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Welcome to the live big broadcast with Derek Greer. We believe this teaching from God's Word will empower you to live a full, impactful life in Christ. Let's dig in. First Samuel 21:1. Now, David came to Nob. What led up to this, or David ending up in nobility, was several chapters prior, Saul hurled a spear at David twice in one day. And then after that, he tried to kill David three more times. And because of that, he's finally on the run. And perhaps, I think, you know, it took a minute maybe, you know, if you're like me, sometimes it takes me a minute to get the hint. But David finally got the hint. And how people treat you is how they feel about you. So believe them. You know, we can't always change, though we try. And there are sometimes things we can do. We can't always change how people feel about us, but we can change whether or not we stay in unsafe relationships. So, ladies, if you're dating a person and all you do is cry, stop and ask yourself, are you dating a man or an onion? And if someone keeps insisting that life would be better without you, give them what they want. So David came to nobility. So the tabernacle had moved from Shiloh to this area called Nob. And it was the place that the priest served and the presence of the God resided. So he came to Nob and he met Ahimelech, the high priest. Now, what made David so great is that whenever he was in trouble, he ran to the presence of God. And this is true. You may run out of luck, but you'll never run out of God. The priest was afraid when he met David, and he had reason for his suspicion. And he said to him, now you know, David was of course, the great hero of Israel. By this time, he defeated Goliath. But also the bride price, or the reward for defeating Goliath was he married the king's daughter. So David was the king's son in law. And it was very unusual for someone of his rank and stature to be traveling around the country without an escort. So the priest is a little bit suspicious. He's like, hey, what's going on? He says, david, why are you alone and no one is with you? So David had left his wife, he left his family, he left his friends behind. But I want to say this, and it's very, very important. We're in chapter 21 of Samuel, and this whole chapter is really all about the same thing. God often uses our seasons of aloneness to both deepen and purify our Faith, you know, how God uses us in public spaces depends on often what we let him do first in our secret places. So David responded to Ahimelech the priest, and he tells ephib. He tells a lie. He said, the king has ordered me on some business. Now, the only thing King Saul ordered David to do was to stop running so Saul could catch him and kill him. But David said, the king has ordered me on some business and said to me, do not let anyone know about the business on which I send you or whatever I have commanded you. Now, if you know David's heart and mind, the odds are David lied to protect the priests from any level of culpability. Basically, he knew that if Saul found out about David's visit and that the priests served David, though he was a renegade at that time and an outcast, Ahimelech could have said, well, David told me something different, and he would be free from guilt. Now, what's important about 1st Samuel 21, the whole chapter, is that the Bible is a wonderful book. One of the reasons that I love the Bible and I can trust the Bible is it doesn't hide the weaknesses of its heroes. If I was telling the story, I would leave this chapter out. Matter of fact, you won't hear much preaching on this chapter because it's a little bit confusing to people that read it. But here's the deal. If the Bible could be this honest, you and I should be, too. We should be able to talk about not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses. Mom and dad, every now and then, you know, I know that, you know, your kids think you were perfect and you just grew up and, you know, you never had any problems. But you need to remind your kids, I had pimples, too. I made mistakes, too. And that's the only way they can really identify with you and really connect. And the Bible connects with me on so many levels, largely because it's honesty. And he went on and said, I've directed my young men to such and such a place. Now, therefore, what have you on hand. So David is alone and he's hungry, he's traveling. And he says to the priest, give me five loaves of bread in my hand. He was specific, or whatever can be found. So the priest gave him the shoe bread with or the holy bread. Now, this event was so important in Scripture that Jesus in Matthew 12:3 talks about this event. Now, it's important to know that the shoe bread or the showbread, however you want to enunciate or pronounce it, was Never to be handled casually. But in dire circumstances, human need was more important than ceremonial law. The problem with legalism is it always obeys, but it never understands. But with me saying that, you got to be careful, because this is the trend of many today, that wherever the Bible declares something they don't like, they call obedience legalistic. Obedience is not legalistic. It's a symptom of salvation. When I get sick, I sneeze. When you get saved, you start to obey. But here's the problem. When you have obedience without understanding, it leads to immaturity and error. And this is why Jesus, throughout the Gospel, is constantly giving the Pharisees and the Sadducees the bigger pictures of God's command so that they could execute them properly. But let's keep going. For there was