So uh last Sunday we wrapped up our series on happiness. We were in that for a couple of months, and then after our anniversary Sunday coming up in a few weeks, we're gonna start a brand new series on Gideon, the story from the Old Testament that's incredible as it as a story, but so relevant to our lives. But that means that today I'm I am without a series. I am series-less today, which means I can just go wherever. You know, honestly, I I enjoy teaching in a series format because I need focus. If you know me well, you know that a focused train of thought is not a natural part of how I'm wired. I can just kind of talk and go from here to there and here to there. So it is best for all of us that I teach in series format for sure. Um, because you know, because of that, you've never had to experience what it's like for me to just go off and talk without any end in sight. You've never had that experience, thankfully. Um I'm being sarcastic. But uh, but it's also good sometimes just to be freed up, right? It's good sometimes to be able to go wherever you want to go, wherever God tells you to go, to have no shackles, to be to be free, right? I feel like I'm living on the edge, I can just go anywhere. It's very exciting. And so Monday, I was so pumped. Monday, I'm like, God, I can talk about anything. What do you want me to talk about? You know, what do you want me to talk about? It can be anything, it could be anything in the world. I keep this list of message ideas that God has either given me or that have popped into my head, and I might be listening to another message or reading the Bible or reading a book, and it's like, oh, that'd be so good. And I looked through the list and nothing jumped off the page, but I wasn't I wasn't dismayed. I was going, God, I can talk about anything. This is awesome. Tuesday. Still excited, very excited on Tuesday. God, I can talk about anything. This is awesome. Wednesday's the day I tend to start putting something to paper, so you know, give me something uh today or tomorrow at your earliest convenience, Lord. Um, but you know, one of those things, but kind of hurry up. Wednesday, a little less excited. Because still wasn't I wasn't getting anything, and so actually I just decided, you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do my normal thing. I started putting stuff down on a whiteboard, and then I came in on Thursday and erased all of that because it was just garbage. Um, not good, would have been bad, wouldn't have been enjoyable or helpful, it just was not, it was for me, not God. So um so and then Thursday, not excited at all. Excitement gone on Thursday. This is my week. Um I'm sitting there going, okay, God, like you, you kind of you have to, you need to give me something. I don't know what to do. That's the point that I got to. And then it sort of hit me, hey, why don't you talk about not knowing what to do? What do we do when we don't know what to do? What do I do when I don't know what to do? That is a question all of us have to deal with, right? Because we always find ourselves in situations that we just don't know where to go. We don't know the decision to make, we're confused, we don't know what to do. In fact, if you look at our language, we have so many phrases, so many interesting sayings that are just another way to say that same thing. Like you might be up a creek without a paddle. You might be between a rock and a hard place. My favorite would be you're in a pickle. I love that phrase. Everyone familiar with that phrase? Raise your hand if you know the phrase in a pickle. If you're familiar with it at least, okay. There might be a few of us that aren't. It means you don't know what to do. It's one of those weird phrases that you kind of wonder how it caught on and how it's it's stayed a part of culture. It's like the phrase, letting the cat out of the bag. You know that phrase? If you spoil a surprise, someone might say, Great, good job, you let the cat out of the bag. And I think about that, I'm like, where did that come from? Why who put cats in bags? Why was that a thing? And and it's a bad thing to let the cat out of the bag. And so I don't know why. I'm not a cat person, I'm really not even a pet person. I I like, you know, human beings and I think animals are good to pet at zoos and things like that, but I don't want an animal living in my house and then me pretend like it's a human, like none none of you do. I know that. Um, you know. But uh, but but like if you found a cat in a bag, you should let the cat out of the bag. You should rescue the cat. We shouldn't use that phrase, and even when we do, it should be a good thing. It should be like, oh, thank God, you let the cat out of the bag. Someone, someone needed to do that. Good job. Or like, or like this phrase, this is a weird one, killing two birds with one stone. A lot of our phrases have to do with animal cruelty. Cats in bags, killing birds, I don't know why. But that that's a bizarre statement, and I don't want to be morbid here, but I was thinking about that one this week, going, how could you kill two birds with one stone? Like, what what is the mental picture you you get with that? Are are there birds on the ground and you're up high and you have like a big stone and you just sort of push it and they don't they don't fly away like because birds usually fly away, they can sense things you know pretty much anywhere. So, is that what it is? Do you throw a rock and you hit a bird and then it like bounces off that bird and hits another? I don't think that could happen. I don't think physics support that. I was talking