Luke: 00:12

Well, good morning, everyone. My name's Luke. I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my privilege to say welcome home this morning. We always want to be a place that you can call home, a place that you can take your next step in following Jesus, whether you've been following Jesus for a long time or you're still figuring that out to begin with. Pastor Cameron's going to come up, and he's going to continue our sermon series on being formed.

Luke: 00:42

I hope you all have your silly putty. If you don't know what that's about, I'm sure Cameron will remind you. I see a number of people with silly putty. Alright, let's pray real quick as Pastor Cameron comes up. Heavenly Father, this morning I pray that You would give strength both to Pastor Cameron's voice and mind and spirit.

Luke: 01:02

I that You would lead him in the preaching of Your word, that he would be submissive to Your spirit, and Lord, that we as hearers and receivers of that word would be open to your Holy Spirit's work in us, Lord. Lord, nothing can be done apart from you, and I pray that this time would be full of you. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

Cam: 01:23

Morning Conduit. How are you this morning? Does anyone need some silly putty? Some silly putties? Pass that down there.

Cam: 01:36

I need a couple of silly putties here. If you're feeling like, oh, I'm too much to have silly putty, John, will you take care of passing the rest of those out for me? If you're too much of an adult to have silly putty, there's I think a few canisters of serious putty in there, and you can take those. Why are we passing out silly putties? The series that we're in right now is called Formed, and we're talking about some of the ways that God, some of the things that God uses to form us so that we are more like Jesus.

Cam: 02:26

What are some of the tools? What are some of the experiences? What are some of the environments that God uses in order to transform us, conform us more to be like Jesus, that we live like Jesus, that we love like Jesus, and we serve like Jesus. When I was praying about and preparing for this series, the image, not the image, but the idea of playing with something like Silly Putty kind of stuck with me. Because it can take some effort to squeeze some form into this thing, and it takes some pressure maybe, it takes a little bit of strength.

Cam: 03:12

Really got to press on it, but I told you last week that my favorite part of silly putty is when you take it and you either squeeze it really hard in your hand, and then you open it up and you see all of the intricate details of your handprint or your fingerprint. Very unique to you, right? But very clearly there. It's like when God takes you and puts a little bit of pressure on you, squeezes you a little bit, and then opens his hand, left on there is his fingerprints. And God desires to form us, that we would be more like Jesus.

Cam: 03:59

So I've been playing with Silly Putty a lot at my desk this week saying, Lord, whatever you want to do in my life, however you want to form me, however you want to change and transform me, Lord, please do that. Sometimes the Lord does that in ways that are really gentle. Sometimes the ways in which we are formed are a little bit more, I guess you would say aggressive. Both of those things ultimately are evidence of God's mercy. When God forms us gently, he's treating us gently.

Cam: 04:45

When God forms us a little bit more aggressively, what he's essentially saying is that your comfort is less important than your holiness. I'm more concerned with your holiness than I am with your happiness. Sometimes it takes a lot of pressure to form us. One of the very earliest memories that I have in my life is also one of the most painful memories that I have. Probably the most painful memory that I have.

Cam: 05:21

I came home from a weekend at my cousin's house, and I walk into my back door to find my parents kind of at the midway to tail end of a pretty significant fight. And I was seven at the time, but managed to find my mom somewhere in our house, kind of like in the labyrinth of broken glass and furniture out of place. And I don't, to be honest with you, I do not remember all of the details of that day, but I remember kind of being forced to be the adult in the moment. I remember my grandfather showing up, I remember the police showing up, and I don't ever, I really don't, I probably did, but I don't really recall ever going back to that house, ever living in that house again. Probably, maybe equally as painful was an experience, or was the experience, one that I've told you before, I've shared this to you before, was the experience of finding my mom who had finally succumbed to her decades long battle with addiction.

Cam: 06:46

This was like almost roughly thirty years after that first experience that I shared. I don't tell stories like this, and I've told them before, so it's not really too much of a surprise for most of you. Don't tell stories like this for pity or for sympathy, or even really to tug on any emotional heartstrings whatsoever, that's not my point here. Tell them to say that I know that I am the person that I am today, at least in some ways, because of those events. Because of those things.

