Daughters: Meet Me In The Middle | Pastor Nicole Sweetman

 We're going to jump into the message here tonight.

I'm so excited to unlock and unpack the scripture with you.

But for those of you who might not know me, my name is Nicole.

And my husband and I, we've been married for 15 years.

I've been... Woo!

Yeah.

 We have two kiddos.

Winston is 11 this Monday, and Mabel, she's six.

And if you ask, she's probably really the one that runs the house at home, but I'm trying really hard to not let her usurp my throne.

 But we've been in LA for almost 18 years.

I'm originally from Atlanta, Georgia.

So I like to still claim that title, although I'm reaching that funny place where I've lived here almost longer than I lived there, which is very bizarre.

But when I was 14 years old back in Atlanta, Georgia, there were two very significant events that took place in my life.

The first event is that my family finished off our basement.

 That was a big day.

The second event is that my family got invited to attend a church called C3 Church Atlanta.

That is a church that Jake grew up in.

It's a church that became my home from that point forward and is part of the network, the family of churches that Cathedral belongs to.

So that was a big moment for myself and our family.

 Now, aside from hosting my very first co-ed birthday party in our new finished basement where I got Usher My Way CD.

My way, my way.

Okay, I won't.

No.

It's seven o'clock on the dot.

I'm in my drop clock cruising the streets.

Yes.

Come on.

 Anyways, the basement getting finished off, that was a delineating time in my life because that was the moment that my dad moved downstairs.

See, my parents' marriage had been rocky for many, many years, and with the installed drywall and the installed carpet came now physical boundaries of their separation, and it would continue like that for almost a decade until they became formally divorced when I was a young adult.

 And like many casualties of divorce, though my dad was under the same roof, and it was a time where obviously the terrain between a father and a daughter is already very strained and complicated, I deeply felt the absence of the love and the identity I once knew well as a young girl from my father.

 And so at 14, my nomadic splintered family, we put on our Sunday best and our big smiles like we do in the South.

And we went to church.

I found myself walking into the local body of Christ.

I found myself walking into this obscure church in a warehouse off the railroad tracks in the suburbs of Georgia.

And I would have come into this church being so insecure.

 Lacking all courage, all boldness, no true understanding to who I was in Christ, this daughter of God.

Like she sounded like a mythological creature, you know, someone I could never dare to actually become.

 And as the years went on and my parents became more separated, my mom and my sisters and I, we put our roots down into this church.

And the mantle that my mom was now trying to carry by herself as spiritual leader for us, well, she found co-laborers for in the local body.

 through the small group leaders, through the kids volunteers, through the youth volunteers, through the pastors, she found those who were willing to embrace their role as being part of the body of Christ, seeking the best interest of a single mom and her three girls.

And so the church was and continues to be God's physical expression of his love and his strength so that a mom could start over again.

 So that three girls could find a place of refuge to heal in.

They could find a foundation to build their lives upon, run their wildest dreams out on, including meeting all three of our husbands in the same church.

How about that?

 See, now 25 years later, I can look back, and I know it was no mistake that the same year that my father moved downstairs was the same year I moved in to my heavenly father's house.

See, it was here that I began to understand and experience what it was not just to be a daughter of God, but to be a daughter of his house.

 Galatians 4, 4 through 7.

 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship, because you are his sons.

God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, girls, but God's child.

And since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

 To be a daughter is a title that we get to carry through the redemptive work of Christ on the cross.

And we actualize the fullness of this identity through the context of belonging to his local family.

Quite often, I feel like as girls, we like to play the role of an only child with God.

Just me and God over here.

Just me and Jesus.

 Now, I am the middle sister of the three of us, and I understand how luxurious and glamorous the only child can seem, right?

The only child never knows the woes of having to call a shotgun in order to control the radio.

You don't know that one.

 The only child doesn't know the struggle that it is that you can't have both the towels in the hotel room.

You have to share and save one for your sister.

A towel for your hair and your body?

What a luxury.

An only child doesn't have to consider fighting over what movie to watch on movie pizza picnic night with the family because your preference is the only option.

 But Jesus didn't see being God's only child, his only son, as something to sit back and hold to himself, did he?

