Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

I have a couple of announcements on my own of my own.

Um, this, this week, um, our kids are starting VBS vacation Bible school, and it's going to be awesome.

They're going to deck out the, uh, the facility.

Um, so that's this week.

Um, and, and because of that, uh, we, we have to cancel Wednesday night again.

Um, and that was, I, that was always the plan since the beginning of the year, but I know we just, we just canceled it last week because of a funeral.

But, um, so this will be the last Wednesday and then we'll, we'll be back in, uh, with our Bible study and everything.

Um, but I also, I want to make an announcement, a personal.

A personal request.

We're not personal, but a pastoral requests, man.

Um, we need, we need more help with the parking lot.

Uh, yes.

Um, we need more hands on deck and right now we got, I mean, we got Danny out there, we got Fernando, we got my brother, Josh, we got Adrian.

I mean, we got all these guys that week after week, they're out there.

Um, and, and a lot of them don't get to enjoy the service and that's not right.

Um, so I'm, I'm asking for some help.

If y'all would come up to me after, after service or talk to Josh, uh, next week, next week after, after church on Sunday, we're going to have a meeting and we're going to feed the parking lot.

And even if you're not up, even if you're not a member of the parking lot crew yet, but you want to be, you still get to be fed as well.

We're going to, we're going to treat them and say, thank you.

And then try to put a little bit more structure to this parking lot, uh, crew because it's needed and we got people circling around the street sometimes.

And some, some, sometimes they leave and, and we don't want somebody to miss out on the blessing of God.

Simply because they can't find a parking, not today.

Devil.

All right.

So we need some help.

All right.

And we got any guys that are willing to help?

I'm going to put you on the spot right now.

Hold on.

Let me raise your hand.

All right.

We need, we need at least 10.

We need a good 10 to rotate y'all and, and to, to make sure that everybody's still being fed here in the house of God.

Um, so, so please talk to me after, after service.

And we're going to, we're going to do that.

And thank y'all, man.

We, man, we, we appreciate all the help.

Um, we're going to go to the word.

Amen.

You ready for the word this morning?

Let's do it.

Genesis chapter 16.

We're going to read just four verses.

I'm going to ask you to stand for the reading of God's word.

Genesis 16, one through four.

Amen.

We have it say I have it praise the Lord.

I want to thank pastor Brandon last week for bringing the word in my absence.

Amen.

And dedicating a whole bunch of children to the Lord.

Praise God.

They're way better off bro than anybody that I've dedicated.

So thank you.

I'm just kidding.

Just kidding.

All right, here we go.

It says now Sarah, Abraham's wife had bore him.

No children.

She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.

And so I said to Abram, behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Go into my servant, my, my servant.

It may be that I shall obtain children by her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

And so after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant and gave her to Abram, her husband as a wife.

And he went into Hagar and she conceived.

And when she had saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.

Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we thank you, my God, for this word that you have spoken, Lord, over your servant, my God.

And I just pray that as I have received it, your people would receive it in spirit and in truth.

My God, we are open this morning to conviction.

My God, we are open, my God, to encouragement.

We are open to being increased in faith.

My God, whatever you want to do, Lord, we give you permission to do it.

My God, our hearts belong to you.

We love you and we thank you in Jesus name.

Amen.

Men, you may be seated.

It was only a few months ago that I preached out of this passage where we focused on Hagar and Ishmael and on how God sees us even when nobody else sees us and how God is the author of our story, even when our story is birthed out of mistakes and sin and failure and stuff that we're not proud of.

That message was called.

This is your story.

You can always go back, check it out on the Newman Church podcast.

Any message you miss is on there.

But I wanted to bring this word.

I got some in my throat.

I wanted to bring this word because I've been kind of in a small season of of trusting God and the Lord's been teaching me some things from it.

You ever been in a season where God is just teaching you things?

And so that's that's been me for the past couple of months, and I think this story is a perfect example of what the Lord has been saying to me when I preached this last.

I spoke briefly on the difference between trusting and rushing the promises of God.

Both require faith, by the way.

