Faithfulness in the Unseen: Finding Purpose in Life’s Middle Seasons

• The Middle Seasons of Life [00:01:21 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts the celebration of beginnings and ends with the often-overlooked 'middle' seasons, using the analogy of seventh grade and graduation season to illustrate that while the middle is difficult, it is where God does profound work.
• Faithfulness and Commitment [00:04:13 ▶️ 📄]
  > The speaker analyzes Ruth's decision to stay with Naomi despite the hardship, defining faithfulness as action taken even when emotions are unreliable and feelings have faded.
• Emotional Reliability vs. Spiritual Obedience [00:11:23 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that emotions are not a reliable source for decision-making and that true faithfulness requires waiting for God's transformation rather than acting on immediate feelings.
• Faithfulness and Emotional Control [00:12:16 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor argues that waiting to speak and letting God transform feelings leads to peace, asserting that faithfulness is doing the right thing even when feelings are negative.
• Covenant Commitment [00:13:45 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses the seriousness of covenant commitments in the Old Testament, linking them to building the kingdom and producing kingdom impact.
• Hard Work and Work Ethic [00:14:44 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor emphasizes the value of hard work, using personal anecdotes about his own work ethic and hiring practices to illustrate that employers look for consistent, reliable workers.
• Unseen Labor and Divine Providence [00:17:16 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor analyzes Ruth's willingness to glean leftovers at night, illustrating how small, unseen obedience positions believers for God's larger redemptive plans.
• Honoring God Without Understanding the Outcome [00:20:36 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor contrasts Ruth's lack of specific promises with Abraham and Sarah's, highlighting that Ruth honored God through a series of 'yeses' without knowing the final outcome.
• Parenting and Legacy [00:24:25 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor discusses the extended nature of parenting beyond high school graduation, the emotional difficulty of raising children, and the goal of seeing them walk in the truth.
• Spiritual Warfare and Prayer [00:28:07 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts realizing that parental influence wanes during middle school, leading to a reliance on prayer and surrendering children to Jesus for protection and guidance.
• Faithfulness in 'Moab Moments' [00:29:32 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor defines 'Moab moments' as hard, prioritization-challenging times where believers must choose to honor God in private decisions, using Ruth as an example of legacy built before public recognition.

• Sermon Illustration [00:07:49 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about moving to Dallas in 2002 to start Genesis Metro Church during a tech bust, highlighting the difficulty of finding jobs without local networks and the emotional challenge of watching people come and go from the church community over 24 years.
• Sermon Illustration [00:04:24 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts the biblical narrative of Ruth and Naomi, detailing the tragedy of losing husbands and the father-in-law, and Ruth's subsequent decision to stay with her grieving mother-in-law rather than returning to her own people in Moab.
• Sermon Illustration [00:15:53 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about living near the church for 17-18 years and his tendency to overwork by organizing and cleaning the property late at night, joking that he has an 'overworking problem' to set an example for his staff.
• Sermon Illustration [00:24:46 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor recounts a conversation with a friend who asked if he was excited to get his three boys through high school 'unscathed,' contrasting the pastor's initial excitement about graduation with the deeper anxiety of raising children into adulthood.
• Sermon Illustration [00:24:46 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor shares a personal anecdote about her husband joking that he only signed up for 18 years of parenting, and her own experience of initially thinking the third child's graduation would be easier, only to realize the emotional weight of seeing three sons navigate adulthood. She also describes her panic during middle school, wanting to homeschool and remove all technology, contrasted with her husband's wisdom to teach them to navigate the world, leading to nights of prayer outside their rooms.
• Sermon Illustration [00:30:27 ▶️ 📄]
  > The pastor references the biblical figure Ruth, noting that her godly legacy began in private, long before she entered the lineage of Jesus or King David, illustrating that honoring God in private builds the capacity for public kingdom impact.

• Pastoral Charge [00:16:34 ▶️ 📄]
  > To commit to hard work and diligence in their respective vocations, mirroring Ruth's willingness to work when no one was watching.
