Thanks for listening to the His Hands Church podcast. If you're using the His Hands Church mobile app, please turn off the auto lock on your phone's general settings so that you can listen to the message uninterrupted. And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands.

How is everybody?

Anybody damp? Well, today is our um fourth annual Blessing of the Bikes Day and our first annual baptism of the Bikes Day. So kind of a a new twist on it, I guess. Um well generally today is a well, it's always it's still gonna be a fun day, but generally it's a day where we have a a ton of motorcycles show up and we we really have this kind of amazing bike show kind of vibe. I think I heard last count there were six. So um, but nonetheless, it's a day where we celebrate our uh our motorcycle enthusiasts. Uh we give them a chance to ride in together and uh show off their bikes, and most importantly, pray for protection over them as they ride and and enjoy themselves. And uh today we're still gonna do that. We're not gonna just let a little rain dampen our spirits. We're gonna um continue to do that. Uh, if you rode in this morning, you are one of those brave few, um, we are going to bless you this morning. You will get prayer, you will get um full coverage, the whole works. If you ride and you didn't ride in this morning, um, and you still would like prayer, we can pray for you. We'll meet you either in the lobby if it's pouring, or we can do it outside, whichever you prefer. And I have this really awesome, you know, we've been doing the whole 4.8 thing, uh, opportunity. Why don't we make it bless the bikes month? How about it? Yeah? All right. So if you ride and you really want your bike prayed over specifically, sometime over the next month on a Sunday, ride in, come to the info desk, we will find somebody to pray for you and pray over your bike. If you know somebody that couldn't have come today, this gets a chance to get more people involved. How about it? Sound good? All right, regardless, we're still gonna have awesome food and a lot of fun today. All right, there's great food. Everybody's welcome to hang out. Let's just enjoy each other. Um we can uh do the prayers and then around noon, we'll still do a big collective prayer for all our riders. And um if anybody's willing who who did ride and the weather's permitting, we'll we'll fire up the six big bikes we have here and see how loud we can make them, all right? All right. So uh now just to set the record straight, I did not ride in this morning. I did not. Um it's not because of the rain, though, it's because I don't have a motorcycle right now. I sold my bike recently and I'm kinda in between motorcycles. I'm hoping to get another soon. Um, but I have ridden on the uh the mean streets of Metro Atlanta, if you will. Uh I understand what it's like. And to just kind of put a blunt honesty out there, um, to ride a motorcycle at all, hey who who here's ridden a motorcycle or been on a motorcycle or any of that? A lot of you, that's right. All right. You have to have a little bit of a wild side, right? Yeah, you got to. You gotta have a little bit of a thrill-seeking mentality. There's there's an inherent risk associated with riding a motorcycle. Um to ride in the metro Atlanta area, we can crank that up a couple notches, right? You know, like a borderline crazy, probably, even. Uh again, I personally can relate, so I'm I'm in that boat. Uh this church, his hands, is is really cool in that way. Um with the people that ride, we know that we're a little crazy. We just identified that. But I know many of you that don't ride, and guess what? It still applies. It still applies. And it's okay. It's like awesome, in fact. It's this is a place where if we are a little wild, if we are a little crazy, if we're rough around the edges, if if we have a little rebelliousness, guess what? It's awesome. It's okay to be yourself. I mean, we we have rock music. I mean, it doesn't get much better than these guys. Um, we party on Sunday, you know, we wear our jeans. Uh together, I'd be gu I would guess that we're viewed maybe collectively as a little rough around the edges. Right? I love that. I personally, really, really love that. So back to the motorcycle thing. If there's a risk, if there's if there's this inherent threat to riding a motorcycle, why would you do it? Why do we do it? Well, for me, I can only relate personally, um, there's a freedom to it. There's this, there's this interesting kind of feeling you get when you're on your motorcycle. It's you have no boundaries between you, the air, the ground. It's it's very liberating. The wind kind of engulfs you. And at times, the bike, it really almost seems to write itself. You're taught that when you want to go around a curve, you just look and the and the bike will follow. And it's really true. It's like you look this way and the bike goes. Um, you get so focused on the experience that you end up purging your mind of thoughts that might generally occupy that space. It's it's very, you know, harmonious in that in that moment. And