Amen. Amen. Well, the Holy Spirit has certainly been weaving
things, threading things together all through from last night
to this morning sessions through the workshops. I have seen
just the steady hand of the Lord, and I believe that tonight is going to
be no different. I believe that we're in for a treat, not because
Barbie's special, though you are. But the Holy Spirit of
God is in this place, and He wants to minister through just
one of the most phenomenal people on the planet. Do you guys agree? Would you
guys please welcome Pastor Barbie Laughlin as she brings the Word.
You know what would have been really awkward? When you said the most phenomenal person
and I stand up, and it would be Pastor
Justin. And then I would have had to go back and sit down.
That's okay. The Lord's working humility in all of us, isn't He?
I am so excited! Guys, I'm so glad you came back!
I'm so glad in so many levels, you know, it's like, you
came back, your leaders came back. You never
really know when they take off, but I'm so glad you're back. I
want you to know you add so much
to this environment with your worship, with your praise, and the way that you
all come in and just abandon yourself in worship.
We We miss you when you're gone. We so miss you. So thank you
for coming back, and I pray that the Lord has done something amazing in your
life. Guys, has it not been rich today? I'm telling you
the truth. The Ondas this morning both just—
the Ondas knocked it out of the
park. You cannot even find the park. I'm just telling you this.
If you were not here this morning, you need to go back and just look
up Ondas— no, don't. Look up this morning's
sessions. You need to hear them. I'm telling you,
these two women,
powerhouses in the Spirit. I had to go home and
study after listening to them. I had to look up words and all
kinds of things. So,
there's the challenge in that, but I'm In all seriousness,
Pastor Kevin and I were talking this morning after the first session,
we were like, "We could just go on home now, 'cause you know, you just
gotta go home and ponder." But you don't get to go home yet. We're gonna
wake up, we're gonna have a dance session in just a minute, and—
You're not even listening! Don't
make me start calling out volunteers!
Jim Caldwell, you're first. The
man behind the camera. God has something for us tonight, and I'm
so excited about how He truly has been
weaving this together. And tonight, I'm gonna take
it in a direction of abiding when your world is in
transition. When everything is changing,
everything is changing. And guys, it's nothing new.
It's always been changing. We just seem to be a little bit more aware
of it right now. And I was so moved, I'm telling
you, this the truth. From Pastor Jonathan last night when he began to paint
the picture, or work on this tapestry of
worship and abiding in worship, and I love the way
he does that. And I'm so tickled to know his proposal
story and everything else. He's just so
rich in this area. And then to listen to
Vonda, oh my goodness!
That woman, I'm telling you what, the way that she paints this
picture of the vine and abiding and
all of the distractions and the ground clutter and just
beautiful as an educator. And then Rhonda, oh
my goodness, I want to know where she gets all of her
resources. I need a list and I'm going to have
to take a speed speech thing so that I
can just, I That, I'm— when I
listen to an anointed teacher, I just find myself going,
"How did they get that? And God, why didn't you give it to me
first?" But that's
okay. I forgive— never mind. So,
we've painted this, we've began to weave this tapestry of
the vine and abiding, and each of us have continued
with the same passages of scripture. And
so, I would just like to share with you my contribution to the
tapestry.
I am that squirrel, okay? We
are going to talk about a Bible— is he not cute?
There was another photo and he was laying on his back and his stomach
was really full, and I thought that's a pretty good one too, and probably pretty
accurate after the day we've had. But I thought this one was good
because we're because what I feel like the Lord is going to have me do
tonight, that I feel like He wants me to share with you, is
a different slant on
abiding. Abiding when the world is
crazy, and your home life is crazy, and your
school is chaotic, and your church, they're changing things there
without asking your permission, and all of a sudden you start
to feel this unrest. And you're
not really sure how to get back to center with
Him, right? So I thought I would help you guys get back to
center with Him as we take a journey. And
I might have missed the memo. Were we supposed to all use
the same scripture?
Yay! All right then, I'm not in trouble because not only am I
going to share a different scripture with you, it's King James!
So, is that a no?
