Sevens

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

Romans Chapter five. If you have not been reading, if you’ve not read Romans lately, let me urge you to read Romans. I mean, I’m reading through the New Testament one chapter today, recording some thoughts. And this past week, this was one of the chapters that I read. And I recorded some thoughts in verses one and two. This is the reason why God is good, and this is why we sing of his goodness. This is a reason why, like Beth, we share our stories; look at Romans chapter five, verses one and two.

Romans 5:1-2

 By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

I’m reading it from the message translation. And Paul says by entering through faith. What are we entering in faith? Into what? What God has always wanted to do for us. To make us right with Him. To make us fit for him. We have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have the opportunity to be made right with God. We express our faith in Jesus. Then we’re made right with God. But that’s not all. So we want to end with salvation. We want to end with salvation. You what I’m saying? Church. We want to end with salvation. Salvation is not the end. Salvation is only the beginning. Because the next part of the verse says, There’s something else that we’re supposed to do. Can I just say we kinda suck at this as a church, but we can get better? Okay, here’s what it says. I love this. Now we throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that He’s already thrown open this door to us. So we have access to him. We have access to his goodness. Notice what it says. We find ourselves standing where we’ve always hoped we might stand out in the wide-open spaces of God’s grace and glory. Listen to this, Miss March, standing tall and shouting our praises to God. Shouting our praises to God. Is it, folks? We’ve been saved so that we can declare the praises of God to everyone that we come in contact with. We’re here to praise God? Beth is sharing part of her story. It’s not about her. It’s about the goodness of God being expressed in her life. It’s about what God did, his Beth says. She screwed everything up. She didn’t know how to fix it. She wasn’t down the dark road. But God changed her trajectory. And here’s the thing, my friends, is it you have a story, and everybody’s story in this room is full of pain. It’s full of trials, tribulations, suffering, and scars. But there’s also. Wonderful expressions of God’s goodness. And you know what your story is? Your story is unique. It is unique to you. It’s the thing that God has given to you to leverage, to declare his praises. And some people. Says yes to doing that. Other people. Doesn’t. But here’s the reason that we don’t. Oftentimes we bind to what Satan says. If you tell anybody your story, they’re not going to accept you. They’re not going to love you. You stay in isolation, and you’ll be safe there. You stay in isolation. You will not be safe. Satan will wear you out, destroy you, eat you up, and spit you out. And flick a burger on you and walk over you and say goodbye to you. That’s what Satan would do. Let me tell you something. You come out. There’s community right here, and he’s waiting for you to embrace you, to love you, to walk with you. And today, we have four incredible speakers there speaking on the subject of hope. And from Jeremiah 2911. We have leading off this morning Chip Devasure. Then after him, we have Rachel Bunch batting second, and then a third batting order is Tammy Cold, and our cleanup hitter is Josh Hill. He doesn’t look like a cleanup hitter, but he’s a cleanup hitter, trust me. All right. So would you lean in? Would you encourage these fine men and women today? Is they sure? Would you give it up for our four speakers?

Right? Yeah. Thanks, Pastor. Appreciate. Yeah. Well, good morning, church. My name is Chip, the Major. I’m better known around here as Heather’s husband, so we’ve been married for about four years. Heather’s been going to church here for about eight. I’ve been going to church here for about four. We’re a blended family. We have four children. I’d like to introduce them to you here. So Ellie, on the right, she’s 19, currently living in Tampa, Florida. You guys pray for her. The weather down there is terrible. Abigail. She’s my 17-year-old. She is now playing softball again. Yes, London, my 14-year-old there in the red shirt. He’s a mini-me, even though he doesn’t want to admit it. And then Collin is now 12, and he is clearly becoming an expert bassist. And now I’m the proud granddaddy to Jason, who will be one year old in July. Look at that. I couldn’t have myself any proud grandparents out there. Yeah. Awesome. So today, I’d like to talk to you about a scripture that is near and dear to my heart. I’m going to give you some background. I’m going to challenge you along the way. I’m going to finish up with some encouraging words. So let’s click on our click on our apps, turn our Bibles to Jeremiah 29:11. Now, before I read this, this is a well-known scripture. We all know it. We all love it. If you love Jesus and tattoos, you probably have this on your person someplace. But sometimes, we maybe not know deeply what Jesus is trying to tell us through these scriptures. So let’s read Jeremiah 2911.

Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)

‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.'”

Some background here. About 1446 years before Christ was born, the Israelites fled Egypt. That’s the whole Moses part of the Red Sea. Exodus Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho story. When they arrived in the Inn and in the promised land, a land occupied by pagan nations. It was God’s intent for His chosen people to be a light and to influence the culture around them with obedience and his righteousness. Along the way, the Israelites began to succumb to the practices of the pagan nations and godson prophets to warn them of their disobedience. Israel refused to listen to the prophets, and eventually, they were punished. The Israelites were taken into captivity and taken to a far-off land named Babylon of the years of captivity began to take its toll upon the Israelites, and they began to complain about their circumstances and cry out to God for help. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but how many of you have been in that predicament before? Yeah, I know I have. Now, maybe we haven’t been a captive in a foreign land, but maybe we’ve been a captive or a prisoner of our circumstances. I have. I used to jokingly say that I had a Ph.D. in screwing up my life in 2008. I was involved in working in ministry and had an affair. And the circumstances that followed I would have loved to have avoided. I lost my job, my marriage, my integrity, the trust of my community. And I was paralyzed by shame and grief. We had to move into a 100-square-foot townhouse. I had three small children and a £120 dog. I was working a job, tons of hours, that I hated. I had to borrow money to make ends meet. And one year, I had a church. Help me buy Christmas presents. I guess you could say. I know what it feels like to be a captive in Babylon. My life at that time was not really fun. My circumstances were tough, and I began to realize you can’t wish your way out of something you behaved your way into. But it wasn’t God’s plan to leave the Israelites and their situation. And I’m here to testify to you today that it wasn’t God’s plan to leave me as a captive in my circumstances. So back to our story. Let’s read Jeremiah 29, verses four through five.

Jeremiah 29:4-5

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives. He is exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem. Build homes and plan to stay, plant gardens, and eat the food they produce.6-7 Marry and have children, then find spouses for them so that they may have many grandchildren multiply. Do not dwindle away and work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I’ve sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare. 

Let’s skip to verse ten. This is what the Lord says.

Jeremiah 29:10

You will be in Babylon for 70 years, but then I will come and do for you all the good things that I have promised, and I will bring you home again. 

You see, this doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would a God, a loving father, the God of Israel, allow them to live in captivity for 70 years and then encourage them to blossom in their captivity? What was he doing? Well, I proposed this. He was using this time to rewrite their story. And I want to encourage you today to let God rewrite your story. You know, there was a lot of changes that needed to be made in the hearts and lives of the Israelites, and God needed that time to bring them back into a right relationship with him. My captivity honestly lasted about ten years. I get it. I hate in my circumstances. I complained a lot. I cursed God. I shook my fist so many times with him in prayer. But I didn’t give up. And I didn’t quit God. And he didn’t quit me. I reached out for help, and I leaned into my circumstances. I didn’t know then. But I know now. I was thriving in my captivity. You see, I joined a life group. I joined a men’s integrity group. Surround myself with people that love God and love me no matter what. I continued to work hard, and I just kept loving all my kids. And I remembered this. This kept me going. This promise that God gives us. For. I know the plans I have for you, son. Says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster to give you a future. And I hope I stand before you today. Without those circumstances, I don’t think that God could have ever healed me of my jaded heart. And I know for a fact that he used that time to rid me of my awful pride. I would have never been able to. I would have never been forced to reinvent myself, working those long hours for all those companies and using that experience and my background to now build my own successful business. I look back at a book, looking back at the old ship, and I think to myself, Heather Divasure would have never been interested in that egotistical butthole. But now I have a marriage that I’ve only ever dreamed of. And today, I get to point hundreds of people to Jesus. I don’t know where you’re at today. I don’t know what your story is. I know the story of the Israelites in the book of Jeremiah. And I know my story. I know that you can’t wish your way out of something you behaved your way into. But you can trust your way on. And you can trust God on your way through church. Let God rewrite your story. Trusting he’s got big plans for you. Thank you.

