So if you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, we're going to be in the book of— anyone with me, Jonah? Jonah, we're going to be in the Book of Jonah today. We're going to still be in chapter 1. We are going to cover a lot of Scripture. It's going to be Jonah chapter 1, verse 17.

Is a joke. I'm working on it. I'm working on my joking. Here's what it says. I'm gonna read it for you, and then I'm going to spend the majority of our time talking specifically about this verse, and I think it will be helpful for each person in this room.

It says this in verse 17, chapter 1: "Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

Today I want to talk to you about an idea that I think, again, will be helpful for you. I want to talk to you about seeing God's provision. Anyone in this room struggle to see God's provision once in a while? I'm gonna be honest with you, I struggle to see God's provision. It's easy to see God's provision when everything's going well, amen?

Somebody, it's easy. We're going to work on this today. It's— I know it's a first service, but you know, the more interaction you get— I saw someone say this at a comedy show recently— the more you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it. And so I want to encourage you, put your energy into this Scripture this morning, into understanding what God has for you this morning, and I think as you put energy into it, God's going to reveal something special to you. So let me ask you again, it's easy when things are going well to see God's provision, right?

Amen. It's so easy when life is going well, when everybody likes me, when I speak well from stage, when things go well in the band, it's easy when I go to work and I get my stuff done, when I go home and my kids are perfect little angels. It is easy to see God's provision, cuz I'm like, "Thank you, Lord, for giving me perfect little angel kids. Thank you, Lord, for a spouse who never has any problems with me"— anyone got one of them? "Thank you, Lord, for a job that I never get frustrated with.

Thank you, Lord, for a life that has zero difficulty." It is easy when life is easy to see God's provision. But when life gets hard, sometimes we become blinded by the difficulty around us so that we cannot see what God is doing right in front of us. And so I want to talk to you about seeing God's provision. If you've been joining us in this series, this is week three of the Jonah series. We'll probably spend about nine or 10 weeks in the Jonah series.

 And we've been walking through this story that some of you might be familiar with. It's about this man, this Prophet named Jonah, who was in Israel about the 8th century before Christ, and God called him not to Israel like all the other prophets. He called him to a place called Nineveh. It's a large city, this text tells us, a great city. And he called them to Nineveh so that he could preach repentance to them, and that they would know who God is and start living differently.

But Jonah, knowing who the Ninevites are— and if you just do a cursory study of the Ninevites, you can see archaeological evidence, whether it's paintings, whether it's inscriptions, whether it's literally like pottery and other things, you can see how the Ninevites operated, and they weren't the nicest people. They would— they would skin people alive. Like, I've been— I've been doing too much deep study on this. It's been stressing me out, studying the Ninevites. They— they would flay people.

 They would— they would cut them up. They would torture them. And one can assume, because of the fact that the Assyrian people group, the Empire, the capital city of which was Nineveh, they invaded the northern portion of Israel and took many of their people captive. And so I can probably safely assume that either Jonah knows somebody who was captured by the Assyrians, or he is familiar with what happened enough that he would not like the Assyrians. And so Jonah goes the opposite direction.

Like many of us, we go the opposite direction of what God would call us to. There may be a plethora of reasons we go that opposite direction, but Jonah goes the opposite direction, goes down to Joppa, hops on a boat with a bunch of sailors that we believe are probably Phoenician sailors, and he goes to the, farthest extent in the opposite direction of the known world, to a place called Tarshish. And on the way, God sends a great storm to batter the boat. And last week we discussed how the people in the boat, these Phoenician sailors who do not know God or Yahweh, the one true God, they start bailing everything off the ship. They find Jonah trapped in, or stuck in, the hole he's sleeping in, in a deep sleep.

They wake him up and say, "Call on your God." Long story short, he ends up telling this group of Phoenician sailors, guess what— "It's my fault. I'm the guy. I disobeyed God, and so God's sending this great storm to batter the boat, and all of us are probably going to die. So what you should do is throw me off the boat." Jonah, it's— it's humorous, Jonah. But I can identify with Jonah, because while, when I look at Jonah and other people, and I see them going the opposite direction of God, to the point where they have become content, they've made their bed, as we said last week, in what— in the opposite of what God called them to—, I look at them like they're crazy.

