Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Be sure to.
Subscribe so we can get you these new sermons every week. I hope you're blessed today.
Would you high five free people?
Tell them you don't even know, you can't even imagine how good God has been to me. Wow, y'all stay standing. I'm not going to be very long before I get to the word because I want to give you part two of what I started last week, and I want to talk about trusting in God. So Hello greetings, every campus. Hello, our watch party in DC. Hello everybody, God bless you. Hello to our EPAM. Y'all tell me hello back? Would you do that real quick?
Online? And in the room? Where are your manners? You gotta say hello back?
Sometimes it's like yeall are on a delay. It's funny, but hello greetings. You know, the Lord gave me a word. He said, every time you get up to preach, remember half the people you're preaching to almost didn't come that week, and so even just to get here was a victory for them. And so I always keep that in mind when I get up to preach. One thing I want to mention real quick. It was mentioned, but I want to tell you a little bit.
More about it. We are going to have an album that releases.
On May nineteenth called can You Imagine?
Put it in the.
Comments can you imagine, and then say yes I can.
And after May.
Nineteenth, I won't have to imagine because I will have it on my phone. I have it on Apple Music and Spotify and Pandora and Amazon Music. I might go down to Tower Records and buy the compact disc. I got a batch of the CDs the other day. They brought me the CD and I said, this will be for one person, my mom. My mom is the only person I know who still has a way to play CDs.
But it'll be May nineteenth.
Me and Chris were talking and the Lord has continued giving us new songs as we've been preparing these songs. So I say, I say, May nineteenth, we get togethered Elevation Valentine, we have a night of worship, we record some new songs and sing some of those songs, and just.
Keep the flow the Holy Spirit going all year long. I can't wait.
We've got, We've got, I told Holly the other day, I feel like I have more sermons than I have Sundays to preach them in right now.
I'm not starting a Wednesday night service though, I'm not doing that. I'm not that confident in it.
But and just the songs and the sermons and just to minister from a place of overflow is what I feel like God has given me in this season.
Now.
That means that I share with you almost directly what God is giving me, and from my own study and my own Bible reading, I don't have two files.
After I've processed and studied, I bring it to you.
It also means I'm going to be doing more and more of integrating the words, so you'll get a little bit one week, a little bit the next week, a little bit the next week, almost like a sermon series, but a little bit different than that. Because if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you can go watch my sermon from last week called Ugly Trust. You could turn this one off, go watch that one and then come back.
It'll be discipleship on demand.
And for everybody in the room, elbow your neighbor in their ribs and say get ready for this one.
Oh.
Also, hey, we've been having such a good time with these Elevation Nights that we're gonna We're adding dates in July July nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first, Greenville, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee. I just got back from Nashville, Tennessee. I still got my pink bracelet. I took my girls to see Taylor Swift. That was wild, felt like a women's conference in there.
It was awesome.
Now that's in July Elevation Nights dot com, and then we'll be back out in the.
Fall October third through the twelfth.
You can go to Elevation Nights dot com because we'll be in Miami, Florida, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Knoxville, Tennessee, Birmingham, Alabama, Lubbock, Texas, Dallas, Texas, and Houston, Texas.
All right, Elevation Nights dot Com. Get there.
I'll tell you what I want you to do, the exact opposite of what we normally do. Sit down for the scripture and let's get into it right now.
Are you excited about it? Amen? Me too? This is this is a psalm.
Go to Psalm thirty four, the song Trust in God, says, I sought the Lord, and he heard.
And he answered.
My premise last week is as simple as that sounds when we sing it. It doesn't live as simply as it sings, does it. I sought the Lord, he heard, he answered, not like a high speed internet connection anyway. I can't find Bible verses about certain things. I, as a parent, want to know how much screen time to give my kids where they can still be connected to their friends but not turn into apocalyptic zombies before they're eighteen. I can't find a Bible verse on how much screen time.
I read two Timothy, one Timothy. I look for third Timothy. Paul didn't say anything about screen time.
I don't know why. He just forgot to put that in, I guess.
And so our contemporary challenges often make it difficult for us to know exactly what God would have us to do in that situation. And yet God gives us timeless truth of his eternal promise that he hears us. Tell somebody next to you, he hears you. Psalm thirty four says I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord the humble shall hear
thereof and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, all of y'all who don't ever talk back in the sermon that Bible verse just testified against you.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Little delayed, but we're getting there.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
Here it comes.
