Mindset: Hineni

What a family -- that's different. Right? What else is different? I'm not Aaron –surprise! Right? We know that they're over in Turkey and they left earlier this week and they're having a good time. And hopefully, like they were saying earlier, that the Bible really opens up to them in a whole new way. And then you'll be blessed because of their trip and going so, in your personal time, please pray for our pastor. Keep him prayed up that they're safe while they're there. And then on the way back as well. And just like I said, that it opens up in a whole new way. I have the incredible task of filling in for him. Some big shoes to fill. You know, I'm no Pastor Aaron, but I'm going to try my best to hold down the fort for him until he gets back. So please, all your grace is appreciated. I also agreed to it because he told me that there wouldn't have been this many people here, but golly, there's a lot of you guys here. You ain't got nothing going on for labor day. 
I'm glad y'all came, though. I really do appreciate it. And we, as a church, we appreciate it. And you online, we appreciate you tuning in as well, wherever you're at. So thank you for tuning in.

Hey, last week we did a thing for our life groups. We did a thing. We, it was called our fall kickoff for our life groups. And if you're not involved in a life group yet, I pray, I pray, I pray that you would get into one. Not because it has any bearing on me because I am one of the life group pastors here and probably the amount of groups that we have would fall on me, like, or I would be one of the people that it would fall on, but I could care less about the quantity of groups that we have. I care intimately and deeply about the quality that we have. So I just pray that you guys would get into one because we do have good quality leaders. And a lot of people last week responded to the call to step out and join a life group. And they felt, they felt the tug and several, several people got engaged and got involved in one of our life groups. And they're going to see significant life change. We had a video last week that we showed too. And then that video, as good as it was, the guys in the back of the incredible job on making that video. Super cool. But the thing is, is that video falls drastically short. It doesn't highlight or capture the true significant life change that's happening, right? I mean, we've got relationships that we have that are in this world that the culture would tell us, you know, otherwise. Like these relationships that we want to engage in in our life groups, these are counterculture. These are relationships that are real and true and meaningful and they're deep and they help point us back to Christ. And if you don't have relationships like that, again, I encourage you to get plugged into one of our life groups you could do so easily by just going to our website. And you can go to the connect tab on the top, drop down menu, click on life groups. And then you can click on find a group, and we'll get you plugged into one as early as this week. And with good reason. Cause like I said, there's just so much life change that are happening. People are accepting Christ for the first time, people are getting baptized, people are breaking the chains of bondage and sin and they're, they're coming to a place of their spiritual maturity. And that's where we want to be. That's the number one goal of our life groups is so that we can mature spiritually. And that can you imagine a congregation, a room this size filled with spiritually mature, reproducing, disciple makers, we would set Parker ablaze in a good way, in a good way. Get involved in one of our life groups. Please do. So I urge you to do that. If you can, in your free time, sometime this week, or maybe today, you may even come see me in the lobby. I'd love to help get you connected. And there's several others of us that would do the same.

Just to recap, last week, Aaron started talking about Abraham and what kind of guy Abraham, and he was an incredible guy. And God had gifted him in such ways that made him able to be used by God. And he was a blessing. I mean, he was blessed and he was able to bless others because of that. So hopefully that was a big takeaway for you last week. As we continue in this series called Mindset, we're gonna talk about context. We're looking to dive deeper into the context of the Bible and try to figure out what in the world are these guys thinking when they wrote the Bible and what we can get from that? A couple of things I want to just note before we move on, context is key -- exclamation point, right? Pastor Aaron's always talking about that -- context is key. And every time we're looking for context, we try to find that by reading what's before stories or after stories just to get some deeper context, deeper level of meaning. Another thing is repetitive ideas. Whenever the Bible repeats something, I don't know about you guys, but like I want to read the Bible. Sometimes I'll see something two or three times. I'm like, I get it. What in the world? Why did you write that down three times or four times or whatever? Well, repetitive ideas are no accidents. Hebrews repeat things on purpose and they do that to emphasize. They want to emphasize a thought. So they repeated, it's listed multiple times. And another thing I want us to note is that Jews take stories out of chronological order all the time. Me, as a Western American, I feel that I want to have stories in chronological order -- what happened first, second, third, fourth, so on and so on until I get to the end. Right? That's just how I am. I'm sure some of you are like that, but Jews would take stories out of chronological order all the time to make a bigger point. And if it makes sense to pull it out and put it together, then that's what they do. They didn't care so much about it running in a very linear fashion. All right. Abraham. So we're talking about Abraham this morning. 

