Well man, I'm so glad that you're here this morning. I want to start by saying thank you. I was gone last week. Uh we went on vacation with my parents. We tagged along on their vacation. My brother and his girlfriend came down from Missouri and we brought our kids. We went to Orange Beach, Alabama, which is an awesome place, by the way. Never really been there before until recently, and it's become one of my favorite places. And it was amazing. I had an incredible time with my family, with my son. My son is five years old, and he is so much braver than I am. He wanted to go parasailing at five, 400 feet in the air. And so we did, we did, and I got to go and pretend like I was not nervous at all about that. He wanted to go kayaking on the waves because he saw other people doing that, and so we did. And then 10 feet away from us, a fin came up, and it was definitely a shark, 100%. And he's like, awesome. And I'm like, nope, we're just going back, you know. Um, but we had we had an amazing time. I say thank you though, because this is what's so special about this church. I'm gone for one week. I'm on vacation with my family. It was unbelievable, it was wonderful, but I was so excited pulling into the parking lot this morning. So excited to be back here because this place is it's just special. It's just special. And so, you know, for me to be on vacation and come back and not be like, ah, I'm back, back to regular life. No, it's the opposite. It's like, wow, I'm I'm so excited. One week away is is too much for this place. So thank you for being here. Thank you to all of you who make this place what it is. Those of you who volunteer, you pray, you give. Um, if you're here for the first time, we don't pass a plate or a bucket or anything like that. Uh, but we do have four giving stations at the back, and you can support us financially. We appreciate that. It's what it's what makes so much of what happens here possible, it makes everything here possible in a lot of ways. Um, and those of you who serve on Teams, this month we're gonna be talking about a lot of our teams at the church and highlighting all the different areas you can you can get involved in. Um and so if you're not on a team, you will enjoy this place so much more when you're serving alongside other people. It'll just make you part of it in a very different way. And so I encourage you to do that, to sign up. You can do that in the lobby this morning. Uh, but thank you to everyone here. You make this place so special. You are his hands church, and God is doing such cool things here. Let's pray and we're gonna jump into the message. Jesus, thank you so much for all you do for us. Thank you that your presence is here. And that we we feel you, God. We don't have to manufacture excitement, we don't have to manufacture energy or passion because you fill us with whatever we need. We love you, Jesus, and we just ask that for the rest of this time our hearts and our minds would be open to what you have for us, that your word would speak to us, and we thank you so much in advance for doing that. Amen. Amen. Well, like I said, I got back from vacation this this last week. It was the closest, the closest I have ever gotten to being on a vacation where everything goes 100% according to plan. I mean, it was it was close. It didn't quite happen, but it was close. We were at the beach for a week, no rain. How often does that happen, right? The waters were calm, I mean, weather was absolutely perfect. We didn't forget any of the kids' toys or anything like that that they needed. Um, it was awesome. So close. But on the first day, my daughter Lily, 18 months old, got an ear infection. And I had forgotten, because I'm a good dad, to bring insurance information. And so we had to call the insurance company, but they were close. We had to wait a day to get proof of insurance so we could go to a clinic. And so for the first 48 hours, she was just screaming at the top of her lungs for mom, and it was a great way to start our vacation. It was awesome. Um, so close to the perfect vacation, right? Everything else though went smoothly. My mom planned it, and it was unbelievable. Had I remembered to bring our insurance card, it would have been perfect. But I'm curious, saying that, has anyone ever been on the perfect vacation where nothing happened that that derailed the vacation at all? Everything went according to plan. Not one single thing happened that that made you have to change or adapt or anything at all. Nothing no one? One, two people, you guys. Wow, three people. Okay. Please write a book or something and share with us how that happened because I've never had that experience in my life. It's amazing. It's amazing how no matter how much you plan, no matter how much you prepare for something, even like a vacation, something where you know where you're gonna go, you can look at the weather, you can you can pack, you can do all this planning ahead of time. Something almost always happens that makes your plans and your preparations just go out the window. Vacations can be stressful, right? Because when you're on vacation, you feel a pressure to enjoy yourself. You feel a pressure to have fun and relax. And it's really hard to relax when you feel a pressure to relax. Because on vacation, there's so much riding on that. If you have a normal Tuesday that goes awry, you can make up for that on Wednesday. But