Honoring God in Life’s Hardships
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Mother’s Day: Honoring God in the Hard Stuff
Point 1: When We Honor God He Gives Us Strength in the Struggle
Proverbs 31:25 NLT
“She is clothed with strength and dignity…”Honor looks like holding onto God when you can’t handle the hard stuff on your own
Point 2: When We Honor God He Gives Us Truth to Triumph over our Troubles
Romans 5:3 AMPC
Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance.The word "exult" here means to leap for joy
“Liars don’t heal!” - Havilah Cunnington
When we honor God in our trial, He provides truths that allow us to see beyond our current circumstances.
Point 3: When We Honor God He Gives Us Breakthrough in Bitter Places
Lamentations 3:5-9 NIV
He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.6 He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains.8 Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. 9 He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked.When we Honor the Lord in the Bitter Place He doesn’t let us stay there.
Lamentations 3:21-26 NIV
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. -
Well, I just wanted to start off today by just encouraging you.
I know today cannot be easy for some of us, but we want to celebrate our victories and not meditate.
I don't know why I'm crying.
When don't I cry?
That's the problem.
But we don't want to meditate on any valleys in our lives.
Yes, we all walk through difficult times, right?
We all go through very dry seasons, but even in our darkest days, God's goodness can shine through.
Proverbs 4.18 says, the path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining even brighter to the full light of day.
When you feel insignificant, God says, you are enough.
Say, I am enough.
I am enough.
When you feel like you're exhausted, God says, my strength is made perfect in your weakness.
When you feel defeated, God says, I am your conqueror.
When you are going through hard things in life, going through the hard stuff which every one of us do, God says, I am working it out for your good purpose.
Do you believe that this morning?
He is always working things out for our good.
So today, whatever you are going through,
Whoever you are, wherever you're at in life, God sees you.
He sees exactly what you're going through.
And today we want to talk about honoring God in the hard stuff.
Anybody ever been through some hard stuff?
Yes.
By the way, you're probably wondering why I'm up here.
I'm just up here for moral support, and I'm just going to just be praying for her as she preaches to you.
No, we're going to do a little bit of a tag team.
As I shared with you last week, we're going to be tag teaming.
When I think about what it means to honor God in the hard stuff, my mind immediately goes to the women in our lives, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, spiritual moms.
We all have them who have consistently honored God through some of life's most difficult season.
These women have shown us what faith in action looks like.
They've disciplined us when we needed it because love tells the truth.
Amen.
They believed when everything looked impossible and we were doubting.
They prayed through when others gave up on us.
They sacrificed quietly even when we didn't understand the cost they were paying.
They showed up when no one else did, cheering us on from the sidelines of life.
They lifted us up when we couldn't stand and they stayed until we could stand on our own.
They welcomed us home again
And again, and a third time, again.
They modeled commitment when walking away may have been easier.
And they worked long hours to make sure we had what we needed, never asking for anything in return.
And that's what moms and mother figures do in our lives.
They show what it means to honor God by doing the hard things with grace, love, and strength.
In other words, they show us how to handle the hard stuff so the hard stuff doesn't mishandle us.
So I'd like all of our moms and mother figures to stand.
And as they do, can we just give them God praise for all of them?
We're so thankful for you.
Come on, we can do better than that.
We love you and we give God praise for you.
Thank you for spending a portion of your Mother's Day with us.
Even at 50 years of age, I'm still learning things from my mom.
She's in service today.
She flew from Louisiana in town.
Yeah.
So she's here.
Last year was not an easy year for us as a family, as many of you know.
But my mom this last year taught me what it meant
And what it looks like, I've done many weddings in my life.
And there's a phrase they say, they say, until death does you part.
And I saw what that looked like.
I saw what that meant, looked like, lived out this last year.
not just spoken on a sunny wedding day, but walked through hospitals, sleepless nights, quiet moments of caregiving like many of us I know are in the middle of, and you realize it's more than sentiment.
It's sacrifice.
It's faithfulness when no one's watching.
It's love that holds on even when the strength is fading.
And many of you, listen, when nobody's watching,
Can I just say, God sees you.
God sees you and he loves you.
My mom just didn't, and again, I'm 54 and I'm still learning, amen?
She didn't just honor her vows, she embodied them.
And that kind of love leaves a mark deeper than any sermon you ever hear and any song that you could ever sing.
