I'm in Judges chapter six and seven.

We're gonna be in this for a few weekends, but this series is called Unpossible.

And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this is the culmination of a lifelong journey, trying to harmonize a good and merciful and kind God who always has our best interest in mind with the reality of real life where we live and the pain and the suffering and the challenges, the obstacles we face almost every day from the big ones, the huge ones, health issues and health scares.

all the way down to the small conflicts and betrayals that we experience every day.

I love the Beach Boys, and of course that makes sense living here in Southern California.

The Beach Boys actually were from Hawthorne, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles.

They sang a lot of simple songs, and songs almost that had the lyrics of some type of daydreaming, you know, like it wasn't the real world.

They were quite unrealistic but fun to sing.

One of the songs that I really enjoyed was a song, I think the title was, Wouldn't It Be Nice.

And some of the lyrics go, happy times together we've been spending, I wish that every kiss was never ending.

I mean, do you really wish that every kiss was never ending?

You got to come up for air sometimes.

He goes on and he says, maybe if we think and we wish and we hope, it might come true.

I mean, wouldn't it be nice?

Whatever you think about, whatever you wish for, whatever you hope for, automatically comes true.

He says, baby, then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do.

Oh, we could be married and then we'd be happy.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice?

And as I've said before, anybody that thinks it's only happiness when you get married has never been married.

Yes, marriage is great.

It's blissful.

It's enjoyable, but it also comes with challenges, much like life.

I got my own song, Wouldn't It Be Nice version.

And I'd like you to go like this.

Wouldn't it be nice if I never had any problems?

Wouldn't it be nice if we never suffered or had any pain?

Wouldn't it be nice if God warned us?

We talk about God being omniscient, knows everything that ever will happen in our lives.

Wouldn't it be nice if God came to us and warned us and said, "'Okay, some pain is about to come into your life, "'but here's the reason I'm going to allow it.'" Wouldn't that be great?

Wouldn't it be so much easier Wouldn't it be nice if we always knew how things were going to work out for the good for those who love God and called according to His purpose?

Wouldn't it be nice?

I don't know if you've noticed this, but we're very, very good with words and ideas when we're trying to encourage someone else who's in the middle of a difficult season of life.

We say the right things.

Our faith for them is so strong.

We talk about the fact that God is omnipotent and he's all powerful and he can do anything.

The battle belongs to the Lord.

And when you speak to your friend, you're reminding them God is able to do much more than you could ever hope for or imagine.

You'll tell others when they're suffering that God is omniscient.

He saw this coming and if he's allowed it into your life, he must have a reason or purpose for it.

or that God is omnipresent, and although you may not understand everything, God will give you this prevailing presence as you go through this difficult time, and all those things are true.

The problem is, when tragedy strikes in our lives, let's be honest, and I'm right there with you, we're very good when it's happening in somebody else's life, when they're having struggles.

For you and me, though, when it happens to us, In our humanity, our faith begins to waver.

We still believe in an omnipotent God that He's able.

We still believe in His omniscience, that He saw that something was about to enter into our lives.

The problem is not that we don't trust God.

We believe God is all-powerful.

We believe He's all-knowing.

We believe He will give us that prevailing presence.

The problem is we don't trust ourselves.

Because when something comes into our life that is incredibly unfortunate.

Most of us go down this path.

Well, is this some sin that I've committed?

Have I done something to deserve what I'm experiencing now?

Because I know God wouldn't allow this in just for no reason.

So obviously this is retribution.

I'm being punished because I violated his word.

Or sometimes we'll say, well maybe I've been living a pretty good righteous life, and so the devil has a target on my back and he's gonna punish me for taking territory away from him.

Or maybe this is a fallen world.

And Pastor Jeff says that we're part and partial to a falling world.

Sometimes we're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All of these things go through our mind.

When tragedy strikes, like Job, we wished we knew exactly what's going on here.

What does it play?

Why is this happening?

I have often heard people say, Pastor Jeff, if I could endure the what if I knew the why.

If I just knew why this is happening, then I would be able to deal and endure it.

That's exactly what Job said, and it's the oldest book in the Bible.

That was also his assumption.

God just tell me why.

Now you and I know the upper story because we read chapters one and two, but Job doesn't know.

And he says to God continually.

Just tell me why.

I can endure the what if I know the why and I know how you're gonna use this for some extraordinary purpose.

Endeavor, please let me know and you know what God never addresses it Do you know why neither do I he never addressed never tries to explain to Joe You ever try to explain something to maybe your child and you know as you're explaining it His mind and his world is still still too small To comprehend what you're trying to get over or get across even though you're given a good explanation his mind can't comprehend I wonder sometimes if that's God with us.