it can be kind of therapeutic. It really can. This morning, uh, I want to talk about a guy in the Bible who, like us, might have been considered a little rough around the edges. Um, he's in the Bible, and and he's a guy who was born with this chip on his shoulder. It told us at birth he was already had an attitude. Um he was the younger twin brothers, and his name was Jacob. And you probably already know the account of Jacob, maybe. Um, but I want to get to a point in his life that you can't really understand without understanding the whole story. So I'm gonna do like the cliff notes streamlined as fast as I can to get to that point version. So bear with me. Um but to make Jacob really, you know, to put him in a nutshell, he was kind of a schmuck. I couldn't think of a better word to use. He was he was kind of a schmuck. Um he was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. And we're told in Genesis that his twin brother, his older twin brother, his name was Esau, was a physically superior and more capable man's man, if you will, for the primitive time in which they existed, thousands of years before Christ. And by being this older brother, even by moments, Esau was destined to inherit the birth rights of the family. And Jacob had this jealousy over his older brother, continuously and desperately desired to obtain this rights to the family inheritance. And at one point, he functionally blackmails his brother over a bowl of stew. Now, that had to be some really good stew for the family inheritance. And Esau, I guess, was really hungry, or it was really good stew, or probably both, and he he gives them away. And I'm not sure that was the smartest move, and it was definitely not a fair trade, but that's what happened. Fast forward down their dysfunctional family path, and Isaac, the father, is sends Esau out in preparation of a formal blessing that he's gonna prepare over Esau. Now, these blessings at this period of time were taken as this kind of godset prophetic forecast for how your life was gonna continue. It was a big deal. And so Jacob, while Esau's away, Jacob, his brother, disguises himself, outright lies to his brother, to his father about his identity, and steals the blessing intended for Esau. So now Jacob, the younger brother, has both the family inheritance and the promise of blessing for him, not his brother, who they should have been. Needless to say, Esau was mad and wanted to kill his brother. And I don't mean that figuratively. I mean literally, Esau wanted to kill his brother. All right? So Jacob, what does he do? He leaves. He flees. He moves away to another area where he has family and he settles away from this threat. And in this new land, Jacob tries to kind of keep a low profile. No matter what he does, though, he's kind of successful in a really big way. He even tries to do some creative things, and it doesn't matter. God just continues to favor and bless him. You know, we go back to that blessing that his father had given him, despite not knowing who it was, all those things are coming true. And furthermore, when he was traveling from his homeland to this new land where his uncle lived, he had a vision from God that reinforced and confirmed all the blessings that he was going to have from God directly. He got a vision from God directly. So this blessing, this favor from God at this point, though, is not really what he wants. It's almost like a curse on him. No matter what he does, he continues to gain more wealth and stand out. That'd be a nice problem to have, by the way. But it gets to such a point where he has to flee his uncle's land now, too, because there's this growing uh threat of risk to he and his family. And this is where I want to focus on Jacob. That's where I wanted to get us. He's stuck between homes with nowhere to turn now, without risks or threats. He's forced now to face a consequence of his past without anywhere else to turn. So Jacob takes this accumulated wealth and he takes his family and he heads back for his homeland. Accumulated wealth. I just realized I he sends ahead some messengers to contact his brother Esau before he arrives. And we find him in Genesis 32. It says, Then Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother Esau, who was living in the region of Seir in the land of Edom, and he told them, Give this message to my master Esau. Humble greetings from your servant Jacob. What a suck-up. Until now, I have been living with Uncle Laban, and I now own cattle, donkeys, flocks of sheep and goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform my Lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to me. After delivering the message, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, We met your brother Esau, and he is already on his way to meet you with an army of 400 men. Jacob was terrified of the news. He divided his household along with the flocks and herds and camels into two groups. He thought, if Esau meets one group and attacks it, perhaps the other group can escape. Now we have to remember where Jacob's at. He has a