Bayside Baptist Church

Jason King: W.A. Criswell told the story, who was the longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, of a man that he knew who had related a story to him about two dogs that he had purchased. He purchased two setter pups who he was training to use in hunting as bird dogs. He kept the dogs in his backyard, and that's where he would train them and work with his dogs, and that's where they stayed throughout the day.

But he said that one day his dogs were in the backyard and a bulldog made its way down the alley on the backside of their fence. The setters could hear the dog coming and see the dog coming, and he thought, maybe I need to get my setters out of the backyard in case he gets in there and there's some kind of tussle. I don't want this bulldog to get hurt. He felt like his dogs would tear this bulldog up.

But he said, you know what? I think we'll let this bulldog learn a lesson. So the bulldog slipped under the fence, came under there and sure enough, his dogs jumped on that bulldog, whipped him pretty good. The bulldog, after a few minutes, had enough and he went home whining and licking his sores, and presumably did that for the rest of the day.

But wouldn't you know it? The very next day, the bulldog was back again, came under the fence, same story next time around. The setters whipped this bulldog and he went on home whimpering and licking his sores. Again, the third day, he did this for a third time and the same thing happened. The bulldog went on home with his tail tucked between his legs and licking his sores.

So the guy had to go out of town for a few days and he was gone for several days. A few weeks later, when he returned, he asked his wife what happened with the bulldog and our setters. She said, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe what happened. Every single day, at the same time, at the same point in the fence, the bulldog slipped under the fence and fought with our setters and they've whipped him every time.

But over and over and over again, as the bulldog kept coming back, wouldn't you know it that the setters eventually now, when they hear him coming, they come to the back door whimpering and whining and wanting to come inside. This bulldog slips under the fence and now he struts around the yard like it's his yard.

That made me think about today what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about how God wants to overcome your doubts. Oftentimes what we find in life is that like that bulldog showing up every day, you may fight and tussle and sort of tie it up with your doubts and try to overcome them, but they continue to come back and continue to come back.

If you aren't able to find strength to overcome your doubts and to see God in the midst of your doubts, your doubts will eventually own you. They will begin to handle you. They will cause you to pull back from your faith or to stop short of trusting God in the midst of the struggle or keep you from seeing the power and presence of God come to bear in your life.

Doubts, not just intellectual doubts or academic doubts, but doubts that impact you where you are. Does God really care about my difficulty? Is God really present in the midst of suffering that I walk through? Does God really care about my life? Can I really trust him in the midst of what I'm walking through right now? You may fight them for a little bit and it may feel like you're winning, it may seem like you're winning, but all of a sudden you realize that in time, if your doubts are not answered, they're going to own you because they don't ever seem to go away.

In Judges 6, there's a story of a man who walked through this similar circumstance facing doubts. His name is Gideon. In the midst of some incredible odds, we're going to see that this man named Gideon struggled not intellectually to believe certain truths, but he struggled in trusting God enough to follow through with what God had spoken. Even though God had proven himself to do what he says he was going to do and God had been faithful to Gideon in his life, Gideon struggled to believe that God would pull through.

Do you remember Gideon's story? Give you a little bit of a refresher. In the midst of God's people struggling, if you remember, the Book of Judges contains this cycle where the people disobey God. They wander away from God. Life has been good. They begin to wander, they begin to drift, and they ultimately begin to worship other gods and other idols and they put their hearts at the foot of something else besides God.

So God begins to try to get their attention and he turns up the temperature just a little bit. Their circumstances get difficult. They encounter difficulty and hardship in life, and so it gets so bad that they eventually cry out to God for help and then God sends a deliverer. He sends a judge to help them in the midst of that. Well, that's where God's people are living.

In the beginning of Judges 6, Gideon is the person that God calls to lead his people back to faith. But Gideon is not really sure that he's the one for that job. Do you remember this moment in his story? It's in the beginning of Judges 6 where Gideon is just working one day. It says he's threshing wheat on the winepress. He's doing his job. He's working.

The angel of the Lord comes to him and says, "Greetings, oh mighty one." And Gideon's like, "Where's he at? Who is he? Greetings, oh valiant warrior." Gideon's like, "Well, that sounds good, but that ain't me. Who are you talking about that's a valiant warrior? I'm from this family and I have never been a general. I've never been in war. I'm just a dude doing my work."