Cam: 07:28

I know that I am the person that I am today because of that day that I arrived home at seven years old. I know that I am the person that I am today because I found my mom deceased. They shaped my view of the world. They shaped my inner sense early of security, of love, of marriage. It's shaped my view on addiction, on abuse, and on so many more things.

Cam: 08:12

Really, maybe another way of saying all of that is saying that I recognize as keenly as pretty much anyone else that suffering has been a tremendously powerful factor in the formation of who I am as a person. We are each formed by and through suffering. Scripture is gonna talk about this in many different ways. It's gonna use terms like suffering. It's also gonna use terms like trials, hardships, persecutions.

Cam: 08:58

You see Paul talk about it like this, you see Peter talk about it like this. Some of you have probably some similar stories to mine, some of you have stories much different. Some of us don't really calculate maybe the suffering that we've experienced in single events, but maybe more in continual experiences that we have. Consistent exposure in a relationship that is difficult or abusive, a sickness or infirmity that won't go away, the pervasiveness of memories that you just cannot seem to break free from. Whether your stories are different or whether they are similar to the people sitting next to you this morning, one thing that we, I think, can be most certain about is that we have all suffered.

Cam: 10:04

We have all experienced things that have caused us pain. We have all experienced things that have left holes. We have all, in some ways, been shaped by that suffering. Now, what I wanna propose to you this morning is that there is more than one way that we can be, or there is more than one direction that we can be formed in by suffering. We can be formed in a direction that takes us closer to God, looking more like Jesus, and we can be formed in a direction that leads really to just bitterness and despair.

Cam: 10:57

There are probably a million different variations in between those two sides of the spectrum, But the question to answer this morning really is not whether or not we have suffered, because I think we all have, but rather in what direction have we been formed by that suffering, and how can we endure future suffering with a biblical perspective? How can we encounter and walk through hardship, suffering, or trial in the future in a way that displays that we are open and humble to receive it for whatever purposes God desires it to be for us. Perhaps the most significant and consistent way that the Bible talks about suffering is in its relationship to perseverance. All throughout scripture, not just one author, not just one voice, several authors, several voices, several different lines of thought in scripture. They seem to all kind of circle back to this connection between suffering and perseverance.

Cam: 12:29

Suffering produces perseverance. Probably most famously is Paul's letter to the Romans in Romans chapter five, where he says, suffering produces perseverance. There you go. Right? He then goes on to say, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

Cam: 13:07

Right? But even I just want to take even those three words, suffering produces perseverance, and I just want to sit there for just a moment because might read that and kind of gloss over or skim over the biblical reality that there is truth beyond or behind the reality that suffering does produce positive things in our lives. It is possible to have a positive outcome from suffering. A lot of times in the moment of something really difficult, in the moment of trial or hardship, it seems it is really difficult and it seems impossible to see a positive purpose at all. Listen, and I'm not preaching at you about this, right?

Cam: 14:18

I'm preaching with you about it, like wanting you to know that this is not a foreign idea to me. I am familiar with suffering. I know that in the midst of pain, in the midst of trial, in the midst of hardship, it can become really, really difficult to see any light at the end of the tunnel, to be positive about it or in it at all. It just hurts. It's just hard.

Cam: 14:56

It's just overwhelming. It feels inescapable, and it feels like it will never end. But what scripture tells us is that suffering can produce something positive in our lives and can radically change the trajectory of our relationships, of our families, and of our own hearts. James, the half brother of Jesus, wrote these words right at the beginning of his epistle. James chapter one, verses two through four, he says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith, here it is again, produces perseverance.

Cam: 16:00

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Don't turn from your Bibles here. I want you to look at these verses, okay? Not only does James say that trials and suffering develop that perseverance quality in us, but he goes on to say that we should actually let it finish its work. So that we can be mature and complete, not lacking in anything.

Cam: 16:46

This is a tremendous statement in the word of God. There is a maturity and a completeness to your faith that can only be experienced through trial and suffering. And while it's certainly counterintuitive to kind of this modern quest to make all of life as comfortable as we possibly can, James says that we should consider it, we should consider these faith testing periods or trials with pure joy. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face many kinds of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. What James says here is that we aren't considering it pure joy because of what is happening.

