- Good morning, Springhouse.

Wow, okay.

Good morning, Springhouse.

There you are.

I wondered if you were awake this morning.

If you're joining us on live stream,

thank you for joining us this morning.

Hey, God is good.

All the time.

And he is the best gift giver, is he not?

He is so, so faithful this morning.

He's so faithful in our lives.

As you guys are coming to give this morning,

we have a group of youth who will be going to camp

this next weekend.

And so if you are joining that team,

if you'll come down here,

we wanna pray for you guys this morning.

It's always good to pray over the groups

going to camp and retreat.

So y'all will come quickly.

So I don't have to preach over time.

You guys thankful for our youth group here at Springhouse?

(congregation applauding)

Guys will stand with me.

And if you'll stretch your hands out this way.

Father, I thank you so much for these incredible teens

and youth leaders, Lord.

I pray, Lord, that as they go to camp,

or this retreat rather this next week.

And God, I'm asking, Lord,

that you would do extraordinary things.

God, I'm asking, Lord, that you would reveal yourself

in powerful ways, God.

And Lord, I pray that they would grab a hold truly

of what it is to be a peacemaker, God.

And I ask, Lord, as you move and as you flow through

the services, Lord, I pray, Lord,

that their faith would increase in you.

We love you today.

Give them safe travels as they go

and as they come back in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, amen.

Before you sit down, just look at your neighbor

and think of one word to describe your God

and let them know.

One word to describe your God and say it to them.

(congregation murmuring)

And then give a great big hug to someone you don't like.

(congregation murmuring)

(clears throat)

Just grateful nobody ran real fast up on this stage.

How many know that God is the greatest gift giver there is?

And you have a story, you are part of the greatest story

ever told and some of the reason why you have such

a wonderful story is because God has given

such great gifts to you.

He's given great promises and great things.

And so in that, we are able to ascribe some real

wonderful words about this gift giver.

He is for some of us, no, for all of us,

he is our provider, say provider.

Okay, he is our security, say security.

Anybody believe it this morning?

How many God is your peace?

Has he been faithful to you?

Yeah, this gift giver, he is incredible

and he has all these attributes assigned to him.

Let's see, is he the truth?

Is he your comfort?

Amen, amen, this gift giver is true

and he provides comfort to us.

What else does he do?

Is he good?

Is he holy?

Amen, amen, and so we have these attributes

to this star breathing God who's just so incredible.

And what else we have here?

Is he worthy?

And does he render strength to those who are weak?

Absolutely, God is all of these things and so much more.

I don't think we have a vast enough vocabulary

to describe this gift giver, this God,

but he is all of these things and so much more.

And you are part of the greatest story ever told

and this God is the centerpiece of this story.

He is the centerpiece of this story

and all of these attributes and all of the other attributes

that we could come up with.

Can I just say, this is totally bunny trail.

Rob Major and Claudia, the Lord wanted me to tell you

that you are a gift to Springhouse

and you are a gift to the people around you.

And I just want you to be encouraged

that he has not forgotten you, that he sees you,

that he loves you and he is using you

and the best is yet to come.

Can I just, do y'all agree with that, amen?

I'm sorry, I know that was out here

but I felt like the Lord told me to say that earlier.

But that's what God does.

He's a render of great promises.

He's a render, he's a gift giver.

He has the greatest things to give us

and some of you are sitting next to

one of the greatest gifts he's given you.

Your spouse, your family.

You're like, who them?

No, no, truly, truly, he is so good, he's so faithful.

Thursday nights have been incredible here at Springhouse.

I wanna thank you guys for coming and being a part of that.

This Thursday night, we're gonna continue our series,

What Giants, and Pastor Barb is gonna be doing it.

We'll be meeting in the Fellowship Hall

because there's a show that's opening up here this weekend.

Something about a play going wrong

and so I want you to come and be a part of that as well.

So there's some things for you to look forward to

this week as well.

But God has saved the very best for right now

and so would you stand with me?

We're gonna read from Genesis chapter 22.

This is probably a very familiar story

and so because it is, I want you

to read as loud as you're gonna cheer

for the football game tonight.

Here we go.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son,

"whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah.

"Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering

"on a mountain I will show you."

Early the next morning, Abraham got up

and loaded his donkey.

He took with him two of his servants and his son, Isaac.

When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering,

he set out for the place God had told him about.

On the third day, Abraham looked up

and saw the place in the distance.

He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey

"while I and the boy go over there.

"We will worship and then we will come back to you."

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering

and placed it on his son, Isaac,

and he himself carried the fire and the knife.

As the two of them went on together,

Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham,

"Father, yes, my son," Abraham replied.