legal right to the father's inheritance and lands. He's been given a prophetic blessing by his father as to the course of his life and what it'll have. He's also been promised by God directly that he will have favor and blessings. He should have every bit of confidence to return. Instead of doing that, though, what does he do? He assumes that there's a risk and a threat, and he starts to plan for the worse. He doesn't focus on the responsibilities that he should have and the blessings that he's guaranteed to have. So he divides his family up in this desperate plan of survival almost, presuming that his brother's gonna come and bring down wrath on him. And he sends ahead gifts and he escorts his entire family across the Jordan River, putting everything he owns in front of him, and he goes back to the camp by himself. If the army's gonna come, they're gonna meet family and livestock and all this stuff, and he's gonna be in the back of the line, not the front of the line. And we we continue on in Genesis 32, right here. It says, This left Jacob all alone in the camp. And a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob's hip and wrenched it out of its socket. Then the man said, Let me go, for the dawn is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. What is your name? The man asked. He replied, Jacob. Your name will no longer be Jacob, the man told him. From now on, you will be called Israel. Because you have fought with God and with men and have won. Please tell me your name, Jacob said. Why do you want to know my name? The man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there. Jacob named the place Peniel, which means face of God, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared. The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel, and he was limping because of the injury to his hip. And even today, the people of Israel don't eat the tendon near the hip socket because of what happened that night when the man strained the tendon of Jacob's hip. Jacob fought God. And this wasn't double WWE wrestling. There wasn't a referee. It's hard to understand that, I think, because you know, it just this was from Jacob's perspective, this was a fight to the death. And God, God, God our Father, the creator of everything, with all power to take care of anything, the orchestrator of time itself, he humbles himself to the form of a man, walks on earth to wrestle with Jacob. Meeting Jacob at his level, at his capacity of strength and level of endurance, allowing Jacob to have give and take in this situation. I mean, you don't fight with God, though, without some sort of risk of injury, right? Still without knowing on some level there's a chance you might get hurt. And so it was so for Jacob. I mean, it's commonly believed that Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life. It was a reminder of that moment. He probably maybe even had pain past that point. Jacob was wounded. And this wounding gave him a reminder that he had to carry with him everywhere he went. And then we call that today, we call that a scar, right? That's a scar. A scar is a lingering sign or damage from injury. And we all have scars. We all have scars. They don't just exist on our physical bodies, we carry them on our soul and on our spirits too. Our soul is our mind. It's who you are, it's your emotions, it's your personality. Our spirit is the part that is created, unique to humans, that is is created to be in a direct connection with God. Where he can just be in this intimate relationship with us. We are three parts. So's God. God's three parts. Isn't that awesome? We were created in his image. And he designed us to face this world despite all of its hardships, capable of absorbing all those things, capable of absorbing the hardships of this world. And yet we have this amazing, miraculous, and mysterious ability to heal whenever we're wounded. Sometimes that healing process leaves us with a reminder of pain or injury that we could have faced. And those are our scars. That's what our scars are. We have two ways of dealing with scars typically, I think, in this world. You know, number one, we we hide them. We're embarrassed about them, we we cover them up, we bury them, and in result, we focus our attention on the ugly reminders of those past woundings and injuries and the pain. Even if we're ignoring them, that's kind of what we're doing by default. And the second way that we can see our scars is how I like to refer treating them as battle scars, right? When we look at our scars as symbols of healing and overcoming, maybe remembering a point in our time in our life where something memorable happened and we were able to get through it, good or bad. I I have a scar um that's fairly noticeable on my forehead. Um it's right here. I got it in July of 1996. I was living in South Carolina with 80 other men. Um it was Marine Corps boot camp. So um it was a typical morning at Paris Island, where uh we would do a typical morning cleanup in this large squad bay, is what we called it, this big, giant, long rectangular room that