 So if you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark chapter three. As I mentioned already, we're gonna be looking at verses one through five. Yes, I said that rightly, one through five. We're gonna be looking at those verses. And tonight's message I have entitled, that's a long stretch. That's a long stretch. And hopefully by the end of this evening, you'll know exactly why it was entitled as such. And here's the scene. Jesus, just by way of backdrop, is performing these amazing miracles. People are flocking to him like the swallows to San Juan Capistrana. The people love Jesus. They love hearing him speak. They love being near him. They love watching him. They follow him everywhere. Now the religious leaders, however, weren't too happy with Jesus. They weren't too happy that he was in town because Jesus was leading people away from legalism, which the Pharisees represented, and also he was leading the people away from liberalism, which the Sadducees represented. And for all intents and purposes tonight, we need to understand that legalism adds to God's word. Liberalism takes away from God's word. Both parties here that we're gonna be seeing tonight were not happy with Jesus because he was teaching them about God. He was teaching them how they could have a personal relationship with the almighty God. See, the religious leaders had a problem with Jesus' stance on their rules. As you remember, specifically the Pharisees adding to God's word, and then Jesus would come and say, you don't need to do these extra things. You need to know the Lord and worship him in spirit and in truth. See, these rules that the religious leaders had developed weren't God's rules. They were man's rules. And they had come up with this particular rule that you could not heal on the Sabbath day because that would constitute work, which you were not supposed to be doing on the Sabbath day or the day of rest. In essence, the religious leaders, their aspects of Judaism were weighing down the people. They were weighing down the people. Man's rules were not alleviating people's problems. They were adding to people's problems. And see, that's what happens when you have a works-based religion. You look at every other religion in the world, apart from Christianity, which we say, hey, it's not religion, it's a relationship. Yeah, right on. You guys know all about that. It's not me trying to earn my way to heaven. It's about the Lord saying, hey, you could never make it on your own. And so I'm reaching down to you. This relationship that we have with God is through faith in Jesus. But the religious leaders, and as we see in the world today with works-based religions, you need to earn your way to heaven. Now, this kind of sits well with some of us too, because we like putting our work in. We like being able to earn our way and we feel like we can accomplish something. And if you were to ask anybody out on the street today, how do you get to heaven? What do you think that they would say? Yeah, unanimously it's be a good person. Everybody knows that. But see, the Bible tells us that our good deeds, like filthy rags in the sight of God. And then also, in God's economy, our good deeds don't transfer over to God's righteousness. It would be like, well, how many guys are into sports here? Probably a lot. Baseball, football, basketball, understand. You know, I played basketball growing up in high school and then I got a scholarship and played in college. And let's just say, for instance, I would say, hey, I scored 40 points in this game. How many touchdowns does that equal? You'd be like, I'm sorry, you can't equate how many points you scored in this game to how many touchdowns in a football game. It doesn't work. And so we try, as mankind, to earn our way and say my righteousness will actually earn me some of God's righteousness and it doesn't even compute. It's not even the same league. You can't do that. But see, the religious leaders were saying, hey, do this and do that and do this and do that. And then maybe you'll be good enough to reach heaven. You'll be good enough to get to God. Jesus spoke of this problem in Matthew 23, verses four through seven. He said, the religious leaders, they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and they lay them on men's shoulders. But they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works, they do to be seen by men. People were having to jump through hoops to get to God. Now I used to live in Hawaii. And in Hawaii, they had these trees called kiavi trees. And if you've ever been there, you may have seen them on the shore. But the kiavi tree, from what I understand from living there as well, was it was planted actually by missionaries. Because the Hawaiians were walking around barefoot and you couldn't go to church barefoot. And so if you planted trees that dropped huge thorns on the ground, they would quickly wear shoes and then be pleasing to God and go to church. If you even hear stories of church history in South America, where you couldn't go to church unless you had a white shirt and a black tie. And so there were these people that were coming and saying, I wanna meet with God and I wanna worship and I wanna study the Bible. But they couldn't do that because they weren't dressed appropriately and the religious leaders would turn them away. Sorry, no white shirt, no black