But he gave up his seat in heaven.

He came down to earth to share his sonship with us.

 hebrews 2 10-11 says it like this in bringing many sons and daughters to glory it was fitting that god for whom and through whom everything exists should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered get this both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family isn't that amazing

 So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

He's not ashamed to call you sister.

So as I said before, girls, we can't step into being a daughter of God and try to exclude ourselves from also being a sister.

As the middle sister of my family, I have been conditioned to share all things, my room, my food, my clothes.

So that caused a lot of catfights.

 my dressing room, but my sisters were a little bit more, you know, not into the backwash and appreciated their privacy.

They would never share a fitting room with me.

I didn't understand it.

And I'd be like, come on guys, we share the same blood.

And they're like, well, not really Nicole, but we understand what you're trying to say.

But daughters, come on, we are covered by the same blood of the lamb, are we not?

 Did you know that siblings, we share 50% of the same DNA and then from the other 50% is like, you know, a unique concoction.

Did you know that?

And so as sisters, as we live together in Christ, there is a commonality that you and I share by being in Christ.

 but there is also this beautiful diversity that we see through god's expression of himself through us so that as his image bears when i look to the person to the left and to the right i see god's character i see his nature i see his wisdom on full display i see his creativity on full display

 As I look to the women around me, right?

When I look to Amara, I see God's strength.

When I look to Sarah, I see God's loyalty.

When I look to Amanda, I see God's compassion.

When I look to Renee, oh, Renee.

I see God's love for making complex things really simple.

Let me flip my page so I know where I'm going.

Hang on.

They're sticking.

Jake goes, we need to get you to preach off a laptop.

I go, I like paper.

 Okay, so the mission here tonight, quite frankly, is to help condition us not to live as an only child in the kingdom of God.

I want to call you to the middle.

I want you to come join me as a middle sister.

I know we get a bad reputation, but honestly, it's the best position to have.

 Because you are surrounded.

You have daughters that have gone before you.

You have daughters that are behind you.

And you are covered.

And you are safe.

But you also have the best point of view of what God is doing in each other's world.

So I'm inviting you, sisters, to come meet me in the middle.

 Sound good?

So open up your Bibles to the book of Philippians.

That's where we're going to park here this evening.

And as you read this letter that Paul is writing to the church in Philippi, you very quickly catch on to his love for this church.

I mean, he uses some pretty mushy, gushy emotional language to them.

I mean, a man that can express his feelings.

Are you kidding me?

How refreshing, right?

 Paul addresses the church in Philippi.

Get this.

He says, you are my source of joy.

You are my crown, my beloved.

Oh, I long for you.

I mean, get a man that talks to you like that.

 But his tone in addressing the church is so much more than just casual friendship.

Like he is talking to his brothers and sisters in Christ.

And from the jump, we see this language being used to point to a very specific theme about unity.

 And as Paul writes these letters to the church in Philippi, he's writing to them because he knows that the family in Philippi, well, they're having a bit of a sibling squabble, you could say.

See, who knows that siblings are not always on the best terms with one another.

And so this letter has been crafted with intention to bring what we will learn is a bit of a severed family back together.

 From the first line that Paul uses, we can see this theme of a call to unity through humility.

See, in Philippians 1.1, Paul starts out, he says, Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ.

Now, that's really distinct that he would introduce himself as a servant.

In all the other letters, in most of them, he refers to himself as Paul, the apostle.

But here he says, I'm Paul, the servant.

 And as you read throughout this letter, the language for unity and humility becomes very strong and more urgent.

He uses words like, stand firm in one spirit, striving together as one in the gospel.

Don't grumble, don't argue, don't put confidence in the flesh.

Join together, stand firm in the Lord.

Are you catching my drift?

 And Philippians 2, 2, he goes on to say, make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being in one spirit of mine.

Okay, we're getting it.

He's really hammering the point.

He says, don't do anything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit and humility.

 Value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others.

At this point in the letter, you should be going, what kind of drama has gone down with the Philippians?

Like, what is happening?

And we get a clue as to what's occurred in Philippians 4, 2 through 3.

 Paul says, I plead with you, Urodia, and I plead with Syntech to be of the same mind in the Lord.

