Stacking Strength (Wade Joye)

to share. But first of all, how awesome was that message from Pastor Stephen last weekend? The pressure to perform, and if I'm being real, I feel just a little bit of pressure being on this stage right now. We're the greatest preacher on the planet, preaches every single weekend. But that sermon last week it helped me so much to live out of a place of purpose and not

trying to perform for us people. And in fact, Pastor Stephen was in a meeting with our campus pastors and a lot of our church leaders this week and he was really encouraging us as we talked about that message. When we look at ministry to always lean into what is most helpful for people, not what is going to

impress an audience. And when he said that, it made me just extra thankful for all the sermons that he's preached that have helped me love God more, helped me trust the Lord more fully, help me believe that God can actually use somebody like me. So if anything in this ministry has helped you, can you just appreciate what God has done through the church. So God has given me something that I hope helped you. And if you can just remain standing as we look at our main

text today, it's found in Meaemiah chapter six. And I was studying this book with a lot of our worship leaders earlier in the year and God just began to illuminate some truths in my heart that helped me a lot. And if you don't know about Nehemiah, he was a leader who led a remnant of Jews back to Jerusalem out of exile, and he was tasked with rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. The wall was broken down, the city was vulnerable, and God had given him this great task.

But he faced a lot of opposition. He faced a lot of setbacks, and that's kind of where we find him right now. Nehemiah chapter six, and it says this when word came to sand Ballot, to Baia, Guessham, the Arab and the rest of our enemies, that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in up though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates. Sand Ballot and Gesham sent me this message, Come let us meet together in one of the villages on the plane of oh No. Side.

Note nothing good happens in a place called oh No. Just trust me there. But they were scheming to harm me. So I sent messengers to them with this reply, I'm carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the workstop? Well, I leave it and go down to you. Four times they sent me the same message,

and each time I gave them the same answer. Then the fifth time, Sambalot sent his aid to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed life in which was written it is reported among the nations, and Gesham says, it is true that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports. You're about to become their king. And I've even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem. There is a king

in Judah. Now this report will get back to the king. So come let us meet together. And I sent him this reply. Nothing like what you are saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head. I just gave you a new bibble verse you can quote to some of the people in your life. They were all trying to frighten us, thinking their hands will get too weak for the work and it will not be completed. But I prayed, now strengthen my hands. So

the title today's message is stacking strength. Stacking strength. Come on, let's pray together. Lord. I thank you for the strength that flows from your word. God, I thank you for the strength that flows from your presence. So Lord, right now, I prayed that you will speak a very specific word to everybody under the sound of my voice, as your word is reached in Jesus' name. Amen, All right, come on, give a couple of hugs Memorial Day hugs as you

have a seat. So I had a bit of an old man's rite of passage recently last week I turned forty three, was my forty third birthday. Thank you. I share a birthday with the Great Holly Ferdic. I'm much older, though, and I've really been praying to get that George Clooney anointing because I want to believe that I'm going to get better with age, that the gray in my beard makes me look more distinguished, makes me look more handsome, that I'm in the wisdom zone of with all this experience.

But every day my body is telling me that that is a lie, because everything hurts. I think my knee hurts right now. But you know, a couple months ago, I was in a meeting and I started to get this just stabbing pain in my right and I had to wait it out a little bit because I don't know if you're like this, but I'm the kind of

guy that I can't google any symptoms I have. I can't go to web md because I automatically go to the worst case scenario possible, even like one little snuff and I think I'm done for or I think I have this like disease. It's only in two percent of the population in Brazil, and somehow it's found its way to me and Charlotte, North Carolina. But this, this stabbing pain, it wouldn't go away, and I couldn't even focus. And it reminded me of when I had my appendix out

about fifteen or twenty years ago. But since my appendix isn't there anymore, I realized something was wrong, and so I started to sweat in the meeting, I started to pace around. I couldn't concentrate. So I just had to leave and I went to the emergency room because I knew something serious was actually wrong. So once I navigated the glorious place that is the waiting room of the

emergency room, I made it back to the doctor. I started to talk through my symptoms and where the pain was and where the pain was spreading to and I'll save you those details. And he looked at me and he said, oh, you've got a kidney stone. Some people have had. I heard some of those groans right there. You know, you feel my pain, and you know I knew my day of reckoning had finally come. For all the soft drinks that I drink. So if you know me, on a good day, I drink about six diet cokes.