• Pastoral Charge [00:21:44 ▶️ 📄]
  > To persist in faith and not give up hope, specifically directed at those suffering from infertility or unfulfilled longings.
• Pastoral Charge [00:32:06 ▶️ 📄]
  > To stand before God and honor Him as He builds faithfulness in their lives for His kingdom.

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:01] That's pretty good, isn't it? Lots of love, LOL.
[00:00:04] Are y'all awake?
[00:00:07] Let's give it up for the band leading us in worship today.
[00:00:11] Also, give yourselves a round of applause for making it through the monsoon that just came in from the north.
[00:00:15] I don't know where that came from.
[00:00:17] I thought it was supposed to be like seven o'clock tonight.
[00:00:19] Does anybody else watch the weather?
[00:00:20] I do.
[00:00:22] Is this way I sound like my mom?
[00:00:24] Reciting to you what the weather report is going to be.
[00:00:28] Well, that didn't happen the first other services, so that just happened.
[00:00:31] All right. I'm just walking that out right in front of y'all. Welcome to Mother's Day Sunday at Genesis Metro Church. We're so glad that you're here. I'm Carrie Bourne, Pastor Tim's wife. If you're like, where's Pastor Tim? Who's this woman? He's my husband. He's asked me to preach on
[00:00:46] Mother's Day, which he often has done in the years past. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity.
[00:00:51] I did tell him I was going to take it easy on him today since he's having back surgery in the morning. If you haven't heard yet, he is having a disc replacement surgery tomorrow morning.
[00:00:59] this is a long time coming. People are like, what happened? I'm like, he was 14 when he first got this injury. So it's been a long, long, long time in adulthood of dealing with his back problems.
[00:01:09] So y'all be praying for Pastor Tim and I'll be nice and won't tell any crazy stories that makes him the punchline of all my jokes today, just for that reason. Today, I want to talk to you about
[00:01:21] the middle season of life, the middle, built in the middle. You know, there's something about life, we celebrate the beginnings, we celebrate the ends, but we don't really celebrate the middle of things.
[00:01:34] We're currently in a season in our family where we have our last son, our youngest son is graduating high school, so we're in graduation season.
[00:01:43] And you know, it's a flurry, May-Sember, right?
[00:01:45] It's like, have you ever, do you know what I just said?
[00:01:48] May-Sember, it's like, you don't realize how busy May is until you get into it and you realize this is the second December and we're in this again.
[00:01:55] and it's crazy. The school has all kinds of things for us, but I am happy to be graduating off of the Frisco ISD mailing list and email list. Yes, I am. I'm excited for that. Yeah. And you know, when
[00:02:08] they're little, you, everybody gets excited for kindergarten and we celebrate, we're going to kindergarten. And then when they graduate, you're celebrating graduation and that's all exciting, but no one is ever saying to themselves, man, I can't wait for seventh grade right in the middle.
[00:02:25] Anybody?
[00:02:26] Anybody looking forward to seventh grade?
[00:02:28] If you're not in seventh grade yet, you're probably not looking forward to it.
[00:02:31] And those of us that have been through seventh grade, we get it.
[00:02:34] It's not fun.
[00:02:35] We're praying for you.
[00:02:36] So the next time you try to judge a middle schooler, you remember how hard seventh grade was and you pray for them instead, okay?
[00:02:42] They're out there trying to make it happen in seventh grade.
[00:02:45] No one looks forward to the middle years.
