(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

I want to talk today about pain and it's funny how I got the message.

I had to drive my little guy and some of y'all know I'm talking about his three's three turns four tomorrow.

He's this little Mohawk terrorist that runs through this church all the time.

Don't laugh.

A lot of y'all helped him get there.

Y'all spoiled this baby.

But I drove him down to Charleston cause that's the closest near pediatric ophthalmologist.

He's got glasses.

And on the way back, I was blessed cause he fell asleep.

So I got to listen.

I listened to YouTube a lot.

I like to listen to sermons.

I started listening to YouTube a lot so that I could understand the language that your children speak.

And, uh, but the sermons that I was listening to, were fire, like no cap.

They were, they were, they were fire.

I just heard my daughter just, Oh, not today.

But those of you that don't know me, my name is Jared.

I'm the student's pastor.

You have the privilege and the honor of speaking with your students every Wednesday.

We don't have child watch in this church.

We don't raise children in this church.

We raise God fearing men and women of the Lord.

If it's your first time ever here, you've probably never been to a church like this.

This is a church that's all based on valor, but I want to talk about pain because what I had done, I hurt my back in the gym just a few days before.

So like driving down there, like I have like the lumbar thing on and everything.

I'm just trying, getting old is hard.

Like it's tough.

I remember I used to get hurt for good reasons.

You know, like I remember the first time I got a slip disc, I was helping a friend move a safe that was 600 pounds and he wasn't very good at it.

He dropped it on me.

And that's a good reason to have an injury.

You know, now I get injured cause I tied my shoes, you know, it's tough.

But, uh, it's funny cause I didn't even think about it at the time.

God's got a way of tying things together.

And the sermons, I just put it on the little channel and it, and it plays and, uh, they were all about pain and swear it didn't even dawn on me.

And so God gave me this message and, uh, the, in that two hour drive there and I don't really ask for Sundays, but I talked to clay when he told me what the series was going to be.

And I was like, I think I've got one.

I think I'm supposed to tell you about that.

I don't know if he's here.

I've never preached when he was actually here.

And this freaks me out enough, but I like to have him look at me.

So just if he shows up, don't tell me, but I am grateful to have pastor clay is my Paul.

I'm grateful to have pastor Richard as my Paul.

I'm grateful to have these folks that care enough about the kingdom to pour into a broken, you know, goofed up country boy like me.

And I'll tell you what though.

I got a speech on this.

Everywhere in our news feeds for the last couple of months, it's been pain.

It's been devastation.

We've seen houses floating down the river.

We've seen people that are in pain, people that have lost loved ones, people that are just hurting around the world.

And we as the church, and what's so amazing to see is that we show up, the church shows up.

It's not FEMA that's going into these mountains to save these people.

It's the church that's showing up to go in there and save these people and watching the way that y'all have shown up for these people in pain over the last month, I want to tell you, it was overwhelming.

Like, you know, I'm, I'm a bigger dude.

So, you know, when heavy stuff shows up here, they're like, Hey, you know, but uh, not, not just me, there's, there's a lot of folks, but uh, moving all this stuff.

And for a minute, I got a little overwhelmed, really stacking it up on these crates and all this stuff.

And, and for that little second, my humanist came in and I was like, man, this is a lot.

And I was like, thank God.

It's a lot.

Thank God.

It's more than we can carry.

It's incredible.

I had to go to an appointment the day that we sent it over to spokes of hope.

And honestly, I was a little mad that there were so many volunteers that got it done before I could get back to help.

But it's a blessing.

Titus says that many hands make light work and y'all have shown up.

But with all the pain that's there, there's a lot of us in here that are in pain too.

Now I'm not comparing or anything, but I came here to encourage you about the pain, whether your pain is physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, family pain.

I was going to try to say familial, but that's hard.

Relational, mental, or even directional.

First, it matters to God.

Slappy neighbors say it matters to him.

I want to tell you how much it matters to him.

There's never been a single tear that you've ever shed that he didn't cry with you.

There's never been a single time that you sat and you're in the darkness of your room at night hurting that he wasn't sitting right next to you in that pain.

There's never been a time that pain knocked on your door and agony showed up there that he wasn't right there with it.