Are this healthier soda called ZeVA six a day most days. Most days I'm more in like the ten eleven twelve range. I know, just bring on all the judgment. I was ready for it. It's my vice, but thank you. But if you multiply six soft drinks a day times three hundred and sixty five days a year times twenty years that I've really kind of been been doing this, that

equals one very painful kidney stone. And so as my doctor and I were talking, he then said what I was waiting for him to say, and he said, do you want morphine? And he then said, you know, you know, having a kidney stone is the closest a man will get to childbirth. I know all the women are just rolling your eyes. You think we're a bunch of WIMPs. Now we are. I am, And since I'm not into natural childbirth, I said, give me all the medicine. You can give me the morphine. I am ready right now.

So once I got that, I was good to go. I was feeling better. They did some tests and they said, you have a three millimeter kidney stone, which is a medium sized stone. Six millimeters or more we'd consider a large stone. And then we do the procedure to break it apart and it'll pass much easier. And so I was just waiting to find out, how are you going to get this out of me today? Because I've heard horror stories about passing this thing and I do not

want to experience that. And all they did is gave me some muscle relaxers, some pain meds, and a filter to catch it in and said this will come out sometime in the next two to three weeks. That is not what I wanted to hear, because three milimeters might sound small to you, but it was a mountain to me, and I need a God to move that mountain. Right then, I was praying every prayer of faith I could possibly pray, and thankfully the Lord heard my cry and in his mercy,

the next day it passed. But I never knew that something so small could stop me dead in my tracks, something three millimeters could shut my system down, because small things make a big impact. And honestly, that's been the motto I've lived by. I mean, that's the short man's motto right there. I've always any any story where the short guy is the hero I love. That's why I love Lord of the Rings. I can relate to hobbits

is awesome. Any story in the Bible where, like you know, the giant is slain with the one small stone, or the mountains could be moved with faith the size of a mustard seed or a kidney stone. I cheer about that. I love I love that. But it also can work the other way, And this is the way that we don't cheer about as much. Where a decade long friendship can be ruined by one betrayal or one mistake can

have ramatic implications for your entire future. Galatians five nine and the Passion translation says, don't you know that when you allow even a little lie into your heart, it can permeate your entire belief system. See I want to be the guy like Nehemiah who does great things for God. I want to be the guy that builds the wall. But there is one little lie that makes me feel like a failure over and over and over again. See.

I know all the promises of Scripture and that all God's promises are yes and amen for me and Christ Jesus. But there's one little lie that looks like the truth that has taken up residency in my heart, and it makes me feel like I can't do anything that matters for God. It makes me think that God is using other people more than he's using me, and it stops me in my tracks time and time again. And this lie is so dangerous because it sounds a lot like

the truth. And it's this and maybe you struggle with this as well. But the lie I tell myself all too often is that my greatest impact happens when I take giant steps of faith. So my greatest impact happens when I take giant steps of faith. And maybe you don't struggle with this the way I do, But I feel like God only uses me when I take the big risk, when I take the huge step of faith.

If I'm being honest, I feel like God only uses me the two times a year I'm on this stage preaching or some of you know about you know how my kids were born and they had a lot of medical issues, and we prayed for miracles in the hospital and we saw those miracles, and I felt like God used me then. But what about every other day? That seems really really ordinary. I read a study on the internet, which of course means it's true that said the average

person gets fifteen days of perfect happiness a year. So I don't know how they define perfect happiness, but no matter what, that's just depressing right right there. So two weeks of happiness a year, and I realized that I kind of think of faith that way. Then I might get fifteen perfect faith days a year where I can actually see God using me, I can see the evidence of it. I feel like I'm in the faith zone.

And that just makes me feel so defeated, because what about the other fifty weeks of the year, when I'm in meetings, when I'm answering emails, when I'm chow foring my kids to and from their practices. How is God working in my life? Then? Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever wondered? Am I even making a difference in the ordinary and mundane routine of life? Well? I have two. And God has really been helping me with

this passage from me Amiah. Break down that lie and replace it with a truth, because whenever you get rid of a lie, you have to replace it with something that is true. And so what God has been teaching me is this, And I want you to hold onto this. If you get nothing else from this message, I want you to walk away with this, and that is that my greatest impact doesn't happen through giant steps of faith, but rather through daily steps of faithfulness. God doesn't just

move through the dramatic. He does do that, but more often than not, he moves through the daily, the day to day. See Nei a Mayah took the giant step to build the wall, but what inspires me about his story is how he persevered in the day today, obedience even when it's hard. And so that's what I want us to talk about today. There's three principles in this passage that are helping me a lot to believe that God can use me even when it doesn't seem like it around me, and I hope they help you too.