if you have a vacation that goes awry, you're not gonna have another shot at that for a year or maybe longer. And so you feel this pressure to have fun. And if you're the person planning the vacation, you feel that multiplied by however many people are there because you want to make sure they have a good time as well. Who in the audience, who here plans vacations? When your family goes on vacation, you're the one that makes the plans, or when your group of friends take a road trip, you're the one that just naturally finds okay. You're amazing people. Because the pressure you must feel is so intense. I mean, that's a lot of pressure. For a few years here, I actually, and how this happened, I don't know, but I was in charge of planning the road trips for the high school students, for the college students here. Um, yeah, some of you guys have been on some road trips with me. Uh, I do not have a logistical mind. I should not be the person planning those kinds of details, but it just fell to me to do it. And so every year I would plan the high school trip, a hundred plus people going out of town for a week. There's a lot of planning that goes into that. I'd plan the college trip, and without fail, every year, no matter how much preparation I would put in, something would happen, something outside of my control, and it would take so many of my plans and just and just flush them down a toilet. I mean, it was it was like it was so frustrating. A couple years ago, we we took our high school students to this set of cabins that we had never gone to, and we only went there once for a reason. Um I saw them online, I saw the pictures, and they were beautiful cabins, and the thing that sold me was they had these huge fields in front of the cabins. And the last year we had gone to these cabins that were great, but there was really no space for our students to spread out and kind of sprawl out and just enjoy themselves. And so I saw these fields, and I'm picturing high school students throwing frisbees and footballs and us all just hanging out and building fires and all kinds of great stuff. And so I rented these cabins, they're a really good price, by the way. I rented the cabins, and then we got there and I saw the fields, and they're beautiful, and I'm just going, oh yes, this is amazing, this is exactly what we need. And then I opened the door, and my excitement immediately went away because there was this smell that is a very specific smell. You know exactly what it is when you smell it. And if you have a hundred teenagers with you, uh they don't take very long to let you know that they smell it too. And so I called up the company that we had rented the cabins from. I said, hey, we're here, it's beautiful, but there's this really intense odor, and I don't know what this is. And they said, Oh, they looked at our cabins. That field in front of you, that that's a septic dump field. That um all the cabins around there have septic tanks, and that's where it's where it goes. That's why the price is what it is. And I was, yeah, yeah. I I heard about that for a long time with our high school kids. The next year I'm like, hey, we're going to the cabins, and all the kids are like, Are we going to the poop field again? I'm like, no, no, not. Because high school kids, they they remind you of your faults. They do that. A couple years later, we took our college students on this trip. We went to North Georgia and we brought canoes. We rented six canoes, and there was this trailer that the canoes were attached to, and everything went really well on the trip. But on the way back, I got a phone call. It was from someone who was behind me, and they said, Hey Justin, did you realize that two of the canoes just flew off the back of your vehicle? We're driving 75 miles an hour down the road. And I said, No, I did not realize that. Are you serious? And they're like, Yes. And so I turned around and they were they were smart enough. They saw it kind of happening, so they they eased back, and the canoes did not hit any vehicles. They just hit the road and they slid into a ditch. But we had to figure out how to get two canoes back here. We were an hour outside of Atlanta and our trailer had broken. That's why they flew off. And I'm sitting here, not a logistically minded person, trying to figure out how we are going to do this, and so frustrating. It's amazing how often life throws us curves. And it's amazing how no matter how much planning or preparation we put into life, life does not seem to appreciate our plans. That's why statements like the only thing constant is change ring true. That's why verses like James chapter 4 speak so truthfully to life. James wrote this, James was very blunt. Look here, you who say, Today or tomorrow we're gonna go to this certain town, we'll stay there for a year, we'll do business there, we'll make a profit. How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog. It's here a little while, then it's gone. What you ought to say is if the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that. Otherwise, you're boasting about your own pretentious plans and all such boasting is evil. In other words, James is saying, look, you can make your plans, but you don't know if those plans are gonna work out. You don't know what tomorrow is gonna bring. You have no idea what life is going to throw at you. And all of us experience that, all of us in