Divine Providence

[00:00:00] This church. [00:00:04] Was that an awesome video clip we got to watch there? [00:00:13] I'm honored to hang around with people who love God and do good stuff. [00:00:21] O Lord, you are the God who upholds all reality. [00:00:26] You direct all humanity. [00:00:30] You govern the heavens and the earth. [00:00:33] You are the God of providence. [00:00:37] Teach us to trust you without hesitation by reminding us how you have led us in the past. [00:00:45] In Christ's name, amen. [00:00:51] I have been attempting to teach the church more about the providence of God, and this week I'm going to try to illustrate it by our own church history. [00:01:10] The providence of God is God. The great creator of all things, upholds, directs, and governs all creatures, actions and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence. [00:01:31] There's a remarkable story in the Bible about the providence of God. [00:01:37] It begins with Jacob. [00:01:42] Jacob was Abraham's grandson, and Jacob had twelve sons by four wives. [00:01:56] So you can imagine that there was disunity in that family. [00:02:06] You can imagine there were issues of competition and jealousy. [00:02:13] And it was made worse by the fact that of his twelve sons, Jacob obviously favored one. [00:02:26] He was the son of his favorite wife, Rachel, and his name was Joseph. [00:02:39] To show everyone how much he favored Joseph, his dad had a special coat made for him. [00:02:49] It gets translated, a coat of many colors, but actually it has something to do with the special sleeves on the coat. [00:03:01] And Joseph wore this coat around like a snotty little brat. [00:03:09] He was the favorite and he knew it. And he didn't let anybody else forget it. [00:03:20] On top of that, Joseph had a dream. [00:03:26] And he came running to breakfast one morning and said, hey, everybody, I had a dream. I had a special dream. [00:03:36] We were all out in the field and we were reaping grain, and we were tying the grain up into stalks, and he said, wouldn't you know it? [00:03:52] All of a sudden my stock stood up, and all of your stocks came over and bowed down to my stock. [00:04:04] Well, you can imagine that breakfast went nowhere. From there, you could just hear his brothers lighting into him with well chosen names. [00:04:22] Not long after that, Joseph said, hey, I had another dream. Now everybody's gone. Keep it to yourself. We don't care. Shut up. [00:04:38] But he insisted. And he said, last night I dreamed that the sun and the moon and eleven stars started swirling around me and they all bowed down to me. [00:05:00] Well, mayhem broke out. I mean, they're throwing food across the table at him and his own dad. Jacob said, dude, you got a little ego issue going here. [00:05:11] You need to deal with that. [00:05:15] And his brothers actually hated him. [00:05:23] They actually despised him. [00:05:28] And they were out pasturing their flocks. [00:05:34] Israel is not Ohio. [00:05:37] There are pastures everywhere in Ohio. [00:05:41] In Israel, you have to move the flocks around because the pastures change. [00:05:49] There's no pasture in Israel like there is in Ohio. They just don't have fields like that. [00:05:57] And so they were feeding their sheep in a pasture in a place called Shechem. And Jacob said to Joseph one morning, I want you to go check on your brothers and see how everything's going. [00:06:12] So he went to Shechem and they weren't there. [00:06:17] And he met a guy there and said, hey, have you seen these guys? [00:06:24] And the guy said, yeah, I did see them. And I heard them say they were going to Dotham. [00:06:30] Dotham is about 10 miles northwest of Shecham. [00:06:36] And so Joseph followed his brothers and they saw him before he saw them. [00:06:46] And then things started to get really ugly. [00:06:50] One of his brothers said, let's kill the brat and see what becomes of his big dreams then. [00:07:02] And so they actually plotted together. [00:07:06] And when Joseph walked up, they grabbed him, jerked the coat off that he liked so much and they hated so much and threw him in a pit. [00:07:19] And the plan was to figure out, how are we going to kill the kid. [00:07:29] Reuben, the oldest brother, said, you can't kill him. [00:07:33] He's our brother. [00:07:35] And stop thinking just about yourself. What do you think this will do to our dad if we kill him? [00:07:46] And so Judah said, you're right. [00:07:51] We should make a little money. [00:07:56] We are on a trade route. [00:08:01] Let's wait for a caravan to