Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good evening, you gorgeous church. How is everybody?
[00:00:05] Good.
[00:00:07] It's an honor to be here with you tonight. I want to make a little bit of an announcement before we start preaching.
[00:00:15] So, starting in June, we are going to weekly Wednesday evening services.
[00:00:24] Yeah, if you've heard me preach before, you know that I have a pretty large heart for the next generation. Our kids are growing up, and I think you can hear a lot of bad news and a lot of bad things. But I want to tell you, God is doing something incredibly special through them. And this summer, when all of our college kids come home, I want to give them an opportunity to lead in the kind of way that I was given when I was in my early twenties. And so we are so excited for them to join us in worship and welcome. We even have a few guests, preachers coming, so God is doing amazing things. So, for the summer, we are going to take a break on our Saturday once a month services. So if you want to join us for the Lord's supper, we're going to be doing that Wednesday, the first Wednesday of every month. Okay. And cc midweek is something special. I hope you will join us and just see all that God's doing. Let me pray.
[00:01:21] Dear Heavenly Father, you are a mighty God.
[00:01:24] You are at work, and I am just so thankful to be a part of what you're doing in this place and in the awesome hearts of these people.
[00:01:32] Tonight, I pray for this challenging call that you've laid through the book of Malachi, and I pray that you will give me the words to speak clearly. But more than anything, I will pray that we have the humility to hear what you are saying, hear the challenges, and not show up with a defensiveness, but show up with an openness that we want to turn towards you. In your mighty son's name, I pray. Amen.
[00:01:57] My dad did a sermon with me at our last cc midweek, and it was called endurance. And he shared real vulnerably the story of when my mom lost her arm in a terrible car accident. And at the end of it, he said, I would only do this sermon for you. So now I am saying we're getting even, because I would only do this sermon for dad.
[00:02:21] When I showed up, it was to finish off his series for the summer. It was the book of Malachi, and he said he's been preaching through the last five books of the Old Testament. And so we're gonna get through Malachi, and I'm gonna make it very much honor dad, but a little sarah in the mix. Okay. So we had a trailer years ago, my husband and I, and we love to take our kids and get away. It was in Marblehead. And if you've ever gone, you know, there's a bridge that kind of separates. And once you go across this bridge, it was our rule that we left all work, all responsibilities behind, and we would turn off and we'd go to the lake. We were too cheap to ever buy a boat or anything, but where our trailer was located, we had water on either side of us, so. Right. Kind of behind the trailer was, I mean, a glorified swamp. They basically filled in the land there because it was trees sticking up everywhere. So it wasn't really like you could get back there and enjoy it much outside of paddle boarding and hoping you wouldn't fall and impale yourself.
[00:03:32] So the front, though, was wide open, and it was beautiful. And so we couldn't really afford a boat, nor did we want the hassle of all of it. So we decided to get the second best thing, which was this giant inflatable. And unfortunately, the only picture I have is this terrible picture they're about to show. And it is. It was just a circle. And I wish it was that holy, but it's just not that holy. So it was a giant circle that could fit about eight people, and it was yellow. There was no paddles with it. But we would go out on the other side of the lake, and we'd paddle out, and we'd bring our drinks, and we'd have music playing, and our phones would be put away, and we would just be chilling. But what would happen is the wind kept moving us. The wind kept making this beautiful little boat drift. And to get onto the boat was life threatening, because the only way you could get on was there were these rocks. Everything was these giant rocks that were slippery and wet, and the waves would crash over them. So there was more than one bruised tailbone trying to get into this stupid boat. And we would paddle out, and we'd enjoy it for about four minutes, and then we'd inevitably be trying to fight against the drift, because we'd be coming towards those rocks again, and we didn't want this little boat to get punctured.
[00:05:04] And as I was thinking about being on that boat with my family, I was thinking about how easy it is in life to drift.
[00:05:13] How easy it is to maybe have good intentions, but let the ways of life pull you towards something you never intended.
