MAR 9 2025 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S5E7 | The Story of Isaac: The Struggle

Sea Change Church · MAR 9 2025 | Genesis S4E7 - The Story of Isaac: The Struggle
Genesis 25:19-28
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

our members. I pray blessing for all of those who donate their time, talent, and treasure to the church and that we would be good stewards of that, that you would take every single bit of today's offering, whether it be a minute of donating their time to service or a dollar that they're donating, that all of it would go to expanding your kingdom, Lord.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. The book of Genesis, chapter 25, verses 19 through 28. These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban, the Aramean, to be his wife. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren.

And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. The children struggled together within her, and she said, If it is thus, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other.

The older shall serve the younger. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak. So they called his name Esau. Afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man dwelling in tents.

Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. This is the word of the Lord. Right on. Welcome to church again this morning. I just want to let you know, after the service, we're going to have a time where if you need healing of any kind, emotional, physical healing, come forward. Just felt like that was something God laid on my heart this week, and so I ask the prayer team to be ready.

We have oil. We want to anoint you. Yeah. Even if you've been prayed for a million times and you're discouraged or whatever it is, or you want to stand in the gap for somebody, come forward. We want to anoint you with oil and to pray for you guys as well. If you have your Bibles, open to Genesis 25. We're still in the same passage as last week. And there was two parts of this passage.

The first one was really a family doing it right. Praying together, interceding together, inquiring of the Lord together, really setting their life on a path. And then when they got the thing that they prayed for, they understood the thing that they inquired of, things kind of went sideways. And you start seeing a family culture that becomes a bit of a generational thing that came from, some of it came from Abraham, some of the deception.

But you see a generational, I would say it's a generational curse. I wouldn't say that there was a curse upon them, but anything that is not of God leads to death. And if we have those things in our family that are going generation after generation after generation, those things take root in our lives. And so I've heard people say generational curse, and you can use that terminology, I guess, if you want.

But what we see here is a generational dysfunction. And that dysfunction comes in the term of the word struggle. It's a lot of deception, a lot of things. And you see a lot of struggling in this family. I wanted to begin today with a little bit of an analogy. I started thinking about if there was a key to really release us from the struggles of life, what would it be?

And so I started researching keys. This is a bit of a skeleton key. You'll see this online, if some of you guys are online. And I found out that the skeleton key was originated at the same time Abraham was around. It's about 4,000 years ago or so, something like that. And it was created in Egypt. And originally, they were wooden. And they would have these different keys.

And then of the keys, they would take different pieces of wood out where they could go through it, and they would make a master key. And then there was a thing called a super master key. I don't know how to say that in Egyptian or whatever language they spoke. They could open up all the locks. Eventually, the Romans would turn these to metal. And you would have these keys, and they would have the guards and the Praetorian guard would have a key.

And that key could get you anywhere. And I thought about if there was any key that could get us anywhere in regard to the struggles of life, what would it be? I mean, obviously, faith is a key. But a component of faith is surrender. Faith is surrender. Faith is believing in something you cannot see. You're surrendering. Not your intellect, but you're surrendering the need to absolutely know.

When you're in a situation, and usually we don't surrender until we get to the point where we have to oftentimes, what is that thing? And so I put for a main point today. As we look at the second part of this, this life of struggle. Jacob has a life of struggle. This is just the beginning. Next year, we're going to be getting, as we get back into Genesis next year, we have one more week in Genesis.

And then we're going to finish up next year the story of the struggle. But his whole life is a struggle until he gets to the end. And spoiler alert, he meets with God, and he finally has a final, ultimate struggle with God. And the thing that he submits to is asking for God's blessing. We'll talk about that in a moment. But it's this life of struggle.

And if there was a key, what would that thing be? And so I put as the main point is this. The master key to the struggles of life, the struggles of life, is surrender to a sovereign God. That part, sovereign, is important. It's easy to surrender when you believe in your heart that the thing, the God you are surrendering to is in charge of all things.

It is a battle of faith. And so I guess I would ask you right now to begin, as we begin this sermon, to identify the things you're struggling with, the things that are on your mind. And this week, it was really helpful for me as I began to identify and I asked God for wisdom, that James 1, 5 passage from last week, that inquisition. I hope some of you started inquiring of the Lord this week.