We're looking at a couple of different stories from the life of Abraham, from the book of Genesis. And like I said earlier, maybe it's your first time in church or maybe your first time watching online. Maybe you don't know who Abraham is. We'll do a 50,000 foot view real quick. And maybe you've been watching and coming to church your whole life. And you know, every story there is to know about Abraham -- I still pray that God has something for you specifically and for me as we dive into this text today. Basically what I'd like to highlight about Abraham is that Abraham was promised by God. Abraham had a vision of God and God told him to come out of his tent. And he said, Abraham, I want you to look up at the stars. And Abraham looks up at the stars. And if you can imagine the stars back then, this is early Mesopotamian culture, right? Like so long time ago. Right? So he looks up at the stars when there's no pollution, no wildfires, none of that stuff. Right? No haze, nothing. So he looks up and sees the millions of stars and God says, try to count those. And Abraham's like, yo, I can't, it's too many. It's too many. And God's like, yeah, you're right. It's too many. But God tells him, he says, Hey, I'm going to give you descendants as numerous as the stars. And this was a promise by God to Abraham. The thing about it is, this is a patriarchal culture, right? It's heavily dependent, but in order for it to continue, you've got to have a descendant. And this is what God's telling Abraham, I'm going to give you the descendants as numerous as the stars. So this was a massive promise for him, right? And this is how he became the father of many nations. All right. So what you got is you got a divine promise of a divine product, but there's a divine process that must occur before we get to the promise. And if you're like me, like Abraham, this is what happened, Abraham. I'm in, I get to a situation where I just don't wait well, right. I can be assured like, God can give me the confidence. He could put it in my heart. And I just know that, I know, that I know that something is going to happen, like right. He can say, Hey Chris, I promise you this will come to pass. So give me this internal peace about it. There's a product. I mean, there's the product of the promise, but there's this process I got to go through and my problem is I just don't wait well. And that's what Abraham did too. Abraham was in the middle of this process to get to that product, that divine product and Abraham just didn't have the patience for it. He just didn't have the patience for it. Him and Sarah, both, his wife was Sarah. So God made that promise to him that he's going to have all these descendants, but there's a problem. The problem was that Sarah was unable to bear children. So, you can see how that's problematic to the promise of God. So what happens, like I said, he just couldn't, didn't have the patience. And then Sarah says to him says, Hey, why don't you take my servant girl Hagar and lay with her? And then you'll produce a child. And as Pastor Aaron said last week, Abraham was deeply in love with Sarah, deeply in love with Sarah. And he loved her until the very day she died. And so when you think about this, you think, well, how in the world could that happen? If he really truly loved her? Well, this was customary of the day. This is customary of the day. Especially when you couldn't, when your wife would not produce, then you would need an heir to continue your line. This is what would happen. So it's not something that's completely farfetched. So anyway, but this is what he does, even though he's had the divine promise of a divine product, he still loses his patience, doesn't have the patience in the process. And then that's what happens. He does lay with Hagar. They have a son, his name is Ishmael. But then God, as his promises tend to always do, they came true. It came true. Finally, the product of the promise was produced God's way. And then Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. 