come through here. And when a caravan comes through here, we'll pull him up out of the pit and we'll sell him and we'll all get some spending money. [00:08:20] Meanwhile, Joseph's saying, come on, guys, just let me out. I won't tell anyone. You don't have to do this. [00:08:33] And sure enough, a caravan came of midianite traders on their way to Egypt. [00:08:41] And they cut a deal to sell their brother for 20 pieces of silver. [00:08:55] And the medianites tied him up, made him part of his caravan and carried him into Egypt. [00:09:04] See, divine Providence doesn't always look like what you think it should look like. [00:09:13] God led Joseph to believe that he was going to live a unique life. [00:09:19] God led Joseph to believe that God was going to do special things through him. [00:09:24] And now none of that looks like it can happen because he's been sold as a slave into Egypt. [00:09:38] But things got worse. [00:09:42] They got worse. [00:09:44] The man who bought him, his name was Potiphar. [00:09:49] And Potiphar was the captain of Pharaoh's guard. [00:09:54] And Potiphar hired him as a slave in his family. [00:10:05] But as it turns out, Joseph was such a good worker and such good things happened to him that Potiphar kept promoting him. [00:10:15] So he just went from a common slave to a better job and a better job. And eventually Potiphar said, you're the best I've got. [00:10:26] I'm making you the manager of my whole house. [00:10:33] Maybe divine Providence was working after all. Maybe things were going to work out. [00:10:41] Things seemed to go well until Potiphar's wife got it in her head that she would like to sleep with Joseph. [00:10:55] And she began to do everything she could to lure him into bed with her. [00:11:04] And Joseph said, how could I do this? [00:11:09] Your husband has been good to me. I have a good job. [00:11:15] My life is better than when I was a yard slave. [00:11:20] How could I ever do such a wicked thing? [00:11:25] And that annoyed her. [00:11:28] She saw herself as irresistible. [00:11:32] And here was this kid saying to her, no thanks. [00:11:38] Kind of hard on her ego. [00:11:41] So one day Joseph had to go in the house and there wasn't anybody there except Potiphar's wife. [00:11:51] And she grabbed him and said, this is perfect. No one's here. [00:11:57] And Joseph, God bless him, awesome, man. He said, I'm sorry, I can't do this. [00:12:08] And she actually started pulling on his clothes. So he slipped his robe off and ran out of the house. [00:12:19] And then she was infuriated. [00:12:24] That was way more than her fragile ego could handle. And she started to yell out and she called people in the house and she held up Joseph's coat and she said, the slave that my husband has brought into this house and made the leader of everything has been trying to take advantage of me. And he came in here today and took his robe off and if I would not have shouted out, he would have taken advantage of me. [00:12:58] The house was tense all day long and Potiphar came home that night and she could not wait to tell him her lie. [00:13:16] And it made Potiphar angry. [00:13:21] I've always been convoluted on how I understand this. [00:13:27] Surely Potiphar knew what kind of wife he had. [00:13:34] It's not real hard to figure out. [00:13:37] Is your wife faithful to you or not? [00:13:42] Maybe you can get away with it a little while, but I've done this 41 years. You think you're going to cheat and get away with it? You're not. [00:13:54] I've had people in my office who were sure they could get away with it and they brought sorrow and misery down on their homes. [00:14:06] Was Potiphar angry because he knew what kind of woman his wife was? Or was he angry because he believed her story? [00:14:17] I have to believe he didn't quite fully believed it because he had every right to put Joseph to death right on the spot. Joseph was a slave. Potiphar could have killed him on the spot. [00:14:29] Instead, he put him in Pharaoh's jail. [00:14:35] He didn't put him in a common jail. He didn't put him on a work gang. There were plenty of other punishments he could have had, but he chose to put him in Pharaoh's jail. [00:14:48] And now it looks again like things are not going to work out for Joseph. [00:14:57] He went from being his dad's favorite to a slave. [00:15:02] He went from running the house to sitting day after day in Pharaoh's prison. [00:15:12] You see, divine Providence doesn't always look like what we expect after being in prison a while. [00:15:35] The pharaoh got mad at his cup bearer and