[00:02:49] But I would submit to you throughout scripture, what we see is that God does some of his most powerful and profound work in the middle seasons of life. In that dash as they say it's in the middle where you're going to have moments that are unmistakable from God. It's in
[00:03:08] the middle that you're going to learn. It's in the middle that you will develop. It's in the middle that you will grow and I want us to dive into that a little today. The lady we're going to talk
[00:03:20] about from the Bible is one that I love. We actually covered her last year in Sisterhood Summer Nights, and you're thinking, why are you covering Ruth again? Well, there was just a little bit left, you know? There was just a little bit left that we didn't get to, so we're gonna pick
[00:03:33] it apart today and dive back into Ruth, and we're gonna see that Ruth is someone, what she teaches us is that God builds faithfulness in the middle seasons of life, that God builds faithfulness in
[00:03:49] us as he built in Ruth in the middle seasons of life. That's where we're going to see God really, really show up. And what she's going to find in that is her purpose, right? She's going
[00:04:01] to find her purpose. And aren't we all looking for a purpose in life? Aren't we all looking for where God is working? The first thing I want you to see under this is that Ruth stayed when leaving
[00:04:13] would have been easier. Ruth stayed when leaving would have been easier. This is what I mean by that. Let me give you a little backstory. See, we pick her up in this story. And in the first
[00:04:24] chapter, we're going to see she's married and she's, she's got this young, cute husband over in Moab now. And, and, and he's an Israelite. He's from the West side. She's from the East side of
[00:04:36] the Jordan, but he, here he is and she marries him. And then his brother gets married to this other cute girl. And now they're kind of couple friends and they love their in-laws and they have
[00:04:45] family dinners, and they gather around, and they're one big happy family, and then tragedy strikes, and the father-in-law dies. And now she and her husband and her sister-in-law and brother-in-law are there for Naomi, the mother-in-law, and they're her rock. They're holding
[00:05:03] her, comforting her in her grief. And man, if tragedy doesn't strike again, and both of these men die. So this woman loses her husband and then both of her sons, and now she's got her
[00:05:19] daughters-in-law left. So Ruth, being one of these daughters-in-law of Naomi, she's left now.
[00:05:26] We pick her story up and she's in grief. She's in disappointment. She's in like unmet expectations.
[00:05:35] does that sound like a great opportunity for a good story or what right when it starts out that bad you know it's going to be that good when we get to the end because I've seen God work like
[00:05:50] that miracle times we've seen God work in these so here he goes now Naomi says to Ruth I gotta I'm gonna go back home remember they're from Israel the west side and she's like there's no
[00:06:03] reason for me to stay here in Moab. I'm going to go back. You do not have to come with me. It is fine for you to stay here. Her sister-in-law says, that sounds good to me. I'll see you later. I'm
[00:06:15] going to start a new life. Bye forever. I don't know what they said. That's what I imagine.
[00:06:19] And now we have Ruth there and she says, no, no, I'm going to stay with you. And Naomi presses her and says, seriously, you don't need to do that.
[00:06:30] And we see in Ruth 1.16, she says, please don't plead with me to abandon you or return and not follow you.
[00:06:39] Where you go, I go.
[00:06:41] Oh, she goes on to say something like, where you go, I go.
[00:06:47] Where you live, I will live.
[00:06:48] Your God will be my God.
[00:06:50] Your people will be my people.
[00:06:51] Like she's doubling, tripling down on this oath she's making, this commitment to her. No, I'm going with you. And isn't that just a beautiful moment before we just keep going that it would have been easier for her to just leave, but she stayed when leaving
[00:07:13] would have been the easier thing to do, right? Because what she's going to is a life where she knows no one. What she's going to is a people, culture she doesn't know or understand. She's
[00:07:28] looking at a long, hard journey back home. That's what she's staring down the barrel at. But she's looking at her mother-in-law, and she's feeling this call to stay with her. So she just says, yes, I'm going with you. Years ago, when Tim and I started Genesis Metro, we moved here,
[00:07:49] and we really had no idea what the cost would be.
[00:07:53] You know, we had a plan, we had a couple of degrees and we thought we'll just move to Dallas and we'll get jobs.
[00:07:58] How hard can that be?
[00:08:00] Anybody?
[00:08:01] Now, I don't know if you remember back in 2002, first of all, we didn't know anyone from college because we didn't go to college in Texas.
[00:08:06] We didn't know that was a thing till we moved here and it was like, oh, if you have a stack of resumes, you're gonna hire your fraternity brother.
[00:08:13] Got it.