The entirety of the 66 love letters that we read are all summed up in God being with us.

That's what they call Jesus Emmanuel.

That's what we just taught on last week to the students.

It's God with us that God is the God that shows up.

He's not just the God of my good times.

He's the God of my really, really hard times.

It matters.

Never been a time that you've groaned.

He wasn't with there.

Some of us have old pain, pain that's been there since we were kids.

Pain is 50, 60, 70 years old.

Some of us have new pain, fresh pain, so fresh we can't even talk about it yet.

We're not even sure how bad it hurts yet because we haven't really given it the time to sink in and we're still in shock from the pain and we're not talking about it yet.

But not one of us is pain free.

And sometimes it's good to know that just somebody else knows how it feels.

Somebody else might have something to say about what I'm going through too.

But not one of us is pain free.

However, the way that we look at pain, it matters.

I tell your students all the time that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will start to change.

It's amazing how it can happen if I'll just get a different perspective.

See, if I stand over here, I see something different than if I stand over there.

That's why we get four Gospels in the Bible, not because we need to hear the same story four times because we needed four different perspectives, four different points of view on the same miraculous being that saved us all.

But the enemy is always at work, constantly against the people of God.

And he's got some ways that he wants to manipulate and twist the pain.

And I wrote down a few things that he does with it.

Number one is isolation.

He wants to isolate you in the pain.

Anybody ever been bedridden?

Anybody ever couldn't get up out of bed?

Okay, we got some hands out there.

You can't do anything because you can't get up.

And even if we haven't actually physically felt that, we all went through COVID where we were so isolated that we couldn't see straight and everything started to change really, really quickly.

But some of us have never been physically bedridden, but we've been emotionally bedridden for 50 years.

Some of us have been mentally bedridden for 50 years.

Some of us have dug into the pain and the pain has hurt so bad that we've decided that we're not gonna let ourselves feel anything.

I'm no in no way gonna ever let love creep back into my heart because the last time I did, it broke me.

I'm not gonna look for relationships and friendships that matter and that are meaningful because the last time that I did, it hurt so bad and that's exactly where the enemy wants you.

Isolated.

What he wants you isolated from the most is God.

And so he uses the second thing that I wrote down which ties right to it.

Resentment.

Anybody ever got mad when they're in pain?

Does anybody have that that reaction to pain when when something hurts I get really really mad?

I mean like I'll give you an example.

Like you're in the kitchen and your husband left one of the cabinet doors open and you stand up and you hit your head on that cabinet.

She's laughing right now but she's not laughing all the time.

I've learned that when that happens you leave.

You leave the room.

Get out.

Go away.

Don't ask her if she's okay.

I grab the kids and we move.

Hey man, I've married this woman a long time.

Things might fly.

But he wants us to be angry.

See because anger kind of blinds us.

Anger consumes us.

Now it's okay to be angry.

It's not a sin to be angry.

The Bible says be angry and sin not.

But being angry to the point where it becomes rage and fury, that's damaging.

That'll damage the relationships.

That'll jack up your whole day.

Some of us have road rage really bad, which is that you're picked a bad place to live if you've got road rage, okay?

They're about to change the state slogan, never too late to make a left-hand turn.

But man, it can mess up the destination.

This experience that I'm having on the journey got me so focused on that that I can't even see where I'm going anymore.

I can't even be excited about the place that I'm gonna end up because I'm so angry at the process.

And that makes it hard.

Resenting people who are well sent to us by God.

Sometimes the anger really isn't with the person that we love or the person that's the close to us, but that's where it shows up the most because it seems to be that that's a safe place and the people that I should be giving the best of me seem to kind of just get the rest of me because the rest, all of the good in me goes out to somebody else when I'm at work or when I'm at church or when I'm wherever I am.

So it seems to be that the people I love the most are the ones that catch the most of the anger, but it's not that I'm angry with them.

It's that I hurt and it hurts and it keeps on hurting and that leads me to the third thing.

Hopeless.

That's the end goal.

That's the end game that the enemy wants to play.

He wants to get you so isolated, so angry that you become hopeless.

Hopeless is a scary place.

Hopeless is when he tells you that God doesn't even care about your pain.