tie, no church, no can do. And you'll see that it's not unique just to the time that we're looking at tonight where men try to add to God's word. We know that this is something that breaks Jesus' heart. And I think we need to be reminded tonight that religion apart from the Holy Spirit pushes people away from other people and from God. See if I'm religious but I'm not filled with the Holy Spirit, then my self-righteousness alienates me from other people. Now please don't raise any hands, especially if you're thinking of the person that's sitting next to you. But have you ever known somebody that was holier than thou? And they came across condescending and everything you did they condemned and you just felt like I don't like being around that person because they're just too something. Well it's called self-righteous. It can be self-righteousness where people think that I've accomplished this and I'm way better than you and I can't believe you would make those mistakes and maybe when you arrive and become a Christian like I'm a Christian, you won't make those kind of problems. You know, you won't make those problems for yourself and it alienates people from other people and you find that you probably don't like being around that person. Kind of like, I don't know, I think I'll do something else but more importantly, self-righteousness alienates you from God. I don't need the work of the Lord because I have earned my way. Look how moral I am. I open doors for old ladies and I give money to humanitarian works and we think that somehow in this world that humanitarian relief actually is a replacement for personal salvation through faith in Jesus. In Galatians 2.16 it says, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. Now yes, by way of long introduction, we're wrapping this up but when I am self-righteous, I create a nice little spot for myself. The religious leaders created a place of authority for themselves, a place of admiration from man. You know, I become now a role model on how you can too earn your way to heaven. Yet, when someone comes around that has a firm grasp of God's word on what God's word says, me and my self-righteousness can feel threatened because my position is wrapped up in my rules and rituals in addition to God's word. We know this to be true for the Pharisees here with Jesus in John 11.48. They said, if we let Jesus alone like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and they'll take away both our place and nation. That's the heart. How can Jesus be a threat to religion? Well, religion apart from the Holy Spirit alienates people from God and Jesus came and said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man gets to the Father but through me. So Jesus is that line of demarcation, so to speak, that separates righteousness through faith in Jesus from self-righteous hypocrisy. It's more than just appearances. It's more than what we look like to other people. However, though that is the background to our passage, our story isn't gonna be about religious leaders but a man that had a withered hand. I believe that there are many of us here this evening that will be able to relate to this man's situation. I know that there are those of you here today that are struggling. You're having your faith tested. Maybe you're facing impossible odds or insurmountable problems but tonight we're gonna watch and see what Jesus will do. And so if you're taking notes tonight, I just have three points the point number one is this, two people, two people. Just remember that, two people. Verse one, Mark chapter three, it says, and he, referring to Jesus, entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a withered hand. Now you may have heard this story before but I want you to mark down a couple things. These are the two main characters in our story. Jesus and the man with the withered hand. These are also the two main characters in your story, you and Jesus. See, it doesn't matter who's watching from the outside. It doesn't really matter what other people think because when it comes down to it in real time and in real life, it's you and Jesus. Friends are gone, families are gone, church is gone, whatever it comes down to you and Jesus. And it says that Jesus entered the synagogue again. It was a regular practice of Jesus to enter the house of worship and prayer. It's not like some of us that are at church only on Christmas and Easter only. You know, I actually looked this up in the Urban Dictionary. It says that Christians that go to church only on Easter and on Christmas aren't called Christians. They're called Christers, Christers. And so I thought, wow, this is something different. It's not a Christer, not a Christmas and Easter goer but this is somebody that worshiped every single day. This was Jesus entering the synagogue again and a man was there with a withered hand. Now, were there other people in the synagogue at this time? Yeah, absolutely. Were the Pharisees there? Absolutely. The scribes were there, the Sadducees were there, other worshipers were there as well. Yet sometimes people think that they can get lost in the crowd. Sometimes people think that they can escape the perfect knowledge of God by hiding themselves in a mass of people. Maybe even here tonight, you're one of those people that you come and you don't say anything and you're sitting there and maybe