And you could see this as a blended family from the beginning. And those of you who are in blended families, you know the unique challenges that they face, that's where we're going to pick up. We're going to pick up on the height of this, like a tipping point in the story between Sarah and her servant girl, which was Hagar. And they were bickering back and forth just throughout, throughout their life. But this is where it comes to the tipping point. It comes to a head in Genesis 21:8-20. All right, we're gonna pick up there. And the child grew and was weaned. Weaned back then was probably about two or three years old. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. Sarah saw the son of Hagar, whom she had born to Abraham laughing. Now the, in the original text, the Hebrew version of that word, isn't just like she saw the kid happy. It wasn't like, what are you so happy about? It wasn't like that. It was more like it was a teasing. It was a poking fun at, it was in spite of -- this was poking fun at her younger son and then she gets upset. So she said to Abraham, she said, cast out the slave woman with her son. For the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. Now in the original text, again, this word cast out -- when she says cast out, that means to disinherit. That means to completely cut off -- like he's dead to you, put him out. Alright. And the very thing was displeasing to Abraham on the account of his son.  Remember, it’s not on the account of Hagar, it’s on the account of his son, Ishmael. So it's very displeasing to Abraham, right? It's a hard thing. And then it says, but God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. So God's telling him, he's saying, Hey, this isn't something that I'm, co-signing on. I mean, this isn't like Sarah's idea. This is actually my idea and I want you to do it. So put her out, do what she says, whatever Sarah says, you do what she tells you. For through your son, Isaac, shall your offspring be named and I'll make a nation of the son of the slave woman also because he's your offspring. So he's down by affiliation just because he knows Abraham. And he says, son, God’s still gonna take care of him too. This is also a promise that God had told him. So, Abraham arose early the next morning, I want to make sure that we remember this phrase too -- Abraham arose early the next morning. Okay? And he took some bread and skin of water and he gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder. Remember that also. And then along with the child, he also put that on her and sent her away. He gave her the boot, right? Gave her the boot -- she's outta here. And she departed. And she wandered in the wilderness of Bersheba. And when the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite of him a good way off. It says about the distance of a bowshot. However far you could shoot a bow. I don't know. I'm not a bow expert. So I have no clue. But anyway, about the distance of a bowshot and then she said for, let me not look on the death of the child, let me not look on the death of the child. That's her son over there. And he's in need and she's over here saying, Hey, I don't want to see it. Don't let me see that. And she sat opposite of him and she lifted up her voice and she wept, so here she is crying to whoever. I don't know. It doesn't even say who she's even talking to at this point, but she's over here, weeping lifting up her voice. Doesn't want to see her child die, or the child is what it says, but this is important. And God heard the voice of the boy. Didn't hear the voice of Hagar over here, crying, talking about, let me not see it. This is kind of from this very selfish place is what I gather. So anyway, then he's over here and God heard the voice of the boy, her son, and the angel of the Lord called to Hagar and said from heaven and said to her, what troubles you Hagar? And if you could imagine, I don't know how she felt in this moment, but what troubles me? What? Like I got the boot this morning and it was early. Like, it wasn't even like I had no time to kind of get up to have coffee or anything. I got the boot super early and not to mention, I only got some water out of the deal. I got some bread and I got my kid put on my shoulders. There's no assistance programs here to help me out or anything. Remember this is a patriarchal system. So without, without someone there for her, this is just as good as a death sentence. Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Your son looks up the boy holding fast with your hand for, I will make him into a great nation. God had already told Abraham that and told Hagar that. Did she believe it? I guess not. She's over here thinking he's going to die. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So this is how it works, right? There's a humanly problem or earthly problem. And then He steps in with divine provision. The way that God does. Right? So the problem was there was no water. Now we've got some provision cause God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. And then she went and she filled the skin with water and then gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy and he grew up and he lived in the wilderness and he became an expert with the bow. 

I want to go back real quick to the time when Sarah says, Hey, cast her out. Abraham was very displeased. Remember it was very disheartening to Abraham, but like I said, it, wasn't God saying, Hey, this is Sarah's idea and I'm going to co- sign on it. This is my idea. It's always been my idea. I told you that this was going to be my idea. And speaking of God ideas, this is what I want us to understand. God ideas won't always sound like good ideas, humanly speaking. God ideas won't always sound like good ideas, humanly speaking, but they're always the best ideas because they're his ideas. They're his.

I'll tell you a little bit about how this plays out practically, you know, in my own life. Me and my wife and my family, we came here to this wonderful state that you guys have -- beautiful place here. And we came here in December of last year for a visit. We stayed with Aaron and Kelli for about a week. And we had a great time. We saw a lot of beautiful places and it was fantastic. And then we got back to Texas, which is where I'm from. Shout out to Texas. You guys have a beautiful state, but there's a lot of things we got that ya’ll don’t have --  we have that y'all don't have. I wish I could bring some of those things over here, but seriously though. But yeah, so I went back and then there was all kinds of things that started happening, like this massive snowball effect. But Aaron calls me and says, Hey dude, I don't know if it's God or if it's timing, but it feels a whole lot. Like God, I got a guy on my staff that resigned and I want to know what you think about moving to Colorado. I was like, yeah. Sounds like a bad idea. Sounds like a bad idea. Really bad because we had a support system over there in our, in Texas. Already where we were at. Right. I had my family there. My wife's family was there. My kids are grounded. They've got friends, we've got friends, great relationships, wonderful church family, everything was really good. So anyway, that started this process of me pushing into God and just trying to pursue the presence of the Lord. Even more deep than normal, just deep in prayer, deepen journaling, scripture reading and having conversations with people who are new cared about me. I was having a conversation with a guy that I consider one of my mentors. We're having breakfast and I start telling the story. I get 8% in this story. 8%, literally, and he holds his hand out, and he goes, dude, when are you leaving? I said, dude, I haven't even told you. I haven't even got to that point. Let me get to the punchline at least. But no, he just says, when do you leave? I see the hands of God all over it.  Then he asked me, he says, why are you fighting it? Why are you fighting it? I still remember how profound it was to me in that moment. And so then that just continued this conversation between my wife and my family and us and God. And we just kept walking him through that incredible, incredibly wonderful time.