Yes, I ask you, my true companion, help these women.

Uh-oh, we're in trouble.

Could you imagine, honestly, if one day...

 Jake got up here and was like, Dylan, help these women.

Help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel.

Now, you're reading this story.

You're reading the letter.

It's mushy-gushy, calling us to unity.

And then all of a sudden, Paul is like calling out these two chicks.

Like, what the heck is going on?

This could seem rather left field.

 But Paul calling these two women who were leaders in the church out by name identifies for us a cause for the disunity that he has been addressing up until this point.

And so we know that these two women's animosity towards one another is so severe and it was impacting the community with division so significant that he had to call in a referee.

He had to call in a mediator to come and help.

I mean, talk about the reunion of real housewives.

Here we go.

 And when he says help these women, that word help is the same kind of help that Peter, the fisherman, calls out to his partners to help him bring in the miraculous catch because the nets were breaking.

I mean, this is some urgency.

This is some necessary help they need.

This isn't like help me bring the groceries in from the car.

 And although we don't know the exact terms of these two women's conflict, we can look at the context clues of the topics that Paul discussed in his letter, right?

He addresses pointedly rivalry, selfish ambition, vain conceit, pride.

What kind of power struggle was going on between these two gals?

What is evident to me is that these two women have somehow moved from siblings to only child.

 They have gone from servant to serving their own interests.

And so the cure for this cancerous division is Paul pleads with them, be of one mind.

He is calling them back to the middle.

He is saying, come and stand back.

 on the common ground of Jesus Christ.

Because it's in that minute that we realign ourselves with Christ, that our attitudes with one another will reflect that of Christ, and we will be humble again.

We will be servant-hearted again.

See, the unity of sisterhood has been under attack and targeted by the enemy by day one to get our eyes off God and

 and become distracted, nasal gazing, consumed with our own best interests.

Like here with the women in Philippi, rivalry, pride, selfish ambition.

I mean, the devil has no new tricks.

He just puts new skin on it.

And we have seen this be played out time and time again, have we not?

 Many of us have grown up hearing you're a woman living in a man's world, so get ready.

And it has bred and molded in us a spirit of rivalry, and we are clawing our way to the top of our own ladder.

We will eat our own if it means getting one more leg up on the rung of the ladder.

And now we have this rising generation of these women who are standing at the bottom of our wobbly man-made ladders, and they're looking up at us, and they're like, yeah, no, thank you.

 And so we see this trend of moving from the boss babe era to the trad wife era.

But it's the same problem, just new skin.

I see you on social media.

It is trad wife hunger games out there.

 Who can make the cleanest food?

Who has the best sustainable garden?

Who can milk the most almonds?

Who can knit the most socks?

Like, how do you milk an almond?

No matter what title you're striving for, CEO or housewife, both are biblically permissible.

Neither, Jake actually wrote that in my notes for me.

 But neither, no matter what title we're going for out there, neither can come before our identity, our title of citizen of heaven, daughter of God, sister in Christ.

 Don't fall for that tactic of allowing the enemy to take our selfish nature and use it against us to wiggle us out of the middle, leading us astray like a lamb from the flock.

I'm calling all of us scattered lambs back to our position of middle.

I'm calling us like Paul did to these women in Philippi.

Let's recover the beauty of a gentle, tender spirit so we can be women reflecting our heavenly identity.

Amen?

 And so Paul brings us, he calls out these women in the Bible, and then literally the next thing he says is a breakdown of practical application.

Thank you, Paul, of how we walk out this unity, how we walk out this sisterhood.

 He says this in Philippians 4, 4 through 7.

This is our main passage.

We're really going to dig our teeth in here tonight.

He says, rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again.

Rejoice.

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious about anything.

 But in every situation, by prayer, petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts, your minds in Christ Jesus.

Rejoice.

Be gentle.

Don't be anxious.

Pray.

If we can make this a rhythm in our lives, can I tell you, girls, you will find yourselves walking out this beautiful calling to be daughter by remaining as a sister.

 And so let's break this down.

To be a middle sister, you have to rejoice.

Rejoice, baby.

Rejoice can feel like a really, really funny first step.