[00:05:24] How easy it is to drift from.
[00:05:28] Okay, I'm gonna lead today, and I'm gonna be a woman of God to reacting because everyone's annoying me. Can I get an amen? Okay. So I was realizing how easy it is for us to drift, how easy it is in my marriage when I don't pay attention to drift, to drift and spend more time working or more time with the kids than I do with my husband.
[00:05:56] How easy in life it is to drift into this awe of who God is. I grew up in the church, so I've had a lot of moments with God, but I'm telling you, when I was a 16 year old girl, it was tangible to me the reality of who God was.
[00:06:16] And without paying attention, I can drift. And then that awe and that chosenness and that deep love that I felt from God, I drifted to my own thinking of not being good enough, not being loved, all the dumb things that my mind wanted to do. And where once there was this beautiful awe of God, I've had moments of just total apathy.
[00:06:42] And in Malachi, he is challenging us. God is using Malachi to speak to the Israelites. But I believe that everything in Malachi is as relevant to us as it was to them.
[00:06:56] And God's challenging Israelites because he's saying, you are my chosen people, but you're drifting.
[00:07:05] You're drifting from having me at the center of your life.
[00:07:10] And for those of you who know, in the Old Testament, we've got this beautiful thing that God's done. He has chosen the israelite people to be his, to be set apart. But time and time and time again, they reject him, reject him, and they reject him.
[00:07:27] And now here we are in the book of Malachi. And there had been this season of about 70 years where, where the Israelites had been taken into captivity by the Babylonians.
[00:07:40] But it wasn't like a captivity like you would think about in Egypt, where they were true slaves. This kind of captivity was they really, they had freedom. They could learn, they could own a business, they could have a home. And so it wasn't a horrible, horrible thing. But they were taken. And Israel, Jerusalem, it was in shambles. It was totally and completely destroyed.
[00:08:06] And in Malachi, we're picking up about 100 years after God has freed them, they're back in Jerusalem. They've rebuilt the temple, they've rebuilt the wall. They've got homes, they've got freedom.
[00:08:25] They've got a sense of life is back to normal.
[00:08:31] But in it, the drift has happened. And I want to talk to you tonight, because in Malachi, there is six challenges or six kind of disputes that God talks to the Israelites, and he shares with them, but every time he says this challenge, they kind of are defensive about it. Have you ever been there?
[00:08:52] I can be queen of defense sometimes where I'm like, mm hmm. Why don't you look at yourself first? You know, okay. But you can't do that with God. So the Israelites are defensive in their response. And so tonight I want us to have a totally different demeanor.
[00:09:12] I want us to have one where we can hear the voice of God challenge us, and we can be open to really ask ourselves the question, is this adrift in my life? And what I did is I'm going to ask the question, but then I'm going to tell you how the warning sign kind of appears in our life. So if you're sick, there's warning signs, right?
[00:09:33] You got strep throat, you got a sore throat, maybe your ear hurts. Sometimes your stomach hurts. You've got warning signs. And in the same way that we can drift, in the same way that God's challenging the Israelites, I believe that there's warning signs from Malachi that we can pull out. Okay, I brought this thing. I love to do these, but I was like, this is going to be dumb. So they're warning signs. It's red alert. Okay.
[00:10:00] Glad I brought that up there. Okay, let's start from Malachi. Verse, chapter one, verse nine. I'm sorry. Two.
[00:10:10] It says, I have always loved you, says the Lord. But you retort, really? How have you loved us? And the Lord replies, this is how I showed my love for you. I loved your ancestors. Jacob, when God is starting with the Israelites, the very first thing he starts with is his love.
[00:10:34] I have always loved you. And church, if you hear nothing else tonight and you zone out, let that be the sentence of the night. Your heavenly father has always loved you. He has chosen you. We are his people.
[00:10:52] And he starts in this honest, open statement, I have always loved you. But something's happened in the hearts of the Israelites, and there's a bitterness, and they say, how have you always loved us?