And I want us to be encouraged today about the ladies and women in our life.
Now I can't see because I'm crying.
Your glasses are fogged.
This could be a problem, people.
Thanks, hon.
In Proverbs 31, it says, Who is clothed with strength and dignity and she speaks wisdom.
She watches over her household and is praised by her children.
That's verse 25 through 28.
At the end of the passage, it says, charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting.
Yes, it is.
But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Today, we honor those women who have taught us by example to honor God in the hard stuff.
When we honor God, he gives us strength in our struggle.
Proverbs 31, 25 says, she is clothed with strength and
When we choose to honor God in our struggle, He equips us with that strength that we need to go beyond the circumstances that we're in.
It's a strength that allows us to hold on to faith when everything else seems like it's slipping away.
Have you ever felt like that?
I know I have.
This is the reason why every year we honor a mom and award someone to receive what we call the Maffini Tapai Courageous Mother Award.
When I first became pastor-
at this church.
Mephini was a mom who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and we would visit her and just an amazing woman of faith.
Her daughter is joining us on stage, Zariah.
See, not everyone that comes to real life is just looking for a good church to attend.
even though it's a good church to attend, amen?
But not everybody's looking for a good church.
Some people are doing everything just to see a glimpse of a good life.
They're doing everything they can just to walk through the doors.
Some people are just coming because they're just so desperate for God's help.
And you may be in this place today in need of help.
Can I just encourage you, you've come to the right place.
Others of us are hurting and they just need to know that they are loved and accepted.
One of my favorite things to hear is how people get out of their car and they're greeted by our parking lot team and they get to the doors and they're greeted by Wendell and that team.
And then they get through in the lobby and they're hugged.
And by the time they get to their seat, they've already decided we're coming back to this place.
This was the case of this year's recipient.
When she showed up to real life in 2021, she was angry.
Anybody been angry before?
She was reeling from a failed marriage and feeling rejected and alone in her struggle.
It wasn't a quick fix.
How many know everything doesn't happen overnight?
Right.
It wasn't a quick fix, but she began to heal and she began to continually come to our services on Sunday.
And it wasn't perfect, but she began to pay attention to the places in her heart that were wounded and waxed over.
And she started attending on Sundays.
And then she got connected with SAC Healing Christian Prayer Ministries and started attending there.
And God began to do a work in her life.
And one of the things that I most admire about this mom is that pretty much any time the doors are open, she's walking through them with her kids leading the way.
She has been a member of Real Life Church for several years.
And during that time, she has watched and she has grown and she has matured into a mature woman in the Lord.
She has four young children.
She also has a daughter who's 23 and is a four-month-old, so she's a grandma as well.
She has endured struggles and stresses the whole time holding on to Jesus as her Savior and as her guide.
We are proud to have her as one of our consistent, consistent, and faithful kids ministry teachers.
She has also been a great team member on our worship and our choir teams.
The 2025 Mufini Tupai Courageous Mother Award goes to Courtney Borders.
Come on up, Courtney.
Come on, Courtney.
2025, Mafingi Tupac, a Courageous Mother Award.
The Lord will fight for you.
You need only to be still.
Exodus 14, verse 14.
This was the scripture above my mom's hospital bed, and you deserve it.
Great job.
Now, Courtney, you told me something about just being seen or maybe not feeling seen.
Would you just share that?
Because it's such encouragement.
Good is not enough.
We're good enough word for God.
God is beyond good.
When Pastor Jesse told me about it, I was reminded of Hagar.
And Hagar...
As many of you know, she was an Egyptian slave in Abraham and Sarah's house.
And Sarah gave her to her husband.
She was misused, mistreated to the point where she ran away.
And in the wilderness, God sent his angel to give her hope, to give her a promise.
And she said, he is Elroy.
the God who sees me.
And I feel that so much because I get caught up in just doing what I got to do.
Every day is just, you know, doing what I have to do, doing what needs to be done.
And it's all for somebody else, for some little people, for some big person.
And sometimes it's...
God sees me.
He is Elroy.
And that's what I want to encourage people with today is that God is Elroy.
He is the God who sees you.
He sees me.
He sees you.
He hears you.
And God answers prayers.
Come on.
God answers prayers.
I'm going to end there because I could go on and on and on.
Come on.
Can we give God praise again for Courtney?
Thank you guys so much.
Amen, amen.
She is one amazing lady.