no bread there but the shewbread, which was the sacred bread, the ceremonial bread, the bread of God's presence that was in the most holy place, which had been taken from before the Lord. So it was already used, and now it was left over in order to put new hot bread in its place on the day that it was taken away. So what we see here is Ahimelech knew the letter of the Lord, and it's important to know what God's word says, line upon line. You know, God said, not a jot a tittle of this word's gonna pass away until, you know, the earth gotta pass away first. So the letter matters. But Ahimelech understood the letter. Well, he knew the letter, but he also understood the spirit of it. Now, if I'm forced to choose between rules and saving a life, Jesus is clear. He said the law was given to save life, not to destroy it. So what this means is, let's say you're an usher and you're supposed to be here a quarter before, you know, the 8:30 service. 8:15. And the head ushers told you last week, hey, I need all y' all to be on time. You're on your way in and you see a family member or somebody, maybe a friend, maybe a neighbor on the side of the road, and they're struggling, they need medical help. And you happen to be in a position to help them. But you're like, I gotta be on time. I'm not gonna look good in front of my head usher if I'm not there on time. And you choose to rush past a hurting person in order to fulfill a command. You hear what I'm saying? You've missed the spirit of it. And if I was a head usher, I'd be mad at you for not understanding that. Listen, to save a life is even more important than being on time. So with that, Jesus in the Bible often gets upset with religious people because they know a whole bunch of rules and regulations, but they don't understand the spirit of it. Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 7 says this, in all means everything. Is that right? Yep. In all your getting, get understanding. So if you learn the what and not the why, your faith quickly becomes a mile wide and an inch deep. So now, a certain man of the servants of Saul, obviously he worked for Saul, was there that day, detained before the Lord. He came to church. And actually this man, his name here is Doeg. He is the consummate false brethren. He's that person that comes to church and knows the Scriptures, sings the hallelujah, but in their heart is something very, very different. So he happened to be Edomite, and he was chief of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul. Now, all this is explained in the next chapter, but the short of it is his position over all the king's herds gave him access to the king. And, you know, this was not. Well, it was a smaller kingdom, but it wasn't a tiny kingdom. And with that, there were probably hundreds of cattle, sheep and all the rest. So this man had a major task. And in that time, a cattleman was very much like a banker, because they didn't. Yeah, they did have a little bit of silver and gold, but most things bartered and most things were purchased through exchange. So the wealth of the king was seen in his property. So this man had a significant role. And in the next chapter, 1st Samuel 22:22, David tells us that when he noticed Doeg, he saw that Doeg was there. He had this gut sinking feeling that Doeg would see David, not pray about it, not seek the Lord about it, or none of that. He would pass on the information and use it to get favor with the king. So immediately when David saw Doeg in the temple, he ran. We have to learn to pay attention to our gut feelings. Again, that person may quote the scripture, may attend the same church as you, and all, but trust what your heart is saying. If they're saying, you know, not safe, not now, give them plenty of room, because God lives on the inside of you, and he's always accurate. Verse 10. Then David arose and fled that day from before Saul. So now David, we see here, his faith is being tested by fire. And as David's circumstances begin to heat up, many of the impurities in his heart and his life began to surface. So, you know, already he's told this one lie, and now he's about to travel to another area to do something very, very similar. But actually, he gets a little bit worse before he gets better. The best gold has to go through the hottest fire. And God will send us all through seasons of testing, not because God doesn't know what's in us, but often because we don't really know what's in us. You know, in a high moment, it's easy to say hallelujah. In a high moment, it's easy to say praise the Lord. But when you gotta get in and out of that store and that person, you know, intensely cuts you off, looks you in the face while you do it wrong, their eyes, while they're moving into that space, that's that moment where what's inside of you really comes out. And sometimes we can have a wrong assessment of where we really are. So the fire doesn't come because you don't have faith, but it comes to perfect the faith that you have. So he arose that day from before Saul, and he went to Achish. Watch this king of Gath. So out of the pot, into the fire. So he moved from Nob to Philistine land, and Gath was the chief of the five cities of the Philistines. Now, the reason David did this is because he didn't want to travel to an allied nation because all. All Saul would do would be send some soldiers and they'd extradite him. So he intentionally wanted to go to an enemy of Israel so that there would be no treaties between them and he could safely live in the land. But what's happening here is we see David leaning on his own reasoning, leaning on