Christmas Miracle – Week 1

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

I don’t know about you guys, but I am so excited. I cannot wait for winter wonderland. I look forward to it every year. It is so much fun if you can. There are plenty of opportunities to pick a night to bring the whole family. It is too much fun to miss. My name is Tammy Howard, and usually, you see me up here with the worship team. But today, I’m here to talk to you, which is terrifying. I grew up in a pastor’s home. And you would think that my generosity journey would have been an easy one. And it is not. I have been stressed and worried about money and finances my entire adult life. See, I will gladly give my time and my talent to God. But when it came to surrendering finances to God, it was a terrifying experience for me. I would always say when I get that next pay raise, or once I’ve gotten this bill paid off, once I’ve got that paid off, then I’ll have the money, and I can start giving. You see, I was doing it backward. I was waiting for the money to come before I gave the money to God. And that’s the wrong order for it to happen in. See? God wants us to trust him with our finances, just like we trust him when we’re sick and we need healing, just like we trust him when we’ve got a decision to make and we want his guidance. He wants all of us. And all of us, including our finances. As I mentioned, I grew up in a pastor’s home. I have seen firsthand my entire life what God’s church can do when God’s people give. And I have seen what happens when God’s people withhold. He wants that act of us releasing our hold on our finances. I think personally, for me, that has been the hardest step to take is releasing those finances. He wants us to trust him. He wants us to give. Then he will bless us because I can tell you that that’s exactly what he does. I started coming to church here. I had always been raised, you know, to give 10%. To me, that thought was frightening. Then I started coming here, and I kept hearing Pastor Virgil talk about Just giving what you can start a small build. Because Virgil helped me understand that God doesn’t care how much money we give. It’s just that act of surrender. He wants that. That is part of being all in, for God is surrendering our finances into his care as well. So I did. I started small, started giving just a little bit every paycheck. And even that was a bit stressful. See, because as an adult, as a parent. Money has always been a stress issue for me. My children’s birthdays and Christmas vacations as a family. I never could really relax and enjoy any of that because I was always thinking about the money because I always was worried that we had spent too much and that we wouldn’t have enough. Because I have lived my entire life having more months at the end of my money. And so it was really hard. But those first few steps of giving just a little bit, I went online. I signed up through Generosity Rock Star. It was simple. It was quick, it was easy, and it was safe. And I didn’t even miss the money. So I gradually started to increase my giving. And every time I increased, that little voice in the back of my head still was going, You might need that money. What do you doing? Are you crazy? But I still kept increasing. Every chance I got, I increased. I will tell you this. I have not missed a penny. I have not been able, or I have not missed being able to pay my bills. All of my bills get paid, and I have even had enough money left over that I can now support my cousin, who’s a missionary. So I give to their ministry as well. And even just the simple, stupid things of being able to go out with friends or go out with my kids and just do things without having to worry if I had the money to do it or not. God has blessed me. He has blessed my sacrifice not abundantly. I don’t have more money than I know what to do with because he knows me. He knows I can’t handle that much. But I have what I need. And in Second Corinthians nine, Paul said, You must decide in your heart how much to give and don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure, because that’s what I had done most of my life, was gave out of obligation. But Paul said God loves a person who gives cheerfully. And God will generously provide all you need, and you will always have everything you need left over to share with others. And I have found that to be true. He has blessed my stepping out in faith and giving. Pastor Virgil has been sharing with us the last couple of weeks about some initiatives that we want to start in the next year. We’re going to start a special needs ministry, and we’re going to start a limited preschool program. We’re going to bring back one of my favorite things, which is Feed My Starving Children. It’s where we partner with an organization, and we provide meal packs for children all over the world who don’t have nutritious food. The year-end fund is a great chance for you to step into generosity if you haven’t yet. It’s quick, it’s easy. You go online, eastside.church/endofyear, you can make your year-end donation there, and you can set up recurring giving there. You have complete control over that weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, however much. And you can always go in and tweak that and change it and increase that amount. So I encourage you, if God has been tugging at your heart, to start giving, or if He’s been tugging at your heart to increase your giving. Just do it. He will bless you. He will never leave you wanting anything. You will have everything you need and more if you give from that heart of worship to him. Thank you.