But then if I'm really honest, and if you're really honest with yourself, you've made your bed in areas that are the opposite of what God would intend for your life, and you just become content with it. This is Jonah. So long story short, they throw him out the boat, and we come into verse 17, and it says, in verse— or verse, yeah, verse 16, my bad. No— oh, verse 17, there's a subheading, and it confused me for a second. "Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." It's interesting to me that when Jonah is sinking down into the depths, in chapter 2 he'll say Sheol, but he's sinking down into the ocean, he's going to drown, going to die.

He's not going to be, not only not doing what God called him to do, but he has become so content that he would rather die than go do what God called him to do and preach repentance to the Ninevites. He's sinking down deep, and it says that God provided. I want you to know this. There's a Hebrew term that we utilize quite often in the church that you guys might hear once in a while, and you're like, "What in the world is wrong with these people?" We even do a song, called Jehovah. Anyone heard the song Jehovah?

If you've been here long enough, we've done it a few times, and every time we do it I'm kind of like, I wonder who in the audience is like, "These people are weird." One guy looked at me, when we were standing next to each other in worship— I invited them to a different church when we first got here, and he had— we had had a conversation where he trusted in Jesus. Then we go to church that Sunday, he looks at me in the middle of the song Jehovah, he says, "What is— what is Jehovah?", well, I want to tell you right now, Jehovah is the name of God. It is a way that we say Yahweh without saying Yahweh. It is YHWH— it is the letters of Yahweh without the vowels, Yahovah. And what we do is we put an adjective at the end of that word, often to describe one specific characteristic of who God is.

And so right here it says he provided the fish, and my first point— it's, I just said, Jehovah Jireh, "the Lord will provide, " that is what it means, Jehovah Jireh, that's why we say it once in a while, that's why you guys heard the song, "Jireh, more than enough"— I don't know if I got that wrong— "I will be content in any circumstance, You are Jireh, You are enough, " something like that. Yeah, I messed it up, but that's why we sing that, that is because we recognize this truth about the character of God, that the Lord will not— maybe not, might not, has in the past, but might not in the future— the Lord, say it with me, will provide. I need us to understand this truth before I go further into this concept of seeing God's provision. If you can understand this truth, that the Lord will provide, it will give you peace in the midst of hard circumstances. It's funny, because I've been in this faith for a minute, and some of you have been in this faith for a minute— literally a minute, you know what I'm saying, like you came in last week, you're like, "I think I know Jesus today." Regardless of whether you've been in for a literal minute or a long time, you're still going to struggle with this concept.

But if you can start reminding yourself daily that the Lord will provide, it'll give you this peace that Paul talks about, a peace that surpasses all understanding. He'll guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus, because when we think on the character of God, that he will provide— just like Kars read a few moments ago— when Jesus, Jesus is speaking on the Sermon on the Mount, he tells them, do not worry. If you look at the grass, if you look at the birds, if you look at all of the animals in creation, if you look at the people around you, you will see that God has provided. He cares so much more about you than all of the other things he provides for. Yet, I don't know if they worry.

I don't think they do. I don't think they got the cognitive ability to worry, these animals. But we, within ourselves, we have the ability to stress out, and sometimes I wish I didn't. Sometimes I wish I was like some of you, who just never stress out about anything. But I do, I stress out.

And when I stress out, I have to regularly, even 15, 20 years into this faith, I have to remind myself, the Lord will provide. The Lord will provide. One of the ways that you can understand that the Lord will provide is by looking in your history. If you're honest with yourself, you look back on your life, and you'll see that, "Well, I'm here today because this happened to me two years ago." Like, I'm in my place, in my family, because the Lord provided some time ago. If you look back on your life and you see the good things and the bad things that happened for you, you can recognize that somehow I got here, somehow you showed up at church today, somehow God is beginning to redeem things in your life, because in the past God orchestrated things around you such that you would arrive at this place today, today, Sunday, April 21st.

He orchestrated things around you so that your family would be ready to show up today, Sunday, April 21st. God has orchestrated things around you such that when you showed up today, if you were to give energy to him, that he could speak directly to you, reveal himself to you, and some of you might have your lives changed. God orchestrated things around you. He has provided. I think about how the Lord provides in basic ways sometimes.

