Pastor Robert (0:00)

There's a reason you're in the room. Well, Social fam, you look good. You look like you have confident trust in the Lord today, and that is our word for this year. If you're new to Social Dallas, every year we frame our year with the Word. And our word for this year is trust. Not shaky trust, but confident trust in the Lord. And that word is anchored in scripture. Our verse of the year comes from Hebrews, chapter 10, verses 35 through 37. And we read this every single Sunday, not out of religious routine, but as a reminder that confident trust is being formed in us. So we're going to do that today. Y' all ready to read? Come on. You awake? Here we go. So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you. Patient endurance is what you need now so that you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that he has promised for in just a little while, the coming one will come and not delay. Come on. Anybody excited about that? The coming one will come. Even so, Lord, come. Well, you're in for a treat today. Talk about trust. I think I've told this story before, but I have to tell it again, because who you're about to hear preach today is not a guest. He is in the family, a part of the family. And I remember before he was a pastor at Social Dallas, he was a guitar player at Social Dallas. And I remember he was playing the guitar, and I was walking up on stage, and this was the word. Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, he can be trusted. He can be trusted. And I'm telling you, I've seen that in his life and how he parents and how he lives and how he leads. I am so thankful for the gift that he is to this body. Social Dallas fam, help me welcome Pastor Josh as he comes to bring the word today. Come on, y'.

Pastor Josh (2:06)

All.

Pastor Robert (2:07)

You can do better than that. Let's go, pj.

Pastor Josh (2:14)