God speaks and he says, "God, I need a sign." So the angel shows him a sign and confirms that it is God calling him to do this. Gideon takes a step of faith to go and pull down all the Asherah poles, as they were called, where people would worship foreign gods. He goes at night and pulls them all down and builds an altar to the Lord. So Gideon has trusted God a little bit to this point, but God has been working through Gideon even though he wasn't sure that this is what God wanted him to do.

Gideon's not mighty. He feels like the situation of his people is hopeless and who's he to help? But God meets him in the midst of that, and so Gideon has taken some steps of faith even to this point. But now the angel of the Lord comes back to him in the passage we're going to look at because three armies have bound together. They've come together and they've come to the face of God's people. Even though God had promised that he was going to prevail, he had called Gideon to this. When push came to shove in this moment, Gideon was like, "Man, I just don't know."

"God, I know what you've spoken, but I'm not sure that I trust you enough to follow through acting upon what you've said." Aren't we sometimes the same way when it comes to difficulty in our lives? Anybody feel me on that? Anybody else that way? I'm just going to tell you I'm that way sometimes. I know what God has promised and I'm familiar with what his word says about the different circumstances that we encounter in life, but yet sometimes when you look at your circumstances, you look at the struggle, you look at the impossibility, you're not sure what it's going to look like. You look at it and you think, "Well, I know what you said, God, but I'm not sure if you're going to do that."

When we face struggle, I believe we can learn from Gideon in this moment how you and I can face our doubts today. So how can you face the doubts in your life in this moment? The first thing that Gideon's story teaches us is this: God hasn't moved in moments of struggle and difficulty, meaning God has not forgotten you. He's not off doing something else and doesn't have concern for your life anymore.

God hasn't moved in moments of struggle and difficulty. We're going to pick up in the story in Judges 6 beginning in verse 36. Here's what it says. Remember these armies are stacked up against him and it looks impossible, even though God said, "Gideon, you're the dude, you're the man," and he's already confirmed it. Here's what it says.

Gideon said to God, "Well, if you are truly going to use me to rescue Israel as you've promised, prove it to me in this way." In other words, what he's saying is, "God, if you're still going to do what you promised, I need some help. I need you to prove it to me. I need you to know, God, that you're still right here, even though it looks impossible."

Gideon got away from the moment where God had confirmed and God had demonstrated that he was at work in and through Gideon's life and he was in the darkness seeing the difficulty that was in front of him in this moment, his own inability to be able to do anything about it. He said, "God, if you're in this, I need to know."

You know, we face fear oftentimes in our circumstances, don't we? All we can see is the difficulty, all we can see is what's in front of us and our adversity. On the heels of God clearly calling him to be the one who's going to lead the people back to God, and on the heels of God already demonstrating that supernaturally he was at work in and through Gideon's life, Gideon in this moment thinks, "Man, it's an impossible situation. God, if you're going to do anything, I need you to prove it to me."

Gideon is still wondering if God is going to work in the future. He asks this question that I bet you've asked it before: "What if?" What if? What if it doesn't work out? What if your finances don't turn around? What if your marriage doesn't get better? What if you lose your job? What if your kids make poor choices? What if God doesn't answer that prayer? What if it all falls apart?

But I want you to remember that God had called Gideon and chosen him for this moment. Even though it looked like all the "what ifs" were about to go down, he was reminding Gideon in this moment that he had called him. God had empowered him so far. There was no way he would have experienced the success and the victory in the first 35 verses of this chapter without God's hand all over him, but the impossibility in front of him was all that he could see.

In the New Testament, God tells us that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. He's not just talking about the church building. As a matter of fact, he's talking about the people—you and me—that the gates of hell will not prevail against your life, against my life. But yet sometimes doesn't it feel like the gates of hell are doing a pretty good job?

In those moments, we start to wonder, what's going on in my life or in my family or in this world around us? You find yourself just like Gideon: "God, are you going to show up?" Maybe that means you've lost your job and you're listening to the media reports about how bad the economy is and you think, "Man, I'm never going to get another job." Or maybe you think each month it's such a struggle just to make ends meet and you have unexpected expenses one after another. They always seem to come in threes, don't they? And then you just start to panic.

