John 1:14-18 - Been There, Done That

Main Idea: We need to believe in and follow the God who knows every aspect of our existence.

JESUS HAS EXPERIENCED EVERYTHING THAT BEING HUMAN ENTAILS (vs. 14-15)

• He experienced human life and difficulties.

• He experienced temptations and overcame them.

• He displayed God’s design for our lives.

JESUS HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR STORY (vs. 16-17)

• He sovereignly directed your background and history.

• He has given you every blessing and necessity you’ve received.

• He wants to be directly involved in your life.

JESUS, OUR GOD, HOLDS ALL POWER AND AUTHORITY (v. 18)

• Jesus has freely offered sinful people a personal, eternal relationship with a holy God.

• Jesus is King of all and will one day be the known King of Earth.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)

We are in week two of a study of John 1-4. We've entitled the series, I say we, it's the royal we. I entitled the series, The Word Became Flesh, because of what we'll read today in verse number 14.

And in the gospel of John, this was one of the eyewitnesses of Jesus' life while he was here on earth. One of the people that was closest to him, one of the 12 men that traveled with him most every day for about three, three and a half years.

And this is the account that he wrote to tell the early churches, who was Jesus? What was he like? What did he say?

What did he do? And in John's gospel account, the word gospel, it means good news. So in his account of Jesus' life, he says at the end of the book, why he wrote everything that he wrote in it.

And he says there are two reasons. He says, number one, I want you to know who Jesus is.

And number two, I want you to know why he came to earth, specifically so that we would believe on him, that we would realize that he is the Savior, and that we are called to embrace everything that he has for us, and to follow him with our life.

Last week, from verses 1 through 13 of John 1, we saw that Jesus is God, and that he came so that we would know him personally, and believe in him, and become part of his family, like we sang about this morning, that we would become children of God.

Today, we're going to be looking at verses 14 through 18, and I've entitled the message today, been there, done that, been there, done that. I think being a tour guide would be a ton of fun.

You get to know a topic, a place, a route so well, that you could then describe to everyone else for days, after days, after weeks, after months. You could tell them everything that you know about this topic.

Some of my friends have gone to Israel, and Owen, I'll have you go to that particular slide with the random individuals. So these are some of my friends, Rob, Beth, Hannah, and Dennis, and they're on staff at our old church in Washington state.

And Dennis has actually been to Israel, man, I want to say at least seven or so times over the past seven years, and he has worked with an individual that has led many tours of the Holy Land and seen all of the locations that we would read about in

our scripture and being able to see it with their own eyes. And they've remarked often about what an incredible experience it is to see, if you will, the Bible come to life, that this isn't just a faraway fairy tale.

These were real events that took place at real locations in time that you can visit even today. And when they go to Israel, they don't just rely on perhaps the maps in the back of your Bible that you might find today or in the back of your pew Bible.

They go with a tour guide. The tour guide knows these are the areas of Israel you don't want to visit. These are places where you might be in danger.

You don't want to go to this area. Maybe there was a town there during Bible times, but now it's under about seven feet worth of dirt. Here are the places where you want to go.

Here's the markets that you want to go to, where you will not be pickpocketed and where you might be able to get the best deals. You would trust your tour guide to take you where you needed to go in a specific place.

I had some friends last year that went to Spain and to Portugal, and they heavily relied on their tour guide. Why would we believe that? Because it's their entire job.

Because they've been there hundreds, if not thousands of times. And so we can believe them when they say, oh yeah, I've been there, done that. Today, we can see that John describes for us that our Lord has been there and done that.

So we can rely on him. We can trust him. John will spend the remaining 21 chapters of his gospel recounting for us that we can trust in Jesus because no matter the circumstance or the difficulty, Jesus has been there and done that.

When he talks to us about life, temptation, hardships, and even death itself, we can trust him because he has experienced it. Today, we'll look at this truth that we need to believe in and follow the God who knows every aspect of our existence.

Let's pray. We'll read through the scripture and look at our points for today. Dear Jesus, thank you.