Our second point today is when we honor God, he gives us truth to triumph over our troubles.
Romans 5.3,
The word exalt there means to leap for joy, a seemingly impossible reaction to trouble.
When we all face challenges on any given day, sometimes it can take our breath away.
In our marriages, in our finances, in our relationships.
with health issues that we go through, and that's just the beginning of some struggles that we have.
But when I'm truthful about my trouble, I can also learn to find the joy.
However, if I ignore the truth, I lose my joy.
If I avoid the truth, I lose my ability to leap.
If I suppress the truth, I get buried in the shame that that holds in my life.
But when I'm truthful with my trouble, I can be honest about the hurt that I'm going through.
And when I'm truthful about my trouble, I can be transparent about trauma that I might have gone through in my life.
And when I'm thankful and truthful, my trouble, I can triumph over that trouble with joy and unending faith.
Amen?
Amen.
Easier said than done sometimes, right?
It is a process for sure.
I have a funny story about my kids.
Mariah's like, Mom, you're not going to say something about me, right?
I'm like, no, no, not at all.
Well, many of us know Josiah as a good football player.
Well, at the same time, growing up, Josiah could be a good liar.
Not my precious firstborn.
He would tell me a story.
He would answer one of my questions.
And I thought all the time he was telling me the truth.
He literally could look straight at me and say a lie.
And I would completely believe him.
Because I just couldn't believe he would do something like that.
There was one time when I found out an incident that had occurred.
He told me everything that had happened.
And then a couple days later, I had got a call from one of his friend's mom.
Well, she had a whole different story than what Josiah had told me had happened.
So anyways, you know where that went.
But I always told my kids, it's better to be honest first.
And then it's much harder when we find out after, right, that you're not telling the truth.
I call it double trouble.
Now, Mariah, for sure, she wasn't a good liar.
She didn't lie a lot, and if she was, it was very evident all on her face.
But one time, we actually caught her doing something that she told us she wasn't doing.
We were driving down the street and all of a sudden, here comes, this is right after she got her license, here comes Mariah driving by us with a friend in her car.
And we're like, oh my gosh, she's not supposed to be driving with anybody under 18 for the first year of her getting her license.
There you go.
There she goes.
And we're like, okay, so you know where that went as well.
But those were just some times that I was thinking about with the kids.
But
with God in the same way, right?
He wants us to be truthful and transparent on what's really going on in our life.
He knows already anyways, right?
How can he really help us if we're acting like everything is okay?
It reminds me of what Havilah Cunnington says, liars do not heal.
When we lie to ourselves about what's really going on, we're not gonna heal.
We won't move forward.
We will just sit in the dark places of our hearts.
But life gets easier when we refuse to lie to yourself and deceive others into thinking that actually everything is going just fine.
When I honor God in my trial, I open myself up to his help.
And again, when we honor God in our trials, he provides his truths that will allow us to see beyond our current circumstances.
Amen.
Amen.
Our last point is this.
When we honor God, he gives us breakthrough in bitter places.
Each and every one of us are in a different place.
Some of us are in a good place, but many of us are not.
And here's what I know, that we wanna encourage you today, if you're not in a good place, to allow God to take you to a better place.
One of the things that Amy and I experience pretty much on any given Sunday is we'll be walking out together, we'll be in the lobby and someone will come to us and just share a testimony of what God is doing in their lives.
Something that we would never heard if this person didn't share it with us.
And can I just tell you, God is moving miraculously in the lives of people.
God is encountering them.
Listen, not just through preaching, not just through, but people are encountering God just sitting where they're at.
It has been an amazing, amazing.
So you're about to hear something miraculous has happened here today.
at real life that we all had a part in.
The book of Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah, he provides a raw and honest account of wrestling with God through difficult times.
And in chapter three, verses five through nine, we see this description of Jeremiah feeling besieged, surrounded by bitterness and walled in bitterness.
by hardship.
I'm sure many of us can relate to this passage.
It's up on the screen, but it says this, he has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
He has walled me in so I cannot escape.
He has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out
Now, even though we know that is not true, sometimes, listen, we can feel like because what the place that we're in, that it is true, that God doesn't hear us.
That as Courtney said, God doesn't see us.
But how do you know that's an absolute lie?
Yeah.
Yet as you'll hear later in chapter three, that's not where the story ends and that's not where your story has to end.
You see, when we honor the Lord in the bitter place,
This is what I love about God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
How many know he doesn't allow you to stay there?