 Well, good morning. Each side for those of you for those of you that do not know me, my name is Rachel Bunch. I am Pastor Virgil’s favorite daughter and Brandon Bunch’s wife. There should be a picture of my family coming up here. This is my brother, Jacob, and my sister-in-law, faith. My mom and dad, Rose and Virgil. My husband, Brandon. And the only one missing in this picture is our niece, Ruby. When my dad approached me about speaking today, you know, I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t anxious. I immediately thought, Thank you, Jesus. It is about time. I’ve been trying to get on the stage and get the mic for the past 28 years. Today we were asked to speak on Jeremiah 29:11.

Jeremiah 29:11

‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.'”

 So why did Jeremiah say this? The people of Israel were in exile, away from their homes, and in a difficult season. Jeremiah was simply reminding the people of Israel, of God’s promise. Now, I would say for almost everyone in this room, whoever is watching online, that we have been through a difficult season or we are currently going through that difficult season. And during that time, we ask we find ourselves asking questions like, God, do you have a plan for my life or God? Do you even love me? Or will you protect me? And for me, that season seemed to come often in my life. I remember the first time that I really dealt with these questions when my brother was struggling with addiction. And during that time, I was young, I was innocent, and my family was just so consumed in getting him healthy. And hear me say this I am and will always be thankful for the love and support that my brother received. But during that time, I couldn’t help but ask God to do. My parents do; they even love me. Or will this even work out for my brother? After that, I found myself in an unhealthy relationship where I felt like I had a question of my worth and my value because of the way that I was treated. Coming back to those same questions. God, do you even have a plan for my life? At this point, I was lost, but I didn’t want to be found. I became a partier, and I would like to believe that was the life of the party. I was so caught up in the things of this world, and I thought that that was the only way to deal with the things that I had endured or the things that I was currently enduring after living this lifestyle for such a long time. There is a point where I came back to that same question. Wow. Is this all I have to offer? And I also caught myself thinking, God, is this all you have to offer me? I remember a specific time when I was sitting at the bar with my friends, and I looked around, and I was like, Wow, is this it? Is, is it for me? Even though I didn’t know it at the moment, God was pursuing me. When I received a text from one of my close friends at the time that said that she was praying for me. See, I’ve always had a family in a church. Family? To remind me and show me that living alive for Jesus was far better than the life that I was chasing. But I was just way too stubborn to listen. Years and years have passed, and life continued to be the same for me. This whole time I didn’t have my eyes fixed on Jesus, but he had his eyes fixed on me, and he had a plan far greater for me than what I had for myself. One day a tall, lanky guy walked into East Side and caught my eye. Little did I know that Jesus had brought him to me and that my life would be forever changed. Now, some of you know our story, and some of you don’t. Brandon would tell everybody that I chased after him, and I slid into his DMS, and I would say he was right because if I didn’t, we probably still wouldn’t be together. I quickly realized during that time that not only was Brian in pursuing me, but Jesus was pursuing me through Brandon. Brandon taught me that I was valuable and that my story mattered, and that I was worthy. All of the things that my family and my church family and Jesus was trying to tell me all along, but I was just too caught up in the things of this world. And once I realized that God had so much more for me and had called me to do so much more. My eyes slowly started to turn to him. I say all of this today to remind you of God’s promise. The same as Jeremiah did for the people of Israel. No matter the difficult season that you are in, I want to encourage you with this. If you don’t take anything out of today, please hear me say this. That.

