Finding Your Place in God's Greater Story.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name was Elimelech. His wife's name was Naomi. And the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah, and they went to Moab and lived there. Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you to your mother's home. May the Lord show you kindness as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband." Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people." But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me, even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons, would you wait until they grow up? Would you really remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is better for me than for you, because the Lord's hand has turned against me." At this, they wept aloud again. When Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. "Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her." But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?" "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

Ruth 1:1-22

Surviving with what you're given

Amen. Okay, so that was a lot of Scripture, and we are reading about the story of Ruth. We have a couple of key contextual things that we're going to talk about as we go through this. The first thing I want to talk about is that this story takes place in the Old Testament. So the Bible is also looked at in those two sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. You might hear it said the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Here's a kind of cheat sheet of when we're reading in the Old Testament. Things that we have to remember: because you write in one of those passages and you're like, "I'm just going to open up my Bible and read a random verse or a random text," and then you start reading it and you're like, "What is happening right now?" We believe that all Scripture is God-given, like God is going to use Scripture to speak to us, but there's also just a lot of things in the Bible that are not happening to us right now that we have to understand.

When you're reading the Old Testament, some things to keep in mind: first, understand and consider the context that we're reading in. Second, recognize that this Scripture, although it speaks to us today, wasn't being directed to us here sitting in Madison, Wisconsin. So there's going to be a little disconnect. And third, we have to recognize the genre. Scripture is broken up into different genres. In the Old Testament we have books of history, these narratives and historical accounts. We have poetry. We have prophetic books. We have the books we'd consider wisdom literature and law. Each single genre requires a different approach to how we're reading it.

But some of the biggest things to focus on and not get so caught up in the side of it is this: first of all, remember every time you read Scripture, whether it's Old Testament or New, that we need to remember the bigger story that we are entering into. We need to process everything that we read.from Old Testament to New, from the moment that God said "Here I am, I created the heavens and the earth," after Jesus' death and resurrection.we have to process everything through the lens of God's heart, God's character, and the bigger story. And because we are on this side of the story, this side of Jesus' death and resurrection, we as followers of Jesus process everything through the lens of Christ. We Christ everything through the ways that we see Jesus, the way that when he was here on earth living his life.

So that brings us to Ruth now. How do we approach this? Well, we see some key things that it talks about right away in Ruth chapter 1, verse 1. It says, "In the days when the judges ruled and there was a famine in the land." So it's giving us some context of what is happening. Ruth takes place in essentially a really chaotic period of time. This takes place when so many of the people of Israel were falling apart left and right.

Ruth was a Moabite widow. She was not an Israelite woman. She was a Moabite widow. And what we see here is that she's choosing to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, even though you see the back and forth there where Naomi's like, "No, go, go." But Ruth's like, "I'm staying. I'm staying. I'm going to keep walking with you." So we see a lot of these are key themes that I want to talk about here.

And I also want to mention.I think it's pretty cool that we're walking through the Book of Ruth both around the month of Valentine's Day but also the month of Black History Month. What we're seeing here is that this is a love story. It's not just about Ruth and Boaz, which is mainly what we've heard about. There's a whole lot of love going on in this story. There's a whole lot of redemption and reconciliation to be celebrated in this story.

We are reading about the story of a minority woman who God uses. Later we see that Jesus himself came from her lineage. We're reading about a redemptive love story. It's a story about redemption. It's a story about a non-Israelite hero here in this narrative. The Moabites at this time were often seen as enemies, seen as outsiders, blessed them. Not only that, but she was a woman who also had significantly less value than men at that time. And we start to see the way that God is using this story as a piece of his story to do incredible things.

So I want to go back to those first few verses, starting with verse six. It said, "When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah."

So she's saying to them, and we're talking about it.go back to each of your mother's homes. May the Lord show you kindness. So she's trying to bless them. What the Lord is saying: find you another husband. Go do all of that. So there's a theme here: a lot of talk about husbands. We're talking about the husbands. Let me talk about the husbands for a minute.