[00:08:14] You don't know this person.
[00:08:15] Okay, we didn't know anything about any networking or anything like that.
[00:08:19] We also moved here in the middle of a tech bust.
[00:08:21] There were no jobs to be had.
[00:08:23] So we had no idea what the cost would really be right away.
[00:08:27] But we would have said, yes, we said, yes, we move here and we get going and we're, you know, we're excited about what God's gonna do.
[00:08:35] We had a dream and like, you know, the drive to do it essentially.
[00:08:40] And through the years, I will tell you for me, I would never have been able to know or calculate the amount of people that would come into our lives and go out of our lives over the last 24 years.
[00:08:54] And when they come in, oh man, I just gather everybody up and love people.
[00:08:59] And when I have to let them go because God moves them on or they move away or sometimes things would get contentious where we wanna do church like this, we want you to do it this way.
[00:09:08] Well, that's not what God asks us to do.
[00:09:10] We're not gonna do it like that.
[00:09:11] I'm so sorry.
[00:09:12] And that doesn't always land well.
[00:09:14] So that doesn't always end well.
[00:09:16] so for me that took some time for me to get the hang of was saying goodbye to people and letting them go without it destroying my heart and for Tim he doesn't process it the same way right he
[00:09:30] kind of moves on he's good God bless you go and be blessed and I'm like wait don't you want to be my friend. Don't go. And I've had to learn to lay that down. I've had to even learn to expect it,
[00:09:47] not in a cynical way, but in a, this is just, you know, sometimes people are seasonal because God is doing something in their lives that has nothing to do with me. Let them go and let God work.
[00:09:59] The other thing I've learned is I can't compartmentalize my feelings about something to the point that I become numb to people.
[00:10:09] Because when I become numb to people, then I stop loving people and I stop chasing after the heart of God.
[00:10:17] If it's all about me and how I feel, I have made this a selfish, singular mission.
[00:10:24] And what he's called me to is to love people like he loves people so that we can reach as many and save as many souls as possible.
[00:10:32] So may I not become the person who says, no, no, no, the cost is too great.
[00:10:38] I'm just gonna leave.
[00:10:39] I'm gonna leave emotionally.
[00:10:41] I'm gonna check out.
[00:10:42] And then what we see is that Ruth was like, I'll stay.
[00:10:45] And so for me, when I've watched people come and go, those that leave, sometimes God is moving them onto somewhere else, but sometimes when they leave, it's hard.
[00:10:55] So I have learned that in my life.
[00:10:58] I have learned to be grateful for those who stay, though they may have to move on.
[00:11:05] What I've learned is, let's look at when Ruth is in this place where she said yes to Naomi, we're going to start to see those seeds of faithfulness begin to be sown. And faithfulness, if you haven't learned this, I want to tell you, faithfulness is proven out when all your feelings
[00:11:23] fade. Faithfulness is proven when your feelings fade. What I mean is this, if someone hasn't already explained to you, let me give you a pro tip for life. This is for free, as Pastor Tim says.
[00:11:35] your emotions are not reliable. That is not a reliable source. Our emotions sometimes can take us to places that we didn't intend to go. Sometimes you have to learn that if you act on emotion, you're going to make mistakes. If you say things in emotion, you're saying too much.
[00:11:55] Does anybody else know what I mean? What I've learned is in 24 hours past how I feel right now, I probably won't feel the same that I feel right now, especially when something is fresh.
[00:12:04] when something has really made me mad or when something has really irked me or when somebody didn't do something or I'm disappointed or my expectations aren't met or whatever it is, I may not feel the same.
[00:12:16] I likely won't feel the same in 24 hours.
[00:12:18] So why not just wait to say anything?
[00:12:22] Because when I wait and I stop and God's like, shut your mouth, let's just be quiet.
[00:12:28] No, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:12:30] When I let him speak into that moment, when I let him have that, then he's going to transform how I'm feeling about it and set me on a more peaceful path.
[00:12:41] He's going to make a way where I can't see.