Well, I wouldn't tell you why I'm doing this but if I told you You wouldn't get it.

There are too many dots to connect.

One of my favorite television shows, Everybody Loves Raymond.

Raymond, the father, is talking with his daughter, Allie, and Allie's asking some pretty intense questions, pretty meaningful questions.

Dad, she says, why are we here?

Why did God put us here?

And of course, Raymond has no idea what to say.

So he comes up with this thought.

He says, well, you know, honey, it's crowded in heaven.

And because it's so crowded up there, then God put some of us down here.

So we're here because God is trying to alleviate heavenly congestion.

And of course, that's quite humorous, but he doesn't know how to explain the authentic, the genuine answer to his daughter.

So he comes up with something else.

I wonder, God has much more integrity than that.

So God, if he tried to explain What do we get it?

But I want you to notice, and many of you know the story, and we're not in judges yet, but we're building a foundation here because this series is gonna last for a few weeks.

And I wanna make sure we get our thoughts going in the right direction because Job, even though he doesn't know the reason, he responds.

One, he maintains his faith and trust and commitment in God, believing that there's something he can't see.

He wants to know.

But even though he doesn't know, he believes so much in the goodness and the character of God and what God and God's good intentions for him that he keeps and maintains his faith.

In fact, the Bible says, in all of Job's questioning, he does not sin against God.

The second thing is, his response, and this took me a while to understand, his response ushers in a cosmic victory of good over evil.

Somehow, Job's response to this mattered on a cosmic scale, as if good in that moment overcame evil, as if a battle was won and a victory had been secured.

And in the end, you know the rest of the story, Job prospers spiritually.

In chapter 42, verse five, Job says, before my ears had heard of you, and now my eyes see you.

Job says, I still don't know why this happened, but I do know this, in the midst of this, you gave me a revelation of yourself.

Before I thought I knew you, but I'd only heard of you.

Now I see you with my own eyes.

And he also prospers, stay with me now, physically.

Later part of chapter 42, the Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the former part.

He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 donkeys.

And he also had seven sons and three daughters.

The first daughter he named Jemima, the second Keziah, and the third Karen-Hapuk.

Just as a side note here, these names, you can tell that whatever Job's gone through, at the end of it, something extraordinary has been created in him.

In fact, I would argue that he's actually becoming like God in this, because Jemima means a dove, means a lovely bird.

Keziah means a cinnamon-prized spice.

Now, if you've ever walked through an airport and you've smelled Cinnabon, you know that God is good.

And the third daughter is Karen Hapook, which means horn of eye shadow.

So as I've mentioned before, he names his other daughter, his third daughter, Maybelline, okay?

and their father granted them an inheritance, this is Job, along with their brothers, which is unheard of in a culture of primogeniture.

The young sons, especially the firstborn, got everything.

But Job is becoming more like God through these extraordinarily unfortunate events.

Okay, I want you to take that and put it to the side just for a moment.

We're on a journey here together.

In 1989, Stephen Covey published a self-help book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

25 million copies sold.

It was the first audio book to pass one million.

It's the best-selling business book in human history.

It's been translated in 40-plus languages worldwide.

What's ironic about the book...

It attempts to communicate absolutes in a world of relativity.

And four of these absolutes, as I read them, seemed to me like they're taken right out of Judeo-Christian context.

Fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity.

Covey's master class comes straight out of Jesus' teachings.

And the sermon on the mount, not to mention the Pauline epistles.

In this book that has sold so many copies that have been read by millions and millions of people.

Covey describes what he calls an aha moment.

Now please stay with me here.

And he describes an aha moment like this, he defines it.

A moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension.

Covey says for him, and you business leaders will appreciate this, his aha moment came when he suddenly realized, and I quote, how many business leaders of major companies completely restructured and realigned.

the habits of their companies to conform with a series of principles they sincerely believed would change everything.

He goes on to say that he came to understand that character is shaped out of habits.

A thought becomes an action, an action becomes a habit, the habit shapes our character and character decides ultimately our destiny.

Let me say that again.

A thought becomes an action.

I'd like to say a belief becomes an action.

An action becomes a habit.

The habit shapes our character and character decides destiny, ultimately where we end up.

But here's the crux, he says.

Employees realize that they need not be controlled by external forces, but instead, could shape unfortunate events into individual and corporate wins by altering their response and perspective.

That is basically good theology for how you and I are to face life.

And when I started writing the book and I decided we need to go through this as a church, this is when I had my aha moment for my own life.

What could happen if those of us who call ourselves Christ followers integrated seven resolutions into our daily lives tied to origin and design, where we came from and God's purpose for us?

What if we realize that we don't?

have to be controlled by external forces and could in fact reshape the unfortunate events of our lives into significant spiritual wins.

