I remember coming to the Gary Indiana Salvation Army corps a year ago. I had heard how Gary, Indiana had poverty and crime and what not. When Chelsey and I got here we were a bit nervous. But, everyone welcomed us with open arms. Gary wasn’t so scary, it was just another place. And all of you accepted us as your leaders, and sensed the anointing of God, and you followed that anointing of the Lord. You loved us, and we loved you, and honestly I learned to feel for the plight of those here who face violence and poverty and crime. But I also saw the beauty of the genuineness of people here, the honesty, and the perseverance through struggles. We will always be family, even though Chelsey and I are moving to our next assignment.
It’s amazing how much we can grow in a single year of our lives. One year can change your entire life. I think we’ve all learned that.
So we’re going to go on a journey together for our Farewell Sunday, and explore some of the things we’ve all learned over the last year. We’re going to reflect on how God has shaped and molded us. And we’re going to consider what God has for us in the future.
From Isaiah 43:1, “But now, this is what the Lord says—
he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”
Last June I remember Chelsey and I went to camp, and suffice to say, we had a tough experience. With the whirlwind of moving, coming to a new area, the pressures of the new environment, the barking neighbor’s dog, and then at camp, all the pressure came together, and I was broken by it. It was simply too much. And I stood under the street light wondering how it could have happened.
Yet like the Lauren Daigle song goes, God said I will rescue you. I will send out an army to find you. And God rescued me.
In the last year we all went through things that brought us to our knees, where it went past our ability to manage it. If the line of being maxed out is 100, life hit at about 110. Over the line, and overwhelmed.
Yet it did not stay there, God showed up and said, “Do not fear, you are mine.”
The secret to this overwhelmed crushing came later. At first we thought well, it hit us, and slammed us, and we survived, damaged, but still moving forward. We assumed it had taken something from us. And at first it felt that way.
But today, I look back and see that it formed us, fashioned us, and molded us. It got us to a high temperature, that made us moldable, and God used it to change us forever. The positive result is felt now, we are stronger, and braver and bolder than we used to be.
Second point on the journey, I recall driving each day, leaving downtown Chicago and driving along Lakeshore Dr. through endless seas of traffic. I remember driving angry, feeling defeated, feeling empty, wondering why would God put me in this situation where I have to drive two and a half hours a day.
It says in Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.”
Slowly each day the anger would build. I would cuss at cars. I would drive too fast. I would weave in and out of traffic.
And again, just like at camp, I reached a breaking point, a point of critical mass, the anger was too much, the frustration was consuming me, and I knew something had to change.
So I started praying on the drive. I mean really praying. I started praying the whole way. I was crying out to God from behind the wheel.
And as I prayed, God quickly brought me from a place of anger to a place of acceptance.
Did I suddenly love the drive? No. But did I fundamentally go from anger to acceptance? Even a level of peace? Yes.
By God’s grace and presence and leading I was maneuvered into a new mindset of acceptance.
Similarly, many of us have learned in these recent challenging seasons to pray. In your desperation you’ve carved out prayer times when you thought it wasn’t possible. And from those quiet times with God you’ve found a peace, and an acceptance of the difficulties of life. God overcame your anger and confusion and frustration in the quiet place of prayer.
Next, the weary service season. Have you ever had a week or day where you felt burdened by traumas in your family or your relationships, or your personal life, and you felt so broken by these traumas, and yet you knew you had to go to work the next day, or the next week, or the next month?
Isaiah 43:3 says, “3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
Cush[a] and Seba in your stead.”
Many of us last November and December were facing that. We were so tired, so exhausted, and in pain, yet the work battle came.
And we got to work this Christmas didn’t we? We went out and fought "the battle of Gary." We worked hard on our bell ringing campaign. And it was long and challenging. Yet God was with us.
But honestly I remember how wonderful the bell ringers were, they did amazing. So many people gave and gave. It was a wow for me, to see how God galvanized us all, so we could push through to the end, it was like we all knew it had to be done, we had to accomplish it and God was feeding us the strength to do it.
This tells me God brings us through seasons of weariness, where it's hard to get up each morning, hard to face the day, hard to not want to give up. And not only that, he will prosper us through those seasons.
If you’re weary, keep going, don’t give up, and believe that God will restore your hope.