you smile at the ushers as you come in and you sit down and you know, Jared asks, hey, introduce yourself to somebody before you sit down and you smile, hey, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. But inside, you're dealing with the pain and you're dealing with the stress and you're dealing with whatever it is that you're dealing with and you're having a hard time. You think, well, I'll just get lost in the crowd. God knows exactly what's going on in your life. He knows every detail of who you are. He knows if you're putting on a facade, if you're pretending to be somebody that you're not. Mistakily, people think that God isn't interested in them personally. But there's a couple of things that I like to point out in this first verse. Number one is the Lord works in the place of worship. In the place of worship. There's a dynamic power in the life of the believer who's worshiping God. You're worshiping the Lord and you're lifting up your voice even if you don't feel like it, even if you sound like a yodeler when you sing. You know, you're still there and you're just glad that the volume's up because they can't hear you when you're singing and it's great, works out and it's not only good for you but for the person next to you as well but you're worshiping. But so often, our trials rob us of our joy. We lose it real quick. How quickly we can rejoice when something's going good and how quickly it goes when something's going not so good. And our enemy, Satan, is just waiting for us to curse God and die. And there's not a better example of worshiping God through devastation than Job and his whole experience is dedicated in that book of his. Being in the place of worship and maybe some of you here tonight didn't feel like coming to church and you're like, I don't really feel like it. I've had a long day. It's been a long week already. I'm only halfway in and you didn't feel like it but you're here tonight. You've drawn near to the Lord. You've given of your time. You were there as we're worshiping the Lord and we're lifting up our voices and we're turning our attention to God and you maybe didn't feel like it when you were coming in here tonight. Maybe you found that your heart softened a little bit after the worship time and you realized that I need to turn my attention to the Lord. I need to be reminded of how great God is. I'm so focused on myself and my own problems but now I'm worshiping the Lord and my focus is off myself and now it's on the Lord. And so I'm not gonna fall into the category of the number one cause of depression which is self-focus because I'm focusing on the Lord. And now I'm worshiping him and being in the place of worship, that place of drawing near to God is the best place for us to be especially when dealing with difficulty and dealing with trials and problems. Because I'm telling you right now if you're going through a hard time the last place that your enemy, Satan would want you would be in the house of worship with other people worshiping the Lord. So we see that the Lord works in the place of worship and secondly, under this first point which is two people, the Lord works in the place of prayer. Prayer is such an underused powerful tool that we have as Christians and unfortunately we only use it as a last resort often. I've tried every single thing under the sun known to man and it's not working. I bet I better start praying now and we wait till the end and we'll get out ahead of the Lord and then we'll say, oh man, I better try to retroactivate this prayer thing and try to work my way back when we should have just taken time to pray in the first place. Now for those of you that may know me a little bit and maybe even from sharing here on a Wednesday night that I have a beautiful little girl named Ava who was born with special needs and she's six years old, beautiful little girl. I was blessed also to have a son who's eight and his name's Hudson and our little daughter Ava and especially with my church family have been pretty transparent with some of the challenges as a family that we've gone through. And recently I had felt that the Lord was calling me to pray and to fast for my daughter Ava. Now Ava, to this day doctors don't know what's the matter with her. Every single scan known to man and tests that could be run shows that on paper she's absolutely normal. If you look at her you would just think, oh that's a pretty little girl and you couldn't tell that she had any special needs but she can't speak and she's just learning to really walk well now and strong. And so we have battled with a lot of things, a lot of things where the doctor said that she was gonna die at one and just the emotional roller coaster of all these different experiences that we had trying to figure out why she was in so much pain all the time and how come she was crying all the time and how come we couldn't help her and how debilitating that can be especially as a father, not being able to help this baby girl and how hard that is and maybe some of you can relate but I felt like the Lord was calling me to pray and to fast for Ava. And fasting as you know, it means to go without food, it means don't eat. It's not like the spiritually inclined child that tells his parents, you know mom and dad, I've decided to give up vegetables and seek the Lord. You know that's not exactly what we're talking