Every story is unique, and each story, including yours, is important to our Lord. But this is his promise. Brokenness is not your final chapter. My name is Bree Turner, and if brokenness was my final chapter, then I would not be standing here before you today. I would have continued to chase down a path away from the Lord, going in every direction except where I needed to go. I would have let the anger and the hurt and despair in my heart keep me from knowing our king. I challenge you today instead of letting your past be defiant of who you are or what’s to come. Use it as an opportunity to show how God saved you and how God showed up in your life and changed it for the better. Why God is bringing you through at this very moment will be the testimony that could be the simple glimmer of hope to save someone else. My childhood and even early adulthood. I was filled and covered with abandonment and heartbreak from my father. I was broken, I was hurting, I still hurt, and I felt undeserving of any kind of love. But God came in, and he wrecked my life for the better. And God showed me that although my earthly father is absent, my Heavenly Father is present, and He has shown me love that no one else can show me today. I have trust in faith and in my story and in yours because I know the author of Who Writes them. I want you to let your story exemplify God’s goodness. Let it be an example of his gift of fortitude. Be living proof of the Holy Spirit in the power of God’s love. That’s how people come to know him. No one is too far gone, no story is too big, no story is too small, and no stories compare to each other. Jesus Christ died on the cross for every single one of us in this room right now. But he didn’t die on that cross for us to stay silent about his works and what he’s doing in our lives. He calls us to be in a community with each other and to share our testimonies with others. He calls us to go out into his world and to share the goodness of his grace. The Lord is carrying us out of the darkness, for He is our light. God is providing us His righteous hand in. All we have to do is reach out to him today. My prayer today is that each and every one of you leaves this room knowing that your story matters. Your story is important. Your story deserves to be heard. But someone needs to hear it. Today. I think Jesus for his grace, his goodness, his mercy, and for us to be able to see his works and his goodness or the stories of others.
Thank you. You can be seated. I’m Virgil Grant. I’m the senior pastor here. As one of the many pastors here at Eastside, I want to welcome you to Eastside. If you missed Last week, didn’t Micah knock it out of the park? Yeah. What a great job. If you missed that message, go back and watch that. We are in a brand new sermon series called Christmas Miracles. And as you’ve already heard, you’ve heard of Tammy’s miracle that God’s done in her life. What Tammy failed to mention in this service versus less service is Tammy started out small, but now she’s giving 10% of her income to the Lord because of her willingness to surrender. Yes. So like, three people know what tithing is. But anyway, we’ll get there one of these days, and we’ll talk about that. But then, Bree, what a story that is. Christmas Miracles is a sermon series all about putting Jesus Christ front and center because he’s still in the business of performing miracles. Amen. He’s still in the business of doing miracles. And there are people that need miracles this morning in their lives, in their families, in their careers, whatever, in their relationships. We want to let you know that God is still in the business of doing miracles. We call this the most wonderful time of the year. We call it Christmas miraculous. And it is because why the greatest miracle of all took place some 2000 years ago when Jesus Christ left heaven and came to Earth to live the life that you and I couldn’t live so that you and I could go to the place that we couldn’t go on our own. But we needed Jesus and His ticket to heaven. And because of that, we’ve experienced the greatest miracle in the world. And the Christmas miracle is all about some Eastsiders who have experienced the miracles of God, But they’re still in the middle of living that miracle out. And this morning, I want you to give a warm Eastside welcome to Heather Andrew Abbott. Would you give it up for them? Yeah, they’re going to share the miracles of God that they’ve already experienced. But what they’re in the midst of experiencing, I’m going to pray for them, and then I want you to lean in, I want you to laugh, I want you to interact with them. I want you to encourage them. Because as you know, this takes a tremendous amount of courage. Father, right now, thank you for being the God of miracles. Thank you. For the miracles that you’ve already done in this place this morning. The father that you are in the midst of doing miracles right now, even as we are praying and even as Heather and Andrew will be sharing. And Father, we just ask that today that you show up and show off in a great and mighty way, and we pray these things in the name of Jesus. Everyone agreed and said together, Amen.