every aspect of life, we know what it feels like to make plans, to prepare, to have an idea of what's gonna happen, only to see life go very differently. And when that happens, how do we feel? When that's the case, what do we feel inside? If you're like me, you feel unequipped. You feel like you don't have what you need to succeed. I am a person that that needs to be prepared. I just live that way. I'm very planned, I'm very prepared, and when I have a situation that I did not anticipate, I feel unequipped. I think thoughts like this. I'm not ready for this. I'm not prepared for this. I did not sign up for this. You ever hear that thought in your mind? This is not what I signed up for. I can't handle this, I can't get through this, I can't get over this, I think those thoughts, and it all comes from this feeling of being unequipped, unprepared for what's facing me. If you've been here the last few weeks, we've spent we've spent our time looking at who God says we are in Scripture. We're in the middle of a series right now called Who Do You Think You Are? And it's it's really unbelievable because people think God is all about telling us what to do, but He's actually about telling us who we are. And when you search Scripture, you find that God's opinion of you is so much higher than your opinion of yourself. No one thinks more highly of you than God. You find countless examples in Scripture of God showing up and telling someone who they are, what they're meant to do, and you never find the person saying, Whoa, God, you're selling me way short. You have failed to see all my good qualities. You're really underestimating me. It's always the opposite. It's always people going, God, I don't know who you think I am, but I am not that person. I am not capable of doing what you say I can do. I don't have the bravery, I don't have the courage, I don't have the talent, I don't have that. God, you're you're mistaken. See, God never underestimates, God never overestimates, God knows. And when God speaks to us and when he tells us who we are, we are always greater and we are always more than we would ever choose for ourselves. So we've been looking at scripture and we've been asking God to show us who he says we are. And this morning we're gonna we're gonna look at this identity that God gives us. And it's an identity that proves those thoughts that we sometimes have, thoughts like, I didn't sign up for this, I'm not ready for this, I'm not prepared for this, I can't handle this, those thoughts, they're lies. Because God says that you are equipped to handle anything that life throws at you. God says that you are prepared and you are ready, that right now within you is everything you need to handle every situation life throws at you and to handle it with success. In Hebrews chapter 13, verse 21. God's word says, May He, talking about God, equip you with all you need for doing his will. May He produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever. Amen. I love that phrase, equip us for doing his will. Sometimes we wonder what God's will is. God's will is that you live life. And that you live life to its fullest, and that you live life in such a way that other people see your life and they see God in your life. Jesus said, I come to give them life and give it abundantly. God's will for you is to live life, not to exist, not to get by, not to just make it and hold on. God's will is for you to live. And he says, I will equip you to do just that. 2 Peter 1:3 almost echoes the words that were in Hebrews perfectly because the Holy Spirit inspired both. It's really the same author. And this is what this is what 2 Peter says. By his divine power, talking about Jesus, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living life. We are equipped, you are equipped to handle anything. If that's the truth, why doesn't it feel that way so often? Because I've been in plenty of situations in life where I can say with a lot of confidence that I'm not equipped for this, I'm not ready for this. And we've all been there. It might be a job. I know we have a lot of students in the room, a lot of people preparing for their careers. Even if you're not a student, you're training for your future. And here's the great thing no matter how much training and preparation you do, no matter how much study, even if you land your dream job, there will be aspects of it that you hate, aspects of it that you did not anticipate, right? We've all experienced that to a certain degree. How many of us have had a job and two months in we were like, this is exactly what the job description said it would be? I have not been asked to do one thing other than what was in my job description, right? This is this is what I signed up for. That's never the case. There's always these moments where we're like, I I this is not the job I thought I was taking. What do I do? I'm not I'm not trained for this, I'm not prepared for this. It could be marriage. I mean, marriage is basically constantly feeling unequipped to handle whatever you've got to handle, right? Megan and I got married really young. I was 21, she was 20, but we had been together for three years. We were high school sweethearts, we'd known each other for five or six years. We even took premarital counseling, so we thought, we thought we were prepared. We were like, ah, we've got this. We're in love, we're puzzle pieces that complete each