has rows of bunk beds down either side. Um we would scrub the floor with these rags. They were the leftover towels from the platoon before, and we would hand scrub the floor every morning. We called them scuzz rags. And in the middle, the drill instructors would walk them down and yell at us, right? And this particular morning, the drill instructor comes out and they talk in this really weird voice. I'm gonna kind of do it for you, and I apologize because it's funny, but it's funny, it's weird. They kind of grunt when they talk. And he comes up and he says in this very unique voice, someone better go outside and get some scuzz rags and get this water cleaned up now. Very politely. Very politely. My name's Thrasher. There's a couple guys with W's next to me. We're at the end of the uh of the squad, man, the the hatch, door to you, civilians, is over here to the right. And I just don't even think. I react. I just boom, I take it off. Um, the door swings open to the right. It's got a crash bar on it, right? And there's this little platform, and then you go down like four stairs. We're on the first floor. There's three floors above us, but we're on the ground floor. But I gotta go down four stairs. You make an immediate U-turn, you come around the corner, and there's this courtyard with clothes like clothes lines, and all these rags are hanging over, drying for the next day. So in this this effortless move, I I hit the crash bar with my hip, land on the landing, run down the stairs, make my U-turn, and I pause for half a second while I'm running. And I reach up and I'm covered in blood. And I kind of have this moment, like, what happened? And then I it kind of dawns on me, and how happened so fast. I had hit the top of the my head on the top of the door frame. To this day, I'm not sure how I jump that high. Because that rule, white guys can't jump, yeah, that's totally right here. So I pause, I turn around, I walk back inside, I stand at perfect attention in the back of the squad bay, I say, sir, recruit thrasher believes he has a problem, sir. Yeah, it's funny, but you have to understand in boot camp, you can't just talk. You don't get that right. The normal process to talk in boot camp goes something along these lines. I would say something like, Sir, recruit thrasher, request permission to speak to drill instructor, staff sergeant Ferez, sir, and then they would say speak. Sir, recruit thrasher, request permission to make a head call, sir. They would say denied, which means go to the bathroom. Sir, recruit thrasher, request permission to speak to drill instructor, staff sergeant Ferez, sir. They'd say speak, sir, recruit thrasher, request permission to make an emergency head call, sir. You know, that was kind of the process. You had to ask permission to speak. Here I am, bloody, beaten, back of the squad bay, perfect attention, drill instructor facing away from me. Sir, recruit thrasher believes he has a problem, sir. He turns around and goes, What? Oh my gosh! Perfectly normal voice. It wasn't as bad as it looked. A couple moments later, I get a towel on my head. Um they get me in this back of this little minivan, the ambulance, and I'm sitting on the spare tire. There's a corpsman in the front seat driving, my drill instructor's in the passenger seat, and they're taking me to the little hospital. The drill instructor looks at me and he's like, Crasher. Sir, yes, sir. He goes, I want to ask you a couple questions. Make sure you don't have a concussion. He goes, You remember your first day of training? Sir, yes, sir. He goes, What type of wound you got? I said, Sir, laceration, sir. He's like, that's right. He goes, What are you doing to stop the bleeding? I said, Sir, applying pressure, sir. He goes, What kind of pressure? I go, direct pressure, sir. Go do go. Go do go. He says, Where would you put a tourniquet? And before he could get the words out, I said, on my throat, sir! He started laughing just like you. You're not supposed to make drill instructors laugh. I didn't I did a fair amount of push-ups after that. I did. I did. Now the point of all that, the point of all that is I had 12 stitches, a bit of pain, a lot of push-ups. The constant reminder of how much hair I lost, because that scar used to be inside of my head hairline. Um it's a scar I'll carry my entire life. I could look at it, you know, as something that makes my head look ugly. Uh I could look at it a lot of negative ways, something that set me back. But instead, I try to choose to look at it as a healing, the overcoming, the learned experience from that process. It's kind of back to that whole 4-8 thing we've been going through again. Looking at it from a perspective of what is best in the situation and not as what is worst. I actually, through the course of trying to prepare for this morning, uh tried to look up the word scar in the Bible. You know, scars, I got a scar. I found two instances in the entire Bible of the word scar. And I looked them up, and they're in Leviticus 13, verses 23 and 28. 