Thank you that we have comfort in this world, not because everything will always go well, but because even when things go horribly wrong, you understand. It's not foreign to you.

It's not something that took you by surprise or that you haven't gone through victoriously already. God, we ask today that you would speak to our hearts. Lord, please be with the words that I speak.

I would only say what you have me to. Lord, we love you. Prayer all of this in your name.

Let's do this first. Let's read John 1, 14 through 18. The word, Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us.

We observed His glory, the glory, as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John, the baptizer, testified concerning him and exclaimed, This was the one of whom I said, The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me. Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from His fullness.

For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son who is himself God and is at the Father's side, He has revealed Him.

As John continues here, he reminds us again of one of these main initial people that 2,000 years ago were one of the first ones to proclaim Jesus. John the Baptizer. He was one you can read about in Luke chapter 1.

His story, a relative of Jesus, his mother was Jesus' mother's cousin. I'm sure some of you perhaps that no more name etymology would know, it's a great aunt, it's a second cousin, thrice removed.

But John, commonly called John the Baptist, he was one that he had a message that he was declaring to 1st century Israel.

That the one, the word, the promised Messiah, the one that for centuries before the prophets of Israel had said, God has promised there's going to be a deliverer, there's going to come a Savior, there's going to come a King.

And John was the last of those prophets to say, Jesus is coming, he's on the way. We're going to see more of John's preaching next week, but today John, the writer of this gospel, the apostle, he weaves together both his thoughts and John's.

He starts off by saying that the Word, this God from all eternity past, he became flesh in what's called the incarnation, and he dwelt among us. What an incredible thought. There is no other world view quite like this one.

As you look at perhaps the different religions and gods of the world, it's very often the case that one would look up to the heavens and think about gods up there, the ones that are far away.

If you look even at the ancient stories of Greece and of Egypt, they would imagine their gods coming down to earth, but not as humans. They would still just be gods. But the Christian statement is that our God became flesh.

As we learned at the beginning of the year in Philippians chapter 2, that though he was equal with God, though he was God himself, Jesus, it says, took on himself the form, the clothing of a servant, of a simple slave, and he was born in the likeness

of men. He came down and he looked just like us. He encountered everything that we would encounter. And he didn't just live on perhaps high off mountains.

He came and he lived with people. He had his brothers and sisters that, as we would read about through the accounts, they didn't even believe in him until after he had raised from the dead.

He had parents that sometimes he disagreed with, as you would read about in Luke chapter 2. He encountered everything that you and I face. What a wonder that God would humble himself enough to come to humanity.

And John also says in verse 14 that we observed his glory, that to look at Jesus, to look at what made Jesus special or unique, was to see God himself. He says he had the glory as the one and only son from the Father.

The word there, monogenes, it's one of a kind, if you will, totally unique. As if you got an older translation, might read begotten, that same thought, that Jesus was one of a kind.

It's the same type of word that is used to describe Abraham's son Isaac in Hebrews 11, that though Isaac wasn't the only son of Abraham, he was the unique, one of a kind, special son of Abraham.

And that's what John tells us, this is who Jesus was, that he was not like any other person or being, he was unique. And then it says to know Jesus was to know that he was full of grace and truth. Our world desperately needs both of those things.

If we have all grace, all kindness, all forgiveness, and no truth, then everyone would go their own way, do whatever seems right to them, and we can look around at our world today and see that that doesn't end well, that we don't always make the

right decisions. If God was all grace and no truth, we'd be hopeless, it'd be anarchy.

But if God was all truth and no grace, as we read about from Psalm 103, if God dealt with us like our sins, our iniquities, our transgressions deserved, we'd be wiped out. The wages, the earnings of our failures is death.

But Jesus was full of grace and truth. That to the men that thought that they were far away, above, and more righteous than anyone else, he brought the truth of God's word that said, all have sinned and come short of God's glory.

To those that were overcome by their sin, taken in adultery, Jesus gave grace to them. He did not condemn them and offered forgiveness. What a God this is.