I mean, we live in the United States of America. If anyone in this world can say that the Lord provides, it's us. I mean, I just hear stories of people who live in another country, like I stress out for the Europeans, who— they're first world, but their shower situation is jacked up, it gets cold after like 10 minutes. Here in Phoenix, not in the summer, I could stand in a warm shower for like an hour and a half. It's not good, it's not responsible, but I could.

The Lord has provided. Man, we're in the middle of a desert that's been in a drought for about 20 years, yet somehow you've still got water in your house. You're still provided for. Many of you might be struggling and frustrated because God didn't provide in one way, but if you can recognize that the Lord has provided in all of these manifold other ways, then you would have joy and excitement and the recognition that he will continue to provide. The Lord will provide.

I'm saying this to somebody in this room who feels like they're at their last leg, and the next step in their life is going to be catastrophic— the Lord's going to provide. I'm not saying he's going to provide the way you want. I got— I got a full sermon here, right, this is just first point—, but he will provide. The question of this sermon is, are you going to see what he provides for you? But you got to remember this as you leave here today.

If you don't remember the second point, if you don't remember the third point, I need you to remember this point: because when you're in this really heavy space of anxiety, because you think that you might lose your job one day, because you think your kids aren't going to become what you want them to be one day, when you think that your marriage is on the rocks, whatever situation you might find yourself in, if you can recognize the Lord will provide, and start giving energy— To him, so that you can see what he's providing for you in the midst of a hard circumstance. That I think, not only will you feel better, but you'll see weeks, months, even years, maybe down the road, how he has provided. Again, and it'll continue to give you faith in him. The Lord will provide. It's funny, if there was anyone that — I'm not the Lord, y'all know this, right?

We're good. Don't come up to me, say, "Father Matt, will you pray for me?", let me rephrase that. "Will you pray for the Absolution of my sins?" Don't, don't ask me to pray for that. I'll pray that the Lord would continue to speak to you, but I have no ability to forgive sins. I have no ability, to choose what God does.

 I am not the Lord. But if I was the Lord, and I looked at a person like Jonah, who was considered a prophet in his homeland, and I had called him to do something very special — like go to a great city called Nineveh, where people who have been flaying people and cutting people up, and, expanding rapidly into the western portion of the, the, the Middle East — if, if I had called him to go there so that he could have such a significant sway in the future of the world, and he said, "No, I'm going to go the opposite direction. In fact, I care so little about your calling on my life that I would rather get thrown out a boat and sink to the depths" — if I'm the Lord, I would be very frustrated, and I'd probably not provide for him. That's me, though. Like, I'm probably like the Bruce Almighty version of God.

But, but the Lord is gracious, loving, compassionate, slow to anger. He is kind. When we are hostile to him, he is so good to us that he would send his Son to live life, robed in flesh. He was, he was so gracious to us that he would sympathize with our weaknesses in Christ Jesus. He was so gracious to us that he would let us crucify him on a cross, and he would still save us.

He's that gracious to us. That's not me, that's the Lord. And so, I guess with Jonah, he looks at Jonah, and he's like, "You know what, even for him, I'm going to provide." The Lord will provide. Where are you at in your life where you're struggling with the recognition that the Lord will provide? You might just need to tell yourself the truth today.

Some of us, we get so in our heads, in our feels, if you will, that we can't, we can't recognize truth even when it is right in front of us. Like, just, just, just yesterday — like, we're in this position, we, we, we celebrated — I don't know if we, we didn't really celebrate, it just happened, so I said "you said, " that's what you say, right? We celebrated eight weeks last weekend as a church. Yeah, yeah, someone's excited, none of y'all — whatever, it was eight weeks as a church. And so I'm, I'm pondering and figuring out, okay, how do we move forward?

Because now we're running more people than we necessarily expected when we launched. We're running about 300 on average every single week, which is amazing. That's awesome, right? More than I thought would show up. That's amazing.

 But now, because of the — because of the, I guess, largess — I can't think of the word — because of the greatness, right, if you use Jonah terminology, of what God's doing now, there is an increase necessary of the provision. We need more from God in order to continue to reach people for Christ Jesus. And so I'm sitting here yesterday, I think we were sitting at the pool, I was chatting with my wife, and I'm like, "I — I don't, I don't know how we're going to do it." Right, more people means more money. I'm sitting here like stressing — hey, we started out with like zero people, that was cheap — and now I'm, I'm sitting like, "Do I need to — do I need to change something? Do I need to say something?