What if we could change the way that we look at unfortunate, seemingly impossible events that enter our lives?

Not only the big ones, but the small ones.

Everyday living.

Now, of course, then I had another problem.

I mentioned this last week.

That you've got exegesis and isegesis.

In exegesis, you study the text or the narrative, deductive or inductive, and you see what is extrapolated out of it according to context for modern day or contextualization.

Isogesis is no good because it's when you have an idea that you think ought to be supported by scripture, so you go looking for ideas and usually it's then that you take things out of context.

When I started thinking about this, I had to be honest and I had to say, is there a place in the Bible where I can find these resolutions that could change the way we think and therefore determine our destiny?

And then I went back and I remembered that when I was in my 20s, I heard a sermon by Dr.

Charles Stanley, who incidentally, great pastor, great preacher, passed away just recently.

Priest in Atlanta, Georgia for most of his life.

And I remember a sermon that I heard on the radio, and then I ordered it through In Touch Ministry.

And I went back and I listened to the sermon, and then I read the text with different eyes.

And I started to realize, here these seven resolutions are as clear as a bell.

Gideon faced an impossible situation.

A situation he detested, one that he resented.

He had little to no courage to face it.

He's like many of us, if we're honest, spiritual wimps.

We talk a really good game when it's in somebody else's life, but when the enemy starts coming down the mountain into our valley to destroy us, most of us spiritually melt.

When that happens to us, including me, including all of us, think about it, we're so good with other people.

I just turned 59 last Tuesday, and I asked myself the question as I began to write this series, why am I no better at this now than I was in my 20s?

Because when difficult things strike our lives, when tragedies come in, whatever it is, we'll get to the specifics in a moment, but whatever it is, what do we do?

How do we respond?

Our first inclination is not by faith.

It's just not.

Lose our job, get bad news from the doctor, estranged from our kids, whatever it is, tragedy.

We start losing sleep.

Our thoughts are dominated by the unfortunate events.

We think about it all the time, in the shower, when we're getting ready for the day, it wakes us up in the middle of the night.

We're possessed with the thoughts of what might happen rather than what is now.

And we become crushed by the uncertainty.

We are Gideon.

And yet, here's why we're going to this over the next few weeks.

experiences one of the greatest victories in Israel's history.

which tells me that if he can, then we can.

And then we ask, how did he do it?

And the answer is simple.

God trained him to think and respond differently to the tragedies of his life.

I don't mean subtle differences.

I mean life-altering, life-transitional ways of thinking and responding to the impossible situations in our lives, un-possible, incapable of rising above or succeeding.

And again, I'm talking about the real world here.

That's why I wanna take the time to make sure you know what we're talking about if we're gonna come to these answers, if we're gonna be productive, if we're gonna determine our destination through the responses that we exhibit when these trials come into our lives, no matter what they are.

I'm talking about the real world, when we lose our job and wonder how we're going to feed our family.

When we're betrayed by someone we felt close to.

When we lose someone we love so dearly.

When Mr.

Right becomes Mr.

Wrong.

When the doctor comes back with the big C word, the word cancer.

When depression overwhelms us, when anxiety wrecks us to the point of constant fear and worry and doubt.

And then finally robs us of our ability to function daily.

when our children become estranged, when our families break up and destroy the things we treasure so dearly, when everything we thought we knew is turned on its head and suddenly we feel we can't hope or trust in anything or anyone anymore.

Folks, that's real life right there.

How do we face it?

I'm telling you, it does not have to be this way for us.

We've got to get better at this.

I've got to get better at this.

And here is what the Lord has shown me through the word.

I'm going to take you into Judges chapter six, verse one through six, so get ready.

In the life of Gideon, God shows us seven resolutions that lead ultimately to our flourishing.

And I'm saying to you that if you will come on this journey with me and you will wake up every day allowing these resolutions to govern the way you live and the manner in which you respond to every circumstance, no matter how big or small.

Every unfortunate event that comes into your life, everything that you'd rather not deal with, if you learn to respond to it in a different way by these seven resolutions, the good, the bad, the fortunate, the unfortunate, the possible, the impossible, the following things are going to happen.

Your countenance will be constantly lifted.

You'll become an incredible optimist.

Nothing will discourage you for any significant length of time.

Now we're human.

We're going to have bad days.

We're going to be discouraged, but not for any significant length of time.

You're going to live with a centralized joy, an overarching hope.

and the power and the presence of God.

And greater still, you're going to be so overwhelmed by the feeling that God is near when you live by these seven resolutions, that you're going to be constantly moving beyond mere knowledge of God into existentially experiencing God and knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that God is near.

And when you become that kind of person, most people around you are going to be in awe of they're going to want to know your secret.