other, and we're in love, and it's just gonna be smooth sailing. And it wasn't really smooth. Um I'll never forget one of the things it was so such small things. Megan was not prepared for the fact that I snore. She did not know that. I actually did not know that I snored as well, because when you snore, you're asleep and you can't hear yourself snore. And so I didn't really find out that I snored until I was married to Megan, and she informed me that not only did I snore, but apparently I snored with like tall tail levels of exaggeration. She'd say, You shake the whole room. I'm like, that's not physically possible from my nostrils. That cannot happen. But she swore, and again, I can't hear myself snore, so maybe she was not prepared for that. I was not prepared to be woken up five times a night to be told that I was snoring. And I know there's some men in the room that have had this experience. What are you supposed to do? Like Megan will wake me up and say, You're snoring. I'm so sorry. I will, I'm so sorry. I went to bed. I was like, should I snore or not? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna snore. No, that's not how it works. And snoring is not a crime. It's not, but you would think it would be if you asked Megan. I'm working on it. There were so many things we were not prepared for. Having children. How in the world can you be prepared for children? How in the world? Because if you read every book there is, if you buy every product that that exists to help make you a good parent, you just have no idea who that child is gonna be. Megan and I just found out, it's exciting. We found out recently that we're expecting our third, so we're gonna have our third child. Yeah. That is that is how we are gonna grow this church, you know, one one baby at a time. It's a slow build, but it'll work. Um and we're excited, but there is this realization that's terrifying to realize that now there will be more of them than us. And and I don't I don't really like that feeling, to be honest with you, because even just even just equal, we can play man to man right now, and now we gotta go zone, and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do because there's gonna be moments where Megan leaves and I'm with all three, and there's more of them than I have arms, and I don't know how to handle that. And even even if I can figure out some logistics, I don't know what this next child's gonna be like. Will this child be like Liam, our oldest, who just talks and talks and talks and talks? I have no idea where he got it from, but he just talks all the time. Is that how is that how this child's gonna be? But he but he's sweet and he's kind, he's generous, and he's helpful, and he he's very accommodating. He just lets you know exactly what he's thinking at all times with a lot of words. Or is this next child gonna be like like Lily, who doesn't talk the same amount that Liam talks, but there's an intensity behind every word that is very real. I mean, Lily, she's 18 months old, but she will point at you and point at something else and scream at you to get it because she believes that she is in charge. She believes it. She is gonna love being an older sister, she's gonna love it because she is naturally so opinionated and direct. Or is this child gonna be completely different? Not like either. Uncharted territory. How are you equipped for something like that? Life is so completely surprising so often. How in the world can this be true? How in the world can we be equipped for everything that we need for life? And the answer's both really simple and also really hard to wrap our minds around. Because the truth is, we're not equipped. In and of ourselves, we are not equipped. I don't have the experience, I don't have the wisdom, I don't have the know-how to handle so much in life. And so if I'm relying on myself, if I'm relying on what's what's by my own power, I am not equipped. But both of these verses, if we look back, both of them said, by God's power, by his divine power, we have been equipped. Through the Old Testament, the nation of Israel frequently felt unequipped. God calls them out of slavery in Egypt, and he says, Hey, you're gonna go into this land that's occupied by these very mighty nations, and you're gonna conquer it. And they had been enslaved for 400 years. They had not been trained on how to fight, they hadn't been prepared for battle. Egypt did not train Israel as their slaves to fight. They didn't want that, they didn't want an uprising. They weren't experienced warriors. Every nation they went up against had more soldiers, more chariots, more horses, and yet somehow they conquered nation after nation. They did exactly what God said they would do. And how, when they were so poorly equipped for the challenges at hand, how in the world were they successful? And the answer is that it was not by their strength that they were victorious. It was God's. That they had something with them that has shaped the course of history, and that is the presence of God. Because when God shows up, things happen. It was the presence of God that parted the Red Sea, it was the presence of God that led them through the desert, it was the presence of God that made the walls of Jericho fall down, it was the presence of God that brought Jesus into this world, it was the presence of God that rose Jesus back to life from the grave, and it's that very