WHEN GOD DOESN’T COME THROUGH

Welcome to '99. Bird Church in San Francisco for the Rebels and Runaways. We're really glad you're here, and we hope you enjoy this teaching. - I'm in any gram type seven. If that means nothing to you, I'm basically an optimist and eternal optimist. I love looking at the glass half full. I love celebrating. I love partying. And here at this church, we love stories of breakthrough, right? The cancer that disappeared, the marriage that was restored, the financial provision that came at the last minute. I don't know if you heard, but Pastor Diane and Yucido, they're starting a startup. They just reached their first round of money. Are funding, is that what you call, I don't know. It came a little late. I'm not gonna lie. But we've been fasting for it. And we're celebrating that. It's good news. It's exciting, right? We love celebrating the prayers that were finally answered. And we should celebrate those kind of stories. But I find being in church for a long time, pastoring for these many years, I found that there's another kind of story that we don't tell as often, right? The person who prayed for healing, but never got better. The person who was praying for the relationship despite years of prayer, the relationship that ended, the person who did everything that they believed that God asked them to do, but still experienced disappointment. And the question is, what do we do with stories like those here in the church? Because for every testimony of breakthrough, there are stories of people still waiting for theirs. And so we find ourselves asking questions like, did I have enough faith, right? Like did God, did I really hear God's voice? Was there something I should have done differently? Why did God do it for them, but not for me? Now maybe the question beneath it all, the question underneath the surfaces, can I still trust a God who doesn't do what I hoped he would do, who didn't pull through the way that I wanted him to? Now I've been around long enough to know that at some point in your walk with God in your life, you will encounter an experience disappointment. There will come a day when your prayer won't get answered. I know this is a horrible sermon to preach, right? As a religious man, but there is coming a day, if you haven't experienced it already, where your prayer won't get answered, where the breakthrough won't come, and when that day comes, the question is, what then becomes of our faith? And so today, I wanna talk about what happens when God doesn't come through? What happens when God doesn't do what we believed him to do in our lives? Okay, so we're gonna go on that journey together. Now the first thing that we need to talk about is this, faith is not a guarantee of the outcome that we want. If we go to Daniel chapter three, we meet Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If you grew up in Sunday school, this story is all the rage, right? It's these three people, they've been ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar to bow down to him and to worship him, and they refuse. They say, no, we will only bow down to an worship Yahweh, our God. And because they refused about, these three were threatened with being burned alive in a blazing furnace, right? And so we did all the, I don't know why, but as a kid, we had like trace out coloring of them in the furnace, like about to be burned alive, like as a kid. And we used to glamorize this story about these three people who had so much resolve to not worship or bow down the king, despite immense pressure. And this is their response. We find in Daniel chapter three, 17 through 18, this is what they tell the king to his face. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know your majesty that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. I want you to notice three things that are happening here that express what they believe, their theology. Number one, God is able. They say God is able. They have absolute confidence that God has the power to deliver them. But not only do they believe that God is able, they go on to say he will deliver us. Not only does God have the power to rescue us, but we believe that his heart is to rescue us. We believe he's for us. We believe that God can and will intervene in our circumstances. But here's the next verse that we never preach. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods. What are they saying? Our faithfulness isn't contingent on our deliverance, right? They don't confuse what God can do with what God will do. And that's a struggle with us, isn't it? Like we think faith means having absolute certainty about what God is going to do. If I just believe enough, if I pray enough, if I obey enough, then God's going to come through the way that I want him to. He's going to find me that brand new job. He's going to find me that spouse that I've been praying for. He's going to move in this way or that way. But what happens when we do all of those things, when we're faithfully attending church, reading the Bible, praying, contending, obeying, when we do all of those things, what do we do when the breakthrough still doesn't come? I grew up in a faith setting, a very charismatic church, where every unanswered prayer, every unfulfilled promise or breakthrough was just an opportunity for bolder, louder, more intense faith. And so we call this spiritual warfare and we literally did spiritual warfare. We'd