Fourth phase of the adventure, the prophesy of a change. God reveals his plans and purposes to His people at just the right time.
Isaiah43: 4 “Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life.”
It starts with a moment of clarity, a moment where God communicates to us, and we realize something new is on the horizon.
For Chelsey and I it was when we visited my aunt and uncle’s church. We went, visited with family, thinking we just want to attend church on Sunday, so we’re going to visit their church. And God did something in our hearts, something profound, a spiritual experience.
Have you ever had a spiritual experience? Something that drew you in a new direction? Those are the nudgings of the Lord. Watch for them in your life.
You are precious to God. Therefore God will go to great lengths to lead you to where you are needed for His kingdom purposes. Period. He’s done extreme things in my life, made huge changes, to lead me, just to bless me, he does the same for you. He loves you. You are precious to Him.
But the shift must be verified, the new thing must be tested. Chelsey and I when we felt these things in the service, we knew we needed to seek the Lord. We needed to pray. We needed to set aside 3 weeks to pray and seek God. Is this His voice? Or are we letting emotions get the best of us?
So we prayed for three weeks. We should all seek to verify what we hear from the Lord through prayer. “God was that you?” There does come a moment for faith and trust, but we should always seek the Lord and ask Him to ensure that we heard correctly. I’ve heard wrongly before, and I had to seek God, and ask for Him for clarity.
Fifth moment, in January we as a body of believers began a series called Spiritual Warfare, which took us through the book of Ephesians.
I was planning to in a completely different direction, talk about choices and doorways, but God gave me a dream about spiritual warfare, that led me toward the topic.
As we began the series, new levels of spiritual warfare hit my life. I began to battle demonic dreams during the night. We experienced demonic activities in our apartment in Chicago. Fear was coming over us, sensing a presence in the room with us, and oppression experienced by our loved ones.
Margaret was experiencing spiritual warfare in her home, Chu and Mayra were experiencing it, others as well, the enemy was coming against the victories we’d accomplished together in the first six months together.
Isaiah 43:5-7 “Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
God suited us up in the full armor of God, and got us ready for increased warfare. And I believe that increased warfare will continue into the future. And as long as we know our authority in Jesus Christ, and we use it, we will continue to find victory.
The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came so that we would have life and have it abundantly.
The enemy wanted to steal from us, steal what we’d gained, steal the victories, and we as a body of believers stood together and commanded the enemy to get lost!
I recall that the Spirit led Jesus Christ into the wilderness to be tested by the devil for forty days. And Jesus combated the enemy by quoting scripture, and lastly, he commanded Satan in his authority, to leave him, and what happened after that?
Angels came and ministered to Jesus, they bound up his bounds and healed him.
After the spiritual warfare season, around Easter, in the month of April we saw God begin to do something new. He began to heal us. We’d been through rock bottoms, frustrations and anger, weariness in service, moments of hope, then intense warfare, and out of all that, most of us here were bruised and beaten up.
It was like April came and things slowed down, we celebrated the resurrection. During this season the Lord had many of us praying for others, anointing with oil became a thing we started doing regularly at the Gary corps, and numerous times we saw demons leave, illness leave, and heart healing take place. God had brought in a season of healing.
Isaiah 43:10-12 says, “10 You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord,
“and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor will there be one after me.
11 I, even I, am the Lord,
and apart from me there is no savior.
12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—
I, and not some foreign god among you.
You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God.”
Times of healing come for us, and healing flowing through us toward others. Having stepped into the authority of Jesus during the warfare season, suddenly, I saw many of you stepping into a new season of ministry, healing and helping others, in authority. And that authority brought real healing. We began anointing each other, as it says to do in scripture. Healing took place.
One of the beautiful moments of healing I had the opportunity to witnessed happened when we took our teens to camp in April. I saw God use a series of events that took place at camp to bring one of our teens to the altar with the divisional commander, and together they prayed, God lifted pain from our teen's heart, a pain that had been there since the loss of his grandmother. God did a mighty work of healing that day at camp, and it was amazing to see.
The 7th thing that God did among us in the last year? Spiritual breakthrough. God was doing a new thing among us.
Isaiah 43:16-19 says, “16 This is what the Lord says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,
17 who drew out the chariots and horses,
the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
18 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland."