to someone in the office this week, and they're like, oh, I've always pictured two birds like flying toward one another, and then right when they right when they connect, like a rock just hits them both. And I have I have to say, I don't think that's ever happened. I don't think in the history of our world have two birds ever been killed with one stone. I actually did some research this week because I value my time, and I uh and I wanted to, I had to find the origin of this phrase, and this is all I could find. We think we don't actually know where killing two birds with one stone comes from. We don't know the origin of that. We think it evolved from a phrase that was used in the in the 1500s. But that phrase was stop two gaps with one bush. Which is weird, right? See, back then, if you had a fence, it was probably a bush or a hedge of some kind. That's that's generally what people would use to hedge off their property. And uh, and if you had a hole in that in that hedge, it would actually be two holes. It would be two gaps, a gap leading in and a gap leading out. But if you put one bush where the gap was, you stopped two gaps with one bush. And they believe that that phrase over time somehow became kill two birds with one stone. But that makes zero sense. That doesn't make any sense at all, so we don't know. When I die and I get to stand in front of God and I get to ask him whatever, I can ask him. I'm not gonna say that's on my top ten list, but depending on how much time I get to ask him questions, that's gonna be on there. Hey, the whole two kill kill two birds with one stone thing. What is that? Where'd that come from? I want to know. In a pickle, that's another one of those phrases. It's an odd phrase, and it's not nearly as mysterious as killing two birds with one stone. When you're in a pickle, it means you're in a situation you don't want to be in. We don't mean you're you're actually inside of a pickle. It's more like you're in the position that a pickle is in. Because you make pickles by putting cucumbers in a salt vinegar solution. And let's say that that cucumber went all skynet and became self-aware, okay? And you could talk to the cucumber and you could ask the cucumber, do you want to be a pickle? The cucumber would probably say, I do not. I do not. I'm fine being a cucumber. I'm not enjoying this experience of being in this jar surrounded by this salty, nasty solution. I'd rather be somewhere else. That's what it means to be in a pickle. It's like you don't want to be in a salty, difficult situation. But we find ourselves in those all the time. That's why the phrase has has lasted. Just out of curiosity, what what era do you associate that phrase in a pickle with in your mind? You think that when when that phrase was a new thing, when it was newly coined, what era of history do you think of? I I think of like the 1950s for some reason. I think of Leave It to Beaver, you know, gee Wally, we're in a pickle. That's what I that's what I think of. You know? Or like Barney Fife or someone like that telling Andy Griffith, like, gosh, Andy, where she are in a pickle. I think of that. That's what comes to my mind. Anybody else think that era, like 50s, 40s, that kind of time? Who thinks later than that? You think like 60s or or later? Earlier? Unwilling to participate in church surveys? Anybody? Good? Okay. Megan thought it was about the the 1920s or 30s. She pictured kind of like film noir, where a woman comes in a private detective's office and she says, I'm in a pickle, I need your help, that kind of thing. But everyone I talked to this week, I talked to a lot of people about this. Again, I very much value my time. And I uh I asked them, and everyone said something like 1900s and up. But check this out. Shakespeare, 1610, the play The Tempest. He wrote, How camest thou in this pickle? That's over 400 years ago. So for over 400 years at least, people have been using this phrase. And that means that pickles have great staying power because they're still a thing, and it also means that we as human beings keep finding ourselves in situations we don't want to be in. So, what do we do when we don't know what to do? How do we navigate that? I tend to underestimate how difficult life is. I tend to underestimate how much life can throw at me. I have ideas and plans all the time, and in my mind it's gonna work out, it's gonna be awesome, it's gonna be amazing. And it doesn't take very long for me to discover that my plans rarely work the way that I'd like them to. And things that I maybe even think will be wonderful and amazing, dreams come true, can can feel like nightmares sometimes. We all have experiences like that, right? Now I'm gonna say this and it's gonna sound really bad, okay? But just stick with me. Like like when I got married. Okay? Again, stay with me. Megan and I married over 11 years. She's amazing, she's the just my best friend, she's beautiful, she's awesome, she hears from God. I love being married to Megan. But our first year of marriage did not go like we thought it would go. We'd been together for over three years. We just dreamed of being married. It was our dream to marry one another, just to wake up next to each other in bed and live together. It was just so awesome. We wanted that so badly. We worked for that, we waited for that. And we just pictured this beautiful, picturesque, romanticized version of marriage, I guess, where we'd wake up every morning and just roll over and kiss each other. And life would just be so beautiful and so wonderful and so easy and free and light, and that is not what our first year