Do I need to — do I need to speak out about this stuff?" I'm sitting here freaking out, like, "How do I make this adjustment?" And my wife's just sitting there with all this wisdom of someone who doesn't have to worry about it as much as me, and she, she's like, "The Lord will provide."

And I'm sitting here — she didn't know what I was going to preach today, and I'd already developed the sermon, and then she said that, and I'm like, "Why she got to be so wise?" He will provide. I don't know what it is in your life, but he will provide. I don't know who it is in your life that's causing you frustration, but the Lord will provide as you seek Him. Jeremiah 29 tells us this. It's not just the cool part —, it's, it's, it's the really important part that follows the cool part.

He says this, he says, "Seek me, where you — I may be found, and I will be found by you." He doesn't just say he'll bless you. He goes on and he says, "Seek me as I bless you, " so that you will continue to see and understand the provision that I'm giving you. The Lord will provide, but you've got to keep giving the Lord your energy, because if you don't, you're not going to see the provision when it shows up. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand on this, but I bet some people in here, they struggle — they might recognize that the Lord will provide, but they're frustrated right now because they didn't see the provision when it came. Thanks for your honesty.

That's me. I'm, I'm sitting here — you know, one was me sitting at the pool in my neighborhood that somehow God blessed me and my spouse enough with income to afford to live there, where there's a pool in the community, right? And I'm sitting here at a pool, hanging out — not everybody's got a pool, it's not my pool, it's a community pool, I want to be very clear, I don't have that in my backyard, my kids can't swim, it's dangerous for them. But, but I'm sitting here in a great situation where the Lord has continued to provide, and as I've continued to give him energy, I've seen more and more of his provision. But yesterday, I am blinded because of my anxiety to see what he has already provided.

He's provided a group of people in the back, he's provided a group of people back there, and kids. Why am I stressed out? He's got his people as provision so that he can bless people who come in for the first time, so he can bless these kids. God has provided through the people in your life. He, he's, he's provided — in fact, I might be so bold as to say, as I look back on just the past year of this church, while I might have been anxious, as I look back, there's not a single moment where he hasn't provided.

If you, if you were to experiment with the Lord right now and look back on your life, and you think of the times where you were anxious about something that might or might not happen, and now you look back on it — can't you see the truth that the Lord will provide? But my second point is: provision isn't always pretty. Provision isn't always pretty. Sometimes it's, it's, it's fishy — you know, y'all like, y'all like the connection back to the — I was proud of that one, I planned that all morning, and y'all didn't laugh as much as I wish you would have. The provision isn't, isn't always pretty.

With Jonah, what happened — he got, he allowed himself to get thrown into the sea. He's sinking down, and, and I love this about God, that he's like, "Now you can try to get out." "Nope, I got you." And he sends him a fish. The Lord could have sent him a boat — I'm just going to throw that one out there, I — no one ever thought about that one. Lord could have sent him a boat, but he didn't. The Lord, the Lord could have sent him something — he could have sent him, like a life raft, I don't know if they had those back in the ancient world, probably not.

He could have sent him a piece of driftwood in the Mediterranean. He could have sent him tons of things. He could have, like, reoriented the way that physics works so that Jonah became all of a sudden very buoyant and he just floated back up. He could have provided them a friend called Wilson the volleyball. He could have provided them just about anything, but he sent a fish.

If I'm Jonah, I might be grateful that I didn't die. I don't know if you've seen a fish — I've gutted a fish before — and we always think it's a whale, it might have been a whale. The — the language didn't have a word for whale versus fish, they didn't really delineate, you know, they weren't — they weren't scuba diving back then, so they just saw stuff from the surface, or if it floated onto the beach, and they're like, "Fish, fish, fish, it's in the water, that's fish." And the word can be translated as fish or sea creature, but because we know a little bit more than them, we tend to translate it as a whale. And I did a deep dive into biblical archaeology, and I just want to say this really, really quickly —, there is a level where this is being written to people, not just at Jonah's time, but hundreds of years after Jonah's time. The reason Jonah is written — I believe that there is a specific and explicit, in the text, purpose that it is being written and communicated, so that a group of people who were dishonoring God's call on their life, as Scripture would communicate, would then turn from their way and understand that God cares about more than just Israel.