about here. We have some examples of fasting in the Bible but just so we're all on the same page we replace our physical meal with a spiritual meal and so instead of eating dinner, you know where you'd feed your body physically you take that time to pray and you take that time to read the word of God and to draw near to the Lord. And so Ruth and I, my wife, we made this list and it was on the back of an old envelope that had been opened and not in order of importance but I'm just gonna share five of these things that we put down, which one was her speech that she would just be able to talk. I mean, could you imagine how frustrating it is to be six years old and not be able to tell people what you're trying to communicate. Like I want this, I don't want that or you know, whatever it may be, I have a sore throat, I have a tummy ache. So we prayed just really simply for her speech. Secondly, we put down interaction with other kids that she'd be able to kind of connect with other children. Thirdly, we put eye contact. Just so, and she'll look you in the eyes but to really like have the good solid eye contact when you're looking at her. Fourthly, we put attention just to be able to maintain attention when you're talking or when she's doing something. And then fifth was fine motor skills. And so for a couple of days, I was pouring out my heart before the Lord and it was for my daughter Ava. I told Ruth, I said, Ruth, I really feel like I need to pray and fast for my daughter. And this is something that had been on my heart for some time and I had been putting it off. And then I had people randomly come up to me and just say, hey, I don't know what this means but I felt like the Lord was telling me that I was to tell you that you need to pray and fast for your daughter. And they didn't know that I was thinking about this, praying about this, but I decided we need to do this. And so we started praying and I started praying and fasting for Ava. And the night of the second day, the Holy Spirit completely ministered to me. You know, so I went from those times of just, you know, and I know I'm being very honest with you about these things, but for me, this was very hard. It was hard for my wife. It's been hard for our family of just praying to God, saying, Lord, I'm reading these things in the Bible, how you heal people's children. Lord, you heal gyros, you know, the man that had his son was epileptic and he begs Jesus, will you please heal my son? Will you please touch him and heal him? You know, and then Jesus will say, well, do you believe? And then the father would cry out, Lord, help my unbelief. Like, that's me. Lord, help my unbelief. Help me, Lord. And every meal, just praying, just taking that time just to be spiritually fed and crying out before the Lord. But like I was saying, on the night of the second day, the Holy Spirit ministered to me completely. I can't even adequately describe to you what happened, but I'll try a little bit. And I wrote this down and I'll read it to you because sometimes it's hard for me to talk about this. But it was as if the Lord gave me a measure of faith and that I was praying in such a way that the things I was praying for were based upon the things I was asking for had already happened. Out of nowhere, instead of praying for the surface level, I felt that the Lord took me to a deeper place. Remember, just on that list, on the back of that envelope was just speech. And instead of praying for speech, it was this. Lord, fill Ava's mouth with the words to speak, words that bring you glory and sing your praise. And she can't even speak yet. The interaction, I wrote this down. May Ava interact with others in a loving and kind way that she would be nice to people and befriend everyone. And then for her eye contact, instead of just saying, Lord, please help her eye contact, we were praying for better eye contact, but it was this, that her eye contact would be such that others see the love of Jesus in her eyes as she speaks. For the attention that we prayed for, that she would be amazingly attentive to others' needs and have empathy, and that she would be attentive to the Holy Spirit. And then finally, for the motor skills to be able to pinch things and use her pinky, I mean, her pointer finger and her thumb. It was like, Lord bless her as she uses her hands to play string instruments in the piano. I mean, I don't even know what I was praying. It was the Lord changed my life through this entire thing. And I was praying for these certain things that I felt the Lord had given me that were based upon, yeah, she'll already be able to speak, and that's why we're praying that the Lord would fill her mouth with words that praise his name. And that everything that I was praying for, I felt like the Lord was saying these surface level things are already accomplished, and the Lord is gonna do a great work. I can't tell you what exactly happened that night, but it ministered to me and Ruth in such a powerful way that it confirmed all the miraculous things that he has shown us and even the things that we've doubted. I think it was either the last time I was here or a couple of times ago where I told you we went to Ikea and my daughter of all the people that she could have grabbed, hundreds of people walking by and she grabs the leading pediatric physician who was visiting from San Diego and he