And I inquired of the Lord again. And he was faithful to give me answers and direct me to books that I began to read and began to teach me things I began to ask. And he began to point out different things I was struggling with that I wasn't even aware I was struggling with. I knew I had a latent or a subconscious turmoil within a stress. Sometimes you feel that stress, right?

You feel the stress. You don't know where it's coming from until God identifies it to you and you realize, hey, I'm struggling with this. I'm a bit of a heel grabber on this. Remember, Jacob was a heel grabber when he was in the womb as his brother's coming out. He's struggling with his brother in the womb, as we'll see, and he grabs the heel. And so I guess what I want to begin to have you populate on the canvas of your imagination right now of your own lives is the places where you struggle.

Or if you could write a map, put out a map of the terra firma of your life and say, I'm struggling with this or I'm struggling with that. Here's a few things that we can struggle with. And you see them all in the passage. The first is worldly struggles. Go to verse 22. The children struggled together within her. And she says, if it is thus, why is this happening to me?

So she went to inquire of the Lord. And verse 23 says, and the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. The peoples from within you shall be divided. Circle that word divided because it's hard to have things in your life you're struggling with that don't divide you in one way or another. The one shall be stronger than the other. Inside of her, she actually has a battle of kingdoms.

Most of us don't have that, right? This is a representation of the New Testament we battle with. We have the battle of the flesh versus the spirit. So it is an homage to that spiritual thing that we see in the book of Romans, chapter 6, chapter 7 of Romans. But she has worldly struggle within her. Now I point that out because as believers, this is one thing that we can really get trapped in.

We can begin to look at the struggles of the world and become so consumed with wars in the world, with the conflicts of nations, that it throws us off our game and we spend so much of our energy on something that you actually can't control. You can't control what's happening in the Ukraine right now. You have no control over what is happening in Israel.

People ask me all the time, what's your take on Israel? And what I tell them is my take is God's prophecies will be revealed and his sovereign will will happen for Israel no matter what we decide as a nation. God will take care of it because I believe in a sovereign God and I don't understand all of his purposes. But I even realize myself that I begin to kind of start grabbing the heel of the worldly conflicts, if that makes sense.

I get upset. I get frustrated. It kind of ruins half of a day sometimes. And as George MacDonald says, he's an 18th century author, Christian author. He was a C.S. Lewis favorite author. He says any time that Satan is able to steal from you from these things of the world, the cares of the world, it's like you have a demon there that is reaching in and he's stabbing you and taking away your joy, taking away your pleasure because you are too focused on the things of the world.

Jesus says don't worry about the cares of the world. He says actually people will lose their salvation because they will give their salvation away or it won't take root because of the cares of the world. And he says the world has enough worries of its own. I believe that God created us to be a people that are only supposed to know what is happening within a three days horse journey of where we are.

I don't think you're supposed to know what's happening in Botswana and be focused on it or what's happening in wherever. We're an agrarian people meant to live in the moment, meant to live close to the earth, and we're everything but. That's the first thing the world concerns. She had two worlds within her nation, two nations within her womb fighting within her womb.

It was Mark 4, 19 where Jesus talks about the cares of the world. Relational struggles. Go to verse 28. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of the game. Maybe he just liked good food, right? But he had a favorite. He loved Esau because Esau would go hunt that game. That game ended up coming back to him later on when he sells his birthright. But Rebecca loved Jacob because it says he dwelt in tents.

I made a joke last week that if he had a music playlist on Spotify for the two of them, Esau would listen to Led Zeppelin, right? And you would have like, and Jacob would listen to like The Cure. And no one got it, and it looks like no one gets it again. So, um. See, one was out hunting, and one was reading books. He was bookish. Okay, that doesn't matter.

Even my 16-year-old was like, Dad, I didn't get that. Can you explain it to me? I explained it to her, but she still didn't get it nonetheless. But it made me happy, so I said it. The relational struggle is this. They were picking favorites. You want to divide your family? Pick favorites. I had a thing I would do with my kids, and it was just kind of a joke, I would say.

And just because I wanted to let them know that they were both my favorite, there was no favorites. I'm called to steward them, and I love them both. And so I would say, oh, Lily, when they were little, you're my favorite today. But tomorrow, tomorrow it could change. And then the next day I'd say, oh, Lucy's my favorite today. I'd go back and forth.