[00:12:45] All I can see is how I feel about it.
[00:12:47] But he's trying to get me to see a bigger picture that I can't imagine exist.
[00:12:53] Faithfulness is proven when your feelings fade away.
[00:12:58] And even though you don't feel good about it, you still do it.
[00:13:02] That's what I see her doing here. When we look at Ruth, what we're seeing is it's not the best of circumstances for her to be making major life decisions. But God, but God, but God is inserting
[00:13:22] himself into the narrative of her life. And she says, I'm going to stay even though it'd be easier to leave. Sometimes our commitment to God, you know, whether it's something private that we have with him or it's something we've declared, there's a, he takes it quite seriously. So like a covenant
[00:13:45] commitment, you know, something that's holy, that he's put his hand on. If you do much reading or studying in the Old Testament, you're going to find this covenant situation that we see with many characters throughout the Old Testament. He takes it very seriously. And those covenant
[00:14:02] commitments in our life, those are what builds the kingdom in us. That produces kingdom impact.
[00:14:10] So when he's building faithfulness in you, he's saying, do you commit? Are you in? Are you with me?
[00:14:19] Okay, that's a covenant between us. And now we're going to go and impact the kingdom. Now you're going to see dividends come forward because you put it in my hand. And that's what we see Ruth
[00:14:30] doing. The next thing I want you to see about her is that she was willing to work when no one was watching. Willing to work when no one was watching. I am a big believer in hard work. Is anyone else
[00:14:44] with me today? Anybody? Hard work? Okay, now we're not going to get on a little soapbox here, but what we're going to say is this. If you stand side by side between two people that are going
[00:14:55] to be hired for a job, this is another pro tip, and one is a hard worker and one, you know, maybe your boss, the people that are hiring, they're looking for hard workers. What I mean
[00:15:08] by that is this, like, oh, if you're always late because something always happens, or if you're always the first one to leave as soon as that clock hits five o'clock, whatever it is, you're out of here. If you often are the one that doesn't get the projects done or you're part of the
[00:15:25] project done, do you see, you see what I'm saying? If there's like a pattern here, you might need to work on like your work ethic, right? That's a hard work factor. Like if they know you will get it
[00:15:35] done, that's what somebody is looking for in a hire. Okay. I will tell you when we moved in this building, we, we happened to live in this neighborhood behind this church. We've lived there for about 17, 18 years, long before this was built, long before this was our land. This
[00:15:53] property was not ours. We've lived back here. And now when the church is literally in my front yard is what it feels like. I mean, I probably have an overworking problem. Like Carrie, you have to come
[00:16:05] home. And I am in here organizing, cleaning out, sweeping, picking things up, re-situating. I was up here yesterday. I was, I mean, you know, I mean, and people are probably like, yeah, she has a problem. We've tried to tell her. It's true. It's true. I probably have too much of that,
[00:16:22] but I will tell you what, I believe that I should be an example for the staff we have working, that I'm willing to show up early. I'm willing to stay late. I'm willing, I'm willing to stay up
[00:16:34] here the whole time to get it done. Are you willing to do that for your thing? Let's go.
[00:16:39] If your boss is out working you, you better figure out how to work hard, right? And I'm just saying, I believe in that. And I see this situation, this law kind of at work in Ruth that she's,
[00:16:50] she's willing to work. She's asking for, where is the work that I can do? This is what we see.