Verse number 15, John the Baptist gave his account of what he saw about him. It says this, Jesus was the one about whom I said the one coming after me ranks ahead of me. He's more important than me because he existed before me.

The testimony of this last prophet was a realization that Jesus was not just a person. He was not just another prophet.

This was God from all eternity past, even as was prophesied in the Old Testament in Micah 5 2, among other places, that the everlasting God, the one who had no birth, was born and came into this world. That was John's testimony.

Verse 16, we can see indeed, we've all received grace upon grace from Jesus's fullness. This is for the law was given through Moses.

God's demands of right and wrong, of good and bad, of evil and justice, that was given through Moses, 1500, 1200 years prior to Jesus. This is, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Just knowing that we had messed it up, that we hadn't gone along with God's plan, that we were in danger of our soul's demise, that wasn't what God wanted for us. So he sent Jesus so that we would know that God has grace and forgiveness for us.

And then verse 18 says, no one has ever seen God. There's an old hymn, immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light, inaccessible, hidden from our eyes. Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, thy great name we praise.

And Jesus, though we, because of our sin, even as God had told Moses many centuries before, he told him when Moses asked, hey, can I see your face? And God said, it would destroy you. You'd be burned up instantly in the presence of my holiness.

He says, but I'll allow you to see my back. And Jesus, in full face, came, and people interacted with him, that we could see God himself. And we were not consumed.

We weren't destroyed. The earth didn't burn up through his presence.

And Jesus revealed to us the fullness of the Father's heart, that he did not want anyone to perish, no one to be condemned, but that everyone would come to repentance, that everyone would know the life that he made them for.

But we didn't just receive that offer. Instead, that face, that face of God that we could see, we spat on it. We ripped his beard out from his face.

We placed a crown of thorns in the top of it. We hit him. And yet, Jesus' response was not, erase the world.

Let's do a do-over. He died in our place. He cried out from the cross, Father, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing.

John, several decades now after Jesus' life, as he reflects on it, he says, no one saw God the Father before, but we saw God the Son, and God the Son showed us who the Father was.

This morning, as we see that big picture, everything Jesus was and did, His mission, I want you to notice three things from this passage for your life. Number one, Jesus has experienced everything that being human entails.

This is found in verses 14 and 15, where the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He, if you will, He set up His tabernacle, His tent. He made a home with where we were.

First, I want us to notice that Jesus experienced human life and difficulties. Many of you are currently experiencing human life and difficulties, and Jesus is no stranger to that. It does not mean that God does not love you.

It does not mean that He does not see you. It does not mean even that He is not actively giving His grace and supporting you in your time. Why would I say that?

Because Jesus went through all of this Himself. He experienced human life and difficulties. Isaiah 53 would prophesy this about Jesus.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from. He was despised and we didn't value Him.

Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains. But we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. John 11.35 would tell us that Jesus wept.

He cried. He experienced homelessness, as we would read about in Luke 9.58. He suffered hunger several times in Matthew 4.2 and Mark 12, among other places.

Jesus was misunderstood and maligned and insulted by His own family, as we would read about in Mark chapter 3. And He was so overcome with stress the night before His death that He actually sweat out drops of blood.

It's a rare medical condition that I won't try to pronounce for you today. Jesus knows what it's like to go through this life and its difficulties.

Hebrews chapter 4 tells us that we do not have a high priest, the one who stands before the Father on our behalf.

We don't have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted, tested in every way as we are, yet without sin.

Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Today, know that God is not against you. I love that bridge from the song, Who You Say I Am.

I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who you say I am. You are for me, not against me.

I am who you say I am. The Lord is not looking to make your life miserable. Instead, as you go through this fallen, sin-cursed world, the exact same as Jesus did, know that Jesus knows and that he wants to give you help through your life.

He has a purpose for your suffering.

