Good morning. Good morning. I am excited to be back with the opportunity to share. I really haven't ever gone away. I'm usually here on most most weeks. Like you said, I'm kind of stuck back in the hole back there in the back of the room. It's been about three months since the last time I shared. And uh last time I spoke, I had some pretty serious news. If you weren't here, or if if you kind of remember and haven't haven't heard an update, um my wife, I'm sorry, my uh my throat was really dry. Let me get you. My wife had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. And um it had just kind of come to light, and and we were just in the middle of that process, and she was scheduled to have surgery. Um that was 13 weeks ago, this coming um week. And um I'm I'm happy and and thrilled to report that she has made a total and a miraculous uh recovery from that surgery. Yep. I mean, that's not a long time. That's that's not a long time, and um it it she's made amazing strides. And and you wouldn't even kind of know walking up to her. In fact, the doctors have kind of been like, whoa, you're you're doing really, really well. Um and and I I truthfully believe um that it's we couldn't have done it without you. Um the love, the support, the the overwhelming out outpouring on us from this place, our family here, was was beyond comprehension. It really was. And and I I can't thank you enough. You guys are our family, and we love you. We love every one of you, so so thank you so much. Um well, we got that out of the way without totally bawling like a like a three-year-old infant. All right, so this week and the last two weeks, we've been uh talking about a series. It's it's you would do well. You would do well. It's a it's a um idea that comes from Acts 15, and Justin kind of started it the last couple weeks. It's it's about taking some practical ideas, right, um, that we can find in the Bible and being able to just walk out here and just straight out apply them. A couple weeks ago, Justin talked about, you know, hunting for wisdom, seeking and searching at wisdom. Uh last week, he he he talked about, and it was really good, about how you are a child of God, and you need to know who you are. Know who you are. You do well to know who you are. You are a co-heir with Jesus to eternity. Um and uh this morning I I'd like to kind of continue that process, if you will oblige. Uh we're going to uh talk about a really common sense idea, a really common sense practice that pretty much everybody is familiar with in this room, especially our students. We're gonna talk about testing. So if the Usher team would pass out the number two pencils and scantrons, we'll get started, all right? Just kidding. No, no, no. Um But we are. We're we're all we're gonna talk about testing, and we're all really familiar with it. Um I've been uh exposed to that just this week, some. I have taken my first college class in about 15 years over the past several weeks, uh this summer. Um couldn't have picked a worse time to do that too, by the way. And uh I had my final on Friday. So um not sure how I did. Um find out next week, so we'll just leave it at that. Um I also tested something else this week. So does anybody know where Bubbecue is down the road? Anybody there? Right down here at Highway 92 in Cant, basically, old English shopping center. Um got to go there with my parents this week, have some dinner. Um I usually I've eaten there a bunch, and I always get the same thing. I get a barbecue pork sandwich and fries. It's like the easiest way to judge a good barbecue joint, right? Barbecue sandwich, side of fries, you know if it's good or bad right off the bat. Um eat that all the time down there. And you usually don't even crack open the menu, but for whatever reason, open the menu and I saw something. Something different. And I and I was it caught my eye. It's called the hog a changa. Yes. Yes, okay. Let me explain the hog a changa. It's a it's a giant flour tortilla stuffed with barbecue pork, got dry rub seasoning and sweet sauce on top, and then they pour baked beans on it, and then wrap it up and deep fry it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Then they pour Brunswick stew on top. Oh, and it has pepperjack cheese too. Yes. I I was I was in I was enamored. I I just I had to know what this thing was like. And I broke all rule and regulation in my life, and I ordered it. I ordered it. Um this thing's been featured on the travel channel. All right, it had me captivated. This is a a a piece of culinary art, right? Yeah. And so it was awesome. It was awesome. It was so good. I love trying new things. I love to test new things. You see, we test. That's what we do. We we test for the ability to retain knowledge, school, right? We test for medical results, we test for scientific understanding, we test. Now I'm a programmer. I test all day, every day. I test to see if my code works or not. Usually it doesn't. So I get to fix it, right? That's what beta testing is. Um, that's what it's all about. And believe it or not, that's biblical. Paul talks about it. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 21. Paul says this. But test everything that is said, hold on to what is good. It's also usually or a lot of times translated simply as this so test everything, hold on to the good. So test everything, hold on to the good. What a simple concept, right? You know, when we test something and we get good results, trustworthy results, we can be confident to know that what we get, the answers we receive are true and reliable. You were created to test. Just think about that for a second. You were created to test. Everything that you know is a result of some sort of testing. We naturally put everything to the test, and the results of that testing then become truth to us. If 20 people go out and eat the hog a chunga, right, and tell me it's awesome, until I eat it and I test it, it's not truth to me. I can trust their information, but I trust my own results more than their testimony, right? Every relationship you have, whether it's interpersonal or not, is a result of testing and holding on to your good results, your trusted results. So this concept of testing and holding on to the good, honestly, it's what's allowed us, I mean, as a humanity, to move into this modern day of technology from the beginning of man until now, everything really frames around this idea of testing and holding on to the good results. Never before have people had the ability to access information like we do today. It's really fantastic. It's never been more readily available. We all know it. But here's an example. If you humor me for just a second, you want to know Don Mattingley's batting average from 1986? 352. Yeah. What shoe size does Oprah Winfrey? I should have thought about saying that out loud. What shoe size does Oprah Winfrey wear? She wears a size 10. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? European. It's roughly 24 miles an hour. And if you didn't get that, find somebody who laughed, ask them afterward, they'll explain it to you. I found all those weird, I just thought of three things as odd as I could off the top of my head doing an internet search, and boom, boom, boom, I had answers in less than two minutes. Internet's awesome, isn't it? But with so much information available to us, it puts a burden on us. You know? We have to be able to decipher what's true and what's not. You know, we apply testing to what we hear, to what we read, to what we see, to what we observe. And that has never been more important than it is now. You know, we must first recognize that information is different than truth. We can find the truth by testing information. You know, uh we must also recognize that it's sometimes difficult to distinguish what is true from what is fiction. When it comes to that information, we we do come across. A lot of times information may look polished or well presented and come across as completely and totally believable. That doesn't mean it's accurate, right? It could be bad information. That's where we gotta hold on to the good. And it was no different in the early church when Paul wrote what he wrote. You know, he encourages young, thriving, rapidly growing group of Jesus followers to not be afraid, to not be afraid to test what was being said or done. Now, I personally I grew up in a relatively um traditional church environment. And, you know, I think the common practice among traditional church environments is that you don't really question what the guy up on the stage says, you know? You're basically taught that that's gospel, that's infallible fact of what he's saying. Unquestionable. You know, that's been my experience studying a whole bunch of religious environments. But but that's not how it really is. That's not the way you were created, and and that's not true. The way you are designed is to behave the exact opposite. It's almost like we are hardwired, you know, to challenge and question what you encounter, right? That's what makes us as a creation so unique. Humanity, we we consciously rebelled against God. And while that wasn't like the purpose and that wasn't a good thing necessarily, it's really because we were the only part of creation given the freedom from our creator to do so. You are made that way. And it's okay for you to test everything, even in the church. So, since we're speaking of testing, I would like to do a quick test, but the no number two pencils, no scantrons, it's just raise your hand, okay? And everybody, I need everybody to answer. Nobody's excluded here, all right? Raise your hand if you ever were or if you are a kid. That's a good result, right? I don't think I saw any anybody not raise your hand. I'm just double checking. All right. That's what we would call a good result. We are all a child at one point, right? Now, second question. All right. Who as a child never challenged any authority figure at any point? I saw a hand, but it quickly went down. Right? It's almost like we were intended to be that way, right? That's that's something deep within you calls you to test against the situations you're presented with. I mean, Adam and Eve had everything they could possibly ever