his baker. [00:15:40] Something went wrong. And the cup bearer and baker were both put into pharaoh's jail. [00:15:49] And the head of the jail said to Joseph, we got to look out for these guys. [00:15:55] If the pharaoh decides he wants them back, they got to be in good shape. So he made Joseph responsible for the cup bearer and the baker. [00:16:08] And one day the cupbearer and the baker came to breakfast and they both seemed troubled. [00:16:17] And so Joseph said, what's the problem this morning? [00:16:23] And the cupbearer said, I had a dream last night and it was so real and it's been plaguing me. [00:16:34] I don't understand what it means. [00:16:38] And Joseph said, well, tell me your dream. [00:16:42] And the cup bearer said, I had the king's cup. [00:16:50] And I squeezed grapes into it, three clusters of grapes. [00:16:59] And I handed it to the king. [00:17:04] And Joseph said, I know what your dream means. [00:17:10] In three days, the king is going to figure stuff out and you're going to be restored to your job, and once again, you will place the cup in the pharaoh's hands. [00:17:22] Well, he's jumping up and high fiving. I mean, he's getting out of jail. He's going to get his old job back. Everything seems great. So the baker feels encouraged. And he said, yeah, I had a dream, too. [00:17:37] I dreamed that I had three baskets of bread and I was supposed to take them to the pharaoh. And so I had them stacked up on my head and I was carrying them to the pharaoh. [00:17:54] But all of a sudden, Alfred Hitchcock showed up and the birds attacked. And the birds were swooping down and they were eating all the bread out of the baskets. [00:18:10] And Joseph said, ugh, this is not good. [00:18:16] In three days, the pharaoh is going to figure this out, and he's gonna know what you did wrong, and he's gonna hang you, and the birds of the sky will have lunch on you. [00:18:40] He wasn't high fiving anyone. [00:18:47] So Joseph said to the cup, you kind of owe me a favor. [00:18:56] I want you to do this when you get out of here. Please tell pharaoh I'm here. [00:19:02] I was stolen from my family. [00:19:06] I was illegally made a slave. [00:19:09] I've been put in this jail, and I really haven't done anything wrong. Would you remind pharaoh that I'm here? And the cupbearer said, I promise you, everything's going to be all right. [00:19:23] But once again, divine providence didn't look like what you expect it to look like, because the cup bearer forgot Joseph and never mentioned his name at all to pharaoh. [00:19:47] And more years passed with Joseph sitting unjustly in pharaoh's jail. Church. [00:20:00] Divine providence doesn't always look like what you expect. [00:20:08] I don't have to just tell you Joseph's story. I can tell you the story of our church. [00:20:15] In our church's 41 year history, divine providence always hasn't looked like what we expected. [00:20:24] 41 years ago, we were in a little building in parma on Broadview Road. [00:20:34] The whole auditorium was probably like this section over here. That was probably the whole auditorium. [00:20:48] Ah. [00:20:52] But we had a new vision of the kind of church that we could be, and we started doing things better, and God started sending people to our church. [00:21:09] And it wasn't too long. We were filling up the whole thing. [00:21:14] And then we went to two services, and we were filling up the whole thing in two services. [00:21:23] There was a school next to us, and we were parking in their parking lot, and everything was going well. And all of a sudden, that school building, the person who owned it, the city, had already sold it to someone. They put a for sale sign on it, and it was right next to our property, and it seemed perfect for us. [00:21:44] It had a new part and an old part. Our idea was, we'll tear down the old part. We'll build a new auditorium there. We'll have these two pieces of land, 13 acres in parmo, which is a big deal. [00:21:57] And everything looked like God was setting it up perfectly. [00:22:03] We would go over there and lay hands on the building and pray, and we just felt like, this is going to be perfect. [00:22:13] You can imagine how my stomach dropped the day I found out he sold it to another church. [00:22:24] In fact, you'd be shocked to know the church he sold it to moved from their building in old brooklyn right next to us. [00:22:37] The guy that bought it turned it into a preschool. It was a preschool until we bought it. And now it's our old Brooklyn campus. [00:22:49] We were absolutely sure that that property