does a full work up right there in Ikea and asks her all these things and she just grabbed the guy by the shirt and it was worse too because it was tucked in and she just yanked him. And he come to find out he's this leading pediatrician you're thinking how in the world of all the people that my daughter could grab, she grabs the pediatrician. I mean, the Lord had done so many miraculous things and so many things up into this point where you just are going, I don't understand how this is even possible but yet then how quickly after the Lord shows you something miraculous do you begin to doubt because you don't see it yet. You don't see it yet. You don't understand how it can happen. I'm telling you, the Lord is gonna do something so radical in your lives that you're going to be absolutely blown away but you have to wait for it. The Lord has shown you things in his word. He has brought people out of the blue supposedly to encourage you and to give you something that they felt was from the Lord. And obviously you would test that against what God's word says. So there they say, hey, you know, I have a word from the Lord, you know, and it's this passage in the Gospels where Judas went out and hung himself and you're like, I don't think that's from the Lord. But when you pray and the Holy Spirit ministers to you it changes your perspective on everything which leads us to our second point, which is two perspectives. Remember point number one was two people because when it's all said and done, it's you and Jesus. That's it. It's not even you, Jesus and your spouse. It's you and Jesus. It's not you, Jesus and your kids. No, it's you and Jesus. It's not you, Jesus and your friends. No, it's you and Jesus. You two are the two main people in your story. So we see now point number two is two perspectives. And so it says in verse two that they watched Jesus closely whether he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. They might accuse him. So here are the two perspectives when it comes to God at work. Perspective number one is this, the perspective of failure. This perspective doesn't believe that God can do anything to change the situation of the person or the person in the situation. They don't believe that that can happen. Let me say that again. This perspective of failure comes from a standpoint where someone believes that God cannot change the situation of the person or the person in the situation. They come at the issue from a place of cynicism, criticism and doubt. And they're really looking for God to not come through. The religious leaders were as some are of Jesus today, scrutinizing, critiquing, looking for a way to disqualify Jesus. Yet these men would look and look and look and look and look and never find one. I mean, how often have we prayed for something and we said something along these lines? Maybe somebody's sick. Maybe they're really sick. And you're like, Lord, I know that you can do all things and we know that you can heal this person right now. And in the back of your mind, you're thinking, that's a long shot. Come on, be honest with yourself. I've done that. I'm a pastor. We've all done that. Lord, I know that you can do this, but you know, oh man, that's gonna be a long stretch. That's a long, long shot. See, there are people coming from this perspective of failure that they consciously and even subconsciously are looking to accuse God, looking to accuse God of failure. Aha, another thing that God's let me down in. They hope really and even on the extreme to disprove God's existence. And in the least, they could prove that he's unloving and unconcerned. And a lot of our atheists fall in that category. And if you ever just as a side note, this obviously is not what our message is about tonight, but if you ever come in contact with somebody that says they're an atheist, ask them one simple question and 99.9% of the time, you'll have an open door to share the gospel. You ready for this? When did you stop believing in God? Ask them that question. Every single time I've ever met an atheist and they said, it's, when did you stop believing in God? And they'll go back to some point in their life where they used to believe in God and something didn't turn out the way that they thought it should have turned out. Just file that one away. But there are people that are looking to accuse Jesus and hope to disprove him and even disqualify him as God. Ironically, the religious leaders knew that Jesus had the power to heal this man because they had seen him do other things before. They even knew that he would heal this man, yet this knowledge didn't bring them to put their faith in him. They would attempt to use this double virtue, if you will, of Jesus being willing and able to bring an accusation against him. So you have the perspective of failure. The second perspective is this, the perspective of faith. This perspective believes that God can do anything to change the situation of the person or the person in the situation. They come at any issue from the place of confidence, optimism and faith. They're looking for God to come through. Oh man, I don't know what God's gonna do, but it's gonna be awesome. This is so exciting. Right now, it's the 11th hour. What is God gonna do? Great things he's gonna do. We know that he's gonna do it. See, this position believes without seeing as if it's already