Cam: 17:58

This is an important distinction. We don't experience or we don't have to express pure joy because we are going through suffering or pain or trial. We consider it pure joy because we know what sits on the other side of it. We know that suffering is not purposeless in our lives, but it has something that it's seeking to accomplish, and that if we allow it to finish its work in our hearts, we will be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James' contention here is that the thing that suffering wants to produce in you, if you will let it, primarily is perseverance.

Cam: 18:54

Suffering wants to produce perseverance in your life. This is the second time we've heard it from God's word. We heard it from Paul in Romans chapter five. We hear it from James in James chapter one. So what is perseverance and why is it so important in relationship to suffering and trial?

Cam: 19:14

The word perseverance, not that you care, I'm gonna give it to you anyway, in the Greek is hypomone, and it literally means to remain under. Hypo means under, meno means to remain. So the conjugation of that is it to remain under. Perseverance means to remain under. The implication here is that perseverance is calling for or is describing a moment in the midst of suffering or trial where we're not just surviving, but we are remaining faithfully still under the pressure of the moment.

Cam: 20:08

Remaining faithfully still under pressure. And it includes or indicates that this is like an active form of spiritual resistance or resilience. An active form of spiritual resilience. It takes us from in the moment of suffering and pain from saying, Well, just going to hold on and I just got to survive this thing, and it switches it. It switches our mindset from a necessity to survival to an active spiritual pursuit of faithfulness to Christ.

Cam: 20:58

So it takes the moment It takes our heart's reaction from, I just have to survive this, to, I will remain faithful to Christ through this. I will continue to trust. I will continue to obey. I will continue to hope. I will continue to have faith.

Cam: 21:20

I will continue to love my neighbor. I will continue to serve faithfully. I will continue to give generously. I will continue. I will continue.

Cam: 21:29

I will continue. Perseverance is not just about enduring suffering, but remaining faithful to God while suffering is shaping you. See, in the process of remaining faithful to God as suffering is shaping you, as perseverance is built up in you, you got a really hopeful statement, okay? Your spiritual capacity then to be formed into the image of Jesus through suffering grows. Meaning, as you persevere through suffering to grow and grow more and more like Jesus, your capacity to endure more suffering in order to become more like Jesus continues to grow.

Cam: 22:27

So it's like, has anyone ever been really really good at their job, and so because they were really good at their job, their boss gave them more responsibility? It's like this, okay? Like when you persevere under suffering and trial and show yourself to be faithfully still in the process of God's formation of you, perseverance is built, right? And that perseverance increases your capacity to handle more suffering. Right?

Cam: 23:04

It is, it's great. Never been so excited to be faithful. Remember what we talked about last week is that this is why it is necessary for you to make an intentional decision as to whether or not you want to be formed in the image and likeness of Jesus. You must have a moment where you say, This is what I want to be more like Jesus. Because if you We

Luke: 23:52

don't

Cam: 23:53

drift into this. Right? We run away from it. We away from intentional formation because the forming process takes pressure and heat Now here, I want to warn you, I think you know this already, I do want to warn you. The idea of persevering and sitting faithfully underneath suffering is not a culturally popular thing.

Cam: 24:34

This is not a popular idea in our culture. The culturally popular thing is to see all trials, all hardship, and all suffering as relatively meaningless and purposeless, and evidence that either God is not loving and kind, or worse, that God doesn't exist at all. If you're not comfortable, and you're not happy, and everything is not going right for you, then something is wrong, and it's probably God's fault. Culturally speaking, the popular advice is, let's get away from suffering as much as we possibly can, because it obviously has no redeeming quality or purpose in our life. It is obviously something that we shouldn't be experiencing or don't want to experience.

Cam: 25:43

That's the cultural ideal. The idea that suffering or trials has a redemptive purpose in your life, to produce something that could not be produced in another fashion is a strictly Christian idea, rooted deeply within scripture. So this is not a popular, culturally popular idea. You really need to look no further, kind of like at the seminal moment of the Christian faith. Pastor Luke talked about Good Friday and the crucifixion.