God cares about more than just them. God cares about more than just one small people group. He cares about every bit of his creation — the Ninevites and the cattle that they had there. He cares so much about those Syro-Phoenician sailors. That is the point of Jonah.

And so I don't want us to get stuck on the fish, because it's not about the fish. But in my biblical archaeology studies this week, I started to look, and I was like, "There really is a lot of, like, validity to the way that this text is orchestrated." And I'll give you some more in the coming weeks, but specifically as it regards the fish — there, there was one person who commented on our Instagram, people do that on the regular, if you want a fun time, just go look at one of our ads and start reading the comments, they say fun stuff. One person said, "You people look crazy, y'all believe that a dude got swallowed by a fish?" And I'm like, "I believe a dude woke up from the grave, so the fish really isn't that much of a stretch." But it's not about the fish. So let's — but let's talk about the fish for a second. Scholars think that if, if it was a fish, it probably would have been a whale — I'm just going to throw that out there.

So if you say "the whale" and someone says, "Technically, it was a fish, " you'd be like, "Yeah, technically it was a fish, but biblical archaeology would state that it's probably a whale, so won't you grow up a little bit, " just — just throw that out there. It, it was probably a whale, and a whale that would have been interacting in the Mediterranean. Y'all — you guys probably don't care about this, I'm just geeking out about something, none of y'all care, y'all thought it was fine, and you didn't need to know all that information. But people think it could either be a fin whale or a sperm whale, and there are actually circumstances in history where people were swallowed by big whales. I saw a study back in — not a study, I saw an article back in 2017 — this dude was swimming and fishing, and all of a sudden everything got dark, and then thirty seconds later, he got spit out by a whale.

Dude, that happened, right? Yeah, I got more proof for a whale swallowing people than a single-cell organism moving to a multi-cell organism, and then, evolution happened over billions of years. I got way more examples of whales swallowing people — I don't know how long they lasted, sometimes they probably got stuck — but anyways, I digress. I think that God is powerful enough to make this happen, but it's not about the fish. So I want to give you a little bit more of the point.

God sent provision in the form of a fish, and it, it wasn't pretty. Like, even if this — even if this whale was prime real estate, and there was plenty of square footage within that belly for him to sit there, it was still going to be dark, cramped, lightly frustrating, tons of carbon dioxide, a little bit low on oxygen, and you'd be stressed out every time that thing breathed. It would not have been a comfortable situation. Yet that was God's provision. When it says he provided a fish, this is the word that he utilized earlier when it says he appointed a storm.

It's the same word that, the author of Jonah will use later when it says he appointed a worm. God provided a fish so that Jonah would be delivered from his own bad decisions. And I want to tell you this: God will provide, but often that provision isn't pret That's great, right? But sometimes raising kids isn't pretty. Yet I know from Scripture, and I know from my own lived experience, that my interaction with my wife and then my interaction with my kids is a huge portion of provision that God is providing on purpose so that I would know him at a deeper level.

There is something that came when I had kids within me. I now understand Scripture a little bit more. When we're going through Jonah and he says he cares about the Ninevite people, when I didn't have any kids, I didn't fully—I understood but I didn't fully understand what God was talking about. But now, like, I've got my—I've got my kids. I didn't create them.

God formed them in Hannah's womb. God formed those kids. I didn't really do anything. I had a very small contribution, to the situation, but now they're—they're my kids. And while I didn't create them, they're my kids, and so when I look at them and I think about them going in the wrong direction, I kind of get a little bit more about how God viewed us in our hostility.

That's why he sent his son. That's provision for me. Like, it's provision to have to self-sacrifice—all of my, not all my preferences, you're very gracious, Hannah—but it's so, like, it's hard to sacrifice my preferences in order to stay good in a relationship when we're completely different people. It's hard for me to put myself out there so that other people who don't have a relationship with God can have a relationship with God. It requires, on one side, me to kind of adjust my behavior a little bit.

Just to be honest with you, I don't have to change every aspect of myself in order to be saved. God will do that, but in order to connect with other people, I have to kind of, you know, stop some of the things that I'm doing that might be selfish. I have to be more concerned about the other. The great commandment is this, he says: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength or might. And he says the second is this, like it: love your neighbor as yourself.

