Day 3 dealing with trials

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Well, hello everybody. Glad to be back with you on this Facebook Live telecast. And this is Bentley. Bentley is trying to get my attention, but I'm going to have to let him go now. Glad to be back with you guys.

And I'll tell you, I have a lot to cover tonight. Last night in the broadcast, it didn't work very well. And so I ended up having to take it down. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you some of the highlights from last night. And then I'll continue to give you a little bit more information as we move toward seven consecutive nights that we're going to be dealing with the subject matter.

And as promised on the last night, I'm going to be sharing with you guys what I call the secret to life. So I want you to stay tuned for that. But if you recall, we began the first night, a couple nights ago, by telling you the story of what happened with Cindy back in 2009. At the end of 2008, I shared with you that God gave me a word. And it actually was five words.

My people are not prepared. And I told you that at the time I wasn't really sure what God meant by that. But it didn't take long since the crash happened at the end of 2008. We began to see a steady stream of people coming into counseling offices whose marriages were falling apart. Their world was falling apart.

And it was all because of the financial crisis and their current circumstances. And I reminded you that someone once said that trials in life do not make a person. They reveal them. And so what the crisis did was it really it revealed the lack of substance or depth that was absent from the relationship all along. And so it wasn't the circumstances.

It was that we weren't prepared for those circumstances. And I'm afraid, dear ones, that the same thing is true in much of the body of Christ today. We've become complacent. We've become comfortable. And as a result, we're not prepared.

Certainly, I think in this case for the virus that's it's on us right now, nor are we prepared for the things that might come down the pike a little bit later. So I began sharing a couple of nights ago that when Cindy went through her ordeal, we almost lost her back in 2009 to H1N1 double pneumonia. She was in ICU for four and a half months being kept alive by machines. So much similarity to what is happening tragically to so many people today. And in her case, it was a miracle.

God spared her. The doctors said that she wasn't going to make it. There was zero chance for survival. They sent her home basically to die. And so the doctors, even now, they don't understand how this could possibly have happened.

But we know how it happened. But during that process of that journey for six months dealing with the potential loss of my wife and my whole family being involved in this, God taught us so many different things. And what ended up happening over the years is we distilled many of those things down. There were six powerful principles that God taught us in the midst of the struggle that he wants me to share publicly. And I've been doing that now for the last 10 years.

So what I'm doing each night is I'm unpacking an element of those leading toward a culmination in a few nights that I think you're going to want to stay tuned for. The first one that we dealt with was the question, are you believing and expecting? And here's how this works in the midst of your struggle, whatever you may be struggling with right now in the middle of it on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate yourself? Are you believing and are you expecting God to show up? And if you missed that, you can scroll down on this Facebook page and you can see that video from a couple of nights ago.

The second area that we had to come to terms with, I shared last night and that's the one I had to take off. On that occasion, I was headed to the hospital one day and I was kind of whining about where we were at that time. Cindy was not doing well at all. And I think I mentioned in that broadcast that I was whining and I consider myself a professional whiner, you know. And as I was whining, I really felt like I heard God kind of tap on my shoulder and ask me this question.

He says, Vince, is there anything that you think you might be grateful for? And I knew immediately that had to be God because that wouldn't be a question I would normally ask myself. And so I said yes. OK, well, he wouldn't let me get away with yes. So he pressed in and I know what he said was, why don't you tell me what you're grateful for, Vince?

And so I did. I started rehearsing the things that I'm grateful for. And I had a whole list of things. I was so grateful for my wife and for all the things that have happened throughout our 50 years of marriage. I was so grateful for my daughters and for their husbands and the way their families all know Jesus.

So grateful for all the opportunities we've had for ministry, for my extended family, which is what on and on and on about how grateful I was and what I discovered along the way is that it's impossible to rehearse the things that you're grateful for and whine at the same time. And it was a principle that God was trying to teach me to get my eyes off of my circumstances and begin to focus on the positive side of the ledger, the side where he is in control. And so I was drawn to a couple of verses that I shared the other night. And I want to share them with you because I think they're very, very important. The first is found in Ephesians 5, 15 to 21.

Let me read these to you. I could spend days unpacking these verses because they're so powerful. But Ephesians 5, 15 to 21 says this. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. And of course, we know, guys, we're living in days that are increasingly more and more evil.