The reason I want to share it with you in the King James is because
this is a passage of scripture that my mom used to use with me
all the time when my world was changing,
when things were chaotic, and I didn't really know how
to find my place in him
long enough to learn to abide. I
was grasping at ankles. I was trying to
find Jesus. I was trying to find hope. I was trying
to find answers. And I didn't know how
to get in and just find my place with Him long enough to
abide. And my mom—
short story— 2 times as a child,
our home burned down. And so, even as I— the
first time I was very small, but I still remember the home.
The second time, I was probably about 7 years old, and we lived in a
mobile home. And we had been gone for the night, and we got a phone
call that our home was on fire. And we came home, and here's the
thing about that. When you are 7 years old, and most of your possessions
are stuffed animals, and you're watching them die in a
fiery death, as you stand in the road,
it does something to you, I'm just saying. And so, what it did was
it developed in me a fear when I would go to bed at night,
because this happened at nighttime. And so, I would be afraid at
night, and because I was afraid something was gonna catch on
fire and all that. And so, my mom would come, and
she would sit on the bed next to me, and she would begin
to share this with me. "He that
dwelleth," Barbie, "in the secret place
of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty." She said, "You can say of
the Lord that He's your refuge, and He's your fortress, and
He's your God, and Barbie, you can trust Him.
Surely He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler,
and from the noisome pestilence," which I thought was my younger sister,
and He shall cover
thee with His feathers, and under His
wings shalt thou trust. His truth
shall be thy shield and thy buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid of
the terror by night. Barbie, baby, you don't have to
be afraid of the terror by night,
because I was. Nor of the arrow that flyeth by day,
nor for the pestilence that— oops, what's that say?
Oh wait, y'all can read it too?
Read the last parts with me. "Nor of the pestilence that
walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that
wasteth at noonday." And louder. "A thousand
shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at
thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh
thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou
behold, and see the reward of the wicked."
because thou hast made the Lord, which is
my refuge, even the Most High,
thy habitation. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We have made the Lord Most High what? Our
habitation. There shall no evil befall thee,
neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling, for he shall
give his angels charge over thee to keep
thee in all of thy ways. I'm going to skip this next one.
Guys, when we— no, I'm not. Yeah.
"They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy
foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the serpents,"
oops, "upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon."
There be dragons! "Shalt
thou trample underfoot." This
was my abiding scripture. This was my
abiding scripture because I was afraid of
the terror in the night. I I was afraid when I would
see anything. I was just a frightened child.
I walked in a lot of fear. And Mama would go,
"Baby, you just gotta abide. You just gotta
picture yourself," she'd say, "I want you to just tuck in there.
I want you to just tuck in there." And today, you know,
you hear people who's like, "You're tucked in snugger than a
bug in a rug."
No. When I was tucked in, I was under the
shadow of the wing of the
Almighty God, and I could see it in
my spirit. I could see it. And when she would say, "Tuck
in," I knew that she meant, "Get in there and don't come out.
Just tuck in there. You let Him cover you." And you let all
of those things earlier when we talked about all of the fruit of
abiding, Do you understand that being protected
and being covered and having all of these things
are things that happen when you begin to learn
to abide under the shadow
of the Almighty? Did you even know
that there is such a thing?
Oh, go back. "He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty." Shall abide.
Shall stay under the shadow
of the Almighty. It says here if
we dwell, we dwell, we dwell. That word is yasaab.
It literally means to sit down.
Sit down in the middle of that place with Him and abide
and stay. Sit down in it. Sit down
in that moment with Him. Sit down in that place with
Him and continue. Just be still. Inhabit.
To make it one's home.
You can abide. You can make your
home in under the shadow
of the Almighty God. The Almighty God.
Not only that, it's a secret place. It's a
secret place in Him. It is a place, you know
what? When I go into His presence, that place that He
has for me, when the world is crazy and
I don't know what is going on, there's this place that each of
us place can go in Him. I want you to
know that when you pursue Him, and when you decide that
you really want to follow Him, and you want to find a place in Him,
that place that He has for you isn't going to look exactly like the place
that He has for me. It's going to be different because it's special,
and it's secret, and it's a covering, and He covers what you
need covered. And when I'm in that secret place, He what I
need covered, and He protects me from the
things that I need protection from. So guys, when you
go into this place with Him, and you sit
down in His presence, and, and literally
visualize the shadow of His wing coming around
you, the intimacy of that moment, and you make a decision
to stay there, you can expect
I don't even have to put a dot, dot, dot. You can
expect. It says here, "Most
High." What? Most High? El
Elyon. The elevated one. The supreme of all rulers,
monarchs, or angel princes. It highlights God's absolute
supremacy, sovereignty, and role as the Creator and
Possessor of heaven and and earth. It is
used to indicate God's superiority over all other gods,
all earthly powers and spiritual realms. That's
where you're going. That's where you're going when you make
a decision to come in and tuck in close
to Him and learn to abide in His presence.