Every single week we have a "so what" and a "now what" of our message. Our "so what" today is this: there is more to your story. And our "now what" is to know your story, to take time to remember where you've seen God at work in your life. There's more to your story. But what we're going to talk about today is we see that for Ruth and for Naomi there was a moment here where their story could have been about their setbacks and their struggles. It could have been about just getting stepped on and trying to survive the load. But instead Ruth chose to believe that there was more to her story than what was happening to her at the moment.

There was more to her than just the setbacks. So I want to talk about these setbacks. And the first is that the husbands were gone. The husbands were gone. Why is this a big deal? Why does this matter? What we have to realize is that at that time in the Bible, in the Old Testament, husbands were not just like, "Oh, that's nice if you get married and fall in love." It wasn't just all this big romantic thing. But for women, that was a necessity for survival. You needed a husband. Marriage was viewed as the primary means of security, of women's social class, her identity, her security, her honor, and her physical safety. Women weren't safe to be alone. So for them to just be like, "Oh no," yes, to grieve the loss of a spouse is very significant, but there was a lot more at play here.

When survival mode shows us who sustains us

The first thing I want to talk about is this: your response when in survival mode often shows us who you believe sustains us. Your response when in survival mode often shows who or what you believe sustains you. We see here when they are faced in this moment.we have no husbands, we have no companions, we have no provision, we have no security.what do we do and how do we respond? We are in survival mode.

I had this story just warning. It's very peculiar. Don't worry. Don't be guys. I'm getting up. Okay, but it was slightly scary. I was getting ready to get on a train and as a train is coming, somebody falls into the tracks. Yes. It was. I see all of your eyes like, "What?" Yeah, it was very scary. So this is one of those moments where you start to realize, like, what sets it? Is this flight or fight? Like, who am I in this moment?

And I'm watching. I was with one of my friends and she just looks right at it and screams really loudly and then turns completely away. Wait, it's on the situation. I watch another stranger and another stranger and another stranger. They jump down into the tracks and they start pulling this woman up and they do get her out. And what do I do? I run towards the train just screaming, praying, like "Stop the train, stop the train." I don't know where that came from. I didn't know I had that in me. And afterwards, I was processing this with my friend. We're like, "What just happened?" And then what I said was, "I think we do this. I like what does that tell us about ourselves?" And I wish that all of the time in my mind, like, that was my default response.is to just be in Jesus' name.but there, I got like just running towards the street, thinking that my arms are going to stop it or something.

It wasn't logical, but the woman was okay. It all ended well. But after, during a complaint, I was like, "Why did you turn away?" She's like, "Well, something bad was going to happen. I took on a sea." Like, "You were a coward. You were a coward." I probably did say that, and I shouldn't have. But the reality is for each and every one of us when we are facing impossible situations and we find ourselves in these moments of like, "I can't protect myself. I can't save myself. I can't provide for myself," what is our default response? Who do we look to to sustain us? To provide for us? To make way for us? What sustains you? What is your response to that?

What I love about Ruth is that she had every reason to turn away and to not face the reality of what was happening. But instead she kept walking. She turned towards the pain. She turned towards the chaos. She turned towards the unknown and she kept walking, and she kept trusting.

Notice when I put this up there today, I wrote the word "believes to sustain you." We believe that sustains us because something that I think is really significant for us to notice is that when we follow Jesus, there's going to be a lot of illusions that come up to us of what being sustained looks like, of what being fulfilled looks like. We talk about this a lot here: the idols of comfort, the idols of control, the idols of financial provision and stability. Then fill in the blank. Naomi's experience was real in this moment. Like, this is no small thing. You don't just be like, "Oh, you lost your husband. Too bad." This is a big deal. God cares about these moments in our life. This is real. But it's also a reminder to us that no relationship, no circumstance, no amount of money is ever as sustaining like Jesus. And often the things that we think will sustain us are just illusions. Sometimes it's the little gifts that God gives us to give us a taste of what he must and so have working for us.