presence of God that is inside of you if you know Jesus. The very presence of God, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is with you, in you. Every moment of every day. Where you go, God is. So when you walk into a situation that you've never been in before, even though you might feel unequipped, God does not. God is with you, He is in you, and there's never a moment that God walks into and says, Oh wow. I don't know what we're gonna do. There's never a moment in life where you'll bring a problem to God and hear God say, Good luck. Romans 8, 16. For his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. God's spirit literally joins with us. And this is this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We live in a time when the gospel is not always a popular message, it is the most powerful message that's ever been spoken. It's shaped the course of history for the last 2,000 years. But it's not always popular, and so what we see happen often in the church is the gospel gets twisted and changed so that it's more palatable or it meshes better with the culture that we're part of, but sometimes the gospel is just countercultural. And so what we see happen is the gospel be watered down and changed so that sometimes it's like, hey, yeah, it's not so much about life now, it's about heaven. You're gonna go to heaven. You know, the gospel is that we all have life insurance and it's called heaven, and we get to go there one day. But Jesus spent his time talking about this life. He talked about heaven, and we have that to look forward to, but he spent most of his time talking about this life, your life right now. He wants your life today to be successful, he wants your life to thrive, he wants your life. To have meaning and to have purpose. The gospel is about this life that we're living right now. Sometimes the gospel gets changed and all the practical good truths remain, but the power's gone. The life behind it gets taken out. And so the gospel gets watered down to be just a bunch of really cool thoughts and a bunch of really practical ideas that if you apply these things to your life, you'll feel better, you'll be better. It's like the self-help gospel. And there's truth in that. Search scripture and you will find answers to every problem you can imagine in life. It's there. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God Himself came to this earth, put on human flesh, became one of us, so that he could make a way for our hearts to be his home. So that the very presence of God that has existed for forever would live within us, that the power of God would be available to us, that we would never have to go into any situation in life alone, but we have God Himself with us. That we are the temple of God, that we are where God lives. Your life is God's dwelling place. If you have a relationship with Jesus, if you've asked him into your life, God's presence and his spirit is available to you every moment of every day. And I'll be the first to admit that I live life and I face my problems and I so often forget that the solution is not outside of me, but the solution is with me and within me because God is with us. He is with us. And he has promised us that he will give us everything we need. You are equipped. So the question is just really simple. What do you need right now? What do you need to happen in your life today? What situation are you in that it's uncharted waters? What situation are you facing or you don't know what to do? What do you need? Do you need wisdom? Answer is yes. We need wisdom, right? We like to think that money solves all problems. That if we have more money, we we have less problems. But a very well-known scholar uh by the name of B.I.G. Notorious BIG, okay, 90s people, um, he actually promised us more money, more problems. No one gets that? Okay. You know. Some people are like, can you clap for notorious B.I.G. in church? Like, yes, you can. That's accurate. There are studies that back that up, by the way. Did you know this? That the wealthiest nations in the world, not the poorest, the wealthiest nations in the world suffer with the most depression and with the highest rates of suicide. Having more does not make us better. It does not solve our problems. But wisdom, that's very different. If we have more wisdom, oh, life just works. If I look back to most of my mistakes in life, they can be traced to a lack of wisdom on my part by me doing something that I would look at now and go, oh, yeah, that was stupid. And here's the great thing about wisdom: God is gushing with wisdom. There's a verse in the Bible, we don't have it on the screens, but it says that the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom. And I love that verse because God doesn't have any foolishness. There's no foolishness in him, and so if his foolishness, which doesn't exist, is greater than our wisdom, how wise is God? James 1:5 says this. If you need wisdom, ask God for it. Ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. You can at any moment in your life say, God, I don't know what to do. You need to show me what to do. He promised it. You can hold him to his promises. God, you said you'd give me wisdom. You said, if I ask, I'll receive it. I need wisdom. I need to know what to do. What should I do? God will give you wisdom. He'll give it to you, he'll speak it into your life, he'll bring someone alongside you who will tell you exactly what you need to do. It's it's in Scripture. You can open up the Bible and you'll find wisdom on every single page. You'll find answers to every problem you could imagine. You have wisdom at your disposal through the presence of God in your life. Proverbs 2.7 says he grants a treasure of common sense to the honest. He is a shield to those who walk with integrity. How much better would our nation be right now if the leaders of our country just had some common sense, right? I mean, seriously. And I'm not, and I'm not criticizing a single individual. I'm just talking about the whole system. It's amazing, right? How we'll look at it and we'll be like, well, that doesn't make any sense. And they'll be like, nope, good idea, let's do it. We can't afford this, we'll buy it. You know, like, wait, hold on. That's not how life works. I love that it's called common sense because it seems to be the least common thing in the world. But God says, I will give you common sense. And if you have common sense and wisdom, you will be successful in your life for one big reason. You will have very little competition. It's just the truth. God will give you what you need, and all of a sudden, problems that would baffle you, the solutions become clear because God's wisdom makes it clear. Do you need wisdom today? Ask God for it. He has equipped you with everything you need with wisdom. Do you need the right words to speak? I mean, how many of us have situations right now where we have to have a conversation with someone, things are awkward, things are frustrating, a relationship's become unhealthy, and we've got to talk to someone, but it's risky because that person might be our boss or a coworker, an employee, it might be a spouse, it might be a child, a good friend. And we're we're worried about what's gonna happen if we have this conversation. We're nervous. If you're like me and that's a situation that you face, you think about every possible outcome, and you have the conversation in advance in your mind, like 300 times. Trying to play out, well, if they say this, then I'll say this, but if they say this and they respond this way, then I'll come at them with this. And oh, and I find myself arguing in my car with someone who's not there. Because I am trying to think through every possible way the conversation could go, because I'm not sure if I have the right words to say. Jesus said this to his disciples in Luke 21. Before all this occurs, there will be a time of great persecution. You'll be dragged into synagogues and prison, you'll stand trial before kings and governors because you're my followers, but this will be your opportunity to tell them about me. So don't worry in advance about how to answer the charges against you. For I will give you the right words and such wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to reply or refute you. Jesus says, Don't worry in advance about what you're gonna have to say. Just trust me, I'll give you the words. You are equipped. Right now, today, the presence of God is with you, you're equipped. If you know Jesus, you're equipped. If you don't know Jesus, we can introduce you to him. He's right here. He wants to equip you for life. So when you have those thoughts that think, hey, I can't handle this, no, no, you can handle this. You are made for this. You're equipped for this. I can't, I can't take this on. You can take this on, you can conquer it because you're equipped. When you have those thoughts where you think this is too much for me, this isn't enough for me. I can take so much more because I have the presence of God in my life. God has equipped you. You are ready. You've got this, you can do this, you can live this life, and you can live it well by the power of God in you. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is with you always. And he wants your life to be his home. And he wants to work through you. He will give you everything you need. Galatians 5, 22 and 23 say this it's the fruit of the Spirit. It's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And as you look at that list, these are the things that the Holy Spirit, God's presence in our lives, these are the things He produces in us. Not the things we have to really strive for and work at, but these are the things that God will produce in us if we allow him to. How many of those things on the screen are the answer to a problem you're facing right now? Is more joy a solution for your life? Is more patience a solution? Is more faithfulness, just the ability to keep at it? Self-control? Gentleness? How many of the things right there are the solutions you need? And God says, I'll produce it in you. You're equipped. You are equipped. I'm always blown away at how often God Himself will solve a problem in my life. And yes, there's work required, there's there's situations where I do have to do something, I have to take action, but but I find that He has already put everything in place to solve the problem. I go back to that story of the canoes that I talked about at the very beginning, the two canoes that flew off at 75 miles an hour on the highway. It's a good day. Canoes are perfect for water, uh, but I don't think when they were originally designed, they ever thought about them traveling 75 miles an hour because they're like great sails at that point. They just catch the wind. And so here's what you gotta