As we get here this morning, first thing, my wife says you’re going to cry. No, babe, I won’t cry. But you’ll learn further through the story that I’m the crier in this relationship. But thankfully, with Bree’s testimony and the first service, I got that out of the way. So I’ve covered that today. Anyway, my name is Andrew. This is my wife, Heather. We’ve been married for almost seven years now, been together for almost 11. Back in October, we got a text from Nicole asking us to meet with Virgil. He probably wants to get coffee or something. No, he is signing you up for something. So when Virgil wants to meet with you as you do something, say yes. So we said yes. Here we are today. Just a little bit about us. We met in college. I was a freshman. Heather was a sophomore. Older lady. I’d gone to an event that Heather’s sorority was hosting. It was a charity event for service for sight. That was, she will tell you, a date auction. But I will argue that it was a dessert auction. I was there to bid on dessert. Same thing. No, I don’t think so. But I ended up sitting beside her roommate and didn’t know it at the time. Heather was on stage as learned her name. And then fast forward just a couple of weeks, we go on to what we’ll call our first date is a little bit different. I guess she agreed to go with me to a coal mining documentary on campus that I was going to for extra credit. So if anybody can pretend to care, it’s her.
So we had both moved to Richmond in the summer of 2014, and after finding Eastside, we joined Virgil’s group. Shortly after a few months in, Virgil encouraged us to branch off and begin leading our own life group. So once again, we said yes, and we did just that. So we have been leading a life group with several of the same members that we were in initially over the last few weeks. Probably a couple of months ago, Andrew and I stepped back from leading. And so our life group members have stepped up and let God show off to keep our life group. So thank you. Since joining Eastside, we’ve been blessed in many ways. But we want to talk a little bit today about the journey to grow our family. So we got married in 2015, and we had the best time as young newlyweds. She became a football fan. She can talk a little football with you now. So you’re welcome. We both love to hike. We hiked several, several, several different places. Some are a little bit sketchy. Maybe we should have shied away from it. But travel to several different countries. Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia. Just love going places. Love having new experiences.
Having been married for a couple of years, we began to get the question most newlywed couples get at some point. When are you having kids? When are you giving us grandchildren? So how many newlywed couples in this room have heard that at some point in your life? Yeah, you’re being pushed to have kids. And so we kept getting those hints at every gathering. And in January 2016, I had my first surgery for endometriosis and some other issues. And it was at this point that we were told we may struggle to get pregnant. So those hints kept coming, and shortly they became painful. We saw those around us. Friends, family, acquaintances, people, coworkers, everywhere. It seemed like everyone was growing or starting their family with no problem, no hitch. Just. Just seamlessly, families were growing. And so we started to feel a little bit of pain. But we kept our struggles, our secrets, our infertility struggles, our secret. But I mentioned Saint Lucia earlier. Shortly after we got back from Saint Lucia, we found out that maybe we had just quite a bit of fun. So we got back home, and we found we were pregnant. Wow. Total shock. And it was in this moment, it was so surreal because we had waited so long to get here. And I remember we got the positive, and we received an adoption pack at the same time, but we could just put that aside because we were pregnant. Right? So a few weeks later, Andrew and I have our confirmation ultrasound, and we go to the doctor, and we are just so giddy with excitement. And we had waited so long to get to this moment.
We go into the room, and the doctor starts the ultrasound. She is doing her thing, looking over everything. And there it is, just empty this black screen. She found the sack, but there was no heartbeat. And it was at this moment. My gut told me that there was no baby, and the doctor kept looking. And she encouraged us and scheduled another ultrasound for a week later. She explained that it may just be too early and that we could come back next week. We’ll see if anything changes. And so fast forward a week. Andrew and I go to the second appointment. We had driven separately that day as we both had come straight from work, and we followed the same routine. We go back to the room. She starts the ultrasound. And there it is on the screen, an empty black sack. I remember her looking over at me and just saying, I’m so sorry, sweetheart. We had officially been diagnosed with a miscarriage. And. I remember getting our stuff together, and the doctor just shared that she’d be praying for us. And as Andrew and I left the doctor’s office that day, we just broke down in the parking lot. And it created a very solemn drive home being alone in each of our vehicles. And as I got in my car, I called my mom. And, you know, she was one of those people we mentioned earlier that kept giving us hints about wanting to grow our family. And we hadn’t shared our infertility struggles, not even with family. I hadn’t even told my mom. And I tell her everything. When I told her I was leaving the doctor’s office, I heard the anticipation and excitement in her voice building up. And then, when I told her that there wasn’t a heartbeat. I heard her just break down and cry.