I sought the Lord, and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The Angel of the Lord in campeth round about them that fear him. That's why it didn't kill you. Because the Angel of the Lord in campeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them no taste, and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Last week was called ugly trust, and this week is going to be called delayed praise. Delayed praise one of the most important things I could ever teach you, coming right now, not in a week. Right now, as I preach it, you might be watching it a year after I preached it. But it's coming to you right now. You believe that
could happen. God could have me speak something today that you will need in a year and you will click on it when the battle comes that I didn't know about when I preached it, but he did.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe you might find this sermon boring today and then get in a battle next week and go back to it and go. I think I needed that more than I thought I needed that at the time. One of my buddies likes to say, if you have relevance, relevance to a situation, you will give more attention to it. If you have a flat tire changing, it becomes important. But a flat tire changing seminar when all four a work and probably isn't going to draw your attendance or
your attention. I believe God is amazing like that delayed praise. Actually, while I was preaching last week, something was happening that was really distracting me. We had a technical difficulty to where my voice was bouncing off of one of these screens that was lower than it should have been. And so while I was talking to you, I was hearing me like a nanosecond behind my voice again, but you
couldn't hear it. But I could hear myself twice. And if that's ever happened to you on a zoom call or a phone call.
It is the worst thing, isn't it. You think you're going crazy.
You're like, hey, hang on, hang on a second, there's a delay, and then.
You're like, do I really sound like that? Is that what my voice sounds like? That sounds terrible. I'll never talk again. I'm gonna learn sign language.
And that's happening right now. The message is going out on YouTube. But if I called for comments and said, hey, text put on YouTube where you're coming from or where you're watching from, I would have to stall for like fifteen or thirty seconds before it came through.
And there's just a little delay on it.
And I realized that that same thing is happening in your life. As I preach this word, there's another voice telling you other stuff. This side of the room is being fake today, so I'm gonna try y'all out. There's another voice where it's saying, you know, I sought the Lord, an he heard any answer. I saw the Lord any heard any answered. But it's like I saught the Lord. I'm not sure if you'll answer. This side is rough too. This is my last option. You are my last available.
I saw it the Lord. I saught the Lord, and I sure hope he answers go. It's like in bringing you into this song, I want to be ever so careful that I give you a picture of what is really meant.
When David says.
I will bless or praise the Lord at all times, his praise shall continually, everybody say, continually be in my mouth. Now let's do the real life version the RLV of the Bible. I read the King James version. Now let me read the RL version. I will bless the Lord at certain times. His praise shall eventually be in my mouth when I get done venting. Then I'm gonna praise him when I get through this season. You know, we'd like to talk about seasons in church. Oh, it's been
a hard season. It's a difficult season, and I'm wondering, like, what point is a season that you are in the sovereign God of your life to get to determine what you say about it and what you do about it. Because we have to remember when David wrote these songs, just like Taylor Swift writing her songs. There's a story behind every one of them. And I watched grown men weep to songs about being fifteen and twenty two the other night, forty nine year old men weeping something that
Taylor went through. Then the Swifties are like, oh, that's me too. I mean, not exactly me. I wasn't fifteen, I'm fifty five. But I get where you're coming from because I've been there, Taylor.
I've been there and I felt it too.
I wasn't a group like I'm gonna shake it off, shake it off.
I need I mean this and uh.
And so when he says that now, now, now, remember this, I taught you this last week, and you come every week and you take notes and you study him, and you listen again and you listen to the sermon and you write it down. But just in case, just in case there was a little delay and you didn't remember it yet and you had some things go on.
Remember that David is not writing this.
Psalm from a place of his personal pain. It is based in his personal pain, but he's not writing this palm from the place of his pain.
He's writing it.
After he has experienced great pain and come through that pain to realize a greater purpose.
Ah.
And now he's looking back on the pain that he went through and he is teaching us the art of delayed praise. Now he says his praise shall continually be in my mouth at all times. And David is not saying this because Praise was the only thing he was dealing with.
Praise is not contingent upon.
The events of my life, not if I'm a mature Christian, And praise is not just a song that I sing. It is a way of seeing my situation, speaking about my situation and being in this world that God has placed me in. That's what I mean by praise, and that's what I mean by trust. And the reason that I trust God is not because everything happens so quickly. I praise God because there are spaces between what I believe He has called me to do and to be and to have and where I'm at right now now.