of marriage was. You may have had a first year of marriage like that. That was not ours. That that image went away pretty quickly. Number one, totally forgot about morning breath. And so rolling over in the morning and kissing one another, that just that went out the window real fast. Because waking up and getting out of bed and brushing your teeth and getting back in bed, that's just you're up. Just be up at that point in time. That's just too much. We don't do that. But number one, we were young. I was 21, she was 20. We were both full-time college students. We both worked two jobs, we were both heavily involved at our church. It was just a lot, and we didn't have much time, and we definitely didn't have much time for one another. And so quality time went away. We we got really stressed, we were stressed about money, we were stressed about all the new responsibilities that went along with being on our own and being married, and that stress started to really affect us, and somewhere in that first year, we sort of turned on each other. I can't even pinpoint when it happened. We just we turned on one another. We were both coping with our stress in very unhealthy ways. I was in the midst of an addiction that Megan didn't even know about, and I started to blame her for my addiction. It had nothing to do with her, but I started to blame her. I started thinking things like if she would just be more like this, this, and this, then I wouldn't have to go to this addiction. And that's just because whenever you're really mad at yourself, it's so much easier to point the finger this way than this way, right? That's what I was doing. Megan was battling depression, and I did not realize that. I didn't know what was wrong with her. I didn't know why she was so frustrated and upset all the time. I always pictured depression as someone just being sad and crying all the time, but but she was kind of angry a lot, and and I didn't know what was going on, and she was a thousand miles away from home and any support structure other than me, and I was not a very good emotional or spiritual support structure for her, and so we just had it out for one another after about six or seven months. And we got to this moment, we found ourselves in this this big pickle where we we did not want to be married. We legitimately did not want to be married anymore, and we had to sit down and talk to one another and figure out what to do. We knew that God wanted us to be married because we know that God wants us to honor the commitments that we make, but we didn't want to be married anymore. And we didn't have kids yet. So there was this part of us at 22 and 21 that was like, look, I mean, if we if we cut and run now, there's not a lot of collateral damage. We'll just be able to kind of lick our wounds and move on with life. And obviously, we chose not to end the marriage. I'm so glad. It's the best best decision I best decision I've ever made, one of the best decisions I've ever made. Love my wife. You can ask her how she feels about it, maybe she has regrets. I don't know. But but I I'm so glad. In the moment, though, I'll say this I could never have visualized what our life is like now in that moment. Could not have done it. Because in the moment, all I could see what was in front of me, and we just we did not want to be in the situation we were in. We were in we were in a pickle. You know, I'm a parent, I have three amazing kids, but I feel for them sometimes because I feel like they're guinea pigs. I'm learning how to be a parent with them, and it's firsts every single day. My son is six, I've never raised a six-year-old before. I don't know how to handle some of the situations that that he's in, things I just didn't think about, things I didn't think through, things you never expect when you're a parent. My daughter's two, and I've never raised a girl before. I didn't have a little sister, I've never experienced like a little girl, and all the emotions and all the everything that can go with that. And so every single day there's a situation in our home, and there's a behavior that I'm supposed to correct or or speak into as a parent, and I don't know what to do. I find myself far more than I would like being reactive rather than proactive. Sometimes I feel like I'm just winging it, I'm just throwing something at a wall and hoping that it will stick. Because I don't know what to do so much of the time. In the role that I'm in here, every single week there there's someone in this church, someone that I love very much, that's going through something that I've never gone through before. And it might be really difficult. And I love, I love you guys so much. And so I want, I want to help however I can, whenever I can, but so often someone will be standing in front of me talking to me about their life, and I'm sitting there like nodding my head, and in my mind, I'm going, God help me. Because I have no clue, no clue what to say. It's one of the reasons I'm so thankful that we have people like Lori Torrelli and Austin Counselors that are part of our church that I can just say, I got a great idea for you. Should go talk to Lori. Um, she'll help you. And I call Lori and be like, hey, you got to meet with someone, so sorry. So, but Lori does great. So anyway, I'm just I'm grateful for that, but a lot of times I don't know what to do. What do we do when we don't know what to do? Because I'm just assuming this sounds familiar to you, this feeling I'm experiencing. I don't know your life, but I would almost guarantee that right now you're in a situation that you feel you feel torn about. You