How many times have you prayed for it?

How many times have you had other people pray for you in that pain, but looks like it's still there?

Your God must not care so much if it still hurts this bad.

God must not love you if he hasn't removed that pain from you yet, that loneliness, that resentment, that anger, if he hasn't relieved you of it yet because he's the God that heals, right?

He's the God that just touches the blind and they're healed.

He touches the lepers and they're healed.

He touches the lame and they're healed.

He just speaks a word.

And like that, people are healed.

Why am I not healed?

And so we become hopeless in our hearts.

Then it kind of becomes this whole thing that ties back to the resentment because the enemy loves to twist things into this ugly basket, we'll call it.

Hopelessness ties back to the resentment and back to the isolation so that now I don't even want to read.

I want to tell you, I want to be honest, there's been some times that I've come up in here so mad I didn't want to worship.

There's been some times I've woken up in the morning and I've been so angry from the day before that I didn't want to open that book, I didn't want to read that Bible, I didn't want to talk to him, I didn't want to.

There have been times in the privacy of my truck where I have screamed at him and begged him and fussed at him and asked him where he was.

But in that realness, because that's what God wants with you.

He doesn't want some fake relationship that you put in a museum somewhere.

He wants you.

He wants the whole you, the real you.

The you that you don't want anybody else to see.

He's the God of that you too.

But if he really loved you why would he let you?

Well let's look what the Bible says about pain.

If you got your Bibles with you turn to 1st Peter chapter 4 verses 12 and 13.

We're gonna bounce around through a couple of epistles today.

Students what's an epistle?

Come on, somebody yell it out.

Don't make me look silly.

There I heard it.

It was little.

A letter to the church.

Give that man some claps.

Dear friends, don't be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you.

Everybody say test you.

As if something unusual were happening to you.

Instead rejoice.

Everybody say rejoice.

As you share in the sufferings of Christ so that, because of clay I can't even read those words without saying it like that, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.

So the word says, don't even be surprised when trouble shows up.

Don't even be surprised when pain afflicts you.

Don't be surprised in the affliction.

Expect the hardship, expect it.

Expect some pain and then it says, rejoice.

Rejoice, rejoice.

Rejoice the pain.

Yeah, rejoice in the pain.

Remember Paul and Silas?

Remember when they got beaten and locked up and then they started singing and then the wall started shaking and all those things happened?

Because what happens in pain is that it opens this awesome opportunity for you to experience the living God in a way that you wouldn't experience without the pain.

It gives you an opportunity to see his power at work in such a way that it changes your perspective on life forever.

If you'd let it, if you'd be so bold as to put it in.

But submitted pain, pain that is submitted to God is totally different.

Doesn't mean the pain will instantly stop.

Maybe it will.

I've been doing this long enough to realize that God does whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And it doesn't matter what I say or anybody else says, I don't have him figured out.

And in fact, I've been through seminary and the more I read this, I've been through the Bible many times, but the more I read, the more I realize I haven't learned even half of the half of the half yet.

And there's so much more and I'd say that's exciting because I'm hoping that I got another 30, 40 years in me.

And in that, I wanna keep on this journey.

I wanna keep going in it and I wanna find out really who he is.

And even more in that, I wanna find out who he says I am.

Like, who's the real me?

Who's the me that you had in mind when you laid the foundations of the world?

Who's the me?

But to get it, I'm gonna have to go through some pain.

And then whatever God's will is gonna happen.

But what it does mean is that my pain is never meaningless.

Touch your neighbor and say, it ain't meaningless.

It's never meaningless.

But what does God do with the pain?

He builds.

He builds in the pain.

He builds character.

That's something.

He builds character.

He builds endurance.

He builds a stronger back.

See, I grew up and folks used to say that, The Bible says that he'll never put more on your plate than you can handle.

It does not say that.

It says you'll never be tempted beyond what you can leave from.

He will absolutely put more on your plate than you can handle.

Consistently, he'll put more on your back than you can handle so that you get a stronger back.

He didn't promise me that this would be easy, he promised me it would be flippin' hard.

And it would be really hard.

But he also promised that he would show up when it got hard and that he would help me and that he would build me and he would transform me into something that could handle it.