Cam: 26:27

How absurd is it to an unbelieving world that God would become a man, submit himself to unjust judgment and punishment, not have any fight against death by public execution, and that his followers would for millennia afterwards declare that all of those things, God becoming a man, God living a humble Jesus living a humble life, submitting to unjust judgment, giving himself over for death on a cross, that's actually the very thing that will bring eternal freedom for everyone. That very thing is gonna be the source of forgiveness, freedom, and life. The Apostle Paul says that the idea of the cross is folly to the world. It is foolishness. It is absurd.

Cam: 27:31

It is ridiculous. God dying, what are you talking about? But Paul says that it's actually wisdom according to God. You see, what the world and maybe would say even more specifically, what Satan, your enemy, wants you to do is rather than seeing suffering as a pathway to maturity and completeness, like James says, Satan wants nothing more for you to curse God for your bad lot in life, and to blame him for not doing his job to make you comfortable, content, blessed, and prospered. This was essentially the kind of the approach of Job's friends in the Old Testament.

Cam: 28:36

You ever read the book of Job? Ever read the story of Job? If you haven't read the story of Job in the Old Testament, here's your sign to read it this week. It is the book that is right before Psalms. So if you open up the middle of your Bible and you hit Psalms, just go to your left, you're gonna find Job, read that story.

Cam: 28:59

To make that very long story fairly short, Job's faith is tested, to say the least. He experiences massive calamity in his life. Essentially loses everything. He loses everything. His friends kind of rally around him with what amounts to these really encouraging words of, Hey Job, your life is a disaster and it's all God's fault.

Cam: 29:38

You should probably curse him. Job has some really, no pun intended, honest to God conversations, where he pours out his heart and he pours out his pain to God, where he says things like, I wish I was never born. Where he wonders why, God, God, why have you targeted me? Why am I in your crosshairs? When he wonders how or if, mean, is God really just?

Cam: 30:25

All of these really honest questions, this honest reflection, overflow of his heart in the moment, and God does indeed answer Job. In the end of the story, Job's trust in God despite the difficulty and suffering that he experienced remains strong, intact, and he grows in it. Suffering produces perseverance. And we must finish, let it finish its work, James says, so that we are mature and complete, not lacking in anything. Perseverance says, I refuse to believe that this suffering is meaningless.

Cam: 31:29

I trust that God is forming me for his great and special purposes, and so I will stay here until they are accomplished. That God, I recognize that the purposes of your suffering for my holiness are more important than my desire for comfort in this situation. I will sit faithfully underneath it, so that you may form me to be more like him. There's another theme that is attached to suffering and trial in scripture, and that is the theme of refinement. This is one that may be a little bit more familiar one with.

Cam: 32:29

Now I will tell you what, it's one of my favorite books in all of the Bible. And my wife was asking me this week why I've never preached through it, and I was like, I don't know, but I think I want to. I'm not gonna preach through the whole book today, but I will tell you that the book of first Peter, right, is a master class in how to navigate suffering. It is an absolute like master class. Peter writes to Christians who early after Jesus' ascension into heaven come under heavy persecution all around the Roman empire, and they kind of scatter to different areas.

Cam: 33:22

Okay? And so he's writing to these Christians in the context of the difficult trials that they are facing and suffering. And early in the first chapter he says this, in first Peter chapter one verses six and seven. He says, In this you greatly rejoice. He's referencing their inheritance in Christ from previous verses.

Cam: 33:47

It's like, In your inheritance you greatly rejoice. Though, now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Now Peter uses the analogy of gold being refined to communicate what trials or suffering does to our faith. Now it's a really beautiful image all on its own, right?

Cam: 34:43

The process of gold being refined. Until you consider that 24 carat gold melts and is refined at a temperature of nineteen forty seven degrees Fahrenheit. We all want to be refined. Refine me, Lord. Burn out any impurity in my life.

Cam: 35:10

Make me more like Jesus. But the refinement process requires extraordinary heat. Extraordinarily directed heat. See, this extraordinarily high heat is necessary in order to burn out the things that are not supposed to be within the gold ore. Once that metal, that ore gets that hot, reaches nineteen forty seven degrees, the more pure gold literally lets go at a molecular level of the impurities that it's holding onto.

