Doubt | Becoming | Week 6

[00:00:00] Foreign church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching. [00:00:27] Well, I want to say good morning to everybody joining us on Church 307 over at the prison, wherever you're watching from across the state of Wyoming, all of you, there are a bunch of you here in the room. It's awesome to see. We're going to be in First John chapter three today. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. First John chapter three. If you don't have a Bible, it's going to be right here on the screen. [00:00:47] While you're turning there, I hope you know what's coming this Wednesday. We're launching a Wednesday service because the Lord has been sending people and we've got to make room. The Lord has put us as planted new life in a town with lots of shift work and lots of people who are at hunt camp this weekend. So we're launching a third Wednesday night service so that we can first off reach more people and accommodate the community that God has given us, which is awesome. And we made a slight change to the plan for the Wednesday night service and here's what it is. [00:01:20] The Wednesday service is going to be the third service of the week. So this Wednesday it will be the same service that you experience here this morning. And here's what I think is cool about that. If the Lord ministers to you on a Sunday morning and you know someone that needs to hear it, well, guess what you can do. You can invite them back on Wednesday. It's an easy invitation. Hey, you should come to me with church. Here's what I learned. Here's what I experienced. Here's what I want you to meet. It's going to be the exact same thing. I know you can't come on Sunday. Will you come with me on Wednesday? [00:01:50] So it's a great way to invite people. And the Lord is moving in Gillette. And the Lord is moving in new life. And we have just got to hang on and do our best to steward it well. Amen. Amen. All right. First John, chapter three. We are going to start reading in verse 19. [00:02:07] This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. [00:02:14] If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything. [00:02:19] Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. [00:02:27] And this is his command. [00:02:30] And this is his command to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God's commands lives in him and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us. [00:02:46] We know it by the spirit he gave us. Let's pray. [00:02:52] Jesus, we praise you for your love for us. [00:02:55] We praise you that we are caught up in a love that will never let us go, no matter what. [00:02:59] Give you glory for that. [00:03:01] Today as we discuss your word, we ask that you would speak, that your name would be glorified, and we would see you more clearly this morning. [00:03:09] If there's any of my ideas or just opinions that get into this sermon, let us notice it and let them go. [00:03:16] We're not here for my opinions. If there's anything that we talk about over the next few minutes that's consistent with your word, consistent with your character, planted deeply in our hearts, that we would become like you, Jesus. [00:03:28] Amen. Amen. [00:03:31] All right, I want to start off with a question for the hunters. And you don't have to answer this question out loud. I just want you. I just want you to think about it. For all of you who are hunters, have you ever. You ever been glassing? You know, you had your binos up, maybe you had your spotting scope up, and you're looking a mile, mile and a half, two miles away, and you spot an elk or you spot a mule deer, you get excited. You know that feeling when you spot one and your heart rate goes up a little bit? Yeah. And you're looking at it. You look at it for five minutes, you look at it for 10 minutes, maybe longer, and then all of a sudden that elk becomes a bush. [00:04:12] Yeah. Some of you guys don't hunt. And you're thinking, CJ, elk and sagebrush don't look anything alike. One's £750 and one's like £20. And you're absolutely don't. But when you want it so bad, you can make anything into an elk. You ever had that moment where you're looking, you're driving along the road and you swear you see 180 inch mule deer, buck, and it turns out to just be an old, dead sage branch. You're just like. And then. Then it's over? Yeah. See, you're right. All of you who are objecting to this, you're right. A sagebrush and an elk look Nothing alike. [00:04:46] But when you're looking a long way away, especially into the wide open, you don't see anything that you know what it looks like. [00:04:54] You don't see anything that you know how big it is, you lose perspective. [00:05:00] And when you don't have anything to set your perspective, you can interpret things incorrectly. [00:05:07] When you don't know how big something is that you're looking at, when you don't know the size and shape of something you're looking at, you can't tell. You don't have anything to evaluate what the size should be of what you're looking at. [00:05:21] And it changes your perception. [00:05:24] We actually. We see this all the time in movies. There any Lord of the Rings fans in the room? Yeah. Praise the Lord. [00:05:32] If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, then you will recognize this