And so I realized one day they were just like fighting about it. Who's dad's favorite today? Who's dad's? They were like into it. And I realized I got to stop doing it. It was meant to bring them together. It didn't work. It actually worked the exact opposite of that. There's relational struggles. Do you have relational struggles? Have some favorites?

Some things that you're in the relations that you're struggling with and dealing with? Are you heel grabbing on some relations? You're manipulating? There's these relations. You'll know. If you have a relational struggle, you'll know. I don't have to tell you what they are. The next is a spiritual struggle. Go to verse 23. She's talking to the Lord now in verse 23.

She says, if it is thus, why is this happening to me? She's got this blessing, this thing she prayed for. She thinks she's going to die. Why? So she went to inquire of the Lord. There's this spiritual struggle. Lord, you gave me the answer to my prayer. In the rabbinic text, ninth century rabbinic text, and I won't get into the name of the author because it's hard.

I can't actually pronounce it. But Jewish rabbinic text. It is believed that the two children were trying to kill each other within her womb. They were actually fighting to the point of death within her womb. Now, that's not in the Bible. That's just rabbinic text that was passed down. And the Jewish people are pretty good at passing down the histories.

We know that. But it is just one thing you'll see. You'll see this spiritual struggle. And so she says to the Lord, Lord, you gave me this thing I wanted, this thing I prayed for. Why is it thus that it is happening with me? And we have these struggles. And sometimes we struggle with God and we begin to lose faith. We begin to put our hopes in other things.

We abandon or whatever the thing is, and it becomes this struggle. And once again, we maybe even start to manipulate on our own. We begin to grab the heel of that thing. There's physical struggles. Verse 22, the children struggled within her to the point where she thought she was going to die. Some of us have physical struggles. We have physical things going on in our life.

That's one of the reasons I want to have prayer afterwards today. And those can be very discouraging. It can be things, especially if they're long term, you're dealing with them and they become to be struggles. Like the woman Jesus met with it. It said she had met with many doctors, right? So she had struggled. She'd gone to thing after thing, therapy after therapy, but none of it worked until she got to Jesus.

And then there's emotional struggles as well. I have verse 21 as an emotional struggle. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. This is earlier in the story before she became pregnant, early at the beginning. And you can imagine the emotional struggle back in the day. The emotional struggle where a woman's entire worth was based on if she could produce a son for her husband, for her family, for the lineage.

There was all this. And there was 20 years. Remember, he was 40 when he married her, it says. And 60, he was 60 when the child was conceived. So you had emotional. So these are just some of the struggles that maybe you identified today. The worldly struggles, relational struggles, spiritual struggles, physical struggles, emotional struggles. I want to say that Jacob was a man of the struggle.

He was a man of the struggle. He was more comfortable in the struggle than in the place of peace. And he continued to invite struggle into his life. Go to verse 22. I'm going to read it again. The children struggled, circle struggled together within her. And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me? It's a struggle. So she went to inquire of the Lord, to struggle with the Lord in prayer.

And the Lord said to her, he answered her, two nations are within your womb. These two people from within you shall be divided, circle divided. It's very hard to struggle without division. And one will be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. Two nations. I want to say that this two words I had you circled is struggle and divided.

What I have found is when we have ungodly struggle in our life, and there are godly struggles. We struggle in prayer, right? That's awesome. We struggle for faith. We strive to believe. There are godly struggles. But ungodly struggles, struggles for position, struggles for pride, struggles to be the own sovereign answer to your own life, as opposed to giving things over to a sovereign God, we start to answer it ourself with our plan Bs.

We start to answer it ourself with our own manipulation, with our own power. And until we come to the end of ourselves, we will never be unified with God. And so when we have ungodly struggles, it causes division in your life. Satan is into the math of division. God is a god of multiplication. And so when you have struggles, ungodly struggles in your life, you're struggling with your spouse.

It's ungodly. There's one reason or another. You haven't submitted it to the Lord. Or whatever the situation would be. Or you have pride with somebody you're working with and you're trying to move forward. Or you have ungodly ambition. Things that you want that the Lord hasn't given to you for one reason or another. Or whatever these struggles are.