And so I recognize, that the things that God places in my life, though they might be difficult, are still provision. In fact, it's even in the difficulty that he is providing for me. All throughout the Old Testament, you see examples or metaphors utilized to describe the walk that we have with God. He says—it says—he's refining us through fire. That song, you guys know, "Purify my heart, purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold." The idea that he is refining us through a very arduous and difficult process, that even the refining is provision so that we would know him at a deeper level and be who he's truly called us to be.

I bet that refining process is painful, but it's still provision. It's not pretty, it's fiery, it's a trial, but it's provision. I think about the trial some of you guys are going through in life. I tend to talk about jobs, I tend to talk about spouse, I tend to talk about, kids, because that's, you know, that's what I'm thinking about, like the top three things I'm thinking about half the time. But it might be something different for you.

I'm looking at some of the students in this room—you're going through junior high—and here's the thing, even in junior high, when things are going crazy, when God puts you in a situation, he will provide. And so if you can look into this dire situation where maybe you don't have the friend groups you want—I can tell you this in past— sometimes it was provision that the Lord had me sitting at home by myself in the evenings. I got one amen, I got a bunch of other people who are scared to say something. You know it's true. You remember what happened that one night when everybody went, hung out, but you didn't get invited to it, or you did, but the Lord provided something in the form of your parents, and they said, "No, you're not going out this day, you're grounded 'cause you did something last week." But then something crazy happened, and you look back at that and you're like, it wasn't pretty—my mama yelled at me, it wasn't pretty, I was insecure about my friend group—but the Lord provided.

You can, if you look back and you see—you could go to the crazy circumstances, you could just go through your, your, your normal mundane existence in life. I'm not saying that as a bad thing. I'm saying just look through normal life and see how God has orchestrated the scenario such that he is providing for you in a way that grows you closer to him and keeps you out of something that was going to really, really screw you over. There's so many times where I would have desired to go in a different direction than the Lord provided for me. I'll never forget when I was about—ten times it just came into my mind, actually—but I'll never forget when I was about a year out of college, I was in public accounting, if you didn't know that.

I was an accountant for nine months. I wasn't good at it, and I spent that whole time extremely frustrated because I wanted to do ministry. I felt like God had called me to do this stuff, for my entire life. Yet because of fear of college loans and other things, I went into the accounting major, and then I got a job right out of college, and I went in that direction, and then I got this job, and I hated it. I'm not saying it's terrible, I'm just saying it wasn't for me.

And eight months in, nine months in, I'm just getting miserable and frustrated. I'm like, "Lord, when are you going to provide the next step for me?" Like, even down to my—like my boss would get on me about specific things. The people around, they weren't necessarily the type of person that I would have chosen to hang out with. Man, I could tell you about the Christmas party we had that year—it was crazy. And I'm sitting here stuck in this job that I didn't like, and I'm wondering, Lord, why am I here?

And at the end of it, he did provide the way that I was looking for. I went to seminary and I started ministry, but there is one set, or one season in my life, that I look back to now more than ever in my life, because there was one season—I don't know if you know this about ministers—sometimes we don't connect very well. Sometimes we seem a little, like, I don't know, holier than thou, if you will. We've been so much in the Bible that we don't connect with a normal person, right? Like, sometimes that can happen.

And I look back to that nine months where I experienced so, so much negativity that people in the world are experiencing—not through seminary, not through ministry, but through a real job—and I look back to that, and it influences me daily as I'm prepping this message. It influences me all the time as I'm interacting with people, and it's been a while back, but God still uses it for his good. What is that for you? I just gave you one example. I can give you fifty examples of how that worked for me.

And as we look back and we see that God was faithful through the fun times, but also through the unpretty times, he was providing for us the entire time. And as Jonah goes in—we go into chapter 2 next week—we'll talk about Jonah's recognition of God's provision. But right now I wanted to focus and hone in on this one reality: that provision is constantly occurring, but we don't see it because we're looking for the pretty stuff, but we're not looking in the hard stuff. And if there's one thing I can encourage you with, that the faith that we have—like the Christian faith—throughout all of Scripture, you see that God actually works more through the unpretty than he does the things that we would consider perfect. He works through Paul.