The first is this, and if you're a note taker, go ahead and write this down. The impact definishing is greater than the excitement of starting. The impact definishing is greater than the excitement of starting. See even though it doesn't say it explicitly in this text, I have to believe that the people in Jerusalem were feeling energized because the wall looked to be complete. I mean, the walls

were high, they look strong. I imagine they were standing there trying to get just the perfect selfie with the walls in the background to post on Instagram. They were

feeling energized by the progress. But there was one detail that you might have glossed over, because I did it first in the first verse of this chapter, and it says this when word came to Sambalot to buy a guess in the Arab and the rest of our enemies, that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it, though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates. See, there wasn't a gap in the wall, but there was a pretty big gap where the doors should have been. There

was a pretty big gap where the gate was. There was a lot of progress that had been made, but the work hadn't been completed yet. How many of y'all were here for a series that we did about a year ago called Gates of Change. It was an awesome, awesome series. I loved it. Some of you did too, and we learned in this series how important gates were to ancient cities. They were the place of commerce, of trials,

proclamations from kings. A lot of stuff happened at the gate, but it was also the most vulnerable part of the city because it was the part that enemies sought to conquer first, because if you could control the gate, you could control the city. So no matter how high and strong and mighty these walls were, the city was still vulnerable because the gates weren't in place, the work wasn't done.

So we loved to start things, but finishing things is a different matter, and we used to experience this a lot back in the early days of songwriting for our church ten eleven, twelve years ago. First of all, y'all know nothing about old school elevation worship, but Pastor Stephen commissioned us to write songs, and you know, me and Chris and the rest of the team, we had no idea how to write worship songs. So anything that had, you know, remotely rhymed kind of had a melody to

it was somewhat scripturally accurate. We would just test it out on the poor people of our church. It was not FDA approved yet, it did not have the official worship song stamp of approval, but the church was patient with us. It served its purpose in that time, but it was a huge blessing when Pastor Stephen got involved in the songwriting process because he would say, Okay, that's not a song, that's an idea, that's a rough draft.

We need to take this round two, round three, round four, five, round ten, because he wanted us to really dig to find what was most meaningful for our church to sing. And that's why there's a song like Resurrecting that means so much to our church. But it took a year to write, and I remember, you know, nine months and ten months, and Pastor Stephen was trying to find just the perfect line for that fourth verse that would just

elicit faith when we sang it at our church. And so now our team is on a European tour and when they get to the fourth verse and singing the tumb where soldiers watched in vain was barred four three days, his body there would not remain. Our God has robbed the grave. There's going to be shouts halfway across the world because of that line and how it elicits faith in people's hearts. But that didn't come with the song idea. That came after a year of work. You see, starting

is fun, Starting is exciting. We love to launch the business we love to ask the girl out. We love to celebrate our kids first steps, and in fact, celebrating first steps is awesome. We go nuts here when somebody makes their first step of faith, committing their life to Jesus. That's why we exist as a church that deserves celebration. You know, when when you're making your vows at the altar on your wedding day, hopefully you're celebrating. If you're not,

you're not making a good decision there. But how many of you know? Saying those valves is one thing. Living out those valves fifteen years later is a completely different matter. Now you have about one hundred of your friends and families celebrating you on your wedding day, They're not there with you in your living room fifteen years later when you and your wife can't even speak speak to each other. So you thought building or planning the wedding was the wall.

The wall was building a marriage. That's what takes work. Making the baby is fun. Trust me, I've got some babies and it's fun raising those babies in their middle school years, their high school years. I haven't hit that yet,

but I heard it's a lot of fun. But trying to show them what it looks like to be a man or a woman of God when you feel in perfect yourself and you don't feel like you have your stuff together, but you're trying to be there for them and love them in times where they're not very lovable. Raising a child is hard. It takes We're coming to church one time is awesome. We are so glad you're here if this is your first time. But to actually have your life change the way God wants to change

your life, it takes being here consistently. A lot of you heard about eGroups earlier. That is the power of an e group. It's getting people in your life consistently. And can I be honest with you about one thing. This is some therapy for me. I used to hate that word consistent because people would use it to describe me and they would say, wait, it is just so con and the way I translated that is Wade is so boring. I hated that word. I didn't want to