It was at this moment that not only did I hear it from the doctor, but having to share it with a loved one was like admitting to myself that I failed. And I don’t know if it was shame or embarrassment or just privacy that we kept just between us. But I was so alone at this moment because I had nobody to turn to. I kept it a secret, and nobody that I knew around me had gone through infertility struggles or had even gone through a miscarriage. So I didn’t know where to turn either. Didn’t know what to say and didn’t know what to do to know what action to take. Just to remotely make my wife feel any bit better. There’s no answer on site. So I take a deep breath and decide whether or not I’m going to have the strength to start my truck and go home. Finally, I get there, gather myself, and at this point, I’m bursting with emotion. I don’t know who I need to talk to, but I’ve got to talk to somebody. I’ve got to get this off my chest. I’ve got to scream. I’ve got to cry. I’ve got to yell. I’ve got to get my frustration, my anger, my sadness has got to come out. So I called my brother. I didn’t want anybody to tell me that it was going to be okay to try and fix a situation, to try to heal a broken heart. I didn’t want any of that. I just want somebody to listen to me. And that’s what he did.
We had been very active in our group to this point, but. After the miscarriage, I began to become very withdrawn. So Andrew kept going to the group, and I didn’t. I fell into a state of depression and just loneliness. I was so numb at this point in our journey. It was early November that the miscarriage began to expel my body, and that morning it was late that Sunday night when everything happened. And while I didn’t get any sleep that night, I gathered myself and decided to go on into work the next day. And so I’m a creature of habit. So I felt it was in my best interest to box up what just happened, put it to the side, and go on with my normal life. And that same day, the doctor had us come in for another exam and some blood work and things. And this was confirmed once again that I had failed. The one thing that a woman is supposed to be able to do, and I could not do it. We struggle to get to the point of being pregnant. And then, once I got pregnant, my body couldn’t do it. I was so mad, and I was trying so hard not to be angry at God. I was done trying after three years of this, a miscarriage, I was done, and I just wanted to sit back and take time to reset. It was right after Christmas of that same year that Andrew just kept on and kept on and kept on. And I finally just gave in and agreed to do one more round of medication, and we agreed this would be the final round. So with being on the medication, everything is so timed. And so it was early January. It was time for us to go to the doctor to see how the medication was working.
To my and my doctor’s surprise, it worked very well. She explained that we had two mature eggs, which meant we had a 5 to 10% chance of having twins. I busted out laughing because I couldn’t have one baby, let alone two. Right? So when it came time for us to take a test. I took one test. Two tests, three tests, and four negative tests. For whatever reason, one morning, I woke up. I was going in to cover a part of our second-shift crew. It was 1:30 in the morning, and I woke up and just had this urge to take a fifth test. Why I expected anything different. I have no idea. But I took a test, and we received a faint positive. And, of course, I had to wake up Andrew and, you know, share my excitement and the news. And so fast forward a couple more weeks, and we had our confirmation ultrasound. Once again, we were overtaken with anxiety and fear. Not sure what to expect from our previous experiences. So we get in the room, and the technician starts the ultrasound. She’s doing her thing, you know, She said, All right, here’s the first heartbeat. So we stop. One. There’s a heartbeat, and it goes through my mind. What are you talking about? What do you mean by one? First heartbeat, two heartbeats. Oh, my goodness. Just overcome with emotion. And I’ve already mentioned on the crier we go out to the waiting room and cry. Heather’s laughing. And the doctor comes in laughing and I’m still the only one crying. So emotions are everywhere at this point.