have dreamed for in the original garden. Perfect provision, perfect relationship, perfect sustained health. And with all that, they still chose to test the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Listening to Satan's lie about what that would offer them for fulfillment. Ever since that moment, we have been forced to test to survive. Now, being a parent is probably the closest thing that we can experience to having this like really amazing relationship with God, our Father, and how He feels about us. We are all God's kids, just like Justin talked about last week. You're a child of Abba. I have two kids. They are awesome, they're awesome, they're amazing. I have Will, he's 11, and I have Ainsley, um, she's nine. And they're at that age where one moment, I mean, I can have this really awesome, almost intellectual conversation with these young minds, you know, and I'm just I'm just overwhelmed with love as a father, and then the next moment I want to ground them forever. Like literally back to back. They're kind of at that age where they love testing, testing their boundaries. I mean, let me ask this for anybody that's out there in the same situation. How many times do you have to ask, have you fed the dog today before it's an unreasonable request? I mean, I don't know. And then they look, what? You're asking me to feed the dog at three o'clock in the afternoon, like every day? I'm in the middle of a video game here. Right? It's kind of how it goes. It they're testing the boundaries. The bet the my kids, the best thing they test, though, the number one thing they can test is my wife's patience. Period, hands down. So my daughter, Ainsley, she's a l- she's nine, and and she's a picky eater, so to speak, you know, if anybody's ever had one of those. Um, she's hesitant to try anything new, and and we actually have to frame restaurants around what she likes a lot of times, because if they don't have chicken nuggets on the menu, we may be in trouble. You know, and it you go somewhere without that, it's it's usually a battle. And um, so Father's Day weekend a couple uh weeks ago, we had a gift card that we were blessed with as a family for Saigon Cafe, again, down the road here in 92, just a little ways down. And we knew that there was gonna be an issue. If you haven't been there, it's a Vietnamese place, it's really good, but they don't have chicken nuggets. And so we we start teeing up the idea, even like on Saturday. We know we're gonna go there. We've already planned it out, so we just start laying the foundation, like Ainsley, it's not gonna have chicken nuggets, you're gonna have to find something, you're gonna have to trust, you know, you know, we go through all that kind of stuff. And we we had to encourage her that there would be something that there that she liked if she just trusted us. So they have this uh salad. It's called the combo luck luck. That's literally not combo, it's combo luck luck, four words. And it's basically lettuce with steak on top and a side of rice. And my daughter loves salads, she loves steak, and she loves rice. So we knew that this was a good fit, right? And we we we had to kind of twist our arm, and she tried it. She did try it, and she ate every single bite. She ate every single bite. But in order for her to even just try it, she had to trust us. Sorry, a little off topic. Between the Hogga Chonga and the combo luck luck, anybody else hungry all of a sudden? It's just me. You see, we knew her likes and dislikes. She tested it because she trusted us in that moment. Can you can you imagine how God kind of looks at us, smiles down on us? How how how much patience and love he has for us despite the times where we kind of push our boundy, push our boundaries and kind of don't necessarily want to live in his perfect provision and his perfect love. You know, as parents, we understand our kids. We do. We allow them to test their bounds so that we can develop a relationship of trust. And God does the exact same thing with you. He provides unending grace to test your boundaries, to find the limits, to come to a clear realization that we can't do this life without Him. To realize that trusting Him brings an amazing life filled with joy, an amazing life filled with combo luck luck moments. Right? So to get a perfect picture of how God interacts in this relationship, all we have to do is look one place. And that's Jesus. It says in Hebrews that Jesus expresses the exact character of God, that he is the exact representation of our Abba, our daddy. So since Jesus' nature is just like God the Father, sharing the same character traits, what did Jesus do while he was here on earth with people like you and me? Think about it for a second. Well, what did Jesus do? Jesus loved to just be around people, to eat meals with people just like we do every week. And he loved being around people who were inquisitive, right? Asking him questions. Questions about everything. And he he provided answers every time. He was asked, what rules should people follow? He was asked, what did the future hold and what would it look like? He was asked