The enemy wants to fill that space, just like God does. The enemy wants to fill these spaces in our life because we're all dealing with delays right now right like not just the screen on the voice or the YouTube buffering or the comments. Oh, they might have told me where they're watching from. By now I gotta go back and check.
Forgot. I set that illustration up and forgot.
But yeah, so there's thousands of people watching right now and they're just now getting around to telling me where they're watching from.
And that's crazy, Like it takes that.
Long for it to come through, And in your life sometimes it takes a lot longer for it to come through. Then you planned on and you can be free, but not by this Friday. And you can be healed from a broken heart, but not in the next hour, not by the time I say amen. And so if the devil can't trick you into thinking is never gonna happen, he'll tell you it's gonna happen so quickly that when it doesn't happen that quickly, you give up on it.
So now he's got two tools.
Discouragement, you're never gonna change, it's never gonna be, it'll never happen for you. If that doesn't work and you believe God, then he will use a delay to try to get you to believe that you were crazy to think that God could do that thing.
In your life.
We studied last week how David went crazy. Remember he had to go to Philistine territory to escape from Saul.
That's the king of his own nation. That's the one who should have been mentoring him. That's the one who should have been showing David, this is how you do it.
This is how we handle pressure, this is how we stand up under it. Instead, Saul spends seven years throwing spears at David.
Hey, David, great news, they are gonna be a king. Bad news.
Seven years of caves hiding from the king that should be helping you. Seven years between the anointing you're gonna be king and the crowning where Saul dies and David actually is that space in your life is where trust is required.
Nothing else will do.
Talent won't fill it because sometimes your talent is great, but your development process is still underway. Intelligence won't fix it because there's some things that you're not smart enough to know about. Nobody is. Nobody calls certain things that we go through.
So no matter how.
Meticulous you are in managing your life and your time, there are certain spaces that only God can fill.
And that's why I.
Trust him, because I sought the Lord.
I sought the Lord.
If David were singing this in real time, I sought the Lord, and then Saul tried to kill me. I sought the Lord, and then Saul tried to kill me.
I sought the Lord.
He is writing that stuff, but he's not writing while it's happening. He's looking back on that, and now he's teaching me, and he's teaching you how to trust God. And I wonder, is God teaching you to trust him right now so that you will be saying that, speaking that, and passing that down, maybe even to your own children. This is how we trust him. This is how we do it. Thank you, Montel. This and I got all kinds of psalms for y'all today.
I got psalms from.
The nineties, I got psalms from the BC's, I've got psalms everywhere.
Now write down the word reflection somewhere. Reflection.
I think that many of us underestimate the power of healthy reflection for our soul's growth. And I think the enemy. I don't like to talk about him this much in the sermon, but he messes with you so much. I want to call him out. I think he wants to get you so busy that you never do it. If every second of your life is sucked out by distracting yourself from what you feel, and you never process it with God, but instead you scroll through what somebody else wants you to think they feel.
If every second.
Is sucked out of your life, you can't reflect, and if you don't reflect, you can't be really blessed. You can actually be blessed from God's perspective, but not feel blessed from your perspective because you never learned to reflect.
Psalm thirty four is.
Teaching me how to reflect, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Now that's interesting because he mentions at least two different senses. Remember, David is writing this psalm after great personal pain from a perspective of purpose, to teach us how to process our own seasons of delay. And one of the things he does is use sensory images because he's a brilliant lyricist. He's talking about taste and see that the Lord is good. But then he
also says, magnify the Lord with me. So we've got a visual sense of sight, magnify, and we've got a chemical sense of taste, and I think both are telling us the same thing.
It is the value of.
Our experience filtered through a healthy reflection process.
Let me explain. You ever had somebody in a restaurant go ah, this is terrible. Taste it. She does that to me all the time. Oh gotta taste this. This is so bad. Oh, taste this. This is what am I?
Your cup bearer? I'm not mea mayah. Not tasting your poison tastes terrible to you.
And so.