God’s response is not to provide you immediate escape from your situation. But to provide you hope that he will see you through.

For anyone in this room that is struggling with addiction or has a loved one that is struggling with addiction, I want to remind you that with God, there’s hope that he will see you through. You see, with my brother’s addiction, he is now addiction free. For anyone today in an unhealthy relationship, and you find yourself questioning your value and your worth. I want to remind you that your relationship with God should come first, and it is the most important relationship that you can have. Your value is found through him, in him alone, and not through other people. See, my unhealthy relationship became me finding my husband. And now we are expecting a baby girl in November. And for anyone chasing after the things of this world and you find yourself come into dead ends, kind of like I did. And you ask yourself, does this life get any better? I want to remind you that with God, he promises you the most abundant life that this world cannot offer you. You see, me living in the world and being a partier became me living an all-in life here at Eastside. And now, I’m involved in student ministries. This hope that God provided me. It’s not just for me. It’s for everyone. And it’s for you. So today, I leave you with this. For. I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Thank you.

 Well, good morning. Good morning. My name is Tammy Cole. I’ve been attending East Side here for a long time. So long that both of my daughters played basketball and cheered for upward. Way back in the day, we weren’t actually going to church at the time. And they came home from school with those little board basketball invitation cards and said, Hey, can we go play basketball or cheer whatever? And it’s like, I don’t have a clue. We’ll go out and talk to the church staff and see if you can. So anyway, fast forward, they ended up playing upward basketball, and we selected East Side as our home church. I have two girls. I think their picture is going to pop up here. Let’s see. Yeah. Reagan on the left, and Madison there on the right. I’m so proud that both of my daughters attend church here with me. I enjoy serving here at East Side. I have the privilege of serving on the house team. So you probably see me at the door a lot of times when you come in. And I also have the privilege to help coordinate some of our best events and some of our outreach efforts that we do here at East Side. My youngest daughter, Madison, just started serving in kids, so very proud of her for that as well. Well, a confession. When Virgil asked me a while back if today’s date was good for me, I said, Oh, sure, I’d love to come and speak. And I naively assumed, never assume, I naively assumed that I was going to be standing in front of you all talking about maybe tracks for parks coming up or a buzz event. Those topics that I love to talk about. And then I realized it was more about me and sharing my story today, which, as you can imagine, is a little bit more difficult than talking about the great events that Eastside has. As I explained, I’ve attended East Side for a long, long time. I vividly remember sitting here one Sunday morning when Pastor Virgil spoke about the storm, and at the time, I was living what I thought was a pretty, pretty good, maybe perfect life. My great-daughter great has been doing a fantastic job, and things just seem to be going really, really good in my life. So when Virgil was talking about the storm, it seemed kind of distant and kind of remote as I was listening to him. I do recall the message that you were either preparing for a storm or you are right in the middle of the storm. As I was listening, it just kind of felt like something that would maybe happen to other people. I kind of felt empathetic, you know, hearing about the story, but I never really thought about the storm hitting me personally. Things seemed really good. We attended church here as a family. But I have to admit to you that my spiritual life was definitely not where it should be. Life just felt easy and good and kind of coasting along, never, never dreaming that the storm would come along. So fast forward a few years, and not only did the storm hit, but it was a raging hurricane. And I was faced with a divorce that I never dreamed would happen. The boat that I was in felt completely overturned. I felt sad, embarrassed, and sometimes even angry. It felt really odd that my life failed to overturn, but it felt like the rest of the world was just kind of going on as normal. I’m a planner and a fixer, and in this situation, I was not able to plan my way out of it, couldn’t fix my way out of it, or control the situation. I was facing challenges that I just never dreamed that I would face. Sometimes I felt like I had failed at one of the most important things in my life. And, of course, as a parent, you hate to see anything that is hard for your children to go through. I remember being asked as I was going through the divorce several times by, you know, well-intended individuals would come up and say, well, was it a good divorce? And my thoughts were those individuals have obviously never lived through a divorce. I was forced to deal with things that I had never dealt with before. And there were some really bad hard days. But I want to reflect upon.