was exactly what we needed. And when we didn't get it, it felt wrong. [00:23:00] It felt like God, the God of Providence, had missed us. [00:23:10] But we just said, okay, if God is not in that, it's got to be something else. So we hired an architect, and he drew this auditorium for us. And it was beautiful. And we saved up enough money for about 40% of what it would cost to build this auditorium. And we were talking to the banker when, if some of you can remember, the savings and loan crisis hit. Does anybody remember this? They had those bad savings and loans. A lot of them went out of business. The government audited everybody. [00:23:49] There wasn't a bank in the world that would give us a loan when the savings and loan crisis hit. [00:23:56] Now we don't have the building next door. We can't build the building. [00:24:02] We're overflowing. We got kicked out. We was renting the lutheran church across the street, and we got kicked out of there because somebody roller skated in there. [00:24:14] That person is here today. But I don't see them. [00:24:20] We just felt like, God. [00:24:25] What's happening here? [00:24:27] This is not the way it's supposed to look. [00:24:33] Not long after that, a friend of mine said, I know a church that went out of business in Strongsville. [00:24:47] You ought to see if you can buy that building. [00:24:52] So I made 100 phone calls, found the loan officer in Atlanta that had responsibility for the loan. The loan hadn't been paid in ten years. They hadn't made any payments at all. And I started negotiating with him. He said, we're going to sell it as is. I don't want any responsibility. [00:25:16] You don't even need to get inspected because we're not going to do anything. [00:25:20] And I said, well, I've been in that building before. I know exactly what it looks like. [00:25:29] So I said, we need one year to pay you off. He said, no, this has been in default for ten years. I don't have any more time. You buy it or you don't buy it. [00:25:42] And I'm thinking, God, come on. [00:25:48] And I said, all right, here's what we'll do. We'll pay the interest on what is owed until we pay you off. [00:25:58] And we can do that in one year because we're going to sell our building apartment that we had paid off. [00:26:05] And the guy agreed to do it. [00:26:08] And we paid the interest for about eight months, our building sold. We took that cash, and we paid them off. We remodeled the building, but divine providence still didn't look the way I thought it should, because we made some changes. [00:26:31] We moved the location, we changed the church's name, and we permitted women to be in ministry, which was something that, believe it or not, in the late 80s, that was controversial. [00:26:57] So when the smoke cleared of us moving, changing our name, and letting women into ministry, we had gone down a lot of people. I mean, more than half, like probably 65, 70%. [00:27:17] And now I'm looking at this new auditorium that was twice as big as our old auditorium, and it's all empty. [00:27:27] And I'm thinking, this is not what divine providence is supposed to look like. [00:27:34] And on top of that, some other ugly things happened. And I would find myself on my knees saying to God, this is not what it's supposed to look like. [00:27:51] You caused me to hope in you. You caused me to trust in you. I'm trying to do things that you put in my head to do. [00:28:03] And God heard our prayers, and our church began to grow again. [00:28:10] And it wasn't too long that we had filled up the lun road building. [00:28:18] The school was right next door. We were parking in the school parking lot on Sunday. So, look, things were going well, but we had filled the place up. We had two services. God was blessing us again. It looked like we were really going to make a major leap forward. [00:28:45] I'm sorry. Somebody glues my pages together every week. They. [00:28:55] We looked and see. We had hired an architect to see if we could add on to the lun road building. [00:29:01] And he showed us a dozen drawings, and they all look like Billy Baru work. They look like, tack this on and tack that on. And none of it worked. [00:29:17] So we decided we were going to look for land and build a new campus. [00:29:25] And we had a map, and we drew a radius of 5 miles. We wanted to be within 5 miles, and we started looking. Well, strongsville had a code then that you could only build churches on 42 and 82, the most expensive property in Strongsville. 