And some emotional struggles. I'm not saying that everything you struggle with is ungodly, right? I'm not saying that. But there are moments, as we see with Jacob, where the struggles he had were because of his own desire for deception and manipulation. And to take power into his own hands. To be his own sovereign force. And this is why I said at the beginning that the key to our struggles, the master key, the super master key to our struggles, is surrender to a sovereign God who can do all things through us.

And so I would ask you to look at the places you're struggling with. And you can usually know if it is a godly struggle or an ungodly struggle based on division or multiplication. If you see your love for your spouse being divided over and over. It's divided again. Divided again by half. Divided again by half. Rarely do we see a god of division.

If God would ever remove things. Sometimes he will remove pain and he will divide the pain and remove it. But he always tends to be a god of multiplication. Because God is growing. He is all powerful. He is eternal. He only moves in the positive forward. And so when there is a struggle, the struggle in prayer, sometimes you will see that there will be a multiplication of joy, peace, whatever these things are.

So look at your struggles. And you can define your struggles based on the multiplication or the division. Jacob, the other thing that we learn about Jacob is until the end of Jacob's life, he invited the struggle. Do you know those people, and I was one of them for a very long time, who the only way they can find peace is if they have chaos in their life.

They don't know how to live in peace. They got to start an argument. Things are going too well. If you are the instigator of a conflict, then you have control over the conflict. What I found early on in my early 20s is when I got a moment of peace in a relationship, it made me feel really unsettled. Because now I was at the whim of the person I was in the relationship with.

Meaning that they could get upset with me and I'm not in control of that. So I would keep self-sabotaging. I would self-sabotage myself. I would self-sabotage relationships. Just little things. Just say a little something I shouldn't say. I would keep doing it because it kept me footed, if that makes sense. It kept me in control. The best relationships happen when, like the Bible talks about, you know, men and women in marriage, when we submit to one another, it says.

Because you make yourself vulnerable when you do this. This wasn't Jacob. Jacob was a man who had to be touching the chess pieces at all times. He was, you'll see in his life over and over again, starting from within the womb, that he was beginning to manipulate. And this is one of the best arguments for a pro-life decision or choice or biblical understanding of the Scripture, shows that there was identity in the womb.

The Scripture clearly shows here. It would be tough to argue that there wasn't. That there was identity here in the womb of Jacob. He knew what he was doing. He was thinking. And for one thing or another, you see that. And that's just one of the arguments. And I wanted to bring that up. But he invited the struggle. Let's just look at it. Jacob invited the struggle for position.

From birth, Jacob was grasping Esau's heel. That's in Genesis 25, 26. On the way out of the womb, he's grabbing the heel, trying to have position, trying to have power. And so we see him doing that. And so I would ask you, are there places where God hasn't opened that door yet, but you're doing everything in your own power? You haven't turned it over.

You haven't surrendered it to a sovereign God. You will know when you are grabbing the heel. He is one who did this on a regular basis. Jacob invited the struggle of deception and manipulation. We'll see that he tricked others often. He tricks his brother twice. Now, his brother's a fool. Jacob, I mean, Esau was just foolish. He sold his birthright.

I don't know how that works, but he was the firstborn, and there's blessing that comes with that. And he ends up getting really hungry one day, if you don't know the story. And he's just famished. And his brother says, well, hey, I'll make you some lentil soup. And Esau says to him, well, hey, I'd sell my birthright for some lentil soup like that.

And Jacob asks him, he says, would you sell it to me? He says, yeah, because I'm going to die anyways. I'm so hungry I'm going to die, just living according to his stomach. And so he sells his birthright. He actually sells it. I don't know how that works, but he actually sells his position in the family for a bowl of lentil soup. He despised his birthright.

But Jacob was willing to make that deal. Just because someone is willing to make a deal doesn't mean it's the deal that you should make. Sometimes it's not honest. Sometimes they're not making a good decision for themselves. You ever seen those people in business, a lot of times in movies? They're trying to get the best of the other person in a deal.

They're trying to, no matter what, even if the other person comes out the other way or the wrong way. This was Jacob. He was willing to make any deal as long as he was furthered. Interesting. And he invited struggle and deception into his life. We see that later on, he gets taken to the cleaner for years. He goes back home to find out. He has to run away from his brother because his brother is really upset at this point.

He runs away. His mom is part of it. Rebecca is part of the deception. They send him away to go live, to get away from his brother who's going to kill him now. And he ends up with his, I believe it's his uncle, Laban. And he starts working. He sees Laban has a beautiful daughter. And he's, I'm going to marry your daughter. We'll see that next time.