You can't trust God's plan without having faith in God and in his word.

You also can't rush God's plan without some degree of faith, because when you're when you're rushing God's plan, that means you have some level of expectation that God's word is going to come to pass.

You just don't have the patience to wait for it.

But at least you got something right.

You've got the faith.

But what God has been teaching me is how to trust in him while having faith in him.

And Abraham's story, this this is Abraham, this is a great man known as the father of faith.

And here in this story, we see this moment where Abraham, the father of faith, fails to trust God and instead rushes the promise of God.

And I want to talk a little bit about that because, you know, we need to know that there is a difference, church, between having faith in God and trusting in God.

There's a difference.

We use the terms interchangeably trust and faith, but they're not quite the same thing in Hebrew.

The word for for for trust is batak, which means to be confident in something or to be confident in someone.

The word for faith in Hebrew is aman, which means to believe and continue faithful.

And Greek is the same thing.

It's not much different.

Pisteo is the Greek word for faith, and it means belief in something or something or someone.

It evokes faithfulness and it evokes trust.

But trust is the confidence that you have in someone that has proved to be reliable in the past.

So trust is based on predictability, experience and empirical evidence.

Faith doesn't rely on empirical evidence.

Faith doesn't require proof.

Trust is built.

Trust is earned.

You don't just hand out trust to anybody.

Faith is conviction.

It's belief.

It's deeply rooted.

It's embedded in you.

It's why faith is a lot more resilient than trust is.

When God doesn't act in the way that I believe that he would, I still have faith in him.

But trust can be broken.

And so it's a lot more fragile than faith is.

It's why people have faith in God, but they don't trust the church.

They have faith in his word, but not in people's interpretation of his word.

Or maybe you have faith that there is a God, but you don't trust his word.

You can have faith in your child, in your children, that they're going to grow up to be good people because you're working really hard and you're praying over them and and you just have faith that one day they're going to grow up to be good people.

But you don't always trust that they're telling you the truth.

That's me and my girls.

Are you do you see the difference between trust and faith?

And so when I look at this story, for me, it provides a really good example of having faith in God while not completely trusting in the details of his plan.

I think a lot of Christians have faith in God, but they don't easily trust him.

And and trust is such an essential part of faith.

Without it, it cripples our faith.

I believe that there's a lot of Pastor Danny even said it this morning.

He talked about dead faith.

I think a lot of Christians are carrying dead faith and you call it faith, but it's dead.

You call it faith, but when there is no trust, see, trust keeps that faith active.

It keeps that faith alive.

And I think we have a lot of Christians who have faith, but they don't have trust.

And so I titled the message this morning, trusting in faith, trusting in faith.

That's to say that you are trusting in God while you are walking in faith.

We just we just sold our house last.

Praise God.

Yeah, yeah.

That's awesome.

And last week, so we weren't here.

We we had planned a little vacation.

And so we left last Friday.

We got back on Tuesday.

Our house was scheduled to close on Thursday.

I would have much rather have gone on vacation after our house sold.

But we had already paid for and planned the vacation.

So just for some of you who are like, why did they go on vacation while they was in their house?

A.K.A. my sisters.

And also, we had tried to move the closing date back, but the buyers were on a on a time crunch as well.

They were selling their house.

So everything had to happen last week.

That was a lot that had to happen last week.

And you know what?

To be honest, during the whole process, I wasn't even sure if the house was going to sell.

I'm in real estate.

I know home values.

I know that prices aren't what they were a year ago or two years ago.

And the buyers offered $20,000 over to buy the house.

They were over asking because they needed they needed money back at closing.

So I was a little worried that the house wasn't going to appraise for the amount that they offered and the whole thing was going to fall apart.

And so I say that because we were holding off on packing.

And like until last week, until the day before we moved, we were we were holding off on getting movers.

We were holding off on finding a property we're going to we're going to rent for a year or two.

So we were holding off on all of that because I didn't want to pay for movers and pack my house and put a security deposit down and sign a year lease also that the deal wouldn't go through.

And so this whole month we're waiting for this appraisal to come back.