Something that in the pain I grew, and in the pain I got a little bit stronger, and the devil's gonna have to get up a little bit earlier if he's gonna mess with me.

If this is the best you got this morning, you better try again, because it ain't happening today.

Character.

Character's a funny thing.

Character is only built one way.

Now I've recently learned there's a difference between being a character and having character.

But having character is only built through hardship.

You don't know anybody that's had an easy life that's got great character, I'm just gonna be real with you.

And see, some of the problem that we have right now in this country is that we've had a lot of people that have had a really easy life, because a lot of strong men and women have built that incredibly easy life, and so somehow now things have gotten easy enough that character has become a thing that's rarer and rarer to see.

I'm just being real.

If that makes you mad, I'm sorry, but it's the truth.

I see it.

Character is built through hardship.

Character is built through belly crawl, through hot coals, when things are tough and you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, I'm not sure what dinner's gonna look like tomorrow, I don't know, and I promise you I've seen a few things, and a lot of you have been in pain for a long time, and I came to tell you that the pain was so that you would have some character, so that you would be able to get up, stand up, and show somebody else what it looks like when a good God shows up.

Character.

There's that tambourine.

See, man, I don't know, from now on, I ain't gonna know if I'm preaching or not unless there's a tambourine.

Can you make sure you're here every Sunday, okay?

Just in case a brother gets to preach.

Second thing I wrote that he does with it is he builds my faith.

See, you don't know how much faith you're capable of until you don't have another choice.

Until you don't have anything else to lean on, because I can't lean on my leg because it hurts too bad.

I can't lean on this one, it hurts too.

I can't lean on my emotional state because it hurts too bad.

I can't lean on my mental because it hurts too bad.

God, all I've got in this place is you.

And so I'm gonna cling to it, I'm gonna hold to it as best I can because I don't know what else to do and it seems to be that there ain't no other place to go.

I'm gonna cling to you and because of that, your faith will be encouraged.

I wanna break that down for just a second.

It doesn't mean that every time you pray, he's gonna work a miracle.

What it does mean is that every single time you've prayed and there's never been a time that you have that he didn't do this, he'll answer.

He'll always answer.

May not be the answer you want.

And I'm grateful for the times he didn't give me the answer that I want because what I wanted wasn't really what I wanted because I didn't know what I wanted.

He answers in three ways.

This is what I tell you kids too.

Yes, no, not now.

So maybe if that's you, maybe you've been in pain for a long time and I'm not just talking about physical pain.

Okay.

It can be any of these types of pain.

If you're sitting beside somebody that you know is physically hurting and you feel like your pain isn't as much because your pain's in your heart, it is, it's just different.

All of our pain looks different.

All of the things that God is doing in our lives looks different.

It is specific.

I wish that people knew how specific the relationship with God is to them.

See, sometimes we look at the Bible and we see the Ten Commandments.

We see the law, the 613 Mosaic Laws, all of this.

So we see the stuff that Jesus said and thought, okay, well, this works kind of like the judicial system works.

I can wiggle in here, but as long as I don't get over this line, I'm good.

As long as I don't get over this line, I'm good.

But see, sometimes something that's not a sin for me is a sin for you.

Something that isn't a sin for you may be a sin for me because it doesn't have to do with my specific purpose.

And I came to tell you today that you have a specific purpose.

And some of us have been sitting on our hands for too daggone long.

You've been sitting in a chair for 20 years.

You showed up, you've taken it in, but you hadn't jumped in the game yet.

I'm telling you that God plans to build your faith in the pain.

He also plans to take your pain and put you in the game and do something with it.

So build your faith.

And what can I have faith in?

Because in those places, in the darkness, anybody like me, like for me, it seems to be the only time that I really have time to think is at night when I'm laying in bed.

And then everything in my life just comes washing back.

And I think about every wrong thing that I've ever said, every wrong thing I've ever done, every mistake I've ever made, man, I wish I hadn't reacted that way.

But I also think about all the things that are going on in my life, but it's in that place that I start to cling to a few promises, promises like this in Genesis 50, 20.

This is Joseph talking to his brothers.

Everybody knows the story of Joseph.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

But God, those two words, but God.

Because if he's in it, things are a little different.