[00:11:07] And Jesus, or God, goes right back to the beginning of time. And in the beginning of time, he chose Jacob to be their ancestor. He chose him from the very beginning.
[00:11:18] And there's this beautiful concept that I want you to feel tonight. God has chosen and knows you from the very beginning.
[00:11:27] He knows everything that's going to happen in your life. He knows the purpose and the plan and the call he has for you. But we have to be on alert. That bitterness does not rob us of the life that God has. Bitterness is our first warning sign.
[00:11:46] We got to be alert on what my mind is thinking, what I'm feeling, how am I showing up in life? And when we think about it, there's a drift from this awe of who God is to this, this blase, this was it, laissez faire, where you just, you just show up.
[00:12:11] And sometimes what happens is I stop seeing the good and the beautiful things that God has put in my life, and I've edged out that. And what now is at the root and the lens of my life is. Can be the hard stuff.
[00:12:26] It can be the things that I don't have. It can be the things that I'm just. I'm bitter.
[00:12:34] There's an anger inside of us that is like a resentment.
[00:12:39] And I promise you, what's happening is it's a red flag of God's, of a drift, and God's calling us back. And he's saying, don't drift into bitterness. Let it be in a warning sign. Let it be an alarm to you that when you start seeing more of the bad, more of the angry, more of the ugly, let that be a cue, that it is time for you to sit in the still, in the quietness, to hear God's voice, to list some of the things that you're thankful for. You'll see over and over and over in scripture all the ways that God shows up and says, take a minute, be thankful, because it changes our mindset, it changes our rhythm of life. And instead of bitterness coming in, now we have an openness to God. Now I'm looking for things to be thankful for. I'm looking for ways that God is showing up in my life.
[00:13:38] Number two, we're going to go to Malachi. One six nine, it says, the Lord of heaven's army says to the priest, a son honors his father and a servant respects his master. If I am your father and master, wear the honor and respect I deserve. You have shown contempt for my name, but you ask, how have we ever shown contempt for your name?
[00:14:05] You have shown content by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar. Then you ask, how have we defiled the sacrifices? You defile them by saying, the altar of the Lord deserves no respect. When you give blind animals as sacrifices, isn't that wrong? And isn't it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased? Try giving gifts like that to the governor and see how pleased he is, says the Lord of heaven's armies. Go ahead, beg God to be merciful to you. But when you bring that kind of offering, why should he show you any favor and at all ask the Lord of heaven's armies?
[00:14:45] Sometimes I think when we read the Bible, we don't sit in it long enough. And this is why it doesn't feel like it's for us.
[00:14:53] And so when you sit in this for a minute, what happens is Israel had. God had set up. These were his chosen people, and he had given them laws to follow. And one of them was what a sacrifice should be, how it should look. And it was supposed to be without spot, without blemish. It was supposed to be perfect. Because what God was doing, probably unbeknownst to them, was he was showing them a representation of Christ.
[00:15:23] He was saying, hey, when you do this sacrifice, I don't want just any old animal. I want you to be clear. I want this animal to be perfect. I don't want there to be anything wrong with it. Nothing defiled. I want it to be clean.
[00:15:39] And in Nehemiah, you see, when they were rebuilding the wall, they recommitted their lives to God, and they recommitted. And now here they are 50 years later, and they're giving blind animals. They're giving defected animals.
[00:15:54] And I think what our warning sign needs to be is apathy.
[00:15:59] I think there can be a time in our life where we show up with God. And I remember wanting to serve him so much. I was like, I will clean toilets. I will wash windows. I just want to serve God in any capacity I can serve him.
[00:16:17] And then it's like, oh, it's Saturday night. Ooh, you know?
[00:16:22] You don't know because you're here, you awesome people.
[00:16:26] There's moments, though, where it's like, am I drifting towards apathy? Am I drifting towards what's not pleasing to God?