accomplished. This is the perspective of faith. I don't see it, I don't understand it, but I know God is going to do it. See, this faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the follower of Jesus. In Hebrews 11 verse one it says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We can even add to this as well, obviously not to the authority of the scriptures just by way of interpretation and by way of application, that faith is the lens through which we see the facts of God's promises before they're yet in existence. So in Hebrews where it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In the Greek language that word for evidence is proof. I mean, if somebody asks where's the evidence or show me the proof. Faith says it hasn't happened yet, but God promised it and that settled it. That's what faith is. The two people, it's you and Jesus. What about them? They're looking at me. No, it's not about them. It's about you and Jesus. What are you going through in your life tonight where it really, if you get all the way down to the base of all things and it's strip away the blaming, strip away the thoughts that you think that you have to live the rest of your life this way, jaded, scarred, messed up, remove all those things that are causing you to doubt and see that it's you and Jesus. It's you and him. Stop blaming other people. Stop pointing the other finger. Stop over analyzing it. Just say, all right, there's two people in my story. It's me and Jesus. There's two people. The Lord works in the place of worship. The Lord works in the place of prayer. In this group of me and Jesus, there's two perspectives. Do I have the perspective of failure or do I have this perspective of faith? And that leads us actually to point number three in our final point this evening, two faiths. Now, I'm not talking about two separate sets of belief systems. I'm referring to two forms of faith. Which are these? Passive and active faith. Passive and active faith. Let's look at the first one, passive faith. Passive faith accepts the word of God as true, but never moves. Never moves. You may believe that God can do it, but won't do it. And that's what I said. I think a lot of times we see that happen in our prayers. Lord, I know that you can do all things, but man, I don't know about this one. What are the chances of that? Look at verse three. And Jesus said to the man who had a withered hand, step forward. And then he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill, but they kept silent. Now, if you were here, I mean, as this whole drama is unfolding between the religious leaders and Jesus, I had to ask myself this question when I was reading this. What must have been going through the mind of the man with the withered hand? He knows the religious leaders are trying to trap him. He's like the bait, if you will, for Jesus to do something good for they can find something to accuse him by. Maybe we'd ask the question, well, what did Jesus want to do? What did the man with the withered hand want to happen? Many years ago, my wife Ruth, and I actually had my father-in-law visiting from Cardiff, Wales tonight, and he's the founding pastor of Calvary Chapel Cardiff in the UK. And his daughter is my wife and married into a great family. I got another brother who's actually watching online right now who's the pastor of Calvary Chapel Oxford in England, and he's visiting with some of his family. But their baby little sister, Ruth, had an episode where her hand retracted as if it were withered. Now, she used to be a barista at Starbucks and worked, you know, you need your hands in order to make those lattes and all those things that we love so much, and no doctor could figure out why she was having these issues, and she was very, very concerned, like I think any of us would be, if one day we woke up and our hand was shrunken up like this and we didn't know why. And she grabbed a devotional called Streams in the Desert, which maybe some of you have heard, and it was the story of the man with the withered hand. And the Lord encouraged her through that story that she needed to trust in God and to believe. And very short thereafter, the Lord healed her hand and she hasn't had a problem with it ever since. That's called active faith, active faith. Passive faith believes that God can do it, but won't do it. Passive faith believes in God's word, but never acts on it, never moves. Active faith accepts the word of God as true and moves on it. I know this is what God's word says, and I'm gonna do it. You believe that God can do it and will do it. And in our prayers, God, I believe that you can do even this. And the great commentator, by the name of Matthew Henry, said and I quote, active faith gives thanks for a promise, even though it is not yet performed, knowing that God's contracts are as good as cash. End of quote. I'm praising the Lord and saying thank you for something that I believe God has promised me before it's even happened yet, active faith. And in verse five, it says, and when he had looked around, Jesus looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. Man, that's a long stretch. The man with the withered hand must have thought. That's a long stretch. Jesus just said, stretch out your hand. So might I ask you tonight for you to think about this question. What is it in your life that seems like a long stretch for God with you? I feel like I just saw a whole bunch of little light bulbs turn on. I'm like, the Holy Spirit moves through His word. Is it your marriage? Is it your finances? Is it your health? Is it your job? Is it your addiction? What is it? What is it? What is the thing in your life that you're questioning God's faithfulness? What's the thing in your life that you're thinking, oh man, that's a long shot? That's a long stretch. Whoa. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and his hand was restored as whole as the other. So often we're paralyzed by our paralysis, so to speak, our issue, our thing that we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't let anybody see that. I don't even think about that. I don't even wanna acknowledge that that even exists. I'm in denial actually right now. I don't wanna talk about it. No, no, no, no, no. What's the very thing that the Lord would even be saying to you tonight? Stretch this out to me. Lord, I can't stretch my hand out. It's impossible. Lord, why are you asking me to do something that's impossible for me to do? Well, have you ever noticed that God does ask you to do things that are impossible for you to do? We see it in the scriptures all the time. You might think, well, where? Well, Jesus, you know, when the multitude needed foodie, Jesus told his disciples, you give him something to eat. Man, must their eyes have bugged out. How in the world were they gonna feed thousands of people? Why would Jesus furthermore ask his disciples to do something that was impossible? What I think we need to understand tonight is the church is this, is that God does call us to do things that are absolutely impossible. They're impossible to do without him. That's it. It's not complicated. It is impossible for you to do. It is impossible for you to fix it. It is impossible for you to stretch out your hand. That's where faith comes in. Passive faith would be like, oh, like the man by the pool. Ah, man, I wish that somebody could put me in the pool that I could be healed. Jesus just asked him, do you wanna be healed? Oh, these start rattling off excuses. I have no one to lift me up and put me in the pool so that I can be healed. No, Jesus just asked you, do you want to be healed? And so often we're like, these are all the reasons why God can't heal me. These are all the reasons why God can't help me. These are all of the reasons. And then what we end up doing is we project our limitations upon God. And we think that God is confined by our sense of a big problem or a little problem, as if it's more difficult for God to heal cancer than to heal the little cold. God's not in our bubble. He's not. He commands the weak to be strong, the inactive to become active, the sinful to become pure, the weak to put forth power. See, every command that God gives, he gives equal power to accomplish the command. If God's telling you to do something, know that he's gonna meet you, but you're gonna have to stretch out. You're gonna have to do the thing that you think is impossible. Some of you here tonight are like the man with a withered hand and you need to present your area of need to Jesus. You need to let him cleanse you and heal you and restore you and strengthen you. I'm telling you right now, and I'm going through this every single day with my wife and my son and my daughter, stretching out areas in your life that are impossible, that are painful, that you don't know what to do with, stretching those areas out to the Lord and asking him for grace. And as the father cried out for his son, Lord increase my faith. You know, it's been said that you never pray for the Lord to increase your faith. That is a rookie move. Why? Because the Lord's gonna allow you to go through things that make you trust in him. That's why you never pray that. And if you were a veteran Christian, you would know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't pray for faith, brother, don't do it. We need to have active faith, not passive faith. I think most of us actually scratch most, all of us in some ways are in passive faith. Myself included. I'm not exempt from what God's word says. I can sit right next to you right now and be like, that's right, that's what God's word says. Some people think that pastors have perfect lives and never have problems and don't know how to relate to people, but let me tell you, it's not the truth at all. They're just normal people. They're normal people. Pastors need the truth of God's word, just as the people that come to the church need God's word. Like to close with this poem tonight, it says this. Passive faith, but praises in the light when the sun does shine. Active faith will praise in the darkest night, which faith is thine? Where are you at? Hey man, I don't like you talking to me personally like that. Oh, generally, where are you at? And if you feel like it's personal, that's because the Holy Spirit's speaking to you right now. This is for you. Like the Holy Spirit just pointed right at you and you're like, that's for that guy, back there. So remember, in your story, there's two people. There might be a lot of people around, but it's you and Jesus. And then there's what? Two perspectives, right? The perspective of failure or the perspective of faith. And remember, finally, there's two faiths. Passive faith and active faith. Which one's yours?