Speaker 1: It's like June and I don't care how Roland, welcome
Speaker 1: to a special edition of the Basin. But not in
Speaker 1: the Basin. This is like a new thing that I'm trying.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's another effort to put God's words in
Speaker 1: people's hearts.
Speaker 2: That's right in a beautiful space.
Speaker 1: So, yes, this is one of our studios, and this
Speaker 1: is one of my wives, my favorite. Not the Bible
Speaker 1: says like do I have a sister wife? No? But
Speaker 1: isn't it always funny in the Bible where it says
Speaker 1: like where you're reading about that in the Old Testament
Speaker 1: and you just gloss over it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they just did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no big deal.
Speaker 2: Lots of wives.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, his his other wife. No, No, that's just
Speaker 1: that was his other wife.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I actually don't gloss over it because I
Speaker 3: watched this reality show about sister wives.
Speaker 1: Yeah I remember it.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, and so's.
Speaker 1: Sermon called sister Wives about Rachel Neil.
Speaker 2: You did it was a brilliant title. You're so good
Speaker 2: at titles. But anyway, okay, so I always think about
Speaker 2: sister wife.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of titles, that's what I want to do
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, I throw away more titles per sermon.
Speaker 2: Are you going to give us some of your titles
Speaker 2: from this past weekend?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to do a cut I want to
Speaker 1: do a cutting room floor title. Okay, and tell you
Speaker 1: where the sermon started.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, So we're talking about this past weekend semon.
Speaker 1: I preached a message called Challenge the Shadow, which was phenomenal,
Speaker 1: thank you. And it was pretty obscure because Hezekiah is
Speaker 1: a king that you don't hear about too much, right,
Speaker 1: And the prophet Isaiah, who you hear about a lot,
Speaker 1: comes to him and says you're going to die, and
Speaker 1: he has these painful boils all over his body, and
Speaker 1: Hezekiah prays and cries, and God says, okay, you're going
Speaker 1: to live fifteen more years, gives him an extension on
Speaker 1: his life, and to prove it, he makes this shadow
Speaker 1: that had stretched on the steps of the temple go
Speaker 1: back ten steps. And so Challenge the Shadow was the
Speaker 1: idea that just because it seems to be going one way,
Speaker 1: just because it seems like you're all out of time,
Speaker 1: just because it seems like it's too late for you,
Speaker 1: just because it seems like this is the way you've
Speaker 1: always been, just because it seems like everybody in your family.
Speaker 1: Just because it seems like doesn't mean that that's the reality. Right.
Speaker 1: So I got obsessed early in the week studying about
Speaker 1: this idea of go back. Okay, all right, because Isaiah
Speaker 1: asks Hezekiah, you can look it up if you want
Speaker 1: to look it up. I promise it's in there. But
Speaker 1: he asked Kezekiah, do you want the shadow to go
Speaker 1: forward or back? And forward was the way it was
Speaker 1: already going, right, But for it to go back, well,
Speaker 1: God would have to do that, right, Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: would show him that God was going to heal him, right,
Speaker 1: all right. So I got obsessed with the idea go
Speaker 1: back because it's over and over in the passage where
Speaker 1: Isaiah tells Hazekiah, you're gonna die. There's nothing I can do,
Speaker 1: and then it says that the Lord spoke to him
Speaker 1: go back, and Hezekiah, I've heard your prayers, and then
Speaker 1: he tells the shadow go back.
Speaker 2: Okay. You left all this out of the sermon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is this is why when I'm done
Speaker 1: preaching and you say now you feel good about it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, there's so much I didn't get to share,
Speaker 1: which is why I'm doing the basin, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm doing things like this. Yeah, because I think there's
Speaker 1: there's powering going back. And I almost called the sermon
Speaker 1: go back for your benefit, go back for your benefit.
Speaker 1: And it's the idea that not only did God tell
Speaker 1: Hazekiah you can live and send Isaiah back, but the
Speaker 1: shadow went back. But also and this is what I
Speaker 1: thought was so cool in Isaiah thirty eight. And we're
Speaker 1: reading through the Book of Isaiah right now with our
Speaker 1: Bible Club.
Speaker 2: We're definitely not at thirty eight.
Speaker 1: No, but we got this six today, Holy, Holy, Holy,
Speaker 1: and this aady Sriff and chairman. Yeah, already sent the
Speaker 1: key verse. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Eight I never read before.