"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said,

"but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb

"for the burnt offering, my son."

And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told them about,

Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.

He bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar

on top of the wood.

Then he reached out his hand

and took the knife to slay his son.

But the angel of the Lord called out from heaven,

"Abraham, Abraham."

"Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said.

"Do not do anything to him.

"Now that I know that you fear God

"because you have not withheld me, your son,

"your only son."

Abraham looked up and there in the thicket

he saw a ram caught by his horns.

He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it

as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide.

And to this day it is said,

"On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided."

I thank you for your great provision, God.

I thank you that your word is truth.

I pray, Lord, that it would be transformative

in our lives today.

In Jesus' name, and everybody said?

Amen, you may be seated.

Greatest story ever told, the center figure

of the greatest story ever told is Jesus Christ.

And we can just be so excited, we can be encouraged,

we should be encouraged that we get to be a part

of this story.

Do you know that the center of the story is not you?

The center of the story is not you, it's not your neighbor,

but the center of this story is Christ Jesus

and we get the privilege of being a part of it.

Last week we talked about Abram and Sarai.

Abram's name was turned to Abraham,

Abram meeting exalted father,

Abraham meeting father of nations.

And Sarah, her name was turned to Sarah.

And God made a covenantial promise, a covenantial promise,

we talked about that last week, with Abraham.

And he said, you are going to have a son through Sarah.

You're gonna have a son through Sarah.

Now, as so many of us do, Abraham and Sarah are there

and they're kinda like, I don't see how this can happen.

So let's kinda take things into our own hands.

Let's figure this out on our own.

And so Abraham, why don't you go and sleep with Hagar

and have a baby and then God can get on with the show, right?

And so many times in our life,

we like to create our Ishmaels and we give them to God

and say, now God, do with Ishmael whatever you want.

Now I'm ready, now we're ready to rock and roll

because we don't have the faith enough,

the faith enough to believe that God can actually

supernaturally do things that we can't see in the natural.

But do you know that God will always keep his promises?

What God says he will do, he most assuredly will do.

Some of you have been rendered a word from the Lord.

Somebody has come and given you a word from the Lord.

And you have sat on that promise and you're like,

Lord, I don't see how this can happen.

In fact, some of you have been given a word

and the opposite has started to happen.

But let me just encourage you, if that word is from God,

it will surely come to pass

because everything God says will come to pass.

Everything God says will come to pass.

You can rest in that.

And so if we know that everything will come to pass,

if God's promises are yes and amen,

and we know and believe God is who he says he is,

no matter what, then it should render us able

to walk in obedience to whatever he tells us to do.

When I say whatever, I mean even those things

that don't make much sense.

Even those things that cause us to sacrifice the things

that seem to be good, right, pleasurable,

all of those things.

God asks us to surrender sometimes those things.

So let's look at Ishmael and Isaac for a second here.

Ishmael is who or what you gave to yourself.

Ishmael is who or what you gave to yourself.

Isaac is who or what was given to you, was given to you.

Do you understand the difference?

The difference being if I fashioned it

and I made it with my own hands, no matter how good it is,

think about that painting I talked about last week

with that little toddler, whatever you did,

you gave that to yourself.

Now God can bless those things

and he does bless those things.

Did the word tell us that he blessed Ishmael?

He did bless Ishmael, but guess what?

God is going to always keep his promise and his word.

So as we surrender things, God can take the work

of your hand and he'll do some things with it,

but man, it's so much better when we surrender completely

and allow him to do the work without us,

without us trying to make it happen on our own,

without us trying to make it happen on our own.

And so here's the challenge.

We will spend our lives working through an Ishmael,

but God is calling us to lay down our Isaacs.

We will spend our life focused on the Ishmael.

We'll spend our life focused

because we've put our hands to it.

Our blood, sweat, and tears, our sacrifice has gone here

and God has this Isaac over here that's a sure promise,

but we'll focus on this over here

and God's saying, I want your Isaac.

See, we will just contend with the benefit of the Isaac.

We will oftentimes manipulate situations

even in our Ishmaels because of our Isaacs,

but God is saying, I want you to surrender to me the Isaacs.

What are the Isaacs in your life?

Well, let me think about some of these things.

Isaac is, if Isaac is a blessing from God,

a promise from God, I've got some Isaacs in my life.

First one would be Sherri.

Sherri is a promise from the Lord.

She's a blessing to me.

Is she a blessing to you guys?

You better say yes.

(congregation laughing)

My wife, she's a promise, she's a gift to me.

I think right behind that would be my beautiful children.

All four, five, six, seven, eight of them.