Isaiah 54, 17, no weapon formed against me shall prosper.

Now these are some things that are popular.

We talk about them all the time, but sometimes we don't cling on to the promise.

Promises like Romans 8, 28, oh, that's my mantra.

And we know, not we think and we're pretty sure, we're kind of guessing that, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

That means that my pain's not purposeless.

That means that I'm not just in this place to be in this place.

And I might've put myself there, situations might've put there, but God will still show up in that place.

But God will still use it for my good.

But God will make sure that no weapon formed against me will prosper.

And if I will continue on, if I'll look at this pain as though there's purpose in it, I will see another side.

God's not taking you to something or not taking you through something to not get you to something.

Maybe you're going through this season in your life.

You're going through this place, and I don't know who this is for.

And I always thought that was something pastors just said when they weren't sure if they had a good message or not.

But I realize now, sometimes you're only preaching to two people in a room.

It might be 150 or 500 or 700 or 800 that are looking at you funny, but two people in the room.

But two people for me is worth getting out of the bed for.

Two people for me is worth showing up for to tell them that I know about their pain.

I felt it too.

See what happens, though, when I start clinging to these promises in the still of the night, I can take a new grip with my tired hands.

I can stand up again and be confident that even in this place, I will yet see the glory of my God.

I will yet see Him show up in my life in a powerful way.

And there's no demon in hell that can stop me, because even though I might be weak, I know His power is made perfect in my weakness.

So I'll rejoice in my weakness is what Paul said.

I'll rejoice that I got here.

I'm so glad that I'm in pain.

I'm so glad that I got taken to this space so that I can see you in a different way and start to build some confidence.

That's the last thing that I wrote down.

Folks, there's never been a dark, cold night that wasn't conquered by a sunrise.

I can be confident in some things, things like it won't always be this way.

But for me to get to the other side of it, I'm going to have to experience pain.

Pain growth, rather, only happens in pain.

Like, how many of y'all go to the gym?

How many of y'all just have a membership?

I go five days a week, and I really love the lifting part of it.

I'm just really not good at the eating part of it, you know what I mean?

I'm really good at lifting heavy weights.

I'm not really good at leaving pie on my plate, you know what I'm saying?

That's how you come out looking like this.

So I've decided that I'm going to be a power lifter.

That's what bodybuilders become when they give up, you know?

I ain't cutting anymore.

This guy's smiling over here.

His arms are as big as my waist.

It's making me feel inferior over here.

Sir, there's a sign on the door that says no guns in here, okay?

The growth is going to take some pain, but I can have confidence, and man, confidence is important.

Confidence don't always show up when you want it to, but it'll show up when you need it to if you're submitted to a good God.

Confidence that God will use anything to grow me, that he is always with me, that he will never abandon me, confidence that I can trust him no matter what, confidence that it will not always be this way.

I don't want to hang here just for a second.

It won't always be this way.

Romans 8.18, and if you really want to know, I talk to the students about this a lot too, there are descriptive texts in the Bible and there are prescriptive texts, okay?

The epistles and many others are prescriptive texts.

That means they're telling you how you ought to live.

They're not just telling you about some things that have happened that'll change your perspective, that will change your heart, that will tell you who God is.

There's some things that say, this is how I ought to live.

Romans is one of those books that is a little stronger than a lot of the rest, just in a different way.

Romans 8.18, Paul says, writes to the church in Rome, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is going to be revealed in us.

That means He's coming back, and one day all this pain will have been worth it.

And when I think about the magnitude and the majesty of an eternity with God, not like just with God, but like with God, like I'm going to sit beside Him, I'm going to lay my head in His lap.

We're going to walk and talk in the cool of the day for eternity.

This endless joy, this little 60, 70, 80 years here that I got my butt kicked for a little while, well, it ain't going to be as big.

It ain't going to matter as much because it'll have been worth it.

But while I'm here, there's some things that I need to do.

There's some things that I need to get involved in, and I need to participate in, and some of us have been bedridden because of our pain.

Some of us have thought that because of the things that I've been through, the things that I've seen that God couldn't use me, that God couldn't possibly do something powerful through me.

And I'm here to tell you that if He can use me, baby, He can use you.

