Speaker 1: 0:01

I am a little bit excited to be here in between series because that means I got to pick the topic. So if you hate it, it's me, okay. If you're new here, it's all me. It's not Steven, it's my fault, so don't take it out on him or Madison Church.

Speaker 1: 0:19

You guys, I have been having a week like a week. It's been a lot, a lot. We had to put down our 13-year-old cat, which was awful, because it's just hard to lose a pet, isn't it? And it was a little bit extra hard this time around because this cat was the cat my daughter, maggie, picked up when she was 13. And she's currently serving as a missionary in Lithuania. So I had to call her and tell her and she couldn't come home and say goodbye. So it was just, it was a lot, it was awful. And then, immediately after the vet left our house, we had my husband and I had to drive four and a half hours to Mayo Clinic for a couple of days because he's having a bunch of medical issues and they're always really good about helping him through those. But it just has been a lot. It's been a long, rough week.

Speaker 1: 1:20

So sometimes, when things get crazy like that, I just need to do something to distract myself. Right, self-care. Self-care is important. I need to do something that helps me feel like I can get back in control and something that I can hold on to. That's not my feelings, because I'm not really a fan of feelings to begin with, so I want something different, something to distract me. So this is where self-care comes in, and I find that I'm not really the best at it.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Anybody here good at self-care? Are you guys good at it? I'm seeing some people like, heck, yeah, I rock at it. So what do you guys do for self-care? I wish that going to the gym was a self-care that I jumped to. That would be great. I think that's a good one. So you guys have some great ideas.

Speaker 1: 2:13

I tend to do stuff that's creative. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it gets my brain into a different place. So I'll do stuff like gardening or painting, and I find I like to organize things. When I'm really stressed, I will alphabetize my spices and think it's like the best thing ever, right, because it only takes a few minutes. But I can step back and be like, oh, look what I did. Everything's beautiful. Now I feel like I have to do something physically, something that I can. I can move around and see the progress, and sometimes we can feel like that's just something I can hold on to.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Personally, self-care can be super important. It can help us feel better. It can help us feel like we're more in control. It's important and there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing. Self-care and calming techniques are important. It can be helpful and healthy.

Speaker 1: 3:13

But if you're like me and I don't know if anybody is, but if you're like me you can kind of get lost in it. I have already forgotten to make lunch and then also forgotten to make dinner because I'm out in the garden trying to pretend reality doesn't exist, or I'm trying to ignore my feelings somehow. I sometimes try to hold on to those things closer than I hold on to God, because they're tangible and I can hold them in my hands. Tangible and I can hold them in my hands. This feeling of wanting to hold onto something is not, I don't think, unique to me and I know it's not new. Sometimes you just want something to hold onto. Have you guys ever felt this way? Yeah, yeah, like you just need something to hold onto. Kids often have a blanket or a favorite stuffed animal. They have that, for a reason, we can find comfort in our pets this way we can find comfort in relationships. Or maybe you've had the experience of being the passenger in the car while Stephen was driving and you know that feeling of clutching that handle as if it's suddenly going to save your life. Right, sometimes you just need something to hold on to. I can say this because he's not in the room.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Oftentimes, when we first start following Jesus, we're really excited about our new faith. Right, it is fresh, it's new, it's vibrant. We're confident in the love that Jesus has for us. The Lord seems to be encouraging us at every turn, shines brightly. For the first time we're noticing that prayer seems to really make a difference Obedience. Obedience results in tangible blessings. Joy just comes naturally.

Speaker 1: 5:07

We find it easy to hold onto those promises of God, but eventually, at some point in our faith walk, we find it harder to maintain our faith right. Suddenly, everything seems to just be more difficult. It seems more work than it was in the beginning. It just doesn't seem to work the same, and some of us are feeling that right now. We feel like God doesn't hear our prayers. We're obedient, but it just doesn't seem like it's getting us anywhere. Our doubts increase and we have so many questions. I know I've had a lot of questions this past week. Maybe you have too.