picture. Yes. [00:05:37] Yeah. Some of you, we watch this movie. We watch all three every year on Christmas Day. It's our family tradition. Some of you guys are like, we're not friends anymore. And that's okay. [00:05:46] So, you know, this is Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, son of Gloin the dwarf. Now, you can see in this picture, Gimli, his character is half the size of everybody else. He is a dwarf. That is his character in the movies. This next picture is going to be helpful, though. We can go on. This is a picture of the actors who played those characters. This is who played Aragorn. This is who played Legolas. And that John Rhys Davies and is who played Gimli. Now, Gimli in the movie is half the size of Aragorn. But in real life, John Rhys Davies is about 2 inches taller than Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn. [00:06:28] But the people who film the movie know how to affect our perception. [00:06:37] They know where to place one character so that we can't tell who's taller. [00:06:44] They know how to blur the background and create angles so that they can affect the way we perceive what we're seeing. And what we perceive won't be what's true, but it will be what they want us to see. [00:07:00] When we don't have something to set our perception, we can't interpret things accurately. [00:07:08] You've probably heard this phrase before. [00:07:11] Perception is reality. Anybody heard that phrase? [00:07:15] Yeah. Obviously, it doesn't mean that what we perceive is actually true, but what it means is that what we perceive is how we'll act. [00:07:27] If I think that bush is an elk, my heart rate will go up as if it was an elk. It's real to Me in that moment. [00:07:36] If you and I meet and we have a bad first impression and I think that you're a really mean person, the likelihood is I'm going to treat you like you're a mean person. Perception is reality. You do the same thing for me. [00:07:51] If I perceive that the world is against me, then I will act as if the world is against me because my perception is reality. My perception predicts my behavior. What I think is true tells me what I will do, how I will treat other people. [00:08:12] Now, if you're following along in the Becoming book, then you know that this morning we're talking about doubt. Now, here's what I want to offer as a definition for doubt. You could look up the Merriam Webster definition, but sometimes those definitions are informative, but they don't really help us see it. So here's what doubt is. [00:08:32] Doubt is when the perception we did have contrasts the perception we now have. [00:08:42] I'm going to read that one more time. Doubt is what happens when the perception we did have contrasts the perception we now have. [00:08:54] I thought I knew something, then I learned something, and it changes what I thought I knew. Now I'm doubting what I knew. [00:09:03] I thought I was a specific way, and then I had an experience and it changed the way I see myself. Now I'm doubting who I am. [00:09:12] The perception I did have can't live alongside with what I know now. So I have to decide then what I believe to be true, what I used to think, or what I now think. We encounter doubt all the time in life. That's probably not surprising to you, but sometimes we don't notice it. We encounter it all the time. And we encounter two general pathways of doubt. There are two ways that doubt goes. Doubt can go intellectually. [00:09:43] I learn something that changes my worldview. I used to have this political opinion, but I learned something or I had an experience, I had an encounter, I gained some information, and now I'm not sure if I can still hold the opinion that I used to hold. [00:09:59] I used to believe something about science. I used to believe something about, I don't know, the medical world. And now I learned something. I saw a late night infomercial and now I'm not sure if I can keep believing what I used to believe. [00:10:14] My intellect is what's doubting. My ideas are what's doubting. And there's also personal doubt. So there's intellectual doubt, that's one direction. And there's personal doubt, which is another direction. Personal doubt is what happens when I'm not doubting what I know. [00:10:28] I'm doubting who I am. [00:10:30] I used to think I was great at my job, thought I was killing it, working my way up at the company. And then I got laid off, and now I'm not sure anymore. [00:10:45] I used to think I was a great husband. I was a great dad. [00:10:48] But now I have teenagers and they won't talk to me. [00:10:53] I'm not sure if who I am is who I thought I was. [00:10:59] I had an experience. [00:11:01] I had an encounter. I learned something, and it's changing my perception and the perception I have now contrasts the perception I had back then. [00:11:12] Now, you probably assumed where this was going because you're in church today. [00:11:18] We encounter spiritual doubt. It's normal. It's part of life. [00:11:24] When we encounter spiritual doubt, it goes along the same pathways as every other doubt we have. Intellectual doubt. I've always believed that the Bible was true. This is what I've built my life on. But then I went to college. [00:11:38] I took a Religion 101 class, and the professor was just so convincing. [00:11:43] And now