42 and 82. [00:29:47] And we couldn't afford to buy property on those, so we looked for two years, and we just couldn't find anything. [00:30:01] We tracked down everything. I sent letters to farmers on 82 over here, where the greenhouse and the farm and all that stuff is. I sent letters to them, trying to inspire them to sell us land. [00:30:24] It didn't look like what we thought it should look like. [00:30:29] But then, providentially, God led us to the high school, and we ended up renting the high school for seven years. Some of you remember this. We had an old box truck. [00:30:46] Some company had owned it, and they'd driven it till it was worth nothing. And we bought it for nothing. We put all our stuff in it, and on Sundays, we would drive it over to the high school. We'd set everything up at the high school, and then we'd do church, two services. Then we'd load everything back in the box truck, and we'd take it back to the church. Well, sometimes the darn thing wouldn't start. [00:31:09] My friend Don Dooley would pull his pickup to the thing. They'd put these latches on it and would pull the darn thing over to the high school, do services, load it back up, and pull the thing home. [00:31:25] And I'm saying to God, this is not the way it's supposed to work. [00:31:31] This is not what Providence should look like. [00:31:36] And then, in his own good time, and by his own great wisdom, I was driving by this piece of property, and actually I came to the stop sign at Marks Road in 82, and it was a big green sign on this piece of property that said it was for sale. [00:31:58] Now, I'm not very pentecostal, but I have been known to have a pentecostal fit or two. [00:32:05] I put that car. I put my truck in park. I ran across the street, I laid my hands on that big green sign, and I said to God, this is it. This is it. [00:32:25] I know this is going to be our new campus. [00:32:28] I made an appointment the next day. I brought leaders. That was a Saturday, Sunday after church, I brought some leaders over here. We walked around. Everybody was feeling good. The driveway didn't used to be over here. It used to be, like, right at the end of Mark's road, and we're standing there, and wouldn't you know, that real estate guy said, in front of my whole team, you'll never get this piece of property. [00:32:57] You're getting your hopes up for nothing. [00:33:02] And because I have such a patient and gentle heart, I said, you don't know what we'll get or what we won't get. [00:33:15] It turns out we have a faith in God that makes us willing to try hard stuff and for the fact we're here and he's out of business. [00:33:36] So I won't go into the. The family had to pick between us and a big company somewhere. And by the grace of God, they picked us. [00:33:52] But the loan was $380,000. And normally, when you buy land, you have to have 20% down, so that would have been somewhere around $70,000. [00:34:11] We had $22,000 in the bank. [00:34:15] We didn't have 10% down, but I knew the president of Strongsville Savings Bank. I had met him many times at the chamber of commerce. I made an appointment and went over and talked to him. [00:34:33] And by the grace of God, they loaned us the money with $22,000 down and church. For the record, you paid that off in four years. [00:34:47] Divine Providence doesn't look like what we think it should look like. [00:34:54] Sometimes it looks the opposite of what we think, and sometimes it looks so much better than what we think we know. There's a miracle of God involved. [00:35:08] We had a giant fight with some people who wanted to zone adult entertainment on a prospect in 82. [00:35:21] I want to build a church, and now I'm fighting to keep adult entertainment out of my neighborhood. [00:35:30] That went ugly for a while, but in the end, God was on our side, and they didn't zone adult. Wouldn't it be terrible if the corner of prospect in 82 was like Brook park in, in Cleveland? [00:35:45] God was with us in that we, we hired architects. [00:36:01] The first architect we hired, we had looked at other churches that he built, and we really liked them. And we said to him, this is a $5 million project. [00:36:12] He drew us this beautiful blueprint. [00:36:16] We had it bid. It was a $10 million building. [00:36:21] Well, that's not going to work. [00:36:24] And I'm saying to God, we're doing our best here. [00:36:28] So we fired him, hired another architect. And all this guy could do was draw elementary schools. Everything he drew looked like an elementary school. [00:36:41] And I tried to say, yeah, we're not building an elementary school. [00:36:46] We're building a church. [00:36:49] And