[00:16:55] She's, she's, she's arrived now on the West side over in Israel. And she looks at Naomi and she says, hey, do you mind if I go out and work in the fields, Ruth, too, too? Do you mind if I go out
[00:17:05] and work in the fields? Not only that, do you mind if I go pick up all the leftovers? Do you mind if I go glean behind the harvester. So if you see that in Ruth 2.2, what you're going to find is if
[00:17:16] you keep going in there, what would happen is there would be fields that people owned and they would have a crew, like employees, that come in and harvest all the grain. And she's asking to
[00:17:27] just pick up all the leftovers that have fallen off the grain out of their baskets or the stuff that no one wanted. And so what would happen is the employees would work their shift and then the
[00:17:37] night shift would come in. And that would be anybody who like can't get a job, doesn't know anyone, you know, got there in the middle of a tech boost or whatever it was. And now they're
[00:17:46] looking for something. So I'll do anything. I don't care. I just need to gather some grain to supply for my family. And she's willing to go out and do that. She doesn't wait for someone to tell
[00:17:55] her. She just says, I'm willing to do that. Can I go? Yes, of course you can. And what we see is, do you think that there was any part of Ruth in the middle? Here she is in the middle that felt
[00:18:09] unseen in the night shift, picking up leftover grain that fell on the ground that no one else wanted. I wonder if anyone in here has ever had a moment like this. What am I doing picking up
[00:18:28] this grain. I was married two years ago. I was, life was fine. What happened? Was she felt alone and she felt unseen? Is anybody coming to help? Does anyone see me? In a room this size,
[00:18:54] there has to be someone who's felt this. Yet Ruth shows up night after night after night after the fields are closed and everyone has gone home to gather the grain for her family, which is her mother-in-law.
[00:19:13] And while she's gathering grain, God is arranging redemption on her behalf.
[00:19:22] While she's gathering grain, she thinks this is about how much can she gather so that she can take it home and try to sell some or provide some bread and make some cakes or something for Naomi
[00:19:34] me so that she'll be okay and she'll be healthy and she'll be sustained. God is saying, you step foot in this field and I'm going to arrange the redemption that's going to supply the rest of
[00:19:44] your life. That's what happens because what's going to happen and we see is the owner of this field is Boaz, who she will end up marrying. But her first step had to be that she was willing to
[00:19:56] pick up all the leftovers before God would step in. And what we see is small obedience positions us for big purpose. Small obedience positions us for big purpose. Consistency matters more than you imagine. Consistency matters more than you imagine. What feels really small to you,
[00:20:18] what feels mundane to you, what feels unseen is sacred to God. Because it's about the consistency of saying, okay, I will do it. I will work. I will step in to what you have for me. The third thing
[00:20:36] I want you to see about Ruth is that she honored God before she understood the outcome. See, her story wasn't one like Abraham and Sarah and so many others that we learned from in the Bible.
[00:20:50] She wasn't promised something really big and just told to follow it, you know?
[00:20:57] She wasn't told like, Abraham and Sarah, I need you to follow me and I'm gonna give you like, I know you can't have kids and you're 90 and you think there's no way I'm ever having a child.
[00:21:08] Now listen, that's one of those questions that's on my heaven list.
[00:21:12] First, Jesus, thank you.
[00:21:14] I'm just so grateful for you.
[00:21:17] Where's Eve?
[00:21:17] I want to talk to her about this birth pain situation. And Sarah, how did you really feel about having a baby at 90? I'm just asking, okay? Asking for a friend. That's on my list. I have a
[00:21:27] little short list. That's just one of them. But here, she cannot have any babies. There are women in this room that know exactly what she must have felt like, who have longed for that and have not
[00:21:37] been able to have a child. God sees you. He hears you. He knows your heart. Stay with it, sister.
[00:21:44] stay with it. Don't be beat so down by that, that you think God is never coming. He is coming. He is coming. He is coming. He is coming. God sees you. So when we get back to Abraham and Sarah, she,
[00:21:57] he says, no, I'm going to make your descendants so many like the sand on the beach that you can't begin to count them. She laughs. That's a whole other story, but they have this promise. God's
[00:22:08] like, come with me. And that's going to happen. Now, does it happen? Yes. More than Abel. Is he more than able? Of course he is. Anything is possible. A 90-year-old woman having a baby is possible. He did it. Ruth does not have that same assurance. She has not been promised
[00:22:24] this basket of goodies over here if she follows God. She just begins to honor God in her life, even though she does not understand the outcome. She had no clue that she was going to marry the
[00:22:40] owner of the field that she's working the night shift for. I mean, come on. Can God do it or what? Do you also, you know, think about this. Have you ever seen your boss or how much your
[00:22:50] boss go in at 3 a.m. and checking on the custodial staff as they're tidying up the office while all are asleep? No. When does a boss ever come and talk to the people that are doing
[00:22:59] those kinds of jobs? Well, this one did. I love the idea that God just makes it happen some way, somehow. And when he meets her, when he meets her, look what he says in Ruth 3, 10 through 11. He says, oh, may the Lord bless
[00:23:13] you, my daughter. It's like saying something kind like ma'am, like being very respectful and, you know, considerate. And she said, and then he says, everybody in my town knows who you are. Everybody in my town knows you're a woman of noble character. Look how her reputation precedes her. You know,
[00:23:30] your reputation, you don't like that. I like that phrase. Your reputation shows up before you do.