[00:16:37] I think what happens, too, is we're overwhelmed. We have busy schedules. And I think instead of letting our life be centered around God, we let God be centered around our life. Does that make sense?
[00:16:57] I think when my kids were young and we did sports and we had all the schedules, life will pull you away.
[00:17:05] But what are the moments in your life that are your best?
[00:17:10] What are the things and the gifts that God has given to you that you cannot just bring him your leftovers, but you show up giving him the best of what you have? God is challenging them here. What kind of sacrifice are you giving to God?
[00:17:26] And I question, what kind of sacrifice are we giving to God?
[00:17:37] I have moments with God, and I've made it. I want to give him the best hours of my morning because I get weird, thin. You know what I'm saying?
[00:17:46] Your mind gets full, gets polluted. There's a lot of stuff. So I decided a long time ago I'm going to give him the best hours of my morning instead of whatever fits in when I allow it.
[00:17:59] What happens is I'm sitting in silence with God. I'm worshiping him, I'm reading scripture, and we have a relationship now that feels fueled and energized, and I can feel that awe of God. I was walking this morning after some God time, and I had my headphones on. It looks so ridiculous because I didn't care who was watching. I was, like, worshiping. And there was a song that came on, and it was called make room. And it says, I will make room for you.
[00:18:32] I will make room for you. Anything you want. I don't know words. I'm terrible at this stuff, but I will make room for you because your way is better. And I was listening to this with my headphones on, and I'm worshiping like this as I'm walking, probably walking towards, and I was like, I don't even care who's looking because I love him. And I don't want my life to be an empty apathetic.
[00:18:57] I want it to be alive and passionate. And I want to hear the words of God through Malachi and say, don't let apathy be a rhythm. Don't drift into it. There is something so much better. So what are the best times of your day?
[00:19:15] Martin Luther? He said, I have an extremely busy today, so this morning I'm going to spend 3 hours with God. Normally, we cut our time with God, or if we even go, but because he was busy, he needed extra. That is not an apathetic life. That is a life that does not let the drift. It's a life that's centered on God.
[00:19:39] You with me?
[00:19:41] Okay, let's go to three.
[00:19:43] Malachi 213 14.
[00:19:48] Here's another thing you do. You cover the Lord's altar with your tears, weeping and groaning, because he pays no attention to your offering, and he doesn't accept them with pleasure. You cry out, why doesn't the Lord accept my worship? But I'll tell you why. Because the Lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young, but you have been unfaithful to her, though she remained your faithful partner, the wife of your marriage vows.
[00:20:20] There is a drift sometimes of checking out, and I think I want to really specifically talk to those of you who are married I think sometimes we make these commitments and then life happens and you do life and you know everything about them. That person and what was cute and adventurous now is annoying sometimes, and it's all a lot. And then I think there's a drift if we allow it to check out in our marriages, but God's calling them on it.
[00:20:55] These men, they're divorcing their women. And in this scripture, you're going to see God hates divorce. You'll see that a lot, but you don't see the second half. The second half. Why does God hate divorce? He hates it because to divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty.
[00:21:14] God cares for us.
[00:21:18] He cares for us. And they use a woman in this, but it could be woman or man and God's deep care for us. I don't want to check out in life. I don't want to check out with my spouse. I don't want to drift to something that feels normal and to be disconnected. I don't want to check out and drift towards something that God hates, not for any other reason but this.
[00:21:47] You overwhelm her with cruelty.
[00:21:52] It's time to check back in.
[00:21:54] It's time to say, am I checking out? Is there a warning sign going off?
[00:22:00] Is my partner.
[00:22:02] Am I listening?
[00:22:05] When's the last time we had a good date? When's the last time we had a good conversation? When's the last time I just listened and actually felt for them?
[00:22:14] Actually felt and cared?
[00:22:20] Warning sign number four, Malachi 217.
[00:22:28] You have wearied the Lord with your words. How have we wearied him, you ask?