So I can’t keep my mouth shut. So we had to share them with the family that evening, and we luckily received all the face time videos, and we still have them. So that’s a great reaction to have. So in March, it was about mid-March, and we decided to have an elective ultrasound just to make sure everything was good, just with our prior history. So thanks to COVID, this was the last ultrasound that Andrew was able to attend. So this is the last time that he was able to see our little beans. So we went to this doctor’s appointment, and it was right around my birthday. So it was such a gift to see both of them doing well and healthy and everything. So as we progressed through the pregnancy, we were set up with several different doctors. I was considered high risk with my history and then also since we were having twins. And so it was time for the anatomy scan, and nobody prepared me for how long an appointment this is with one baby, let alone with two. So we are well, just me because Andrew couldn’t go. I’m in this appointment, and I’m lying on the table, and they look at maybe A first look at her little toes and her and her nose and everything. And everything’s perfect. They go on to baby B. And by this point, I’m starting to get a little woozy because I laid there too long. Andrew is still on speaker, and they’re doing a scan and they stop at his face. And then they move on, and then they come back. And I remember looking over at the screen, and part of his nose and his lip were missing. And I wasn’t sure what was happening at this moment, but they started talking about doctors and procedures and everything else. And he said, Oh yeah, he has a cleft lip and palate. No big deal. But it was a big deal. It was a big deal to me. I wanted my baby to be perfect. We had waited so long to be given these miracles. That. Why was our baby having to go through this?
So a cleft lip and palate, for those of you who may not know, is a deformity where the nose and lips are affected. And then, a lot of times, the inside of the mouth. So if you can imagine taking your tongue to the roof of your mouth and instead of it stopping, it just goes on up your nose. Kind of gross, but that’s what our little man was born with. And, you know, that weekend was so emotional because. I was still withdrawn. And this was not the news that we expected to hear that now our baby was going to start having some issues. And taking time to process, I found a cleft mom group on social media, which was such a blessing. But I had also reached out to Karla Perry here at church, and she introduced us to Jessica and David Evans and their three children, Lily, Romel, and Noah. Lilly was also born with a cleft lip and palate. And the experiences and the advice, and the shoulder to lean on were more than I could have ever imagined coming out of such a dark situation we were going through. And they quickly grew to become another part of our family. So the big day gets closer to where we’re into October now. I’m sure several of you saw Heather coming into church on Sundays. If you’ve ever seen Happy Feet, Little Penguins getting around. It’s kind of how it was, but she did pretty well-carrying twins. I’ll give you that for sure. Never done it myself. Can’t say what they’d be like.
October 2nd came, and she’s decided that she’s going to get up to workout, you know, kind of pretty fairly normal routine for her. I go on in to work at about 11:30. She texts me and says, I feel a little strange. Talk to the doctor. They want me to come on in. So I leave where I’m going to take her to the hospital. You know, at this point in the pregnancy, she’s at 37 weeks. So we throw the bags in the vehicle, and we get going. And she mentioned that through COVID, I hadn’t been able to go to any of these appointments. Well, while I wasn’t able to go to these appointments, I sat in the vehicle normally with a pretty large water, Coke zero, or something. What have you? Well, hold onto that thought. She goes to the hospital. She’s in active labor. Here we go. It’s party time. I don’t know what’s going on. She lets me know this. I’m like, Baby, I got bad news. Homeboys about to bust. I got to find a bathroom before you have these babies. I’m sorry, but I got to go. So leave the hospital, use the bathroom, come back, and get in there. They throw scrubs at me. I put scrubs on. They say, Dad, by the time you get those on, we’re going to be ready to go. We go in very, very quick. How it all happened. And shortly before 5:00, we have Boone, Woodrow, and Nora Jane, two babies that have come into our lives at this point. I get down into the recovery room first. Heather was still struggling a little bit, so they were taking care of her, and they brought the babies to me very briefly. I hold on, hold them for a couple more minutes, and they take him away.