And he's like, yeah, you can marry my daughter. So they have this big wedding thing that goes on. And they must have gotten him drunk because he wakes up the next morning and it's not his daughter. It's his second daughter, Leah. Now, I don't know how that works out either. How you have a whole, I don't know. I don't want to go into it. But he didn't know it was Leah.

And then he has to work seven more years. And he gets deceived over and over. And we're going to look at that story. Whatever darkness you agree to has a key to your life. Christians think that they can walk in darkness. They can be a part of deception or, you know, whatever, the manipulation. And they think, like, I can do it, but it won't happen to me.

The devil has the ability to go to God, to argue before God and say, I have a right to be in that person's life because they have invited this into your life. Whatever darkness you intentionally walk in is a key. You have opened the door to your life and said, devil, you may attack me. Now, God is sovereign. God can say, no, I'm going to bless them anyway.

And I've seen that. But I found that when I stole, when I was in my night, I would steal things from people. Things would be stolen from me. And there was this lack of protection. And I'm still saved, but I was opening the door. And Jacob does that. And you see that in his life. He's struggling. And we see that every struggle, things are being divided from him.

He's having to leave his own country. He's having to leave his own family. And we see the breakup of families because of that struggle often. Jacob invited the struggle into his family later on. Verse 28. Let's go to verse 28, if you would. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game. But Rebekah loved Jacob. Now, we know later on, Jacob has a bunch of sons.

Twelve of them. One of them is named Joseph. He really, really likes Joseph. So he makes him this coat, right? This gorgeous coat. And he has 11 other brothers. And he puts this coat on him. And he's like, you can wear that coat around because you are the son that I've always wanted. Now, what's this going to do to the other brothers? They're going to sell him.

They're going to sell him into slavery is what's going to happen. And then we have that story of Joseph. I can't wait to get to the story of Joseph because I love the story of Joseph. But once again, he's just inviting struggle. He's invited it through favoritism. He's invited it through manipulation. He's invited it through deception. He's invited it through pride.

He wants what he wants. He wants the top position. He wants it all. And all it does is bring just more deceit into his life, division into his life. He loses. But God is still sovereign. You see, even in the midst of that, God is still blessing him. He's still moving him forward until he gets him to a place where he's ready to use this key. And that's the key of surrender.

First thing is I want to talk to you about how to move from struggle to surrender. Okay? So just two quick things. The first, as I mentioned a moment ago, is finding solace in the sovereignty of God. What does sovereignty mean? It means that God is in charge of everything. You don't need to grab heels when God is in charge of everything. There is no place that you are supposed to go that if you submit your life fully to God that you will not end up.

Your purpose will come and lay down at your feet. It won't worship you. But your purpose will come and lay down at your feet. You won't have to strive to do things. You just walk in peace. You walk in God's wisdom. You walk in God's glory. You walk in his sovereignty and say, God, if I'm not supposed to have this, you can have it. You give it up to God's sovereignty.

Jacob could have known this. In the book of Romans, Paul talks about it. He's thousands of years later. He shares a story in Romans. You'll see it. Romans 9, 10, and 13. He says this. And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac. That's the story we're in. Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad.

They had no record of good or bad. In order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls. She was told the older will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved. Esau I hated. Now there is a theological stew in that passage. We can talk about God's election. Are you saved? Once saved, always saved.

There's a whole bunch we can talk about. I don't have time for that in the sermon. What I do have time for is that God is sovereign. And God had a purpose for Jacob's life before he was born. Before you were formed, I knew you. He knows you. He has a plan for you. He has a purpose for you. It's his purpose. And nothing can change that purpose of God's sovereignty.

God's in charge. And so the first thing to surrender, the doormat to the kingdom of surrender, or the threshold, that's even better, the threshold of the kingdom of peace and God and God's surrender is understanding God's sovereignty. It's really coming in touch with God's sovereignty. God is sovereign over your marriage. God is sovereign over your business.

God is sovereign over your church. God is sovereign over your health. God is just sovereign. He is sovereign. And sovereignty means that we can believe that God loves us and that God is faithful. Once again, George MacDonald says sometimes we don't pray prayers because we're afraid of what might happen if we pray them. He says that's a lack of faith.