be in prayer meetings and yelling, "Turio, like yelling Jesus's name." And we saw God move powerfully in people's lives. We saw people getting healed. We saw people receiving breakthrough for the things that they've been attending for for years. But for every person that received their breakthrough, I can think of five other people that never did. And for many of them, their faith never recovered. Why? It's because we have a lot of theology around how God answers our prayers. But we have little to know theology around what happens when God doesn't. And so when we experience the circumstances that change, that don't change, our faith begins to unravel. And it's not because God failed us, but because our understanding of faith was wrapped up in our expectation of how we think God should move or who we think God should be. And this is the danger of transactional faith, right? We begin relating to God transactionally, rather than relationally. God, if I pray, you're this cosmic vending machine that you will answer. If I obey, God will bless. If I have enough faith, God will heal. And when things don't work out, we begin wondering which part of the transaction went wrong. And usually we're thinking we did all the right things. So now it's God who messed up. It's God who didn't come through. It's God who left us hanging. But hear me, church faith isn't a formula for controlling outcomes. Faith is a relationship of trust in a person in God. And there's a difference between trusting in God's character and predicting God's behavior. We can know that God is good without knowing what God is going to do or how God is going to move. In Luke chapter 24, Jesus, he had just been crucified. And we find two of his disciples on the road to a mass. But here's the thing we have to understand. They're not just on the road to going somewhere. They're not just going to a mass. They're also walking away from Jerusalem. And Jerusalem for them represented everything that they put their hope in. Everything that they put their faith and everything that they built their lives around, around this one person who promised to be their redeemer and Messiah, and now he's dead in the grave. And everything they believed was a lie. He did not come back, he's dead. He's in the ground, he's in the grave. And so they're not only walking to a mass, they're walking away from their faith. They're walking away from their hope. They're devastated and confused and disappointed. And it's here where the resurrected Jesus approaches them. But notice, they don't recognize him at first. They think he's the gardener, right? Which is actually very symbolic because Jesus is the gardener bringing in a new creation. But they don't recognize Jesus and they begin talking. And they confess something absolutely heartbreaking to Jesus. In Luke 24, 21, they say these words. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. I really firmly believe that there are no three words throughout the Bible that encapsulate and describe the human experience better than these three words. We had hoped. I think I could look at every one of you. When I say those three words, you can think of a time when I had hoped and it didn't come through. It didn't work out. We had hoped he was going to be the one to redeem us. We had hoped that God would come through. We had hoped that the diagnosis would change. We had hoped that things would turn out differently, right? It's one thing to experience the suffering of life when it's surprisingly cast on you. But it's another thing when that suffering is intensified because we had hoped, but then we were left disappointed. I don't know about you, but when I hope for something, the suffering of not getting that thing feels a lot more painful and weightier than something that's just. is surprisingly cast on me. And so here's the thing. Their hope wasn't entirely wrong, right? Their hope wasn't misplaced. Jesus really was the Redeemer, right? He really was the new gardener ushering in new creation. Jesus really was the Messiah and the Savior of the world, but this is where they were off. Their expectations of what redemption would look like were incomplete. They got the Messiah part right. They got the Savior part right. They got the Jesus part right. But their expectations of how he would come through were misaligned. They expected a Messiah who would liberate their people in a particular way, but they never expected a Messiah who would come to be crucified. Like that's the worst kind of leader, right? If I'm following someone's a battle and their strategy is let me get captured and let me get killed, right? I'm not following that leader, but that's the kind of Messiah Jesus was. And when Jesus died, it didn't just shatter your circumstances here, me church. It wasn't just in the roading of their world. When Jesus died, it was shattering of their understanding of who they believe God to be. And sometimes that's a lot worse. Isn't that the struggle for us followers of Jesus? Sometimes it's not the disappointment of what happened or didn't happen. Sometimes the disappointment is what happened contradicts the version of God that I've come to believe in. And that is the hard part. Isn't God supposed to protect us from suffering? Isn't God supposed to reward obedience with success? Isn't God supposed to make everything work out for our good and for our favor? And when that version of God doesn't