And and it took forever.

And and so we were on our way to Mexico.

And when we landed in Mexico, right when I turn off, turn back my phone on from airplane mode, I got a text to say, we appraised.

Praise the Lord.

And it was going to be a good vacation, right?

Praise God, the sale is going to happen.

But now we need to find a place to live and we need to find movers and all of this needed to happen while we were on vacation.

So no big deal.

You know, I'm good.

I'm good under pressure.

But we had seen some houses that we liked and none of those houses were available anymore.

And and we made two offers while we were over there.

We didn't even go see them.

We just went by the pictures in faith and this is going to be fine.

And and they didn't take our they didn't take they didn't accept our application.

The only one that accepted our application.

And this is going to sound really convenient, but it's not is the most expensive one.

We had went to see that one.

Our girls loved it, but we were like, no, it's it's it's a little too expensive.

They didn't want to come down on the price.

And so we had written it off, but that was the only one that was available.

And so while we were over there, we signed that lease and we get back home Tuesday night.

We start packing some things.

My great aunt passed away.

So I had to come Wednesday to the funeral and thank you all for everybody who came and help.

But my wife wasn't even able to come because she was at home with the movers.

And so I get home after the funeral on Wednesday and and we're still with the movers and we're making some trips back and forth.

I go to bed at about four in the morning and I come back here Thursday morning for the part two of the funeral.

And it was a lot.

And I'm tired, feel like I didn't even go on vacation and I'm stressed and we moved out completely of our house and we paid first month's rent and a security deposit on a house that is more expensive than I wanted to pay.

And at this point, we hadn't even closed on our house yet.

So, man, Lord, make it happen.

And I remember having a conversation with my wife with, you know, with my wife and I told her all of this.

I said, babe, I'm not going to lie.

I'm stressed a little bit and I'm nervous because all I want to do this, this is my life's desire.

All I want to do is be a good steward of my life.

Like I want to make wise decisions that God honors.

But so much is happening so fast and not really in the way that I would have liked.

And I told her, I'm just, I'm just not sure about all of this.

And after my wife's comforting words and presence, I take all of this to God and he begins to tell me, Ryan, I see your faith, but I need your trust.

Faith is big picture.

Trust happens in the details.

Faith says God is going to get the glory.

How many of us believe that as believers?

We believe that God is going to get the glory.

Trust says God is going to use this moment to get the glory.

Faith says the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He leads me besides still waters.

But trust says in this moment where I don't know what to do and I don't know what is right and what is not right.

And I don't know if this is a step of wisdom or a step of foolishness.

In this moment of uncertainty, the Lord will shepherd me.

Abraham believed the word of God would come to pass.

He had to have the faith that was necessary for him to take up all of his things, to pack up his wife and say, hey, we're going to this place of the unknown.

But trust should have said this is not the way that is going to happen.

Sarah said to her husband, behold, now the Lord has prevented me from having children, so go into my servant.

It may be that I shall obtain children by her.

So you can you can see the faith in Sarah's words, right?

Like she knows that God promised her husband a nation of sons and daughters.

She knows that she is following a man who has been handpicked by God, and because he was handpicked by God, she is also anointed for the same task.

She believes in what God is doing through them.

You see the faith in her words, but you also see the uncertainty in her statement.

God said this and I'm all for it, but he didn't give us details.

He didn't give us instructions.

He didn't give us a road map.

He didn't give us a timeline.

He didn't give us any more information that would have been really helpful right now.

Do you ever feel like that?

You got a word from God, but that's all you got.

Look, I say this with fear and trembling.

If the Lord was your manager.

You would have filed a complaint with HR a long time ago.

Because what kind of leader gives you an assignment but doesn't equip you for it?

What kind of leader tells you what to do without telling you how to do it?

God, I just want to be set up for success.

Train me.

I've got no problem with obedience.

I am your servant.

You tell me to go, I'll go.

You tell me to act, I'll act.

You tell me to wait, I'll wait.

But how can I trust the process when I don't even know if this is the process I'm supposed to be in?

Many times, God will send you on a journey and he makes you the captain of the ship.