When we honor the Lord in the bitter place, he doesn't let us stay there.
Has anybody ever had to work through, come on, some bitterness or some unforgiveness or something difficult that it took you?
Listen, it didn't take you overnight.
Sometimes it takes over a year.
Sometimes it takes a few years as you're going to hear in just a moment.
Sometimes he even makes our current situation uncomfortable to push us towards growth and breakthrough.
He makes it uncomfortable.
Sometimes it feels like he closes in on us so we can't avoid dealing with the hard stuff.
Anybody ever been confronted with hard stuff?
Not in your life, but in your heart.
This is what the Holy Spirit does to us.
And you're about to hear a God story.
When Therese and Pam came with their families to real life, they were hurting and they were navigating a difficult family situation.
Not only did they lose their dad to cancer, who was a great pastor in our region, but through tough circumstances, they lost their church.
They helped lead for years.
It was the only church that they knew.
Their family legacy seemed to have shattered before their eyes, and they too wrestled with their soul through unforgiveness and bitterness.
But God.
How many thankful for the buts?
Come on.
But God.
A couple of weeks ago, Therese emailed me about the breakthrough.
They just experienced it.
And recently God gave it to them.
And I asked them if they would close out our service with this God story, this miraculous story of reconciliation that has happened recently at our church.
Turn your attention towards the screen and be encouraged and empowered.
you
Hi, I'm Therese.
This is my sister Pam.
And this is Our God Story.
So we were raised in a ministry family.
We've been in ministry our whole life.
So we were raised to serve.
We were raised to be in ministry.
And I would say that we had the best life growing up ever.
And that all came crashing down and came to an end July 15th, 2022, when our dad died.
Um, it was, it shook our world.
It shook our world.
It shook our kids world.
It shook our family's world.
And in the course of him dying, um, and transitioning to heaven, it broke our family apart and completely.
Yeah.
I mean, yes, completely.
When that happened, uh, through misunderstandings and a long course of event, our mom stopped speaking to us and we had zero contact with her.
For how many years?
Two and a half years.
Two and a half years.
That's a long time to go without both parents in your life.
And so both of us realized that we were living the life of not a good Christian.
We were living the life of hate, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness.
And it wasn't just affecting us.
It was affecting our marriages.
It was affecting our children, our jobs.
It affected every aspect of our life.
So he died in 2022.
The end of 2022, Pam
called me and she said, Teresa, we are we're not taking all of this in to 2023.
And I said, Oh, yes, yes, I am.
I'm taking it and I'm going to feed it.
And then December 31, just God got ahold of me.
And I made a decision that I was going to forgive and I was going to begin the process of healing.
We came to real life the end of October of 2022.
And, you know, it was a weird transition for us.
We've never attended another church in our lives.
And we had a man of God that spoke into our lives.
And he said, you need to find the church that God is sending you to.
And you need to sit for six months.
And that was hard.
That was very, very hard for us.
Because what do you do for six months?
You come to church.
You walk in the doors.
You walk out the door.
But during that time of those six months of us sitting here, God ministered to us.
And he showed us where we were broken.
He showed us where we were hurt.
And he was able to start repairing and putting salve on some of those wounds.
So fast forward to December.
So we decided we were going to release that, let it go.
And we got involved.
We got plugged into the church and we started serving.
We joined small groups.
We led a small group.
January 5th of this year.
Yeah.
Pastor Dean was preaching a message on wisdom, pillars of life, January 5th.
And I walked out of those doors after teaching and I just felt the Lord tell me even during the service, but even during while I was teaching the kids saying, you have to be more intentional.
in your prayers towards your relationship with your mother.
So of course, I called Trace on the way home and I said, Trace, we've got to be more intentional in our prayers towards our relationship with our mother so that it can change for the future.
And, you know, walk in love, do that.
But really by praying for her, it changed my heart.
and I saw my mother differently.
I even got rid of more anger, more bitterness, more hurt.
Walking in love came as a result of me knowing that I had to pray differently.
And when I started praying differently, praying in tongues, finding a verse to stand on, and having that accountability partner,
Right.
Because she called me on the way home from church and she said, let's get more intentional in our prayer.
Let's pray more targeted.
She said, let's pray for clarity of vision for mom.
Let's pray that her eyes are open.
Let's pray that her heart is softened and that she lives out her best days.
that she has her best days ahead of us.