be the consistent one. I wanted to be the guy that was that was exciting and had a quick wit and was so insightful and was the life of the party. And Wade's a great singer, but instead I got Wade's just consistent sounds so lame. It's like, it's like, you know the girl, she has such a great personality. I never wanted to be the guy with the good personality. I wanted to be the hot one. Now some of you married the hot one, and thirty years later you

wish you married the one with the good personality. Just look look straight ahead at me. You're good. We'll get through this. But what I am learning. What I'm learning is that Jesus celebrates consistency because consistency is power powerful. It might not be flashy, but consistency actually changes things. Consistency makes a huge difference. I mean, I had that stupid kidney stone because I consistently drank diet cokes every day for twenty years. Consistency makes a difference. This church

is built on consistency. Consistent volunteers who serve every single weekend when you feel like it and when you don't. We couldn't do it without you. This church is built on consistent generosity, people who give and prioritize God through the tithe in plentiful seasons and in hard seasons. See.

The church is built on consistency. And I feel the benefit of that and the impact of that in my family because my daughter, my youngest daughter, Sidney, she gave her life to Christ this past Good Friday, which was awesome. How cool was that to do that on Good Friday? And it made me so thankful for all of our e Kids volunteers who showed up consistently to show her what it looks like to love Jesus. And they showed up to serve when she was behaving, and they showed

up to serve when she was not behaving. She was not going to get a gold star that day. You showed up to serve when you were feeling like it. You showed up to serve when you did it, and my family is different and change because of you. So thank you on behalf of all the families at Elevation Church. I want to thank the unseen Heroes and our e Kids Department. Consistency makes a difference, and I also think it's important to God because our culture doesn't celebrate consistency.

Our culture celebrates convenience, leaving the hard thing to chase the thrill of the new thing. But I think God wants to show what it looks like when a people actually stays in the hard thing and makes it better. Who can honor their commitments when it hurts. Who can do the hard thing consistently, over and over again. Who don't just chase the new thing, but do the old thing with a new passion. So turn to your neighbor, speak the over yourself, say I am consistent. I like

the sound of that, all right. The second principle is this, the path of least resistance is rarely the path of obedience. The path of least resistance is rarely the path of obedience. So one of the things I heard a lot growing up in church to justify decisions, and I said it, I heard it a lot. Maybe you've heard this too, is I've just got a piece about it? Have you ever said that? This is not a trick question? It's

okay if you have. I got a girl dumped me one time because God gave her a piece about it. And I thought God was big enough to have some peace to go around and give me a piece and give me a little bit of a heads up. But he failed to do that at that time. But it made me feel so unspiritual because most of the things I felt like God wanted me to do. I rarely felt peace about In fact, they usually scared me to death. And I think me and Mayah probably didn't feel a

lot of peace in the situation he was in. So he was confronted with this rumor at this time that could have gotten him killed. And I want us to look at verse six so you can see it. It says it is reported among the nations, and Gesham says, it is true that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. So here we have this rumor that he's building this wall just so he can revolt against the king of Persia. So if that rumor gets back to the king, Nehemiah

is dead. Now. If he goes to the plane of oh No to meet with these people who started the rumor, they're setting a trap firm. If he goes and tries to refute the rumor and set the matter straight, he's dead there too. So it's a no win situation for Niemiah. I have to imagine that he was tempted to take the path of least resistance, would be to kind of get out of town quietly, go find another city, go find another wall, to build, but the path of least

resistance would also be the path of disobedience. I don't think Nehemiah when he was sitting there, thinking, God, know you called me to build this wall, and I'm facing this opposition, but I'm going to trust you anyway. I don't think that was a peaceful decision. And it reminded me of something Pastor Stevens taught us, and that is that peace rarely comes before obedience. Peace is a byproduct

of obedience. Peace comes after you obey. We can't wait for our emotions or our feelings to validate God's voice when we know his word has told us to do this, when we know his spirit is leading us to fight for something. So you're praying for guidance and you're praying that God speaks and you know that you see this in his word, and you know you should take this step, and you know you should stay in this relationship and fight for it. But you're just waiting for this feeling

and this emotion to tell you it's okay. And fighting for something is not a very peaceful thing. And God has called us as a people to fight for love, to fight for reconciliation, to fight for peace. Changing this world is not an easy thing, and peace doesn't come until after we obey. It is a hard thing to forgive somebody when they It doesn't feel very peaceful to take that step in to do it, But peace will