There's something about it. It tastes so bad. She just wants somebody else to have to be in it with their misery. Loves company, right, And so there's this thing that David is saying. He's like, I know the bitterness of wondering, are you you really going to see a breakthrough in your life or you just believe in it for nothing. I know the ashes of defeat when everything that you love has been burned to the ground. I know the taste of the isolation of the cave. But
I want you to taste something else by decision. As you face this delay, the enemy tries to fill that space, that seven years space. I don't mean seven years literally, it could be longer.
It could be shorter, but it's long. It's long. When you're living it. Some stuff you go back and you talk about.
It, and you can say in a sentence, what took you seven years to learn in real life? True, But when you're living in it, it feels different. And that's why the benefit of distance is so great. Not only does he say taste and see that the Lord is good, he also says, oh, magnify the Lord with me. To magnify something is not to make it bigger. Magnification doesn't change the size of the object. Magnification is the process whereby you get your perspective.
About what was there all along. I don't know about you.
But that's why I come to church, because I need help sometimes magnifying the Lord. What I magnify in my life, I get more of.
Whoop.
So if I sit around with stingy, miserable people all week, don't look at them right now while I'm preaching, look straight ahead. If I sit around having low level conversations, broke down conversations, hateful conversations, stupid, ignorant conversations all week, surface level conversations.
All week that never really pushed.
Past all the stuff about what's going on and ot out Illuminati and out out of an out prices of the gay. If I never get past that, I can't see what's there in my life home. Magnify the Lord with me, b Yob, bring your own binoculars. You're not making God bigger, You're just making yourself more focused to realize that for every reason the devil can give you to doubt God, I can give you ten to trust him.
You want me to prove it? Lift your hands. How many fingers are you lifting.
Up right now?
That's ten reasons right there to bless him, exalt him, and worship him. Blessed be God forever. Not clap those same hands. Put those ten fingers together. There's somebody watching me. Lost a pinky okay, nine, hey, seven, six five four.
And and.
I bless the Lord, I magnify him, I taste him, I experience him. The value of personal experience is worthless if not reflected upon in the light of God's goodness.
And I'm not just saying keep a gratitude journal. Do that.
I got all kinds of little gratitude tricks me and I. You made one up on tour. It's the best thing ever she showed me and I taught it on my YouTube channel and you can go there and see it.
It's about a grateful heart. Is this stable heart? I'm not just saying that.
I'm actually saying things turn into blessings as you reflect on them in time. I will bless the Lord at all times. Does that mean I'm gonna walk down the road singing Gyri this week? Does that mean I'm gonna be in a meeting and They're gonna be asking about the spreadsheet and I'll be like, I don't know about the spreadsheet. But my God is sovereign, he's holy, he's righteous, he's pure. I bless him at all times. And it's like, you can do that on your own time. This is
company time. We are doing a meeting. Submit the budget, all right, So we're not turning we're not turning this beautiful psalm into some weird excuse for us to live in this other reality.
It actually is the way that we.
Bring God's faithfulness into this moment for the fights that you're dealing with and for the future that you're uncertain about. And it's a beautiful thing. It is a decision that you make to praise God to glorify him. To speak about the things in your life that you want to see more of, to speak about the things in your life that God has given you. There's nothing wrong with admitting the things that you wish were different and getting
help with them. Stop elevating your request to people who are not supervisors.
What do you think I should tell my husband?
She's not married, and even if she is, she is not married to your husband.
She can only take you so far.
These conversations, they get real cyclical, right sick lakole, Because in the process of that, if you don't bring God into it, I'm talking about delayed praise. And I'm going to get back to that in just a moment, But for now, I want I want you to remember this about David when he wrote Psalm thirty four.
He was through it when he was living it. And this may give you permission to struggle a little bit.
That's why I called it ugly trust, because let me get out of the king James back. Go over to the NIV so you can see what's going on in for Samuel twenty seven, verse one. But David thought to himself, one of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. Does that sound like a guy who's confident in God's promise?
But his seven years? Seven years is long.
Enough to whittle away at your worship. And he thought to himself, one of these days I will be destroyed.
By the hand of Saul.
The best thing I can do, the next best thing. I don't like what I've got to do right now. I don't like where life has me. I don't like this situation. But the best thing I can do, because I don't know what else to do, the next best thing, the one thing I can do.
He not asked to handle the next thing after.
That, because I can't only focus on one thing right now, because I don't really know about all this, because it freaks me out when I try to think too far out.
But the best thing I can do for now.