Anyway, we'll get back to that. Let's just jump back into our second story that we're going to go over from Genesis. This is going to be Genesis 22:1-12. And this is after the previous story. After these things, God tested Abraham. And he said, to him, he said, Abraham. And Abraham said, here I am. And he said, take your son, your one and only son. Now, quick side note. Why would he say your only son when he's got another dude out in the wilderness that's his son? Why? Because he was cast out, remember cut off, disinherited, like dead to you. You're done. So that's why he says, take your son, your one and only son whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall tell you. And then in the next verse, it doesn't say anything about Abraham being very displeased or anything. Remember he was displeased because he had to give the boot to his son and Hagar in the last story. Well, this time it doesn't say anything about that. It doesn't say anything about his feelings or anything. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is? Because culturally in Abraham's day, this is what the gods would do. Gods would take, they would take. So giving was not a foreign concept to him even child sacrifice. That was not a foreign concept to him. Not that he practiced it, but it just wasn't a foreign concept to him. So when God tells him, Hey, I want you to offer your son. That's why he doesn't lose his lid.  Right? Let's read on: Abraham rose early the next morning. Remember I said, remember that? Why did he rise early again? Abraham is always getting up to do the hard thing. What's up with this dude. So’s he got some good coffee or what? I don't know, but man, he's getting up early to do the hard thing all the time. And I admire that about Abraham because by nature, I'm a procrastinator and I'll get around to it. Eventually I'll change I promise, at some point, whenever I get around, I'll get there a promise. I just don't know when, but Abraham's getting up early. This dude is remarkable. Anyway, he gets up early the next morning, saddled his donkey. And he took two of his young men with him and his son, Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and he arose and went to the place of which God had told him.  And then on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place from afar. And then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy we'll go over there and worship and come again to you. I love this because Abraham he's so full of faith. Even his statements, he's dripping with faith here because he says, y'all stay here. We're going to go worship. And they're going to come right back. We are going to come right back. Whether he knows it or not. I don't know, but it's super cool that he's just got so much faith. And then Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on his son, Isaac, his son. So remember in the last story he's laying on Hagar. He laid on her, the wine skin or the water, the water and the skin. And then he also laid on her, the he bread, right, and her son. And then in this story, he's laying again, the wood this time on the shoulders of his son, Isaac. I just think it's a super cool kind of side by side. When you look at it, he is actually in the physical act of laying something on there -- is a guilt, is it shame? I don't know, chemical it up. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand, the fire and the knife. So they went to both of them together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, Abba, daddy. And he says, here I am son, very contrary to the other story where Hagar and her son – he’s in need, and she puts him down and she walks away. Here it is. Even though Abraham is the one that's bringing -- Abraham is living in the tension of trying to fulfill what God's telling him, but also honor his son. And he says, here I am, Son. And then he started says, behold, the fire and the wood, but where's the burnt offering? Where is it? And Abraham says, again, with faith, God will provide a lamb for a burnt offering my son. So they went to both of them together. When they came to the place that God had told him, Abraham built an altar and he laid the wood in order and bound, Isaac, his son. That had to go great, right? And he laid him on top of the altar, probably pushed him on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and he took the knife and he was going to slaughter his son. But then the angel of t he Lord called to him from above and said, Abraham, Abraham twice. So you know what that means. Remember what we said, repetitive for a reason. It's there because it's important. I guess it was like your mom calling your whole name. Hey, Christopher Allen. You know, whatever. I guess Abraham, Abraham and Abraham says, here I am. And he said, don't lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now, I know that you fear God seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me, Abraham lifted up his eyes. Just like in the last story. When Hagar got her eyes lifted. He looked and behold behind him was a ram. Again, provision, problem – provision for Abraham. He took the ram. He offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of Abraham called the name of the place The Lord will provide, as it is said to this day on the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided. God's always providing