Speaker 1: It records more in detail.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like it's like the parallel to that story
Speaker 3: or the prophecy that story.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a parallel. So like when you read Second
Speaker 1: King's right, you read the Bible, like sometimes you can
Speaker 1: get a Bible on your phone where it'll put the
Speaker 1: reference and it'll show you, oh, this is also recorded
Speaker 1: in this other book and that will give you a
Speaker 1: different point of view. Or this is quoted by Jesus
Speaker 1: or Jesus is quoting Isaiah, right, Can.
Speaker 3: I ask you a dumb question, is that in the
Speaker 3: column of the Bible, all those little references, is that
Speaker 3: what that is?
Speaker 1: Well? Cross references in the center of your Bible can
Speaker 1: show you also related verses. So if you're reading something
Speaker 1: about shadow, it shadow, Yeah, do I walk through the
Speaker 1: valley of the shadow of death? Or these things were
Speaker 1: just a shadow? And when Christ came the reality? You know,
Speaker 1: there are there are so many ways to use the
Speaker 1: tools that we have. So I was clicking around and
Speaker 1: I found how Isaiah's book, which is you know, written
Speaker 1: about many events and different kings that he prophesied to,
Speaker 1: has what has Akayah wrote after he recovered okay, and
Speaker 1: he starts pouring out his heart to God, not when
Speaker 1: he was still sick, but after he was made well.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's another example of going back. Yeah, he's going
Speaker 1: back and he's looking at what he went through through
Speaker 1: the experiences of what he learned because he went through them.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So he is looking at what he's been through through
Speaker 1: the lens of the benefits. Now watch this, this is cool,
Speaker 1: he says, And this is Isaiah thirty eight, verse seventeen
Speaker 1: Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish,
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy statement?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 1: Surely it was for or my benefit? Wow, that I
Speaker 1: got a new house. Surely it was for my benefit
Speaker 1: that I got a promotion. Surely is for my benefit
Speaker 1: that God gave me the truce. That's that's great too,
Speaker 1: But this is different. Surely it was for my benefit
Speaker 1: that I suffered such anguish. In your love, you kept
Speaker 1: me from the pit of destruction. You have put all
Speaker 1: my sins behind your back.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the question that it makes me ask.
Speaker 2: Huh, did you know all this like before you got
Speaker 2: up to preach this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I had the scripture ready to go when
Speaker 1: I preached, but it was just a time issue.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think a lot of times the enemy
Speaker 1: attacks us and we survived the attack, but we don't
Speaker 1: go back and get the benefits through reflecting and healing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we just walk around with the trauma of
Speaker 1: what we've been through. You don't grow wiser from the wounds.
Speaker 1: So another potential title that I wanted to use was
Speaker 1: wisely wounded, Like when you go in for surgery, Yes,
Speaker 1: they wound you, but they use with.
Speaker 2: Create a wound.
Speaker 1: Had you ever been wisely wounded that at the time
Speaker 1: it felt like God was allowing something to be taken
Speaker 1: out of your life that you couldn't live without. You
Speaker 1: look back and realize if you had kept living with it,
Speaker 1: it would have killed you.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That could be a relationship, or that could be a
Speaker 1: certain responsibility you thought you were ready for and you
Speaker 1: really weren't right. Or maybe sometimes God lets you go
Speaker 1: back a little bit, because if you don't learn what
Speaker 1: you're doing wrong and you just keep going forward in
Speaker 1: your life, you'll keep repeating those mistakes. So I think this.
Speaker 3: Is thinking about like a lot of the painful things
Speaker 3: that I've been through in my life, and how even
Speaker 3: the ones that you can't even make sense of, you
Speaker 3: still can say I came away stronger. My prayer life
Speaker 3: is stronger. A relationship that I leaned into at the
Speaker 3: time is stronger.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I started going to church more during that time.
Speaker 3: Because I was so like, even the things that you
Speaker 3: still can't make sense of, when you look back, you
Speaker 3: can think about how they benefited you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, I used to say about a few things
Speaker 1: in my life. I wouldn't choose it, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change it. Yeah, and that really helped me because it's
Speaker 1: acknowledging you want to go through that again. No, if
Speaker 1: God give you door number one or door number two,
Speaker 1: door number three, and the suffering was door number one,
Speaker 1: would you choose door number one? No, I wouldn't choose it.