They come back to the room, and they say that one of the babies has been taken to the NICU Nora, on the left in the picture, was born around 2 pounds lighter than Boone was. So we just assumed it was her that Nora had been taken to the NICU. But it was actually Boone, so we thought it was related to his cleft lip and palate, but it was not. He was struggling to fully breathe on his own, so they took him to the NICU. And then Heather gets down to down to recover shortly after that. So I actually didn’t get to see Boone. They were born on a Friday, and I didn’t get to see him until Sunday. I didn’t get to hold him until Tuesday. He spent 12 days in the NICU, and once we were all discharged, we had to get used to our new normal. Not only was going out public an adventure with two babies but. The look on people’s faces when they would see Boone. That was hard. They would look at him, and I could see the question asking what was wrong with him? And so, during these times, I would get very frustrated and angry. And so, every encounter, I began to preface with an explanation of the cleft before they could even ask. So there was nothing more upsetting than a mother seeing somebody look at your child with the question of what this wrong with them or looking at him like he was a strange human. It was during these times that Jessica was such a blessing because I knew I could talk to her without fear or reservation. She understood my frustration, and she never judged me for being angry with the situation we were going through.
As we began the Boone cleft journey now that he was with us in December, he was given a device called a nam. I think we have a picture of it. And so you can see it’s taped to his little face. And that device, I’m not even going to say it was a storm. It was a hurricane, keeping it taped to his face, trying to feed him with it on his face, trying to keep him comfortable. It was awful. While we don’t miss it, that did help close the gap, which created a more successful surgery. So he had his first surgery in March of this year, and he had his second surgery in August of this year. While we have those behind us, we continue to go through struggles with him and his cleft every single day. So while in the midst that Boone was going through his cleft journey, We’re sitting at home one Saturday night and thanking God for highly sophisticated baby monitors. Nora’s baby monitors go off with a high heart rate, which doesn’t go off until it hits 200 beats a minute. So her little heart is beating out of her chest. We run up to her. She’s sweating temperatures through the roof, 104, close to 105. We’re freaking out. We rushed to the hospital, got to the E.R., spent six, 7 hours in the E.R., and found out that she had a very severe UTI, very common in young baby girls, but so severe to the fact that they wanted to send her for further testing, do some additional ultrasounds, be sure that that’s all it was. Well, we go to that appointment and find out that that was not all that it was that she has a duplex kidney. Now, just in brief, a duplex kidney is one kidney that’s almost two, but it does have two tracks as part of her urinary system. So two kidneys and three tracks may not cause any problems. They cause a lot of problems. We don’t really know yet. But our miracles are not over.
So it’s opened our hearts to just how important community and relationships are. And. We feel that the highs and lows that we’ve gone through, the highs and lows that will go through and that you’ll go through, we’re not meant to go through alone. Galatians six two says bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. That’s why we want to challenge you to bear one another’s burdens. We made the mistake of walking through our infertility journey alone. We didn’t share it with anyone but each other. Nobody knew outside of her and me. What was going on in our lives? When Jessica Evans came into the picture. Heather flipped the script when she leaned on her to help her walk through Boone’s cleft journey. And then, from that point on, moving forward, our life group knows everything about our lives. We share everything. Our first challenge for everyone is.

Don’t allow fear, shame, discouragement, or anything else to keep you from stepping out into the community.

We’ve realized how important it is to do so, to let God love you through those around you. Our second challenge is.

If you’re ready to give up on your miracle, don’t.

Don’t give up. God will bless you with you’re your miracle in his time. One of my favorite songs is What a Beautiful Name it Is by Hillsong United. And one of the lines in there, the lyrics say, You have no rival, you have no equal. Rivals are built through wins and losses to an opponent. God doesn’t have a rival because he hasn’t lost. So as Heather said, your miracle will come. Although it may not be on your watch, it will be on God, and it’ll be right on time when it gets there. If you keep praying, you keep the faith. You reach out. You bear the burdens of others in that journey. It will be there. There are so many people that were part of our community that we just want to thank just a few of them. Our families, of course, the Evans family, as we’ve mentioned multiple times. Tim Grant is a personal resource for me. I’ve leaned on him quite a bit. Our small group they’ve shown up and let God show off. As Heather mentioned, it’s been a whirlwind with our group. So our group alone, we have five. We have five babies under the age of two in our life group and we have another on the way to be born. The due date is January 1st, so there’s so much going on in the life group, but we’re so thankful for it. But we are so thankful to have been here today to share stories with you guys, to share our Christmas miracle, our struggles with infertility, and the miracles and the understanding that we now have because of that. Thank you so much.