it seemed like we had hit a dead end. And we met a lady named Barb Shregales. And she had a business. She was an architect herself. But she realized how hard it was to work with architects. So she had a company that she would work with the clients to help them work with the architect. [00:37:14] So she came into the deal, and she met with the architect two or three times with us. And finally she said, you're absolutely right. He's not listening to you. [00:37:25] Now, we've had two architects, we've paid them money, and we still don't have a buildable blueprint. And I'm saying to God, this is not what it's supposed to look like. [00:37:39] And Barb met Krebs and Simmons, and God moved in a remarkable way. And Dave Krebs drew this building, and the only thing we did, the only changes we made, was we made the auditorium a little smaller to make it more affordable. And there was supposed to be a room off the side here, and we dropped that. Other than that, the building, as you see it, is exactly the way he drew it. [00:38:12] There's probably been 50 churches that have been through this building looking at it, because the design is so good and it's so attractive. [00:38:26] Providence doesn't always look like what you think it should. [00:38:33] In 2006, we had the miracle Sunday when we had our first service in this building. [00:38:41] Do you remember, shay? [00:38:43] Thank you. [00:38:47] We cut the ribbon out there and we walked in. [00:38:52] Our chairs weren't done, so we had to rent folding chairs. And this whole room was full of folding chairs. But we didn't care because it felt like God was among us. [00:39:05] In 1996, I had a meeting with all the leaders in our church and laid out a plan that we would break the 1000 barrier in ten years. [00:39:18] In 2007, exactly ten years from when we had that meeting, we broke the 1000 barrier. We averaged more than 1000 that year. [00:39:33] Providence doesn't look like what we think it should. [00:39:37] Covid hits, and we're just scrambling to do church. [00:39:42] But do you know, because of COVID about 700 to 1000 people watch our service online every single Sunday. [00:39:53] Covid made us figure out how to do online church. And now, every single Sunday, somewhere between 701,000 people watch our service online. [00:40:07] Providence doesn't always look like what you think it should. [00:40:14] This year, I want you to know we're passing another milestone. 2023 will average over 2000 on an average Sunday. [00:40:27] God is still at work doing awesome things in our church. [00:40:34] We decided we wanted to be a regional church and have influence all over northeastern Ohio. That led us to opening our campus in Alyria, and it led us to opening our campus in old Brooklyn. And by the way, there are more campuses to come. [00:40:56] We have an international ministry because of our connection to the orphanage in Uganda. You have influence with a whole group of people in Uganda. [00:41:13] Divine Providence always doesn't look like what we expect. [00:41:20] It's always been part of our key core thinking that we want to be a century church. [00:41:26] But what I mean by that is, if we do this right, in our generation, what we do will still be affecting our church 100 years from now. [00:41:37] If I lead the way I should lead, if I mentor the people I should mentor. If you serve the way you should serve, if you help the people you should help, this generation will still be having influence through this church 100 years from now. [00:41:58] And that sounds a whole lot different now that I'm 41 years into it than it sounded 41 years ago. [00:42:09] We have young people in this church. [00:42:13] If God called me tomorrow, we have leaders in this church who will ready to take over everything, and it would run as smoothly as it does today because we have this century church plan. [00:42:28] Not only do we have leaders who could take over now we're training the third generation of leaders. [00:42:35] Right now. We are training a third generation of leaders. Last week, Sarah and Jacob drove these 18 to 22 year olds down to Atlanta so they could see that they're not the only ones. There are 70,000 other young people just like them who take God seriously and want him to have influence in and through their lives. [00:43:00] Who knows? There are fourth generation kids here that we haven't even identified. [00:43:06] But divine providence will be at work for the glory of God and the accomplishing of his eternal purpose. [00:43:19] Joseph's vision was that one day his brothers would kneel to