stacking one brick at a time, it's not your strength. It's his power that's working within you. The wall will be built. And I really felt like God sent me today and brought you here this Memorial Day weekend, some of you who feel like nobody notices you stacking. You feel like you've been stacking the bricks, and you feel like you've been trying to feel faithful, and nobody sees and nobody notices, and maybe you're just

tempted to quit because you feel like you just can't keep going. And I want to tell you that God is doing something mighty in your life, even if you can't see it. Because I want to remind you of the truth of Philippians 1-6, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So we talked about finishing what we start. We're never going to do that perfectly. But God promises he will always finish what he's And he has started something so special in each and every person under the sound of my voice. We're never going to be truly consistent, but Jesus is the model of consistency. The word says he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

His love is consistent. His grace is consistent. His power that's available to you is consistent. So do not give up. Do not stop building the wall. Keep stacking brick by brick. And God is going to build a mighty wall of faith. through your life. I want to invite everybody to stand so I can pray for you. I love for you just to

hold your hands, palm up like this, and close your eyes. I want you to think, what is the hard thing that you know God has called you to do again and again? What is the brick he's called you to pick up and to stack? What is the act of obedience that you've been dreading, but you know the Lord is calling you to it. And I just want you to repeat this prayer after me, this very simple prayer that Nehemiah prayed, and say, strengthen my hands. So God, I don't know what was on everybody's heart as they prayed that, but I pray that you will give them the strength and the courage and the faith to obey, realizing that you are a trustworthy God. You are a strong and mighty God. and that even when we are faithless, you are faithful,

and we can know that you do all things for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to its purpose. So, Lord, work in the hard things, work in the good things. And Lord, I pray that you will open everybody's eyes this week just to get a glimpse of the wall that you're building through them. And I thank you for their faithfulness. I thank you for how you're using them. Thank you for joining us.

Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. is because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now or visit elevationchurch.org slash podcast for more information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe, you can share it with your friends. You can click the share button, take a screenshot, and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.