don't know what to do. Part of you wants this, part of you wants that, part of you is full of faith, part of you is full of doubt, part of you wants to do it this way, maybe the person you're married to wants to do it another way. You know, you have a situation at work, you have a situation at home. We're always finding ourselves in situations where we don't know what to do. How do we handle that? My hope is that you would walk away today with a solution. My hope is that you would leave today with something you can remember, something really practical that you can take with you that will help you find the direction you need when you find yourself in a pickle. And here's here's what I'd like to say. Just to say this, it's a phrase I just want to put out there. I want us to spend time with this. It is easy to remember, it is simple, but it can be difficult to live out. It's powerful if you do though. Here's the thing. I think this is the solution to figuring out what to do when you don't know what to do. It's it's this do what you know is right and trust God with the rest. When you don't know what to do, do what you know is right and trust God with the rest. The Bible is full of stories of amazing men and women in really terrible situations that you would never want to be in. Sometimes we look at the people in the Bible and we desire their walk with God. We might look at them and say, Man, I wish I could I could hear God like that. I wish I could have that kind of faith. I wish I could experience God like that. And then God might say, Hey, in order to have that, by the way, you can. You just need to go through the things that they went through, and we're like, never mind. I'm good. That's how we might feel because these people went through it. And the Bible is so amazing in that it records not just the highlights, but it records the low points. It gives us the full story, and so we get to see the terrible, difficult, frustrating situations that these people lived in. And sometimes we can read these stories, especially the really old stories, even older than the New Testament. Stuff that happened 3,000, 4,000 years ago, and we read it, but we read it almost like it's a fairy tale. We forget to stop and think about what it would feel like to be in that situation. And when we do that, we minimize the predicament that people actually found themselves in. One example of that is the book of Daniel. Book of Daniel takes place Old Testament about 2,500 years ago. Very, very difficult situation that Daniel and his friends encountered. We can just pick it up in Daniel chapter 1. It says, During the third year of King Jehoiakim's reign in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and he besieged it. The Lord gave him victory over King Jehoiakim of Judah and permitted him to take some of the sacred objects from the temple of God. So Nebuchadnezzar took them back to the land of Babylonia, and he placed them in the treasure house of his God. And then the king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief of staff, to bring to the palace some of the young men of Judah's royal family and other noble families who had been brought to Babylon as captives. Select only strong, healthy, and good-looking young men, he said. Make sure they're well versed in every branch of learning, are gifted with knowledge and good judgment, and are suited to serve in the royal palace. Train these young men in the language and literature of Babylon. The king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens. They would be trained for three years, and then they would enter the royal service. Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah were four of the young men chosen, all from the tribe of Judah. The chief of staff renamed them with these Babylonian names. Daniel was called Belteshazzar, Hananiah was called Shadrach, Meshael was called Meshach, and Azariah was called Abednego. Okay, so situation's pretty simple. Their nation, Judah, is besieged by Babylon and they lose. War's over, battle's done, they lost. And these young men have been taken. They're captives, they're slaves. They've been taken to Babylon. They are never going home again. They're never going back home. They're not going to see their families again. They're not going to see their friends. That's gone. And now they're in this native, this land that they're not native to, they're in a foreign land. They they are they're captives, they're slaves in this land. It's a hostile land to them. It's a place that doesn't value them at all. And they they have to now learn the customs, they have to learn the literature, they have to learn the language. All the while mourning what they've lost. I mean, how would you cope with that? How would you handle that? Talk about talk about a pickle. How would you navigate that situation? Let's go back to the story. Pick it up in verse 8. Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods. Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel, but he responded, I'm afraid of my Lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. If you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I'm afraid the king will have me beheaded. And Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff to look after Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah. He said, Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water. At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king's food, and then make your decision in light of what you see. The attendant agreed to Daniel's suggestion, and he tested them for ten days. So Daniel and his friends, they're strict followers of the Jewish law. And that was the covenant that the people of God were under at that time. They were under the law. And the law was all about separation, you being a separate people from the other people in the world. So they ate different foods and they had different customs. All of that was designed so that God could show them that they were meant to be set apart. But it was a pretty big burden to follow all these laws. They were strict dietary laws. I mean, you it wasn't about what you're in the mood to eat today, it was about what you're allowed to eat today. And they find themselves in kind of a pickle within a pickle. It's a pickle-stuffed pickle. Those are the worst kind. And now not only are they in the pickle of being in this foreign land and captive, now they're being asked to do things that would violate the law that they are so passionate about. It would violate their conscience. The kind of amazing twist that Jesus shows us is that the whole purpose of the law was actually just to bring us to the point as a people, as humanity, that we would realize we can't do it. And we just need God to do it for us. So we're not under that law anymore. We're under the law of grace, the law of love that God gave us. That means we can eat bacon. First service, amen that, but you guys, it's okay. You guys are healthier than first service. That means we're not under that. It's not about performance. It's not about are we doing all the right things so that God is pleased with us? It's about being in relationship with God because Jesus did all the right things for us. You might wonder, well, why did God go through all that trouble? Why did God spend all those years having people try to follow this law just to go, hey, you know, never mind, you can't do it. I'll do it for you. Why didn't he just do it for us in the first place? See, I think the reason for that is simple. God knows us, He knows our human nature, and He knows that we are not likely to ask for help unless we absolutely have to. I mean, how many times have you been in a situation in life where you actually need someone to do something for you, but rather than ask them to do it, you exhaust yourself trying to do it on your own first. That's how I was with addiction for a long, long time. That's how my son will be at six years old trying to do something at home that he cannot do. But he'll try. He'll try over and over again. And it's like he has to get to this point of frustration, deep frustration, just so he'll go, All right, Dad, will you help me? And that's what the law was. It got us to that point where we would say, Okay, God, we can't do this. Can you be holy for us? So we can let go this pressure of having to be holier than we are. That's why, as Christians, we can never be holier than thou, because we're not. He's the holy one. He makes us holy with his love. He makes us holy by being part of us, by being in us. We're under a whole different covenant. Okay, back to the story. Okay, here we go. At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for others. Now, essentially, here's what this is saying: they stuck to their guns. Right? For ten days, they're in this test, they stuck with their conviction, they did what they they knew was right, and it worked. They looked healthier. And this is kind of an aside, but it's so important that we live by our convictions. It is so important that we live according to our conscience as human beings. In fact, in the New Testament, Paul wrote this in Romans 14. He was talking about food again because food was always tied to religion, and so when people on that day would become a Christian, that would mean they'd have to eat food that might have been sacrificed in honor of a false God and they didn't know what to do. And here's what Paul wrote about that. Romans 14, he said, Don't tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble. You may believe there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, but keep it between yourself and God. Blessed are those who don't feel guilty for doing something they've decided is right. But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you're sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything that you believe is not right, you're sinning. When we start to ignore our convictions because we're we're in a bind, when we're in those tough situations, right, we're up against it, we don't know what to do. It's very easy sometimes to start to loosen our passion for what we believe is right. We start telling ourselves things like, well, this is just what you gotta do. This is the cost of doing business. This is what everybody does. You can't be perfect, you can't do this all the time. We start to go against our conscience. And when we do that, by the way, it's devastating for us as individuals, personally. Because what happens is our spirit and our mind fall out of sync with one another, and we become people that are conflicted in our nature. In fact, James wrote about this in James 1.6. He said, Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. So if we don't stick to our convictions, if we don't do what we know is right, we become at war with ourselves. So important to live according to our conscience. Okay, back to the story. We'll start in verse 17. God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom, and God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams. When the training period ordered by the king was completed, the chief of staff brought all the young men to King Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and no one