Goosebump God

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Maybe you have even had a conversation with someone over a text message like you were seeing in this video right here. People doubting the presence of God, what he is doing, why should I believe, but all these different things. We want to be able to tackle these questions and today we want to center our hearts with Psalm 13. So if you have a Bible, open that up. If you have your phone and want to follow us along with our notes, that is there. Or if you just want to open up to Psalm 13, we are going to be reading together as a congregation verses 1-4. I love being able to read psalms because usually when I hear the psalmist or David saying these words spilling out his guts on scripture, I am just like, me too, me too. And so we are going to read this together and maybe you have experienced this and you can relate to exactly what the psalmist is going through. So Psalm 13, we are going to read verses 1-4 together. How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, oh Lord, my God, light up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. Now before, we are going to stop right there, we will hit the last part, I promise you. This is the first part and we will get to the very end. Before I had the opportunity to be able to serve with you all at Thrive Community Church, I was, both Kiri and I were living in St. Louis at the time, I was going to school and seminary there, but during that time, I had to get a job naturally, right, to be able to make some money. And one of the things that I got to do while I was working in St. Louis, and something I really miss to this day, was I was able to work at Chili's, serving some great Cinco Tamayo margaritas and food, and just really had a great time connecting with people. Now I'm not necessarily talking about the people that I serve food or drinks to, I really miss and enjoy connecting with the people that I worked with the most. Now if any of you all had any experience in the industry, which I know that there are some people here today that have worked in the restaurant business, or consulted in the restaurant business, or whatever it may be, if you know anything about the restaurant business, it can be a very, very dark place. I mean, there are some people, let me tell you, that just do not know Jesus whatsoever. And I just thought, man, that is the perfect place to be, you know, I need to be challenged in my faith, I need to be outside of these seminary walls, I need to be connecting with people. And it was also a very challenging place for me to be in. Some of the things that were said, I learned a lot about life for the very first time. But I remember when I was leaving this place, I was kind of like discouraged, like I thought that there was going to be some big old great transformation at Chili's, right? Like all these people were going to come to know the Lord, and it's going to be this miraculous thing, and God working through me, you know, one of those, yeah, it just didn't happen the way that I thought it was going to be. And I kind of questioned, and I kind of doubted, but I still remember as I was moving to Florida to help Plant Thrive Community Church, I got some text messages from some of my managers, all right? And some of the messages were like, hey man, like, I can't believe that, you know, you have the opportunity to be able to do this. After meeting you, like I'm starting to take my family to church, and like I'm really wanting to know who the Lord is, and I just want to thank you for your time, and just being able to be the real person that you were. And I was just like, man, that's awesome. But why did that have to happen when I'm leaving, when I can help them through the journey? And, you know, but like the Lord was working through their heart. And I remember these guys, and I love these guys. There's a picture of them, we were in a softball tournament together, and this was my Chili's crew right here, and some of my managers, this was in St. Louis, hence the Cardinal S t-shirts. I'm not a Cardinal fan, by the way, so don't use that for blackmail, Vicki. So there's Scott, he's in the Cardinal's hand, he's right next to me, to my left, and then my other friend Kurt, the backwards hat. And these were some of the guys that expressed these things that gave me thankfulness and gratitude, and it's like, man, this is awesome. Like, I just continue to pray for them, and that the Lord continues to work on the heart, and it's just like a beautiful thing. Now, I want to flash forward to this past February, all right? And I received a message from someone th...