Back least, the best thing I can do is escape to the land of the Philistines, that's the enemies. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand. And David did that, and for sixteen months he lived amongst his enemies. For sixteen months, he lived amongst the enemies that he would eventually defeat when he became king. Hold that. Hold that for a moment. Go back to the very first part of that verse. David thought to himself, I will
bless the Lord at all times. His praise will continually be in my mouth. He thought to himself, I'm gonna die. But watch this, he said, My soul will make its boast in the Lord. What's your soul. Your soul is not your mouth. Your soul is not what your eyes see. Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. Put that into comments. Your mind, your will, your emotions, your mind, your will, your emotions. He said, my soul will boast in the Lord. But we know that his
mind was telling him, you're gonna die. You're not gonna get through this. This is it for you. He's gonna kill you for real this time. This is the end of the line. This is where it stops. This is where the fantasy ends. Yeah, that was cute when Samuel anointed you when you were a little boy.
Samuel's dead. Now, yeah that was cute.
When you saw your family back together and happy again.
But it's not gonna happen. Now.
This is the one they used to have a show when I was little, called Sandford and Son, and he would always say, this is the big one, Elizabeth.
I'm coming to join you. Elizabeth. What is up with all my outdated pop culture references? Today? Pray for me, and David is having a moment. This is it. He's gonna kill me. This is it.
There's nothing else I can do. This is the end, this is it. This one's gonna take me down.
This is it.
And he thought that to himself, but he said, my soul is going to boast in the Lord, and his praise will be in my mouth.
Soul.
His mind is saying one thing, Saul's gonna kill you, but his soul is going to say another thing. I will bless the Lord at all times, and his praise will continually be in my mouth. The mouth is gonna say God is good. The mouth is gonna say God is great. My mouth is going to say what God promised he will look acomplish.
My mouth is going.
To say, but he's faithful, and he's proven that my mouth. What I'm trying to give you is this simple principle.
Give me my camera.
Not everything that goes through your mind needs to come out of your mouth. Your mind can try to tell you all that your mind wants to tell you, Oh, this is it. But I'm a worship my thoughts. I don't even trust my thoughts. I don't bow at the altar of my thoughts. Thoughts or thoughts like clouds are clouds, like rain is rain. Let him pass over? Okay, devil, you want to tell me to kill myself, you can tell me that I'm not doing that because God has the last word in my life.
I'm good live and not die. And declare the goodness of the Lord.
Here's the land, open your no and say yeah, year flood, year flood.
Yeah that's f.
I five somebody and say, I'm gonna keep praising him. I'm gonna keep praising him even if I have to praise him on a delay.
Watch this. Here's what I mean, a delayed praise.
Do you remember the first time that you found out that live TV wasn't really live? You thought you were watching live TV until somebody cussed and the TV just went silent.
Do you remember the first time. I remember the first time.
I remember the first time that I learned about the seven second delay. That's what they use in TV. Now, we were talking about seven years. But let me shrink this and make it real practical. When they have a Super Bowl halftime show and things get exposed, you can google this later that are not meant to be exposed.
The network cannot take the liability that you just saw that on TV because they got the FCC and the SEC and the ACC and the Big ten and well all those c's, and so they put it on a delay. Watch this so in case they need to bleep it, they have time. It was a seven second delay they have to happen. They broadcast it out seven seconds after it happens. And I'm trying to figure out do I need to put a seven second delay?
Y'all getting quiet?
Now?
This sermon is getting good?
Do I need to put a seven second delay from when it comes to my mind and when it comes out of my mouth so I can start bleeping some stuff and censor myself so that I don't stay stuck in what I feel, but my soul can speak and say no, no, no, no no. We don't lie down like that, We don't fight back like that, we don't get nasty like that.
Are you crazy?
My friend who works in radio, he said, in radio, they call that.
The dump button. I said, what is the dump button?
He said, if you say something that you're not supposed to say live on the air, you go ooh, you hit a button and it takes out the last few seconds of what you said to protect them station from the liability. I said to him, they have that in radio? Do they have that in real life too? Can I have a dump button, like a live dump button in my life? Like you know, like you know, get a little sharp with somebody, you don't mean to get sharp.
You say he little.
Something, it was reserved and you're like, oh no, I think that went on a thought bubbleville and went into like mouth bubbleville and I.