Social fam, how you feeling this morning? It is amazing to be with you. And like Pastor Robert said, I am so privileged and honored to be a pastor on staff here at Social Dallas. My name is Josh, and I want to take first a moment and just say thank you for the home that you are. For myself and my wife, Pastor Keenan, and our two girls who serve here, they're about to join Social Youth. It's been amazing. We're honored to be part of the house, and we love y' all and just appreciate y' all so much. And I never, ever want to Miss the opportunity to honor our amazing lead pastors, Pastor Robert and Pastor Taylor Madu. Being on staff, we get a little bit more insight to some of the decisions that they make and some of the pouring out that they do that y' all feel the effects of, but you can't quite get an up close view to. And so I've been watching them now for almost three years make hard decision after hard decision, pour out from morning to evening just so that you can receive the benefit and the blessing of the vision that God pours into their lives and so that the Gospel can go forth. So can you help me honor our amazing lead pastors, Pastor Robert and Pastor Taylor? Love them so, so much. So grateful for them. And I want to get into our text today. It's going to be coming from First Kings, chapter 18, verse 41. Don't sit down yet. I see people grabbing physical Bibles. Have you been to social studies? Raise your hand if you've been to social studies. Come on, you need to get in the room if you have not been to social studies. One of the things that Pastor Robert challenged us to do was to get a actual physical copy of the Bible. And it's just such a beautiful thing when you engage the Word in that way. But we are coming from First Kings, chapter 18, verse 41 through 45, and it's going to be coming up on the screen here for you if you need it. And verse 41 says this. Then Elijah said to Ahab, go up and eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain. And so Ahab went up to eat and drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel. Then he bowed down on the ground and he put his face between his knees. Somebody say, elijah's flexible and said to his servant, go up now. Look towards the sea. See? He went up and looked and said, there is nothing. And seven times he said, go again. Then it came to pass the seventh time that he said, there is a cloud. Somebody say, there is a cloud as small as a man's hands rising out of the sea. So he said, go and say to Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down before the rain stops you. Now it happened in the meantime that the sky became black with clouds and wind and there was a heavy rain. So Ahab rode away and went to Jezreel. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your rain. Lord God, we thank you for your healing rain on the areas of drought over our lives. Lord God, we thank you for the manifestation of even a cloud. Lord God, because we know if you're sending a cloud, then you're sending the rain, Father. So we. We praise you, we worship you. Open our hearts and our ears, Lord God, to receive and hear the sound that you have for us today in Jesus mighty name. And everybody said, come on. Amen. You can be seated. Some of you are all praising God that you get to sit down. I am honored to get to close out the series on trust in the year of trust, y'. All. And I can remember when Pastor Robert first released that word to the staff, the year of the word trust. And I remember that part of me was excited about it. But Pastor Robert always does this thing where he asks the staff, he says, what do you think the word of the year is gonna be? And jokingly, we have all taken to responding words like joy, peace, stability, safety. Right? All words that we believe will not incur any hard, hard circumstances throughout the year, because we have begun to notice and recognize that there is a pattern, that whatever the word of the year is often has some subtle indication of the things that we will go through that year. How many of y' all remember last year's word, Unshakable, right? And we would end the verse of the year and we would say, God himself is fire. And we love that part, and we get excited about it. But the truth was that some of us were fighting for our lives. Some of us were getting a little bit shaky here and there. And we ask ourselves, why? Because in order for God to make us unshakable, he has to build up our resistance to shaking. So when Pastor Robert said the word of the year was trust, I was excited about the word. But I would be lying in the house of God if I said there wasn't some small part of me that was a little nervous about what the year would look like. And many of us in the room, I don't think I'm the only one, probably have an aversion to the word trust. And if we did a quick survey in the room and I asked everybody, I said, how many of you, when you heard the word trust, you would be so excited about it, your hand would just shoot up in the sky. You would come out of your shoes, because you just love trust. You love trusting people. You love all things trust. Your cup is filled by trusting. However that works, I think there would be many of us on the opposite side of the coin that would actually say, if I'm being honest, trust is actually pretty hard for me because I've been hurt by people I'VE been stabbed in the back by friends. And I don't necessarily want to put myself in a situation to go through that again. And that's the difficult thing about trust is trust is gained in drops, but it is lost in buckets. But what if the question that I was asking today, and what if the issue that I was addressing today wasn't about your trust issues with the person to your left or to your right? What if the trust issues that I was wanting to address today didn't have to do with the pastor who let you down or the spouse who walked out on you, or the fill in the blank situation that causes you to keep people at a distance because you don't want to get hurt again? What if the trust issues that I was talking about today actually have to do with your trust issues with God? I wonder how many of us would then raise our hand honestly in the house of God and actually say that it's been difficult for me to place my trust in God in one sense or another. And I know that there's people in the room that would confidently state, actually my trust with God is good. We've actually been great. We're on speaking terms. He's telling me what to do, right? He's blessed me with a new job. But I want to say this, that trust is very layered. It can be siloed and it can be compartmentalized. And just because I have trust in God in one area of my life does not mean that I trust God in all areas of my life. And that's the thing is that trust is not a one time deal. Trust is actually a choice that we make over and over and over again. And that's the way that trust is actually formed. It's sustained through consistent showing up over time. And this is the way that we have always learned trust. Since you were a baby, before you could even recognize it, you were scanning the faces of the relationships around you, looking for signs of safety and connection and meaning. You weren't just reacting and responding to cute faces. You were actually learning what relationships look like. And those patterns don't just go away. They get refined and reused throughout the whole course of your life. You're drawing from patterns that you learned before you even had words for them. And so that means this, that trust at its core is not something that we decide first. Trust at its core is actually something we recognize. And if trust is built through patterns, then we have to be honest. The same way that trust is built is also the way that trust is shaken. Because There are moments in our lives where God doesn't feel as close as we would hope he would feel. There are moments in our lives when we start to wonder if God even cares. There are moments in our lives when God's urgency doesn't seem to match our need. There are feelings like this throughout the Bible. We aren't the first ones to feel this way. If you look throughout the Psalms, you can see these themes of God. Do you hear me, God? Do you see what's happening, God? Have you forgotten me? But it's important to understand that these words aren't faithless words. They're actually spoken by people who know God and are struggling to understand what he's doing. There all have been moments for people like us that have caused us to pull back, to be more cautious and to be less expectant because we couldn't reconcile who we know God to be with what we were