And she said, let's pray 15 minutes in the Holy Spirit.
And I'm telling you, if you are not baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in tongues, then you need to come up today and get that gift.
Because of that, we were able to pray the perfect prayer for her.
And I know it easy.
It made it easy to pray.
And I know it was working in her, but it was working in us.
So that was January 5th, January 29th.
She sent me a text for my birthday and she ended it by saying, now keep in mind, we have not spoken to her in two and a half years.
And she, she ended it saying, I hope that someday we can have breakfast together.
And fast forward, fast forward to February 19th.
And I said yes to breakfast, found a date that worked for both of us.
We went, her and I went to breakfast on February 19th.
We spent three hours together at breakfast and two weeks later she was at my house for breakfast with the whole Walton clan.
And it was like nothing ever happened.
There was complete restoration, complete forgiveness.
And now moving forward, we are in a working family relationship with both of our families, with our mom.
And that has changed everything.
I didn't realize I still had a weight on me.
You know,
not having that relationship, I thought I let it go.
But after connecting and getting back with my mother, wow, the burden removing power of God, I could just, I was, I'm happier because I have a relationship with my mother.
And so I would just say that getting involved in real life and being a part of just the different things and allowing myself to be healed
and quit blaming and the power washing up the water of the word on a weekly basis, you know, through the small groups, you know, through everything.
Um, the Lord just, he did a work.
We got our miracle.
We did.
And it's nothing that we could have done in the natural.
And it's nothing that we ever thought would happen in the natural.
We thought reconciliation was coming in heaven, but
It's a God thing that happened to us and for anybody that has a broken relationship with a family member, with a parent, I would say don't give up hope.
Mom came to Good Friday service with us and we stood in that Good Friday service and it was Pam, my mom, myself,
And we stood worshiping and all three of us worshiping our hands up, you know, praising the Lord.
Our voices.
Our voices raised.
And there was just a heart of gratefulness in that row because, you know, it was, wow, look what the Lord has done.
And God will do it for you.
He will do it for you.
And one of my mom's favorite scriptures in the message translation is Ephesians 3.20.
And she says it all the time.
She says it because it starts out, God can do anything you know.
And I stood in that Good Friday service and I thought, wow, God can do anything.
And we are living.
We're a living testament of God's goodness, his faithfulness, and that he is the restorer of anything that's broken.
And Ephesians 6.1.
Honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you and that you may live a long life.
So God is good.
Let it start with you.
Come on.
If he did it for them, he'll do it for you.
If he did it for them, he'll do it for you, amen?
It was awesome because first service, guess who was in service?
Pam, Therese, and her mom came to church today sitting on the second row.
They prayed for us like we're gonna pray for one another.
But here's Jeremiah.
He says, he besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
And if you drop down to verse 21 to 26, it says this, yet this.
I call to mind and therefore I have hope.
I don't know what your situation is today.
It might not be a relationship that needs to be reconciled.
Maybe it's your relationship with God, with Jesus Christ that needs to be reconciled.
Maybe you're in a bitter place or an angry place or just maybe I'm just not in a good place.
And today you need to step out of whatever place you're in to the better place that God has for you.
And I want to encourage you.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.
If he did it for Pam and Therese, I know he can do it for me.
Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed for his compassions.
They never fail.
They are new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness.
I say to myself, the Lord is my portion.
Therefore, I will wait for him.
The Lord is good to those who hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.
It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
You see, when we honor the Lord in the bitter place, come on, how do you know he can take us to that better place?
And this morning, I just wanna ask you,
Will you allow him to do that in your life?
Maybe you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and you came and you even said to yourself, maybe on the way to church or maybe you've said it sometime this week, I'm just not in a very good place.
Will you allow the Holy Spirit this morning
to knock on the door of your heart, and we will allow Jesus to come in and let him lead you out of that, whatever place you're in, into a better place.
With every head bowed and eye closed.
You say, Pastor Dean, just by the lifting of your hand, will you include me in that prayer of salvation?
I need to get in a better place in my relationship with Jesus.
If that's you, we had several people in the first service.
Is there anybody today you would just be honest before God and you would honor and say, man, I'm going through some hard stuff and I need you.
Jesus has helped today.
Is there anybody?
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for being honest.
Thank you for being honest.
Anybody else?
Just a few more seconds.
Anybody else?