Okay?

So, resolution one, here we go on this awesome journey.

You're going to live every day, resolution one goes like this, I will see the unfortunate events of my life as faith builders leading to the greatest accomplishments of my life.

Let me say it again.

You're gonna make a commitment to live by this first resolution.

I will see every unfortunate event, the unfortunate events of my life, as faith builders leading to the greatest accomplishments of my life.

In Judges chapter 6, we meet Gideon.

He's anxious, depressed, with little hope of recovery.

He lives in a time when Israel, his people, and himself, they have abandoned God.

Let me give you the summary of Gideon's time.

Chapter 6, verse 1.

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.

Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain cliffs, caves, and strongholds.

Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other Eastern peoples invaded the country.

They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza, and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys.

They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts.

It was impossible to count them or their camels.

They invaded the land to ravage it.

Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

And a summary of the manner in which Israel is living in the day of the judges, especially Gideon, is summarized in chapter 21, verse 25.

Everybody did what was right in their own eyes.

So here we are, think about what Gideon is facing.

According to the narrative, at every harvest time, the Midianites are just waiting for the crops to ripen and they come down out of the mountains.

They're too numerous to count, which means you look out and all you see are Midianites.

And they destroy and burn all the crops.

So they're trying to commit genocide, not by warfare, but by simply exterminating through starvation.

They don't want to enter into battle.

They don't want to fight, even though it's difficult to see why not, because they overpowered significantly the Israelites.

I mean, we're talking about 135,000, according to the text that we'll get into later.

There's 135,000 Midianite well-trained warriors, and you only have about 32,000 Israelite farmers at this point.

That's better than a four to one odd.

And still, they're warriors versus farmers.

Gideon looks at this and says, where on earth is God?

What happened to that great God of Israel who opened the Red Sea for his people?

and who fell the walls of Jericho.

And then we're told in verse 11, the angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Oprah that belonged to Joash the Abyssalite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.

When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.

Now think about what we're told here.

Gideon is not a man of courage.

He's terrified.

All the people, when the Midianites come down, nobody stands up to fight.

They all hide in caves and holes and rocks, behind the rocks, waiting for the Midianites to impoverish the land and then return to their homes.

Gideon is in the wine press trying to save the wine and the grapes with one eye, looking probably over the wall, waiting for the Midianites to come.

He lives in total fear.

And it's at this moment, with one eye on the task and one eye over the wall looking for the enemy, that the angel of the Lord, basically it means the Lord himself, shows up and says, O valiant warrior.

In verse 13, Gideon replies, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?

Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?

But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.

Now you think about this, what is Gideon saying?

Gideon's saying, look, God, what gives?

Now what I like about this is Gideon and his people are in this situation because of years of total disobedience to the precepts of God.

Now if you and I were God, we would probably say to Gideon, why?

Why are you in this situation?

You want the truth, you can't handle the truth, right?

You've been doing evil for the last seven years.

Idol worship, adultery, no gratitude for the promised land.

You've lived with a sense of entitlement.

You only come to me when things are bad.

Worship and my precepts have become an inconvenience to you.

You're distracted by all the milk and honey that comes from my hand, and yet there's no gratitude or generosity.

And by the way, what about the asterisk pole and the statue of Baal?

In verse 25b in chapter 6, God says, Gideon, tear down your father's altar.

So it's been going on for a while, through a few generations.

Tear down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the asterisk pole beside it.

then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on top of his height." And they wonder why things aren't going well.

Yet, notice, this is huge, God does not say to Gideon, let's talk about your sin.

Isn't that amazing?

God doesn't go there.

He simply says to Gideon, do you want out or not?

I mean, this is amazing to me.

It's like God says to Gideon, it's not about your sin right now, it's not.

You prayed, I'm here, do you want out or not?

And Gideon says in verse 15, yes, but how can I be sure you will help me?

My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.

Now Gideon doesn't know what you and I know, and that is that God has a history of using flawed people.

That's just the way he works.

But God doesn't go there.

He doesn't talk about the sin of Gideon or Israel.

When Gideon says, well, how do I know you're going to help me?

Now, this is amazing to me too.

This shows you how little faith Gideon has.

God, he's talking to God.

And God says something.

And when God says something, you shouldn't have to challenge him and say, now, are you sure?

This is God we're talking about.

And notice how God responds in 14.

He doesn't defend himself.

He just simply says, the Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength that you have and say vigil out of your hand, or out of Midian's hand rather.

He says, Gideon, okay.

All right.

Fine, you go.

It's not about you, Gideon.

That's what God is saying.

This is about my power and my grace.

Are you in or are you out?

Let me just pause here just for a moment.

