It’s Time to Be Encouraged
It's Time

Transcript

Well, I want us to get started back in our book of Haggai. We're in chapter two today. We're going verse by verse through this little book over these eight weeks, and today, we're going to be talking about, “It's time to be encouraged.” Now, I don't know about you, but I could use some encouragement today.

I want to thank many of you who have sent us cards. Some of you have talked to us in person earlier today, or you've sent us a message on social media. My wife's older sister passed away this past week, and it's been a challenging week for our family. We drove up to Salem, Virginia, on Monday.

We got up early. We thought we were just visiting. We knew she was in the hospital, and she'd been in the hospital for a little while, and we needed to get up there. So, I told Robin, “Let's stay overnight at a hotel.” We rented a hotel room across from the hospital. I have a lot of work to do, so I'll step in and say “hello” to her. Then, I'll just leave Robin there while I go to the hotel room and work. That was the plan.

But on the way up, we got a text from her daughter. She said she had taken a turn for the worst. We needed to get there. She passed away with us there, so I never left the hospital.

I stayed there, and we held a vigil. We were there, thanking the Lord for her life as she took her last breath. Now, I'm pastoring this church, and I'm trying to take care of all of you, so I had to get back here. I'm a pastor, not just of this church of 33 years but I'm becoming a pastor to the city. Now, my whole family thinks I'm their pastor, too.

So, guess who they asked to do the funeral? So we drove back up again this past Friday. It's been a hard week. Can I just say that to you? It’s been a hard week.

She was my sister, too. Robin and I have been married 45 years. I told the Lord, ‘You know, it seems like I ought to be able to take a break right now. I'm tired, driving up and back and then up and back to Salem and preaching at the funeral.”

Then, when I started studying for this week I decided to name it, “It's time to be encouraged,” because I got a lot of encouragement from His word. You know, sometimes the preacher needs encouragement just as much as anybody else, because I'm just one of you. I'm just one of you.

Is that okay for me to tell you that? I know you probably wanted a great pastor. Well, I'm just a little pastor who loves a great God. Here's what I've noticed - If I'll just show up sometimes, whatever's left of me, if I drag up here and show up, He shows up bigger than ever.

That's what I'm doing today. I need this encouragement. Y'all pray for me and I'll pray for you, because some of you are discouraged just like me today for different reasons. Maybe you've had a loss like our family had this week.

Maybe you had to work hard this week and it just wore you out. Sometimes just physical fatigue will cause discouragement. Discouragement is one of the greatest obstacles to being faithful to God. It makes you want to quit. Discouragement makes you want to say, “I'm done.”

When things don't go the way you expected them to go, it makes you lose heart; it makes you want to give up. Sometimes, we say we want to give up on marriage. Sometimes in the middle of the night, after the third wake up from an infant, we wish that we could give up on being a mama.

Sometimes, we want to give up on some dream we had because, once we started getting closer to it, we found out it wasn't going to look as great as we thought it was going to look. That's kind of how it was for the people in Haggai's day. That's how they were feeling in Haggai's day. The people were feeling discouraged. They had started the work on the temple, but then they started looking at it and realized it wasn't going to be as great as the former temple that Solomon had built that was destroyed.

The old people, especially, started feeling discouraged. They were down. They wanted to quit. How are you doing today? Are you facing some obstacle or difficulty that makes you want to cash it in, that makes you want to give up?

Are you feeling like quitting? That's how feelings of discouragement can move us from time to time. I wonder how we can find encouragement at times like that? That's what this text is about today. That's what this message is about in Haggai.

In chapter 2, verses 1 through 5, the Lord encourages the people of God not to give up, but to persevere in His work. I believe that, we too, can hear this encouragement from God's Word today and be encouraged. Even if we're discouraged, we can be encouraged to keep on keeping on, to persevere in what God's called us to. Let's look at it.

Haggai 2:1-5 (ESV) 1 In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: 2 “Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, 3 ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now?

Is it not as nothing in your eyes? 4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts,

5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three ways we can be encouraged to persevere in God's work.

1. Be strong relying on God’s presence.

Be strong. Be strong. Relying on God's presence. Did you hear it three times?