[00:22:33] You have wearied him by saying that all who do evil are good in the Lord's sight and he is pleased with them. You have wearied him by asking, where is the God of justice?
[00:22:48] This is a tricky one because I think sometimes we can spend time looking at the world around us or looking at the things that have happened in our life that are hard. And we can say, if God is good, then why?
[00:23:00] If God is for us, then why does it hurt so bad?
[00:23:06] And I think my dad did an awesome job of this in the sermon we did at CC midweek, which you can watch online, the story of my mom losing her arm. In those moments of deep pain, in those moments of uncertainty and not knowing what to do, he lended towards seeking God.
[00:23:29] He leaned towards God and not away. And he said this really cool idea. He said, I think what happens is I fuel myself up with God. But when I fuel myself up with God this day, it doesn't cover the next day. And he learned that every single day he needed to go back and to fuel up with God.
[00:23:54] Because what happens is this is the warning sign, is we tend to want to take control.
[00:24:01] If we don't believe that God is really a God of justice, we want to take control into our own hands.
[00:24:08] And sometimes this is my downfall. This is probably the one that convicts me the most of. Like, if I really trust in who God says he is, if I really trust that he is good, he is faithful, and he will work it all out for our good, then why do I lose sleep?
[00:24:27] Why am I up at 03:00 in the morning and like, okay, I gotta do this, this, this. I get up, I have conversations. I'm trying to make decisions for my husband, I'm making decisions for my kids. And they're like, we're adults. We can handle this. You know? And there's a sense of I've got to control it. Because if I don't control it, who will?
[00:24:46] Any amens. You know, the feeling? Any. Anybody? Am I alone up here tonight? The feeling of, if I can't control it, then who will? But our God is a God of justice. And in the hardest moments of pain in our life, when maybe you have been hurt, mistreated, abused, your God has the final say, and it is not finished for him.
[00:25:14] And we don't have to control every little thing.
[00:25:20] All right, let's keep going. You with me?
[00:25:23] Okay.
[00:25:27] This is also what he says. He says, return to me, and I will return to you.
[00:25:33] Return to me and I will return to you. You.
[00:25:38] It just caught me off guard because he's asking us to return, and then he will return. But who's initiating here?
[00:25:48] God's initiating.
[00:25:50] And in Malachi, he's saying, return to me. He's already initiating. And I think inside of each and every one of us, God is initiating something good.
[00:26:01] He's the one who initiates. It's not us. But it's my job to lean towards him. It's my job to return to him.
[00:26:11] Okay. Five, I think.
[00:26:15] Thank you. Malachi 3810.
[00:26:19] We're doing the whole book of Malachi. Anyone else? Sweaty?
[00:26:24] It's short. We're almost done.
[00:26:27] Eight through ten.
[00:26:29] Should people cheat God yet? You have cheated me. But you ask, what do you mean? When did we ever cheat you? You have cheated me of the tithes and the offerings due to me. You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple. If you do, says the Lord of heaven's armies, I will open the windows of heaven for you. Do you know God talks about money more than just about anything else in the Bible? There's a ton of verses on money, and so I know this can feel like, ugh, we're a church. She's talking about money. All they want is my money. Let that be a sign, okay?
[00:27:13] Because here's the thing. I think what happens is our alert, our warning sign is stinginess.
[00:27:22] Our warning sign is, when is the last time you felt glad to give?
[00:27:28] When's the last time you helped someone out? You gave them your time, your money, and you felt good about it.
[00:27:37] God does not want. The Bible tells us that God looks at the heart church. We talk about finances because we know it's a part of the character of who God is. And if he's growing us to be more like him, then we've got to be bold in our faith. And part of growing in our faith is to say that I am going to trust you in a way that feels uncomfortable. I'm going to trust you with my finances, and I'm going to open my hands instead of clinging tight.
[00:28:06] My husband and I, we grew up very, very poor. When we got married, we were young. We had three kids. Almost instantly, we lived in the bottom half of this apartment.