That's who He is. El Elyon. The
Supreme One. The Creator and
Possessor of heaven and earth, and abide. You know
what? There's something I like about this. You loon! Anyway,
you know what's precious about this? I didn't know this, and I know,
I know that my mom didn't know this, but you know,
today the Amdas were talking about abiding
during the day, and God and Rhonda was talking
about day after day after day after
day in abiding in that vine and and what God is
doing. And I kept thinking, "I used to
pass the night with Him." So not only is
He covering me in the day, and I'm
abiding in this vine by day, at night,
to pass the night, to lodge, to stop and
dwell, to stay and continue to tarry, to remain through the
night. That's what He gave me as a child, and that's something
I still have today. I still tuck in. And when I
talk I tuck Rowan and Nora in bed at night and I'm tucking those
covers in behind them, all I can see
is the shadow of the wing of
the Almighty God just tucking them in
tight and covering them up.
And that would be my prayer when you're tucking your babies
in at night, that you would see that it's not
just about tightening those covers. It's about
tightening the COVID It is about
allowing God to be God and sovereign in the middle of the
night. What does this have to do with transition?
Everything! Everything!
Because when everything's changing, if I like it,
it's okay. But what if things are changing and you don't
like the way things are going? We have choices
in those moments of where we're going to stand, whether we're going to— one of
my favorite one of my favorite, favorite songs Pastor Wayne ever
did. And he's got like a million and a half songs that
he's written. Such an amazing artist,
psalmist. But he stood up here and he sang a
song called, "I Will Not Run."
I will not run. And I can't tell you
how that impacted me as a child of
people who ran. It impacted me to
go, "There are people who do not run." And guys, we are not supposed
to be a people who run. We are supposed to be
a people that tuck in and abide
in the presence and the shadow of the Almighty God.
Shadow. I liked this part just
because it made me think about the branches outspread
a permanent place to shelter. Through what?
The transitoriness of life. When everything's
changing, everything's changing, and you just want
to tuck in and hide somewhere, that's His
shadow. Now what about this? Under the shadow of who?
Of who? The Almighty. This is
Shaddai. This is Shaddai. This is the
all-sufficient one. And guys, it's
so important, and we gloss over this, El Shaddai is the God
of the mountain. The God of the mountain, and I want
to share with you what that means. But
before I go there, I was so impacted
when Rhonda— I'm sorry, when Vonda was sharing this morning, and she was talking
about— well, actually Rhonda shared part of it as well.
They were talking about what it looks like
to abide, and their definitions, just every
single one of them, I'm like, "God, I want that!
I want to know that!" But
I have a place that I abide
when I'm trying to get back to center, and when I'm trying to find
my place back under His wing, And if I
can, I'm gonna take you there with me and kind of show you what that
looks like in my world, in my life.
Because what I do when I'm trying
to find that place
in the night watches, in the day,
I'll sit down at my piano
and I just shut everything else out
and I just kind of see myself in that
place with Him, just Him covering me
and lifting my voice and just talking to him.
And when we began to talk about abiding,
I just sat at the piano.
That's how I took it. That's how I
lean in. And I
know, I know that you have
a song that is just yours and just his
and a place where you can lean in under the
shadow of the Almighty. That's the invitation.
Whoops, I gotta finish.
You can't just leave it hanging out there like that. You know, people, all the
musicians in the room are going,
"Oh wait, I should have left it that way, shouldn't I? That would have been
fun." Anyway, wanted to wake people up, that would have been the way to do
it. So, why am I telling you this?