But you don't want to be the captain of the ship.

You don't even know where you're going.

You don't even know how to steer the ship.

You don't even know how to turn the thing on.

You don't even know how to swim.

And God is sending you off.

It's still his boat.

It's still his mission.

It's still his charter.

But you're left navigating.

That's what it feels like sometimes.

When God called us to pastor, I didn't know what I was doing, so I barely still know what I'm doing.

It's been 10 years.

I was 25 when I started to pastor.

I was still a baby.

I was still figuring out my own spiritual life, and now I'm leading other people spiritually, and I'm grateful for the wisdom that was yielded to me in the form of counselors and mentors.

And I'm grateful to having been raised in the Lord, seeing good pastors growing up.

I'm grateful that God provided vision with the assignment, but he didn't give me what I thought at times was enough.

I would have loved to have had a lot more than I had because I could have avoided some mistakes.

I could have done things better, and I could have avoided some hard lessons.

There's been so many times in this pastoral journey that I'm still questioning if I made a wrong turn or not.

An estimated 11 years had passed since God's promise to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. 11 years.

That's 11 years of uncertainty.

That's 11 years of waiting.

That's 11 years of questioning.

I think our sermons kind of aligned this morning because Pastor Danny this morning in Spanish, he was talking about, you know, just getting tired of the prophecies, getting tired of the it's coming.

It feels like that, like you got a word from the Lord a long time ago that God spoke something over your life for your family, for your ministry, for your future.

And it's like, OK, God, where is it?

It's been 11 years and I've been waiting and I've been faithful and I've been obedient and I haven't done things perfectly, but I'm still walking in the faith.

Where is it?

That's where Sarah and Abraham are right here in this situation, and I wish I could have heard those conversations between Abraham and Sarah regarding this promise.

I wish I could hear that that pillow talk, you know, at night of strategizing and those arguments.

There was a point, you know, for sure that Abraham and Sarah were like, babe, it's because you're too old.

And they're like, no, it's because you're too old.

There was probably a point where Sarah came to the realization, because, you know, a lot of times when we're left too long with our thoughts, we start to think about things and maybe this is why God is doing this.

And and so Sarah got to a point where she was like, you know, surely God doesn't expect this 90 year old body to deliver a baby.

I mean, I sneeze and I almost die.

He wants me to give birth to a child and then raise it.

No, no, no, no, no.

Sure, maybe it's maybe this is the way.

I wish I could have heard those conversations, man, like the ones that my wife and I have around the promises that God has made us.

Like the ones that our pastoral teams have every now and then regarding the promises that God has made over this church, like the many conversations Pastor Danny and I have regarding expansion and growth and what God is saying and what God is doing.

Those conversations happen because we have faith in God's word, but we're not always sure on the how.

And so the last time I preached this sermon or out of this passage, I mentioned that when we start asking how, we got to be really careful what we do next.

Siona, when you're stuck too long analyzing the promises of God and you start trying to figure out what you need to do to make it happen, how is this going to happen?

You got to be very, very, very careful what you do next, because we can either rush the promise of God or we can do nothing with the promise of God and just sit back and wait for God to do something when he's actually expecting us to do something as well.

Or we can trust that God is working in us and through us even when there is uncertainty.

You're with me.

Let me let me make this real practical for a second.

Whenever, whenever you are confronted with a big decision, how many of you have big decision you got to make?

Whenever you are confronted with the big decision, there is wisdom in prayer.

Hear that if you are about to start a new relationship or make a big purchase or start a new job or quit a job, or if you're about to become a member of another church, good practice is praying.

Before any type of decision like that.

And there was a lot of that for me in these past few months.

Just, just personally, as far as my family goes, prayer went into the decision to list our house and then to go with this offer and the next steps and, and, and pulling our, our, our kids out of school and taking them to a different neighborhood and taking them to a different school.

There was a lot of prayer because these are big decisions.

And I said earlier, I just want to be a good steward of my life.

So I, I know that we've got men and women of God in here who, who pray before anything they do.