his own wisdom. He's thinking, this is my best option. I'm going to take it. But what we also see here is that God had taken the boy out of the streets, but he uses this chapter to take the street out of the boys. Sometimes God must remove our hood for our own good. Yeah, all of us have a little residual hood somewhere in us. And God permits circumstances for us to be reminded we're not as holy as we think. We have not arrived just yet, and there's still work to be done. And the servants of Achish said to him, is this not David, the king of the land? Now, you'll see this in a couple verses, but David is older now. And we'll also say he's bearded now, and you don't have a beard at 16. Well, you know, a few of y' all did, but most of us don't have beards at 16. But some time has passed, and he thought that he could blend in because he underestimated his fame. But every time we lose ourselves to try to fit into what we where we don't belong, we begin to lose pieces of ourselves. He said, did they not sing of him to one another in dances? So they're looking at him saying, that looks like that God. Now, remember, he defeated Goliath in front of the whole army. He's like, he looks like that God. He said, didn't they sing to one another? So they're bringing, you know, trying to conjure up everyone's remembrance, saying, is this the guy? You know, didn't they say, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands? Here's the deal. You cannot unscramble an egg. We can become famous, but we cannot become unfamous. How many are old enough to remember the Fresh Prince of Bel Air? Okay. Or at least watch the reruns. Yeah. How many remember the butler in the Fresh Prince? Now, I've not seen that butler in one movie or television show since, yet I remember him. You cannot become unfamous. And there's a thin line between being famous and infamous. So be careful what you wish for. Now, David took these words to heart. Now, David has been spending time in the palace. He's playing for Saul when the demon comes on, the devil comes on Saul, and he helps calm his mind. And he's become familiar with palace intrigue. And even before he was in the palace, he killed the lion and the bear, which means he understands something of what you would call the Jerusalem or Gibeon Street. And as streetwise as David had become, the fact his brothers and his father, Jesse, could not see the good in him made it very difficult for him to see the good in himself. Even after defeating Goliath, I mean, the greatest feat, you know, one of the greatest in the Bible, he still held a relatively low opinion of his accomplishments. But this was his wake up call. C.S. lewis famously said, true humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. And it's not humble to say you can't do something you can do. It's not humble to say, well, I can't dunk when you know you can dunk. It's not humble to say you can't sing when you know you can sing. Do you understand what I'm saying? That's not humility. That's false humility. Now, David did not say, well, Mr. Giant, I'm hoping and praying that, you know, maybe God might knock you down. He said, no, no, this day I'm going to feed you to the birds of the air. You hear what I'm saying? Jesus didn't say, well, you know what? I know God's never done a miracle like this before, but perhaps, you know, if I just grovel enough, maybe on the third day I'll get up. No, he said, on the third day I'll get up again. You hear what I'm saying? False humility is deception. And there's some things you need to know that you do well. There's some rooms I walk into. I'm like, God, me and you about to do this, and you gotta respond that way or the devil's gonna eat your lunch. You better go in there with confidence, knowing that God is with you and for you or you in trouble. Now, the religious folk may not understand that, but you get enough fire in enough situations, you begin to have to listen. Timothy was all scared and everything, but Paul was like, listen, boy, you need to stop all that. Stir up that gift that's in you. You need to fan it into a flame. God put something in you and use it. And likewise, when I'm in trouble against the wall, I'm like, lord, I can't do. But you can. Lord, I can't figure it out. But you gonna figure it out. And that's what faith is. He wants us to have a spirit of faith where when the devil says, we can't, we say, well, we're God, I can't. And that's what faith is. So David took these words to heart and he was very much afraid. The Bible's honest, and this great king, well, would be one day, King was afraid. He was afraid of Achus, the King of Gath, because he knew that when the Philistines found out who he was, that the king was going to kill him. And when he realized that, the fire got even hotter. So watch what he did. So he changed his behavior before them. David reverted back to his own wit and grit, and he did whatever he thought he needed to do to survive. And here is the sweet psalmist of Israel. Here is the man that God has already begun to use to write psalms that would prophesy the coming Messiah, Jesus. This is the man that was anointed by Samuel to be the next king. But here we have him. It says he pretended madness in their hands and began to scratch on the doors using his fingernails of the Gate. You see, David understood that people in this time in history, in this part of the world, believe that if they killed a crazy person, the crazy spirit would leave the dead body and either come on them or begin to haunt them. So you didn't mess with crazy people. That's like, you know, in the Madman of Gadara, you