Like there's tension in the room.

And you're like, rejoice.

And, you know, imagine them.

Here, here, here.

Paul has sent us a letter.

You know, and they're reading it out.

And they're like, wait a second.

Wait.

 What did he just say?

Rejoice.

And Paul's like, yeah, I said it.

I'll say it again.

Rejoice in the Lord.

I mean, imagine the next time my kids are fighting.

And I go, guys, you know what we need right now?

We just need a praise break.

Praise break time.

You and your husband are squabbling.

Honey, you know what we need to do right now?

 Please tell me it's sex.

No.

Let's praise the Lord, sweetie.

Try that one next time.

Let me know how it goes.

Next time you get mad at your friend, ticked off at your boss, instead of ghosting them or venting, rejoice.

Paul literally says, no, first step, rejoice.

Why is praise the first step?

Because it gets our eyes off

 and back to where it needs to be.

Listen, the enemy would absolutely love to do nothing more than allow your feelings to determine the level of your praise.

Hear me.

I don't feel like praising.

I need time to process.

That was a lot for me to take in right now, and I can't just flip a switch, okay?

 for me to praise right now that would be disingenuous to who i am that would not be genuine worship to the lord for me to praise in this state no no no no no choosing to apply some good spiritual self-discipline to your own self-serving tush

 to get yourself out of that corner, the tantrum you put yourself, and back in a posture of praise.

That keeps you living in the middle.

Praise, rejoice in the Lord.

It literally brings us together.

 Ephesians 5, 19 says, speaking with one another with psalms, hymns, songs from the spirit, sing and make music from your heart to the Lord.

Paul again is prescribing worship for unity that as I engage here, it impacts how I engage here.

 Practically speaking, it's really hard to be divided in the flesh when we're united, drinking from the same well of the Holy Spirit.

And can I just say, we cannot allow our circumstances, we can't allow feelings to determine our praise.

 We can't allow circumstance to determine our praise.

And no one showed us that better than Paul himself.

I mean, he's literally suffering for the Lord.

He knew the only way he could survive his suffering is if he was rejoicing.

And he knew he could rejoice because of the one he put his faith in.

Our praise is not dependent on circumstance.

It's dependent on the person that is Jesus and what he has already done for us.

 Okay, middle sisters are gentle.

If we are daughters who rejoice in the Lord always, then we will be characterized by gentleness to all.

Gentleness.

Philippians 4, 5, let your gentleness be evident to all.

Okay, and this makes sense because by your rejoicing and drinking in the same spirit, right?

What does that mean?

Guess what gentleness is?

 It's a fruit of the Spirit.

It's a fruit of the Spirit.

So as we rejoice, we produce in ourselves the fruit of the Spirit because praise and worship, it clears the chaos from our hearts.

 You know, some of us, we have our knickers in a twist because we're getting so upset over little paper cut issues.

And we need to put the drama aside.

We need to remember what fight we're fighting.

It's not against flesh and blood.

And we need to unite ourselves.

So when you hear the word gentle, what do you think of?

Do you think of Mother Teresa?

Do you think of a baby lamb?

What do you think of?

 Gentleness defined is kindness.

It's yielding, not seeking your own way or right.

Gentleness is to be courteous.

 Gentleness places our strength under God's guidance.

We're not bowls in a china shop.

It's composed of humility and thankfulness coming together to truly take a position of servant.

See, gentleness is not a personality type.

It's not a tone of voice.

 And it's also not weak.

It's not to be a pushover.

It's not to not have a backbone.

It's not to be a doormat.

There's nothing weak about the Holy Spirit.

And if gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit, then by definition, gentleness is truly strength.

It's the same kind of strength that Jesus showed as he put himself on the cross for you and I. Many would look at that as weakness, but we know that is in fact true power.

 Now, to be gentle, it requires immense amounts of self-control and prudence.

Gentleness is dependent on us putting our self-interest last.

Even if we feel we are right, girls, even if we think we're justified, girls,

 You know, I just want to talk to the wives for a moment because we need to reclaim gentleness in our homes with our husbands.

There's a world out there that is showing us that if you think it, feel it, you should say it.