I'm not sure. I'm not. I'm not sure if I still think the things that I thought. I used to believe the Bible was true. I was 100% convinced the Bible was true. [00:11:54] But then I saw this guy, Alex O' Connor, on YouTube. For the record, Alex O' Connor is brilliant. He's an atheist, cosmic skeptic. He's brilliant. He makes really compelling arguments. And now. Now I'm not sure. Just. I always thought this. [00:12:06] I'm not sure anymore. [00:12:09] I used to believe something about creation, but then I heard what modern science says, and I'm not sure if I can find a way to marry those two things together. I'm going to have to pick one. [00:12:20] And we enter into a season of doubt. Something we used to believe doesn't hold with something that we now think we believe. We find ourselves in a season of doubt. [00:12:31] But once again, spiritually, we encounter intellectual doubt and personal doubt. [00:12:38] And personal doubt, I think, while just as common, is perhaps more devastating. [00:12:45] In intellectual doubt, we question what's true. We question God. We question the Bible. [00:12:52] In personal doubt, we question ourselves. [00:12:55] I thought the Lord had changed me. [00:12:58] I thought I was growing. [00:13:01] I thought I was done with that addiction. And then I fell off the wagon. [00:13:07] Maybe God changes other people, but he won't change me. [00:13:11] Maybe I'm just more sinful, more stuck, more broken than anybody else. [00:13:17] I didn't think it would happen. [00:13:19] I know people make mistakes. I know people need forgiveness. [00:13:23] I just didn't think I would make that mistake. I mean, other people. Yeah, but I thought I was beyond that mistake. I thought I was beyond that failure. [00:13:34] And then you make that mistake, and you're not questioning whether God exists. You're questioning who you are. [00:13:41] Is any of this even real? [00:13:44] Is my faith even real? You know, God answers prayer. You believe God answers prayer. You believed it for a really long time. You've always believed that God is faithful and he answers prayer. But then you struggle with infertility, you have miscarriages, somebody gets cancer, and you start to think, well, I know God answers prayer. Maybe he doesn't answer my prayers. [00:14:07] Maybe I've just got more secrets than anybody else does and that's why he doesn't answer my prayers. [00:14:12] Maybe I just don't have as much faith as the other people do. [00:14:16] That's why he doesn't answer my prayers. [00:14:20] We start to question who we are now. There's a gift that John, the author of First John. I know it's a very creative name. John, the author of First John, gives us First John. It's called First John because it's the first of three letters that the disciple John wrote to a church that he probably planted or at least heavily invested in. And this section, he gives us gifts for going through doubt. And here's the first gift that he gives us. He says this line, if our hearts condemn us, here's the first thing that it tells us. It tells us that doubt is normal. [00:14:56] Did you know doubt is all over the Bible? [00:15:00] All over the Bible. [00:15:04] It's everywhere. If you read the Book of Psalms, it is full of doubt. It's David angry at God because of his doubt. It's the writer is angry at themselves because of their doubt. It's full of it. There's this passage in Matthew, chapter 28. You should go back and read Matthew chapter 28 sometime soon because there's this line that gets old, overlooked. It's right after Jesus ascended into heaven. He goes up into heaven. He died, came back from the dead, hung out and ate dinner with all of them, did some miracles, and now he's floating up into the sky. And this is the line. [00:15:38] They worshiped and some doubted. [00:15:42] Doubt is all over the Bible. Doubt is normal. Intellectual doubt is normal. Personal doubt is normal. It's a normal experience. In fact, there are probably some of us who came to church today, and the only thing that you needed to hear was that doubt was normal, that it's okay to doubt. Doubt is not the anti. The antithesis of faith. Doubt and faith coincide. They go together extremely well. Doubt is incredibly normal. Here's why. Doubt brings you towards the truth. When you're doubting, you're doubting your perception, which means you're seeking what's true. As Christians, we believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. So the pursuit of truth will lead us to Jesus. Let me say something very clearly. As Christians, we should never be afraid of honest questions because we're not afraid that Jesus is going to be disproven. We don't keep Jesus behind a curtain like the wizard and wizard of Oz. We believe Jesus is obviously true and it is worth questioning. So if you find an Alex o' Connor video video and it ruins your perception of the world, keep asking the questions. We believe Jesus is true. And if you ask the questions authentically, you'll wind up with Jesus because we believe that's where the evidence did you know actually that the Bible, this book right here, is the most heavily scrutinized document in human history. [00:17:09] There is no document that has been scrutinized to the degree of scripture. You can look that up. That is completely true. What that means is there's no question you