If you didn't hear it the first time, he repeated it two more times for your ears. Three times he said, “be strong.” He said it to three different people. The first person he said it to was Zerubbabel, who was the governor of Judah. Zerubbabel would have been king.

He was in the line of David. But because Babylon had overthrown Israel, and then because the Persians had overthrown Babylon, now Zerubbabel does not get to take the throne as king. He's, instead, appointed governor under King Darius the Great, who's the ruler of Persia. His name means “seed of Babylon,” “Zerubbabel,” “seed of Babylon.” I wonder why that was.

Well, it's because he was born in Babylon. That's what his name means and so, he is told by the Lord to “be strong.” Then Joshua, Yeshua, the high priest, the priest with no church. The building hasn't been built yet.

He says, “be strong, Joshua” and then he says, “be strong, all you people.” He says it three times. I think if God says something once, we ought to take note. If He says it twice, we ought to underline it.

If he says it three times, I think we need to get it. “Be strong.” I don't think he means with your muscles. The idea, in the Hebrew, really has more of the idea of “to hang on with strength, to get a grip.”

It's speaking of your spirit, it's speaking of your attitude. What would you take hold of? What would you get a grip on? Well, He tells us what He would desire us to get a grip on. He says, “I am with you,” in verse four.

You need to take hold of the Lord. You need to take hold of God. Be strong in hanging on to Him. He's with you. His presence is with you.

Now, before He tells them to be strong, I want to “back up the bus” here a little bit to verse one and take note of what I've said in previous weeks. Haggai is one of the most careful diary takers. He writes down dates very carefully in his diary. This is his third entry of a date. He opens up, in verse one, that it's the second year of Darius, the sixth month on the first day of the month.

He tells us what God said on that day and then, he closes chapter one by saying, “the 24th day of the month and the sixth month in the second year of Darius. ” Now, he says in Haggai 2, verse one that it's the seventh month. Okay, so it's the next month and the 21st day. He says, ‘okay, so 27 days have taken place according to the Hebrew calendar since the people went back to work.’

Remember, they had been discouraged, due to opposition and because of other reasons and fear. Sixteen years had gone by since they had returned to the Promised Land. They had started the foundation, but then got discouraged and stopped working. Now, the foundation has been exposed to the elements and it has actually gone backwards, so now, they're going to have to kind of do some rework.

But at the end of chapter one, remember that the Lord stirred them up and they said, ‘let's go back to work’ and they went back to work. They had passion and they were fired up. But now, 27 days later, discouragement is creeping back in. Why is that? Well, that'll happen.

Sometimes you start obeying God, I'm going to be strong. I'm going to get back to work. Then, you start seeing the size of the thing, or you start looking at it and thinking, I don’t think this is going to be as nice as we thought it was going to be. This is going to be harder than we thought it was going to be. Maybe it's not going to be the dream we thought it was.

It's going to be smaller. that sort of thing. So, they were already, after 27 days, getting a little discouraged. God actually uses a couple of questions. He's got three questions for them, in verse three, to kind of use as a “scalpel,” to kind of help them look at their hearts. What's causing this discouragement?

He says, 3 ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? First of all, he says, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?” In other words, he says, ‘How many old people did we have out there? How many people saw Solomon's temple and then got carried off to exile?’

Now, you're back and you're seeing what they're starting and you're sitting there thinking, It ain't gonna be the same. In fact, if we go over to the historical book that's written during the same time period, I would remind you that the two prophets that are prophesying at the same time are Haggai and Zechariah, and the two historical works are Ezra and Nehemiah. These are all in the same time period. So over in Ezra, chapter three, we read, Ezra 3:12 (ESV) “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid,

though many shouted aloud for joy.” The old people were thinking, It ain't going to be the same. It's not the same. I remember Solomon's Temple. It was all gold.

The whole thing had been plated in gold. The front pillars were so amazing, we gave them names. I mean, it'll never be the same. Do you remember the church you grew up in,

old people? I'm one of you now. I can call you old people. Don't get offended. I'm one of you.