Or maybe you get a bad diagnosis or you're hitting a rough spot in your marriage or something's going down with your kids or you've lost a loved one or you find out that a close friend has just done you wrong and you're like, "God, why would you let this happen to me? Are you still who you said you are?"

But you know, while you're trying to figure those things out, do you know what's also taking place? The enemy is at work behind the scenes trying to blind you to what is true, to what is real, to who God is, and the fact that he has never moved in that moment. One of the ways that he does that is he seeks to distort reality. When you're facing some giant in your life, some impossible situation that seems too large, Satan wants to tell you you just need to give up. What's the use in trying? Quit praying, quit trying, quit being a part of a faith family, quit going to small group, quit reading the Bible, quit trying to honor the Lord in your life. Throw in the towel because God didn't answer you. He could have stopped this bad thing, so you just need to give up on him.

You see, the enemy is working to make you bitter when God doesn't work in the way that you want or the time that you want or life isn't as easy as maybe you thought it should be. But there's never a promise of God giving us what we want, church. This is where faith comes in. You have to stand on and I have to stand on the words and the truth that God has revealed. He has demonstrated who he is to us.

In those moments where the circumstances and our reality in our lives don't seem to align with what is true, that's a moment where we walk by faith. That means we trust God. We trust that what he said is true and that even though it may not seem that way or feel that way, he's wanting us to do what Gideon did right here and to admit that we need him and to turn to him and to say, "God, if this is going to happen, you're going to have to show up. I need you."

Gideon doesn't have it all together. As I'm looking at you and myself, none of us do either. All right? Can we admit that? We ain't got it together. But can I say to you that admitting that and recognizing the fact that you're facing an uncertainty or some difficulty is the first step in seeing God move in power?

Steve Magness, who is a performance coach who's worked with Olympians and other professional athletes, has kind of become known as an expert on resilience. He noted that in his studies that admitting our weakness can actually increase our ability to become resilient in the midst of the struggles of life. He shared the thoughts of one soldier who came face to face with this through training in the military. Here's what he said. He said, when there's a difference between what you project and what you're capable of—in other words, how you present yourself and how you really are—when there's a gap there, it all crumbles when you face stressful situations. He says on the other hand, if you're honest with yourself and you acknowledge your strengths and your weaknesses, what you're capable of and what might scare you, then you can come to terms with what you're facing and you can deal with it.

So can I say to some of us today that we've become convinced that the whole church thing is a game where we kind of come together and act like we got it all together? There's no chinks in the armor, no problems, no stuff in our lives. We're just "Glory to God" for everything. But can I tell you that when we act like that's where we are and there's a gap between where we really are, it sets you up for significant trouble in the midst of crisis.

If you find yourself with that tension—and probably everybody does in some ways at some points—if you find yourself in that tension where you're like, "Hey, I need to present myself a certain way or project this," can you just stop it? All of us. Because we don't have it figured out. The reality of it is that we find God's strength and power when we admit like Gideon that there are moments—and it's probably a whole lot more than we'd like to admit—where we are powerless and we need God to intervene. He's reminding you today, church, that he hadn't gone anywhere. If you're in Christ, he has not moved. He's with you.

The second thing that we learn from Gideon's story is this: God offers help when you doubt. God offers you help when you doubt. I want you to look in verse 37 for the rest of this particular passage right here. After he says, "If you're going to truly use me to rescue Israel as you've promised, prove it to me in this way," he said, "I will put a wool fleece on the threshing floor tonight. If the fleece is wet with dew in the morning but the ground is dry, then I will know that you're going to help me rescue Israel as you've promised." And that's just what happened. Gideon got up early the next morning, he squeezed the fleece, and he wrung out a whole bowlful of water.

But Gideon still wasn't sure. Come on, somebody. Verse 39: Gideon said to God, "Please, please don't take this the wrong way, God. Please don't be angry with me, but let me make one more request. Let me use the fleece for one more test. This time, let the fleece remain dry while the ground around it is wet with dew. I've just got to make sure, God, okay?" So that night, God did as Gideon asked. The fleece was dry in the morning, but the ground was covered with dew.