Chelsey and I had sensed the call in a new direction and it had brought hope. But, we didn’t know where.
It reminds me of Exodus 14:14: "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
We were waiting, and watching. But we have to remember that Exodus 14:15 says, "Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”
There is a time to stand still and watch God. There is also a time to get moving. So we pursued the new direction God was moving us in, and it all came together at just the right moment, and the new path was established.
One thing consistent in the Christian life is change. One might expect that being a Christian means consistency. But in fact, it does mean consistent change. Growth, new events, one time period ending, another time period beginning. This is talked about in the book of Ecclesiastes, which discusses what different seasons of our lives may look like.
There may be a season of planting, where you are planting seeds in your life, there may come another season of harvesting where you are gathering the fruit of seeds you or another planted, there are seasons of grieving, where we are sad or mourning a loss, there are seasons of rejoicing where we are happy and blessed and excited. This is how being a Christian works.
Things change.
Rest assured, that God is going to continue to use the Gary corps for His kingdom and God is going to continue to use Chelsey and I at our next appointment as well.
So in conclusion today, we see these 7 stages and shifts that God did in us, in the last year. How do they link together? It’s hard to tell in the moment, but when we look back we can see how God weaves the strands together to create a beautiful tapestry.
Review of Main Points:
1. Being brought over the edge of what we could handle - some people say God won’t give you more than you can handle, it’s not actually true, 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, says, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” When we are brought over the edge, we are molded deeply. Truly. And then, God brings deliverance.
2. Anger and confusion at our situation - the brutal drive, the difficulties of our first year of marriage, these stresses and others sometimes lead us to get angry at our situation. And it led to prayer and worship in the car in the Chicago traffic, and then wrestling with God, toward a point of acceptance. Where in my heart I was able to say, I accept where I’m at right now, and I choose to trust God in it. This teaches trust despite our circumstances.
3. Weary service - This sort of service is viewed by God in a very precious way. I believe in certain seasons of weariness, our faithful service brings God to tears. We don’t give up, we keep marching, even though we’re marching on crutches. This leads to reliance on God
4. Prophetic hope - We see God nudge us in a new direction that renews our hope for the future. We’ve sensed for a while God changing the season, then God prophetically speaks it to us. And we begin to search and pray, as God leads us toward a new direction. This builds our faith and our patience as we wait to see what God shows us next.
5. Spiritual conflict - Increases in warfare come, and through it we study and learn our authority in Jesus Christ, we learn how to fight the enemy, and we take a stand. We fight the spiritual battles, the internal battles, the mental health battles, and we win. We go from surrendered to God, to relying on God, to standing on our authority as God’s children. We fight against the enemy, and the enemy is defeated. This teaches us to stand firm in struggles.
6. Healing - God is a God of healing. He has brought us through sorrows, confusion, weariness, hope, spiritual battles, and then, toward healing. He sends his angels and bandages us up and then teaches us to bandage the wounds of others. This heals us so we can love more completely. The healing of our hearts helps us to love others deeply without the wounds causing us pain. We learn to be healers in Christ.
7. Breakthrough to new seasons - Through all of this God brings the transition moment, one season ends, another season begins. And we find ourselves going into the new season ready. We’re ready because God has molded and shaped us through the previous season. The breakthrough is a blessing, it’s a reward, it’s a gift, it’s a sign of God’s love for us, as we move forward into what He has for us.
In truth, everything we went through together in the last year got us ready for what God is bringing next. I believe God is going to bring victories, along with new challenges. Dark times are coming for the world and our country. We live in the end times. But, God has made us ready to shine brightly in the dark times in which we live.
It has been my honor to be your pastor, to teach you from the word of God. We learned so much together. We went through the intro series together when I first got here, then the kingdom of God series where we went through the parables of Jesus, then the Christmas series, followed by the Spiritual warfare series, the key moments of Jesus’s life series around Easter, and then lastly, the Book of James series on practical action. Remember what you’ve learned, continue to apply it, keep praying, reading the word, and ministering to others.
I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ, to continue in your faith journey, whenever it leads you, whether in good times or in hard times, in times of favor or persecution to fulfill your ministry, and I believe you will, and then we will see each other in heaven to celebrate, God willing, in Jesus name, amen.