Do you remember that church, you know, suits and ties and “Just as I am,” all 27 verses at the end of every service? Do you remember that, church? Can I get a witness? I had many of you hit me up after the first service and say, ‘I hear you, pastor, but it'd be okay if we just sang one or two of those old hymns every once in a while.’

How many of you remember? That's what God was asking. The reason He was asking that is because they were weeping and they were saying, ‘It ain't gonna be the same.’ Then, He asks, “How do you see it now?” They don't think it looks like much to them..

In fact, He uses a double negative in His third question. “Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”

Can you hear it? The young people are starting to go back to work, but the old people are thinking that it ain't going to be the same. They are working hard, but it's for nothing, really.

It's not going to be the same. They were living in the past. They wanted what they had, not what God was giving them. Now, I remember when we first planted the church. We were renting Forest Hills Middle School, setting up and tearing down music equipment, nursery equipment, every Sunday. We would load it back up.

We were like the children of Israel in the wilderness with the tabernacle, the tent of meeting. Every week, we would set up and tear down. We did that for a long time. When we first started, I wore a suit and tie because that's how I was brought up. Then, I began visiting some people in the city and in their homes, trying to invite people to church. People would say to me, “I don't have church clothes.”

Remember when that was a thing? “Church clothes.” So,I decided at first, to just take my tie off. Okay, I'm sort of dressing down, but eventually I said, ‘You know what? I'm just going to go ahead and wear blue jeans.’ I'll still wear a blazer, and you'll see me wearing that to church. I decided, ‘Let's just have liberty when it comes to dress code.

Let's be modest. Let's do that. But I don't want to hear another person say, I can't come to church because I don't have church clothes. I want to take that excuse away.’ Then, the other thing was young people who didn't go to church; how could we reach them?

What kind of music are they accustomed to listening to? So, we started introducing drum kits, electric guitars and things like this. I actually heard some pastors on the radio in Wilson, back in the early 90s, talking about us. ‘That church has got a rock and roll band over there. It can't be right.’

It discouraged me. People would discourage me. It didn't take much to make me feel discouraged in those days because I was young and I was still learning. People would get discouraged because it didn't look like the church they used to go to or should still look like. Things have changed a lot since then.

We don't hear those kinds of things anymore, but we still hear people talk about what they think things should look like. Do you understand what I'm saying? Maybe they say that about you; you should be doing this, you should be thinking like this, you should be dressing like this, or you should be…It can discourage us. God's kind of using a “scalpel” on the old folks heart right there and saying, ‘I see this differently than you do.’

You see it as nothing, but I see it as something. I'm telling you, don't give up. Hang on to Me. Be strong. Hang on.

Be strong. Keep going. Why? Because I'm with you. Verse four,

”Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts,” I'm with you. I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Paul says in the book of Ephesians 6:10 (ESV) “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” We're not called to be strong in our own selves, but to take hold of the Lord and to find our strength in Him. One of the things that I knew is I felt tired even when I got up this morning.

I got up early this morning, the alarm clock went off at 5am. I slept until 5:25 am because I was debating with God. God, would it be okay if I took Sunday off? Then the other part of my head said, Who's going to preach? I don't know. I should have called somebody sooner.

I'm still grieving. I'm still tired. All of this work this week doesn't seem fair. I shouldn't tell you all this, should I? I should keep that to myself, right,

because y'all need a better pastor. You need a stronger pastor. Here's what I've learned though. If I'll tell the Lord the truth and if I'll share with you the truth about what I'm going through and then say to you that I decided to show up anyway and trust that when I'm weak, He'll be strong. Here's what I have learned -

I don't even remember what I said at the first service because there's not much of me left right now. But, when I get out of the way and there's less of Gary and more of Jesus, the things go better, I preach better, I lead better. Now, there were times when I was younger where I might have checked out and thought, Boy, you deserve a break today. But, I'm learning to be strong in His strength.

Remember what He told old Joshua when Moses had died and Joshua got put in charge. I'm sure Joshua's knees were banging together. He said in Joshua 1:9 (ESV) “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

When you're weak, if you'll take hold of Him, you'll be strong if you'll just show up. See, God cares more about your availability than He does your ability, because any ability you have comes from Him anyway. Besides, when you depend on your own ability, then you get the glory. But when you depend on Him, He gets the glory.