And pastor Larry, every time pastor Larry invites me to speak at a men's event and I tell him, let me look at my calendar and I tell him, yes, he's like, hold on, pastor.

Pray about it first.

I love that.

I love that.

But let's be honest.

A lot of times God doesn't give you a yes or a no.

Well, if, if God doesn't give you a clear yes or a clear, no, that means it's a no, no, it doesn't.

I don't know who taught you that theology.

It wasn't your pastor.

Well, well, if God doesn't give you a yes or no, that means it's a maybe, and, and, and you just have to wait.

No, it doesn't.

That's not how faith works.

Faith doesn't need, faith doesn't work by God giving us every play by play and every turn that we need to take.

He's not Caesar.

Giving us a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Every time we ask him something, there are going to be big decisions in your life that you need to make.

And God is not always going to tell you which one to make, but it's still necessary to go to him and prayer because prayer keeps you connected to the father.

More than God giving you a yes or a no prayers power is that it keeps you in a relationship with the spirit.

And so when you are walking in faith and you're not sure which way to go, prayer is going to remind you that you live to honor him.

Prayer is going to remind you to act in wisdom.

It is going to remind you that every decision you make, you want to honor God through it.

And so even if the decision I make is the wrong decision, even if by every effort, I sought God through all of it, and I still made the wrong move.

I know that God will turn whatever mistake that I made into something that he draws glory from.

Because when you seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, everything will be added.

That's why I trust him.

That's why.

If the definition of faith is confidence in someone or something, then I trust that God has got my back.

I am confident that when I place my life in his hands and I walk in faith and I seek wisdom in the unknown and I and I plead for discernment to see what's from God and what's not.

When I do all of these things, even if I mess up.

Even if I misstep or misspeak, God's got me and his word will come to pass.

Because God's promises are bigger than my mistakes.

Trusting in God is not about having confidence in the decision.

I don't know who needs to hear that today, but somebody needs to hear that today because you are waiting to have confidence in the decision that you have to make.

That's all we want.

We want confidence in the decision.

Like, is this the one I'm supposed to marry?

I don't know.

Is he the one?

Is is this job?

Is this job the job that God wants me to have?

Is this the house for my family?

You don't know the answer to many of those questions.

If you're a Christian and he's not, well, then the answer is obvious.

If the job that you're trying to get is at a club, then the answer is obvious.

Okay, like, if the house is going to make you house poor, then the answer is obvious.

But for those who have prayed and you have put away all selfishness and you are seeking first the kingdom of heaven, not every question will have an answer.

So you can't have confidence in every decision.

I know that's not what you want to hear.

I know you want revelation.

I know you want God to tell you, yes, go ahead for it, but it's not going to work like it all the time.

Okay.

It takes some trust.

It takes trust that God has got your back when you when you place everything on his table at his feet.

Lord, I just want to make the best decision because I want to honor you with it.

You have to take a step sometimes, because if you don't take a step, you ain't going anywhere.

And when you fail to continue to trust, then you're walking around with the dead faith.

You can have the confidence that even when you fail, God will never fail.

This is not this is not a pass for foolishness.

Okay, this is not a pass to make stupid decisions.

This is for those who live and walk by faith.

God knows that some of you would be obedient if God were just to give you a word.

He's seen your obedience.

Some of you have been praying, God, I just don't know what to do.

Just give me the answer because I want to honor you.

And I think that's a beautiful thing when you are so careful with what you do because you want to honor God with your life.

It's like it's like the people I, I, um, I see in my life.

I see this a lot of times, there's people who have a prophetic voice, a prophetic gift over their life.

I know at least three of them I can name.

I won't name them.

But there's at least three of them who have a very distinct prophetic anointing over their life, but they don't always like to give the words because they're careful because they don't want to, they don't want to misspeak.

And I think that's a beautiful thing.

But I've told these people, look, if you are feeling that word over your life, if it's pressing on you, you've got to trust that it's the Lord and you got to release it.

And if it's wrong, man, that sucks.

Yeah, but that's the truth.

That's the truth.

Like that's, it takes a step of faith.