Cam: 35:59

Giving the goldsmith, the one that's applying the heat, the opportunity to then skim those impurities off the top, leaving a more purified version. Something beautiful, something valuable, something that cannot be created in any other way. Gold is never pure in nature. It always requires refinement. When God puts some heat directly to our life, when God puts some heat right there, are you willing to let go of the impurities that he's trying to skim out of you?

Cam: 37:13

Are there any I'm laughing at myself for even asking this question. Are there any big fans of Japanese art in the room? Yeah, it's okay. That's what I thought. It's alright.

Cam: 37:31

I'm not a fan either. I appreciate it. I'm just not like jonesing for a good Japanese art museum or anything. How about this? Does anyone know what Kintsugi is?

Cam: 37:45

One, two, yes, this word up here. Anyone know what this is? Not allowed to Google it. Yeah. Okay, couple, I saw a couple, Donna, Luke, raised their hands.

Cam: 37:56

Alright, great. Kintsugi. Kintsugi is a form of Japanese pottery that takes mistakenly broken pottery and mixes lacquer in with 24 karat gold in order to fuse broken bowls back together. Looks a little bit like this. The bowl, it was broken on accident, right?

Cam: 38:29

It endured some kind of catastrophe, And the artist, instead of seeing it as, well, I guess just throw this away here, looked at it as an opportunity to bring to bring it back together here. Listen, a point with Kintsugi was the stated point of the medium of the artist here. The point is not to erase the brokenness that occurred, but rather to highlight it with something more beautiful than the original. So the point is not to say, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, this never happened. I'm fine.

Cam: 39:12

Never went through that. Or I did, but it wasn't a big deal. No, it actually was a really big deal. It's not a Christian virtue to downplay suffering. It's not a Christian virtue to say, That wasn't hard.

Cam: 39:26

I'm good. Yeah, you're not. You're faking it, and everyone knows it. Suffering is hard, and it's okay to say that it's hard. It's okay to say that it's difficult.

Cam: 39:44

When God refines our life and our faith with fire so that we become more like gold, the areas of life that we experience that pain and suffering in become visible markers of God's grace for others who are on the road to suffering themselves. Paul says it like this in two Corinthians. He says, You will be able to comfort others with the comfort that you yourselves have received. Right? That when someone looks at our lives, they will not see this perfectly shaped bowl that has never experienced brokenness, but the grace of God that has put us back together in the refining of our faith has made God's grace visible to the world.

Cam: 40:34

I am broken and I have been put together by God's grace. Want to offer maybe two really quick things, short things. What I find is sometimes I don't know, in the middle of suffering that I've experienced or walked through, I don't really know how to act in the middle of it. Because I want to, I want to persevere, I want to remain faithful under the pressure. I want to sit with faithfulness to receive the forming properties of suffering in my life.

Cam: 41:20

I don't want to jump away from the heat, right? I want to let the heat do its work so that the impurities come out. I want to be faithful in that. But man, I'm feeling some things in it. And I got a lot of questions and I don't know what to do with them.

Cam: 41:42

So what do we do in that moment? What do we do in those moments? What is a practice as Christians, as people of the book, right, that we can engage in that helps us to remain faithful in those moments, but helps us also to be honest with the situation that we're dealing with. I wanna go back to kind of the idea of Job's story here. Job was not silent with God about what he was experiencing at all.

Cam: 42:14

I mean, read the story of Job, you're like, man, bro was dangerously close. Dangerously close to like cursing God. Dangerously close to crossing over that line, even though that line seems kind of invisible. Right? This is biblically what we call lament.

Cam: 42:47

The practice of lament. Lament is the faithful act of bringing honest sorrow, questions, and complaints to God while still trusting in his character and covenant. We don't often do this, we don't often practice lament because it's been my experience that we are not good at being honest with God. We are not good at sharing our hearts with God. Because good Christians don't say to God, God what in the heck are you doing here?

Cam: 43:38

Are you targeting me? Good Christians just Get through it, right? This is not the This is just not what we see in scripture. I don't know what else to tell you. It's just not what we see in scripture, right?