And we have put our husbands in the mosh pit of our emotions.

And we think because I have the title wife, I have the right for him to be my dumping ground all the time.

 But can we take a page out of Hannah's book when she was distressed, when she was upset, when she was getting taunted, when there was wifey drama going on?

Where did she go?

She didn't go to her husband.

Where did she go?

She went to God.

She went to the altar.

She literally poured her soul out to him so much so that the priest Eli thought she was drunk.

 Some of us, we need to clean up and we need to recognize, am I being gentle?

Now, that doesn't mean you don't have open communication and dialogue.

That doesn't mean we don't have wifey tears.

Jake preached a great message about making room for wifey tears.

But the thing with it is gentleness, right?

It's yielding.

Is this the right time to bring this up?

Have I done my part to first go to the feet of Jesus?

 Gentleness.

It's not to be quick to anger.

Gentleness is to not slander a person for the sake of being real or honest.

Gentleness is not to say that degrading comment under the guise of just making a joke to be funny.

I will never forget in our early years of marriage, I was just always... I always just wanted to have something to say at the table and to make people laugh because I was like, you know, and...

 I would just always end up poking fun at Jake.

And, you know, he knows I love him and all, but, you know, I got convicted by the Holy Spirit.

He gave me a little Holy Ghost slap.

That's what I call them.

And I got convicted that, yes, they're funny, yes, they're close friends, but I'm tearing him down for my building up.

That's not fun.

Gentleness.

Paul calls them to be gentleness to who?

Who?

 All, not just your friend group, not just the coworkers you like, but to all.

My friends, gentleness can be exhausting and impossible only if we try to do it apart from God.

See, it's a fruit of the Spirit, not by my might, not by my power, but by the Spirit.

And if gentleness is truly a work of the Holy Spirit being invited into your lives,

 Grab that card you got given.

On it, it's this verse.

And I like to say it's like a sifter for my heart, for the soil of my heart.

And as I pray it line by line, Lord, purify my heart.

Renew a right spirit.

I am sifting and seeing what got in here today.

Guarding your heart is a lot more about being a farmer than it is about being a knight.

 Guarding your heart is about being a farmer, excavating the soil.

What's here that shouldn't be here?

If gentleness is the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, then gentleness can be and should be our response even in the face of opposition.

 So Paul is writing to this church and he's saying, hey, be gentle.

Let it be evident to everyone.

The church that is undergoing persecution.

Philippians 129, Paul says, it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.

 goody since you are going through get this the same struggle you saw I had what struggle did Paul have that they witnessed well if you flip over to Acts 16 you fall Paul and Silas and Philippi and they are getting flogged they are getting beaten with rods and thrown into prison but guess what their response to opposition is

 hallelujah praise and thanksgiving they start a worship service the ground shakes the prison doors fly open and at this moment it would be reasonable for them to seek out their best interest and to get out of dodge but what does paul do he hangs about and shows kindness to the jailer the man who was holding him in chains and says don't kill yourself you're not long gone let me share jesus with you

 He gives him the salvation call.

The household gets saved.

And Paul in this moment presents an opportunity for the gospel now to reach beyond.

And how amazing is that?

And it doesn't even stop there.

After Paul gets out of jail, guess what?

The magistrates come to him and they're like, hey, if you could just leave quietly, you've caused a lot of ruckus.

If you could just quietly please exit the stage.

 And Paul is like, wait a second, I'm a Roman citizen.

I have a right to a trial for the unfair treatment you guys have given me.

Oh, oh, he could stand on that.

But what does he do?

He shows gentleness.

He forgoes his right and he leaves peacefully.

 Now, in our day and age, many of us aren't getting flogged and beaten, hopefully, for our faith.

But we do go through opposition.

And we have to choose what our response is going to be.

See, the thing with Paul and the Philippians is their opposition, you could physically see their wounds.

You could see the chains.

You could see the bruises.

Girls, when we go through opposition, our wounds stay hidden.

 They stay inside.

And it is up to us to decide what we will do with them.

Will we bring it into the light?

Will we allow the love of God to heal them?

Will we allow the Holy Spirit to do a new work in our hearts?

My son recently informed me of an observation he had.