[00:23:34] That's what that phrase means. When your reputation precedes you, it arrives before you arrive in the room. That means somebody's heard about you and knows about you before they know what your face looks like. That means someone understands what you're about before they've ever had a conversation
[00:23:51] with you. So her reputation got there before she did. Her character has been being built, and her character's being built before it's recognized.
[00:24:01] But now what we have is this woman who's been following God and honoring God, not fully understanding the picture or fully understanding what the outcome might be, but she just kept saying yes.
[00:24:21] And it takes a series of yeses in our life.
[00:24:25] it's one yes after another to understand what faithfulness is to have the courage to say I will stay faithful even though it's hard and I'm a little bit scared about it someone asked me this week as I mentioned we're in this end stage of uh raising kids not parenting
[00:24:46] someone once told me years ago you don't stop parenting when they graduate high school And I said, what?
[00:24:52] I'd only signed up for 18 years.
[00:24:54] I'm done.
[00:24:55] And you realize you're still in your kid's life long after that with boundaries, of course, not speaking into every little thing, but we're at the end of raising them in our home and our youngest is graduating high school.
[00:25:08] And the other night we were having dinner with friends and had a great time.
[00:25:11] And one of them asked me, Carrie, are you so excited for graduation?
[00:25:15] The last one, I said, oh, I'm so excited, man.
[00:25:18] The third one is so much easier than the first one.
[00:25:21] And all the moms that have done that said, no.
[00:25:25] You're like, no, I'm still crying.
[00:25:28] I think the third one's way easier.
[00:25:30] My heart can take it.
[00:25:31] My heart couldn't take the first one.
[00:25:33] It was hard.
[00:25:34] But he said, no, no, no, that's not what I meant.
[00:25:36] I meant, how do you feel about getting three boys through school and through high school and like into adulthood, like unscathed?
[00:25:49] And I thought, wow, that's a different question, isn't it?
[00:25:52] And for me as a mom, in 1 Thessalonians, I think it says, I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth. And what I always say when people ask me, are you proud of your
[00:26:09] boys, all the things? Yes, but it wasn't a straight line. Please, I just want to sit and tell you the story that it wasn't a straight line. It wasn't like they were born and they followed everything
[00:26:21] we said, and now it's a life is a beautiful big red bow. No, I can remember those early years when, you know, you're setting out and I'm watching my oldest now with his two kids. We
[00:26:34] have a new grandson and they've got two and I'm watching him. They're shaping their strategy for parenting. Right. And I can remember reading books. This is before Google. That's how old I am. Okay. Before Google, I'm reading books. I would go to the bookstore and grab books. And
[00:26:50] you talk to other moms that you're like, oh, her kids, that seems to be working well. What are you doing? Okay. What do you do? You find the ones that kind of look like somewhat they have it
[00:26:59] together and you'd get some tips. And I remember shaping those and just thinking, oh, this is such a big deal. Okay. I know how I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And I can
[00:27:08] remember so carefully curating a bubble around them to protect them from anything that was a voice other than mine or anything that might bring them harm, whether it was electrical outlets or TV shows that I didn't want them to hear, right, and know about. And then middle school hits
[00:27:26] and everything that you've been protecting is up for grabs. Oh, and that was it for me. I was like, that's it. We're homeschooling everyone. Get every TV out of this house, every computer, nothing. I was freaking out. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is in jeopardy.