Jeremiah 29:11

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

It has high meaning to me. I was able to survive the storm and, along with my two daughters, were now accustomed to the new normal. And most importantly, I feel like that, as a person, I was able to really grow tremendously in my faith during the storm. It’s a little bit hard to explain, but after the storm, I feel much stronger and more confident about myself. Then I did before the storm. During the hardest, most difficult days of going through that, I got on my knees and prayed. And I’ve prayed every day since. I’m not sure why these things happened to us here on Earth, but I know that things happen for a reason, and it’s up to us to determine how we’re going to react to the storm when it hits. When I went through the storm, I was so fortunate to be surrounded by a good family and a good life group here at East Side and leaders here at the church that I knew I could depend on. I always felt better after Life group or after talking with people here at church that are believers. I read somewhere recently that we often forget about the two dashes that stand in our lives. The first dash, obviously, is the day we’re born, and the second dash is the day that we’re going to die. And there’s a whole lot of space in between those two dashes. It’s up to us to make the most of that time between the two dashes. We’ll continue to be hit with curveballs we did not anticipate. But make sure that you prepare and that you’re surrounded by people in the boat that care about you and that believe in Jesus Christ as our savior. My struggle helped me to realize the importance of living an all-in life for Jesus Christ. Sharing our time, treasures, and talents helps us more than it does though those that we’re helping. I personally, myself love to serve here at church, whether it’s serving as a host on Sunday morning or helping to coordinate our annual tracks for packs 5k. It really is a gift to be granted the time, treasures, and talents that we’re blessed with, and I hope that each of you will think about how you can share your time, treasures, and talents with our church community. As I get ready to close today, I just want to leave you with a word of encouragement. It’s actually something that Brooke told me shared a couple of months ago when she was sharing her story that morning, and I’d written it down in my program for that day. And as I was kind of preparing for the day, it kind of jumped out at me. So I want to leave you with some words of encouragement. God is bigger and stronger than anything that we are dealing with. Thank you.