Cam: 43:57

Lament is such a common theme of the Bible. It is such a common theme of the Bible that we have a whole book of laments called Lamentations, right? The largest book in the Bible, the book of Psalms, which is 150 chapters long, and is the ancient songbook or worship book of the Hebrew people, has roughly 60 psalms that are lament psalms. I think that's like 46% of the book of Psalms is lament. These weren't Listen, these weren't just like poems.

Cam: 44:49

Do you know what the word psalms means? Don't overthink it. It means songs. K? The psalm book was the songbook of the ancient Hebrew people.

Cam: 45:03

Meaning, it was the thing that led it was the things that they sang in worship, in the midst of worship. Now if 45% of the Hebrew songbook was lament, it should show us something about the nature of honest worship with God. How does lament help? How does lament help us in the middle of suffering? Well, don't know about the relationships with you in your life, it's been my experience that no relationship can build intimacy without honesty.

Cam: 45:57

My wife asked me a few days ago, Hey, are you alright? I'm fine. I am totally good. 100% good. Okay.

Cam: 46:17

Okay. We know in our human interactions that answering, Hey, how are you doing? Are you doing all right? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine.

Cam: 46:35

Is really totally not fine at all. Not even a little bit. In a moment where my wife invited me into a deeper level of trust by saying, yeah, I'm not okay. These are the things that are on my heart. Here's what I experienced today.

Cam: 46:59

Here's what that person said to me. And my heart just hurts and breaks. She extended an invitation to deeper intimacy and because I, for whatever reason, wanted to hold onto this, I'm fine, I essentially rejected the invitation to intimacy and lost the opportunity to have a moment where our hearts became one once again. Okay? So lament is the language of honesty during trial and suffering that builds trust and intimacy between you and the Father.

Cam: 47:51

Lament is hope that refuses to die at the hands of hardship. It is part of our worship. The second thing that we can do, and this is to be intentionally brief, because next week, the whole sermon's going to be on this, okay? What do we do in the middle of suffering? What do we do when we're persevering under the trial?

Cam: 48:26

We press into godly community. I know we're gonna talk more about this, like I said, next week, but isolation is a tool that the enemy keeps, or that the enemy uses to keep us from the healing presence of the Holy Spirit in those that love us. And when we get into moments of trial or suffering or hardship, almost a reflex of human nature is to run to isolation. Get me away from people as far as I can. But when you submit yourself, or when you commit yourself, maybe I should say, to godly community, what you begin to see is that the presence of the Holy Spirit in those people, in that person, in that small group, in that church, in that relationship becomes a way in which the Holy Spirit brings healing to your life, brings comfort to your life, brings support.

Cam: 49:45

Next week we're gonna talk about being formed by community. Now, I know Part of I hesitate to say this because I want you to know my heart in it. I don't want you to hear it. I I don't want you to hear it in any type of prideful way at all. Please know my heart when I say this.

Cam: 50:20

Not just because of my personal experiences with it, but in my experience, in my time as being a pastor, I have become, I think, somewhat of an expert in suffering. I don't say that again with any level of pride, only to say that I know because so many of you over the years have shared with me, or we have walked together in a type of depth of pain, or trial, or suffering that many will never know. Listen, we're not here this morning to compare sufferings with one another. Like, Oh, his thing is way worse than my thing, and so I can't even talk about my thing, or Her thing is not as bad as my thing, so why is she even saying it in my presence? Listen, we're each dealing with our own pain, our own trial, or our own suffering, and there's no such thing as comparing to see whose suffering is worse.

Cam: 51:49

Maybe you've been walking through it without much thought of what God is trying to do in you. Maybe you've been experiencing trial suffering or hardship, maybe for your whole life, and you've never No one's ever told you that God is trying to form something in you that can't be formed any other way. And so you've just been fighting, you've been fighting it, been running away from it, rather than staying under it like perseverance suggests. Jesus said in John chapter 16 verse 21, he says, A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. Why are women willing to go through the extreme pain of childbearing?

Cam: 53:02

Because they know that something beautiful waits on the other side of it. I want to invite you this morning to have a moment with God. Once I've finished up here and the worship team comes back up, I'm gonna open up the front of the church here, the kneelers, or just this big front space that we have down here. I'm gonna invite you to come forward. There's maybe several different reasons that you might want to consider coming forward.