When you've been in the wilderness for a long time and you might be there because of something that you've done, something that's been done to you, who knows?

You're never going to know the answer, by the way.

You will never know what God causes, what God allows, what he sends, what's coming from the evil one.

God seldom tells you everything.

you did wrong to get where you are.

It's almost like he's not interested in that at that moment.

He's always interested in repentance, but at this moment, sometimes your desert experience has nothing to do with your sin, but more to do with God's glory.

Gideon, can you believe it, in chapter six, asked God for proof.

He said, God, you've told me you're going to use me to deliver the Midianites into our hand, but don't strike me dead now.

Don't get upset, God, but I need some proof.

Can you imagine God giving me some proof?

In verses 36 through 40, Gideon says, I'm going to lay out a fleece.

In the morning when I wake up, I want.

dew on the fleece, but it'll be dry on the ground.

And then I'll know, God, you're going to deliver.

So he wakes up and sure enough, there's dew on the fleece, it's dry on the ground.

But I think Gideon starts thinking and he says, you know, God had a 50-50 chance there.

Let me test them again.

So he says, God, don't get upset with me.

But God, this time when I wake up in the morning, can it be dry on the fleece and dew on the ground?

And do you know what amazes me?

God obliges.

Do you know why?

God, if he's going to use you for extraordinary things, has to go into a season where he builds your faith and trust in him.

Because the battles you're going to face in your life, you're not going to win them without him.

And he's got to get you to a point where you're not putting your faith and trust in you, but your faith and trust in him.

The victory, the battle, belongs to the Lord.

God nowhere reprimands Gideon.

and was very compassionate in giving what his faithlessness requested.

And the reason is, God needs to build Gideon's faith and trust.

Desert life is always training ground.

And the reason is, God needs to build Gideon's faith and trust.

And let me just remind you, it is not God's purpose or plan that any of us should live a mediocre spiritual life.

No way.

God never planned for us just to get, we're going to get saved, we're going to receive Christ, get into the water, come out, and then mediocrity.

No, our entire life is a boot camp where God is training us to accomplish extravagant, extraordinary things.

Now the question is, if God is preparing Gideon to slay a giant, how does God prepare us for a giant killing?

Do you remember what happened when Saul asked the shepherd boy David, what makes you think you can go up against this well-trained warrior, giant of a man, Goliath, and win?

And here's David, the shepherd boy's David's response in 1 Samuel 1737.

The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.

And Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you.

What's David saying?

David's saying, God has prepared me for this day.

He gave me victory over the lion.

He gave me victory over the bear.

This was my bootcamp.

This is my training ground.

I have slain lesser enemies, and now I'm ready to slay the big one.

And can I just tell you, part of the reason that God allows these unfortunate events into our lives is because we have to deal with the idols in our lives.

We have to deal with the things we put our trust in.

And God, and we're going to talk about this, has to strip those away so that ultimately our trust and our faith is in God.

When our ultimate faith and trust is in God and what He's doing in any event, no matter how unfortunate, that's when in our weakness we become strong.

I know a young girl right now who's incredibly gifted.

There is no doubt in my mind that God is going to use her to slay a lot of giants in her life.

She's far too gifted by the Spirit of God.

There's no other explanation.

Yet right now, she's in the middle of a test.

She's falling in love with someone who does not share her faith or her values.

And she's violating a precept or principle of Scripture concerning being unequally yoked.

She's going deeper into this relationship with someone who will not teach her children and share her passion for Jesus Christ and his calling in her life.

God did not send this man to her, but God has allowed this man to come in.

And I think the reason is to build her faith and trust in God.

Well how's that going to happen?

Relationships are powerful things.

All of us seek love and acceptance.

But unless your ultimate relationship, and unless your ultimate love and acceptance comes from God, you will always strive to get it from something else.

And if you're striving to get it from someone or something else, you can never be used to the degree that God wants to use you to slay the giants in this world.

It's a test.

God wants you to pass the smaller difficulties so that greater difficulties can come so that He can use you to model to the world what a God-shaped life looks like.

Listen, you know and I know that we will never learn faith by reading it in a book.

Only when the bottom drops out, when the rug is pulled out from under us, when the odds are heavily stacked against us, when everything seems impossible.

Not likely will we learn faith.

You will never know the certainty with which you can have when it comes to your relationship with God.

You will never know why God sends or allows any event into your life.

You will never know what you have caused, what God has caused, what the evil one has caused, what the fallen world has caused.

God never goes there.

He simply tells you that God is going to take advantage of every opportunity in your life to build your faith and trust in Him, to demonstrate His faithfulness to you, to prepare you to slay a giant.

Now you think about this for a moment.

God has complete foreknowledge of every event that will ever come into your life.

You got to think in these terms.