It's a lack of believing that not only God is sovereign, but he's a loving God who loves you. And so that is the threshold to the doorway of surrender. It is believing in God's sovereignty. So these different parts, think again to that map that I told you about your life. You got this relational thing. You got this health thing. You got a thing, the house you want, the school you want your kid to get into.

Whatever the thing is, your relationship with your kids, whatever it is, God is saying, let go of the heel and let me be sovereign. And I got to say, this week, I just began to realize how many heels I was grabbing. I said to the Lord, I inquired to the Lord, God, show me where I'm grabbing heels. And I thought there was one or two that were pretty relevant in my life.

I'm like, okay, I know I'm grabbing heels on that one. Not in a deceptive way. I'm not being deceptive like Jacob. But they're just things I'm trying to control, right? Trying to manipulate it, not always in a deceptive way, but just with my own abilities, right? Because you love your own abilities because we're really good at our own abilities, right?

And he began to say that. And I was like, oh, I am. I am grabbing the heel there. Oh, that. You're trying to do this. You haven't given this to me. You haven't given that to me. You're worrying about this. You haven't given this to me. And I began to give over to God. Let go of these heels over and over again. I began to let go. And I began to feel this pressure that had been actually on my chest.

I could feel it in my body. You know how you can feel it? I began to feel it released one by one as I realized and let over to his authority. The next one is to submit. Not only do you understand and recognize his sovereignty, but then you rest in the sovereignty. You submit in the sovereignty. Jacob submits to God in Genesis 32, 26. He's wrestling with God.

And it's interesting because he lets go of everything. It's a bit oxymoronic. He lets go of everything in his life because he's been so beaten down. He has to meet up with his brother at the end of that story, you know, 20 years later. He's afraid he's going to get, you know, killed. He thinks his children are going to get killed by Esau, his older brother.

He's been cheated by Laban. I mean, he's just reaped the rewards of all of his deception, if you would call it that. And as he's there, he's finally meeting with God. And he wrestles with God, it says, or an angel before the Lord. We can talk about that next time. And he begins to wrestle. And the one thing he finally won't let go of is God. You see, he finally surrenders.

And the way to surrender is to grab onto God, to surrender. And the only way you can do that is to let go of what you had. I was watching Point Break yesterday on the Miramax channel, right? Best movie of all time. Keanu Reeves, one of my favorite actors of all time. He talks like this. Come on, Bodie, jump out of the plane. And so Patrick Swayze jumps out of the plane with a parachute, right?

And he's going and, you know, what was his name? Johnny something or other. Johnny Reno, I forgot what his name was. And he's there and he doesn't have a backpack, I mean, a parachute to jump out. So he's looking out of the plane and Bodie's gone now. But he wants to catch Bodie. And he has a gun. And so he just jumps out, if you remember, with no parachute, right?

And he's going. He's trying to get. And he ends up on Patrick Swayze's back. And he's like, ah! And Patrick Swayze's like, and he's like, you know, I'm not going to pull the cord unless you pull it. And he goes, you've got to let go of the gun. And so eventually, ruined the movie for you. Conor Reeves has to throw the gun away. He pulls the thing. They hit the ground.

But they survive and the whole thing. But he had to let go of something to have the other thing work. Because you can't hold on to Patrick Swayze if you're holding the gun. And that's one thing I've learned. So he lets go of it. Jacob, in Genesis 32, 26, says, then he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Jacob submits by not letting go.

By holding on to God. By letting go of everything else. And he basically says, and I say, when you hold on to God, you can rest in God. When you are held by God, it is a place of rest. You'll know you're there. You will know. It is so definable in your own mind and your spirit. When you finally let go of things, you will feel it. You will physically feel it in your body.

You will emotionally feel it. You will mentally feel it. And this is what he finally gets to the place that he does. I would say that when we surrender to God, it activates God. God's always active. He's always blessing your life. But when we surrender, it unlocks new abilities for God to work in your life. Because sometimes he will hold himself back.

I just want to give you one verse that stuck out to me this week. It is Exodus 14, 14. The Lord will fight for you. And you only have to be silent. Exodus 14, 14. Really easy verse to remember. Exodus 14, 14. The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be silent. That is such a difficult thing to do, to surrender. And so here's the practical takeaway is this.