Don't know it happened. Where's my dumb button? This week?
I want to I want to challenge everybody who is struggling this week. You're not struggling, you can do it next week because you'll be struggling. You ain't perfect. I want to challenge everybody who struggles with magnifying the wrong thing in your life. Everybody who is struggling with how you're speaking about this.
Season always just a hard season? Is just the horrible season. I know, I get it. That season is called life on this planet.
Now, tell who you need to tell, and I'll bring up all as a positive example. I'm used to it for illustration earlier on music for Goovna.
She did this last night, she goes, I just I'm not gonna say it, and she didn't.
Y'all don't know her to know what a miracle that was that she hit that dump button. I knew I was preaching about the dump button. She didn't.
She was giving me a real life illustration.
Or she was about to criticize somebody, but she wasn't gonna call it criticism.
Nah.
We were praying for him, but something in or new that Holygo said that Holly, Holygo said, are you really praying for them right now? Can I get a dump button for the dumb stuff that the devil tells me? Can I put it even before my mouth? Can I put it where it's like, oh, I'm not gonna think about that longer? Can I put a seven second rule on that, like, okay, we're gonna worry.
About that for seven seconds seven six five four.
I wrote it down. I didn't even need the last three. You can have your three seconds.
Back, devil. I wrote it down. I put it there. I deal with it later. Now I'm gonna do this.
Wow, David found his dump button. He knew to bring that stuff to God and to do the next best thing. He knew that there needs to be a delay between what you feel wha help me and what you do.
If you're thinking about going to see a therapist soon for your problems, one thing they're gonna teach you that I'll just give you for free, and then you can go on to see.
Them and break it all the way down.
They're gonna tell you need to put a bigger gap between the thoughts and the feelings and the actions.
So you can process it and go like, is this how I want to respond? Or a dump button as me and David like to call it.
I think it's important that we get this because when he says his praise will continually be in my mouth, that doesn't mean that's everything that was going through his mind. It was a decision, and I'm gonna give this personally because somebody is going to be just for you. The thing he was so afraid of, God was already lining up to take care of it.
And Dane, give me that one.
The thing that you are afraid of God might already be taken care of.
And how much time do y'all have? Okay, okay, I make your promise.
I will do at least one bonus teaching this week from the Basin on this subject, and I will put it on my YouTube.
At least one. I may need to do two. It was so good.
Where did David go to escape from Saul to the land of the Philistines? Who was the first person that he defeated that elevates him to a place of prominence in front of the nation? Goliath from Gath, who was an uncircumcised Philistine, Right, you're like, uncircumcised? Is that really necessary to include that part? It's in the Bible. I'm not bleeping this in the Bible. When David eventually became king,
you gotta get this. He was the first one who delivered the nation from the Philistines, and the Bible says.
That he subdued those enemies. How did he do it?
What did David know that Saul didn't that enabled him to defeat the Philistines? And when did he learn it? I suggest that in those sixteen months that he went to be a mercenary, he was learning what time they breakfast and what time they went to bed. David saw that sixteen months as a time where he was trapped. God saw it as training.
Can I tell you time God did that to me?
When we started this church, there were three different people, Two of them were ministries. One of them was an individual that said they were going to pay my health insurance and my salary so we could start the church because.
The church didn't have that many people.
And they said, we don't want you to be burning yourself out traveling and doing all this.
We're going to pay it one by one.
They all backed out for different reasons and no hard feelings toward them. But what I felt having a little baby because Elijah, my oldest, is the same age as the church, and we had that baby and we're moving. I remember when Chunk said, well, we just need to step up and teach people to trust God with the tithe and build the church and trust God in this area.
And I thought like, wow, is that really what this is for?
And it was.
If I had had those people do it for me, I probably would have trusted them.
Fool. I appreciative. This is not about me. I'm looking for you. If they did what I wanted them to do.
I wouldn't have seen what God can do. And are you in a season right now? I'm asking where God is teaching you to trust? But it doesn't feel like training. It feels like painting a fence. It doesn't feel like training. It feels like waxing a car. I might as well finish off all my references today. This is my last shot to do it. It doesn't feel like training, but it is. But you don't know that until you look back on it. You don't know that while it's happening.
You don't know that while they're saying, I think we need to see other people, it's not you, it's me. It's not me, it's you. Whatever the thing is. However, however they say it, it still hurts. You don't know at the time that everybody say that there is event that you don't know about right now that God does and while the enemy is telling you.