Speaker 1: But after you've been through something that you can't really
Speaker 1: control anyway, it's good to take that perspective, like, all right,
Speaker 1: what are the benefits? So to me, that looks like
Speaker 1: going back for my benefits. Accepting it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's what it is. You know, this is what it
Speaker 1: is right now. But then after you accept it, you
Speaker 1: kind of glean the good from it that you can.
Speaker 1: You know, you glean the good from it. And this
Speaker 1: is not a a psychotic charge to you to just
Speaker 1: suffer as much as possible, and the more you suffer,
Speaker 1: the more benefit. Like no pain, no gain. No sometimes
Speaker 1: just no pain, no pain, right like wat uh oh oh,
Speaker 1: no pain, no gain, like no stump being stuffy and stupid. Right.
Speaker 1: So we're not like gluttons for suffering, and we think
Speaker 1: that all suffering leads to growth. Some stuff suffering it's
Speaker 1: just to stutter stuffer, stuffering, suffering, some suffering in your
Speaker 1: life is a symptom of something that you won't deal with.
Speaker 1: And so when we get into those situations, that's when
Speaker 1: it's time to challenge the sh shadow and change our course.
Speaker 3: Okay, because that's what I was going to ask you,
Speaker 3: because you're just talking about acceptance and then and now
Speaker 3: you're talking about challenge because the message was challenge the shadow.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that you said was there
Speaker 3: are some things that we accept and there are some
Speaker 3: things that we challenge.
Speaker 2: So how do you know the difference?
Speaker 3: How do you know the things that you're supposed to
Speaker 3: accept and the things that you're supposed to challenge.
Speaker 1: You know that serenity prayer that they use in they
Speaker 1: use it an AA they use in church. It's actually
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful prayers, and it's written a
Speaker 1: few different ways, and nobody knows who really wrote it
Speaker 1: because there were like copyright disputes over it. I know
Speaker 1: this because I looked it up when I was studying
Speaker 1: about what do you accept? What do you try to change?
Speaker 1: And the idea that God will give me the courage
Speaker 1: to change what I can, the serenity to act accept
Speaker 1: what I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference
Speaker 1: can only come from God. Like, God, is this you
Speaker 1: wisely wounding me? And in this situation, I need to stay,
Speaker 1: stick it out and learn what I need to learn,
Speaker 1: because sometimes if you don't learn from it, you will
Speaker 1: keep losing and praying and losing and going to church
Speaker 1: and losing and wondering why am I losing because you
Speaker 1: refuse to learn. So there can be times in my
Speaker 1: life that I don't even stop to say, wait a minute, God,
Speaker 1: is this you right now? I assume in everything that
Speaker 1: happens in my life that even if God didn't cause it,
Speaker 1: He'll still use it, Okay. And that's where my faith
Speaker 1: comes in because I think even if I cause it,
Speaker 1: or my uncle caused it, or my boss caused it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not making light of the things people go through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in our ministry we have people who are paralyzed because
Speaker 1: of a drunk driver, people who are traumatized because of molestation.
Speaker 1: Our message is not, well, God put you through that
Speaker 1: so you could learn something, because that's how God teaches you.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's evil in the world, that's common to
Speaker 1: all men. The difference for us as Christians is that
Speaker 1: we can put it in the hands of God so
Speaker 1: that he can make something out of it in our future.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And so I don't always believe that everything came from
Speaker 1: his hand, but I do believe that everything has to
Speaker 1: pass through His hand in the end. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I mean when I say it was for
Speaker 1: my benefit that I suffered. I almost see that not
Speaker 1: as Hezekiah saying God made me sick to teach me something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he's deciding if I had to go through it,
Speaker 1: I might as well grow through it. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, I mean that's not original to me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's already a book and a sermon. But
Speaker 1: I like that way of thinking because it just assumes,
Speaker 1: mums that God is for you, so go back for
Speaker 1: your benefit, even reliving your past. That can either be
Speaker 1: very destructive or it can be creative because sometimes, like
Speaker 1: when you go back to your past, when we do
Speaker 1: this all the time, I say, man, remember that person
Speaker 1: and I thought they betrayed me. Yeah, and you'll get
Speaker 1: kind of mad and remembering that we thought they let
Speaker 1: us down and stuff, you know, and and then we'll
Speaker 1: be like, maybe they didn't betray us. Maybe God had
Speaker 1: something for them and he had something for us, right,
Speaker 1: and maybe we didn't even handle it that good. Like
Speaker 1: we've grown too. So that's what I mean, go back
Speaker 1: for your benefit, because if you just live your experiences
Speaker 1: and never reflect on your experiences, you leave a lot
Speaker 1: of wisdom on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 2: And then and then it is so you said no pain,
Speaker 2: no gain.