Speaker 1: 5:50

We long for the days our faith seemed fresh, new, unstoppable, and it's here, in that place, where we tend to revert back to the things that made us feel better in the past. It's here that we often take things into our own hands and start depending on ourselves, maybe a little bit too much. Maybe we still pray and we still ask God for comfort and help, but we also have an additional glass of wine or distract ourselves with a project longer than we should go to the gym, longer than we should try to get a new personal best right. We put our trust into things or people that we shouldn't, and we can just kind of do that by default. And you know what we find in this? We find it doesn't work. It's empty. We're flailing around trying to get back to that faith, that mountaintop experience when our faith was fresh and new. And while our faith probably isn't going to be brand new again, right, we can move forward. We can move forward from trusting ourselves and the other things that we shouldn't to a genuine faith, tried, tested, true, deeper faith. And this isn't a faith that has all the answers, unfortunately, and it may not look pretty and shiny, but it's real. Most of us want this kind of faith, but here's the thing, you guys, it's the part we don't really like to admit. The only way to that deeper faith is to go through the valley of having our faith challenged, to journey through the valley of mistakes, trusting the wrong things, learning and growing. Trusting the wrong things, learning and growing, coming out of the valley with more confidence, with more faith and a closer relationship with Jesus. We will take this journey over and over and over again throughout our lives.

Speaker 1: 8:02

So today I want to take a look at the Israelites. These are the people of God who lived long before Jesus was born, and God set them apart from the very beginning for a unique mission in our world. He led them out of slavery in Egypt and promised to lead them to their own land. In lots of ways, I'm sure those few first days of freedom freedom from that slavery must have felt like a fresh new walk with Jesus does to us. Look at what God has done. We're experiencing freedom for the first time. We've been rescued, but if you're familiar with the story, you know that God didn't take the Israelites directly from Egypt to their promised land, right, didn't take the direct route. Instead, he led them into the desert and suddenly freedom didn't feel like freedom anymore. The Israelites wondered if they would have been better off as slaves. After all, slavery is probably better than starvation. After all, slavery is probably better than starvation.

Speaker 1: 9:10

So the people of God began to wrestle and doubt and distrust and, just like when things start to go bad in our lives sometimes, the Israelites didn't realize that things were going to seem to go from bad to even worse. Moses went up to the mountain to meet with God, which is something a good leader should do. A good leader should be meeting with the Lord. So Moses goes up to the mountain to meet with God, and what they didn't realize is that he was going to be gone for 40 days and 40 nights, which is an incredibly long time. He's on the mountain and they're in the valley. He's on the mountain and they're in the valley. He is hearing from God. They're hearing nothing. He's holding the 10 commandments. They are holding onto nothing, and sometimes we just need something to hold onto. So what did they do? If you feel like following along in your Bible, or a Bible near you or on your phone.

Speaker 1: 10:10

I'm going to look at Exodus, which is in the beginning part of the Bible, exodus 32. In verse 1, it says they gathered around Aaron and said come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what happened to him, because sometimes you just get doubtful and tired of waiting on the Lord and you want to do something, anything to make the situation better. You want something to hold on to. So Aaron asks the people to take off all their gold jewelry that they're wearing and bring it to him. And he takes those items and forms an idol in the shape of a calf. And he does this. And he says in verse 4, and then, if that wasn't bad enough, he goes on in verse 5 and says tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord. So the next day the Israelites ate and drank and they partied like it was 1999.

Speaker 1: 11:19

And now, if you ever heard this story before, you might be thinking like I do almost every time why would Aaron suddenly think that a golden calf is a god? Give me a break Like how does this even happen? Right Before we just decide that he's completely nuts, I think there's something we do need to pay attention to Remember. After forming, the golden calf, aaron proudly announces tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord. A festival to the Lord, I mean, what's going on here? And many biblical scholars believe that the choice of a calf was not a random idea. Aaron didn't just think they were cute. He wasn't from Wisconsin, so he wasn't like waving around a dairy state flag, right? Nothing like that.

Speaker 1: 12:12

A calf was a common image that was used in worship in the ancient world when making an image of a god. It was believed that the calf was part of the throne where God would sit, so the calf wasn't necessarily God itself, of the throne where God would sit, so the calf wasn't necessarily God itself. It was a throne for a God. So while we're seeing Aaron grabbing a hold of this golden calf, saying these are the gods who brought you up out of Egypt, we're also seeing him proclaiming a festival to the Lord, the one true God. So Aaron holds on to a golden calf while still proclaiming his faith in God, and this can be a difficult image for us to really grasp and understand today, but maybe Aaron is a little more like us than we realize.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Because let me ask you, if you are a follower of Jesus and when you're going through a difficult season, is your tendency to reject God altogether? Do you completely dismiss God? Do you take charge and handle things yourself? Do you think to yourself I got this one God, you can step aside. That might be true for some of us. Step side, that might be true for some of us, but in my experience, most of us would continue to say we believe in God, that we trust God, but we also feel like we need to do something. We need something to hold on to, something tangible to make him feel real. I can't count the number of times that I wished I could physically see or touch Jesus, especially when times are extra stressful, painful or filled with grief.