can ask of this book that someone else hasn't asked and that doesn't have an answer. Usually many answers, or at least ideas. Hypothesis, you can ask. This book has been studied intensely since really the development of modern scholarship. Approximately 500 years since the Enlightenment. It's been heavily scrutinized and it has survived everything. Here's what that means. Ask the question. [00:17:46] Ask the question. [00:17:47] If you're asking the question honestly, you're going to wind up back at Jesus. So I'm not afraid of you asking the question. We're not afraid. Your life group isn't afraid of you asking the question. If you go to life group and you're like, it seems like God killed a whole bunch of people in the Old Testament, and that is not good. Ask the question. [00:18:05] You're not the first person to ask the question. You're not going to be the last person to ask the question. Keep asking. We're not afraid of doubt. We're not afraid of questions. When I'm in a season of personal doubt, that doesn't mean something's wrong with me. It doesn't mean that I'm broken. It means that I'm asking the normal human questions about life. Does God actually love me? Does God actually accept me? Do my prayers actually make it anywhere? Is anyone listening? These are normal human questions that we ask all ask. Keep asking. Them God will be the answer. Scripture says in psalms, taste and see that the Lord is good. [00:18:47] Christianity is not the religion of believe first, find out later. [00:18:53] We taste and see that the Lord is good. It's another religion that says, close your eyes, force yourself to believe. It'll all make sense later. [00:19:03] Christianity is the religion of taste and see, of come, follow me and I'll show you. [00:19:09] That's what following Jesus is. [00:19:13] It's not the doubt that's dangerous. [00:19:18] The danger is not in the doubt. [00:19:22] It's in condemnation. [00:19:25] See, the problem when we go through a season of doubt is that our hearts condemn us. [00:19:32] The problem isn't the doubt, it's the condemnation. [00:19:37] See, Satan wants to isolate us. We talked about this last week, that one of the first things said about humans is that we need each other. So one of the first attacks against a human is going to be to isolate us. [00:19:49] Here's what our enemy will tell us when we're doubting, he will whisper to our hearts and we'll start to believe the lies. He'll start to say, oh, well, if you're questioning the Bible, why in the world would you go to church? They don't want you there. [00:20:01] You're questioning the Bible, you don't belong there anymore. That place is for people who believe. [00:20:06] That place is for people who are certain and confident. That's. That's what church is. So if you're not certain and confident, you shouldn't even be there. That's what the enemy will tell us. He'll say, get out of there while you're doubting. Get out of there while you're struggling. He wants to isolate us. He will condemn us for our doubt. And then we'll start to believe. The lies in our hearts will condemn us. I'm not welcome there while I'm questioning today. I don't think God is good. So I'm not going to go to church. Did you know that Jesus himself cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? [00:20:39] Which means if you wake up on a Sunday morning and don't think God is good, you're in good company. [00:20:50] We'll say, God doesn't answer my prayers. [00:20:55] He answers other people's prayers, but he doesn't answer my prayers. [00:20:59] Look at all the other people. He gave them kids. He didn't give us kids. Look at all the other people that they got miracles. I didn't get miracles. It must be me. [00:21:08] I'm the problem. [00:21:10] And then he'll say, you should be ashamed of that. Don't Admit to anybody that you're doubting. Don't admit to anybody that you're struggling. What are they going to think? They'll see the truth. [00:21:20] He will lie to us so that we'll look in the mirror and say, of course God wouldn't answer your prayers. God doesn't love you. How could God love you? I know your secrets. You know your secrets. God knows your secrets. Of course God's not going to answer your prayers. And then he'll tell us. If you admit it, they'll know and they'll think the same thing. [00:21:37] Our hearts condemn us. The danger is in the condemnation, not in the doubt. [00:21:44] Everybody doubts. [00:21:47] I have a friend and mentor, a pastor I respect, who says that a a faith that hasn't been doubted is a faith that isn't owned. It's not really yours. Yet. If you haven't asked the tough questions, doubt is normal. [00:22:03] Here's the second gift that John gives us in this passage. He tells us what to do when our hearts condemn us. [00:22:10] He says, God is greater than our hearts. [00:22:15] So here's what that means. When you have an intellectual doubt, you take it to God. Because God isn't saying, go figure it out and then come back. He's saying, I'm greater than your heart. I'm greater than your condemnation. I'm greater than your questions. Bring your questions to me. So when you struggle with intellectual questions, you bring them to the Lord. Because he will welcomes the questions. He is greater than our hearts. When my heart condemns me and says, you're the worst, Nobody loves