Who knows?

The Lord knows, right?

Sherri's not in here.

Nine, 10, 11 of them.

Sherri, kids, I mean, it could be like Justin just overnight

just, you know, multiplication.

And one of my points later is he multiplies the blessing.

So he did that in your life, brother.

Another Isaac, another promise, another gift

that it's good and right and wonderful

is the ministry at the school.

You know, the school, my place of employment, if you will,

the ministry there.

Or what about being the pastor here?

Gosh, look at this ministry.

To be the lead pastor of Springhouse Church,

that is a, man, that is a gift from the Lord.

That's not something that I crafted with my own hands.

That's something he gave to me.

My gift of administration.

Some of you have gifts.

You have a variety of gifts.

And that would be maybe an Isaac in your life,

something, a promise God has given you.

What about being a parent?

I wanna thank for my kids, but I'm also a parent.

I'm a parent in this life.

You know, God has blessed some of you

with financial provision and stuff,

houses and properties and investments

and those types of things, yes?

And so that's part of our Isaac.

Those things that he's given us is really great.

Right now, you may have worked for some of that,

but some of you, how many of you all work for investments

in all of those things, but God came in

and just like a tsunami, I supplied so much more

than you could ever imagine.

Anybody ever have that happen?

Now that's God, that's the Lord, right?

What else here?

Health.

Health.

Having a long life, right?

Thinking about the Lord taking care of us

and protecting us from being sick

and those types of things, health would be something.

What about ideas?

You ever met somebody that,

they're just constantly coming up with the best ideas,

the best, most innovative strategies

and those types of things, but man,

some of those things sometimes

really come from the Lord, you know?

What about your schedule?

What about your calendar?

Some of you run your calendar

and some of you allow the Lord to run your calendar.

Do you know the difference?

Right?

When we allow the Lord to run our calendar,

we're more at peace, aren't we?

But when we run our calendar,

we can run ourselves into the ground, is that true?

Because God's calendar rests in me.

That's God's calendar, right?

Our schedule.

I've got all these Isaacs in my life,

these things that God has given me,

things that I haven't necessarily built with my own hands,

but I've been given the opportunity to steward.

I've been given the opportunity to work with them in my hands

and so God always keeps his promises

and God gives Abraham this great promise

and he says, "I'm giving you the son

"that's coming through Sarah and guess what?

"I'm going to allow through him, through his seed,

"your descendants are going to be like

"the countless sand on the seashore."

Isn't that a wonderful promise?

Isn't that a glorious thing?

And so here is Abraham, he's got two sons now,

Ishmael and Isaac, both are blessed

and he's just gone along his merry life.

Everything is just wonderful

and then God says, "Hey, Abraham,

"this is what I want you to do.

"Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac,

"and go to the region of Moriah,

"hey, I've got an idea, sacrifice him there

"as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you."

Now, everybody look at your neighbor and say crazy.

Okay, now here's the thing,

you have the benefit of knowing how this story turns out,

but I guarantee you, if you had no idea how this turned out,

you would be like, that is crazy.

That's absolutely nuts.

That's absolutely, doesn't make sense.

It doesn't line up with what has already been said.

This is so wrong, but can I tell you something?

Part of the reason why it's very important,

we did a whole year on the Holy Spirit,

part of the reason that it's so important for you

to understand and learn the voice of the Holy Spirit

is sometimes the Holy Spirit's gonna have you

do some audacious things that don't make any sense to you

and your response should always be obedience.

But your response is always going to be a question

if you don't know what the voice sounds like.

If you don't know what his voice sounds like,

there's a story of a girl who was blind

and she was on the top of the apartment

and she could get around the apartment, fair enough,

and the father went to the grocery store

to go get some groceries and somehow something happened

in the apartment where it caught on fire.

Well, she was on the top floor.

And so the firemen are coming and they're going

and they're yelling at this girl, "Jump, jump, come on down."

And they've got that big tarp and she's out there

and she's screaming on the ledge,

and they're yelling, "Jump," they're yelling, "Jump."

Well, they called the dad and the dad rushes

from the supermarket all the way to the apartment.

When he jumps out of the car, he looks up and he says,

"Jump," and the minute he said jump, she jumps.

Why did she jump with his voice and not the others?

Because she knew his voice.

She knew his voice and it saved her life.

Can I tell you that when you listen

to the Holy Spirit's voice, it might just save your life?

It might, and not only that,

it might save the lives of others.

Listening and hearing and understanding

and knowing the Holy Spirit's voice is so important.

So God said, and I believe Abraham knew the voice of God.