hold up, we experience disillusionment. All right, what is disillusionment? If you just break down the word disillusionment, it's simply the loss of an illusion. All right, and sometimes what feels like a loss of faith is actually just the loss of our misunderstanding of God, an understanding of God that was never fully true. And so honestly, I think sometimes disillusionment is amazing for faith because it's shattering our illusions of who we think God is so that we could see him for who he truly is. And that doesn't mean that God uses tragedy to teach us lessons. He thrusts tragedy upon us and heartbreak and circumstances. But it does mean that in the midst of our disappointment, God actually may be inviting us into a deeper, more truthful understanding of who he actually is, shattering the illusions and showing us who he really is. And this is what makes the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego so remarkable. They didn't need to know the outcome to know where their allegiance belonged, right? They don't say we know that God will save us. They say we know that God is able, but even if he doesn't, we're gonna remain faithful. And I wonder if that's the kind of faith that God is inviting us into this morning, not a faith that never experiences disappointment, not a faith that knows all the mystery, not a faith that can explain every unanswered prayer, but a faith that can say God, I know you are able. And I confess that I don't understand why you haven't, but I still believe you are good. I still trust you. I think one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever experienced, I had a friend and a colleague who used to pass through at the same church together, and he had a beautiful baby boy that was born, but he had a second baby boy that was born and just around one year old, they discovered a tumor in his brain. And for that entire year, like we were contending in prayer, we were fasting, they had this slogan called Shields Up for Milo and we were praying and praying. You know what happened? A year later, Milo passed away, at just under two years old. And watching him go through that, he was a close friend and a colleague, watching their family weep and grieve that loss after they had hoped that God would come through. Man, it was earth shattering, it was heartbreaking. And I'll never forget at their memorial, they planned a celebration of life. And really part of me was a little worried because when Christians do celebration of life, sometimes I feel like they're just going to gloss over the grief and like, Christianize it. And I was a little worried that they were going to do that, but I was okay because everyone grieves in their own way, but I remember showing up to that celebration of life and I walked away distinctly remembering, I know who God is, like people were weeping and whaling and heartbroken, but they were still able to say, God is good. But they were still able to say, I don't know why and I'm pissed at God and I can't wrap my mind around why he would allow this to happen, but we still trust that he is good. And I remember walking away thinking, I still don't know the answer. I don't know why God would allow this family and that young boy to go through what they went through. But I remember walking away thinking, but God is good. I understand God a little better, right? This is what faith is. Faith isn't certainty about an outcome, but faith is trust in a person. And sometimes the most profound expression of faith isn't believing that God will change our circumstances. It's continuing to trust God, it's character, even when our circumstances don't change. But this raises another question, right? If we're supposed to trust God, even when he doesn't break through on our behalf, does that mean that we simply accept whatever happens? Like, do we just stop praying? Do we stop hoping? Do we stop believing and just move on? Which brings us to our second point, surrender without resignation. And second Corinthians 12, Paul describes something he calls a thorn in his flesh. And I love it, theologians, they have so many conspiracy theories about what that thorn was, like, oh my God, was it a pornography problem? No, it probably wasn't, okay, guys, what was it? Like, was it less for women? Like, did he really have a limp or something? Like, what was the thorn? No one knows, okay? And if theologians tells you that they know for sure, they're lying, okay? We don't know what that thorn was, but we do know that there was something in Paul's life that caused them significant distress. And Paul says, three times, I pleaded with God to remove whatever that thorn was. And we find in second Corinthians 12, nine, he says, my God is responding to Paul asking God, would you remove this thorn? And God says, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Honestly, I read this, I was like, that's kind of messed up. Like, if my boy ran to me, he has a thorn in his foot, he's like, Dad, can you help me? Can you remove the thorn? I'm like, hey, son, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. And I just walked away, that'll be me. Like, that's what I, when I read this, that's what I was thinking, right? But here's when no one ever preaches that thorn after he pleaded, that thorn remained in Paul's side for the rest of his life, right? You're not gonna hear this sermon at all the big conferences. This doesn't match up with our