him. [00:43:25] And Pharaoh called Joseph up out of the prison because Pharaoh had a dream, and his dream plagued him. [00:43:35] And the cup bearer said, my sins have come to my memory. When I was in jail, I met a young man, and he interpreted my dream. And my dream came true. And Pharaoh said, get him in here. [00:43:51] So they brought Joseph up out of the jail. [00:43:55] They bathed him, they shaved him, they put a nice robe on him, and he stood before Pharaoh. [00:44:03] And Pharaoh said, I had a dream that's just bothering me. I can't shake it. And Joseph said, God gives the understanding of dreams. Tell me your dream. [00:44:14] He said, I dreamed that I went down to the Nile, and there were seven great looking cows feeding along the edge of the nile. [00:44:28] They were healthy, they were strong. They were the kind you want. [00:44:32] And he said, all of a sudden, walking up out of the nile came seven of the scrawniest, ugliest, flea bitten cows you have ever seen. [00:44:46] And he said, all of a sudden, the seven scrawny cows ate the seven healthy cows. But you couldn't tell. They looked just as bad after they ate them as before. [00:45:02] And Pharaoh said, I was startled awake, and I woke up, and it troubled me. And then I fell back asleep and I saw seven very healthy, good, well developed ears of corn. [00:45:20] And then there were seven blighted, fallen apart, no good, runty ears of corn. [00:45:33] And the seven bad ears of corn ate the seven good ears of corn, but you couldn't tell any difference in them. [00:45:42] And Joseph said, God has told Pharaoh what he's about to do. God is a God of providence, and he's told Pharaoh what he's about to do. [00:45:53] They're going to be seven years of plenty. [00:45:57] You're going to have the best crops you've ever had. And after those seven years of plenty, they're going to be seven years of famine. And the famine is going to be so bad that everything you saved up in the good years will be used in the bad years. [00:46:15] And Pharaoh said, can we find a man better than this man to lead us through this? [00:46:21] And Pharaoh made Joseph the premier of Egypt. [00:46:27] And when the famine hit, his brothers had to come to Egypt for food. [00:46:34] And who do you think they met when they came to Egypt for food? [00:46:39] They met Joseph. [00:46:41] The problem is they didn't recognize him and they bowed down to him, asking for him to sell them food. [00:46:50] Church God always does what God says he'll do. [00:46:57] He just doesn't do it the way you and I think he should. [00:47:03] This church has promises from God. [00:47:08] This church has been entrusted by God with a great vision for ministry. God wants to do multigenerational things through this church. [00:47:18] He won't do them the way we think he should do them. It won't always look the way we think it should look. But I promise you, in the end we will attract people to the excellence of Jesus Christ. [00:47:35] We will do better and better at inviting people into the joy of ministry. It's about time for some of you to help us get on the team, be part of this divine thing God is doing in this church. [00:47:49] We have a promise that he will give us the adventure of faith. And time after time he will entrust us with challenging things. [00:47:59] And we believe that God is going to fund good in the world because we are a culture of generosity, that the world will be better because of the generosity of each and every one of you. [00:48:11] Church Providence doesn't look the way we think it should look, but when you look back on it, it is crystal clear. [00:48:23] I've told you these stories so that you can remember that God has been with us year after year after year after year. [00:48:34] We had 3800 people in our Christmas services 41 years ago. If we had 38, I would have thought we were killing it. [00:48:47] The providence of God has guided us step by step, year by year. [00:48:55] Listen, Providence, we need to trust without hesitation the wisdom and power of divine providence and simply do everything God asks us to do. [00:49:10] Our dear heavenly Father, thank you for your history with us. Thank you for the way you have blessed us. [00:49:19] Thank you for all the incredible things you've done here. [00:49:23] Thank you for the promises of what you're still going to do. [00:49:27] I pray that as you have been our God in the past, you will be our God in the future. [00:49:33] And what we see today is only the beginning of the great work that you went in to do. And may Jesus Christ be glorified. Amen.