I want you to say this word with me, Hineni. This word is a word that is best translated in English as here I am. The problem is that here I am in English falls drastically short of th Hebrew word that has life and meaning. It's got so much depth and so much weight. This word is a word that means total readiness. I'm totally ready. Total availability. It means total surrender. It's a declaration of faith. This is an emotionally charged word. It's a powerful statement that reveals purpose. It means to be totally present. It's usually used in a holy moment between someone and God. It's used when God calls someone to do something important or difficult. It's an ultimate word that says I'm all in every fiber of my being. It's an absolute, I hate using absolutes. I don't know about you guys, but if your house is anything like mine, absolutes lead to disputes, right? You never take the dishes out of the dishwasher. I always take the dishes out of this washer. No one else ever does, right? At least the disputes, but this one should, this one should, this one should disrupt our comfort zone. It should challenge our motives and our drives and our desires. And it should give us to the place of surrendering all of our selfishness. Sons and daughters of God will find themselves saying here I am. It's a word that depicts courage over costs. It flips it around. It says, God, your product through your promise by your process. And I'll be patient. Let's go. You know, if I were to ask my kids, right, I can get up on Saturday morning, make this massive breakfast. Right? And then they eat well and we have a good time. And then I say, afterwards, I say, hey guys, I need some volunteers? What do you think? They're going to say, if they're anything like mine, they're going to be like, what? Okay, well, this is what I'm saying. When we get to this point of saying here I am to God, it's not like that at all. It's children of God willingly making a commitment before even knowing the cost. They trust that whatever it is, God's way is the best.

In Genesis 31, let's think about some other places where we could see this, other places where we see this played out in the Bible. We see in the life of Jacob. God is about to take Jacob and do something incredible. Take them through an incredibly difficult trial of his life to get him to be the kind of guy that he needs to use. Right? And Jacob says, here I am. We see it, right, in Moses's life. Where from the burning bush and God speaks to him through that bush goes Moses, Moses twice, right? And Moses says, here I am. And then we also see Samuel, God calls Samuel. He says, here I am. We see it in the book of Isaiah where God says, who shall I send and Isaiah says, here I am. Send me. Also in the book of Acts, we can see in the life of Paul before he got his name changed. But Saul was out there killing Christians. And God comes before a guy named Ananias and he says, Hey, I need you to go find that guy. And I need you to heal him. Cause I’ve got a special mission for him. And he says, wait, you're talking about the Christian killer? Do you mean that guy? And God says, yeah, I got something for him. And I just want for you to go over there and heal him. And then finally he gets to a point where he says, here I am.

Every time we see this in the Bible, God is redirecting and revealing purpose. He's redirecting and revealing purpose. And I want us to understand this just this morning is that God's ability to use me is directly tied to how I respond. God's ability to use me is directly tied to how I respond. Back to my own story. When we were trying to decide, what are we going to do? There's just so much that we're leaving behind for so much that's uncertain. There was so much uncertainty. I didn't know anybody here. I mean, me and Aaron, we were acquaintances, at best. I didn't really know anyone else here. And, but I knew in my heart of hearts, that it was going to come down to how I responded and I wanted to be used by God and I wanted to be faithful. And I wanted him to redirect me and reveal purpose, but it was going to come down to how I responded. And then I finally got to that point where I said, God, okay, here I am here. Here I am. He was like, one more time. Sound like you mean it from the tips of your toes, the top of your head. I said, here I am. Here I am, Lord. And you know, what's cool about God? Besides everything? He responds in the same way. He says, here I am and son, I’m the great I am. He says, I'm the great I am – isn’t that incredible. Just incredible that God steps to us when we step to him in that way, when we say here I am, I'm totally available. I'm totally ready. And I'm totally ready to surrender to you. And he says, here I am. And his here I am means so much more. In Isaiah 65:1 we see where it says I was ready. This was God speaking. I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me. And I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. And I said, here I am, here I am to a nation that was not called by my name. It's incredible. It's incredible.