23 says, if the area grows no longer and does not spread, no larger and does not spread, it is merely a scar from the boil, and the priest will pronounce the person ceremonially clean. In verse 28 it says, if the affected area has not changed or spread on the skin and it has faded, it is simply swelling from the burn, and the priest will then pronounce the person ceremonially clean, for it is only a scar from the burn. I read those, I'm like, those are useless. That's what my first thought was. And then, kind of like a wave, it hit me. God just showed me something. I didn't think they had any point. Yet they have every point in this message. See, these are excerpts from an Old Testament law. An Old Testament law that was really in place to protect the community from someone who might have an illness of the flesh like leprosy or something along those lines, something that they were afraid might be contagious. You know, if you were pronounced unclean, you were functionally removed from society. You were cast out and deemed unworthy to live with other people. You you had to be away from where life was experienced. And you were unable then to perform the needed sacrifices that you had to have to gain from forgiveness from God as it was written under that law. So you couldn't have freedom and you couldn't have life. These very verses, these two interesting little verses, state the process at which one could regain life and freedom back. You had to be publicly recognized as clean. And your scar was the testimony of your healing. Your scar was the testimony of your healing. How do you view your scars? You know, we've all been hurt, I think. That's easy to say, and more than likely we've all done the hurting somewhere along the line. You know, whenever there's a tear or a wound, whether it's physically, emotionally, spiritually, even relationally, there's a need for healing. We can look at scars as a kind of point of past pain and injury, or we can look and recognize their value in the healing process that took place and the moving on that we're passed from that. I mean, physical scars are easy kind of to understand. We look at them, we know if it's healed or not, maybe we have a limp, maybe we don't. But by and large, we can it's kind of easy to put a bead on a physical scar. Spiritual and emotional scars are much, much harder to identify and recognize, but they are real. I mean, perhaps there's a wound that you have right now that needs healing. You know, maybe it's healed to a large degree, but you need help in finding the purpose behind that pain and injury you've experienced. I mean, maybe you've struggled with that process. You're you're unhappy with how it's unfolded. Maybe you need help. You know, if you have a large injury physically, like my head, I didn't just stand there and like, well, it'll heal itself. I needed help. I needed a doctor to help suture it up and give me some medication to help me alleviate the pain. I needed therapy, if you will. I needed help. And it's it's okay to be there. That's normal. No matter what type of wound or scar we have, it's normal to need assistance in getting through that process. And we have a real God who wants a real relationship with you. And part of this, it's easy to say real relationship. I think it's kind of interesting. We had the sign out front, got torn, the other sign, and we put up the real sign. And real is one of those words, I think it's it's cliche some points. It's not here, it's real. And part of a real relationship, a real relationship has conflict. It has conflict in it. Our Father in heaven, God, he loves us enough to let us to let us fight with him. He knows that only a give and take relationship will make this a real relationship. Real. Who's married? I'm I'm married. All right. Uh uh, the test. Married people. Who's married and never had any conflict with their spouse? Okay. Point taken. Not a single hand, right? All right. It is a part. Conflict is a part. It is a part of every, every intimate relationship. It is. Whenever there's friction or forces that are applied in opposite directions, the byproduct is always damage. There's always a wound, there's always an injury. There is never a fight without some level of that. It's a part of this creation, it's part of this world. It's biblical even. In Jacob's particular fight with God, he personally was left with this limp, this injury to his hip. But yet again, what happened? He was blessed. God blessed him right then and there again. And so what does he do? He gets up, he thinks about his brother, and he focuses again right on the threat. He turns around and focuses immediately again on the threat. In Genesis 33, it says this. Then Jacob went on ahead, and as his brother approached, he bowed to the ground seven times before him. Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, threw his arms around his neck and kissed him, and they both wept. When Esau looked at the women and children and asked, Who are these people with you? These are the children God has graciously given to me, your servant. Jacob replied. Then the servant wives came forward with their children and bowed before him. Next came Leah with her children and they bowed before him. Finally Joseph and Rachel came forward and bowed before him. And what were all the flocks and herd I met herds I met as I came? Esau asked. Jacob replied, They are a gift, my Lord, to ensure your friendship. My brother, I have plenty, Esau answered. Keep what you have for yourself. For all that fighting from Jacob, all that attention to the risks, to the threats, God had the whole situation under control. It was all taken care of, all as he promised. There was no need for Jacob to get in that fight, to need the blessing yet again. It was already there. But through that process of fighting, through that brawl, he had a real relationship with a real God from that point on in his life. And his relationship with God was forever changed. You see, from Jacob's lineage, from Jacob's descendants, this real God will again humble himself in the form of a man. He'll come to earth and he'll choose to meet you on your human level. To intimately know your strength and capacity for endurance, to allow you this give and take relationship, a personal, real relationship. In 1 Peter, we're told where that mysterious, miraculous, amazing source of healing comes from. It says, He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds, you were healed. Jesus is where we go for a relationship. Jesus is where we go for healing. He doesn't care that you're rebellious. He doesn't care that you're wild. He doesn't care that you're crazy. And based on the collection of people he chose to hang out with when he was actually, you know, living as a human, I think he kind of likes those people. He prefers those people. He has a soft spot for you. Jesus heals each of us. But sometimes we're left with a limp. Just like Jacob. You know, maybe somebody is or has battled with addictions, wanting to be healed, wanting to escape that dependency. They might have to change how they walk to find freedom. You know, maybe you've been abused or hurt by someone in the past. And you're going to need counseling. You need help. You need therapy, if you will, just like we do for our physical wounds. You will be forever changed in the way you walk, though. It won't be as easy as it would have been had you not gone through that. Maybe you have a marriage that struggles and you're always pointing fingers at each other. Are you willing to let God reach out and touch you in a way that will forever change the way you interact with your spouse? Jacob's limp, despite being this point of pain, was a wonderful sign of God directly touching him. Would you be willing to let God touch you, even if a limp were the result? To have this tangible sign that God forever has healed you. Jesus wants a real, again, a real relationship with you. He wants the give and take, fist fights, and all. Ask for him, and he'll be there. Out of this entire little study I did to get to today, one other thing hit me, really, really unique, out of this story with Jacob and Esau. Jacob is a guy who obviously struggles with seeing and understanding how blessed he was. Through his entire life, this man had a personal relationship with God. Very, very intimate relationship with God, as we can see. He's arguably the most blessed man in the entire Bible. And yet, he struggles his entire life focusing on what's worse than his life instead of what's best. Take a look at his brother Esau, though. His brother Esau was stolen from, was lied to, was blackmailed. He had every reason to hold on to animosity and anger. But instead, he opens his arms and he says, I have plenty. I have plenty. He focused on his blessings. That simple choice, that simple choice for him to, and he chose to change his perspective to forgive rather than call for the attack. That act, it saves Jacob and his entire family. It's back to Philippians 4.8. It says, and now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you've learned and received from me, everything you've heard from me and saw me doing, then the God of peace will be with you. This single 4-8 act in history allows for the continuation of this man named Israel, through which Jesus will come. Esau's scars were no longer this focus of pain and wounding, but now they were healing from God. Why don't we pray? Father God, we just uh thank you for this day, rain and all. Thank you for the people that came and for the opportunity to pray for our amazing uh friends here who rode motorcycles this morning, God. God, I pray for the wounds that we carry, for the scars that we carry, that you will heal the wounds that are still there, that you will allow us to see our scars that have healed, as blessings from you, as these signs of experience that have been learned, and just that we can move forward and know that you are the one that heals us on every level. Hope this will be a great day. Um allow all the festivities out there to be um engaging, allow anybody who can stay to stay and have a good time. Um, and our week to be good. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.