He cares more about your availability than He does your ability. That's the first way: (1) Be strong, relying on God's presence. Here's the second way that we can persevere and be encouraged:

2. Do the Work trusting in God’s promises.

Do the Work trusting in God's promises. Do the work. Look at verse four. He gives it to us.

His command is one word, “work.” I like that. “Work.” Do you see it in verse four? “Work.”

That's what He says. “Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, 5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not.”

That covenant is filled with promises. Our God is a promise making and a promise keeping God. He loves to make promises and He loves to keep them.

One of the reasons that we don't get to experience His promises is that we won't obey His word. His protection, His provision, His blessing and His grace is over here under the umbrella of obedience. He says in verse 5, “according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not.” Remember the covenant. Get to work. I've already told you in the covenant, if you'll do the work, then I'm going to bless you and I'm going to cause you to be a blessing to all peoples.

All of those promises that I gave Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all those promises I gave through Moses, all of those promises are yours if you'll just do the work. Now some people say, ‘Well, Christianity is not about work.’ You're right about that, partially. The gospel is against earning because you can't earn salvation. Christ has already paid for it; it's a gift.

Christianity is not against work; it's against earning, but we are to work out our salvation. After receiving our salvation, we're to do good works. Ephesians 2: 8-9 says, 8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves,

it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.” That's verses 8 and 9 and then verse 10; people forget to read verse 10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

So, the gospel is against earning, but it's all for getting to work and so, we get to work and we ask God to help us in our work. Now, one of the things I used to do is I used to be a district manager for the Eckerd Drug Corporation. I was transferred down here from Roanoke, Virginia, and they gave me the eastern North Carolina district.

So, I had Raleigh to the coast, all the drug stores that Eckerd had. I would travel to these stores and sometimes I would have a problem store and I would have to let the manager or the pharmacist go. The store would be a mess; it would be a mess and I'd have to replace the manager.

I would come in with a new manager and usually it was a promotion for an assistant manager at a new store. They would come in and they'd be overwhelmed with the work and I would say, “Okay, get a clipboard and get some notebook paper on that clipboard.

Let's “walk the store.” I'd start in the parking lot and I'd say, “One of your letters is burned out. You need to call somebody and get that “D” for “Eckerd” lit back up.

Hey, there's trash on the front walk. Hey, your coke machine doesn't have any coke in it.”

Then, we go through the front door. “You need to clean your windows.” Then we go to the front and I would walk every aisle and the

manager would be writing it down. “Your camera clerk is out of dress code. Write that down.”

Then, we went to the stock room and the break area. “You need to clean that.” Let's go to the bathrooms.

”These are the employee bathrooms. This is

one of the ways you pay your employees is by having a nice bathroom.” He would be looking at ten pages of lists and I could see the discouragement. This doesn't feel like a promotion.

I would say to him, “Hey, look, I'm going to be back in two weeks to see where you're at.” They would say, “Two weeks?” How about two years? No, two weeks. I asked him, “Have you ever heard of the ‘Swiss Cheese Theory?’

I'd read somewhere about who gets the cheese. There was a book about who gets the cheese. I thought, Well, I'll use that, except what if it's swiss cheese? and I asked, “Have you ever heard of the Swiss Cheese Theory?” I kind of made this thing up on the road, on the run.

I said, “Just poke holes in it. Don't try to eat the whole cheese in one bite. Just poke holes in it. Let's look at your list. Do you see those first five items?

Dou think you could get those done today?” “Yeah, I probably could.” “Okay, do those today, then tomorrow, how about doing the next five or six?”

”Yeah, I could probably do that.” I said to him, “Okay, don't worry about tomorrow. How much can you get done today? Here's what you'll notice. I want you to take your pen, and every time you do a task, mark it out.

It'll feel good. Then, watch what happens if you keep on it every day. By the time I get back, you'll be finished. Every day that you mark out another task, you'll get encouraged. But, if you look at the whole list, you'll get discouraged

and every day you don't act on it, you'll get more discouraged. But, if you'll just show up and do the work, if you'll just show up and do what's next, you'll get more encouragement in the work.” Show up, do the work, be strong; do the work and then God will show up. God will help you.