It takes a step of trusting because that's exactly what the enemy wants for you not to trust enough to release that word.

And there's so many of us that walk with that, with that caution that everything that I do, I want to, I want it to honor God.

Every move that I make, I want it to honor God.

My, my, my mom, she, uh, you know, mom's just no things.

My mom could sense this week when I was signing this lease on this house that is at the very top of our budget, I felt defeated.

I was like, man, I'm just all of these big decisions I got to make right now.

And I'm just like, there was so much going on.

And my mom, my mom just said, just trust God.

She inspired the sermon.

Just, just trust, just trust.

You've done everything that you can.

You've prayed, you've put this in the hands of God.

You can't control everything.

Just, just trust, just trust.

Trusting is hard.

Because it mixes human elements with God's divine plan.

Abraham and Sarah believed God, they had faith in his word, but they had to trust his plan through so much emotion and so much uncertainty and so much waiting and so much doubt.

And so Sarah says, well, it could be that this is how I have children.

That was the wrong decision.

And it brought heartache and it brought tension and it brought drama and it brought delay.

But you know what?

Last I checked, Abraham is still the father of faith.

Abraham and Sarah are still listed as the pillars of faith.

In Hebrews 11, Abraham and Sarah were still used in a way that God intended to use them.

Look, look at, look at Hebrews 11, 8, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive an inheritance.

And he went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

Therefore, from when one man as him as good as dead were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

It doesn't even mention.

It doesn't even mention the mistake that they made.

It doesn't say, well, they could have had it, but they made a stupid move.

No, they were walking in faith.

And look, I don't want to excuse really foolish decisions, OK?

I never want to make a mistake like Sarah and Abraham.

I don't want any of you to make the please like don't make a mistake like that, like exactly like that.

I'm going to be a lot of drama in the church.

I never want to make a mistake like Abraham and Sarah, and we can sit here and we could talk about where Abraham and Sarah went wrong.

Oh, we love to do that, man.

We love to analyze other people's mistakes.

I can preach a whole message on how Abraham failed to to have wisdom.

He had faith, but he failed to have wisdom.

He had faith, but he failed to have discernment.

He had faith, but he failed to have patience.

But the beauty of this message lies in the grace of God, that even when we fail, his word can still be trusted when we walk by faith.

Even when our wisdom is clouded and our discernment is distracted and our prayers don't reveal the right answer, God never fails.

And the perfect God will still use imperfect people to carry forth his plan.

That's why I trust him.

So two things, two things, and I'm already done.

I want to summarize what I really want to leave you with today.

Today, I know it wasn't really a Pentecostal sermon, but I hope that this word is teaching you something.

Number one, make prayer a part of your life.

That is, I mean, yeah, of course, you're going to say that we're church.

Make it a part of your everyday life.

Don't just pray at church.

Don't, don't, don't just pray when you need something, pray before every decision that you are confronted with.

I've learned this.

I've learned this.

The more I pray, the more I align myself with God.

Oh man, that's, that's so true.

The more I pray, the more I align myself with the will of God.

And the more you align yourself with the will of God, the more you stand in the presence of God.

The more you start to pray what God wants for you, the more you start to pray what God wants for you, the more you see the hand of God over your life.

And some people wonder, well, God never answers my prayers because you only pray to him when you need something.

But the more you pray, the more you align yourself with God.

Now, I can never align myself perfectly with God because he's a perfect God and I'm always going to miss the mark somewhere.

But the more I spend time in his presence, the more I desire what he desires.

I become less and he becomes more.

The Holy Spirit is my counselor, man.

I can't, I can't go through life without consulting him in every step I take.

So, so in everything you do, seek first the kingdom of God, let kingdom things, let godly things be your priority.

Because when you do that, you're already so close to where God wants you to be.

Make prayer a part of your life.

That's number one.

Number two, trust God in and through the details.

Listen, it's hard to have confidence.

Listen, it's hard to have confidence in God when you know you're not walking in faith.

When the spirit of God departed from Saul, the word says that Saul would call upon God and God would not answer him.