He said, "Take your son," now here's the thing,

Abraham is like us, he has the propensity

to take what God says and says,

"Now I'm gonna twist it into the version

"that accommodates me best."

So God is very specific here.

He says, "Take your son, your only son,"

the one I provided actually through Sarah,

and just in case you're not clear,

Isaac is who I'm talking about, right?

See, I need a God who will be very clear with me, right?

Because I have a tendency to twist it up quite a bit,

but no, he's very clear.

Your son, the one you love, we're talking about Isaac.

We're talking about Isaac,

and I want you to sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

Now let me tell you about a burnt offering.

There are different types of offerings listed in Scripture,

but a burnt offering was an offering

that was totally consumable,

which meant when you were done offering whatever that was,

it meant it was gone, it was no more.

There was no more, nothing that you could take from it,

nothing you could glean from it, it was completely gone.

That's the type of offering

Abraham's being requested to give with Isaac.

I wonder how many of us would be willing

to say yes, Lord, immediately to a request such as that.

I believe that we can sometimes get into a place

where we say, did God really say?

Would God really make me do that?

Would God really tell me to do that?

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Would God really tell us to do that?

But here's the thing, he did, and he does.

He did, and he does.

I want you to take your son, your only son,

who you love, Isaac, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

But the other thing that we have to consider

is that we actually believe that he, God Almighty,

is a sovereign God, and when we believe that,

his will will trump all else.

In other words, listen to this, friends,

God required the sacrifice of Isaac

regardless of Abraham's response.

I want you to understand that when God decrees

something to be done, it will be done

with or without your participation.

And Abraham had a choice, and the choice Abraham had

was yes, to obey or disobey, but the choice Abraham had

was you can be a participant in this blessing

or you may not be a participant in this blessing.

And the way that you get to participate

in the blessing of God is obedience, is obedience,

even when it doesn't make sense,

even when it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

And so this is a very important point

because God required Isaac regardless of whether or not

Abraham was willing to do it.

Guys, we serve a jealous God.

We serve a jealous God.

We have the privilege of knowing the rest of the story,

but can you imagine just being in Abraham's shoes?

I believe Isaac would have been sacrificed no matter what.

Some way, some form, because God decreed it,

it would have been done.

And we see this reality as harsh as it seems

throughout scripture.

Pharaoh would not release the Israelites,

so what happened?

God took the firstborn of Egypt.

Saul would not release the kingdom,

so God removed him and established David as king.

Jonah would not go to Nineveh,

so God had a fish drag him there.

God's will will always come to fruition.

God's will will always come to fruition

with or without your participation.

We will bow down one way or the other.

The only question is whether we bow down in willing faith

or stubborn resistance.

(breathing deeply)

Which side of the coin are you on?

Why?

Why, God, would you have me do this?

Because God said it.

What about the promise?

How does this line up with the character of God?

All questions.

What about, what if God never said

that our understanding was a prerequisite to our obedience?

He graces us sometimes in understanding.

He graces us in giving us explanation.

He graces us a lot of times with giving us

the bandwidth of time to get our act together

and finally decide to obey.

But at the end of the day,

God's will is gonna be done all of the time,

every single time.

Now, this seems so harsh,

and it seems to paint God with kind of a broad stroke

of man, this God doesn't really see us or hear us,

but we just went through all of these things

to say how great of a gift giver he is.

And if he has all of these things,

that means that when he requires things of us

that require sacrifice that we don't understand,

we can trust him that he is a good God

and that he is faithful and that he keeps his promises

so if it doesn't feel good right now,

I can trust God, you've got something better

on the other side, I just don't know what it is right now.

And so if I lean into obedience,

and if I look at the, guys,

you're a part of the greatest story ever told.

Why are we going through these stories?

It's because if God did it then, he'll do it again now.

He is the same God yesterday, today, and forevermore.

We just sang that song.

He is the same God.

And so you may be in a moment where it doesn't feel good,

that faith is being tested,

you're being asked to do some things

or to walk through something that hurts,

that doesn't feel good, that you don't understand,

but guys, you stand up with the strength,

not that you have on your own,

but the strength that the Holy Spirit gives you

and you say, God, I surrender all of it.

I give it all to you because I believe

that you are the star breather

and you are the giver of good gifts

and I will trust you no matter what else

seems to be going on, I will trust you.

I have faith to believe in you, amen?

- Amen.

- He is faithful.

He is so faithful and so we learn in scripture,

remember I talked about Saul,

that it is better to obey than to sacrifice.

Saul's kingdom was ripped from him

because he was not willing to do that.

And so we can run around trying to make everything happen.