Cam: 53:52

Maybe you need to come forward with a spirit of lament. Asking God at the prayer altar, the prayer kneelers, honest questions. Meeting with an honest God that invites you into that conversation. Maybe you need to come forward because you never thanked God for what he did or what he accomplished in you or in your life in that last season, and you can't imagine the life that you're living now is the result of the pain that you once walked through, but you never stopped and was like, Oh, God, thank you for that. Thank you for that.

Cam: 54:33

Thank you for that trial. Thank you for that suffering. Thank you for that pain. Thank you for what you did in me, that I see it now. And I never stopped to say thank you.

Cam: 54:46

Maybe you're currently in it. You're currently in pain and maybe what you need is an opportunity to come forward to ask God what beautiful thing he is trying to birth through your pain. Maybe you know you need to come up front, You can hear you can feel it right now, like like you're getting like anxious in your stomach because like, ugh, I know he's talking to me. But maybe maybe you need you know you need to come up front, but you don't know why. And you don't know what to do when you get up here.

Cam: 55:33

Do I kneel? Do I sit? Do I stand? Do I Whatever. Maybe what it is just for you, and what I find is particularly for me this morning, is you're coming up front.

Cam: 55:53

It's really just like a defiant declaration against an enemy that wants you to curse God for your experiences and the things you're going through, and you're coming forward and standing before the throne to say, I absolutely will not. I will not.

Luke: 56:19

Pretty smart.

Cam: 56:24

So maybe that means you come up and you kneel and you pray, and I can pray with you. Many people here can pray with you if you want someone to pray with you. Maybe it just means you come up front and stand with me and Vince and Emma and Luke in the front row, or over here with the kids, in this space, and you just worship with the rest of us. Or maybe it means that you come in silent prayer or in standing worship with hands raised, or maybe it means that you come down and you need to find a place to lay flat on your face in prayer to the Lord and just pour out your soul, because if you just had enough with it all Whatever reason you come forward, I want you to know that you will find a safe place and we will be here to minister to you, and pray with you, and support you. But I feel like just because I know what many of you both have gone through and are going through and continue to experience.

Cam: 57:39

That maybe what you need, maybe what we all need this morning is just a moment to stand before the Lord and to say, Lord, I want you to birth something Lord, please help me understand the beautiful thing that you're trying to birth in me in this. Maybe it's to come forward to say, Lord, I want to pour my heart out to you because I have a lot of questions and I don't understand this. Or maybe it's the defiant act of saying, I know the temptation of the enemy to get me to curse God in these moments, but I'm standing here in defiant worshiping declaration to say, I will not do that. I will continue to trust. I will continue to believe.

Cam: 58:17

I will continue to love. I will continue to be faithful. I will continue to worship because God is good and because he is worthy. As soon as the music starts, I'm going invite the worship team to come back up. But as soon as the music starts, don't wait for another invitation.

Cam: 58:38

Go ahead and come on up. I don't always know if you want me to pray with you when you come up. If you do, you just give me the and the nod or the fist bump or what, just make eye contact or something like that. Tell me you'd like me to pray with you and either myself or Luke or some other leaders or men or women or whoever you're comfortable with will pray with you while you're up here. Let's start in prayer and then we'll continue.

Cam: 59:14

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, sometimes when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we we get into a situation where we're like, hey. I I thought, I thought all this hardship stuff was supposed to be over. I thought we were done suffering. Heavenly father, I pray that you would write this scripture on our hearts.

Cam: 59:55

Peter says, dear friends, do not be surprised. Do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. Lord, I pray that you would unite us with Jesus Christ in this moment. Lord, knowing that to be united in his life is to be united with him in his suffering.

Cam: 01:00:50

Lord, may you do in us what we have been unwilling to do or unwilling to accomplish on our own. Make us, Lord, mature and complete, not lacking anything. In Jesus' name. Hear the good news from first Peter chapter five verses ten and eleven. And the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.

Cam: 01:01:33

Steadfast. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Conduit, you are loved.

Cam: 01:01:43

Have a great week. We'll see you next time.