God offered to help. He helped Gideon even in his doubt. In those moments when we doubt whether God will follow through with his word or whether he's capable of doing what he says he's going to do, God offers you help. I want you to see how God responds to Gideon's struggles. Does he look at him and say, "You moron, quit asking me about that"? Does he push him aside and say, "Man, I thought you were going to be the one to lead God's people? Get out of here, I'll find somebody else." Does he say, "Oh, you're so weak, man? Didn't you go to Sunday school? Don't you know the answers?" No. Not once, but twice.

God answers Gideon in a very real struggle that's taking place in his heart. He says, "God, I know you said this, I know you promised this, but it just doesn't look like it can happen. If this is what you're going to do, God, I need you to show up and I need you to show me," not just once, but he's like some of us—it takes more than once to be reminded that God is still at work and he offers help. Now oftentimes you would think that God is angry or maybe he's put off by your lack of faith or doubt, but yet in this moment, God confirms his presence and his calling, his faithfulness and his blessing upon Gideon's life even though Gideon is struggling.

Oftentimes God does the same thing for us. But you've got to own the fact that you're facing doubts. Now I want you to hear me clearly what I'm talking about when I say a doubt today. I'm not talking about intellectually you're struggling to believe some fact. That's not what I'm talking about. I realize we can all have that. You need to go chase that down. There are answers to those questions, okay?

What I'm talking about is we know just like Gideon that God has promised something, that he has spoken something. It's revealed in his word. It is clear. This is what God has said. Yet we come to the precipice of a decision or a circumstance or some adversity or some difficulty and we're like, "God, I know you said that, but I don't know that I believe it enough to act upon it in this moment. I don't know that I trust you enough." If we're just being honest, "God, I just don't know that I trust you enough to do what you've said and to believe that your promises are still going to be good, even though it looks like the opposite is happening."

Gideon is not asking for direction with his fleece. I don't mean to burst the bubble of some folks. He's not asking for a parking spot to open up or for a spouse to materialize or for the right job to happen or where he should go to college in this moment. He's asking for confirmation that, "God, what you said, I need to know that's what you're going to do. I'm struggling, God, I need to know that."

So there's a step of faith and obedience that Gideon's already taken. He's come to God and he's laid this at his feet, but he's already chosen to trust God. This is not the first step for Gideon. He's already stepped towards God and said yes and begun to act upon that. He just gets to this moment where he's seeing all this around him and he's like, "I don't know how it's going to work out, God." He owns his doubt. Gideon knows what God's will is. He just struggles to believe that it's true and that it's really what's best for him in that moment, just like us, right? Sometimes that's where we find ourselves.

One of the things that concerns me today more and more is that we're listening to the world around us constantly and to God less and less, and sometimes we don't even realize that that's what's taking place. In a sense, we may recognize it, but we minimize the reality and the impact of listening to the world constantly in our lives.

I shared it a few weeks ago, but there was a statistic that I came across that said that the average churchgoer—so all of us in here right now on average—the average churchgoer, before you set foot in this room on a Sunday or before you listen on a Sunday, you have been discipled by the algorithm, by your feed, by some other source for 49 hours already that week. And what concerns me is that intentionally or unintentionally, you've given that voice—the voice of social media posts or news articles or videos and on and on and on and on—a disproportionate amount of time and influence in your life compared to God.

Like it or not, that's the voice that's shaping your heart and your mind. You're being shaped by what you're consuming even if you don't realize it. The result of that—look, I'm not telling you to go burn your phone and get rid of it—I'm saying that that's just oftentimes a reality we don't even realize what's going on. The impact of that, the result of that is it causes us to be a lot like Gideon in those moments where God calls us to trust him and walk by faith. You struggle to believe and then apply what's in God's word to your life.

You tell yourself it's really no big deal. Everybody else around you is kind of doing this or it makes you happy, so it's okay. You can find ten ways to make your life better or five "must-dos" before you're thirty or whatever that's popped up in your feed this week. So gradually, little by little, you begin to rely on those things to guide you for life. Everybody else is doing it, so it seems okay. They said they're Christians. The Bible, it is kind of old and a little outdated, at least with practical stuff you've heard.

So in the end, you start to pick and choose what you'd like for your relationship with God to look like, how it makes sense to you to live out your life. But at the heart of it—now listen to me, church—at the heart of it is this struggle deep in your heart of: "Can I really trust that what God has said in his word is right and true? Can I trust it enough to do it first and before anything else?" You have doubts. We all do.