You are never going to make it through this. And I don't even know what your this is. And I wish I did, because I would speak straight to it.
I would call it out by name and social Security number. If I knew exactly what y'all were fighting about, If I knew exactly what you were taking too many pills about. If I knew exactly what you were asking God for and feeling the silence of a prayer that bounces back down and you keep seeking, but it keeps eluding you, and it keeps slipping away. I would call it by name.
I don't know what this is what God does. But there's something else you know that I want to remind you of today that you tend to forget in moments like this, where you have tasted the sting of your tears about the situation that God won't change, where you have tasted the air of hunger for the relationships that have left your life. A lot of times, while the enemy is saying, you're not gonna get through this. What are you gonna do about this? How are you gonna
handle this? You forgot about that, and you were singing about that. You said, that's why I trust him. That's why somebody shout, that's why I want to all caps chat.
All caps that.
In the chat right now, from everybody. Put that in the chat right now, put a that in the chat. And when you put it in the chat, I wanted to stand for this. T things h he a already t taught me.
Don't mess up the acronym things. He already that.
Things he taught you in the valley that you went through before the mountain that was on the other side. I'm talking about seasons when you were broke.
But he fed you like.
A father feeds mena to his children.
That. Yeah, that.
The thing that you push through. And you didn't even know you were that strong. You fell a little cocky for three days afterwards You're like, oh, whoa, hey man.
That was hard, but I did it.
That. You forget that every time you go through this. But today's this is just that in the making. And so I came to preach today.
Give me five minutes, I'll finish. This message is about delayed praise.
What are you saying, preacher, I'm saying, thank him today for.
What will only make sense later.
Give him a praise right now for what you can't point to.
For what you can't prove, for what.
You can't verbialize, for what you can't understand. Put a praise on that, on that situation, on that misunderstanding, on that step, on that question, on that intricacy, on that struggle, on that stronghold, I'm.
Not done yet.
I'm not done yet because God said, we need to get you back to that. You're going through this. It's fine, but that's not why you trust him. That's not why you praise him. That's not why you love him. You don't love him because it's always a feeling. You love him because he first loved you. You haven't been who you want to be lately. You've been struggling with performance issues. There's been heavy guilt, heavy shame, heavy fear on you.
Well, it's a good thing.
You're not praising him according to your perform You're praising him according to his goodness.
And he is good.
And all the time, old taste and see that the Lord is good. I'm not praising him for this pain in my body. I'm not praising him for this issue with my kids. I'm not praising him for this situation that won't resolve. I'm praising him for that. You want to go all the way back. Let me take you to Calvary, where the precious leave Him of God suffered, bled and died for me.
See the crown of thorns on his head, Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did ever such loving sorrow me or thorns composed so rich a crowd.
I'm not praising him for a feeling. I'm praising him by faith. This is ay faith praise. I'm praise him like that.
I got it like that, I know it like that.
I met him like that.
He snaps me like that, he filled me like that, he raised me like that, He forgave me like that.
That's God God praise.
I don't need a thirty second delay. I don't need to get out of this cave and see how it turns out.
God already knows. I praise him for that.
Whoa, look, I got happy because I look around today and I see him big sad that See.
For months, I'm preaching in.
This auditorium, empty from a pandemic, and I promised God. With the room got full again, I would keep preaching and I would thank him.
This is that, This is that, This is that. This is that praising If you want to.
Praise him, if you know him like that, The Lord.
Is my supper, my line and my salvation. Oh man, the find the.
Lord with me ugly praise, ugly praise. You got an only cry? Why not an ugly praise? Give him a praise that sounds kind of crazy. I did the only cry now what says ugly praise? Hey, thank you Jesus, you did that. You delivered me from all my fears.
You did that. So win that enemy. When that enemy, when that enemy comes.
In like a flood and tries to remind you of this that you don't think you.
Can get through, take him back.
To that.
I don't know much, but I know he's in control. I don't know what I thought I knew, but he's the author of my story.
I don't know what I thought I knew, and God's not doing what I thought he would win I thought he would. I'm in the delay right now, but I went down there to that Elevation church and.
They taught me what to do. Until God lifts you. I fill that space with praise.