you. God couldn't love you. God doesn't even like you. We bring that to the Lord and we discover what God who is greater than our heart says. And do you know what he says? He says in Romans, chapter 8, verse 1, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. [00:22:58] And you know what else he says? He says, all who believe on him are in Christ. [00:23:03] So do you believe that Christ died and rose again to forgive your sins and give you eternal life? Then there's no condemnation for you. [00:23:10] That condemnation you might put on yourself, but God doesn't. [00:23:14] Because that condemnation was paid on the cross. [00:23:19] Also says at the beginning of First John 3, the author says, do you see what great love the Father lavished on us? That we would be called children of God? [00:23:31] So when my heart tells me I'm not welcome here, I'm not wanted here. [00:23:35] No one will accept me here. What does God who is greater than my heart say? He says, I have lavished my love on you by calling you my child. And if you're my child, you have a place here, even when you're doubting. [00:23:50] So we bring our doubts to the Lord. We bring our doubts to the Lord because he is greater than our doubts. He's greater than our hearts. That's how we defeat the condemnation. While living in the doubt, you can stay in the doubt as long as you're honestly seeking the truth. The Lord will lead you out of it, but what will kill you is the condemnation. So while you're in the doubt, you have to be constantly asking the Lord to tell you what's true about who you are so that you are not condemned. You do not feel condemned. [00:24:23] Your doubt. [00:24:27] Now, the next thing I'm going to say, really the last thing I'm going to say is something that's not going to apply to all of us. [00:24:37] And that's okay. [00:24:41] There are some of us, probably a lot of us who are sitting here thinking, CJ, that sounds so easy. [00:24:48] Just believe it. [00:24:50] Just believe that God loves you. [00:24:53] Just and honestly, for some of us, we can do that. [00:25:00] You can, you can, you can use scripture as an anchor. You can return to it, and it can be the anchor for you in your doubt. You can constantly remind yourself of what God says about you, and it'll get you through the seasons of doubt. [00:25:12] There's, there are others of us who, especially those of us who deal with things like depression and anxiety, who can't. [00:25:26] You can't rationalize your way out of anxiety. That's the point. I've struggled with anxiety off and on for most of my adult life. You can't rationalize your way out of it. So someone telling you, C.J. everything's going to be fine. I promise, it's going to be fine. Your words, worries don't make sense. Well, that's the point. That's why I'm worried about them. They, they don't make sense. [00:25:44] That's. You can't rationalize your way out of anxiety because anxiety is irrational. So when you're in a moment of anxiety, just going to the Bible and saying, see, God promised he loves me, in an anxious moment, you'll say, yeah, but, but me that, that it must be other people. [00:26:03] You'll find, you'll find a reason. You'll find an excuse. You've. You've struggled with, maybe you've struggled with depression chronically. And the funny thing is, if you haven't struggled with depression in a chronic way, then what? You look at other people and you say, your Life's not that bad. [00:26:17] Why do you not want to get out of bed? Your life's really not that bad. But if you're struggling with depression, you say, I don't want to feel like this. I didn't wake up this morning deciding to not enjoy my day. [00:26:30] I wish I could just decide to have joy. It just doesn't work like that. [00:26:35] I wish I could change my mind about all this. I just can't. [00:26:39] Because that's what it's like when you struggle with a mental illness, when you struggle with whether it's chronic or whether it's stress induced or situational, it's not rational. So you can't rationalize your way out of it. [00:26:51] So you can't just look and say, well, God's greater than my heart. That fixes it. That works for some of us. We can just go to the Lord and he'll minister to us, and then we'll just believe it. We have the faith to just believe it, but there are others of us that we want to, but we can't make it work. [00:27:11] So John gives us another gift. He says, we know by the Spirit in us, the Holy Spirit in us, ministering the truth of God to us. [00:27:27] Now, once again, some of you, especially if you struggled with depression or anxiety, you're thinking, C.J. that's just a different way of saying the exact same thing you just said. [00:27:34] That doesn't help, but you got to notice a specific word here. We know it by the Spirit he gave us. [00:27:44] Friends, there have been times in my life where I had a hard time believing anything good. [00:27:53] But I had a friend that I trusted. [00:27:56] And he believed the good and I trusted him. [00:28:04] The Holy Spirit is in us. If you're in Christ, the Holy Spirit is in you, which means we know it by the Spirit he gave us. Which means sometimes you know it because of the Spirit in me, and sometimes I know it because of the Spirit in you. And we need each other. We need the Holy Spirit in us to minister to us