For some of us, we don't like to go that far deep into the cerebral activity, but you got to deal with this.

When something, no matter how bad it is, No matter how unfortunate, what are God's options?

He could stop it, prevent it.

He's omnipotent.

He can allow it by divine providence.

He can say, I'm going to allow this in.

He's going to use it for his purposes.

That means everything from small to large, but you never know what is at play because we're never going to have that kind of knowledge and God's never going to give it to us.

He simply wants to use every unfortunate event as a boot camp to train us.

us for extraordinary victories in our lives.

I can tell you, I've shared this before, I needed to suffer anxiety in my life.

I needed it.

I don't like it, I didn't like it at the time.

But God, I now know, was doing something drastic in me.

I have an incredible respect for those who struggle with mental illness, where before I did not.

I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to lie.

I'm not going to lie.

I have more compassion for those who are hurting.

When somebody tells me they're hurting, I'll pay attention much more than I ever have, and I want to comfort them with the comfort I've received in 2 Corinthians 1-4.

I have more dependency on God before I start the day because I realize without God, I'll never make it through a single day.

God has stripped me of my fear of death, reminding me that He's in charge.

He determines the number of my days.

There's no use worrying about it, being depressed about it, or anxious over it.

When those large unfortunate events come into our lives, I'm saying to you and me, we can live by a resolution to know that God could have stopped all those things, but he has decided to redeem them and to use them for immeasurable good and to prepare in us an extraordinary event.

So when we lose a job or when we don't get a promotion or whatever it is, as Christ followers, we're not supposed to be people who fall apart when we get betrayed, when we get our feelings hurt.

Yeah, it's painful, it hurts, but the reality is God is at work.

Either through causation or allowance, God is at work.

I remember a young lady came to me a few years ago and said, Jeff, I really want you to pray for me because I'm about to get a break in Hollywood.

You know, I've been acting a lot for a long time, but I can feel this coming and I'm so terrified that God's not going to grant me what I've been praying for for so long.

I could tell this meant everything to her.

I put my arm around her and I said, now wait a minute.

What I'm going to pray is for your life, God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Only God knows if this job will destroy you or if he's going to use you to do great things inside this job.

I'm not smart enough to do that.

I'm not going to beg God that you get the job.

I'm going to pray, God, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

She didn't like that very much.

By the way.

I ask her, don't you think God can put up a roadblock if he thinks this is what you want desperately, but he sees this with his foreknowledge into the future, that this is going to destroy your relationship with him?

Would God be a loving God to thrust you in the middle of that?

So many questions.

And the point is, if God is going to use us, Gideon, or anybody else for extraordinary purposes, He's going to have to build our faith and trust in Him to cause, to allow any event that He sees fit into our life for His purposes, so that you and I can have a peace that God is involved in the most unfortunate circumstances of our lives.

The battles of our lives cannot be won by our wisdom or our strength.

The battle belongs to the Lord, and therefore God must do whatever necessary to rid us of our self-sufficiency and create trust and dependency in him." Somewhere along the line, we have to develop this boot camp mentality.

U.S.

Marines, if you know anything about boot camp, they'll go through 13 weeks of hardcore training.

It challenges the physical, the mental, the emotional stability of each recruit.

And the experience is designed to remove weakness.

You know that, right?

The weakness of character, integrity, of narcissism, of selfishness, as well as physical and emotional weakness.

Thirteen weeks, every obstacle, every challenge, every hardship forges young men and women into men and women of strength, character, and courage, that which is necessary to defend this country and protect our freedom.

That's why personally I have such a huge respect for people who go through this.

And I'm telling you that God is looking for a few good men and women to carry on His purposes in this world who will stand courageously for what is right.

and will allow Him through the unfortunate, even the most unfortunate events of our life, to forge character and integrity and staying power in us so that He can use us to slay a child.

Most of us assume that when we see greatness in someone, that everything automatically just fell into their laps.

Everything's gone right in their lives, we say.

They've suffered no setbacks and encountered no unfortunate events.

They were born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

But anybody who's lived life long enough knows that the people who have accomplished the most in the kingdom of Christ have often suffered the most.

Greatness requires an enormous amount of pain and suffering.

Deep troubled waters either destroy you or you learn to swim to the surface and ride the waves of some of the most thrilling, exhilarating times of your life.

Gideon says to the Lord, pardon me, but how can I save Israel?

My clan is weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.

And I can hear the Lord saying to Gideon, that's exactly why I'm going to use you.

to accomplish something extraordinary.

And if you know anything about the rest of this story as we make our way through it over the next few weeks, right now Gideon is at a four to one odd.

But by the time he goes into battle, hand to hand combat with the Midianites after God has sent him to spiritual bootcamp, the odds are going to be 450 to one.