No, we've covered a lot. I hope you got something from God today. I want to give you one more thing before I go. I'm about to go eat some Keto pancakes and replenish. But there is a song that says that's why I trust him. That needs to be your anthem for what you're going through. And it says I sought the Lord and he heard, and he answered.
It does not define how much space.
There will be between those sequences.
But I found a verse, y'all.
I found a verse in the New Testament that I'm clinging to for everything that God has called me to be in Doo. It's in on one John five fourteen, and it says that this is the confidence we have in approaching God. This everybody say this, This is the basis of my faith. This is the confidence we have in approaching God that if we ask according to his will, he hears us. That is not even the good verse verse fifteen.
And we and if we know.
That he heard, if we know that he hears us whatever we ask, we know that we have but we.
Asked of him.
Now, I want you to get to this on your mind that the enemy keeps talking about doing this, bouncing back the whole time I'm preaching going home with you, that delay, that thing that goes yeah but yeah, but yeah but yeah yeah, get on your mind seven seconds to think about this, and then I want you to push it back with.
A that that.
Somebody say, we know that we know that we have what we asked of him according to his will. And if I'm asking God for his will, I know that it shall be done, and my soul shall boastend the Lord. So say it again. I know that he died for me. I know that he loves me. I know that he's for me.
That's why I trust him. Now.
When we wrote that song, everybody's stand, I'm gonna lead you in a worship moment that I hope you remember, and I hope you repeat it through the week. Something else to put in those spaces where you feel like I'm going crazy right now. I can't stop thinking about this, I can't stop ruminating. Okay, you're gonna reflect with God and get his perspective.
And I didn't know how clearly.
The others who wrote with me on this song, Mitch and Brandon and Chris, but we went through some voice memos to make sure that my selective memory wasn't wrong. When we wrote the Bridge, it went a little different. You will barely notice the difference, but one, two, three, four it went I sought the lore and he heard and he answered. I saw the lore and her and the answer. I saw the Lord her this what did
and the answer. That's why I trust him. That's why I trust You're Like, that's the same, No listen again.
It's the same, but it's a little different. Just watch.
I saw the Lord and he heard and the answer. I saw the Lord and he her and the answer. I saw the Lord.
And he her. You sing it the regular way. I sing the other way. That's why I trust what happened when we were writing that something didn't sound right.
So we said, it's a good thought, but what if we just push it back just one beat? And when we did, it went from a pretty cool song.
To the song I'll see a.
Song that I've heard in a minute.
You see what I'm saying. It was the smallest little thing. It was just it's just a beat, y'all. It's just a I saw the Lord and he heard, and he answer. That's why. That what made the difference. We just pushed that back a little bit. Let's take a church vote.
We never did a church vote at Elevation Baptist PRESBYTERI epistop bel and Church of God of Prophecy.
This first one.
If I'm around the world, you can vote to I saw the Lord this version one, and he heard and he answer. I saw the Lord and he.
Her and he answer. I saw the Lord and he heard, and he answered. That's why I trust him. That's why I see how white that sounds.
The virtue who heard and he answered, I saw the Lord.
Let's push it back a little. That's why God might be pushing something back just so I'm gonna go.
But let's take a moment and give God a delayed praise for everything I am, for everything that he knows.
Because he's good. Hen he's great, and he's faithful. Because he's good. Hen he's great. Come here, let's have some fun. Come on, see Chris. Because he's good. Hen he's great, and he's faithful. That's why. Because he's good. Because he's good, he's and he's Oh he's good, and he's gonna heat and he's what's this?
He's put it down right there, slops. I got a number because he healed.
Because he heals, and he says had delivers.
That's why.
Because he heals and he says had delivers. That's why.
Because he heals, Hendy says he delivers.
Sa'm like, you do, how about this? You don't know? Like I know what he stuns for me? He said, that's what I got a princess.
You don't know.
Let me tell somebot.
That slides ship slop shot up.
Hey, I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and if you did, make sure to share it and subscribe so we can get you all of these new messages as soon as they're available.
I also want to take a moment and thank all of you who are a part of Elevation.
Whether you support us financially, or serve with us, or just share these messages, it's because of you that we're able to reach people all around the world. And if you want more information on how to be a part of Elevation, click the link in the description. Thanks again for listening. Make sure to leave a review, share the message, and subscribe.
God bless you.