It says in Psalm 90:17 (ESV) “Let the favor of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” God is not interested. He doesn't want us to be focused on success.

He wants us to be focused on faithfulness. Success is in His hands. If we'll do the work, He'll give the increase. It says in
2 Corinthians 9:6-8 (ESV) 6 “The point is this:

whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” (Pastor Combs’ comment: That makes sense. If you don't sow anything, you won't grow anything. The more you sow, the more things will grow.) 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

Here's the thing I've noticed - God trusts generous people.

If He knows He can trust you to be generous, He can abound to you more. He can trust you more and He will take care of you. Where has God called you to work today? Where have you gotten discouraged? The fact that you're not at work on that thing, your discouragement has grown as a result.

What would it look like to just start doing the little things again? Take a baby step towards the calling it has on your life. Take a baby step towards it. Stop saying, “I feel like God's called me to this.” The more you say it without taking action, the more discouraged you will get.

Who am I talking to right now? Are you getting this? Show up with whatever you have . You know, perfectionism is the enemy of faithfulness.

Well, I'll do it when I have perfect conditions. The problem is, perfect conditions never arrive. Do the work. Show up, especially when you don't feel like it and say, “God, I'm going to be strong in You. I'm going to leave the results up to You.

I'm going to do the work. Will You establish the work of my hands?” Here's the third:

3. Be Fearless walking in God’s Spirit.

We're in verse five, the final two words, “Fear not.” Fear not. Be strong, do the work. Fear not. All of these are Hebrew imperatives, all of our commands to God's people.

This is how God is encouraging His people. Be strong, do the work and don't be afraid. Be fearless. How?

Because My spirit is with you. My spirit is in your midst. Many commentaries I was reading saw the Trinity in these five verses. Do you see the Trinity in these five verses? Notice, first of all, that the word of the Lord came to Haggai

and he said, “Speak now.” It was so important to Haggai that he wrote down the date that he heard the Word. Verse 1, “In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: Verse 2, “Speak now…”

He wrote that down. So who is the word? Well, we go over to the New Testament. We find out who the word is first. We find it in the Gospel of John.

John 1:1-4, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”

Then, in verse 14,
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” It's Jesus; that's the Word.

Then, the Father says, “Be strong. Do the work. Fear not.”

We have the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit all in these five verses. If we look close, He says, ‘I’m with you. I'm in your midst.’ The Holy Spirit is here now, by the way. People have prayed for the Holy Spirit to be here.

The Spirit of Christ is in our midst. He's here in our worship. He's here in the preaching. He's here in your hearing right now. He's speaking to your heart if you'll allow Him.

He's in our midst. Some of us are afraid because when we talk about generosity, we land in one of two “ditches.” We either land over here, in this “ditch” of fear. But, God says, “Fear not.” We're afraid we won't have enough and instead of living in an attitude of generosity, we live in an attitude of scarcity. We don't think there'll be enough and so we live in fear.

Or, we live over in this other “ditch.” Which is, we get offended because we want more. We're in the greed “ditch.” We always want more; we're never satisfied. Generosity makes us angry when we talk about it. I can't believe that pastor's talking about that.

I don’t want to talk about that. But, somewhere in the middle of those two “ditches” is the highway of love. The highway of love says, ‘Love gives and it's fear not.’

Misers are miserable, but givers are glad. The joy is in the generosity. He says, “Fear not.” Don't be afraid to keep on keeping on, people of God. I love this.

This quote from Oswald Chambers says this, “It is the most natural thing in the world to be scared, and the clearest evidence that God's grace is at work in our hearts is when we do not get into a panic. The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

I don't know where you're at today. I don't know if your discouragement has led you into the fear “ditch.” I remember that my grandparents and my mother came out of the depression generation, the ones who experienced the season of the depression. They were always so afraid of not having enough.