These are always fun.

He comes up to me and he's like, Mom, do you know what Mabel does?

 Okay, what does she do, buddy?

She uses her emotions to manipulate me to try to get her to do stuff.

And I look at him and I go, buddy, women are going to be doing that to you for the rest of your life.

When we allow our brokenness to go unaddressed, we will be like little Mables.

And those wounds...

 will manipulate us, it will manipulate our friends, our spouse, and it will become the soapbox that we stand on to defend, serving our own interests, exiting from the middle.

Can I call you back to the middle?

See, Paul tells us in Philippians, he says, don't do anything grumbling or arguing that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault.

 and a warped and crooked generation.

Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.

Can I remind you, daughter, if you have a wound, if you have brokenness inside, God has made you a new creation.

And it's not your wound that defines you, it's whose wounds that bring you healing.

God has created you to shine.

Can we let our gentleness be evident to all?

 To be a middle sister, next Paul finally instructs us, do not be anxious about anything in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

In other words, as a middle sister, we are called to be grateful.

We have to be grateful.

Simply put, anxiety is the fear for tomorrow.

We all know what anxiety is.

 But there is a difference between genuine concern and being overly concerned.

 Genuine concern is a good thing.

In fact, Paul gives Timothy a shout-out as one who is genuinely concerned for their welfare.

But then, when we cross over the boundary line and we become obsessed with worry, we become overly concerned, we start removing ourselves from the middle.

And anxiety becomes our own island.

Nothing isolates us quicker from our sisterhood, from the body of Christ, than anxiety.

 I recently was having a conversation with my oldest sister, and she is the saint of the family.

She's like five feet tall.

She's super introverted, super sweet, teaches children.

I don't know if it gets, you know, sweeter than that.

But she was just sharing with me that she'd been struggling with anxiety, and we're just like talking, and we're, you know...

 On the phone, she lives in Georgia, and I get to the end of the conversation, she's like, thanks, this really helped.

And I'm like, well, gosh, you never share anything with me, so it's not every day you bare your soul to me.

And she goes, yeah, I just decided I can't be an island unto myself anymore.

It doesn't help.

And girls, that's what anxiety will do to us.

We become so self-consumed with our worry, with our fears, that we don't have time, we don't have capacity to genuinely concern for our sisters anymore.

 At the end of the day, anxiety is the absence of trust in our relationship with God.

That's what it is.

 Even Jesus, in his own words, in Matthew 6, 25, says, don't be anxious about your life.

Don't be anxious.

He's like, listen, my dad, when he made the whole world, thought through every single detail down to how the lilies were going to get taken care of, how the birds were going to get fed, and you're way more valuable than them.

My father knows your needs.

Anxiety

 is natural to be the world's response.

But worry should not be a characterization of God's kids.

Don't be anxious about anything.

That's really hard.

See, I have had my own season of anxiety.

Fun fact, it's a symptom of perimenopause, so get ready for that.

 But, you know, there are moments where you can go from just general anxiety that you can pray off and push through and yada yada.

But then there's the kind that sticks.

It's the kind that like your kids see it on your face and ask if you're okay.

It's the kind that makes people walk in eggshells around you, that grips you.

And I was like, Nicole, you got to get this under control.

Like, what is going on?

This isn't like me.

 And I went to God and I'm praying.

I'm like, what is at the root of this anxiety?

And what I've discovered is on the other side of our fear that we hold is a desire that either we haven't trusted God with or that has gone unmet.

 And we just haven't simply surrendered it to him.

There's a mistrust in his word and in his promises to us.

So as I struggled with anxiety, and I knew there was a root of fear of abandonment, I began to understand on the other side of that fear was this desire to be loved, noticed, and affirmed by my father.

And that's when I got the picture of my dad walking into the basement.

And in that moment, I heard God say, Nicole,

 I never left the room.

I never left the room.

And it's in that moment that I put together the same year.

Yeah, that happened.

It's the same year I became a daughter of your house.

I began to feel the affirmation.

I began to feel the love.

I began to feel the strength of my heavenly father through the hands of this church.

See, on the other side of our fear is just an unmet desire that we haven't fully trusted God with.