experiencing. And over time, our trust didn't disappear. It just grew quiet. And this is what I believe is happening in this scripture. This is what I believe. That in the year of trust, it's not for nothing. In the year of trust, it is not God bringing something to your doorstep that you could never confidently fulfill. In the year of trust, I believe that God is making a powerful statement. I believe that he's not asking you to pretend like things didn't happen. I don't believe that he's asking you to be naive about your situations and circumstances. I believe that God is offering you an invitation that extends beyond your current circumstance and a call to trust again. I believe that for those of us whose trust has been damaged, it's an offer and an extended hand down to whatever low position you might feel that God would pull you up and say, come and trust again. For those of you who feel like your trust is locked in and you're good with God, I believe that God is saying, come and trust again in a new way, in a new area and a new level. I believe in this year of trust, if we are going to walk into what God has for us, if we're going to walk in the confident trust that he has, then we are going to have to trust and trust again. And trust again. And trust again. And this is what I see in First Kings, chapter 18 as we catch up with Elijah. Elijah is coming off of an epic victory. He has defeated 450 prophets of Baal and he prays a single prayer. And in some of the most vivid and dramatic imagery within the Bible, fire literally comes down from heaven after he prays, and it consumes this altar. But here's the thing that Elijah has seen fire, but now he has to call down rain. So for three years in the land, there had been no rain, because this false God, baal, that the Israelites had turned to was thought to be the God of the skies, the God of rain. But, you know, Yahweh won't let those things persist. He had to show them that it's not BAAL who controls the skies, it's Yahweh that controls the skies. So he allows a drought to insist. But now the people have repented, and it's time for the rain to come. But Elijah goes up to Mount Carmel, and there's still no rain in sight. So Elijah tells Ahab, he says, go up, get something to eat. Rain is on its way. He and his servant go up the mountain again, and Elijah begins to pray. And it's very interesting because Elijah is positioned between two sounds. He has his servant who is constantly going to check to see if the circumstance has changed. And then he has the sound from heaven that says that rain is on its way. He has the sound that's the circumstance, that is saying it's exactly the same as it was. It's still 110 degrees. The moisture level is zero. And then he has the sound from heaven that says the healing rain of God is on its way, that repentance has broken through, that God is ready to move forward, that God is ready to reclaim his people. And Elijah finds himself in the same position that we so often do, caught in between the sound of reality and the sound of heaven. But it's so important for us as believers that if we're gonna walk in trust, we can never let the sound of reality overpower the sound of heaven. Because here's the truth about the situation, and I love that Elijah's not denying it. I've been a Christian at times, and I've met many others. And this is no shame to you, that when a hard situation or reality comes at you, you say, no, no, no, don't say that to me. No, no, no. I don't want to hear that. But I love that Elijah is not denying reality. He's just not fixating on it. Elijah is responding to the sound of heaven because he's seen the character of the God that met him on the mountain before. So Ahab leaves, and it's just Elijah and his servant. And Elijah is waiting on a promise to be fulfilled like so many of us are. Elijah's caught in the Tension between these two sounds, and he has to make that decision, which will be the thing that determines his reality. So Elijah begins to pray. But this time, it is much different than before, just hours earlier. This is literally a time gap of hours, right? Elijah prays, fire comes down, A couple of hours go by, and now Elijah's on the mountain, and he's praying, and he prays the first time, and he sends his servant, and the servant comes back and he says, everything's the way that it was before, but here's where you and I, and maybe even Elijah, got tripped up. Because, wait, it's not supposed to work this way. I'm supposed to pray, and fire comes down, I'm supposed to pray, and then rain comes down. And so many of us, we get into that formulaic relationship with God where if I put this in, you're supposed to put this out. But I want to tell you this morning, if you're looking for consistent input and output, you're actually probably looking for a vending machine and not the God of heaven and earth. So Elijah prays once, and nothing changes. And I can imagine Elijah shakes it off, and he's like, all right, all good, all good. I probably didn't bring my best to that one anyways. Let me run up again and try this prayer. Let me pray more fervently. Let me do something. Let me do something that will turn the situation around and something that I've often realized about myself, and maybe you can see it in yourself, too. I am so much more inclined to doing than I am to trusting. I am so much more inclined to fix a problem myself than I am to go to God and believe that he will do his part. And so many of us, we get stuck in that situation. And to be honest, our faith, our trust in God never fully recovers. We get stuck in somewhere between the first prayer and the sixth prayer, and our faith takes a damaging blow because we begin to tell God, I did everything that I was supposed to do. I prayed every prayer that I knew to pray. I gave, I tithed, I served, I did all the things that I was supposed to do that everybody said if I did these things, that you would do your part. I believed and I trusted, and you were supposed to cover me with your feathers and under your wings, I was supposed to find refuge. But the truth is, I feel all alone. The truth is, it still feels like just me up here on this mountain. And we could assume that Elijah is impervious to these types of feelings and thoughts, but the Bible gives us far more insight to who Elijah is so that we do not disqualify ourselves. It says this in James, chapter five about Elijah. It says, elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. He prayed again, and heaven gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Elisha was not different than you. Elisha was like you. Elisha had the same fears. Elisha had the same anxieties. Elijah had the same discouragements. You cannot disqualify yourself from this trust pattern. You cannot, because Elisha is not so other or unlike you and me that he had some superpower that we do not have. But then you begin to ask yourself, but okay, if Elijah wasn't different than me, how was he able to keep trusting? It's in. Because in verse 41, it's clearly outlined. It says that Elijah heard a sound. Elijah heard a sound. He heard something from heaven that was indicating that he would hear and see and feel the reign of God come and restore to their land. And I know I've been in those seasons where I'm like. But, man, I've been praying and God's quiet right now. Where do I get a sound if I'm not a prophet? Where do I get a sound if I feel like God's not listening to me right now? Where does one go to find a sound if. If Heaven's gone quiet in my life. But I want to encourage you today, brothers and sisters, that there is a Bible full of 66 books that are full of sounds, that are sounds over your life, that are sounds over your future, that are sounds over your family, that are sounds over your hopes and your dreams. If you are in a season where you feel like you cannot hear the sound from heaven, open this book. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God. If you're looking for a sound, you just have to hear. But a sound demands a response, and trust has a posture. The Bible says that Elijah got on his knees. Elijah got on his knees. Because he didn't need to see the situation. He just needed to hear the sound. So Elijah tells his servant, go look. Go look if there's rain yet. And the servant comes back and says, there's nothing. And Elijah says, no, no, no, there is a sound. Go look again. And Elijah keeps praying. And the servant comes back and he says, master, I'm sorry, there's still no there's still nothing. And Elijah says, it's okay. There's a sound. Go look again. And the servant comes back and he says, master, it's your family.