impressed him as much as Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah. So they entered the royal service, and whenever the king consulted them in any matter requiring wisdom and balanced judgment, he found them ten times more capable than any of the magicians and enchanters in his entire kingdom. They did what they knew was right, and they trusted God with the rest. And God showed up. Notice that it said God gave them special wisdom. God gave them this special aptitude. The Bible says that all knowledge and understanding comes from God. All of it. And God gave that to them. God gave them favor. The reason that the king was so impressed by them is because God gave them favor with the king. And you know why God showed up for them? It's very, very simple. And it's not because they were perfect, it's not because they just impressed him so much. He's like, you know what? I'm gonna break tradition and show up for these people. Because that's how we think sometimes. Sometimes we think that God showing up is the exception to the rule. But the reason that God showed up is because God shows up. That's what God does. When we give God the opportunity to show up and we trust him and we rely on him, he shows up time and time again. It's the way we live sometimes, not trusting him. Worried that he won't show up, that we we actually exclude ourselves from the opportunity to see him do what he does. See, God showed up for them because that's his nature. And he would show up for you just like he showed up for them. This is the way they live their lives and continued to live their lives, by the way, doing what they knew was right and trusting God with all the details, trusting God with all the stuff that they couldn't envision working out. In fact, a few years later, Daniel's three friends found themselves in another pickle. King Nebuchadnezzar built a statue, he told everyone to worship that statue, and they weren't willing to break their convictions for food. They sure as heck were going to break their convictions for worship. So they said no. And the king got kind of mad. And he ordered that they be thrown into a furnace, thrown into a fire, and burned to death. But he gave them an opportunity. He brought them before him. Remember, he was impressed by these people. He he consulted them, he relied on them. And so he gives them a chance and he brings them forth in Daniel chapter 3. And he basically says this: we have it here. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the question of whether or not they changed their mind. O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. If we're thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. I like that that's thrown in there. But even if he doesn't, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up. Do you see the trust there? Do you see the knowledge that they have that God is going to come through for them? The confidence that they have that God is going to show up. It's like they know that God loves them. It's like they know that God cares. And what blows me away is that these are men who lived before Jesus came to earth and literally died for them. And yet they're so confident in the love of God that they're willing to look at a king who has the power to kill them on the spot and say with boldness, God will rescue us, God will show up. It's like they know that they can trust him. And truthfully, sometimes we forget that. I forget that. I'm not saying that in condemnation of you. I forget that all the time. It's like sometimes I get so affected by the religion that had hold of me. And maybe you're affected by religion because you grew up in it. Maybe you're affected by religion because it's what you saw, it's what you said no to for so long. Because what religion tells us is that God's showing up, God's love for us, it's very much dependent on one thing: us. Our track record, our performance. And so if you did, if you did really well this week, if you read your Bible every single day this week and you prayed and you prayed enough and you did all the right things and you were selfless and generous, if you had a really good week, then God might show up for you. You might have impressed him enough to convince him to show up. But if you didn't do great, if you neglected your relationship with him, if you neglected to follow some of the things that he values, if you didn't do it his way, but you did it your way this week, then man, is he gonna show up for you? Probably not. We think sometimes that we've let God down. And because we've let him down, he's less likely to be there for us. Because after all, why should he? I mean, we we weren't there for him. But we get so twisted in our thinking, and when we think that way, we forget that he's a father. The Bible actually says we can call him daddy. That's how intimate our relationship with God can be. You can pray and call God daddy, and that is not sacrilegious because God is not religious. It's relationship. You can call him, you can call him daddy. You cannot let God down. I just want to make sure we understand that. You you literally cannot let God down. And here's why he's not depending on you. Now that shouldn't make you feel small. He loves you, he cares about you. He's he's actually invited you in service in his kingdom, he's invited you to be part of his big plan, to play a big role in what he's trying to accomplish. That's amazing, but but you have to understand, he's not depending on you for sustenance, for what keeps him whole. He he doesn't need to depend on anything but him. He's God, he's the dad. We're the children. We can't