So if that's you, own it. Quit trying to spiritualize it, psychologize it, or rationalize it. Just call it what it is. You're not sure. We're not sure in a moment that we can trust God. After all, the Bible has a lot to say about morality and sex, doesn't it? Yet you may find yourself choosing pornography or hooking up on the weekends or maybe even living with a boyfriend or girlfriend or fiancé. If that's what you're choosing to do, really what it means is you don't trust God enough and you haven't taken the steps to walk through that doubt to trust that when God says you're to be holy as he's holy, that the marriage bed is to be undefiled, that you're to possess your body in honor reflecting the Lord, you've been shaped more by the world around you because that's what everybody else is doing.

The Bible teaches about integrity, about how honesty in your business, in the business world, the marketplace, or in your marriage or in other relationships is a calling of someone who's going to follow Christ. But yet you find yourself fudging little details when it's convenient or when it helps you out or tiptoeing around the truth to conceal things. But the Bible says, "Hey, you be truthful, don't lie, have integrity."

Maybe you find yourself caught in an addiction with alcohol or drugs or pills or something else and you think, "Man, it's really not that big a deal. After all, alcohol is legal and whatever I'm doing was grown in the ground or it's legal in a lot of other states or whatever." But yet the Scriptures say, "Man, you be filled with the Spirit. Don't be controlled by something else. Let nothing but the Spirit lead you."

When it comes to your finances, you find yourself betting on games constantly or you overspend to get the right brands or go to the right places. You don't give generously. You're not looking for opportunities to be a blessing to other people with your finances even though God has given you everything that you have. He says your heart follows where your money goes.

Even with what we talk about, isn't it a struggle to trust that what God has said is really what he calls us to do and that we should follow that? We can have doubts surface with our mouths. You find yourself gossiping, criticizing, talking about other people even though you know the Scriptures say let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but what you speak should be for the building up or the edifying of other people.

You see, at the heart of our doubts—and there's a hundred other ways that we doubt that what God has declared and what he's revealed to us is true—we may intellectually think "Oh yeah, yeah, that's true," but how you really know that you believe something is if it affects your life. At the heart of our doubts is we just don't trust that God knows best and that if we follow his word, he will pull through in his faithfulness.

So just acknowledge it. Look, if there's an area of your life—maybe it's one of the things I mentioned just a minute ago—where you're caught in the midst of that, look, nobody's mad at you about that. But what God is doing in this moment, make it very clear, the Holy Spirit is bringing conviction in your heart to say, "Hey, I've revealed the truth of my word and I'm inviting you to experience my blessing." That God will meet you in that moment, even in your doubts. He's not casting you aside. If you come to him with your doubts, he offers to help you in that moment.

The last principle from Gideon's story that I want you to know today is that if you want to overcome your doubts, you need to take a step of faith today. Not tomorrow, not when the kids get out of school, not when you retire, not when you pay off whatever, you need to take a step of faith today to see God's faithfulness.

Look back in the text. He's talking about this same story we read just a minute ago. "If you're going to use me to rescue Israel as you've promised, prove it to me in this way." And then Gideon says, "Here's what I'm going to do, Lord. I'm going to step toward you. I need you to show up." He puts out the wool and God demonstrates his faithfulness twice. Now don't miss this. Even though Gideon is doubting, even though he's not sure that God's going to show up and that he can trust God, he's still turning to God.

He's not searching his socials to try to find an answer to this problem of his doubt. He's not searching the Google. He's not calling his friends. He said, "God, I'm struggling. I need you to meet me here. I'm going to step toward you in this." God meets him.

I believe God will meet you in your time of need, in your doubts, in your struggles when you step towards him. Take a step of faith towards God today to see his faithfulness. God will often remind us and he'll answer your doubts to show you that he's still right there.

You've heard it said before, probably: don't doubt in the darkness what God has spoken in the light. It's like when you were a kid laying down to go to sleep. Anybody have this little game when you were a kid? You lay down to go to sleep and all of a sudden, "Man, that looks like a monster going across the room." Or you look over in the corner, "Oh my goodness, it's somebody standing in the room." And your heart starts to speed up. Anybody else do that when they were a little kid laying in the bed? Right? I know y'all did. Come on now.