So how do we get to this point where we're able to say here I am before a Holy and pleasing and perfect God? I think we could look back at Abraham's life. And we can see in Hebrews 11:8-11, it says, by faith, Abraham obeyed, when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And when he went out, not knowing where he was going, by faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. By faith, Sarah herself received the power to conceive. Even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised. So you see it takes faith. And just like Pastor Aaron's been teaching us, every time we have to call upon faith, it takes faith. And we've got to have, we got to muster up some faith to take another step of faith. And we see that in Abraham’s life. It just takes faith to say, here I am. It really does. It takes faith before we can come before God and say that. Our ability to say here I am before the Lord, it reveals where we're at spiritually and personally. It locates us, it tells us exactly where we're at. It really does. In my own situation, again, back to that, I was so scared to step out and say, here I am. But then when I did, we did -- I mean like, I, I can't tell you the amount of blessing and favor that I feel for my family and I. Just to give you a quick side note, we had a house warming party, which in and of itself is an amazing thing. Like, God, you had a place for us here. We're so scared to leave this other place, but you had a place for us here. So we're having this house warming party and we were blown away by the incredible character of people that God would have in our lives. Like I was baffled. I was like, I'm surprised as many people would even want to come, but they did. They came. And I'm just like in awe of God that you would surround us with such quality people. And it was just absolutely amazing. It really was. I just couldn't believe that.

You know, the last thing I want to say too, is that “here I am”, that isn't always just for us to stop being so selfish. Right? Like it's not always just for us. Like I thought us coming here to Colorado, Colorado, I don't know. Am I saying it right? Anyway, us coming here was about me, right. And me saying, here I am, but God is so sweet. Y'all I'm telling you, like, he was just like, Hey, it's never about you. Like, I got something for your wife and for your daughter and for your other kids, like your other two daughters, like it was incredible. It was incredible. And he still just continues to blow us away. So it's not always about us. And we can see that in Hebrews 11:17-20, it says again, by faith, when he was tested, Abraham offered up Isaac and he who had received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be named? He considered that God was even able to raise him from the dead. And he did.  He did receive him back by faith, Isaac, the one who was under the knife that was about to get slaughtered. But Abraham responds to the here I am. He says that the God and God redirects and reveals the purpose, Isaac is not slain. And then he's able to go on. And then what does it say? It says that Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. He invokes future blessings. Who's counting on your future blessings. Who's counting on you’re here I am. Somebody is counting on you to say, here I am, today. I don't know who it is. God does. It may not even be in this generation. They may not even manifest itself until generations down the line. Right? But that's the way that it is. I want you to be thinking about that this week. Someone's counting on it. Someone's counting on you and you're here I am.

So I've got some implications. Let's get into those real quick implication. Number one is that God ideas don't always sound like good ideas, humanly speaking, but they're always the best ideas because they are God's idea. I gave in to God’s idea even when I thought it was crazy, I thought it was really crazy. But I gave in and he had something so much greater and better. He redirected me and revealed purpose like you wouldn't believe. And he wants to do the same for you. So remember that God ideas don't always sound like good ideas. And sometimes you're going to have friends. That'll tell you. That sounds ridiculous. That sounds ridiculous. And you'll be like, I know, I know it does, but that's what God said. 

Alright. Implication number two, God's ability to use me is directly tied to how I respond. Your response matters. My response matters. The way I responded in that moment mattered. The way you're going to respond will matter. It absolutely matters to God. God's ability, like he can do anything he wants, but his ability to use you is tied directly to how you respond. All right.

Our ability to say here I am is implication number three, our ability to say here I am reveals where we are spiritually and personally, where are you at with God right now? Where are you at with you’re here I am. Are you struggling with it? Are you struggling with it? Is there something that you know, that you know, that God's calling you to and you are having a hard time processing that or stepping out and saying, here I am?

It reveals where we're at spiritually and personally implication, number four. This is one that we haven't went over yet. You haven’t missed your opportunity to say, here I am. God's got something for you. Like we said, he's always working, always looking for folks. He wants to put you to use. He wants to use you for his team, but it's up to you and you haven't missed your opportunity. Remember we were saying about the Jews and chronology and order and stuff like that. It's not like you had one particular shot and you missed it. It's not like that. He's always working, always making himself available to you. He wants to redirect you and reveal purpose to you this morning. 

We’re going to move to our time of communion and as we do, I want us to think about that word and deep and meaningful it is, it really is. It's got so much, so much weight so much more than here I am in English. But I want us to think about the flip side of that. The flip side of that is Jesus Christ. He stepped down from heaven. He left the comforts of heaven and paradise to step into his own creation and say here I am for us, for you and for me. This morning, as we prepare our hearts for communion, I want us to consider that.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He was having a meal with his disciples and when they had finished the meal, he took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body that's been given for you, whenever you eat this, do so in remembrance of me.  In the same way, he took the cup and said this is the blood of the new covenant, whenever you drink this do it in remembrance of me.