Sometimes you need a tool. Sometimes we can talk
all day about what it's like to abide in the vine, but I want you
to see what it's like to crawl up into the vine. That little
squirrel up there, that feels like me a lot of times. Like, "Lord, I know
I'm attached here somewhere, but Lord, I'm going to walk this
vine just a little bit until I find the place where I can sit down
and rest because God, I need
you. God, I need you."
As the world around us changes and transitions, the temporary
winding toward the permanent. We have the
invitation to tuck in and to be covered by His
wings. To abide. When my
mom was telling me that I could abide and that He would
cover me under His feathers, she had no idea
that it was literally talking about nighttime.
We sit down, we still ourselves, we inhabit His
secret covering, sheltered by El Elyon, passing through
night watches in the The permanent shadow of
the all-sufficient One. The permanent
shadow. See, He doesn't change. He does
not change. That invitation, guys, when
Pastor Kevin came to us last year and he said, "I really feel like the
Lord is leading us toward abiding," the first thing
I saw was those wings. The first
thing I saw. It's like, Lord, I don't know everything about
abiding, but I don't know all of it, but God, I know how to hide
there. God, I know when I need to be restored, when
I need to be covered, when my family is shaking, when
my work is shaking, when I turn on the news, Lord
forbid, and you see everything else that's happening. Guys, that's just chess
pieces. That's just chess pieces.
That is the
temporary moving toward the eternal. That's
all it is. Don't get caught there. Don't get
caught up there. We sit down, we still ourselves, and inhabit.
"He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His
wings shalt thou trust." I so wanted feathers.
Not attached, but
I really wanted like a bunch of feathers, but then I could just see
Pastor Jonathan picking them out of his guitar strings, and I thought that probably wouldn't
be a good thing. He shall cover you. Our lives
are hidden. Listen, our lives are hidden in
wings and prayers. Bon Jovi
didn't write that.
Well, maybe they wrote their version of it. Guys,
I knew my mom's prayers, the 91st
Psalm, and the way that He covered me.
There's an abiding place for
you. Which of you by worrying
can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot
do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
Consider how the wildflowers grow. They do not
labor or spin, yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all
of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If
that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which
is here today and tomorrow is if one of them is thrown into the fire,
how much more will He clothe you,
you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what
you will eat or drink. Do not worry about it, for the pagan
would run after such things, and your Father knows
that you need them. But seek His kingdom, and
these things will be given to you.
Put Him first. Put Him first! Go after
Him first! Guys, I was listening to
a doctor/theologian/minister/psychologist.
Okay, let's just say he had a lot of certificates.
He was an older gentleman, and I was listening to him,
and he said, "You know what I see all the time? There's so much
anxiety. There's panic attacks in
epidemic. There is fear, and there is restlessness. I'm
seeing this in my office, And he said, "The thing about it is—"
And he gave the science behind everything that's released,
the flight and fight mentality, all of that. But then he
slid right into pastor mode. He said, "Guys,
God did not design you to worry about poverty in
Bangladesh. He did not design you to
be concerned and fearful over everything that you're seeing,
things that you can't touch and change." I'm not talking about missionaries that
God sends. I'm talking about the day-to-day, you you and me who turn
on the news and look at things and, and feel overwhelmed. He said, "Your
physical systems were not designed for that, and your
spiritual systems are not built up enough that they know
how to combat it." So what we're doing is we're medicating it, and
thank God for medicines that will help people in those
situations. But what he said was, you were
designed by our Creator
for small community. I can grieve with Kevin.
I can rejoice with you. I can
handle grief within a small area as we
minister to one another, but what the enemy has done is try to make us
all feel responsible for everything that is happening in the world, but as
they said this morning, and as Pastor Kevin said last night, we
can't fix it! We can't add one inch to
our height. We can't.
Let me tell you how Jesus did this, because I'm looking at how
He abided, because He abided. It wasn't just
us abiding. He stayed. Jesus
stayed with the 5,000. When you look at the world, when you
see the masses, and you're going, "How do I do this?" You
abide in compassion. You abide in compassion.
It said, "And seeing the multitudes," He went up on a
mountain and He did what? He sat down.
You know what that word means? He abided.
He went in, kathizo, continue in one place,
abide, and settle in. When you don't know what to
do with everything you're seeing and everything you're hearing, move in
compassion, pray, sit down,
settle in for a minute, and go, "God, I see it and I know that
I can't change it, but God, I can't, you can. And you are
a God who stays. He went from the 5,000
and then with the 12. With the 12, you know how He abided?