The Apostle Paul would tell us in Colossians 1 that even as he was going through suffering, as he was shipwrecked, as he was rejected, even at times while he was stoned from his own fellow Jews who rejected his message, as he went through all of

those sufferings, he described it as, I am filling up in my body the sufferings that Christ hadn't suffered. He says, anytime that I'm going through a difficulty, I know that when Jesus suffers, it brings life to others, that the punishment that went

on Jesus, it bought salvation for us, that when Jesus suffers, it leads to the betterment of others. And so Paul says, when I suffer, I know that God's doing something for someone else.

In 2 Corinthians 1, he would tell us that God comforts us in our suffering, so that we would be able to comfort others. We'd be able to pass on to them the same comfort that we have received.

Today, do you view your suffering as pointless, as empty, or are you asking God, God, will you please show me how this suffering can point others to you? Secondly, today, we see that Jesus experienced temptations and overcame them.

It wasn't just difficulties in life. It wasn't just hunger or homelessness that Jesus experienced. He also experienced temptation, that desire for sin.

Jesus faced every type of temptation to sin that we do.

Many of us are familiar with Satan's three large temptations of Christ in the wilderness, where Satan tempted Jesus to step outside of the Father's design plan and take what he wanted on his own timetable in his own way.

However, at the end of that account, we read that Satan left Jesus for a season.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, in Peter's rebuke of Christ's death on the cross, and in countless other unnamed moments, Jesus was faced with the choice of his own way or his Father's way. And he chose the Father's way.

For your temptations and struggles and sins today, know that you do not have to bow to your sin. Jesus' Holy Spirit lives in you if you know Christ as Savior. And he is leading you to love over hatred and apathy.

He is working joy into your personal anger and sadness. He's moving peace into your anxiety and unsettledness. He's working patience into your short temper, kindness into your rudeness and so many other things.

When you're tempted today, what do you do? Do you remain in situations and circumstances where you are consistently put to the test? Or do you, like Joseph, run as Paul encouraged Timothy?

Do you flee, run from youthful temptations? Do you pray and ask Jesus for help? Do you memorize verses to help you combat the evil that is present in your heart, as in all of our hearts?

Psalm 119, David wrote, I have hid your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you. Jesus experienced human life and difficulties. He experienced temptations and overcame them, and he displayed God's design for our lives.

1 Peter 2 and verse 21 says this, Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. Want to know how to love people? Look at Jesus.

Want to know how to interact with a hostile government? Read what Jesus did. Do you want to pray?

Look at how Jesus told us to pray. Want to know what discipleship or following God looks like? Look what Jesus modeled with the lives of those around him.

Jesus has experienced everything that being human entails. So trust him. When he says in his word, here's how to live the life that's ahead of you.

You can believe him because he's gone through everything that you have, but he's done it all correctly. And he's offering you the path forward.

Secondly today, not only has Jesus experienced everything that being human entails, and so we can trust him in general, but Jesus has been involved in every moment of your story.

And see this in verses 16 and 17 where John writes, Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

First today, I want you to realize that Jesus has sovereignly directed your background and your history.

As John looks back decades later from Jesus' life on earth, he doesn't just say, At that time, those people that interacted with him received grace upon grace from his fullness. He says we have all received.

He realized that Jesus wasn't just present from BC 3 to AD 29. Jesus as eternal God has been involved in every point and moment in your life. In Psalm 139, David would write this, Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I stand up, you understand my thoughts from far away. You observe my travels and my rest. You are aware of all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it, Lord. You have encircled me. You have placed your hand on me.

Jesus knows when you sat down today. Jesus knows what you're going to say to someone in five minutes when you go, Hey, do we have lunch plans? Jesus knows every aspect of your background and your history.

So you can trust Him. It will not always lead to happy good times. It didn't result in that for Jesus.

And if Jesus, the perfect one, didn't experience only sunny good days with blessings and generosity, then why should we expect a better life than Jesus lived?

We can see this even in the Old Testament in the story of Joseph, a boy that at about 16 or 17 years of age was sold into slavery by his brothers. He became a slave. He was in the country of Egypt.

He was raised within his place of work to about the highest position that he could be at that time, was falsely accused, was thrown into prison, was faithful even there, rose to about the highest place that he could be within that system.