 And these desires that you have, they're heaven-breathed into your heart.

God has placed and deposited there into your soul, and it's his creative expression within you.

But can I tell you something?

We have to first hold tightly to this word so that we can hold loosely the desires, even the quiet ones that he speaks to you in private.

We have to learn to hold them loosely.

And how do we do that?

We do it through prayer.

 we do it through prayer when we get our desires out of order we will become unbalanced and we will find ourselves moving away from the middle we'll be like the control freak sarah attached to abraham you remember her you're gonna have a nation come through you sarah well

 it's getting pretty late on the old timeline.

When's that going to happen?

She becomes anxious.

As a result, she treats Hagar so poorly, she has to bounce out of town.

That is the outcome of our anxiety.

But when we can get our desires back in order,

 When we come to him in prayer, you know, at the end of Jesus's passage about anxiety, he says, what?

Seek first the kingdom of God.

Seek first.

That's why Paul says, don't be anxious, but do what?

Pray.

Pray about everything in every situation.

 prayer with thanksgiving that's the antidote to our anxiety see what is prayer prayer is taking a step towards god prayer is closing the gap that anxiety has created in your life he tells you pray in every situation girls if we create a habit of praying in every situation we will break the habit of obsessive worry every situation are you praying for every situation

 Are you just saving the really big things to bring to him?

I won't.

I don't need to pray about that.

 Have you ever collected a lot of pebbles in your shoes?

It's uncomfortable.

Eventually, you're going to start limping.

You're going to have to sit down.

If we keep the pebbles in our shoes, the unprayed prayers, no matter how small they are, eventually they amount to much, and it will affect how you operate, how you hang out, how you connect, because you're preoccupied.

 You're not bothering God.

Bring it to him.

He paid the price, whether it's a boulder or a pebble.

Come on, pray in every situation.

I remember as a teenager praying just from my grades.

And I felt kind of silly, but I was like, he's my dad.

Why wouldn't I pray for those things?

Prayer with thanksgiving.

 This is where we find it possible to stop being anxious.

Because Thanksgiving is the sound of trust.

Thanksgiving is the sound of trust.

It is the discipline of rejoicing put in the form of a prayer.

 Some of us need to listen back to our prayer time with God.

We need to do a playback and we need to ask, is this prayer with thanksgiving or is it a complaining session?

Is it a grumbling session?

 There is a difference that I feel when I just come to God and I bring him my list for my kids.

And when I pray to God with thanksgiving, I thank you, Lord, that you are creating the mentorship, the friendships, that you're picking out the seat of where he's going to sit in his class.

I thank you, Jesus.

There is a difference I feel when I walk away from a prayer like that.

The voice of thanksgiving, girls, it's a voice of faith.

 As women, we were created to be life givers.

It's in our physical makeup.

It's God's nature in us to be a nurturer.

And so one of the greatest ways we give life, we sow life, we nurture life is through the prophetic voice that he has put inside his daughters.

And can I tell you, the prophetic voice

 voice within us if we look at the old testament prophets it wasn't about them telling the future it was about them reminding the people of god's promises and calling them to be faithful not to fall back to that idolatry not to fall back to that fear not to fall back to that self-centeredness

 The enemy would love nothing more than to dull, to take away our prophetic voice as a womanhood by getting us surrounded by thoughts of anxiety, by entrapping us.

And I am sick and tired of him putting a mute on our prophetic voice.

Why don't we stand here tonight?

Anxiety is detrimental to the body of Christ.

It's...

 When you're dealing with fear and you try to look to the future, you're terrified.

 You see darkness, you see death, you see decay, but if we can remain a prophetic sisterhood, then we will look to the future for each other, and we will see with eyes of promise.

He says, come, pray about everything, petition, make your requests be known, but put thanksgiving on it.

It's time that we bring back the prophetic cry in our hearts to God, and we say, I will rejoice this

 Fight the opposition.

Nevertheless, I will rejoice.

No matter the opposition, I will remain gentle.

I will choose to be kind.

I will be known for the light that shines within me.

Come on, girls.

Don't allow the enemy to take you out by getting stuck on your own stuff.

We got to give it to him.

Don't let fear trap you in.