Speaker 1: 13:53

The Israelites weren't necessarily looking for a substitute God. They were just looking for something to add on to God. They were tired of the silence. They were tired of feeling alone in the valley. They were looking for something that they could hold on to, something that would help them get through this painful experience. And isn't that what we do? We want to help reduce our pain and suffering. We don't necessarily grab onto a golden calf, but we might hold onto a drink or drug of choice, hoping to numb pain. We might hold onto entertainment to feel good for just a moment, or our job overworking, because it's something we're really good at. Most of us are not so bold as to say forget you, got, I'm out. Most of us are not so bold as to say forget you, god, I'm out. We just want something to hold on to, something that feels more concrete, something we hope will help us get through this difficult valley experience, and there have been so many times where I have walked through this and I'm sure there'll be many more. But one time that comes to my mind right away is when I started this little church called Exchange in Green Bay. And if you want to test your faith, just plant a church. Okay, it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 15:23

I felt this overwhelming call on my life to do this and I knew that it was a God thing right away. This was not my idea. I had never in my life thought this was going to be a thing, but I knew that God had pointed me in that direction and as it started to play out, it got really tough and I doubted him and myself several times in that direction and as it started to play out it got really tough and I doubted him and myself several times in the process. Financially, I wasn't in a great place. I had been a single mom for 20 years and I worked hard to make ends meet, and those kids were now going to college, which is not cheap, and I had zero extra income to be funneling into this new startup adventure. It was difficult on some of my relationships. People that I thought were going to be for me, people I thought would be encouraging, and people I thought would be supportive or even join me in this grand God adventure didn't, and some were outright discouraging.

Speaker 1: 16:29

I had read a million books and been to at least a thousand conferences. I talked to a bajillion church planters and I thought I had a handle on what to expect, but I had no clue. I felt like I was failing. I felt like I either heard God wrong or maybe God changed his mind about me, and I often felt that maybe God was letting me down. I remember begging God to make himself real in those moments. Sometimes I would isolate myself and just go to work right, working at making this church happen in my own power. I wrote proposals and plans and jumped ahead of schedule to get things moving in the right direction. Nothing seemed to work.

Speaker 1: 17:15

It was hard, it was lonely, I yelled and cried at God a lot and then I surrendered. I had to get to the point where I said, hey God, this is your church, this is not mine. This church was your idea. I certainly didn't think about doing this all by myself. I'm out here in the desert and this sucks. And yes, I talked to God like that. And you know what he showed up. He was probably like hey, thanks for finally getting your ego out of the way so I can do my thing. Way to go. Took a while. It was not my favorite lesson to learn, but it did cause me to pray a whole lot more and it did cause me to get closer to God than ever before, to depend on him more than ever. And ultimately I'm thankful to have experienced that desert. I'm thankful for what he did through and with that little church and I know Stephen has similar stories about the early days of Madison Church. I'm thankful he endured and pressed into his relationship with God, because we're all gathering together here and growing spiritually as a result, and for that I'm thankful. Don't tell him I said that.

Speaker 1: 18:42

So what about you guys? In fact, right now, I want you to just take a second and think about one or two things in your life that are just plain hard right now. Maybe you want to make a note of it in your phone or write it on a piece of paper, maybe you just want to keep it in your head. But just think about one or two things. What's causing you pain? What's challenging your faith? What is it that you're going through?

Speaker 1: 19:11

Some of us are going through a relational desert. Right now. We feel alone. There are hopes and dreams of dating and marrying, but right now it feels as though God is totally silent on that topic. Others of us have someone in our lives. We may be married or in a significant relationship and we've never felt more lonely or alone.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Some of us are going through a financial desert or alone. Some of us are going through a financial desert going to the mailbox or opening your email. It's about as frightening as riding a roller coaster without a seat belt, because the bills just keep piling up more and more. For others, this has been a season of tremendous disappointment and unmet expectations. You had such high hopes, big dreams, and they're gone, and most of the time it feels like God is gone too. And for all of us, no matter your political party of choice. You are worried about the future of our country. Misinformation, the economy, country misinformation, the economy, the persistent social media, squabbles filled with fear, anxiety, anger.

