Always By Our Side

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. We're talking about being on a journey, a pilgrimage. What an amazing thing. A God of grace by the power of his Holy Spirit calls us, gathers us, enlightens us, makes us God's very own, and then that same God promises that he will do life with us, walking beside us, leading us, standing before, going before us, standing behind us, but always at our side. What a comfort it is to know that we journey with God through this life to that place that he's promised us, which is heaven. And so we're gonna be talking about that journey. We started last week, continue this week, and then we try not to let this out too far, but I'll be back next week. Sorry, but I will be. But then Pastor John hopefully will be back, and you'll get the Pastor John with the H in his name, not the one who doesn't. So welcome again. If we can have that scripture come up that we're going to be taking a look at today, and I'll share that with you. Again you can go online, use your Bible app, take a look at this scripture, because again it's going to remind us of God's incredible promise to us to walk with us. So we got sermon notes, by the way if you want to catch that you can do that with a Bible app. There's a QR code there, take a look at that. Those of you who know how to use that, I'm kind of tech challenged so that's beyond my ability. Thank you. Here we go, Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12 is that great passage in the scripture, it's kind of like the Hall of Fame of Faith, right? So let's take a look at this. Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely to us, and let us run with, sometimes the word is perseverance, long suffering, endurance, the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, keeping our eyes on Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith, and our Savior who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that we may not grow weary, so that we may not grow faint-hearted in this journey, in this pilgrimage, from this life to the next. And so grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who was, who is, who always will be the only Savior of the world. Well friends again take a look at that QR code on the screen so you can follow along with us. But last week we began this series about trusting God as we journey through this life, and we said first of all people of faith, people who have been given this gift of faith by the Holy Spirit, they hold things loosely while they hold tightly on to a God who holds tightly on to them. And if you remember we shared a four-word reminder to help us to do that, to hold things loosely, and those four words again are I am an alien. So again turn to the person next to you and say to your neighbor, remind both of you of this biblical truth, I am a neighbor, go ahead you can do it, I am an alien, and we talked about different ways you could use that in your day-to-day life. Anyway it's true, right? We are aliens on this earth because this world is not our home. Our God in His amazing grace created us to be eternal. We were created to spend all of eternity with God, which is why He sent His Son to pay the price to cover our sin and clothe us with Jesus' righteousness so that we might live with God forever. But friends between now and heaven we're on this pilgrimage, we're on this journey of life, we're on this journey of faith. So first we need to hold stuff loosely and hold tightly on to our God. And then the second thing we said last week is that people of faith come to see the sheer goodness and grace of God. One of the main reasons I think Abraham was able to trust God for the journey that he went on was because he was absolutely convinced that God is a God of blessing. And brothers and sisters if we are not convinced by faith of that same truth that our God is a God of blessing, then sooner or later we are not going to be enabled to persevere, to endure on this journey. Quite honestly sadly I think far too many people get this idea that there is this divine being God just kind of sits up there in the clouds and he says well you know hey if you're well behaved I'll bless you and if you're bad I'm going to rain on your parade. But it really doesn't make much difference to me which way you go, it's your choice. Well friends that is not our God's heart. Our God has this insatiable longing to bless you, to bless me, to bless people. You see take a look at this reference it's in Genesis chapter 12. We are included in that Genesis 12 verse 3 promise when God says to Abraham I will bless you and then all of the peoples on the earth including us will be blessed through Abraham, right? That inc...