God will put people in your life that you can abide with, that you can
walk with. Jesus abided in discipleship
with the 12, and they abided with Him,
and they learned, and they gleaned, and they went with
Him. I love this right here. I hope they put this scripture up.
"Again Jesus went up on a mountainside and called
to Him those He wanted, and they came to Him. And He appointed 12
that," what? "They might be with Him."
What? "That they might abide with Him.
Sitting down," kathizo, sitting in the middle and waiting,
"Jesus called the 12 and said, 'Anyone who wants to be first,
must be the very last and the servant of all,
abiding the opportunity to come and be in.
Then there were the three. See, you can have compassion for the
masses, and you can abide in compassion for the
masses, and then you abide in discipleship with those that God
puts into your life and brings into your realm of influence, and
you pour into them and you sow as the best that you can. And then
there are the three. Then there are those intimate companions. There are
those that share your life with you on a daily basis.
With the three, Peter, James, and John, Jesus stayed.
He abided. How did He abide? In revelation
and relationship. You can sow into those close
relationships and you can reveal your heart in
those relationships as you abide and you stay
in those places. With Him,
all of those things change. The 5,000 changes.
The 12 will change. At this point in my life, I can tell you my
12 has changed over the years, but the
calling to those in that area has not stopped and has
not changed. With the 3, I have been so blessed to have the
most amazing friends in my life, and God has sent to me what I needed
me in those seasons exactly what I needed.
I'm going to skip. In scripture, I
want you to pay attention, guys. All three of those things I just told
you, whether it was God in the thousands, He went up on
a mountainside and He sat down and abided with
the twelve. He went up on a mountainside and He began
to call the twelve. And then with the three, He took the two
and And they went up on a mountainside and the revelation
of God came to them. What did I just call El
Elyon? What did I just call El Shaddai? The
God of the mountain. The God of the mountain
that meets us there. Mountains
are places of revelation. Not a lot grows there,
but revelation does come. My granny used to have
me sit down and sing In the valley he
restores my soul. And there's a line in it that says, nothing grows
high on a mountain, so
he picked out a valley for me. I
have told you these things so that in me you may
have peace. In this world, this has already been shared today, you
will have trouble, but Do what? Take
heart! Take heart! I have overcome
the world. You can abide there. You
can stay there. You can grab hold of that and
rest. Now let me tell you something, abiding does not just
happen. It does not just happen. It's something, it
is a decision. You decide,
God, I want to Abide.
I want to abide in the vine. I want to
be attached to everything you're doing. I'm so grateful for
the roots. When Rhonda was talking this morning about the roots, and that's
where our water comes from. I am so grateful that, but
in order, it's a decision to stay, and a
decision, it's a practice. We don't learn it overnight.
We don't wake up, just like the plants don't grow overnight, and
as Pastor Shari shared today talking about the tree appearing
in her front yard just overnight, and it doesn't happen
that way. But if we will practice, if we
will practice, and we will allow the Lord to show us what
abiding looks like in our life. It is a
posture. It is a place in
Him. Worship guys— oh, I'm sorry, you
prefer worship dudes. I'm sorry. Worship
team. Oh no, actually the correct
term is Levites. You
do understand, and you do understand that
you are a priesthood, Levitical priesthood.
There's a lot that, that is behind their
abiding. So what we're going to do is we're going to
give you just one more opportunity before
you go home and dread that hour that you're losing. Before
you go home, we're going to make a conscious decision and we're going to
do this. He who dwells in the secret place
of the Most High will abide under
the shadowy wings of the Almighty. Guys,
if you have capacity And if you are able, young people,
lead us. Lead us. Those
of you who were up here kneeling, take just
a moment if you would. And I want you this time,
when you settle into worship— grown-ups too,
I don't mean to negate you, but
I also know what your knees are like. And If
you have it in your heart, this time when they lead us in this
song, I want you to just close your eyes for a minute. If you're kneeling
or if you're standing, and I want you to take just a moment
and press into that place, and
I want you to see it in your spirit, the invitation to
just tuck in and abide under
the shadow of the Almighty. Go
ahead, guys.