There's a story of a man who was on a boat

and his one job, he had one job,

and it was to make sure that the rudder,

a rudder is a small little piece on a boat

that stirs a big deal, but a really small piece of the boat.

And his whole job was just to make sure

that that was working.

And he got in there and he was working,

he worked month after month after month,

he's like, man, I'm not getting really

a whole lot of notoriety,

I'm not getting a whole lot of prestige,

I'm not getting a whole lot of pat on the backs for this,

so I'm gonna start helping other people with their jobs.

And so he would leave for a few minutes,

his job, and he would go sweep the floor

and be like, good job, pat on the back.

And he started feeling good about all these things

that he was doing, he would go upstairs

and he started to help push some of the food carts

and he would go up to the deck

and he'd start mopping the deck and all of this stuff,

he's getting all these accolades

and people are coming around him and celebrating him,

and man, guess what, he became famous.

He became everybody, everybody's friend.

He was really great, he was smiling,

nobody, nobody disliked this guy.

Well, guess what, the rudder stopped working.

The boat crashed and everybody died.

Now, that's probably not a true story,

it's a story I heard, but the point is this.

He sacrificed himself instead of doing

the thing he was supposed to do.

But the sacrifice was bathed in him getting edification

that he didn't find in the place he needed to find it.

Because he had stood in a position he was supposed to be,

let me tell you, the greatest accolade

would have been that you saved all their lives

by doing what you were supposed to do.

Does that make sense?

To obey is better than sacrifice.

I used to be the young adult pastor here at Springhouse.

That front guy right there,

that's Kurt Bryson without glasses.

And I was young adult pastor,

I actually started as a young adult leader,

I guess I would say, at Chick-fil-A for four or five years

because we had a group of young adults

from a variety of churches who wanted to meet for worship.

And so I would open the store on Sunday night,

I'd fry up the fryers,

everybody likes free food and chicken, right?

And so we'd do that and we'd worship on Sunday nights

and it started to grow

and it grew to like 80 young adults.

It was fantastic, it was a glorious time,

glorious season, still have some connections

from that time period.

It lasted for about three years.

And at the end of the three years,

toward the end of the three years,

it was like literally in its prime.

I mean, we had, like I said, we had like maybe 80 people,

we had a worship team, we had a great setup.

In fact, this church had just decided to put an umbrella over

'cause I needed some authority in it

'cause I mean, we were collecting money.

I mean, this thing was really taking off.

And you know what the Lord said?

I want you to lay it down.

That doesn't make any sense, God.

Things are thriving right now.

Things are going great right now.

Why would you ask me to lay this down?

That must not be the Lord.

Now, here's the thing, I know the Lord's voice,

but I was trying to make it

as if it wasn't the Lord's voice.

And do you know that I basically said,

not in my words, but I said in my actions, no,

I'm not laying this down.

And I went the next couple of weeks to that thing,

to the meeting, just knowing that it was gonna be great.

And it was everything but.

Numbers dropped, drama started, worship team disbanded,

all types of things, people were stealing money from the,

I mean, it was a mess.

And we hadn't seen anything like that.

I got to suffer the consequence of my disobedience.

And more than that, I walked in bitterness for a year or two.

And that whole season, I told the Lord,

I will never be a young adult pastor again.

Never will I be a young adult pastor again.

Fast forward three years later,

as the Lord got a hold of my heart and he's maturing me,

I go out in this foyer and I'm walking,

we used to have Wednesday night services,

and I see Brittany, then Sweeney,

and Chris and Sweeney, and they're gathering out there.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

I was working with kids at that time.

And they said, we're gonna go do a Bible study at Starbucks

'cause we don't have a young adult program here.

I said, well, good riddance, go do that, it's fine.

Next week, just happened to walk by, there they are again.

And God said, I want you to start leading them.

No, sir, not doing that.

And I mean, guys, I just can't tell you how crazy it was.

I would just happen upon them meeting,

happen upon week by week.

I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it.

And so then I made a deal with God.

Anybody made a deal with God?

Made a deal with God.

I said, God, okay, I will put some organization to this

and do it for four or five weeks,

but you're gonna raise somebody up to do this.

I'm not gonna do it.

And so I stepped in there,

and we got a little organization.

I helped get them a room here, helped get them sanctioned.

And then I went to lunch with Ronnie Meek,

and he said, hey, Kevin,

I want you to be our young adult pastor.

And we grew a ministry.

Many of you have touch points,

ripples from that ministry that flourished here.

People from this place.

Can I tell you that had I not gone through that season

of learning, I would not be the lead pastor today?

Because there's no way that I could carry this position

any other way than like this.

I've been there and done that when I've held it like this,

and it did not go well.