[00:28:19] We had no money.
[00:28:21] But we took these words, and they meant something to us.
[00:28:27] We took these words, and where it says in ten, verse ten, if you do, says the Lord of heaven's armies, I will open up the windows of heaven for you. And we have never wanted in our life. We were poor. We got groceries, though. The kids were fed. We had diapers. We had all the things they needed in our life. He has never left us hanging. It's the only scripture that says, test me. Test me and see.
[00:29:03] I don't think we should test God, but here's what I think it's saying. It's saying, you can trust me. And if you just try it, just wait and see what God might do. Wait and see how he might bless you in ways you never saw coming. And here's the thing. It might not even be financially. It might be with struggles or with relationships or with things. Because what happens is, when you're not stingy, when you open up your heart and your eyes, you see a hurting world.
[00:29:34] We had a terrible waitress the other day. She was terrible, horrible, horrible. And I was a waitress. Jake was a waiter.
[00:29:42] We feel empathy. We feel the pain. And she was so bad and mean and not nice. And I was like, tip her better. Tip her bigger. And we tipped her bigger because we knew that she needed it. We knew that it would be a blessing to her.
[00:30:01] Thank you, husband. You did a good job on that one because we didn't want to.
[00:30:12] Okay, last one. Last warning sign. Malachi 313 15.
[00:30:20] You have said terrible things about me, says the Lord, but you say, what do you mean? What have we said against you? You have said, what's the use of serving God? What have we gained by obeying his commands or by trying to show the Lord of heaven's armies that we are sorry for our sins? From now on, we will call the arrogant blessed. For those who do evil get rich, and those who dare God to punish them suffer no harm.
[00:30:49] They're looking at those around them, and the warning sign that I think is adrift is when we start to look at our life and we start to compare it.
[00:30:59] I did this a lot when I was younger, in different ways. It was like the house. It was, you know, Pinterest came along, and I was like, oh, my gosh, it's gorgeous. Everything's gorgeous. Then I'd look at my house and I was like, you have no. You don't know how to decorate. You don't know.
[00:31:17] But then I could do it in spiritual ways, too, right? I can do it in ways where I'm like, God's blessing them. They must be doing something right. And instead of it being about the favor of God, it turns to be, what are they doing? What are they doing?
[00:31:36] Sometimes I can compare the way I look, ladies, you know the feeling.
[00:31:42] But all comparison ever does is two things. It makes you feel better about yourself, or it makes you feel worse about yourself. Neither of which is anything that honors God.
[00:31:53] And God is challenging them here.
[00:31:56] He's challenging them because they're looking at the people that are living however they want, and God's blessing them instead of creating a relationship with God that turns toward him, and they're drifting into a life they never wanted.
[00:32:18] This scripture is cool because it talks about the Lord says, I wanted to give you peace and life, but you keep turning away.
[00:32:31] How good does peace sound?
[00:32:34] Peace of mind, peace of heart.
[00:32:38] I was listening to a podcast, and it was Kay Warren. For those of you who don't know who she is, her and her husband, Rick Warren, started, I think, the largest church ever. It's giant. It's bigger than a city. There's like 100,000 people that go to it. It's all over. And they started this church. And in this podcast, they were interviewing Kay because her son Matthew, in the black shirt, he, from a very young age, showed signs of deep depression.
[00:33:16] She said when he was young, like two or three, they started noticing he wasn't like the other two.
[00:33:22] And she remembered asking their children's ministry pastor, can kids have depression? And by age seven, he had a diagnosis of severe depressive disorder. She said, through his entire life, he struggled.
[00:33:40] He struggled. They gave him tons of diagnoses. And she said, I don't know if every one of them was right, but what I know is my son was tortured by it. Mentally, he was tortured.
[00:33:53] And they said one of their biggest fears was that one day he would commit suicide.
[00:33:58] And the day came, and it was worse than anything they could have ever imagined.
[00:34:06] Matthew killed himself.