Speaker 3: It's it's like the pain and you didn't gain it
Speaker 3: all pain, no goin, pay, no gain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to live like that. If I
Speaker 1: got to be wounded, let me get wiser, Yes, If
Speaker 1: I got to get prune, let me bear more fruit. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's how I feel. And I think that is a
Speaker 1: choice that you can make too, Like you don't have
Speaker 1: to just suffer for nothing, right, And I thought it
Speaker 1: was really cool how at some point in the fifteen
Speaker 1: years that God gave Hezekiah to live, he took the
Speaker 1: time and Isaiah thought, I'm going to include this part too,
Speaker 1: and he walked through what he went through and without
Speaker 1: denying how bad it felt. Because he says some pretty
Speaker 1: dark stuff. You can go read it on your own time.
Speaker 1: I don't want to bring the mood down. But then
Speaker 1: he goes, surely it was for my benefit. But then
Speaker 1: he said something else. I don't know if you caught
Speaker 1: it or not. He said, it was for my benefit
Speaker 1: that I suffered such anguish in your love. You kept
Speaker 1: me from the pit of destruction. You put all my
Speaker 1: sins behind your back. Now that makes me think that
Speaker 1: there's something that God taught Hezekiah spiritually while he was
Speaker 1: suffering physically, because he says, you put all my sins
Speaker 1: behind your back.
Speaker 2: What was the secondary title?
Speaker 1: Go back for it? Go back for your benefits, Go
Speaker 1: back for your benefits. So there were some things that
Speaker 1: Hazekiah needed to put behind him that he was still
Speaker 1: dealing with. You.
Speaker 2: I need to preach this this weekend.
Speaker 1: I will or just put out like this, But that's
Speaker 1: the word for you today. Go back for your benefit.
Speaker 1: You know what else I thought about? Now I'll stop
Speaker 1: after this. We went back to Shelby a couple weeks
Speaker 1: ago to take our middle child, Graham, to wrestling camp.
Speaker 1: We're actually picking him up, and we lived five minutes
Speaker 1: from Gardner Webb University when we first got married, and
Speaker 1: it just so happened that we were going back to
Speaker 1: Shelby going back to Boiling Springs to be exact, like
Speaker 1: on probably the exact day that we had moved to
Speaker 1: Shelby as new right twenty one years early calculated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this was the day we.
Speaker 2: Were pulling in the show right around this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so, which is pretty cool. We're driving
Speaker 1: around remembering me Pablido and Monterey and you know all
Speaker 1: the restaurants where we shared shared chips and got water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can get keeso back then, that was a different
Speaker 1: time you were in the caso season. This was the
Speaker 1: free sauce of season on my birthday, keso on special occasions,
Speaker 1: KSO on Easter, Christmas, in Valentine's Day. But with all
Speaker 1: the memories that we had, like how our our furniture
Speaker 1: that we moved in with half of it was from
Speaker 1: my best friend's dad who would repossess furniture out of
Speaker 1: mobile homes. He would repossess the mobile home and then
Speaker 1: take the furniture, and he had all this reput furniture
Speaker 1: and we actually still have some of that furniture. You
Speaker 1: brought it out the other.
Speaker 2: Day, Yes, they did, yea yeah, a little table.
Speaker 1: But going back was so good because we're like, remember
Speaker 1: pulling up with the repode furniture for mister Rob and
Speaker 1: for me, like we didn't get to share every little memory.
Speaker 1: But remember when I went out to the church by
Speaker 1: myself and wrote the song who I Am and in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and like him, and was
Speaker 1: learning how to write music. And so today we're in
Speaker 1: this studio where we've written so many other songs that
Speaker 1: some of them people have heard all around the world.