First of all, identify your struggles. This could be an inquiring of the Lord if you want. Matthew 7, 7 and 8 says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, it will be opened. And the thing I inquired of the Lord this week was, God, show me where I'm grabbing heels.

Show me. And I've got to say, there was like upwards of 15 places where he's like there, there, there, there. And I was so unaware that I was actually grabbing onto those. And as I was praying, I was saying, Lord, speak to me. And God, I don't know about you, but I'll get pictures in my mind. That's how God speaks to me. He doesn't speak to everybody that way.

Spoke to somebody this week. They said, I get dreams. I'm like, oh, how cool. I'm not really a dreamer. I've had maybe four or five really, you know, prophetic dreams in my life. A person said, I get dreams all the time. I'm like, well, I don't get dreams. But I get these word pictures. And so I was sitting there, I was praying. And I said, Lord, just show me because I know that's within his will.

And he showed me a picture of myself grabbing a heel. And the word that came through my head is, you can't walk or run when you're grabbing heels. It's impossible for me to walk upright and to walk in the way that he has me if I'm trying to grab heels. It is an untenable position to move forward. What he said to me is, I need you to let go of the heels and grab my hand.

Because we are meant to grab God's hand. We release that. Isaiah 41, 13 says this. For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand. The right hand is a hand of favor. It is I who say to you, fear not. I am the Lord who helps you. I am the Lord who helps you. And so identify the struggles as number one. And then the second thing is this. Identify those heels, release and grab God's hand.

And don't let go. You see, when we surrender, it's a key. It is a key to opening up God's sovereignty in your life and saying, God, wherever you take me, even if it isn't the place that I always wanted to go, I want to be there because that's where you are. I want to be there because you're there. I think so many of us are willing to be somewhere God is and if it's the place we want to be.

I don't want to be saved just to be saved. I want to be saved so I can be with God. And that is what God calls us to. Amen? Let's stand if you would. We're going to have our prayer team come forward. We're asking for if you need healing today or you just want to surrender, I need a prayer of surrender, that you come forward. We're going to have Chris sing a chorus.

And then I'll bless you and we'll have the prayer team come forward. Prayer team come forward and we'll pray for you today. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. The universe. The universe declares your majesty.

You are holy, holy. God of wonders. God of wonders beyond our galaxy. You are holy, holy. The universe declares your majesty. You are holy, holy. I feel led to ask Chris to pray a song, a word of healing, a prayer of prayer of healing over our congregation and those that need to be healed. Would you invite that as anybody wants to come forward as well?

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for being a God that wants to hear from us and wants us to be healed and to be close to you and to be restored. I pray right now for all of those that need that. We all need that. But I pray especially for those who are feeling called to pray for that, to ask for healing. I pray that you restore them beyond what they can imagine.

Help them to feel your peace and your love and your joy. God, we thank you in advance for all the work that you're going to do. So, Lord Jesus, we thank you again for who you are and being a God that loves us. If you'll extend your hands, I want to bless you today. And then the altar will be forward to come forward. Please come forward for prayer.

If you need healing or you have problems getting pregnant or whatever, we just want to pray and then, you know, let God distribute those answers. Lord God, we pray for your congregation and those that are here. We love you, Jesus. And we want to let go of those heels, God. Those places where we're striving, where we have pride and we just have all these old issues, God, where there's been division.

The devil has divided our life into little pieces, Lord God, and you want to just multiply our lives, Lord God. And so, Jesus, I pray for a multiplication, Jesus, as we surrender, as we let it go, as you let our career choices let go, our family, where we're going to live, our money situation, even our health, God, whatever it is. We have to surrender it to you, God, because we don't want to grab heels, God, we want to grab your hand.

And we pray for Exodus 14, 14, God, that we grab the hand of you, that there would be an anointing, a blessing on those that grab your hand, that inquire of you, like in the book of Matthew, and ask of you, God. That we would hear from you, Lord Jesus. We give you our situations, God, and we just bless you. So I bless your people, God. Bless our church.

Multiply our church. God, let us be faithful to you. And we thank you for this incredible teaching out of the word of God. And we pray for healings now, for anybody that needs a healing, that there would be powerful healings at our church. We believe in you, God. We believe you're a great healer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. We love you guys. The altar is open if you need prayer.