[00:34:09] And Kay said the pain was so crippling, so she felt adrift.
[00:34:20] And her biggest fear was she would drift from God and she would drift from her husband because it was just so much. And they had this worldwide giant church and organization, and she was afraid that any, any sort of affection, any sort of intimacy with her and Rick would be dissolved. Because Matthew's entire life, they never saw eye to eye on how to care for him. They never saw eye to eye on how to take care of him or get help for him. And so it was a constant battle in their marriage. And now that he was gone, she thought for sure it would cripple them.
[00:35:09] But in this podcast, Kay said Rick surprised her.
[00:35:13] She said, traditionally how he dealt with the hard was he would go on his own, he would seek God, and then he'd come back with the solution and how to fix it.
[00:35:23] But this time he turned towards Kay.
[00:35:29] This time he grieved with Kay and they shut out the world for 16 weeks, and it was them, their kids, and God.
[00:35:43] And for 16 weeks, it was just them. And they sought him with all his heart and they turned towards each other. And Kay said what her biggest fear was is now the exact opposite. They have an intimacy that they have never experienced before in their entire life.
[00:36:03] You see, when the waves of life came and crashed into their family, they didn't let the drift happen.
[00:36:11] Rick turned towards his wife. They turned towards God. And there's something so much beautiful, something so much stronger, something so much more profound in their life because they did.
[00:36:24] And church, this is the last book in the Old Testament, and I think it makes us want to lean in a little bit more and say, God, what are you trying to tell us?
[00:36:33] And he's challenging our drift. He's saying, let me be the center of your life because I have something better.
[00:36:41] But church better doesn't mean happier. Better doesn't mean easy. Better means deeper, richer, with purpose, with passion. A life that is meaningful.
[00:36:55] So tonight I want to open my heart to these warning signs so that we aren't a church that drifts mindlessly, but we say, no, I'm going to fight against them and I'm going to pursue, pursue God, heart, mind, soul. I'm going to follow him with all that I am because I want his life that he has for me. His way is better.
[00:37:17] And time and time again I keep proving it when I go my own way, that his way is better.
[00:37:25] So don't let this be a drift of a sermon because you missed Doc and wish he was here.
[00:37:31] I know you people.
[00:37:35] Let it challenge your heart, let it challenge your soul.
[00:37:42] And don't let the drift rob you of the life that God has.
[00:37:49] All of this Bible, all of Malachi, leads to chapter four.
[00:37:55] Chapter four says this. The Lord of heaven's army says, the day of judgment is coming, burning like a furnace. On that day, the arrogant and the wicked will be burned up like straw. They'll be consumed, roots, branches and all. But for you who respect my name, for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness will rise with healing, healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.
[00:38:31] For those of you who are hurting, for those of you who fall short, for those of you who have a tendency to drift, there is an answer, and his name is Jesus Christ.
[00:38:46] There is an answer and there is a healing for the soul. Soul. There's a healing. For the hurt, there's a healing. For the broken, there is a healing and it is the sun of righteousness.
[00:39:00] His light shines and magnifies who God is. Will you let the warmth of the sun of righteousness touch your life tonight?
[00:39:11] Let's pray.
[00:39:14] Dear heavenly Father, I pray for every single one of us watching here or online. And I pray that your name will be magnified.
[00:39:24] I pray that we will understand to the depths of who we are that you want peace. You want life for us, Father. That you have a good plan and a purpose. And if we catch the drift, that we will return to you.
[00:39:40] I pray it can be our heart's inclination that when we feel these warning signs, that it can just be a reminder that we are yours and to return.
[00:39:51] Thank you that all along you've called us with a plan.
[00:39:55] Thank you for Jesus Christ.
[00:39:57] I pray tonight as we take the Lord's supper. Father, that you will.
[00:40:02] You will just be with us. That your spirit will speak to our hearts.
[00:40:09] That you will do what only you can do. In your mighty son's name we pray. Amen.