come after the reconciliation, and that takes work. You know, some of you high school students, it's not a peaceful thing to stand up for the kid who's bullied and isn't treated with any dignity or respect. But you have no idea what that simple act of courage would mean in that person's life. But it's not a peaceful thing

to stand up against your friends. Some of you made commitments at the end of the year to give and to begin to prioritize God through tithing, and now these bills hit that you weren't planning on, and it is a hard thing and it hurts sometimes to honor your commitment to God. But God always promises that he will bless us when we are faithful and we will trust him and when we obey. And if I'm telling the truth right now, sometimes I use peace as an excuse

to get out of doing the hard thing. So I've said I've got a peace about this and it's given me the excuse to leave the hard thing when really what I was feeling was relief, not peace. Relief and peace are not the same thing. And some of you might have walked out on commitments, walked out of relationships, and you claimed you had peace, but you really just felt relief because you could wash your hands of the problem.

God is calling us to be people who fight for peace, who are willing to do the hard thing, who don't wait on the emotion, because sometimes those opportunities do not last forever. And I learned this the hard way. See, I have two amazing parents. They raised me in church, they raised me to love God. They set a great example for me, and they moved to Charlotte to help us with our kids and their medical issues. I love them a lot. But a lot of people don't know

that my dad is really my stepdad. He married my mom when I was seven and adopted me when I was sixteen. For all intents and purposes, he is my dad. He is the example in the role model of what a man of God looks like. I love him so much. Yeah, you can clap for my father. I didn't know my biological father that well. I didn't see him much after the age of four. We lived in California right after I was born with him, and he was basically a

con man, a white collar criminal. He was in and out of prison for money laundering, heavy cocaine user, had a double life behind my mom's back, had countless affairs, very violent person, and once my mom figured out who he was, she left him and moved to the East Coast. And about five or six years ago, I began to get this sense, this leading from God, this prompting that I should reconnect with him and just try to build a relationship, be some source of light in his life,

and share my faith. And there was zero percent of me that wanted to do that. It felt awkward, it felt weird. I couldn't even get to the bottom of the depth of emotions that I felt about that, And so I really thought God on it. I didn't want to do it, but I knew it was something he was prompting me to do. But I kept putting it off until it felt right. One day, I'm just going to feel that it's right and I can pick up the phone and make the call. One day I'll get

a peace about it. So October twenty sixteen, my mom caused me and said that he had passed away. And I remember I was in my office in a meeting with John Bishop, and I just poor John. I just broke down crying. And I never expected to grieve over somebody that I didn't know the way I grieved then. But I was also grieving because I knew I would never get that chance back to obey to share Christ with them. And it wasn't even something huge that God

was asking me to do. It was one simple phone call that could have had a dramatic impact on his life. And thankfully, God is a god of mercy, He's a God of grace, and so he helped me come to terms with that and realize that there's other people that could have shared Christ with him too, And the Lord did help bring me to a sense a peace about that.

But I share this with you because I resolved in that moment that I wanted to be the guy that obeys those simple promptings from God, even when they're not peaceful. I want to be the guy that sends the text. I want to be the guy that makes the phone call. I don't want to just wait for peace to come. I want to be the guy that does the hard thing, even when it's not the peaceful thing, because we all want to build these giant walls of faith in our life.

But those walls are built one step of obedience at a time, one brick after the other. And sometimes to pick up those bricks and stack them. It's a painful thing, but God will always bless it when we obey. Here's the final point. Don't mistake what is most noticeable for what is most valuable. Don't mistake what is most noticeable

for what is most valuable. So one of the biggest lies that has stolen my peace in my walk with God is trying to attach my worth with my accomplishments, my value with what other people can see, my value with the wall that I've built, the work of my hands. And here we have me a Mayah who's the builder of the wall, the leader of the exiles. And I don't think he was feeling a lot of significance or value in the work that he was doing, because it looked like it was in jeopardy, it looked like it

might not get done. It looked like he might even lose his life because of it. And in this moment of weakness, he prayed a prayer that I think we would all do very well to pray ourselves. So Verse nine says they were all trying to frighten us, thinking their hands will get too weak for the work and it will not be completed. But I prayed, now strengthen my hands. I used to read over that prayer like it was some token prayer, like this is just some