know, when we read how, you know, he terrorized the whole area. Like, why didn't they just kill him? They tried to chain him and all that. There was this belief that if you kill the man, the demon's gonna come out and jump on you. So David knew this, and he's trying to outsmart, you know, the Philistines. And then he says, and he let saliva fall down on his beard. Now, a man's beard in that day was. That was his manhood. You didn't cut your beard. It was your vigor. I mean, it was your manliness, your beard. And you wanted to have a strong, powerful, full beard. And it was a disgrace to mess with a man's beard. So this was a big deal. David, again, this is the great psalmist of Israel, letting dribble come down the hair on his face. And once again, he's not a youth anymore because he's grown a beard. And David thought that perhaps time and age would hide his identity in enemy territory. How many of you have gone back into the world and you thought you could hide? And you let filthy, foul come out of your mouth. The dribble and all the foam, all that. But deep down on the inside, there was a noise. And they do things and you do it with them. But then you felt bad about it. But you're trying to look the part, but on the inside, you still know I don't belong here. This is not for me. Three things we will not hide very the sun, the moon, and who you really are. Then Achish said to his servants, look, you see the man insane. Again, David pretended to foam at the mouth. And before we look down on David, how many have ever done something that you're embarrassed about to get out of a jam? Yeah, when we rely on ourselves and not on God, we will regret it every time. The loss of faith, at least in my life, has always ended in the loss of dignity, and it will do the same for you. Then he said, why have you brought him to me? This was a low point in David's life. But once again, be careful about judging David too harshly, because if you stop trusting God, you too will be surprised by how low you can go. Verse 1. Therefore, David departed from there. All of chapter 21 was about God exposing certain character flaws in David's life. And then when we go to the Psalms, we read Psalms about his experience when he was at the temple at Nob, when he feigned madness before the Philistines. And in those Psalms, we see David turning his heart back to God. And by the end, you know, you see, we can think we are further along than we are if God just lets everything in our life be perfect. But God in his wisdom, lets it get hot. Because when the gold gets hot, the draw surfaces to the top and what was hidden is no longer hidden. And now, you know, the gold goldsmith takes the dross and then wipes off the dross and then heats it up again. And what God does in his wisdom is not because he doesn't love you, it's because he's doing a genuine work in your life. He wants you to go from 5 carat to 10 carat to 18 karat to 24 karat gold. But it's a process and it always takes heat. I don't like the heat. You don't like the heat? Nobody likes the heat. But it requires heat to become pure gold. So the subject of this series is Fresh Starts. And what I want you to see is that our fresh starts do not always happen as neatly as we would like. After God exposed all the weaknesses that God was concerned about in David's character, then David therefore departed from there again. After God showed him his flaws, God was like, listen, David, I showed you. You see, it's right before your face. It's time to grow up. It's time for you to leave some of the shucking and de jiving, leave that behind and become the king, become the man that I created you to be. But sometimes God has to expose us in order to grow us. And he escaped to the cave of Adullam, which was. He went there by himself. And seasons of aloneness are important. He's at this cave and he even wrote psalms in this cave. And he's reflecting on what he had just done. He's like, lord, I gotta grow. God, I need your help. I find myself moving forward. But then every now and then I'm reaching back and Lord, help me. He's in this cave about 12 miles inland. And soon this cave becomes David's base of operations. And it's the place he went from being alone to becoming a formidable military power in the region. But this is important. It's in seasons of our aloneness, seasons of exposure and correction. It's in seasons of fire and testing that the caterpillar gets wings. It's in those seasons where you're forced to deal with your faults that we get an opportunity to grow most. But many times what happens is we go through a season where God's trying to show us where we need to grow. And instead of growing, we blame others. We say, well, if I didn't have that person in my life, if they didn't say that, if they didn't do that, Lord, it would have never happened. And by you saying that, you deflect. You say, it's their fault, not my fault. It's the people around me. It's not me. And for that reason, you're stuck. And you never become the man or woman God wants you to become. But I've learned when God starts exposing me, those are the moments. Moments that he's allowing me to grow. And if I'd admit, even if it wasn't all my fault, what my part was, I could become better for it. Imagine if we spent as much time as we do deflecting blame, owning it, and getting better because it David owned. I still got the backside of the desert on me. I still got a little hood in me. I still got a little bit of the shepherd boy. God was trying to make him a king. But many of us, when we go through seasons like this, we kind of give up. Instead of trying to