[00:27:47] we cannot have that. This is at all costs. I will protect this. You know, I'm having like the emotional freak out. And then my very wise husband saying, hey, we have to teach them how to navigate the world. And we're raising men. So we have to do this. We got to figure it out.
[00:28:07] And then as I, this is all happening in my head. I remember the long nights of prayer outside their room while they slept. And I remember realizing their friends' voices were louder than mine.
[00:28:20] And when their friends' voices, if they're in opposition to you, you got a problem. And I knew we had a problem. So I knew if I wasn't going to be the one that could speak into them, only God
[00:28:34] could do that. So I went to the only source I knew, and that was Jesus. And I begged him to please intervene on my behalf. Please keep him safe. I know you love him more than me,
[00:28:45] but please make it so he knows you and he listens to you more than anyone else, even me.
[00:28:56] And we did that with all three of ours. And we just kept putting them in front of Jesus and putting them in front of God and making sure they had godly men around them to speak
[00:29:06] and to them. There are men in this church that have walked with our boys for years and I know God provided them and we are grateful. But I will tell you when you're in those tough
[00:29:20] years of parenting and you wonder if there's any way that they're ever going to look at you normal again or you're ever going to be able to say, I count it all joy that my kids follow God.
[00:29:32] you just know that's a Moab moment that God is putting in front of you and everyone everyone can have that but it's hard it's hard to prioritize that when everything around you is saying oh there's many other things that are more important than fuse there's many other things
[00:29:57] that are more important than going to camp there's many other things that are more important then it was just like a random night or hanging out or, or not allowing behaviors, not allowing them to stay at someone's house that you know what's happening there. There's lots of things
[00:30:12] like that, that you will have to engage in and be aware of. And I will tell you what I've learned is that a godly legacy is built in private moments, private decisions with God that people
[00:30:27] may never ever know, but we see that with Ruth. A godly legacy began in her long before she came into the lineage of Jesus Christ himself, long before she became part of King David's line,
[00:30:43] long before that the godly legacy started. She was willing to honor God despite not fully understanding what the outcome would be. And I will tell you as a mom, if you can learn to say,
[00:30:58] I'm looking for the Moab moments when I don't know and I don't understand, but I know the God who does. I'm looking for a chance to have those because honoring God in private will make you
[00:31:12] able to stand for God in public settings and have kingdom impact that you never knew possible. God is building faithfulness in the middle of your life that he intends to use.
[00:31:25] The next thing I want you to see is this, and this is the last, we're gonna wrap it up.
[00:31:29] Once you begin to realize that faithfulness, the courage to have that faithfulness is a series of saying yes over and over and over.
[00:31:40] Once you realize that this is not about you, that you're having generational impact, that you're really saying yes so the next one can say yes, and the next one can say yes Whether it's your kids
[00:31:54] or the kids that are around you in your life, at school, at home, in your neighborhood, in your church community, you will begin to understand what kingdom impact looks like and what that could mean for the rest of your life.
[00:32:06] May we all stand before God and honor him as he builds faithfulness in us for his kingdom.
[00:32:14] Let's pray.
[00:32:15] God, thank you so much for your love.
[00:32:17] thank you so much for your hand on our lives and our children's lives. Thank you so much, God. We can never put into words what your faithfulness teaches us about where we should land on that scale. Thank you that though it may be a long night and we're
[00:32:35] gathering grain, that you are writing stories we could never begin to pen and you are arranging things on our behalf that seem impossible, we couldn't even begin to ask for them. God, as we go through the rest of this day, may we find one thing that we could take a step in that would
[00:33:02] honor you, that would show our faithfulness to you, that would develop everything you're looking to develop. Just one first step is all you ask as you build us in your kingdom, as you build us
[00:33:18] in our faith. In Jesus' name, the church said, amen. You may stand for worship.