And so as we continue to process this, I just want you to think: like, what have you placed your security in? What is it that if it was taken away tomorrow, you would find yourself in that moment of panic.either it's too hard, I have to look away, or maybe even like the weirdo flaring in your arms, and you're saying, "Jesus, help," like where's the point where you're going to be just in survival mode and you're like, "What's sustaining me in these moments?"

About four years ago I felt a shift in my life taking place. Many of you know the story. If you've been around here and was here originally (I can't remember how many years ago), I started campus ministry, which I did for about seven years. Now that was my main source of income. I was a missionary, but that's what paid the bills at the end of the day.

When I started to sense this shift that God was saying, "Hey, it's time to move away from that and start leaning more into the church and what we're doing here," and that's when we made New Culture College and all those awesome things. It's been good. But I remember that first "yes" when God's like, "Will you do this? Will you step away?" It's like, "Yes. I'm all in. This is amazing." And then as it got closer and closer, the panic started to set in. The realization: "Like, what am I actually doing? When I'm about to quit my job and I have no lens for the future, what am I actually doing in this moment?"

We make all of these different shifts and these things happen, and when we first say that "yes" it can be so much easier than when we're faced with reality of what we're actually saying "yes" to. So much of following Jesus is the scary moments of surrender, than walking in faith.which is walking without seeing completely what you're walking towards.

As it got closer, I mean, the panic started setting in. I made some really good choices. I decided to buy a house two months before I quit my job. So I bought this house. I quit my job. And when the paycheck stopped coming, it really was that moment: "In Jesus' name, you have to provide because I have no way."

Now I would love to tell you that it's like, "I know this amazing new job and I'm just rolling in right now," but that's not the case. But what I have seen happen is when a few weeks into buying my home and all of a sudden the hot water heater goes out and all these things.and again, it can be these moments of panic and saying, "Okay, like, how will I provide for myself? How do I survive?" I got to experience the body of Christ at work, where neighbors that are also followers of Jesus are saying, "Hey, we just felt called to send you this check. To give you this money to fix the things that need to be fixed." I watched as God opened doors for work and for jobs to sustain me. But what I've seen even more is it continues to be true that God has a better plan and a better story than we could ever imagine.

That sometimes when those theory guesses and instead of looking at when the paycheck stops and going, "Oh, this is a setback," and so I better go into survival mode, I'm like, "Oh, when this stops working the way that I wanted to, like, this isn't part of God's plan anymore".it's continuing to step up and that's leading and saying, "Holy Spirit, what are you doing? What is my invitation? And how can I keep walking and following your way?" He always has a plan. It's his plan. It's his story.

I love it. Colossians and John there's two or four verses that really sum this up. It says: "For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

But God's the one who made it all. He created it all. We could trust the creator to be creative with our situations too. The moments that you feel like you're stuck, like you're in the middle of chaos, I don't know what tomorrow is going to hold, I don't know what's going to happen with this relationship, I don't know how I'm going to have the provision that I need or the job that I need.trust that he's going to sustain you. If he created it, he's a creative guy, and he could create a way out and a way for you. John 1:3 also says: "All that has been made was made" through him.

Survival mode is a real thing. The reality is again that nothing can sustain us like Jesus. If God made it, he'll sustain us. The Holy Spirit will continue to give you the plans and you will provide. God doesn't just make promises that he's not going to come through on. The other key thing is that we might not always get what we want, but God is telling you what we need and what he needs for us to do in order to seek his kingdom come. So they might not look the way that you thought it would. How many times are you waking up and you're like, "How did we get here? And what is happening right now?" And we can let the enemy's voice start to creep in and tell us all the things that we did wrong and why this is a setback and why we're struggling. And we can focus and start to center everything on the pain. Or we can say, "How did I get here? And Holy Spirit, what are you doing that I cannot see? Even if it's not what I wanted, if this is not what I dreamed that things would look like right now, how can I continue to say, 'What are you doing? What's my invitation to keep Jesus at the center and trust that you're writing a better story?'"

Because when we keep walking, we start to see the story really does go beyond this and it's so much better.