let him down. It's like my children. I love them so much. They can't let me down. They can't do it because I'm not depending on them for what I need. If I was depending on them for what I need, I would be way off in our relationship. That wouldn't be right. I don't depend on my six-year-old. I love him. I enjoy it when he wants to hang out with me. I enjoy it when he cuddles up next to me on the couch, I enjoy it when we do things together. But but I'm not I'm not depending on him. He's depending on me. So often when we get confused about God, it's because we're making God smaller than he is. And we treat God like he would be someone whose feelings are really easily hurt, and he would be someone who's not patient, someone who's not kind of. Honestly, we treat him like someone who's just super immature. And like he would be so offended at our little mistake that he would never want to be with us. But that is not God. In fact, the Bible says that when we are unfaithful, he is faithful, and that's because God is God. And so if you're here this morning and you feel like you've let God down, you haven't let him down. He's your dad. He loves you. He might want to teach you, he might need to correct you. He corrects me a lot. It's super fun. No, he he does because I get off track so easily in my thinking and in my attitude. He corrects me, but he's he's not he's not like upset with me. He's not disappointed. I haven't let him down because he's not depending on me. I'm depending on him. I have to remember that and keep our relationship in the right perspective. So you can trust God to show up because he's God. Because that's what he does. Back to our story. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego tell the king thanks, but no thanks, and then basically what happens is the king throws him in a furnace, full fire. He doesn't go, you know what? I respect you. You're men of conviction. I like that. He says, What? Fine. He throws them in the fire, and they go into the fire, but they don't die because Jesus literally shows up and hangs out with him in the fire. I mean, it's amazing. This is Jesus before Jesus. This is 2,500 years before Jesus would come. And he shows up and he's like, oh my gosh, he's there. They see him, King Nebuchadnezzar sees him. It's so cool. It must have been an awkward moment because they throw these guys in the fire. They're expecting screams of agony. In fact, the fire was so hot that the soldiers who threw them in the fire died. And they're sitting there waiting for their like just desserts or whatever in their mind, the king and his attendants, haha, these guys are gonna get what's coming to them. And then all of a sudden, one of the king's guys, in the midst of no screams, goes, Hey, uh, how many guys did we throw in the fire? I remember three. Did you three? Three? I think three. I don't remember four. There's four guys in there. And one of them, he said, looks like like the son of God. And that was because it was the son of God. And Jesus was so brilliant, so bright that he was brighter than the fire. I mean, it's it's amazing. God showed up. He he absolutely showed up, and that's because God shows up. When you're when you're up against it, when you're in a pickle and you don't know what to do, do what you know is right and trust God with the rest. Don't worry about all the details. Don't worry about, well, what if this happens and this happens and this happens? All that stuff, that's God's. That's not up to you. You don't have to worry about that. You don't even have to worry about what happens if you make the wrong choice. Because that's God's. Just do what you know is right, what you believe is right, and trust God with everything else. If you do that, you'll succeed. Now, we're gonna wrap up with worship. Close, I promise. But there's one one other thing. This is important, I think. What happens when you don't know what's right? Because sometimes it's clear. Sometimes we know what's right, we know our convictions, but we're tempted to do something else because it's easier, or maybe it feels like it'd be more beneficial to us right now. But sometimes we look at our options and none of them seem right. It's like it's an election or something like that, you know? We're just looking and going, I don't know what to do. And by the way, if you're if you're passionate about either candidate, that was not me knocking your candidate. That was me knocking all of politics, like the whole thing, okay? So I just want you to understand that. Um vote vote for who you believe is right. Follow your convictions. That's what that's exactly what you should do. But sometimes we look and we go, I don't feel like any of these are right. I feel like it's the lesser of two evils. I feel like this could be right, this could be right. I can see a case for all of it. What do you do when you don't know what's right? Real simple. Ask yourself a question: what does God say? What does God say about it? When you don't know what's right, find out what God has to say about it. Because this is the thing I found about God. It's kind of annoying sometimes. He's always right. Like every time. Always. He's always right. Now, what does that mean? That means pray. It means pray hard and don't just pray that God would change your circumstances. He will do that, by the way. Pray for that. But pray that God will guide you through the circumstances. Pray that God will give you the wisdom to guide you. In fact, James says it this way: if you need wisdom, ask our generous God and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. Ask God for wisdom