understand. I do not have what they call spatial intelligence. Okay, it means I don't look at things and figure out how they fit together. My wife gets frustrated with me often because I cannot figure out how to get all the dishes in the sink into the dishwasher. Can't do it. I look at the sink and I'm like, that's two loads. That's definitely two loads. And so I load it up and I put it in. She'll come and say, Why didn't you put those in too? I'm like, they won't fit. And then she will stop the dishwasher and rearrange things and they fit with room to spare. And I'm just like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know how that's possible. It's like a magic trick to me. I don't think like that. Okay? And so we're on the side of the road, and it's me and Megan. We're driving this SUV and two canoes, that we've got to figure out how to get back to Atlanta because the trailer's broken, they won't go back on the trailer. All the other students that were with us, the college students, they all drive these really little cars. So there's no way that we could strap the canoes to their vehicles. So we have to figure out how to do this. And I'm like, this isn't gonna work. I can't think of it. But here's what's so cool: God had already lined up everything ahead of time. Number one, he brought two people on that trip, my wife and Matt Simmons, who was singing just a second ago. Both of them are very logistically minded, both of them see details, and so I'm freaking out, and they're like, no, no, no, we can do this. And they figured out pretty quickly what to do with the first canoe, just put it on the top of our vehicle. So I've got a picture of that. That's that's our vehicle right there, and canoe's on top. We use the straps for that. But then we've got this other canoe. We can't just stack it on top of the one that's on our car. None of the other cars had room for it on the top of their cars. They didn't have racks. We were out of straps. We used all the straps that were on the ground that we could find. We used them to put that canoe on. So what we ended up doing was figuring out how to put it in the back of our vehicle. Um and we secured it with seat belts. But here's what here's what's what's really crazy about this situation. This is always, like for me, this is really personal. That's actually not our car. That's that's Megan's parents' car because two days before we took that trip, our car died. And we we had an SUV that could have pulled the vehicles, but it was much smaller than theirs, and there's no way that that canoe would have fit in our vehicle. None. Even if it would have been long enough, which it's not, it would never have fit through the window. We actually looked at it when we got back home and see, because our vehicle died, we had to borrow theirs. And because we had theirs, we had the space for this other canoe to fit. And so before we even went on our journey, God had already prepared. He already knew, and he had already put everything into place for us to be able to handle that situation. I want you to know this morning that is you. You might be in a situation right now that you feel unprepared for, you feel unequipped, you might be facing one soon, but I promise you that God has put everything you need to get through it in place already. That God has gone before you and He has placed within you all the strength, all the humility, all the endurance, all the hope, all the faith, all the wisdom that you can handle. He's put it within you and you have access to it. And so it's as his followers, let's not live pretending to be unequipped. Let's not give in to the lies that tell us that we can't handle this, that this is too much for us. Because when you have God, when you have God in your life, when he is in you, there is nothing that's too much for you. So be equipped. Don't walk out of here today realizing that you've got this. And every situation that comes at you this week, every situation that comes at you this year, every moment you start to think those thoughts, I can't do this. No, no, no. It's done. God is with you, He loves you, and He has equipped you. So let's be people who live equipped. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for uh, for this church, God, just to be back this week. It's awesome. Thank you for caring about our lives. So much so that you have put within us your presence, your spirit. Which makes us so much more than we would ever be without you. Because of you, Jesus, there is no situation, there is no circumstance, there is no problem, there's no emergency that we're ever gonna walk into that you're unprepared for. And you have given us access to your very spirit, and God, we need it, we love it, we need to experience more of it, Lord. So if there is one person in this room that does not know you, that does not have you in their life, we pray that that changes today, that this moment they would make a decision to follow you, Jesus, and to experience your spirit joining with theirs. God, remind us that we're equipped. We would ask you to equip us this week, but you say you already have. So remind us this week that we are equipped for this life, that we have everything we need to live it to its fullest. And God, give us excitement and passion as we walk out of here today, ready to live the life you have for us. We love you. We ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen.