 Alright, so if you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark chapter 8. This is going to be maybe a familiar passage for some of you, for others it might be new, but either way we're going to look at the living Word of God. In Mark chapter 8 verse 1, it says in those days the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him. Now we'll stop just right there for a second. I can only imagine the look on the disciples' faces when Jesus called them over to him again. And you might ask, well, what do you mean? Well, sometimes the Lord will allow us to be in situations that really stretch our faith. And not only do they really stretch our faith, they extremely test our character and we can be revisited by those same type of situations. And this evening's text is one of those types of scenarios. For those of you that have studied the Gospel of Mark, you remember back in chapter 6 when there was a quote-unquote large crowd that needed food, and I'll read it. It's Mark 6 verse 34. If you like, you can turn back there. It says in Jesus when he came out, he saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them because they were like sheep, not having a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things. And when the day was now far spent, verse 35, Mark 6, his disciples came to him and said, this is a deserted place and already the hour is late. Send them away that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread for they have nothing to eat. And then here's the key in Mark 6, verse 37. But Jesus answered them and said, you give them something to eat. Now let me ask you this question. Have, and you don't need to raise your hand, just more for you to think about. Have you ever felt like you've been in a situation where you were way in over your head? Maybe for you as a guy, you're dating this girl and she's just out of your league. I mean, she's beautiful and you're not. And she loves Jesus and she's a millionaire and she's a doctor and she likes Lord of the Rings. And she apparently likes you for some reason. I mean, does that mean that there's something wrong with her? I don't know. That's probably yet to be determined. But how about financially? The mortgage for your house or sending your kids to college or even to private elementary schools these days or credit card day. Maybe you've been overwhelmed by school or by work. You know, this class or those of you that are students, this class is just over my head. This job is too demanding. What they're telling me to do is impossible. Maybe you've been challenged physically with an illness or a handicap where you're hindered or incapacitated in some manner. Maybe you've been battling substance abuse, drugs, alcohol or some other addiction. Maybe you're not only here, but maybe you're watching online and you're coming off God telling you to do something that you feel is absolutely impossible. You feel that God's calling you to do something that's beyond your own ability. Where you maybe have even cried out to God and said, there is no way in this world that I can do that. See, Jesus asked his disciples to do something that was beyond their ability to do. He says, you give them something to eat. They just said, we're in a deserted place. Send these guys away so they can go get some food. And Jesus says, you give them some food. You give them some food. That's when you say, this is crazy. I can't do this. This is impossible for anybody to do. Oh, right there. You said it. You said it's absolutely impossible for you to do. That's absolutely true. It's absolutely impossible for you to do in your own abilities. And see, Jesus knew it was impossible for the disciples to feed the multitudes back in Mark chapter six, but nonetheless, he still said, you give them something to eat. So Jesus commanded, Jesus called his disciples to do something, listen to this, that was absolutely impossible for them to do without him. Even as tonight, you might have shown up here on the night before Thanksgiving and thinking, man, this is crazy. What's going on with my life or my family or any of the things that I mentioned already. And you might feel so stretched that you're at the end of your rope. You're at the edge of the cliff. You don't know where to go, what to do, or how it's going to work out. And you say it is absolutely impossible for me to do. Well, then let's add the addendum at the end where it is absolutely, yes, impossible for you to do without Jesus Christ. It's the same with us today. In 2nd Corinthians three, verse five, it says not that we are sufficient of ourselves as to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. So many times, even as Christians, we'll find ourselves saying, yes, Lord, I know you've done it before, but I don't know if you'll be able to come through for me again. Lord, I know you did it last time, but this time it's way different. Lord, I know you provided last time, but what about now? And so we'll see in Mark eight how the disciples are revisited by a very familiar and formidable situation, which leads us now to verse one, Mark chapter eight. It says in those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat. Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the multitude because they have now continued with me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, then they will faint on the way for some of them have come from afar. Jesus was concerned with the people. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. He was moved with compassion. Compassion really can be defined as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune. But not only that, that feeling is accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate that suffering. Now compassion wasn't something that the people were accustomed to in that day, because they were definitely not going to find compassion from the Roman government. Even the own religious leaders saw the people as a means for their own gain. Yet Jesus had compassion, but had compassion for the multitude, which was comprised of just normal people, normal people. Now we don't have a whole lot of normal people in Orange County. I don't know about you guys out here. But the everyday person, same struggles, family, work, job, etc. Jesus isn't like some people today that have ulterior selfish motives for helping people. You know, I really have compassion on the good looking people. It must be so hard for them. I want to minister to those people. I want to minister to the celebrities, you know, the wealthy, the famous, the powerful. I want to minister to those type of people. And those are the people that seek to associate themselves with particular individuals so that they can profit from it. Jesus wasn't like that. Jesus isn't like that. And 1 Peter 5, verse 7, it says, Cast all your care upon Him for He cares for you. And in Matthew 6, 8, it says, For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. Before you even ask God knows. Now prayer is a very interesting thing. I mean, it's our direct connection to God, where we can open our mouths and we can even in our hearts and our minds pray to the God of the universe. But so often we pray for things in such a selfish way. You know, I remember at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, we used to have a prayer line. I think you guys have one here as well. But people would call up and they would get prayer. And one particular, I think it was a morning, I was working the prayer line and it was, Oh, good morning. This is Calvary Chapel prayer line. How can I pray for you? And this girl calls and she says, You know, I am in this relationship with this guy, my boyfriend. And would you just pray that everything works out with him and that, you know, our relationship really matures and grows. And, you know, eventually we get married. And I said, okay. And so I jotted, you know, jotted her name down here and we started to pray. And I said, dear Lord, I just pray for this person so and so on for this relationship that she has with this other guy here. And Lord, I just pray for your will to be done in their relationship. And as I'm praying, she completely interrupts me. And she says, I didn't ask you to pray for God's will. I asked you to pray that we would get together and stay together and grow and mature in our relationship. And I said, excuse me? I said, are you serious? I said, there's no way in the world that I'm going to change my prayer. And actually upon hearing what you just said, I'm going to pray that your boyfriend breaks up with you and that he has nothing to do with you ever. Actually, I didn't say that. I felt like saying that. But we'll pray for things and we'll not be seeking the heart of the Lord. And like, Lord, what's your will for me? And what am I supposed to learn? And what am I supposed to, you know, get from this? As was mentioned already too, two years ago, so I had my last Monday night service at Calvary Coastal Mason in December of 2013. January of 2014, we planted a church called Vision City Church. It's a Calvary Chapel network church. And for that first year of ministry, I don't have any other way to really explain it, but as a pastor, I absolutely got my clock cleaned. And I seriously had experienced some of the most difficult things I've ever experienced in my life. Now, I'm married. I've been married for eight years. I have two little children, one son, who's Hudson, seven, and a daughter, Eva, who's five. And as we were planting our church, I don't know if any of you guys might be able to relate to this, but you can just think about it as I share. The spiritual attack was so intense that first year that it was so clearly starting and so clearly, you know, stomping and seguing into the next thing that actually delineated it on a timeline. And for the first four months, I battled with severe anxiety. Now, some people battle with that all the time and my heart goes out to you because I've never struggled with that before. And I didn't understand, you know, you leave a secure place such as what was Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and then you're out there and you don't know how you're going to pay for things. You don't know how you're going to take care of your family and then you don't know how to take care of the church. You don't know how you're going to pay these bills and all this kind of stuff. And I had battled with that for seriously, intensely. Four months out of that first year was just bam. And that segwayed right into a fear of failure where, you know, it's going to fail, it's going to flop, your church, you know, people aren't going to come or whatever. And then that segwayed into a complete demoralization where, you know, anything that you thought you had swag about or, you know, you were prideful about, you know, or that you thought you were good at was all gone. Where I literally felt like I was the worst husband, the worst father, the worst man, the worst leader, the worst pastor, the worst everything. And anything that you thought that you could feel good about yourself was completely shattered. And finally, the night before our first service of 2015, I had told my wife Ruth and I said, I have no idea what's going on with me. I'll wake up with this feeling and I'll go to bed with it and it doesn't go away. And I wasn't an unrepentant, habitual sin. I wasn't doing these terrible things or whatever, you know, you think, well, God's judging. I was like, I had no idea what was going on. And finally, it was 10 o'clock at night. And I told Ruth, I said, sweetie, I got to just go for a drive, clear my head, pray, because I don't even know how I'm going to teach our service tomorrow. And I called a friend of mine who was always outside of my circle like a mentor. And I just told him, I said, this is what I've been dealing with these last 12 months. And I don't know what to do. And I couldn't even speak. Like I couldn't even talk. And he just said this, he was a man of few words, but what he told me was this. He said, the Lord is going to continue to allow these things to happen in your life until he has his perfect work accomplished in you. And at that very moment, it was literally like there was a gorilla off my back that instantaneously, I was free because I felt like God showed me that this wasn't judgmental. This wasn't something that, you know, you were paying the price for whatever. The Lord was actually using these things that would in the flesh cause anxiety, in the flesh cause fear, and in the flesh just cause this demoralization. And I looked back on that 12 month period and I thought, anxiety, how many times have I taught from the pulpit? The Lord's your provider. He takes care of you. How many times when I was battling with the fear of failure have I said, the Lord hasn't given you a spirit of fear, but of love and power and of a sound mind? Fear not, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. Perfect love casts away all fear. I learned God hasn't brought me that far to let me fail. And then the demoralization aspect where you think that your self worth or prides based on something that can be taken away, it's like we really truly, I learned my identities in Christ regardless of what kind of leader or pastor or father or man that I am. And hopefully we'd strive to be holy as the Lord is holy and to be a good example and to do our best with what God has given us. But our identity needs to be in Jesus. And we need to know that tonight, if you're hurting or struggling or strained or whatever it might be, that the Lord is going to allow these things to happen in your life until he has his perfect work accomplished in you. And first Peter 5.7 again, cast all your care upon him for he cares for you. And your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. And verse 4 Mark 8 says, Then his disciples answered him, How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness? You just remember back to Mark 6, Jesus did this miraculous event and fed all these people. And then they're like, Oh, how are we going to do it again? Lord, how are you going to do it again? Lord, I don't know about this time. And the word wilderness there and the Greek literally means an uninhabited region or wasteland. I mean, back in the day, you weren't going to go to 7-Eleven and you want to find one anywhere. I mean, this is like way worse than even that. You're out in the boonies and there is nowhere to get food. It says, How can one satisfy these people? Listen to that question again. How can one satisfy these people with bread here in this wasteland? The world is a wasteland when it comes to satisfaction. How can Jesus satisfy people's hunger when there's nothing in this world that can satisfy them? I mean, are you here dissatisfied with what the world has been feeding you? Maybe you've been eating it. See, we as human beings will feed on the things that bring some sort of fulfillment. But those things, quote, are temporal at best. You know, I thought I'd be satisfied if I got that job or ran my own business or dated or married that person or own that home or that boat or that car or those clothes or ate at that restaurant or stayed at that resort or went on that cruise or had enough drugs or big enough parties et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And though we may have fond memories of certain events in our lives, the fulfillment doesn't last. It's temporal. There has to be something more out there. You know how frustrating it is for me when I walk into Costco? I don't know about you if you ever get like this. I love the TV section. There are any other guys that like the TV section at Costco? Yeah, I don't know why. I mean, I don't need a TV, but I'm always telling my wife, hey, I'm going to go look at the TVs. And I just go right there. And they're always right by the entrance too, you know? And so she'll go off and I'll be like, hey, I'll catch up with you at the, you know, whatever aisle that is over there. I'll see you in a minute. You know, and you get this TV and, man, it's great and it's clear. You know, it has 120 megahertz refresh rate. It's clean. And then like the next week, they get something bigger. And then the problem is, is that you get your 55 inch TV home and then you go back to Costco the next week and then they have like a 90 inch. And you know what those dirty guys do? You ever see them like subframe the 55 inch inside the 90 inch? And it's like this little red tiny box. It says, yeah, that Pee Wee little frame is yours that you just brought home. And now look at this one. You know, it's on to something new. You know, people get the iPhone 5s right before the 6 comes out or they get the 6 right before the 6s comes out. You know, I should have got the 6 plus. You know, I just got this processor on my computer and then the one that doubled the speed comes out next. You know, it's amazing how Apple does it. You know, we got the iPad Air, which was a good size, but then we shrink it and we go down to the iPad Mini. And then all of a sudden you got the iPad Pro that's like carrying a 32 inch TV screen around with you and you're like, this is what you want now. First it was small and now it's large. There's always something new. You know, it's like, I'm so 3008 and you're so 2000 and late. It's like Fergie Ferd said back in the day. And so we'll strive and we'll work and seek to obtain something that we hope to derive some level of fulfillment, satisfaction, or pleasure from. Though ultimately eventually it leaves us hungry for something more. And it's in every sphere of life. That's why Jesus said in John 6, 27, do not labor for the food which perishes but for the food which endures to everlasting life. Which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has set his seal on him. Don't strive for things that don't last because there is a hunger that goes deeper than your stomach. And in light of tomorrow's festivities we wonder what could that be? I don't know. But there is a hunger in your soul and nothing physical can fill it. Jesus said in John 6, 35, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst. To have the insatiable thirst inside quench, that hunger filled, it can only be through mama's stuffing. No, it's through Jesus Christ. That's it. That's it. And you guys know that I'm speaking the truth because we all understand the realities of life. And so verse 5, Mark 8 as we continue on, he asked them, how many loaves do you have? And they said seven. So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground and he took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before them. Then they set before the multitude the fish. And they also had, excuse me, the bread and they also had a few small fish, verse 7, and having blessed them he said to them also, he set them also before them. Verse 8, So they ate and were filled and took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. That word basket is the same basket, word for basket used in Acts 925, which would be large enough to put a person in, like a big old basket. Like the basket that Paul was in as he went over the side of the wall so you could fit a person inside of it. The word for baskets in Mark 6 was a satchel, like a little carrying bag. So we see that the Lord does this work again but then blesses it even more. And it says that those who had eaten were about 4,000 and he sent them away. So here's the multitude of people who have been following Jesus for three days. And they're a prime example of God's promise, God's promise in effect in Jesus. And he said it in Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 30, he said, Now if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you or you of little faith? Therefore do not worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. I mean when you think about bare necessities, it's like food and clothing, shelter. But Jesus said, Matthew 6, 33, he said, But you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things shall be added unto you. And so after Jesus sent the multitude away, it says in verse 10, immediately got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha. In verse 11, then the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, testing him. You know Jesus wasn't a performer doing magic tricks and testing literally means tempting. And Jesus didn't use his power to put on a show. He used his power to help those who were in need. In verse 12, it says, But he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation. And then he left them and getting into the boat again, departed to the other side. Now we know that blessed are those who believe without seeing. And being people, it's like, Hey, I want to see it. I want to touch it. Show me the proof. Show me how it's going to happen. Because right now I don't see how anything is going to make this situation better. I don't know what God could even do. This is such a tangled web of a situation. I don't know how God's going to work it out. Now I had mentioned to you that I have two kids, Hudson seven and Ava's five. Ava was born with special needs. My daughter and beautiful, beautiful little girl. And for the first year of her life, she she had a really extremely hard time. And literally she would only sleep two hours every day. Two hours. Like that's it. You know, and we know babies don't sleep that much, but two hours a day. Man, come on, seriously. And she would never sleep more than 20 minutes at a time. And the hardest part was especially that 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift where she just would be up all night. But it wasn't even that she was up. She was crying in pain. And we had no idea what was wrong with her. No idea. And I mean, seriously, being a dad holding, you know, when I had my son, I was like, okay, I raised my son to be a godly man. And then if I was going to have another son, I felt like I could do a better job because I already made some mistakes with this one. And I can be a better dad to a son. But when I had a girl, I was just absolutely shattered. And not in a bad way, just humble, like scared. Like, wow, the enormity of the situation of being a dad for a daughter. And there, you know, in the middle of the night, you know, rocking her for four hours straight and she wouldn't stop crying. You know, and you know, parents, we got the rock down. What? You know, my soul had a little beat in the background. You know, as you're going like that. And but nothing would ever stop it. And I couldn't get her to stop crying. And finally, the doctor said, your job isn't to stop her crying. Your job is to comfort her through the pain. And so one year turned into two years. Two years turned into three years. We had every single test known to man run. On paper, Eva was absolutely normal. But that's not the way she was in reality. From brain scans to DNA testing, chromosomal testing, gastroenterologists, everything. You know, we did the whole gamut. We ran the whole gamut of testing. And it was one of those things where one night, being on staff at Calvary, I came down. It was like three in the morning. And I played basketball in high school. I got a scholarship. I played in college. I had a really bad temper. And I used to have a really foul mouth, sorry to say. And all of a sudden, I remember going a year and a half to yours, and I seriously hadn't slept. My wife hadn't slept. And just every amount of pressure that you could feel just internally, externally was happening. And I came downstairs because I felt all of this things that I thought I had dealt with when I recommitted my life to the Lord and when I decided to follow Him. Like my temper was gone and all those things were gone. But all of a sudden, I felt like it was going, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I was about to just be like, I was about to lose it. And it was so discouraging to me too, because to be a Christian and to be a pastor and to have those things start to fill your mind again. And even the deepest part of who you were, you didn't even know that those things were there anymore. You thought you had dealt with them. And a lot of times in the Scriptures, you'll hear how God's refining process is like a goldsmith, right? Where you put the gold with all its impurities into that cauldron and then you heat it up to the right temperature. And then what ends up happening is what they call the impurities is dross. And it starts percolating to the top, bloop, bloop, bloop. And then the goldsmith will scoop out the impurities, throw that in the trash, and he'll keep doing that. As the heat gets hotter, the dross comes up and that's how they would purify gold. And that's what was absolutely happening to me, where the heat was getting turned up in the kitchen, so to speak. And those things that were in the innermost recesses of my heart and the things which are in the innermost recesses of your heart have now been able to start coming to the surface and maybe things that are absolutely surprising you, like, why am I feeling frustrated? Why do I feel these emotions? Why do I want to do that? Why do I want to do this? And you'll start to see that circumstances will actually be used by the Lord to refine you and to help you be a better man and to be a better woman. And that heat gets turned up just enough so all these things start percolating to the top so that the Lord can remove them and refine you and increase his work in your life. And so, one year turned into two years and I cried out to the Lord, I said, Lord, I don't even know these things were there. Please take them from me, Lord. I don't want them. And two years turned into three years. Three years turned into four years where my daughter couldn't speak and she couldn't walk. No one could tell us what was even wrong with her. He went to every single doctor and one doctor says, oh, she's going to die. And this other doctor, my wife's just like on this roller coaster all the time and we're going, what in the world? And then being a man, I think it's one of those things where you feel absolutely helpless. Because guys like to fix stuff, right? Like we like to fix it. Our wives want us to listen, we want to fix it. You know what I mean? Tell me your problem. I'll take care of that guy right now or whatever it might be. And no, just listen. My wife always tells me, she's like, just listen. I just want to talk to you. And so I couldn't fix the situation. And so we were praying, Lord, please help us. Please help our daughter. Please be with our family. And it's like the more we prayed, the worse things seemed to get. Talk about irony. We would try to go to bed to sleep real quick and Ruth and I would pray for the kids. Hudson would have a nightmare. Ava would start screaming. And we're like, what in the world? Finally, a doctor gave a kind of an umbrella diagnosis that my daughter had cerebral palsy. Now there's two ends of cerebral palsy, the ends of the spectrum that is where there's hypertonic where you have people that are in a wheelchair that they're restricted and they have like a wheelchair and a little ball to help them move or hypotonic, which is loose muscle tone, which everything's just underdeveloped. So come to find out, our daughter did have hypotonia, which is an underdeveloped nervous system. So the reason why she was crying for all those years and we didn't know is because she had ulcers lying in her esophagus because her internal organs and then the valve that separated her stomach from her esophagus hadn't developed yet. And so here we are just like, you know, you're just blowing your... You just don't even know what to do. And I'm with family too. It's especially hard, I think. And so like I said, three years turns into four years. Four years turns into five years. This September she turned five. And we were praying and we were just like, Lord, please show us what to do. And last February, we moved from Costa Mesa to Irvine where our church is. And the first night that we spent in our new house, Ava slept through the night for the first time. Slept through the night. And then that February, she took seven steps out of the blue. You know, she has to wear her ankle brace. So it was this February. And then she took 14 steps. And then she took 29 steps. And then she took 60 steps a few months ago. And my neighbor, really strange, comes out of her house when I'm playing football with the kids, my son and some other boys on the street were playing football on the street. And she comes up and says, can I speak to you? And I said, yeah, sure. And she was really kind of nervous. And she said, well, you know, I've never done anything like this before. And I just needed to tell you something. And I was like, okay. And I was like, you know, and I'm just kidding. And so she says, I don't know what this is. Take it for whatever you think it is, whatever it means to you. But I felt like God told me to tell you that it's in his strength, whatever. She's like, I don't know what that means. But I just felt like God told me that I needed to tell you. And I don't even know what her relationship with God is at all. But she just comes and says, I want you to know that it's in God's strength. And then that day Ava set a personal record on walking. Unbelievable. Until two months ago, we're at Ikea. And you know, I'm Swedish, so I like Ikea more than most people. But Ikea really likes to complicate things too. Everything has to be Swedish. You just can't call it a stool. It's a stool in Magullin or whatever. You know what I'm saying? And so we're up at Ikea in Costa Mesa. And you can use that one later. So we're upstairs and we're at the cafe. And I drove from Irvine real quick on the 405. It's really bad traffic anytime between like one and seven. But we hopped north. And to get something for my daughter to come back, I had an appointment that evening for a premarital for a wedding I was doing. And so we get there. And then my son Hudson, being the growing boy that he is, he's like, I'm starving. I want some meatballs and ribs and whatever, all this other stuff. You know, and so we go up, okay Hudson, we'll go up real quick. And so we sit down and he gets his plate of food. You know, I was like, good boy, Swedish meatballs, little boy. I should have just said a hoot, a hoot, you know, or whatever. But anyway, he's sitting there. And then Ava's in the shopping cart and Ruth's standing here. I'm sitting here, Hudson's here. And there's the walkway. And about 40, 50 people are just, you know, have walked by. And my daughter, if you know her, she doesn't talk and she can't walk. And she reaches out just randomly. There's this guy, he's in his 70s. And he's walking by with his wife. They're probably both in their mid-70s. And she grabs him by the shirt. Just this random guy. Like she's never done this before. And yanks him over to her where she's sitting in the cart. And the guy's shirt was like tucked in too. You know, he's like grabs it and pulls him in. Come to find out. This guy is one of the leading pediatric physicians from Chicago who happened to be at Ikea at that same time that we're there. And of all the people that Ava could have grabbed, she grabs this guy. And right there in her Ikea shopping cart, he gives her a full evaluation. He says, okay, if she had this test, have you guys had run this test, have you had this? Well, what did they say about this? Well, did she see an entourage? Did she see this? And all these things were like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then he's like, well, look at her right there. See how she engages and how she wants to connect with you? She's not autistic. A lot of families, they wonder if their child has autism or whatever. And so this goes on for about 35 minutes right there in Ikea. And then finally he says, we've seen a lot of children like Ava where they don't know why she's the way she is. She's just delayed. She's a slow developer. And as he's walking away, he's just a lovely guy, him and his wife, just beautiful couple. And as he's walking away, he looks, he stops and he looks at Ruth and he says, mark my words. You need to be patient, but mark my words. By the time she's nine, she'll be okay. She'll be completely caught up. And Ruth almost starts like balling there in Ikea because just the day before, she had prayed specifically to the Lord and said, Lord, would you please send me some encouragement from my daughter because I'm not feeling, I'm feeling really, really heartbroken over this. And she didn't even tell me this until afterwards. And the very next day Ava randomly grabs this guy and pulls her down. And then the doctor says, mark my words. You be patient. Wait, by the time she's nine, she'll be okay. And ironically, listen to this. Three years prior, a physician from India visited my father-in-law's church in Cardiff, Wales. John Vickery planted the first Calvary Chapel in Wales from the UK. And my father-in-law was telling the physician about Ava and the physician told my father-in-law, he said, no, we've seen children like that. Well, you just don't have any medical explanation for, you know, why they're the way that they are. But he said, mark my words. By the time she's nine, she'll be okay. So we have one doctor randomly flying in from India to the UK and then doctor of Ikea over here both saying, by the time she's nine, she'll be okay. I mean, talk about something sent from the Lord where for the last five years, my wife and I have been stretched beyond our own abilities. And everything that we have been through has been absolutely impossible for us to do without Jesus. Without Jesus. And so tonight, I can say how truly thankful I am that we have a God who has compassion on us. And though you might think, oh, he doesn't care about me or he's ignoring my situation or whatever it might be, don't believe those lies. The Lord is going to show himself strong on your behalf and he's going to continue to allow you to go through these things until his perfect work is accomplished in you. Do you ask for these things? Do you sign up to have the worst five years of your entire life? Absolutely not. I mean, if you do, I will be available for prayer over here afterwards. But we don't do that. But the Lord will use all things working together for the good. Because we love him and we're called according to his purposes. And so be encouraged tonight, guys. And even having a special needs daughter and going to therapy, I became thankful for the way Ava was in her condition because there were children that were far worse off. We have so much to be thankful for. And if you feel like God's asking you or calling you or you're in the middle of doing something that you feel is absolutely impossible for you to do, know that it is impossible for you to do. But you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.