Thank you. You can be seated. I just want to wrap this up today by reiterating the two challenges that Heather and Andrew gave us. I just want to ask you to just about your head, if you would, as I issue these two challenges. That they issued us the first one. Just don’t do life by yourself. Don’t live on an island by yourself. Don’t. Feel like you can’t trust anyone. You know, part of the reason why we exist as a church is so that we get to laugh together. We get to walk together through the storms and the trials and tribulations of life. And I can just affirm. What the Abbotts said, that what our life group means to us, to Rose and me. If you’re here today and you’re not involved in the biblical community, you’re not involved in a life group. Here’s my challenge for you just before you leave today. When you go into the atrium, as you’re walking back out to the atrium, heading back out the main doors there on your right, there’s a little lounge called My People Lounge. The name is right there on the wall. You can see it. There are going to be leaders there that can help you to get connected to find community. So do that be the greatest decision that you would ever make? The second thing. I want to challenge you. Is it many of you? You’re still waiting for your miracle. You’re still waiting for God to show up and show off. And even when you can’t see them, even when you can’t feel it, he’s still working. He never stops working. And you may be growing weary. You may be losing faith. Your faith may be dwindling. Your passion. There is no passion. Because you’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and pleaded and pleaded with God to show up and show off. But he hasn’t done it yet. But you know what? It’s his timing. Not your timing. And today, God brought you here to fuel your passion, to fuel your zeal, to remind you that he’s God and you’re not to remind you that he’s in control and not you. And also to remind you and me that he’s still the God of miracles. He’s too good to not believe the fact that he’s the God of miracles. And so this morning, I want you to walk away believing and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s the God of miracles. I just want to ask you to just quietly stand to your feet. Just quietly stand to your feet. And the worship team is going to lead us in the first part of this song. And then, midway through, you’re going to join in. I just want you to listen to the words. Do not miss the words. What is the theology that this song is given to you and me? I just want you to absorb it. Soak it in this morning as they lead us.
Do you believe that this morning? Oh, I do. I believe it. I mean, friends. I’m a miracle. You’re a miracle. And we need to live every day as if it’s a miracle. We live every day as if there are no miracles. And you have a choice. And. The God that we serve is still doing miracles. And the next two weeks, you don’t want to miss because we’re going to have another miracle and then another miracle. We’re going to have other stories that are going to remind us that Christmas miracles are still happening because of Jesus. Now, friends, this Wednesday is inspiring, and I want to encourage you to come. And here’s a reason why I want to encourage you to come. Is it we’re going to gather together, have a short program in the worship center, and then we’re going to be dismissed. You’re going to go throughout winter wonderland. You’re going to get to see all the different stations. We are going to have everything set up and ready to go, and we’re going to pray over every station. And here’s the reason why is because with prayer. This whole winter wonderland event can become supernatural. Without prayer, it’s superficial. Does anyone want superficial? I don’t. I want something supernatural. I want Miracles do take place during winter wonderland. And it has to be a field saturated with the spirit of God. And so I’m encouraging you. I’m begging you. It’s not beyond me to get on my knees to ask you to beg for you to come and be here this Wednesday as we make this event as spiritual and as powerful as we can for the community. Amen. I’m going to pray over you a prayer blessing, and then you’re going to be dismissed once again. Can you just give it up for Heather and Andrew? Make sure. Make sure. Make sure that you say something to them. Tell them how grateful you are. Jesus. May you be the light. To our path and the lamp to her feet. As we go throughout this week. And may we give a testimony of your miracles in our lives to those that we encounter. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. You’re dismissed. Have a great week.