And then God brought him into leadership in the country of Egypt and made it so that he was able to provide food eventually for even his family that had once rejected him and sold him.

And their response to him was fear that he was going to bring retribution for what they had done. And his answer to them was, You planned evil against me. Wrong took place.

It was not good that I was sold into slavery. It was not good that I was falsely accused. It was not good that you did me harm.

He says, You planned evil against me. God planned it for good to bring about the present result, the survival of many people. Your background in history might include some awful things.

It might be that abuse. It might be that rejection. It might be that incredible hardships and loss have been in your history.

I want you to know God did not do that to you. There was no evil planned against you from God. But what humans, what the circumstances around you intended to bring evil into your life, God has planned it for good.

You might not know right now what that good looks like, but if you're here today breathing, I know that God has a plan for you. That he wants to work it out for your good and for his glory, as he tells us in Romans 8.

The writer of much of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, would put it this way, talking about his own story. He says, You have heard about my former way of life in Judaism. I intensely persecuted God's church and tried to destroy it.

I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.

But God, who from my mother's womb set me apart and called me by his grace, he was pleased to reveal his son in me so that I could preach him among the Gentiles. Paul here says, I was vigilantly fighting against God's design for my life.

He says, But from the time that I was in my mother's womb, God had a plan for me. And can I tell you, God does have a plan for you.

It might not look the way that you would want it to, but I promise you, the end result of God's plan is so much better than anything you could ever imagine for yourself.

He has a way of bringing hope into hopeless situations, of bringing life from the dead. Jesus, of all people, ought to remind us of that truth.

Jesus has sovereignly directed your background and your history, so you can believe in Him, you can trust Him, you have received His grace. We can see this, that He has given us every blessing and necessity that we have ever received.

Some people mistakenly think that God has never done anything for them, but the testimony of Scripture is that everything, every good thing that we have ever enjoyed has come from His hand.

James 1.17 says, Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Matthew chapter 5 says, God causes His Son to rise on the evil and the good, and He sends rain, that provision for crops, on the righteous and the unrighteous. That God has given us every breath in our lungs.

God has given you the clothes that you wear today. God gave you the ability to be able to be here through transportation, either from a friend or your own vehicle. God has given you the health to be able to be here.

God loves you, and He has sustained you every moment of your life so that you are here. Don't think that He does not care about you. He loves you.

And because He has sustained you all of your life so far, believe that He will continue to. Romans chapter 5 verses 6 through 8 says this, While we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For rarely will someone die for a just person, though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That God, He loves you so much.

Every moment of your life, He has been pursuing you. Scripture would tell us, all of us like sheep have wandered away. We've turned every person to their own way.

But God laid on Jesus all of our sins, all of our failures. Jesus took it on Himself so that we would be reconciled to God. Have you received that gift of salvation?

Have you turned to Him? Because, thirdly, Jesus wants to be directly involved in your life.

Jesus does not just want to work behind the scenes of providing for your needs, of giving you health, of giving you every opportunity and good thing and relationship and pleasure that you enjoy in this life.

He doesn't just want to be involved in your behind the scenes. He wants to be directly involved. So pray to him.

Talk to him over and over and over again in scripture. We are called to pray to the Lord, to go to him with our needs, our requests, our outrage about injustice. God calls for us to bring it to him.

Have Jesus be directly involved in your life by following his commands. That what he has laid out for us in his word is not to bum you out. It is not to make your life more difficult.

It is so that you can enjoy the life that he created you for. Have God directly involved in your life by loving his family. That might involve talking to another person, and I know that stabs some of you, but I promise you it's worth it.

For God to be involved in your life, Ephesians 4 would tell us one of the ways in which Jesus blesses us, that he is involved in our lives, is through using others in the body of Christ to bring us to spiritual maturity.

That through a love and relationship with one another, we would find out that God loves us, that we're not perfect. There are areas in our lives that need shored up, and through connection with other people, we are able to encourage them.

They're able to encourage us. We can comfort, and there can be growth that takes place. But God wants to be involved in your life through you interacting with His family.