to heal people. He was asked, how do we feed 4,000 people with two fish and two loaves? You know, he was even asked about taxes because nobody even back then liked paying taxes. He was tested and he was even tried in courts and in the temple. And he always provided truth and love with his responses. This is the exact character of our daddy God. The same God of the Old Testament. You know the God of Old Testament came down and physically fought, physically wrestled with Jacob, allowing that stubborn human to push back and test the purpose of God in his life. God expressed that same character with Abraham, Moses, with Gideon, with Jonah, and more, allowing all these to be test and to test, to be test, to be tested and to test, excuse me, to grow in their relationships with God, developing a bond of trust in the experience of their tested outcomes. See, Jesus and God don't mind being tested. In fact, they welcome tough questions. They don't even mind pushback sometimes. Guess what? When we need to test our understandings of them, they always provide good answers. Answers grounded in truth. And that's when trust is created. We test, we find truth, and we get to trust. That's the relationship God desperately desires to have with you. One full of love, trust, and testing. Testing and trust are always connected. I mentioned when I started about my wife and what we went through over the past several months. When she first began to realize something was odd, we really didn't know what was going on. In fact, it kind of started really just about like she was having vision problems in her left eye. And it was time to go here get her normal prescription eye exam. And they gave her a new set of glasses, and she's like, I just don't think the prescription's right in the left eye. And uh I just can't see clearly. And so she went back again and uh they adjusted the prescription slightly, and she was having some odd and unexplainable pressure behind that left eye, um, and was getting headaches and stuff, and it was, you know, that went on for a little while. And it got to the point where the headaches got scary. I'm not sure how much pain it was, but it was just fear. And that fear built up one evening to a point of anxiety that I've never seen with her before. She started having chest pains and breathing shallow, and I ended up having to take her to the ER. Um, and it turns out it was because of an anxiety attack. But the anxiety was was rooted in fear of what was going on, the uh this unexplainable um sensation she was having in her head. The doctor at the ER diagnosed her having a complex migraine and sent her back to uh her primary care and said you might want to follow up with a neurologist as well. So she did that, and we ended up with a neurologist whose first step really was why don't we just kind of rule out the big stuff, get a quick scan, so make sure you don't have anything major going on, and then we can go from there. So we went and got an MRI and an MRA. And that's when we found out what was going on. We got a proper diagnosis for the first time. I mean, she had an aneurysm. You know, sometimes a good result is tough to hear. But the truth, regardless of the impact, is always good. I mean, I think that's something that in the moment is difficult to remember sometimes, but that but that is it. The truth is always good. So this aneurysm was pressing against her optic nerve, which was causing some of her vision stuff and this pressure. And the result of this truth gave us the that actual hard-to-take truth we needed. The MRA, they they followed that up quickly with a CT scan, which gave us even a better picture of what was going on. And during that whole kind of process, kind of parallel to it around that time, we we knew we had a decision to make. How are we going to go about treatment? And um we kind of went about it in two different ways. We knew we needed to find somebody who dealt with this as a specialty. And my wife actually has an aunt who was also diagnosed just prior with this situation with an aneurysm. And she called her family and asked, what were they doing about this whole thing? How were they going to go about it? And um she had been with her neurologist who recommended a specialist here in Atlanta. So her why my wife was kind of aligned with that as her kind of path to get an answer. I took a totally different route. The morning after I found out, um, I had had a really rough night's sleep, as you can imagine. I got to work early. And to be honest, I don't even remember if I I made a pot of coffee like I usually do because I was just so focused on what was going on with us. And I remember sitting down at my desk, firing up my computer, and going straight to the internet to do research. I just wanted to know everything I could about what she had and what we could do and get it. I'm just the guy, the more answers I can have, the better. And I ran across a website for the Brain Aneurism Foundation, uh, which had a great FAQ, talked about treatment options, had everything. And through my investigation on their website, I found a link that