Choosing not to turn away

Verse 14 says: "They wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her." So poor Orpah, and she's like, "I'm done. That's it, right?" So I peace out. Like, I don't want to look. I don't want to see how this goes. So I'm going to turn away from the problem and the pain. And I've been there. I relate to that moment where you're like, "I can't see this go down."

But Ruth cling to her. Through the fight. "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people. Your God my God. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, and even death separates you and me."

This is the love story I'm talking about, right? This love. This commitment. This devotion to her mother-in-law. Those of you who have mother-in-laws can you imagine that? Like, if you're like, "I'm so committed to you right now. Where you stay I'll stay, like my spouse isn't in the picture like that's true love right there." So this is what the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem.

When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?" And she said, "Don't call me that. She's like, I saw my name. Don't go be that. Call me Mara, because all the Almighty has made my life very bitter." Do you see what's happening here? She's being stuck in a situation that she's saying, and now she's starting to identify with her grief. She's identifying. She's renaming herself. Has anyone ever done that before? We get so stuck in what is happening, and all of a sudden you're just like, "Well, this is what's happened, and now this is who I am. You are not what has happened to you."

We don't have to identify with that. What she's making a choice here. She said, "Don't call me Naomi. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought this scourge upon me."

See, life happens, and life is hard. This is a big thing. Even to get that.she has a choice in how she responds. And this is it. So that she returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem. And this is what the barley harvest was beginning. So what's happening? Naomi is doing honestly what makes sense and what would probably be most of our response to the situation, if we be honest. Her first response is that she's not going to take the approach to like run and be like, "Lord, I cast you off, hack your way out of this situation." She's not quite doing the light or the thing like, "I'm just going to look away." But she's kind of in this weird spot where now she's starting to identify with the pain and she's starting to send her everything. And there's really a bigger deal happening.

But we see Ruth coming here, and she starts to look to life beyond the grief and beyond the pain.

Bethlehem, the house of bread

Now I want to talk about Bethlehem for a minute here. So Bethlehem.that Hebrew word is based on Beit Lehem, and it really means the house of bread. Is what it means. You probably heard this if you've ever made a trip, especially around Christmas time, to talk about this. Bethlehem: the house of bread.

So what's significant about this? Well, first of all, bread is pretty significant, right? Jesus several times he refers to himself as the bread of life, which is a really funny thing. Like, if you're coming in as a big hero, like picture the climax of a superhero movie, and it's like, "I have rides. I am it," it's like, "Red. I have, I'm the bread of light," which is feeling why is he saying this? This is strange. Well, bread is something that sustains us, right? Bread is something that nourishes us. If it's good, healthy bread, obviously. But sometimes it's not always bread. But you don't have to say it here. Still, by the purity of what bread is supposed to be.

But Jesus says in John 6:35: "After he feeds the five thousand and he uses the bread and the bread is multiplied, it feeds all these people, he said, 'I am the bread of life. Jesus declares is another bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes that he will better be thirsty.' So he continues to elaborate on this and saying like, not only am I the bread of life, almost like a saint, but like, if you come to me, you will never be hungry again. That is a statement right there. Jesus is declaring like, 'I am the one that sustains you.' And here's where he gets even cooler than that: we later are going to read that this is where Jesus is born. Jesus is born in Bethlehem, the house of bread, a house of provision, a house that saved."

There's no more lack anymore. So right now it may not make sense for you to keep walking. But the way that we walk, the way that we choose to walk, makes room for God to work and to do what only he can do. The way that we walk makes room for God to work. If Ruth wouldn't have kept walking, if she wouldn't have kept headed to that place, who knows what would have happened? But that she continues to walk, she continues choose not to look away but to look towards it, to see that God is doing something in this story. There's provision coming, and we read right at the end of the chapter: "After they arrived there in Bethlehem, as a barley harvest was beginning." Harvest is a good thing. Harvest is plenty, right? Harvest is abundance like it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. But unless you start walking, you continue to walk.even, never see it.