So if you're not walking in faith, I get it, I get it.

Because how is God going to honor your life when you're not even trying to honor him?

I'll be honest with you, man, I've felt like that a lot of times.

I felt like God has left me.

I have felt many times that I was no longer anointed.

I have felt many times that God silenced me.

He was mad at me.

I felt like he wasn't hearing me or he was just ignoring me.

I've gotten the silent treatment many times from my God.

So many times where I began to lose trust in anything I would do because I wasn't sure if God was in it.

But then I remembered his word, this word, this word that I have put my faith in, this word that I do my absolute best to live by.

And I don't do it perfectly, but I do my I do my very best every day to be the best husband that I could be, to be the best father that I could be, to be the best financial steward that I could be, to be the best pastor that I could be, the best preacher.

Everything I do, I want to do it in a way that honors God.

And when God reminds me of that, when when God reminds me how much I love him, when God reminds me how much I have put my faith just to live by his word.

And when he reminds me that I am his child, I remember that I will never be forsaken.

I will I remember that I will never be abandoned.

I remember that I am still in the presence of God, even when even when I don't see his hand upon me.

And Hebrews 1035 says, therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

When you're in doubt, church, when you're impatient, when you're unsure, strengthen your soul and remember what you were called to.

Remember that you are a child of the living God, anointed as salt and light.

Remember the word that God spoke over you and your family.

Remember what God said about your marriage.

Remember what God said about your children, that they would one day serve the Lord.

Remember what God said about your future.

Remember what he said about your ministry.

Remember what he said about your household for generations to come.

Remember what the word of the Lord has spoken over your life.

God is calling people of faith to have confidence that he's still working.

So here's the altar call.

I'm going to I'm going to ask you to stand.

And I want to make this very, very specific.

Hallelujah.

Listen, if you are in an uncertain season.

If you're in an uncertain season right now, maybe you have to make some decisions that you're nervous about making.

Maybe you're just unsure of the direction that you're going in.

Maybe it feels like there's no actual forward movement right now happening in your life.

And you have prayed and you have sought the spirit and you have asked God for wisdom.

But you're still not sure if this is the process that God has for you.

God wants to give you peace that comes from trusting in him.

God wants you to have peace today.

We don't always walk.

We don't always we don't always have peace when we're walking in faith.

Because faith is belief, it's conviction, it's hope, but it doesn't provide assurance of every move.

And so that's why when we walk in faith, our spirit can still be troubled and disturbed because we're not always sure if this is the way that I need to go.

But when you trust that God is leaving, leading you, when you trust, when you're able to release that decision, when you're able to take that step of uncertainty.

Trusting that God is going to be with you, even if you begin to sink into those waters, that provides a peace that surpasses all understanding.

And there's some people in the room today, you have faith in the word of God, you have faith in your God, but you haven't been walking in trust.

And God is wanting to rebuild that trust in you today.

And so I don't know who this is for.

I'm going to ask that you would just close your eyes.

Everybody just close your eyes for a second.

God, I pray that you lead this moment, Holy Spirit.

God is calling those who need to make a decision that they are unsure about.

And you have sought the Lord with all your heart.

And if you have asked for wisdom and you have asked for confirmation and God hasn't given it to you yet, God is asking you to trust in him.

If that's you, I want you to come forward, come forward, come forward, come forward.

That's you.

I don't know who this is for.

If that's you, just come forward.

Come on.

Don't, don't delay.

Don't delay.

We're going to pray.

We're going to pray.

Holy Spirit.

I know that you see our faith, my God.

But you are calling us to trust in you in the details.

You are calling us to trust in you, my God.

And be confident that with every step we take, my God, even, even if we don't go the right way, Lord, your spirit will be there to lead us, my God, because we are children of God.

Strengthen our confidence in you, Lord.

We worship your name.

Come on, begin to pray.

Begin to cry out to God.

We're going to pray with you.

Anybody else?

These altars are open.

If you just want to come and have a moment as a worship team.

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe or share it with your friends on social media and tag us at mypneumachurch.

Thanks again, and God bless.