Sorry, guys. Jesus wants to be involved in your life through you telling other people about Him. Don't let Jesus be the secret relationship in your life.

Let it be something obvious, that for someone to know you is to know that you know Jesus and that you want them to know Jesus. Jesus wants you or wants to be directly involved in your life, so read His word. Spend time.

Hear about who He is, what He thinks, how He tells you to interact with this world. Read about the victories that He has won, that then in your struggles, you can turn back and say, God, I know that you were there for Abraham.

I know that you were there for Joseph. I know that you were there for Moses. And God, I need you to be there and work in my life.

Make the reality of God's world, make that your reality. Live life through the lens of Jesus being directly involved.

And lastly today, I want us to realize that not only has Jesus experienced everything that being human entails, not only has Jesus been involved in every moment of your life, but Jesus, our God, holds all power and authority.

Verse 18, what John says about Jesus is he's the one and only son. He is the completely unique one. And it says he is himself God and is at the Father's side.

That he reigns in power now and forever. His power and authority means that Jesus has freely offered sinful people a personal, eternal relationship with a holy God. All of us are sinners.

We've all missed the mark. If you don't think you've missed the mark, ask your best friend. They will let you know all of the ways in which you have missed the mark.

We are all sinners. There is a punishment for sin, but Jesus came down and took the punishment for sin on himself so that you could be reconciled to God.

Now he offers that free gift, that it doesn't come through human works, it doesn't come through financial generosity, it doesn't come through perhaps magical waters and a baptism.

It comes through acknowledging your state before God, believing in your heart that Jesus is who he said he was, God himself, believing that he died and was buried and rose again, and confessing him as your Lord, the one who is to be your master, the

one in charge of your life. Jesus offered that freely, that he has revealed the Father's heart. It was not sacrifices, it wasn't greatness, it wasn't a particular ethnic pedigree that endeared people to God.

It was faith, it was belief, and a turning to him away from everything else that this world offers. I want us all to see that Jesus is King of all, and will one day be the known King of the earth.

That is, he reigns on the throne of heaven now, and one day he's coming back. So we are called to submit to him now. Matthew 25 says this, When the son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Revelation 21 says this, I heard a loud voice from the throne.

Look, God's dwelling is with humanity. Jesus didn't just come to live with us once. He's coming again forever in strength and in power.

It says, look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more. Grief, crying, and pain will be no more because the previous things have passed away. Then the one seated on the throne said, look, I am making everything new.

He also said, right, because these words are faithful and true. Then he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life. The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

But the cowards, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

When that day comes, when Jesus returns as king, not just in heaven above, but in earth below, will you be one who chose God, who chose Jesus' payment for your sin, or will you be one who rejected him and the life that is found only in his nature?

There is no life, there is no everlasting joy to be found outside of God's presence. He is life, and there is no life outside of him. Today, where are you at in your relationship with God?

Maybe you've known him, maybe you are a believer, but as you've been going through your life, you've been falling to temptation. You've been struggling with the difficulties that life brings, and you don't know if God is there for you.

You don't know if he hates you, if he's turned his back on you. What Jesus tells us, the tour guide to life with God. He lets us know, if you're going through struggles, I've been there.

I'm with you. I am giving you grace to go through each moment. If I didn't have life easy, there is no guarantee for an easy life for you, but you can go through it with my presence, with my Holy Spirit, with God's family coming alongside of you.

To encourage you and to help you, so that you can give comfort and you can give encouragement to others who are in that position. You can find strength to overcome temptation, just as Jesus overcame temptation.

And you can rest in him, his plan for your life, knowing it might not be the way I wanted to write it. But it's his plan. It's his world.

He's the king and I can trust in him. Today, if you don't know Christ as your Savior, let today be that day. None of us are guaranteed another moment.

I officiated a funeral on Friday and was reminded once again of the fact that none of us are guaranteed another day. Don't put off a relationship with God. He is far too valuable to go a moment without.

Today, will you choose to believe in and to follow the God who knows every aspect of your existence?