Therefore, it says, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. We could spend a lot of time on that one. Okay. And do not be drunk with wine, which is dispensation, but be filled with the Spirit. Man, that's a powerful one right there.

In fact, our pastor, Steve Holt, at the Road at Chapel Hills, has been really talking about the importance as believers to really be filled with the Spirit. We really need to grasp what that really means. I don't have time to unpack that now, but let's move on. Speaking to one another in Psalms, in hymns, in spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. That's a powerful picture of worshiping God.

And listen to this. Then it says, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Giving thanks to the Lord in all things. Remembering our relationship with the Lord and all the wonderful things he's done in our life and just having a grateful, grateful heart. So the message here is in the midst of your struggle, do you have a grateful heart?

On a scale of one to ten, where do you think you are right now? Do you find yourself focusing on the negatives? Do you find yourself tuning into the media and all the news channels and getting all of this information and having it cause you to go crazy? Or are you focusing on the Lord? Let me read another scripture.

In fact, this particular scripture is one of my favorite in all the Bible. It's a picture, a powerful picture of what the nation of Israel got back in the Old Testament. It's found in 2 Chronicles 5.13. Listen to what it says. It says the trumpeters and singers joined in unison as with one voice to give praise and thanks to the Lord.

They were praising him and thanking him. If you look up thankfulness or a thankful heart or thanksgiving or any of these things that have to do with thanking God, you will be amazed at the hundreds and hundreds of verses in the Bible that talk about this. In the Old Covenant, giving thanks to the Lord, there's verse after verse describing the nation of Israel going out and the trumpeters and singers at the head of the army. They're going into battle. They're going into tough stuff.

They're going right in the middle of the fight, which is what we're in right now, guys, with what's going on around us. We're going into the middle of the fight. But in the midst of it, they gave thanks to the Lord. And on and on and on it says as they're giving thanks to the Lord and as they're praising God. Listen, many passages would say, and their enemies were defeated.

In this particular passage, listen to what it says. They give thanks to the Lord. And then accompanied by trumpets, symbols and other instruments, they raise their voices and praise to the Lord, saying, He is good. His love endures forever. And so they're really, really thanking God.

And then right after it says all of that, it paints this picture. Here's the next word. Then I love it when the word then shows up because then is a transitional word. It means as a result of what has just been described, this is what took place. Then it says the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud.

Oh, man. What guys you got to get this. What was the cloud on the old covenant? The cloud was actually the physical representation of God. It was God showed up in person right in that right as a result of that in the temple.

Now, of course, where did God reside in the old covenant? We know it was the tent, the tabernacle, the temple, the ark. It was a physical place. Jesus came. He died on the cross.

He gave himself up. It says the temple curtain was rent. Did the temple leave planet Earth? No. The good news for us and the great mystery that we are living under right now is that the temple didn't leave planet Earth.

The temple is now right here in us. So what am I saying? If you paraphrase all of this, God's the same today as he was then. As we give thanks to the Lord, as we honor him, as we praise him, as we worship him, he still comes into the temple. Everybody in the temple now is us.

We don't have to go to a physical location. It's right here. So in the midst of your struggle, do you have a thankful heart? Now, I want to move on to the third thing. Are you believing in it and are you expecting?

That was the first one. Do you have a thankful heart in the midst of your struggle? Now, let me tell you the third thing that he taught me. And this is really pretty profound. On this particular occasion, I was driving to the hospital and I will never forget what God spoke to me.

I'm driving there and I'm feeling kind of down. And the Lord again taps me on the shoulder and says, Vince, are you sure in the midst of this whole situation that you are letting go? And I thought, wow, what an odd question, Lord. Am I hearing you right? Are you asking me if I'm letting go?

Lord, what do you mean am I letting go? I mean, there's nothing I can do to… I'm not a medical doctor. I can't help my wife. Listen, guys, there's nothing you can do really to cause this virus that's in our culture right now to go away.

You can't control it. You can do the things that you need to do and that you're called to do, but at the end of the day, you have no control. And certainly that was the case with me. So it was confusing to me. But what God kind of pressed upon my heart very sensitively was this idea.

Even though we can't control something, it doesn't mean that anxiety and fear well up in us. And sometimes the less control we have, the more anxious we are. And oftentimes it's not something that you can identify right away. It's just there. It's just hovering.