two D story character. But what I love about our church is Pastor Stephen helps us see that the humanity in the Bible, that these were real people with real emotions. And so I tried to put myself in Neamia's shoes. And he had staked everything on building this wall. He was risking his life, and it looked like it was in jeopardy, and all he knew to do was to pray for strength from God. It had to be so tempting to quit, it had to be so tempting to

walk away. And I was wondering what kept him going in the midst of all the discouragement, in the midst of all the hardship. And I think one thing might be this, that he realized that God wasn't just building the wall, that he could see. God wasn't just building this outer wall to protect a city. God was building this inner wall of faith in his heart, this inner wall of character, this inner wall of trust, this inner wall of realizing that his hope was and then how

strong this wall was. His hope was in how big and mighty his God is. His defender wasn't some far away king in Persia. His defender was the Lord God, Almighty. God was building something greater in the Amiah than what He was building through him. And God was also doing that for the people of Jerusalem. See, they had been sent to exile to begin with because they had trusted in false gods and lesser kingdoms, and God was building a renewed faith in them to trust in the God

of Israel. That God was their defender and protector. Sometimes your faithfulness isn't just about you. It's about what other people see through your faithfulness, the way other people are encouraged by it, the way other people are inspired when you go and you do the hard thing, even when it hurts, and even when you're weak. See Nehemiah had to be tempted to quit, but he knew that his

strength didn't come from retreating from the hard thing. His strength came from repeating the hard thing again and again and again. Strength wasn't in the retreat. Strength was in the repeat. Can you say that to your neighbor's strength is in the repeat. See God wants us to be a people that just the hard thing over and over and over again. It's to say, it's the principle when you work out, I'll work out maybe once a week at best. That's just enough to get you sore, not

to build strength. If I really wanted to get stronger, I would work out day after day after day, week after week after week. That would build My strength comes in repetition. It's the same with faith. It's repeated obedience, repeated surrender, repeated trust in God. So Neamia didn't just say, Lord, strengthen my hands and expect some supernatural strength to make his hand stronger. No, he knew he needed some stacking strength. So he picked up a brick and he stacked it.

Picked up another brick, stacked it, said Lord, strengthen my hands. Got back to work, picked up another brick, stacked it. Accusation came, kept stacking, Discouragement came, kept stacking, And when his obedience met God's power. That's when his strength came, and that's when the wall was built. Because verse fifteen shows us this. It says, so the wall was completed on the twenty fifth of a lull in fifty two days.

And when all our enemy's heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self confidence because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. So you might not think you had the strength to do what God has called you to do, but he promises that if you obey, if you keep stacking one brick at a time, it's not your strength, it's His power that's working within you, the

wall will be built. And I really felt like God sent me today and brought you here this Memorial Day week. And some of you who feel like nobody notices you stacking, you feel like you've been stacking the bricks, and you feel like you've been trying to feel faithful and nobody sees and nobody notices, and maybe you're just tempted to quit because you feel like you just can't keep going. And I want to tell you that God is doing something mighty in your life, even if you can see it.

Because I want to remind you of the truth of Philippians one p. Six, being confident of this that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So we talked about finishing what we start. We're never going to do that perfectly. But God promises he will always finish what he starts, and He has started something so special in each and every person under the sound of my voice. We're never going to be truly consistent. But

Jesus is the model of consistency. The word says he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His love is consistent, his grace is consistent. His power that's available to you is consistent. So do not give up, Do not stop building the wall. Keep stacking brick by brick, and God is going to build a mighty wall of faith through your life. I want to invite everybody to stand so I can pray for you well. For you, just to hold your hands, palm up like this and close your eyes.

I want you to think, what is the hard thing that you know God has called you to do again and again. What is the brick He's called you to pick up? In a stack. What is the active obedience that you've been dreading, but you know the Lord is calling you to it. And I just want you to repeat this prayer after me, this very simple prayer that

Neiamiah prayed, and say, strengthen my hands. So God, I don't know what was on everybody's heart as they prayed that, but I pray that you will give them the strength and the courage and the faith to obey, realizing that you are a trustworthy God, You are a strong and mighty God, and that even when we are faithless, you are faithful, and we can know that you do all things for the good of those who love the Lord, and our hard according to its purpose. So Lord, working

the hard things, work in the good things. And Lord, I pray that you will open everybody's eyes this week just to get a glimpse of the wall that you're building through them. And I thank you for their faithfulness. I thank you for how you're using them, thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. Is because of you that

this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now or visit Elevation church dot org slash podcast for more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it with your friends. You can click the share button, take a screenshot and share it on your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.