and listen. Now, I know some of us in the room have heard God speak to us. We've prayed and we've gotten an answer. Some of us, that's a foreign concept. In fact, if you're ever discouraged because you're like, I pray and I don't hear God speak, just stick with it. You will hear him one day, and all of a sudden it'll it'll become clearer and clearer and clearer, and one day you'll really be able to discern when it's God and when it's you. But pray and ask God for guidance. But but above that, like read the Bible. Know the word. Because here's the thing: when God speaks to you, let's say you're praying and he speaks to you, he's not going to contradict himself. And so if he tells you something and it's not consistent with what he teaches in scripture, that's not God. That's not God, that's just that's you. That's maybe your emotions, that's something else. 2 Timothy 3.16 says, all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we're wrong and it teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. He's given us a gift in the Bible. I mean, it is a gift. It is literally, this is what God values. Now, if you've tried to read the Bible before and you haven't enjoyed it, you haven't been able to stick with it, let me give you a tip. Start with Jesus. Very rarely would you buy a book and open up halfway through. That'd be odd, but do that with the Bible. Start with Jesus. Make it your point to know what Jesus says. In fact, a friend of mine, Emily Till, I don't know if she's in here right now, but uh, she has a t-shirt on this morning that is a picture of Jesus, and it's he says, I didn't say that. You know? And I love that. Because sometimes things get attributed to Jesus that he never said. But you gotta know what he said. Start with the book of Mark. It's in the New Testament, it's very short. You can read it in a day. It's a very condensed, fast-paced version of Jesus' teachings. You can read it, you can understand it. In fact, on Wednesday nights, we're doing a study on the book of Mark right now. It's called Foundations. Come here any Wednesday night, and we'll help you go through it. If you can't come on Wednesday nights, go to our website, go to the source, and get the foundation study. It's the book of Mark. You can go through it, it'll help you out. But just make it your point to know what Jesus says. I'm a disciple of Jesus. And if I'm really a disciple of Jesus, the thing that should matter most to me is knowing what Jesus says to do. Not what I'm not what I might wish he says. Sometimes I wish he said different things than he said. But to be a disciple, it doesn't mean you have it all figured out. It doesn't mean you get it all. It just means that you have made it your passion to know what he says and to do it. The Bible, it's a gift. I'd be lost without it. I'd be lost without the Bible. And so utilize it. Use it. If you don't know what's right, find out what God says. Okay. Worship team, if you guys want to come back out. Yay, we're ending. Um do what you know is right and trust God with the rest. A good friend of mine used to have this quote he would say, fix what you know is broken and see what else it fixes. I always love that because it makes so much sense. Fix what you know is broken, see what else it fixes. Do what you know is right. Trust God with the rest. It's not all on you, because you're not God. That's good news, by the way. That's good news. But he is, and he loves you, and he cares about you. And when you find yourselves in a pickle, you don't know what to do, he does. You might look at yourself and go, How camest thy in this pickle? How did I get here? Why am I in this situation? Why is this my life? What did I do to deserve this? If you know Jesus, you know the one that has the answers. So you don't have to have all the answers. And by the way, if you don't know Jesus, if you haven't accepted accepted him in your life, you need to because you need to know the one who knows. Because when you don't know, he knows. And when you can't, he can. Jesus loves you, he's there for you. He wants to be with you, he wants to make your heart his home. And when you make that choice to follow him, it means that every time you find yourselves in a pickle, in a tough situation, he's there with you. It means you have access to the God of the universe at every moment of every day because he's with you. So have that. Make that decision this morning. And those of you that have, live that decision this morning. Live it today, live it this week. Remember that you're loved. When you don't know what to do, do what you know is right and trust God with the rest. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you for this church. I'm so in love with this group of people that can come together every single week. We can be authentic, we can be who we are. We don't have to put on a show, not up on this stage, not anywhere else. We don't have to act a certain way. We we can just be honest and say, hey, we don't know what to do. There is so much freedom, Jesus, and just being able to say out loud, I don't know what to do. And to remember that you do. And you don't ask us to figure it out. You don't ask us to solve all of our own problems. You don't ask us to do that at all. You ask us to rely on you. You ask us to trust you. You ask us to put our hope in you. And that's what we want to do this morning. Give us the strength and the courage to trust you, Jesus. To simply live by our convictions, to do what we believe is right, and to trust you with everything else. We love you, Lord. We thank you, and we ask all this in your name. Amen.