Can I tell you that sometimes that the Lord

will take things out of your life

because he wants to know

if he is the number one priority in your life?

Can I tell you that sometimes

that he will put authority in your life,

that will come in the authority

will remove that thing from your life,

and it doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem right,

it doesn't seem just.

But God is saying, do you trust me?

Because if the word says that all authority

has been established by him,

then the authority he's put in your life

will be the one to make the decision.

And no matter how it affects you,

you can trust, if you trust God, you can trust,

he's gonna take care of you.

That his promises are yes and amen.

And that sometimes the leader comes and says,

I wanna go left.

When you so in your mind wanna go right,

what are you gonna do?

You can obey or disobey, that's the choice.

And guess what, if the leader is wrong,

guess who it's not on?

It's not on you, it's on the Lord

because the Lord establishes all authority.

When you walk in obedience,

there's always gonna be a blessing.

But where we find strife and where we find things

is whenever we step outside of the authority

the Lord has placed in front of us

and we don't walk in obedience.

God is so faithful, he is so faithful.

And I'm wondering this morning

if there are some Isaacs that some of us need to lay down.

I believe that one of the questions

that we need to ask ourselves,

we need to stop asking why is this happening to me?

And we need to ask the Lord,

what is he trying to teach me?

What God are you trying to teach me?

I don't understand the situation,

they have hurt me, I am upset.

This is my ministry, this is my thing,

this is my relationship, this is my job,

this is my assignment.

And God wants to eliminate that my vocabulary word

out of the sentence.

Because it never was yours, it was always his.

Because who is the giver?

He's the gift giver.

He's the one that gave it to you.

And so God if it's yours

and I was just supposed to steward it,

seems like it's leaving my hand right now,

it means that you have something better for me then,

right now.

Something that you see ahead of me

that I don't see right now very clearly.

So I'm gonna trust you.

I'm going to trust you.

God, what is he trying to teach me?

He's always trying to teach us something.

And this is where faith enters the picture.

Can I tell you it takes great faith

to surrender the thing you believe belongs to you.

It takes great faith to surrender the thing

that you believe belongs to you.

Because what you're saying whenever you surrender that thing

is say God I place you above every person,

every ideology, every board, every emotion, every feeling,

I put you above all of that.

And I trust you just as much as Abraham raises the knife

ready to slay his own son.

Great faith.

Great faith.

The real test of faith is not in sacrificing

what we have created,

but in surrendering what God has provided.

And so I just talked about all these Isaacs here.

My health, schedule, Sherry, my kids, all of these things.

Can I tell you something about all these things right here?

Guys, Sherry is like the most important person in my life.

You understand that, right?

Like my kids are super important to me, right?

My ministries that the Lord has allowed me to steward

and be a part of, they're important to me, okay?

But can I tell you what they look like

in comparison to the gift giver?

(man whistles)

Do you know how many of these gifts

I would have to add up to add to this box?

And some of us are holding on with clenched fists

these promises that God has given us,

and we are walking away from the gift giver

because we love the gifts so much.

In fact, we've fallen in love with the gifts so much

that all of a sudden, it's not God that's my peace anymore,

it's this gift.

It's not God that's my provider anymore, it's my spouse.

It's not God that's faithful anymore,

it's that person or that job, that boss in my life.

He's no longer my security, it's the gift God's put in my,

it's the resource, my bank account, the crypto XRP,

that's my security.

The truth.

I bought into a lie because I like how my gifts feel.

(man speaks faintly)

My comfort is no longer found in the Lord,

it's found in all of these things

that I get to control my schedule, look what,

and guess what, it's so deceiving

because the gifts come from God.

I'm not talking about Ishmaels,

I'm talking about things from God.

But here's the thing, look,

I can't even get one of these signs to come,

these affirmations overwhelm the gifts

because they were never supposed to be assigned to the gifts,

they're supposed to be assigned to the gift giver.

They're supposed to be assigned to the gift giver.

But when we hold on to our resources

and the people he's put on our life

and we place them above,

we place all of that above him, there's a problem.

And you say to myself, well, God would never tell me,

and when I say let go of our sacrifice,

God's not, I don't believe God's saying get a knife out.

But here's the thing, God is gonna ask you

to surrender your spouse and make him the priority.

He's gonna ask you to surrender your kids

and make him the, he's gonna ask you

to surrender that promise and make him the priority.

And here's the crazy thing,

when he truly is the priority

and you're spending more time assigning these attributes

to him, all of a sudden your relationship

with your spouse is abundantly blessed.

Your kids get an inheritance

that is beyond anything you could imagine.