Sometimes, based on your past experience, some of you might have come up so poor that your mindset is still there in terms of your scarcity mentality, instead of thinking that God is our provider and all that we have belongs to Him and that He can pour out whatever we need if we'll just trust Him. If we will just live “the life of the open hand” - one hand open to God, one hand open to others, so that our life becomes like a conduit, like a river that flows to us and provides for us and it flows through us to others to provide for the needs of others. It's a life of such freedom and joy, but we're afraid. Instead of revering and fearing God, we fear everything else.

Paul talks in the book of Romans about fear. He says, Romans 8:15-16 (ESV) 15 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

So, when we cry out to the Father, as believers in Jesus, we've been adopted into His family. We're actually talking to our Father like a daddy, like a provider. So, when you have a spirit of fear, that's from the old life, but the new spirit, the Holy Spirit, that spirit that lives in us, cries out within us saying, ‘No, ask your Daddy for what you need.’ Now, I've told you this before. My daddy died at age 39 of cancer.

I was 8 years old when he died. I'm the oldest of four children. I remember when I was an only child, though. And then my brother Barry came along and ruined it. For four years, the first four years of my life, I was it.

I was “the cat's meow.” I was the only child, the firstborn son. My daddy, boy, he was my hero. I was scared of the dark, though and I remember at night this being a real problem for him.

It might seem strange to you that I remember four year old memories, but there's something about when you have a crisis or a tragedy in your family. It's like it superimposes all your memories and so, I have so many memories from my early age, I think because of my dad's passing. But I remember that I would get scared and I would cry out. My dad would come into the room

and he'd say, “What's wrong?” and I'd say, “I'm afraid.” He would then say, “Well, go back to sleep. There's nothing in here” and I would say, “There's something in the closet.”

I couldn't stand for the closet door to be open when I was a little kid. There's something in there. He would open it, look in and would say, “There's nothing in there.:

He would kick around in the closet and there was nothing. I'd say, “Shut the door”

and he'd shut the door, because I didn't like an open closet door when I was 4. Then I'd say, “I'm still scared. Would you stay here with me?” and he'd say, “Okay.”

We had twin beds. They had already bought twin beds in anticipation of the next child. I'm laying in my bed and my dad would get in the other bed. He would stretch his arm out across the space between the two beds and he would hold my hand. Every time he would think I was asleep,

I'd feel him. He'd try to pull his hand loose very carefully and I'd grip it real tight.

His arm probably just about rotted off on those nights. He had to get up and go to work in the morning. But, I would hang on till I went to sleep, holding my daddy's hand.

I still remember that. He was a good daddy. Our Father in heaven is an even better daddy. He's the best daddy. He's the best daddy.

He'll never let go of your hand. He'll never leave you nor forsake you. If you're afraid, reach out and say, “I'm afraid” and take hold of His hand and feel His touch. He'll change your life.

Be fearless. If you fear God, you don't have to fear anything else. Take hold of the Lord. Are fears holding you back from full and complete obedience? What are you afraid of?

Have you forgotten who your Father is? Be strong. Do the work. Be fearless and be encouraged to persevere. So, the people of God went back to work, and maybe we can, too.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord, thank You for Your word. Thank You for how You encourage us. I pray for that person this morning, especially, who doesn't know You as father.

Is it you, my friend? You've never given your life to Jesus. Would you do it right now, right in your seat? You can talk to Him; He's listening. It's called prayer.

You could pray like this. “Dear Father, I'm a sinner. I've never given my life to You, but I believe Your son, Jesus, died on the cross for me. I believe He was raised from the grave and that He lives today. I invite Him to come into my life now and

forgive me of my sin. I want to follow Him all the days of my life as my Lord and Savior. Would You adopt me into Your family? I want to be a child of God. Forgive me of my sin.

Make me what You want me to be.” If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, the Bible says He'll save you, He'll adopt you into His family. You can call on Him right now.

Others are here and you know Him. You're a follower of Jesus, but you've been afraid, you've been discouraged, you've been down, you've been hurting. Right where you are, would you say, “Lord, would You encourage me? I've heard Your word today. Help me to start taking baby steps towards obedience.

I want to be like You, Jesus. I want to be generous. I want to be full of love and joy. Would You remove this discouragement from me today and help me to persevere in what You've called me to do and what You've called me to be.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.”