You'd say, I need to be honest.
I'm going through some hard stuff right here against the wall.
Hand raised.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Several people have lifted their hands and I want to pray this prayer.
together.
It's a prayer of salvation.
And I want us, when we pray it together, I want us to trust the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, believing that Jesus is going to come in.
And it might not be a quick fix.
I'm not promising everything's going to be okay when you leave this place.
But what I am going to promise you is that you're going to be perfectly positioned to God, for God to begin working on your story and your miracle.
Can we pray this prayer together as a church?
If you lifted your hand or you didn't, and you want to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, on the count of three, one, two, three.
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner and I ask for your forgiveness.
I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead.
Right now, I turn from my sins and invite you to come into my heart and life.
I want to trust and follow you from this day forward.
I confess you as my personal Lord and Savior.
Thank you for saving me in Jesus' name.
And everybody said, can we give God praise for those that lifted their hands today?
Listen, we have a I Have Decided packet for those that raised your hands or you didn't.
You could take that card that was placed in your hand or if you didn't get a card, just go back to my friend Jeff there.
There's a New Believers New Testament there as well.
Some next steps that we can take with you in your new faith journey with the Lord.
Can we give God praise one more time?
Like this is what I know.
This is what I know.
I'm gonna ask our prayer ministers to come forward.
At this time, this is what I know.
There's a lot of believers.
You believe in the Lord.
You love the Lord.
But you're going through some hard stuff.
You may even be in a very difficult place dealing with some hard stuff.
And this morning, I'm just going to ask you to do something bold.
If you're in a hard place.
and your desire in the Lord to take you to a better place, would you just stand to your feet?
We wanna pray for you.
You would just say, you know what?
I wanna be in a better place.
Come on, before I leave this place, thank you for your honesty.
I wanna honor the Lord with the hard stuff that's going on in my life.
God, I wanna honor you with the difficulty, God.
I don't wanna curse you, God.
I wanna honor you with my life.
Is there anybody else?
Maybe you need reconciliation in a relationship.
Whatever it may be, maybe you're just going, you're feeling alone like Courtney.
You don't feel seen.
But this morning, the Lord says, I see you in your difficulty.
I see you in your trial.
I see you in your circumstance.
Thank you for being so bold.
This is what I want us to do.
I want us to just stretch our hands out.
Somebody standing near you, just stretch a hand out towards them.
Father, I thank you that you know the place that we're in.
You know the hard stuff that is confronting us.
And I just pray, God, that you would give each and every person in this place the strength, God, and the power, even in their weakness, God, to overcome, God, every trial, God, every tribulation.
God, I pray that you would strengthen, God, every step today.
God, that you would encourage them.
God, that you'd give them the ability to leap, God, over every circumstance.
Father, in Jesus' name, we thank you.
Lord, I pray for relationships that need to be reconciled.
God, whether it's been two and a half years, 10 years, or more, God, you are the God of the impossible.
You can do all things.
And we give you praise and we give you glory in the mighty name of Jesus.
And everybody said, amen, amen.
Can we give God praise?
And as you do, can we all stand?
I wanna pray a prayer over all our moms before we leave.
This is what I know.
Listen, if God is not done and you need prayer in any area of your life, listen, I feel like there's an anointing here to get you in a better place, to get you on the road to a better place.
Like I said, it might not be a quick fix,
But I believe the Lord could start something today.
Listen, that in six months or a year from now could be totally, totally different.
If you need prayer in any area of your life, after this prayer, I want you to come.
Moms, if you could just lift your hands, I want to just pray this blessing over you.
Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of every mom in the midst of life struggles.
I pray today that you would clothe her with strength and dignity, just as your word promises.
When challenges arise, I pray you fill her with truth that leads to triumph and help her hold on to hope, knowing that you are building perseverance and character within her life.
Lord, in every bitter or broken place, bring breakthrough.
And just as you were with Jeremiah in his sorrow, be near every mom today and remind her that when she honors you, you are faithful to strengthen God and bless her life in Jesus' name.
And everybody said, amen.
Can we give God praise again for our moms and our mom figures in our life?
Listen, if you need prayer in any area of your life, I want you to respond.
Hey, on your way out, take time to take a picture at the photo booth, tag RLC.
We'd love to repost it just to let you know that you've been here today.
Church, we love you.
God bless you.
And again, please, please, please get prayer if you need it.
Any area of your life.