OK, and that was the case with me. Anxiousness was welling up. And I really believe there is a spiritual principle here that what God is asking us to do is to chill, to relax, to let go and to let him be the one who rules over all of our circumstances. And that is sometimes very difficult for us to do, particularly if we have a nature in us that wants to fix things and wants to control things. There is a poem.

The author is unknown, but it goes like this. As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last I snatched them back and cried, How can you be so slow? My child, he said, What could I do?

You never did. Let go. And I think for many of us, there's a lesson to be learned, maybe in that little tender poem that suggests that we have to come to a place where we back away and we let God in. Now, let me tell you what happened as a result of my hearing from the Lord about this. That night, it may have been that night or the very next night, I got a call from the hospital telling me that I needed to get there as quickly as possible because my wife was not likely to survive until the next morning.

I was scared. I got in my car. It took me an hour to get there. When I got there, I went right into the ICU. And in that room, there's just a little bitty room.

They didn't even have time to take her out of the room. A little bitty room that was there and she was not doing well at all. And so I went in and there was a private moment where everybody else left. And I was in there. And what I did, I had to somehow try to remember.

I kneeled by her bed. I held her hand up like this. And I prayed a prayer to the Lord. And it was a prayer of letting go because I believe that's what God called me to do. Now, I don't remember exactly all the words that I that I spoke during that prayer.

But as best as I could, after I was done, I went in and I wrote them down as best as I could remember so that I could share them or refer to them later as best as I can crawl. Now, this is what I said. I said, Lord, you love this precious woman way more than any human can imagine. Please forgive me for not remembering at times that she belongs to you, not me. Let me pause there for just a second and suggest to all of us that nothing in life really belongs to us.

Everything is on loan from God. We'll be called to how we steward those things one day, but they're not ours. OK, and I want to say this. Thank you for giving her to me and for touching my life through her in ways that are unbelievable. Lord, I now release her to you.

I ask you, Lord, to reach down right now. And as I physically let this hand go from mine to yours in the natural that in the spiritual realm, you will have your way. Your destiny for Cindy is not mine to control. Whatever future you have in mind for her, I humbly submit to your will. Now, I'm sure you recognize that that was not a prayer of releasing her for the Lord to take her home.

And by the way, let me just say there are times when a prayer like that is appropriate. That was certainly the case when Cindy's ninety five year old mother was in a hospice and she was ready to go home. That was a different kind of situation. But that's not the nature of this prayer. What I was praying is, Lord, I give her to you.

You're going to control the situation. I am going to back away. And I really meant that. But then at that point, I found myself living in what I call kind of a spiritual tweener. It's kind of this weird in-between place where on the one hand, I know God is in control, but there are two potential outcomes, one that I'm going to like a lot.

OK, which is actually what happened and one that's going to be very painful. You know, people have asked me, they've said, Vince, if God had taken her home, would your message be any different? And I can honestly tell you, no, it wouldn't be any different. But would that have been the case in the very beginning? Probably not.

God had to take me to a through a series of these kinds of events to remind me that it's about him and he knows best. So in the midst of your struggle, here's the words that you need to write down and you need to measure on a scale of one to ten. In the midst of your struggle, are you letting go? Are you letting go? And again, you can't control anything that's going on.

But are you finding yourself being anxious? And here's another thing. Are you on a roller coaster ride? I was on a roller coaster ride for so much. I mean, I found myself up one day and then down and then up and then down.

And you're going to find yourself in the same place, even dealing with what we're dealing with in our culture right now. There are some days that you're going to be high and you're going to say, wow, you're going to think positively. There are other days when you're really going to be down. What God's calling you to do is to be consistent. And the only way you can do that is to get out of the way and let him fill the void.

Are you letting go? And it reminds me of a verse in Ephesians 5, 15 to 20. Let me read this to you and unpack it just for a moment. Ephesians 5, 15 to 20 says, Be careful then how you live. Not as unwise.

Oh, I'm sorry. I already read that one. It's not Ephesians 5. There's another place I wanted to draw your attention to. Hang on just one second.

This is found in Proverbs 4, 25 and 26. Proverbs 4, 25 and 26. And this is kind of interesting because these verses were actually the verses that I used when I started on Target Ministries. The original name for on Target Ministries was called Path Levelers, Inc. I know that's a mouthful.