assumptions of what God's love is. We often assume that if God really loves us, he'll remove whatever is causing us pain, right? But Paul, he discovers something different. God's love isn't always expressed through the removal of suffering. Sometimes God's love is expressed through his sustained presence in the midst of our suffering, right? We recognize God's power when He changes our circumstances, right? And so we celebrate. We praise God when the cancer disappears or when the relationship is restored, when the provision comes. And listen, don't get me wrong. Those are genuine expressions of God's power. But what about the power of God that sustains someone who has lived through years of chronic illness? Right, what about the power of grace that enables someone to keep loving after devastating loss? What about the strength to wake up another day, mourning another day, even when life isn't getting any easier? Paul discovers that God's power isn't only revealed through deliverance. God's power can also be revealed through endurance. Not every testimony ends with, and then something changed. Right, some testimonies end with nothing changed, but God sustained me. And listen, that's not an inferior testimony. That testimony is just as powerful of God's miraculous breakthrough. Now here at 99, we often talk about God's kingdom as being already, but not yet, right? When Jesus came, He announced that the kingdom of God had arrived, and He demonstrated that kingdom had come through the healing and the miracles and through deliverance and through restoration, and these miracles, they're glimpses of God's future, breaking into the present. The kingdom of God is here, but the kingdom of God has yet to come in its fullness. Right, we believe in between the already, but not yet, we live between what God has already accomplished through Jesus on the cross, and what God has yet to fully restore at the end of all days. That's why Roman 8 says all of creation is groaning as it waits for redemption. Now we're groaning evokes this image of a pregnant mother laboring for their child, right? And here it's used as an illustration to say that those with the spirit are groaning, they're laboring as a pregnant mother would for their child for a new world. Now two weeks ago, some of you know, but Sunday night, there was a lot of groaning in the show house, and it's really because Christa began feeling contractions and keep in mind, our twins are not supposed to come until December, it's like way early, two months early, and she actually actually go to the hospital that night because she was having like, six contractions within an hour, which usually means it's like go time, right? And so she was groaning, she was in a lot of pain, she went to the hospital, luckily they gave her these meds that were able to stop the contractions and she was able to be discharged about a day later. But what if she didn't go to the hospital? What if she never got those meds? I tell you what would have happened. Those twins would be here right now. I would not be preaching on stage, I'd be at home in diapers, losing sleep. Why? Because the groaning is a sign that the babies are coming, right? And Paul says something fascinating. He says, we who have the first fruits of the spirit, he's not talking about the apostles or just those disciples. He's talking about every believer or follower of Jesus. We who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as well as we wait for redemption. What's he saying? He's saying we're all pregnant. We are all laboring for a new world together. And listen, although us men will never experience the excruciating pain of giving birth to a child, until Christal all the time, I would not survive it, right? I could barely touch water when it's a little too hot for me and I scream at the top of my lungs, right? Us men will never understand the excruciating pain that goes into giving birth to a child. But all of us know the pain of suffering. All of us know the sting of loss. All of us know the frustration of waiting for God to make all things right in our world. All of us know the pain of reading news story after news story of another school shooting, of racism, of genocide and Palestine. All of us know what it's like to groan for a new world. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives doesn't mean the absence of groaning. We can be filled with the spirit and still experience suffering. We can still believe in healing while living with sickness. We can experience God's goodness while still wrestling with disappointment, right? We are people who have tasted the future but still live in the brokenness of the present. You know, one of the most common Christian responses I hear to unanswered prayer is, you know, just give it up to God. Like just surrender it to God, right? Like God didn't, he didn't come through and I still don't have a job. Hey, brother, just surrender it to God, right? And we say that all the time and there's just truth to that. We should surrender everything to God. And honestly, sometimes I really do believe that surrender is necessary. But I do want to say this. I really do believe that sometimes what we call surrender is actually just resignation. And they're not the same thing. What's the difference? Resonation says nothing I do matters. But surrender says I'm gonna remain faithful even though I can't control the outcome. Resonation stops