I promise.

There's something incredible on the other end of this if you just cling to it.

If you just hold on to Him, and this phrase that I love so much, if you just wander after Him, wander after God, that means that sometimes the road's going to get hard to see.

Sometimes it's going to be really, really difficult, and you're not going to know where to go, but it's okay because you have a shepherd.

And the shepherd will guide you.

If I get off track a little bit, he'll get me back on track, and if I go a little far to the left, he'll get me back to the right.

But one thing that you will positively have to do is you'll have to take all of these things that He's grown in you, that He's shown you, and you're going to have to put them to work.

We were built for it.

Human beings, the creation that we are, we're built to worship.

That's what we are, and if we don't worship the divine, we'll worship anything.

If we don't put our trust in God, we'll put our trust in anything else.

If we don't put all of our heart into it, into Him, then we'll put it into anything else.

And God's not asking you for much, just everything you got.

Just everything you have.

Would you get involved?

Here's the mission.

What good would it be for God to build up His body if it wasn't put to work?

What good would it be for you to have gone through that pain and got that stronger back and grown the way that you've grown if He didn't put it to work?

We have to show the world what God can do with a broken person.

We have to show up, since we have this great promise, we have to tell the world about it.

What does that look like?

For some of us, it looks like participating in the cafe.

For some of us, it looks like finally signing up for Kids World.

To show up and get to work there.

For some of us, it means finally stopping thinking about it and showing up to serve in students, or showing up to serve in worship, finally using the gift that he had.

Some of us have been waiting too long.

And eventually, if you don't get on it, you'll regret it.

Get involved with God's plan, because I'm gonna tell you, in this space and in this place, I have seen things.

In this church, the dead raises another day at the office.

We see bodies healed.

We see lives changed.

We see relationships restored.

We see the glory of God show up, because it's real here.

It's faithful here.

We haven't figured out some plan to make this place a museum.

We figured out a plan to make this place a church, a place to make this place a hospital, where the sick can come, the kids can come and get fed, you can come and get fed.

But above all, you'll find some people that can tell you about the thing you're going through, because they've been through some things too.

That'll hold you through the shakes.

That'll hold you through your addictions, that'll hold you through your pain, that'll hold you through your grief.

That's this place.

But it shouldn't just be this place, it should be every place with a cross on top, all across America, all across the world.

But it takes you showing up in the place you are, with what you have in your hands, with what you got, to start the movement.

I've seen a movement start in your teenagers.

Nothing affects me more than seeing their lives change than when they say, Pastor, will you baptize me?

I will go.

When I see 70 kids out here with their arms raised, worshiping, because they have learned about a good God, a God that loves them, and that's what they get more than anything.

He loves me.

And the littles, your children, I'm telling you, they're not over there being watched by somebody right now, they're over there learning Jesus right now.

That's what's going on in that place.

Because there's a few people that show up day after day after day, Sunday after Sunday, they give their time, their resources, and maybe you're not called that way.

Maybe you're called in giving.

Maybe that's how you can help.

Maybe you bring in 58 cases of water is the way that you show up and not one of it is a miss.

Clay uses this analogy of this big, beautiful puzzle.

I don't like puzzles, because that requires attention span, and mine's like, died 20 minutes ago.

I'm playing.

If one piece is gone, the picture isn't complete.

I don't care what you've been through.

I don't care what you've done.

There's a God that'll heal it.

There's a God that'll forgive it.

There's a God that'll restore it, and we won't be the same picture without you.

We need you and all of you, and what would it look like if the whole church came together and we all joined arms and we started marching to the beat of his drum?

The light would shine brighter than the darkness, and the darkness must flee.

We would be a city on a hill, a light or a lamp on a lampstand.

That is this place.

So I ask you to get on mission, get on board.

Let's change the world.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for your grace, your mercy, your kindness.

Thank you for what you're doing in the life of this church and churches all around this world, Lord.

And I just ask that you would move in every heart, in the heart of every man, woman, child, that we might lift up your name, that we might edify one another, that we might glorify you, that we might hold each other in our pain, that we might share our burdens and cast all of our cares on the cross that you gave us.

Father, we love you.

We praise you.

And all God's children said, amen.