Your job goes so much better than you could ever think

of all these great and wonderful things

that God has given you.

They are immensely blessed because they are not your God.

He is, he is.

What are you holding on to this morning?

And I'm not talking about things you fashioned.

What are you holding on to that God has given you?

How's a barometer here?

Here's a good question to ask.

What do you fear the most?

What do you fear the most?

Now I fear spiders, but no.

I ask you that question, I fear losing my ministry the most.

That would be if somebody would say that.

I fear losing my spouse.

I fear losing my kids.

Those are legitimate, those are legitimate,

those are legitimate fears if you will

that you could put there.

But what about the fear that says,

you know what, I wrestled with this this week

and I said, God, I believe that my number one fear

is that I would live my life part from you.

That I would live my life part from you.

If your number one fear is losing somebody close to you

or your ministry or resources,

then that's a clear indicator that you've got an Isaac

that you're turning into a God.

He is the giver of great gifts,

but he will give and take away and he is still good.

He will give and take away and he is still good,

he's still God.

Do you have an Isaac in your life

that has taken, that you filter all your decisions through,

that is the most important thing to you, that's not him?

Your story builds faith.

Your story builds faith and as you share about the Isaacs

that you render and lay down, Abraham's story that we read

builds our faith because God kept his promise

even in a circumstance that we didn't understand.

And so he says, we will worship and then we will come back.

What great faith.

What great faith to say, basically,

I have no understanding Calvin of why the Lord

is telling me to do this,

but I'm gonna walk in obedience to him.

But I'll tell you this much, the promise he gave me

is the promise he gave me and I'd rest so assured

that he's gonna make that promise come to pass.

We will worship and then we will come back.

This is my wife Sherry, she's beautiful.

And she was never gonna get married.

She, back in 2008 and prior, she had made a commitment

to the Lord really when she was 16, she said,

"I'm never going to get married,

"I'm never gonna get married."

Then she met me, what can I say?

No, she made a commitment to the Lord,

said, "I'm never gonna get married."

And the Lord met her in 2008 and she said,

and the story on this side of it is,

it really became a source of pride.

It became a source of, look what I'm doing for the Lord.

You see, we can get self-righteous

about the things we're doing for God.

And God's saying, I want you to surrender

that thing to me as well.

And so she was, she was praying, everybody was saying,

oh, you'll get married, and she's like, no, I won't.

Let me show you how stubborn I am.

She's like, I will not get married.

And the Lord said in 2008,

if I tell you to marry somebody, would you do it?

And she had to wrestle with it.

But God, I'm doing this for you.

But God, I'm doing this for you.

He said, okay.

I'm not asking what you're doing for me,

I'm asking will you obey?

Will you obey?

God requires us to sacrifice our greatest ideas

and our best intentions.

I believe that even this is where the enemy gets in,

some of us will spend our life arguing

about scripture and theology and all of the things

of what you should believe and not believe

and how it should go down and what this says

and how church should operate and all of these things,

and we will miss him altogether.

We will miss Jesus altogether.

Hey, it was a good thing.

It was a great subject, great thing to talk about.

It's about the Lord.

And oh, I'm just doing this because I need to make sure

that they know where they're going

and how they're supposed to read this and discern this

and all those things.

And we can really make an idol out of the faith.

This is the biggest deceit of the enemy

is to take the things of the Lord

and allow them to be right in front of us here

to cloud our vision from the gift giver.

How do we get to that place in scripture where he says,

well, we worshiped in your name.

We cast out demons in your name.

I wore the shirt, I went to church, I tithed in your name.

I ran that ministry in your name.

I did all of these things in your name.

I did that Bible study.

I read all 365 days of that Bible study in your name.

I don't know who you are.

And it was because you took the gifts I gave you

and you made them your gods.

When we hold too tightly to the gift,

we lose sight of the giver.

And guys, this is a daily rendering.

This is a daily surrender.

For some it's moment by moment,

but it's daily to wake up and say,

God, I really need today to just be me and you.

And I get to be a part of all these wonderful gifts

that are around me.

But man, God, I need it to be just me and you

because here's the thing.

When you get to the end of your day,

you've picked up some things.

You have started to fashion some things.

And guess what?

The next day you need to go up and say,

I lay this all down again.

I lay this all down again

because we are creatures of habit.

And we pick things up.

We pick things up.

We make priorities of things

that should not be the priority.

Isaac says, where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

What an interesting question.

When I read that, you know what that says to me?

In life, some of these gifts, primarily the people,

they can cause you confusion.

Isaac was the burnt offering.

And he's asking Abraham, where's the burnt offering?

You can have your children look at you

and question what you're doing.