hoping. But surrender continues hoping without demanding certainty. Resonation becomes passive. But surrender continues participating and leaning into what God is doing. On the eve of Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus is praying in the garden and he's clearly distressed. He's literally crying out tears of blood and he says, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done. We love to highlight yet not my will, but yours be done, man, Jesus, this hero, right? He's going to the garden, he's praying, God, not my will, but yours be done. But we forget that he actually pleads with God to take this cup from him. Notice what Jesus does. He expresses his desire, Father, take this cup from me. I don't want to suffer. I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want to die. I don't want to do this thing. And he actually asked God, God, is there another way? And he wrestles honestly with what's ahead. And what I love about Jesus is humanity in this moment. He doesn't pretend that suffering is something that he wants. Right, honestly growing up in the Korean church often felt like the suffering Olympics. I don't know why, but Koreans have his weird love relationship with suffering, right? Suffering was almost like this unspoken badge of honor. And whoever suffers the most is like the most celebrated. And so you hear people in pyramids and like, oh, they're like whaling and crying because suffering was a badge of honor. Surrender isn't pretending that you're not suffering. Surrender isn't pretending that you don't want something anymore, that you're not still longing for that thing. Surrender, though, is trusting God enough to tell him what you want without demanding that he give it to you. Let me say that again, surrender is trusting God enough to tell him what you want without demanding him to give it to you. So it looks like praying for healing while recognizing that maybe healing might not come. It looks like working toward reconciliation while acknowledging that maybe I can't control the other person's response. It looks like fighting injustice, even when the transformation seems painfully slow, and it feels like one step forward is always three steps backward. Surrender doesn't mean abandoning our desires. Surrender doesn't mean abandoning our hope. It means releasing our illusion of control. To say, God, I know I'm not in control. And I'll trust you. Now, why does this matter? Because sometimes I think we use God's sovereignty to explain away things that should actually grieve us, right? So someone experiences abuse, and we rush to say, oh, you know, God must have had a reason, right? Or someone experiences injustice, and we say, maybe it's just a part of God's plan. But this is how Jesus taught us to pray, right? If you remember Jesus, the way he taught his disciples to pray, he said, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as is in heaven, meaning that the world, as it currently is, doesn't fully reflect the world that God desires it to be. And so there are things happening in our world that grieve the heart of God. There are things happening in our world that God calls us to resist. So trusting God doesn't mean becoming passive towards suffering. We don't stop feeding the hungry people because poverty will always be among us. We don't stop pursuing justice, because injustice continues. We don't stop praying for healing, because not everyone gets healed. We keep participating in God's work, even when we can't guarantee the outcome. Listen, for some reason this past year, people have had encounter circumstances that were just so monumentally big. And listen, if you come to me, and you want me to partner with you in prayer, I'm going beast mode for you. Like literally, I'm fasting, I'm praying, I'm believing for the best possible outcome. I'm even telling God, God, I'm not going to accept anything, but no, yes, for an answer. I'm not accepting any know for an answer. We've seen amazing breakthrough this year, haven't we? Like we've seen God move in miraculous ways. Surrender doesn't look like giving up our desire or our hope or our pressing in. Surrender simply means I'm going to do all those things, but at the end of the day, I'm going to relinquish control to you. I'm going to trust you with the outcome. And in any of those cases, if God didn't breakthrough, listen, I'm not even entertaining even if not, even if he doesn't until he doesn't, right? I'm contending until that moment, but if he doesn't, will we still trust that he is good? And so surrender isn't giving up on what God can do. It's giving up the illusion that we could somehow control how and when God moves, okay? And so surrender, not resignation, and the last thing I want to touch on is this faithfulness is success. Hebrews 11, it's often called the Hall of Faith, is a chapter filled with extraordinary stories of people who trusted God, people who conquered and overcame, people who were miraculously delivered, people who saw God do the impossible in their lives. But halfway through the chapter, like the tone shifts, the genre shifts, the beats switches up. And all of a sudden in the author begins describing people who experience torture, people who were imprisoned, people who were persecuted, and killed, right? Some people experience miraculous deliverance, and others didn't. And yet the author who wrote the scripture, he celebrates all of them as