135,000 well-trained Midianite warriors against 300 farmers from Israel.

The only way they're going to be able to win that battle is God.

You know, I am hoping and praying that you have your own aha moment this weekend.

That suddenly it dawns on you that you don't have to hide in the holes in the ground.

but you're going to submit to the purposes of God in your life and allow him to shape and mold you into greatness.

And this first resolution means that you're going to resolve to believe that God will take advantage of every disadvantage in your life and use it for his glory and build something extraordinary in you so that you'll go beyond the spiritual mediocrity you're living into greatness and experience some of the most rapturous events or adventures of your life.

so that when your boyfriend breaks up with you, you'll not look for the prize around the corner, but sulk somehow thinking that God does not have something better for you.

Those days will be gone.

When you lose your job, you won't grow impatient anymore with God.

Instead, you'll trust him that he has something far better than you could ever imagine.

You'll say to the potter, go ahead and throw me on the potter's wheel, and shape and mold me, and prepare me for something great.

And you'll stop wondering whether or not God cares, you'll know he cares.

He who did not spare his own son will surely give us all good things.

When you're attacked from every side, betrayed and left for dead by people you thought you could trust, instead of allowing God to build staying power in you and open your eyes to your own weaknesses, I'm hoping that by the end of this you will not run away.

and miss out on what God is ultimately doing in your life.

No matter what it is, you don't get the promotion, you don't get the girl, you don't get into the university, you go through a season of pain and illness, you go through a time of relational fracture and hurt, no matter what it is, that you come to the conclusion, God saw this coming, He could have stopped it, He didn't, I'm in boot camp, He's preparing me for greatness.

When you say yes to that question, that I'm going to live by this resolution, here's what's going to happen.

Stay with me, I'm almost done.

You're gonna understand for the first time a passage of scripture that we've been going over for a long time, if you've been a Christ follower.

Paul says in Romans 8, 28, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose.

But do you know what this means?

I wanna look at two words quickly.

The first thing is in all things.

This phrase right here, this word, can I just tell you, it actually means all things.

It means everything.

It is totally exhaustive.

It is comprehensive.

In this word, there are no restrictions and no limits.

It means that God works everything.

It means the injustices that come into your life, the betrayals, the hurt, the pain, the wounds, the physical illnesses.

Hey, how about this?

Even your own sin.

He can work together for good.

Now that doesn't mean we all should go out and sin as much as we can and see how much good God can do.

It simply means that even if you've been in alcohol and God's rescued you from that, then you are able now to comfort people with the comfort you receive from God.

He's able to turn all your sin, all the things you've done all your life, turn it around, redeem it for good, and use it for his purposes.

It says God will use all things, not some, not a few, not most, but all things.

And then here's what I like about it.

We're told that he will work, and I love the translation that says works together, and here's why.

The word translated works together comes from our, or is the idea behind our English word, synergism.

It's the same word, only in Greek, and it is in English.

And synergism means this, the working together of various elements to produce an effect greater than, and often completely different from, the sum of each element acting separately." Now, what does that mean?

So the Bible tells us, the Bible tells us quickly now, that God is going to work everything, all things, not a few, but all things together.

Synergo.

Synergism.

So in the physical world, the right combination of otherwise harmful chemicals can actually produce substances that are extremely beneficial.

A good example is table salt is composed of two poisons, sodium and chlorine.

Put these two things together though, extremely beneficial.

What Paul tries to tell us in Romans 8 is that God's going to work everything, even bad things, even things that in and of themselves are harmful.

He's going to take all those things, meld them, shape them, form them, bring them together and bring about His good, especially the times of difficulty and unfortunate events in our lives.

I'm asking you this weekend.

to understand God's promise, to take otherwise harmful and unjust decisions and produce something beautiful and extremely beneficial into our lives.

If you will live with that understanding, you will live with an overarching sense of joy and anticipation of what God is going to do, and yes, you will have moments of sadness, but you will live with an overarching sense of joy.

Let me tell you the final thing.

If you live this way, ultimately, you're gonna be victorious.

That's right.

You're gonna win in the end.

Let me finish with this because of time.

I've talked about my friend Coach Tony Bennett for a long time, but this illustration that we've mentioned a few times is so appropriate here.

He's quickly becoming arguably the best or the most successful basketball coach of our time.

He's the only active three-time winner of the Henry Iba Award, two-time AP National Coach of the Year, four-time ACC Coach of the Year, two-time Naismith Coach of the Year.

His winning percentage is somewhere around 0.72, which is remarkable for a young coach.

His Virginia Cavaliers have won the ACC title five times, That's impressive because North Carolina and Duke are in the ACC.