one another. Sometimes I can't muster up the faith to believe that God actually loves me. But I know you. And I know you've been my friend for a long time. So if you think God loves me, that will get me through, that will be enough. Sometimes I can't muster up the faith for myself to believe everything's going to be okay. But I have a friend that says, even if it's not okay, we're in this together, and that will be enough to get me through. It's the Holy Spirit in us. The theologian and philosopher, an incredible man of God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together, he said it like this. He said he's talking about someone who's doubting. [00:28:59] And he says, the Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother. [00:29:10] His own heart is uncertain, but his brother's is sure. [00:29:17] Sometimes I have a hard time. We have a hard time mustering up the faith on our own. But we have a frustration friend. We have a life group. We have a mentor. We have accountability, who are certain, and they are certain for us. So that when I'm doubting, the Holy Spirit in them is my anchor. And then when the seasons change and they're doubting, a Holy Spirit in me is their anchor. One of my best friends on earth, his name's Jay. I walked through a season of extreme doubt and deconstruction with him. And then he. He walked through one of the most difficult seasons of my life with me. [00:29:52] The Christ in each of our hearts at different times was weaker than the Christ in the word of the other. His word was sure, my heart was weak. But later my heart was sure, my word was sure, and his word was weak. The Holy Spirit was in us, and the Holy Spirit ministered to one another through us. We get through seasons of doubt by first going to God. First, God is greater than our hearts. But when we can't muster the faith to believe it, even though we know it's true, we trust the community that God's put us in, because the community doesn't condemn us in doubt. [00:30:26] Listen, your life group isn't going to say, why don't you come back once you've got this stuff figured out? [00:30:32] Now most of your life group is going to say, yeah, me too. Been there. [00:30:36] Let's work through it together. [00:30:39] Your pastor, your mentor, they're not going to say, why are you doubting so much? Why don't you just. Why don't you just believe? [00:30:46] No, they're going to say, we'll figure it out. Those are really good questions. [00:30:53] The Holy Spirit in us. So here's how we're going to respond. Today, we're going to sing a song, a song that actually some very good friends of mine wrote in A Season of Doubt. [00:31:05] This is a worship song that came through a. Came from a season of doubt and struggle. [00:31:10] And as we sing, if you find yourself in a season of doubt today, then there are two options. Number one is maybe you can just you and the Lord. You can sing this song, and it can Be a declaration that the Lord is greater than your heart. And if that's you, praise the Lord for that. You and the Lord, you can set your mind on what Christ says about you and what's true from his perspective, and that can be the anchor in your season of doubt. Praise the the Lord for that. If that's you, I'm so happy for you. There are others of us here today who need to hear the spirit of God through somebody else. So we're going to have prayer partners. Two are going to be over here at the pray wall. Two are going to be over here at the five and five wall. And we're going to have a couple up in the balcony as well. We're going to have prayer partners. And these prayer partners are just there to have faith for you. [00:31:58] You can tell them as much or as little as you want. If you don't want to share your whole story, that's fine. All you got to say is pray for me. [00:32:05] If you need to share it with someone, share it with someone. [00:32:08] Share it with them. [00:32:10] That some of us, we need to be reminded within ourselves of what is true from the Lord. [00:32:18] Others of us need someone else to believe what's true for us so that we can receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit through someone else. [00:32:29] There is no shame in going through a season of doubt. [00:32:32] There have been many seasons of my life, and if I'm being honest, there'll probably be seasons again where I would be up there with Nick and Barb over here asking them to have faith for me because I didn't have enough for myself. There's no shame in it. We all go through seasons of doubt. If Jesus can cry out on the cross, why did you forsake me a few hours after he said, please God, let anything else but the cross happened? There has to be another way. If Jesus himself can go through that, then you can too. [00:33:02] There's no shame in it. [00:33:05] Let's allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us through one another, through worship and through truth. Let's pray. [00:33:15] Lord, you are good and your love endures forever. [00:33:25] We believe that and we want to believe that. [00:33:31] Would you prove it to us through your spirit? [00:33:35] Would you prove it to us through one another? [00:33:39] Would you give us the courage to bring our doubts with honesty to you so that we can see the truth? [00:33:53] We love you, Jesus. [00:33:54] Amen.