people of faith. Hebrews 11, 39, these were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. Think about that. The person who escaped the sword, and the person who died by the sword, are both celebrated for their faith, right? The person who experienced breakthrough, and the person who never did, are both included in the same story. The outcomes were different, but their faithfulness was still honored regardless. I think that one of the challenges in the modern day church is that we've allowed our cultures obsession with success, shape our understanding of spiritual maturity. And so we love to celebrate the person whose ministry is growing, we love to celebrate the person whose prayers were answered, the person whose testimony has that dramatic ending. And we all know that person that we grew up with, right? And their testimony is like so dramatic, like they can move you about it. And mine's just like, I went to a Christian school growing up, and I just encountered God, like why? Like, why are our stories so different, right? But we love stories like that of how God miraculously intervened, but what about the person who prayed faithfully for decades and never received the answer that they hoped for, right? What about you? Without the person who lost someone they loved and is still grieving, what about the person who has struggled with depression for years, and they still can't seem to shake it, or the person who continues living with chronic illness, are there stories any less valuable? Hebrews 11 actually tells us no. They're just as valuable as the stories of answered prayer and miracles and breakthrough. So what if a testimony wasn't simply a story about how God changed circumstances? What if a testimony was also a story about how someone encountered God in the midst of circumstances that never changed? I think it would radically define what we celebrate, what we highlight. Like imagine someone coming up here on a Sunday, and this is their testimony. Guys, I have a testimony of how God moved in my life. I've been praying for healing for years, and I'm still sick, right? But through this experience, I've discovered a community that will never let me walk it alone, right, or what about I prayed for my marriage to be restored, but it didn't work out. We're divorced. But through the heartache, I experienced God's grace and ways that I never experienced before. Well, if someone came up here like God, you know, I don't have a breakthrough story. I'm still waiting. I don't have a dramatic thing that someone can make a movie about for my life. I'm still confused, but I keep showing up. I'm still here, and I'm trying to keep trusting in God. Right, what if we celebrated those stories, too, not because suffering is good, not because we want to keep people remaining in their painful circumstances, but because God's faithfulness is not just limited to stories where everything turns out well. God's faithfulness can also be expressed in stories where nothing changes on the outside, but someone resolves to continue leaning into God, to continue trusting in Him, to continue standing and showing up. You know, mothers of newborn babies, I commend you because I know how much of a battle it is to get out of your house every Sunday morning and get to church on time. And I really commend mothers who keep showing up because it takes a lot of work. What if the testimony isn't just that things changed around us, but that we were able to experience a God who was with us when nothing did? That's the power of God's faithfulness. And so to wrap all this up, I really do believe that this is bigger than just our individual relationship with God. This really is about what kind of church we are becoming, what kind of church we want to embody. And the question is, are we the kind of church where we feel like we need a breakthrough before people can testify, or are we able to celebrate the God who moves mountains without abandoning the people whose mountains have never moved? A spiritually mature community isn't about how many miracles we experience. It isn't about how many breakthroughs that we have. It's about how we love people through people who haven't experienced their miracle or their breakthrough. A church that believes in breakthrough must also have a robust theology to practice solidarity with those who are still waiting for theirs. And I believe that's the kind of church God has called us to be. Now back to Shadrach Mishek and Abedinago, they're in the furnace and they're saying God is able, but even if he does not, I really do believe that these words give us permission to hold two truths at the same time. Number one, God is able, but number two, God may not do what we ask him to. And holding these two truths allows us to pray boldly while surrendering honestly. It allows us to believe in miracles, but still be really honest about our disappointments. It allows us to trust God, but still have doubts and unanswered questions. It allows us to grieve what didn't happen while still remaining open to what God still might do. In other words, I really do believe that we can hold both the miracle and the mystery intention. We can hold both the breakthrough and the unanswered prayer, both the resurrection and the cross. Now I want to end with this really lengthy quote from one of my favorite modern day poets and musicians and artists. My dream is actually to get them to come here one