He has four 30-win seasons, he has a national title, and you say, well that doesn't impress me.

I got news for you, it doesn't impress Tony either.

None of this gives Tony his value or significance.

What truly makes Coach Bennett unique is that he says very little.

He demonstrates his faith and trust in God.

by the disciplines that are present in his life.

You know, I call Tony from time to time and I wanna talk basketball.

He'll go, he won't talk, he just wants to talk about a new devotional he's reading or something that God is doing in his life at the moment or some obstacle that he's just overcome by the Holy Spirit and now he sees that God is equipping him for more success.

I went to see him play Virginia Tech a few years ago in Blacksburg, Virginia.

It was a barn burner in a very hostile environment.

And as he's walking off the court, he sees me, motions me to come down on the floor, and he takes me into the broom closet, and he says, can you pray with me?

I need to pray together with somebody to feel the presence of God.

That's what we did.

In 2018, people got a glimpse of Tony Bennett.

during March Madness when the Virginia Cavaliers went in as the number one seed.

Five of the 22 experts picked them to win it all.

The other experts actually leaned heavily in their favor as well.

And the Cavaliers that year, you know the story, went on to forge their names in the record books.

They became the first number one seed at NCAA tournament history to lose first round to a 16th seed.

Never happened before.

They were soundly defeated by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Most of us didn't even know who they, I think their school like a 4,000.

And I remember sitting on my couch at home watching that game and feeling in the pit of my stomach just a sickness because I ached for Tony, knowing all the hard work and the type of man and the type of character and integrity he possesses.

So Tony enters, I sent him a text to encourage him, I don't know when he read it, but he goes into the press room for the post-game interview, smiling and greeting the press.

And this is what he said, and it's become quite famous now.

He looked over to the press with a smile on his face, having just been defeated.

He says, this is life.

It can't define you.

You enjoy the good times, and you've got to be able to take the bad times.

And when you step into the arena, the consequences can be historic losses, tough losses, great wins, and you have to deal with both.

And that's life.

As I heard him utter those words with a smile on his face, I wondered if anybody really understood what Tony was saying.

The definitive line in his message was this, this tragedy doesn't define me.

That's why I'm not that upset.

I'll go back and work hard, but this is not what my life's ultimately about.

The world may define you by wins and losses.

God does not.

The world may define you by unfortunate or fortunate circumstances.

God does not.

I've often heard Tony quote Job 2.10, "'Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?' Does God not use the trouble in our lives for His purposes?

And are not all His purposes good?

Then shall we not praise God in good times and bad times?

I know that sounds difficult, and I'm not there yet.

None of us probably are.

But when you live by the resolution that nothing comes into your life that God does not previously know about, and he's equipping you to slay a giant, then you can rejoice in the bad and the good knowing what is yet to come.

In all things, this is what's to come, in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose.

Unfortunate events have minimum negative impact on those who believe in a sovereign God who is always working his plan.

And you know the rest of the story for Tony?

They got in the record books the next year, because come back the next year, they won the whole thing with the same basic team.

They won the entire championship.

He says that he played a song in the locker room before the final game called Hills and Valleys and reminded them, this doesn't define you.

Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, but what defines you is your relationship with God and his willingness to do extraordinary things in your life.

Resolution number one.

I will see the unfortunate events of my life as faith builders leading to the greatest accomplishments of my life.

And I don't know where you are right now, what you're facing, but I want to show you the promised land.

I want to show you what Gideon's going to be able to do through his dependence on God and how he experiences the greatest victory of Israel.

For when you are in the midst of life's most fierce battle, chances are you are most centered in the will of God.

He's going to bring about salvation.

He's gonna give you a victory that you never hoped for, asked for, or imagined.

And everything that was meant for evil, he's gonna turn it on its head and use it for a measurable good.

Lift up your eyes.

Come on this journey with me and remember your life with Him is full of signs that God writes straight with crooked lines.

Dark clouds can hide the rising sun.

And all seem lost, all seem lost when all is one.

And Father, we thank you for your goodness and mercy.

We thank you for a powerful narrative and story of Gideon, and we've not even started.

And I pray that as a church, we would go on this journey and on the other side, we would live by these seven resolutions that would make such a difference not only in our countenance, in our lives, but in the lives of everyone who meets us.

It's my prayer, desperate prayer, in Christ's name, amen.

We hope you enjoyed the message.

If you've been watching online for quite a while, I wanna encourage you to engage with us and to find an online community group.

We have just started them, and if you wanna jump in on one or find one, go ahead and either download our One and All app or go to oneandall.church.com.

community.

From there you can find your community group, sign up, get to know people probably from around the world as well as getting to know you and grow deeper with God.

Thank you for watching.

Join us next week for week two of Unpossible.