Your spouse, your family, people look at you,

ministry workers, what are you talking about?

Did God really say?

You can say, I know the voice of the Lord.

Wonderful response from Abraham.

God is gonna provide the offering.

God is gonna provide the offering.

And so we live our life like this.

I have been crucified with Christ.

Every single day, I am dead.

I am dead to the world.

I am alive in Christ.

I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer me that lives, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life that I now live in the flesh,

how do I live it?

I live by, everybody say faith.

I live by, say it again.

I live by faith.

I live by faith.

Are you living your life by faith?

Because boy, we sure grab some security in these, can we?

But God gave these to me.

He absolutely did.

But faith says, I surrender.

Hadassah, come up here.

This was a terribly hard message for me to construct

because I don't know that I could do what Abraham did

with her.

And you would look at me and you would say,

well, Kevin, God would never ask you.

God would never ask you to do what Abraham did to Isaac.

But guys, I disagree.

I disagree.

Because as much as I love, geez,

as much as I love my daughter, I have to love him more.

I have to love him above her.

I have to place him above her.

I have to place him above her.

No matter how much I want her to thrive and succeed

in my heart, I would lay down my life.

I was thinking this past week, there's my family

and about two other people, three other people

that I actually believe I would let them pull the cord

and I would go out of here and I'd go to heaven for.

But guess what?

He's not asking me to die for Hadassah

or for other people.

He's asking me to die for him.

To be crucified with Christ daily.

To lay my life down for him first and foremost.

And when I do that, I get to look at Hadassah

and say, God, thank you for another day

with this beautiful gift, this treasure.

And as I lay down her and I choose him,

then God will multiply what I'm willing to surrender.

He will bless what I'm willing to give up.

And so if I want her to have a fighting chance

out in this dark world to be blessed,

I gotta give her to the Lord.

I've gotta give her up and I've gotta make sure

my heart pops, you guys, there's a day

where he's gonna split the sky.

And guess what, it's not gonna be you

and your spouse standing there.

It's not gonna be you and your kids standing there.

It's gonna be you and God Almighty.

And he'll say to you, oh, it's okay,

I knew you really wanted to have more time with them

so it was okay that you didn't give me the time of day.

It's not what he's gonna say.

Honestly, I don't even know that he's gonna really consider

anything we didn't give him.

He's gonna look at what we did give him.

And man, God, my all in all, my everything,

we sang the song, is the lyric,

Jesus is the giver of life, is that the lyric?

Nobody's looking at me over here, is that the lyric?

When they're looking at the floor.

He's the giver of life.

I don't know anything more precious than life.

And so here's the deal.

We deserve the penalty of death.

And this was a precursor for the grand picture

of why we can even sit here and talk about this today.

While the gift giver would even have the ability

to give us gifts that we would receive

and that is because Jesus is the provided sacrifice.

Jesus Christ is the perfect unblemished lamb.

He is the one that we're gonna stand face to face

with one on one.

And I wanna be one that is able to say,

God, I surrendered it all.

You gave me so many great gifts but I surrendered it all.

You were my one and only.

You were and are my one and only, God.

Nothing else trumps you.

Nothing else is more supreme in my life than you.

And out of the overflow of my relationship with you, God,

all of these Isaacs, these gifts are abundantly blessed.

Guys, Isaac didn't, his life wasn't taken from him.

And he was blessed big time.

God kept his promise and he'll keep his promise for you

if you'll surrender your all.

Around you are some boxes.

And I wonder today, if today might be the day

where some of you might wanna take a box

and take a pen next to you and write on that box

something that maybe is an Isaac in your life.

This isn't you coming to the altar space and saying,

I need to nail this to the cross necessarily.

This is saying, God, I need a reminder

that no matter how much I love this person

or love this ministry or I'm secure in my resources,

none of that is more important than you.

And so I lay this down in surrender

and in acknowledgement that you, God,

my personal savior, you, God,

are more important than any of it.

And that means, God, if you choose to take it away from me,

I'm gonna say yes, sir, because I trust, Lord.

If you take it away from me, you got something

for my good on the other side of it.

My greatest fear, God, is not being with you.

Let's surrender our Isaac's today.

Would you stand with me?

You don't have to have a box.

This is just to put some semblance to it

because of our analogy here.

Because listen, there's something about coming here

and facing this giant box and saying,

wow, that is so small compared to that.

So if you've got a box and you wanna render it,

you come forward, spend some time in the altar space,

this time is not for you to be with your spouse

or a prayer partner.

Guess what?

We're gonna spend some time one on one

with the star breather.

Let's worship.

(gentle music)

(gentle music)

(gentle music)

you