of these days. Maybe 2027. We'll see. My boy Andy Squires, he just writes these really honest songs of faith. And he has these really lengthy posts that are humorous, but also really honest. And I just want to read something that he posted about a year ago. He says, "I know a man, an Anglican priest whose wife died slowly over the course of four years while suffering from a sickness similar to Lou Gehrig's disease. He's a ridiculous man. He is not bitter. He is open and full of kindness. He believes in miracles. He prays fervently and often. He made me some oatmeal for breakfast. He confessed to me that the years he and his wife suffered through her losing battle is the most precious thing either of them had ever experienced. He told me, "You can't fathom the depth of experiential love and grace one feels in a time as dark as that." We sipped our coffee and he softly added, "We would not wish our experience on anybody, but also we would not trade it for anything." Asking God for help and then meing met with something other than help is well a clarifying experience. For better or worse, all that s been assumed suddenly suffers the weight of scrutiny. Our expectations of God are undermined, so we ask, "Lord, if you are not useful to me, then why exactly are we friends?" But if God is faithful to continually disappoint us, we must remember it is not for our ultimate abacement. It is to discover that when we find ourselves reduced, whether in circumstances or in spirit, even if severely so, the love of Christ is proven sufficient, never failing, even in what mostly looks like is non-intervention or absence. How is it proven? That s not easy to identify or describe, but for me, it sneaks up on me as a dissipation of fear. The vice grip of the fear of death and lost no longer the background program of my operating system, the hope of resurrection that dwells in my DNA makes its way to my nerve endings, and I feel God s goodness and power. I can rest, I trust God, I can be quiet and still and loved. Let s pray. In some of us, we are here this morning, and we hear this message, and it makes sense theologically, it makes sense logically, like, I know, God, you are good, I know even when circumstances don t change, you are always the same, you are always faithful, and maybe some of us, we need to keep this as a flyer for the next season. But there are others of us in here where this is all too real for them. There are some that are in here where this is my reality right now, this isn t theoretical, like I ve been praying, I ve been believing, I ve been hoping, I ve been longing, I ve been asking God, and I don t see you coming through and I m wondering, have you left me dry? Have you abandoned me? Why did you do it for them, but not for me? God, are you here? Are you listening? Do you hear me? And God, right now, I just sense that you want to touch those who are in the middle of that circumstance that isn t changing. I feel like you want to meet those where the mountain isn t moving, and in fact, it s just getting heavier and heavier and heavier. But we thank you that you re big enough, not only for our worship and our praise, but you re even big enough for our disappointments. And I just sense an invitation, a safe place to bring you our honest disappointments. God, I m mad at you. God, I can t get over the fact that you re not breaking through. God, I have a grudge against you. And I just hear God saying, I m big enough for all of that. Bring me your disappointment. Be honest about what you re feeling and what you re experiencing. Be honest about the pain and the grief that you re find yourself in. And right now, I just hear God saying, just be honest with me. Just come to me. You don t have to put on this fake religious facade. You don t have to put on a mask. Just come before me honestly and tell me what you re feeling. Tell me what you re experiencing. Right now, Holy Spirit, would you meet us in that honesty? Would you meet us in that place as we lay down our disappointments before you? We thank you that our disappointments aren t barriers to our faith, but actually our disappointments are stepping stones to knowing who you truly are and experiencing a deeper level of your intimacy. So right now, God, we lay down those disappointments before you. We lay down our heartbreaks. We lay down our unanswered prayers. And I just sense today there s no resolve. There s no resolution. God s not saying, oh, don t worry two weeks from now I got you. God's not saying this is going to happen this time and this is how it's going to work out, but I just sent an invitation for some of us as we surrender our disappointment to embrace mystery and to say, "God, I don't know. I really don't know and I'm really struggling with this, yet I will praise you, yet I will trust you, yet I will believe that somehow you are working all of these things and rearranging it for my good at the end. Somehow, God, I know that you are working all things for my benefit, even if it doesn't look like the way that I thought it would." So today, God, we lay down in surrender our disappointment and we receive the mystery and we just say, "God, would you help us trust in who you are and believe in who you are?" Thank you for listening. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope this teaching encourages you. To learn more about 99, visit our website at 99.charge. Until next time, grace and peace.