reach the standard, we lower the standard. We lower the standard to our behavior to justify ourselves versus allowing God to develop the muscle that we need to reach that standard that he's called us to. So when his brothers in all his father's house heard it, they went down to him. Now, in earlier chapters, if you know your Bible, David's family was his greatest source of pain and persecution. But after God turned David around, he turned his family situation around. And many of us are saying, well, Lord, you changed. My husband changed. My children change. My cousin changed, my niece change. My friend. And then I'll change. God's like, no, no, you change and I'll change your situation. Okay, I'm gonna mess around. I'm gonna mess around. There's no such thing as a bad marriage. We say that as if it's the marriage. It's the people. Bad people make a bad marriage. I'm gonna cover it a little bit. So maybe both of y' all ain't bad, but I believe both of you. Thank you. But both of y' all ain't good either. That's what he said. I'm trying to Clean it up and say it nice. But we blame the marriage like it's a thing. It's not the marriage, it's us. It's us, it's us. Sometimes you gotta look at yourself and say, honey, we broken. Honey, we need fixin. It's not the marriage, it's you. I used to say things like, why? You know, I have these relationships that keep going sideways and it's like, you pick bad friends, Derek, your choice of companions is your problem. Choose better, you have a better life. Okay, I feel like I stepped in. And maybe. You don't have a bad marriage. One of you or both of you are making bad choices. Let's say it better. You're people that make bad choices, and your bad choices are creating a bad marriage. If you want a better marriage, better choices. Okay? So as David changed, his family situation changed. If we quit in the process of what God must take us through, we're quitting on the results. All of us will go through awkward stages. All of us. I don't care who you are. You know, when I was in middle school, my nose seemed to be as big as my whole head. And then I don't even know how tall I was as an eighth grader, but maybe I was five, eight, I don't know. But you know, my feet were a size 12. So when I came into the room, family members would say, here comes Sasquatch. I mean, it's like, here come Derek and his feet. Because we all go through awkward stages and we're all growing into something we're not yet, you know, what it is now will make sense at a later period. But right now it looks just a little bit strange, a little bit funny. But never give up on yourself, because God will never give up on you. It's just a season. It's just a stage. You will get to the other side of it. And he got to that cave. And after he dealt with some of the issues in his character, and everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So David was an outcast. So he attracted outcasts. You see, this is important. We don't attract what we want. We attract who we are. There was a season when pastors would come and say, you know, I've been to your church. You have some of the nicest and just incredible people. Man, if I had people like yours, man, my church would be great and wonderful. But if I had the stomach, I would say, you don't attract what you want. You attract who you are, you gotta become the change you wanna see in your world. You gotta learn to embrace who you are, work with what you have to get what you want. How many? Y' all remember Steve Urkel? Steve Urkel, suspender and all. He eventually got Laura. Because you got to embrace who you are, work what you have till you get what you want. And I was broke trying to figure out my future. But I had to work with what I had. And eventually I got my Yurimitu what I wanted. So David became captain over them. For the last few weeks, the things I've been saying, I've been really making a single point. Abraham was not a perfect man. But God covered him and took care of him as he grew. And many of us think God requires perfection. So when we're less than perfect, we quit and give up thinking there's no hope. And today we see David was not a perfect man. He was a man after God's own heart, but he was not God. But what we see is God protected him through all of chapter 21, despite his imperfections. Because David was a man in process and did not quit in the process. This is important. If everything about you has to be perfect before you start, you will never start. It's said this way in the Bible. He who looks to the wind will never sow. If it has to be a perfect day, you will never be a good farmer because no day is ever perfect enough for you to sow. See? You hear what I'm saying? Likewise, if you're waiting until you find the perfect church to join, you'll never join a church. If you're waiting for the perfect person to marry before you marry, you'll never get married. You hear what I'm saying? I don't know who I'm talking to. I'm talking about stuff I didn't plan on. Focus on progress, not perfection. Excellence is a value, but perfectionism is insecurity. You see, faith trusts in God's promises, but it also trusts in God's process. God knew everything David would do before he anointed him to be king. But God also knew the process it would take David to become a good and godly king. God knows every fault in your life. He also knows the process he has to take you through to get you to where you need to go. And that process often includes some fire. It includes stuff coming to the surface you thought were behind you. It includes stuff coming up that you thought you were better