The Apostle Paul wrote the best majority of the New Testament as we have it today, and not only did he start out as someone that people would look at and say, "That's not the prettiest disciple." The apostle dude was a murderer, was killing people, he had a mouth on him. But when you look at his ministry, you see that he was beaten numerous times for his faith. You see that when God would send him—, he told Ananias before the call, he said, "You must teach him the things he must suffer on my behalf." Then when Paul stepped into ministry, he was stepping into something that was not even supposed to be pretty, and I'm sure he had good times, but Paul learned to recognize that it's when I am weak that he is made strong. It's when I'm going through a hard time yet I still give him my energy that he reveals himself to me. It is when I'm going through a trial, yet seeking him in the midst of it, that God continues to shape me and make me into who he's called me to be.

The Lord will provide, but that provision is not always pretty. And I want to tell you this as my final point: maybe in your life you need to stop seeing yourself as something that's unusable and start seeing yourself as that provision. In fact, you are God's provision, just like Paul was. I bet Paul struggled with insecurity constantly—"God, I'm so sorry I killed Stephen and, inside of riots, ignored you in this way, and fought against Peter the Apostle when I was still kind of new to the faith. I'm sorry for my argument with Barnabas.

God, I am so inadequate and incapable of doing what you've called me to do. I am the most unpretty apostle or disciple that there is." And the Lord still reminds him continually, even with a thorn in his flesh: "No, you've been called to preach the Gospel, the good news of Jesus." That's who I look back to when I'm struggling. I want to encourage you to look to God's word and recognize, that from Abram to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph to Moses to David, throughout Israel's history, through Jesus, through the disciples, and in your life, God is calling you to be the provision that he needs to share with the world, or to provide for the world. But you're also going to struggle through the midst of it. In fact, God prefers it.

God prefers to take a group of unhewn stones, a group of imperfect, unpretty people, and mold them together so that when the end comes, we're going to look back and we're going to see all that he built, even when we didn't realize it. And so, how can you flip it today? Rather than seeing yourself as someone who just needs the provision of God, which you do, but to starting to see yourself as the imperfect vessel through which God wants to bless your family, your spouse, this church, this community, and this world. This—I think this is why God rescued Jonah through the fish. 'Cause while the fish was minding its own business, God appointed that fish and provided it for Jonah, because even though Jonah was imperfect, he was hostile, he was struggling with a mentality that he was probably brought up in—probably wasn't all Jonah's fault—he was struggling with hostility.

And he jumped out of a boat, or they threw him out of a boat, I don't even know what that looked like, it probably looked crazy, but he's sinking down, and God looked at him in the midst of his dysfunction and he said, "That's my provision."

I don't know what you struggle with right now, but God looks at you and he says the very same thing. He looks at you in the midst of your dysfunction, he says, "That's my provision." Like, you're my provision. You're my provision for this world. You are who I created to solve this problem. You are who I planned, from before all of creation, to have that conversation with that specific person.

You were the person that I gave that child to, so raise them the way I've called you to. You were the person called to love your spouse, so love them the way that I love you. You were the person that I provided, so be the provision. Be the provision. I love that we can see the best example in Christ Jesus of what it looks like to take ownership of being the provision that God has called us to.

He is daily our provision because we couldn't have approached God on our own. But instead, he came down, died on that cross, and rose from the grave so that we can approach the throne of God boldly and step into his calling. And if there's anyone in here who has never experienced that relationship, the moving from death to life, I want to give you that opportunity right now. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, we're going to pray a prayer specifically for those who are trusting in Jesus for the first time. You might pray this, and we're going to keep doing this, we're going to pray it out loud, because, you sitting next to somebody might be the provision they need to feel confident to have this prayer with God right now.

So we're going to pray this out loud after me. You might say this: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ—I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Father, forgive me of my sin. Make me a new creation, and I will be what you've called me to be for the rest of." My life, it's in Jesus's name that we pray.

And all guys, people said, "Let's celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus right now." If that was you, I want to encourage you, take that connection card you have on the seat and fill that information out and check the box that says, "I have decided to follow Jesus, " and I will reach out to you personally to help you take your next step. Don't be ashamed of it. God has such a plan for you. It's bigger than you're currently thinking than it could be, and we believe that about you. We're imagining more for your life, so I'd encourage you to check that.

Don't be ashamed if one of us calls you to let you know how to take a next step. That's what we're here for. All right, so if you guys would stand with me, we're going to do one more song, and then we're going to head out of here.