So we have a choice when we are faced with the setbacks, when we're faced with the struggles, when we find ourselves experiencing pain and grief, grief and loss: to say, are we going to choose to sit down and to stay stuck? Are we going to step up and are we going to take that next step and that next step and say, "Holy Spirit, what are you doing? Where do I need to walk?" And trust the process and trust the story.

The final choice: step up or stay stuck

The final thing I want to talk about is how the story's already in motion, and we get to choose if we will sit out or step up and start walking because to get to the other side, we have to keep walking. I want to talk just a little bit more about Naomi. When we talk about this, of what it was.preferred to really just count herself out and to just step down and to say, "I'm out." She's saying, "I went on my fold, but the Lord has brought me back empty." Her grief caused her to focus so much on what she was missing that she couldn't see anything else that was happening around her.

See, this is the danger that we see of making ourselves the main character. She started to think that everything that was happening was about her. And so in doing this, her pain was the biggest thing happening. Her grief, her loss was all that she could see. She made herself the main character of the story and therefore got stuck and wasn't able to move to that other side where she changed her God-given name and said, "Call me bitter. Mara means bitter. She's like, 'I'm bitter. This is who I am. This is what's happening,' and she chooses to stay there."

When we focus on ourselves, we miss the bigger picture of how God is working in our lives and around the world. Naomi was blighted by her pain. When in reality, God was using her story to set the stage for redemption, for reconciliation. He was using her story to literally lay wait for Jesus. As we see, Ruth is the great grandmother of David. Jesus came from the line of David. Like, God is doing something incredible through these women. But she chose to step down rather than stepping up. And the law ends up to make way for Jesus.

May the worship you become this be ready to close today. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. Our "so what" is this all about: there is more to your story. And part of that good news, to remember again and again and again, is that we are not the main characters of the story. That's really good news. So that means just because something bad is happening to you, it doesn't mean that God is bad. It means that just because something was taken away from you, it doesn't mean that God is a God who lacks or that you will always lack. But each and every one of us, we are a part of a greater story than God.he's been writing for all of eternity. A story of redemption, a story of pursuit, a story of love. A story of sending his self, Jesus, to come and save all that which was lost.

This isn't the story. We are not still a part of after Jesus' death and resurrection. He then empowered us to continue to see this kingdom come. But for us to do that, we are going to have to not see ourselves as the main character but to say, "There's more to this story, and I have a part to play." So, Holy Spirit, what has been your part? You want is my invitation.

Survival mode: what do you cling to when you are in survival mode? What is your default response? Are you running away? Are you turning away because you don't want to face the reality of the pain? Are you turning to the Lord and saying, "I need you to intervene"? Are you willing to jump down and help people and say, "Okay, what is happening, and how can I be a part of this?"

If you're here today and your step, if you feel like, "I relate to this or I feel like my life, things feel a little okay, I think, to a little shaken, there's things that are happy that really know," I want you to think about like, how are you going to respond to that? Our default could continue to be to seek comfort, to seek control, to say, "Well, how can I come up with a plan to fix this?" So what would it look like if instead of moving away from it, away from God, we move towards the pain, we move towards the questions, we move towards that "I don't know" and we brought it into Jesus? What is recentering everything around Jesus?

Now I want you to remember, guard that "now" that I send this weather invitation from this. And it's to look back and to remember where you are. They seem not to hurt. Because it said in the days of Judges, and what was happening in the days of Judges is that there was no king. So we read this in Judges 21:25. It says, "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone was doing what they thought was right in their own eyes."

So essentially in the Book of Judges, it's this chronicle of the dark period of Israel's street where people were repeatedly over and over again falling into sin. It was this endless cycle of sin and suffering and repentance and restoration over and over again. And I think one of the root causes that we see this is because they forgot. They forgot the things that God had said. They forgot the intimations they already had. They forgot the ways they had seen him move.

And so the second that they had a setback, the second they had a struggle, they went back into survival mode. They took things into their own hand. They tried to pursue comfort and control and all of these things rather than surrender to God and put God at the center of what they were doing.

And so the importance for us is to go back in our old stories, in our old lives, and say, "God, where have I seen you?" Like, in my family's history, where have I seen you? In my old life, where have I seen you come through? For our friends and for our church, where have I seen you? Because when we can remember, remember that when we're in the setback, we're in the struggle, when we're faced in a moment of going, "No, no, no, God, how are you going to provide? God, I don't know where I'm going to be in two months. God, I don't know where I'm going to be in three months. Like, what do I do?"

We can remember that he comes through. We can remember that he doesn't just make promises, but he eats it. We can remember that he left with us his Holy Spirit to continue to give us strategy, that next step, every single day over and over again. And we can wait at that surrender cycle. We're not stuck anymore in the sin cycle, but in that day of the surrender cycle.

So it's easy for us to look back and to think like, "I could never get there, right?" Like, "Of course I'll keep moving." Ogi gets so stuck so easily. And power the repetition. And so we need to remember who are we called to worship. We need to remember who are we called to fix our attention on in the midst of struggles and setbacks and when we are in complete survival mode.

Ruth did not cling to control. She didn't cling to what makes sense in the moment. But she stayed with her family. She didn't cling to trying to survive or provide for herself. But she trusted that her obedience would lead to a greater story.

So then how do we not get stuck? How do we make sure that history does not repeat itself? Go back. Where have you seen God? What is he already told me? What do you need to remember?

Closing

And so I would invite you to see in today and we get ready to close. And I'm just going to invite you to teach some more response. And I want you to take a moment to posture yourself in a posture of surrender. Whether that's lifting your eyes or holding your hands out in posture of surrender. And I just want to invite each one: these questions. What is at the center of your attention right now? Is it setbacks? Is it struggles? Is it trying to survive? Is it trying to get control, provide for yourself? Is it the pain that you're in? Or is it the story and reality that God is weaving it all together for his good, his glory?

I want to read to us that Isaiah 53:3-4 says: "He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one of those people hide their face from him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our pain and wore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, struck by him and afflicted."

Jesus is familiar with your pain. Jesus faced rejection. Had moments where it would have appeared, if people looked back and said, "That is a setback." His death on the cross, onlookers would have looked at that and said, "That's suffering. That is a setback." But what that was is surrendering to the story that moves and reigns for all eternity. His death on the cross, his persecution, his pain.God was working in the midst of that.

And so we have an invitation today: what we think we're doing, center our lives, our intention to look at our stories, the places that you find ourselves in, to not turn away from Jesus, to not turn away from his Holy Spirit, but to turn towards him, knowing that he knows our pain, he knows our suffering, and that he's left with us his Holy Spirit to be our comforter, to be our guide.

And so as we take this new romance, I just want to remind you to continue to posture yourself and to say, "God, would you remind me where I have seen you? Holy Spirit, would you empower me to keep walking? And even right now, when you just said, Holy Spirit, what is one step I need to take?"

"What is one step that I need to take? Would you show me today?" Holy Spirit, we just invite you into this space. God, you know again our hearts. You know our stories. You know what we're happening in our stories. You know the roles that we are playing in the story that you've been praying for all of eternity. And so I'm going to thank you that today, look to this story, and we could see this woman was a minority, this woman who didn't belong in the places that she was going, this woman that had every reason to stay stuck and continue to keep walking.

And so by praying the same way that she was empowered to keep walking, will you empower us to keep walking? Will you empower us to not stay set, but to move closer to you? To not fear, and to see with you, Jesus, but to rise to you and surrender everything. That we will walk into Christy, that you are going to use it all, that nothing is wasted with you.

And so for these next few moments, as we just end in this time of worship together, we should buy your Holy Spirit's power. Will you continue to use a seat? Will you continue to get all? Will you continue to be our comforter? Will you continue to remind us of where you have been at work in our life, that you are at right now in our midst?

And so now, God, we just lift our gaze upon you, and we choose to walk towards you, to continue to worship, to continue to lift high the name of Jesus, and to make way. Jesus, we just worship you in this place. We surrender.

We're just going to take these extra moments, and I just invite you to continue to praise the time that the Holy Spirit responds however easy by the way to do as we close in this time of portion.