than. But if we're humble enough to admit you know what Lord that's some dross that just came out of me. Lord, I still have some growing to do. And Lord, I still need you. I don't care if you, if you're 69, 79, 89, 99, we still have growing to do in the Lord. None of us have arrived and we're still in process. I hear you and I feel you right there. I feel you. And there were about 400 men with him, but if you read the Bible, he was faithful with the 400, then God brought 600, and then he was faithful with the 600 men. And then God gave him half the kingdom, a whole tribe, Judah. And then he was faithful with half the kingdom. Then God gave him the whole kingdom. If you're faithful with little, God will make you faithful over much. But listen, God doesn't always give us everything at one time. It's line upon line, precept upon precept. A little bit here, a little bit there, and we grow better and better and better. Only Jesus came out of the womb perfect. The rest of us are creatures of process. And the best we can do is be better than yesterday and keep pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high call of God in Christ Jesus. I'm done with this. If an archaeologist finds a straight line in nature, he or she knows that whatever that structure is, was built by a human. It's either a side of a house or a wall or something like that. Because perfectly straight lines do not occur. Nature, likewise, the God of nature does not require perfectly straight lines in our lives. Only man made religion is gonna have perfectly straight lines. Now, as far as I'm concerned, I like straight lines. I want everything in my life to be a straight line from glory to glory. But with God, sometimes you gotta go around and around in the wilderness a little bit to get the wilderness out of you before he moves you into the promised land. God often has to take you through process. God does not require perfectly straight lines, only growth. David did not immediately go from being a shepherd to being the king. God took him from the backside of the desert, the wilderness, as a shepherd. And his family didn't invite him to be looked at by Samuel when he was anointing folks. And then even after he was anointed, he didn't immediately go to be the king. He served in the palace and he would play for demon possessed king. The devil would come on Saul, they called for David to play, so the demon would leave him. So he's exposed to the worst side of the king. And God's Trying to toughen him up and get him ready for what's ahead, but also what God does. He gently brings you to where you're going, and you don't even know it. So he exposed him to the palace so that when David came there and ruled, he'd understand all the dynamics. So then after he gets to the palace and he serves Saul, Saul runs him off. And you'd be like God, if you called me to be king, I would have gone from being a shepherd to a king. But God often doesn't move in straight lines. What makes the Grand Canyon so beautiful is all its contours and ridges. What makes nature and mountains so beautiful is all its contours and ridges. And God's beauty. And his design has contours and ridges, ridges. There'll be some ups and downs, ins and out, but all of that is part of the process. I'm saying all this to say your imperfections are not final. They're only the fuel that God uses you to want to grow. So when God shows you something wrong with you, don't run from it. Don't blame mom and dad or you don't know where I'm from. Don't blame the other person. Say, lord, what is it that I own? Help me grow into the man or woman you want me to become. Help take this bad situation and turn it into good. Father, may I learn a lesson from my pain, a lesson from my disappointment. And here's the deal. When people disappoint me, it hurts. But nothing hurts as much as when I disappoint myself. But when I disappoint myself, I've learned that that's when I do some of the greatest growing. So in this season, all that's going on, I mean, so many people losing jobs and all the rest, you saying, God, how could you be in this season? Well, God's in this season. And what's happening is the things you used to trust in. You used to trust maybe in your job, your degree, the government, and all of a sudden, you can't trust in that anymore. All you can do is trust in God. And God said, I'm trying to burn out of you codependence and all that. It's not because I don't love you. I'm going to get you to the other side of this. But I want you trusting, man. Because if you trust man, you're going to be dealing with disappointed. You're going to be heartbroken. But if you trust me, I will keep you and preserve you until my coming. So church, we are collectively and corporately in the fire, in all the worry and all the anxiety that's surfacing. Don't blame anybody. Say, Lord, I guess my faith wasn't as deep as I thought. I guess I didn't believe it as much as you know, Lord. But I tell you what, let all this dross come up and I'm gonna call it what it is. It's worry, it's anxiety, it's all, it's dross. Lord, as it comes up, would you help me scoop it off. So I can go from, you know, 5 carat to 12 carat to 18 to 24 carat so I could be pure goal by the time I get to the other side of this. Give God a hallelujah, a little bit of praise. Thank you for joining us. Until next time, remember, you have what it takes in Christ to live big. We also invite you to partner with Derek Greer Ministries in bringing the life changing and impactful teachings of God's Word to the world. Get started by visiting Derekrer.com by clicking the link in the description.