Well, good morning, Eastside side. For about the fifth time pastor, the Virgil said I’m your cleanup hitter. We’ll hit the ball as far as we can hit it. How about that? My name is Josh Hale. My wife and my kids. And I’ve been attending East Side for about four years now. This is them in the picture. My wife, Renee, our oldest one, Caitlin. She just graduated from Madison Central High School. And our youngest one, Addison, who’s in here now? She’s getting ready to go to middle school. My wife is in the medical field, and I am a police officer. And some of you may recognize me from standing out in the road in front of Clark Mowers for about seven or eight years. A couple of years back. So I’m sorry if you get in, get in. Didn’t get into the school on time. So I’ve been a police officer about 19 years. And how we got to the church is kind of a story for another day. But ultimately, it revolves around, you know, Carla Perry starting us off on the second Sunday, chasing my wife through the parking lot, yelling Renee. And then and then we ultimately joined her life group, which you’ve heard that word said a lot today. And then we started getting more involved. Eventually, we got more involved through things like serving on serve teams, holding signs, which, I must say, it’s difficult for me to even stand still here, let alone hold a sign and just wave at people. But we started doing that, and then we got involved in Sunday nights and different things like that. I want you as we go through this. I want you to understand that whatever you do with Eastside, never minimize what your job that you’re asked to do. So never minimize anything that they ask you to do. There’s a plan. There’s a purpose for your life. Last summer, Rene and I had the opportunity to take the kids to a passion camp in Florida. And if you really want awkward, then you should be the oldest guy on the trip and have all the youth leaders be your former students. So that’s how that was. I was the oldest guy on the bus, so I got to admit that whenever I first was asked to do this, my testimony was going to be a little bit different than what it is today. But on April 25th, 2022, and if you all are good math people, which I am not, that is two months ago. Yesterday I was at the funeral of Aaron Stidham. He was a police officer who became a trooper good friend of mine. I was in charge of the honor guard detail. And it was my responsibility to make make sure everything went well that day. Long story short, I had during the funeral service a interest from a cerebral hemorrhage, a brain bleed that caused a stroke, and six seizures. There’s going to be. Yep, there it is. So for all my medical people in here, I’m sorry I had to draw an arrow on the thing there, but I got to kind of point to it. So it happened right there in the church pew. And afterward, I told my boss that I felt kind of weird, so I said, I need to go get checked out. And I did whatever a responsible person would do. I made the doctors mad, and I drove to the hospital. So I got in trouble a little bit over that. But immediately, they admitted me into bed 16 of the E.R. I had kept overnight my wife, Caitlin, my mom, and just very few people came. And immediately, we rallied around just very few people. I’m a very public person, but my wife was very wise in her words and said that I should just keep it close right now. And so my family, my life group, and my two bosses, my two supervisors were the only people that really knew anything that was going on. When I did a follow-up with my primary care doctor, he said he asked my wife and I if we were believers, and we said yes. He said, Well, he said, I’m really not supposed to say this, but God kept you here for a reason. And I’m not sure what that is. But he has a plan for you. So throughout all this time, my real test came whenever I got sent to the house. The doctor said that I couldn’t drive for three months, which I know that’s minimal to a lot of people from the things I struggle with. But as a go-getter and a guy that ran on caffeine and chaos as I did, you take my keys away from me, put me at the house, and I’m helpless. So my life group rallied behind me again. They brought us food. They mowed our yard. They took me. They took us to appointments. They took us to get groceries. It was just amazing. And throughout this time, people were reaching out to me and kept saying Psalm 23, verse two. And I grew up in the church, so I’ve read over it a thousand times, it seems like. But it says, He makes me lie down in green pastures. He laid it to me beside Stillwater’s. And I’ve heard it over and over, but verse three said, He restores my soul. Now, you cannot be still if you’re always trying to chase a moving river.

 Like I was. And it was not until I was completely forced to stop by God that I finally realized that my wife and my mom and people in the church and my friends and people at work were like, if you don’t slow down, God is going to stop you. And he did it very quickly. You know, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. And I have to say that no matter what your plans are, but God has a better plan. So I had to learn that. And when I got sent to the house, I started wrestling my own demons. And there was a lot of spiritual warfare going on. And I don’t know if you know about that, but whatever goes on in the physical world has already gone on in the spiritual first. So you’re going through something that you don’t even know you’re going through, and you don’t even know why you’re going through it. But God has a plan. So. He has a plan for me. He has a plan for you. He has a plan for my family. So whatever storm you’re going through, know that God is already going to get you through it. And he already has the plan to navigate you through that. And, you know, don’t minimize what Jesus has for you. And I was minimizing what people said to me about it. I felt weird because I was like, you just want me to stand here and hold this sign and wave at people. I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything. But God had a plan, and it included passion camp, and it included other people and influencing others to just greeting them. Sometimes people are not okay when they come in our doors. We have a saying that says it’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay to stay that way. And so wherever you’re at, God has a purpose for you in his kingdom. You are already enough. Stop trying to be enough. God knows you from before you were born. Whatever you’re going through, God already has it worked out for you. And Jesus has paid your dues on the cross. So get involved in your church. Get involved in the things that Eastside is asking you to do. And no matter what, remember this. But God has a plan for you. Now, the fun part. Now the update. Thursday, I went to the doctor. I went to a neurosurgery specialist that specializes in seizures. I have been cleared very soon to go back to full duty. I drove myself to church this morning. This is the best part. Virgil was behind me in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, so I did what he told us to do. I bought his breakfast. He paid it forward, and he had to pay double. So for the next person behind him. But Eastside, if you are not a part of something here at Eastside, get involved. This is a good home for you. And remember. But God is in control. Thank you.