had their board of directors and all that kind of stuff. And one of the listings under there was their medical advisory board. Their medical, um, their top medical advisor, their executive director was a doctor, a neurosurgeon out of Harvard University. I mean, this is a who's who list of the top neurosurgeons in America. Really in the world. Um and it's kind of broken down by geographic region. And I mean, I just quickly scanned as fast as I could down to Southeast. And the top name I came across was uh Dr. Daniel Barrows. He's the chief of neurosurgery at Emory University Hospital. Now I'm familiar with Emory, I've done a lot of work down there in the past, and and um I know the quality of care there is second to none. And I knew right in that moment that was the guy I needed to see, that we needed to see. And I did a second test super quick. I I actually pulled up our insurance and I double checked that he was in our plan, and he was. Um I called my wife that morning, and I said, I know the guy, I wrote it down, he's on our insurance, this this is who we need to see. And um, it's the same guy that was treating her aunt. Um it just shows you go to show you how God works. Um, we met with Dr. Barrows, and he recommended another test. So the next step was to get a diagnostic angiogram, which is a fairly invasive procedure. And we actually had some complications with that I talked about last time. But the end result of that was really a clear picture of what was going on. And it gave us very accurate information about how to make a decision. And it was his um it was his professional recommendation that we treat this procedure, treat her aneurysm with a procedure called clipping. It's basically a craniotomy, it's full invasive brain surgery through the skull. And um, that's not an easy thing to make a decision on, I would say. Um but when you've gone through that much testing and you have an advisor like that, um, you trust his advice. And that's exactly what we did. And and we did so with complete confidence, and I know looking back that that we made the right decision. You know, through testing testing, and more testing, we had the best information we could possibly have. And we knew it was good information, truthful information. It gave us trust in how to move forward. Testing led to truth, led to trust. When we we began to walk as as people down a path of faith, you know, we we often have many available routes to take. There is so much information out there. And we have to test it. You have the responsibility to test it to find out what's good. You can trust somebody's testimony, but your results are you're gonna trust a lot more. You know, when we test God's love and plans for us, the best way to do that is look at Jesus and what he did and what he said. And Jesus was not unfamiliar with testing. It says this in Luke chapter 4. It says, for the third test, the devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the temple. He said, If you are God's son, jump. It's written, isn't it, that he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you, that they will catch you. You won't so much as stub your toe on a stone. Yes, said Jesus, it is also written, don't you dare tempt the Lord your God. That completed the testing. The devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity. You see, I'm not sure that we have the ability to test God in this type of way, that like Satan tested Jesus. That said, testing God is not the same as testing our ideas or our understandings about God. You know, our convictions, the information we have available or we hold as truth, should be tested constantly. It should be an active process of testing. If you've grown up with an idea about God that's harsh and he's angry and you know, he's out for revenge, for wrath, test it. I mean, test it. Put it to the test. Find out what Jesus said, what he did, how he treated people. Ask God to show you in Scripture His true nature. What about creation? What does that say about who God is? What if you have an idea of God that, you know, he loves us, but he doesn't really care about the choices we make, so long as you're just happy? Right? It doesn't really matter. As long as you're happy, it's all good. Test it. I mean, put it put a valuation of your choices you've made in your life and choices others around you have made. Look at the results. Do good choices and a good life of wisdom in your decision making produce results? Does prayer and time with Jesus make your life more effective? What did Jesus say to people who made poor choices? Even if you're here today and you just struggle with just the sheer idea that there is God at all, that the universe may not even need a creator, or that if there is one, he probably is so big he doesn't even care about this little speck of dust and the tiny people on it. Test it. Test it. Ask questions. Ask tough questions. Don't be afraid to dig for answers. Seek objective truth from a collection of perspectives. Don't be afraid where you're going to find. Look at the Bible from Genesis to Jesus to revelation. Look where it points. See