Speaker 1: 20:33

Next week can't come soon enough, right? Whatever it is you're going through, I believe God arranged for you to be listening to this right now. God arranged for you to be listening to this right now For you. I want you to be able to hear what I'm about to say. Next, there are two challenges I want to make for us. But before I go there, I want to say this specifically to you I can't imagine what you're going through. I want to say that I'm sorry, I'm really sorry that you have to go through whatever it is that you are personally going through. I know it's hard, I know it feels impossible and I can't imagine how much it hurts. Please know that God can use whatever you're going through. He will use it to heal you, to get closer to you, and he'll use it to help others, if you so choose to let him. So.

Speaker 1: 21:26

In light of that, let me give you two challenges. First, honestly ask yourself what do I need to let go of? What substitutes have I been holding onto in hopes of dulling the pain? What do I need to surrender? Do an honest evaluation. It might be a relationship that you were holding onto. You know it's not mutual. Maybe you're drinking to make the pain go away, or your drug of choice might be food or spending money you don't have. Maybe it's work, and while others applaud your success, you know you're holding on to work as a way to not deal with other stuff. You may never claim any one of these as your God, but is it what you hold on to to get through the difficult valley? What do you need to let go of?

Speaker 1: 22:20

The universal sign of surrender is two open hands raised in the air. I picture like an old Western gunfight right where the one guy comes out his hands up right. That's how we know he surrendered. Two hands up in the air, or the police. They're always yelling put your hands up. At least that's what I hear. I don't know if I'm a personal experience that person that they're yelling at when they put their hands up. We know they've surrendered right. The police are now in control. Maybe you've seen people raise their hands in worship. Maybe you've done it yourself. This is a sign of surrender to the Lord. Two open hands raised this is what surrender looks like.

Speaker 1: 23:07

But before you can surrender, you have to let go of what you're holding on to. You can't surrender in a gunfight while holding your gun up in the air. You have to put it down. That's not surrendering. Until you let go.

Speaker 1: 23:21

Before you can surrender, you have to let go of what you're holding on to. Will you surrender today? Will you be willing to let go of what you're holding on to? And the second challenge is this Ask yourself what do I need to hold on to? What's amazing about God is he will not leave us empty-handed.

Speaker 1: 23:44

Once you let go of whatever it is that you need to let go of. Once you surrender, then you're left with two empty hands. Two hands ready to grab onto two things. With one hand, grab onto God's presence. Psalm 23, verse 4, says even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me. God may have been on the mountain with Moses, but he was also in the valley with the people. God wants to go with you through your valley. So with that one hand, grab a hold of his presence. Grab a hold of a Bible reading plan. If you don't have one, ask Stephen. Pastors always like to talk about what they're doing and what they're reading. He'll be all excited. So if you need a Bible reading plan, ask him. But also, grab a hold of a long walk, maybe, where you're crying out to God and telling him what you need, what you want, how you're disappointed. He knows he can handle it. It's a big God. Grab a hold of a worship song and just let all of it go, fully surrender. Grab onto that, grab onto God's presence. And with that other hand, because you have two right holding onto God's presence and hold on to God's people.

Speaker 1: 25:15

When God established the church, he meant for it to be a group of people who really just get each other, who can help each other get through anything. And we only meet here once a week, right on Sundays. But there are other ways to connect with each other. There's small groups, there's parties, apparently all the time, and I heard something about an after party. I don't know who's arranging that, but I heard about it. But there's those. There's small groups, there's parties, but you can ask someone to meet you for coffee or for lunch or to come over for a game night. You can chat by phone, by text, on social media. Right, we know these things and sometimes we expect our church family to just be around to know that we need them. But our communication has to be more intentional. Sometimes we have to ask for what we need because people don't just magically know.

Speaker 1: 26:14

Hold on to God's people. It doesn't mean that we fix everything or anything really, but we're there, there to walk with you, be there for you. We all need something to hold on to. All of us. God is there and he is ready to help us to hold on to his presence and his people, ready to help us to hold on to his presence and his people. I love what it says in Psalm 63, 8. It says my soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me securely, because we all need something to hold on to. But ultimately we can remember that God is holding on to us. That's pretty incredible. That's pretty incredible.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Corrie Ten Boom and her family members helped many Jewish people escape the Nazis from the Holocaust during World War II by hiding them in their home. Eventually, their family was caught and taken to prison where Corrie's dad died. Corrie and her sister ultimately ended up in a concentration camp, where her sister then died, but Corey miraculously survived. If you aren't familiar with her story, I would encourage you to check it out. It's pretty intense. She went through some stuff and I'm sure she had moments, like us, where she just wished she had something to hold on to, where she wished she could physically hold on to God. And here's what she said. She said when a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. What we need the most when times are dark is to hold on to God, who holds on to us.