Path Levelers, Inc. We had to change the name because people kept calling us to move dirt, you know. And so Path Levelers, Inc. It was taken from this verse in Proverbs 4, 25 and 26. It says this.

Let your eyes look straight ahead. Okay. Fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. It's the idea that we want to be on level ground.

We want to avoid the roller coaster. We want to avoid these ups and downs that really will take its toll on us if we're not careful. So again, in the midst of all of this, do you find yourself on the roller coaster? Do you find yourself trying to control things that you can't control? Let me encourage you to let it go.

And like I said on the very first broadcast, and I'll continue to say this, the answer to all of this, guys, is our relationship with God, spending time alone with him every single day, reading the Word, praying, praising him every single day. Now, most of you know that I'm sequestered right now because there's a tremendous risk with Cindy still. Even though she's doing very well, the scar tissue on her lungs makes it a very high risk. If I were to go out and bring something home, it would be devastating for her. So I'm kind of imposing it upon myself.

And I know that many of you right now, you're being called to be sequestered by your government or local authorities. And let me just encourage you, that's okay. Use the time wisely. If you're married, spend more time with him. I mean, Cindy and I have been married 55 years, and we're just having a ball.

We're picking up on things we probably should have been doing a long time ago. We're finding the time to really drill down. We're working on our relationship. We're working on stuff around the home. But the main thing is we're spending a lot of time in prayer and a lot of time with the Lord.

And the more we do that, guys, the more peace we have. And again, peace is really, really important. And we're going to be talking about that a lot more tomorrow as we unpack this whole idea of what God is really looking for in us and the contrast between the peace Jesus is calling us to have and the world's peace. And of course, we know that peace is the opposite of fear. And many of us are struggling right now with a little bit of fear.

So I'm looking forward to talking to you really directly tomorrow about how to overcome that fear more directly. Now, let me just say this before I close. If you go down this feed even a little bit more, you'll find a video that I produced probably about two or three days ago that deals with fear. It's about a 10, 12 minute video. I would really encourage you to go watch that.

And it will really unpack fear, the different biblical kinds of fear that are talked about. And hopefully that will minister to you and really help you. But between now and then, my prayer is that you will kind of chill. You'll spend time with God. You'll focus on him, not on your circumstances and the things that are all around you, that you will be safe and that God will do a mighty, mighty work in your current circumstances.

Let me just pray. Lord, thank you so much for all of my dear friends. Thank you, Lord, for all of my Facebook friends, all the people that are tuning in, many of them around the world. I thank you so much for On Target Ministries and our entire community with On Target Ministries. Again, many of them around the world.

There are people I know that are watching right now that are in New Zealand. I thank you for all of them, Lord. Bless them, because what's going on right now is a worldwide challenge. We know that. I thank you for all of our dear family at the Road at Chapel Hills, for our staff and our team and for all of our people.

Thank you and protect them mightily, Lord. But I pray especially for every one of the Sound of My Voice, Lord, for those that might be struggling with an anxiety that comes from a lack of control, from a natural kind of thing that happens when we can't make something happen, when we don't have any way of manipulating our circumstances. Oftentimes, these kind of anxious thoughts well up in us and can cause even physiological harm. I pray, Lord, that even tonight that you will descend upon every one of the Sound of My Voice now and give them a supernatural sense of your peace and that you would help them, Lord, understand that they need to bow wherever they are right now and just lift their hands and let all their burdens be taken by you. That they would actually let go, Lord, and let you have every care that they have on their shoulders right now.

And I thank you in advance, Lord, for what you're going to continue to do. And I pray, Lord, that everyone listening to this right now, I pray you give them a great, great night and a peaceful rest and peaceful sleep. And we look forward with great anticipation, Lord, of how you're going to continue to work through these difficult circumstances. We give you all the glory and honor and praise in Jesus' name and all God's kids said, Amen. Well, guys, it's been really great to be able to talk to you again.

I'm trying to keep these things relatively short. This video will be on our site. I'll go ahead and post it as soon as we're done here. Please feel free to share it with anybody you wish and encourage people maybe to tune in tomorrow night again at 7 p.m. Mountain Time.

And I look forward to meeting with you then. Until then, God bless you richly. Thank you.