Speaker 1: And going back and just driving past that church building
Speaker 1: and remembering sitting there learning to lead songs in that church,
Speaker 1: and how bad those songs were and how nice the
Speaker 1: people were to try to sing them along there. A
Speaker 1: few of them were good. But my point is it
Speaker 1: helped me see and feel my development and our development
Speaker 1: and how far we've come and how far God has
Speaker 1: brought us. It made me grateful for God's grace. It's
Speaker 1: the benefit of going back and either physically or just
Speaker 1: in a moment mentally remembering, hey, man, I have come
Speaker 1: a long way. And sometimes we don't get that perspective
Speaker 1: because we're in it right, But sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: just mentally or physically go back to it and go back, Wow,
Speaker 1: God has done a lot. I want you to share
Speaker 1: as our closing thought. What you said about what you
Speaker 1: would say to those two kids who started back in Shelby.
Speaker 1: You said you would go back and tell them something.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what you said.
Speaker 2: I think I said I'd go back and tell them
Speaker 2: you're doing a good job. Is that in that what
Speaker 2: I said?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said, I'm proud of those two kids.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, And I was. We were just reflecting.
Speaker 1: Talking about us talking in the third person. It's kind
Speaker 1: of exercise.
Speaker 2: Well, we were reflecting. I mean like that was a
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 3: Very monumental place for us because we just graduated college,
Speaker 3: just gotten married, and so it was our first apartment,
Speaker 3: our first jobs. I was a school teacher. I was
Speaker 3: teaching fifth grade, and I mean we had to we
Speaker 3: had to. We had to get our own dial up
Speaker 3: internet and set up the electricity.
Speaker 1: We had a cable modem.
Speaker 2: That's dial up.
Speaker 1: I was doing business. Dial Up is different. Well, we
Speaker 1: had dial up will kick you off if somebody picks
Speaker 1: up the phone. Dial Up will take you forty four
Speaker 1: days to download a song. We didn't have that.
Speaker 3: Oh that was like the backup though, right, No, No,
Speaker 3: I had you on cable modem from day one of
Speaker 3: our marriage. All right, all right, So we had to
Speaker 3: set up our own cable modem, and we had to
Speaker 3: set up our own you know.
Speaker 1: Repoide furniture, but a cable modem. Yeah, priorities.
Speaker 5: But like looking back, we did it, and we we
Speaker 5: and I was proud of us. I think what I
Speaker 5: said was if one of our kids in a couple
Speaker 5: of years got married and did exactly what we did,
Speaker 5: I would be so proud of them. And so it
Speaker 5: was a good moment to look back, because when you're
Speaker 5: in the moment, you don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: You don't know if you're doing it right.
Speaker 1: We didn't do everything, That's all I was going to say,
Speaker 1: because if you're sitting there going like, I don't feel
Speaker 1: that way, I didn't do it, all right, neither did we. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't do it. And that's why sometimes you need
Speaker 1: to go back from that perspective of grace and go
Speaker 1: a look at those two kids. Y'all did all right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you were dumb and you were broke, and
Speaker 1: you would do it differently if you did it again.
Speaker 1: You can do it differently now because you've learned right,
Speaker 1: and even things you didn't get right, you can learn
Speaker 1: from and that's the spirit of the message. You go
Speaker 1: back for your benefit. And so I just want you
Speaker 1: to live with the power of reflection at your disposal,
Speaker 1: but not just any kind of reflection, reflecting on your
Speaker 1: current circumstances, with God's presence as your lens, just in
Speaker 1: the light. He was with you, with you, He will
Speaker 1: be with you. And hope you go back today and
Speaker 1: some of the things that the enemy did to you,
Speaker 1: go back and kind of demand, you know, like I
Speaker 1: refuse to let this make me weaker. I am going
Speaker 1: to be stronger from this. I refuse to let this
Speaker 1: turn into bitterness and resentment in my heart. I'm going
Speaker 1: to turn it into wisdom. So do what has Akaya did.
Speaker 1: No matter what you've been through or even if you're
Speaker 1: still going through it, go back for your benefit. Remember
Speaker 1: another time that God did something awesome in your life.
Speaker 1: Apply that same faith that you grew in that season
Speaker 1: to the current one. Go back for your benefit and
Speaker 1: put in the chat real quick. I'm going back, going,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you back soon.
Speaker 4: Bye bye, Hey, thank you for watching the Elevation Church YouTube.
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Speaker 1: Thanks again, I'll see you next time.