what it says. You will find a God who wants you to seek Him. That is the practical takeaway for today. You should test everything and then hold on to the good. Testing will build a relationship of trust. See, religion, traditional religion, has a tendency to make you have doubts, make you wonder about your doubts, question your faith. You know? Have a lack of trust in what it's trying to sell you. Relationship is completely different. It's the opposite. A healthy relationship is built on a foundation of trust and authenticity, right? And honesty. The Bible, that's its purpose. It highlights that for us. It doesn't sugarcoat it. It doesn't cover up the struggles, the doubts, the question, the faith wavering of all the people that it talks about. From Adam to Moses, from David to Peter and Paul. It shows us that it's completely normal, completely normal to feel that way. It helps us understand that it's okay to question, wonder, doubt, and most importantly, to use what you've been created to do, to test. This is where it all begins to start pointing back to Jesus for us. Once you develop this relationship, you build confidence, just like we had confidence in our doctor. You have a confidence that if you test Jesus, you will find that he is your control, so to speak. He's your control when it comes to understanding who God is. He has and he will pass every test. Try it. Apply it. He is the exact representation of God your Father. And he showed you his character. He wants a relationship. A relationship built on testing, truth, and trust. Jesus said this in John chapter 12. He shouts to the crowds If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me. For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me. I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark. I will not judge those who hear me but don't obey me. For I come, I have come to the I have come to save the world and not to judge it. Think about that. That's God's character. He wants you to seek him. He wants you to seek truth, to develop a trust in him, to test our understandings and his purpose and his plans. Through a process of testing and truth finding, developing trust, walking in what we would call faith, maybe, you know, speak, so to speak, what happens is this the Holy Spirit comes alongside us. God enters our heart, we get the Holy Spirit, and He walks with us, and He begins to align us, changing us slowly from the inside out to this thing called wisdom that Justin talked about two weeks. Wisdom is the byproduct of this process. And it provides us with an ability to discern, right, what information we have and what is good and what's not. We learn through a lifelong, this isn't a one-day thing, this is a lifelong daily process of who God is and what his heart is really like. How much he loves you. If the worship team wants to kind of start making their way up, um, why don't we stand up? We can do that, we'll do that and get ready for the last song. You know, for the past three months, as you can imagine, the past three months, I have come to understand and appreciate testing like never before. And I've, if anybody's ever taken a class, I'm all about testing, and it's just to a totally different level now. Um to testing develops truth, develops trust. And when we trust, we can walk through any situation we face. Any situation, and we can walk through it with confidence. Proverbs chapter 3, this is one thing that is so simple almost to memorize. You could almost memorize this verse. And it's one I actually showed me something a little bit different this week with it. You've all probably heard this verse, maybe. It says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. This is this is before Jesus, kind of, right? But this is a relationship-driven verse. Think about it. We have to seek in all we do. We have to test in all we do. Right? And we learn to trust. Jesus said he is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus will be the light that shines on dark paths. The Holy Spirit will be there to guide you as well. And he will lead you to truth. God wants you to trust him. He loves you, he ain't mad at you. I said, ain't, because he ain't. You can lean on him. He wants you to lean on him with all your tough questions. He wants you to test everything and hold on to the good. And truth is always good, and there is no truth better than Jesus. Alright? So why don't we pray? And then we're going to do something slightly different, okay? So let's pray real quick. Daddy God, thank you for giving us the freedom to seek an amazing relationship with you. We thank you you allow us in freedom to test and question everything. God, we we pray for answers of truth today. God, I pray for anyone struggling in faith. Just open their hearts to who you really are and how desperately you want them to seek you out. Holy Spirit, just be with us as we go out with our lives this week. Show us clear examples of testing and how we can develop a trust and walk with you better, and how we can show that to other people. We love you, and it's in your son's awesome name we pray. Amen. So