And you know what changes everything? When you call your parents and they come in the room and what do they do? Flip on that light. Guess what? That monster is a shrub outside that's blowing in the wind. And that person in the corner of the room, it's the shirt you wore today that you threw over the top of whatever it was there in the corner, right? It's shining light on the reality that reminds us of what is true.

That's what God wants to do in the midst of your doubts, in the midst of your struggles. The light overcomes the darkness and you learn, you know what? God still is faithful.

Early on in ministry, I struggled with discouragement. It happens still at times. It's a different kind of discouragement now than it was several years ago. But I distinctly remember several times where I was came to this place where I was ready to make a deal with God. Do you know what my deal I was going to make with God was? "God, I'll do anything else. I'll teach Sunday school, I'll tithe, I'll clean the bathrooms, I don't care. I don't want to do this. Why would anyone want to do this?" I would just get so discouraged. It just was a tough time. It was early on in the first church I'd pastored in particular. I'm thinking, "Man, what in the world? I'm so discouraged. God, are you going to show up? Are you going to do anything? You called me here and you called me here for what? I'm dying on the vine here."

It never failed that every time I'd get to that point and that moment—we lived about 45 steps from the church, that's where our house was. What a blessing, right? It was just right there. I'd walk out my office back door, walk up to my house about 30, 40 steps up the driveway. I'd go outside or I'd go out in the backyard or I'd leave somewhere that I'd been and I'd be so discouraged thinking, "God, what am I even doing? Why am I even here? What is going on?"

And you know in those moments—I can't tell you how many times it would happen—that I would hear the flutter of wings and a dove would fly across my path. Now I love to hunt, so the first thing I'd think was, "Man, that bird was in range," right? But after that happened a few times, I started to think back to: maybe God's trying to get my attention. Because throughout Scripture, the presence of the Holy Spirit is often pictured as a dove, right? Do you remember that throughout the New Testament? There's this picture that when God's Spirit is at work, there's often this reminder.

So God began to show me, look, this simple reminder—most people think it's just a bird—but in those moments, I would hear that flutter and I would see that bird fly across and it was as if God was whispering to me, "I'm still here. I haven't forgotten you and I'm still at work." It reminded me, it would reset my heart and my mind, not to some feeling because I saw a bird—it would reset my heart and my mind to what the word says is true. God just by that simple picture would be saying, "Look, you go back to what I've said because you can trust it. I've not forgotten you. Pick your head up and keep walking by faith."

You see, God knows when we need it. He often reminds us of his presence in simple ways. He'll turn the light on for you. You think it's a monster, you think somebody's in your room, and he just turns on the light and says, "No, no, no, I'm still here and I got you." That's the way that God often works.

But you also need to know that God's not always going to use some other way to confirm his presence and faithfulness to you. Please don't walk through life relying on songs and birds and circumstances to determine whether God's there or not. Don't trust your feelings as a measure of God's presence or his involvement in your life. Don't build your faith just on what you're experiencing in a moment.

Most of the time, church, the way that God reminds us of his faithfulness is the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in us. But it's as we take in God's word, as we read or we hear God's word, his Spirit confirms in us, "I got you. I'm with you. I've not changed. I'm the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that includes what you're facing right now." God is faithful to remind us of who he is.

So when you're tempted to toss in the towel, to quit praying, to give up, remember God always allows trials and difficulties in our faith, not to destroy us but to strengthen our faith. A temptation is an opportunity to walk away from God's will, but the converse, the opposite side of that, is a test reveals where you are in your walk of faith and gives you the desire and the hope to lean on God more in the future.

Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:13? "The temptations in your life"—this word also can be translated "trials"—"are no different from what others experience. We're all going through it. And check this out: and God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than what you can stand. And when you're tempted, he'll show you a way out so that you can endure."

Do you remember Joshua and his story in Joshua 1? Moses, the greatest leader that God's people had known to this point, is dead. Joshua, his right-hand man, is now to take over. His responsibility, his calling, is to take the people of God where the greatest leader that God's people had ever known couldn't take them: into the Promised Land. In that first chapter of the Book of Joshua, over and over and over, there's this phrase that is repeated over and over to Joshua from God: "Be strong and courageous. Be very strong and courageous. You be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

And that's his word to you today, church. If you're in Christ, if you've been made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, he is with you wherever you go. So you be strong and courageous even when you have doubts. You take him at his word and say yes by faith to him, and you'll see his faithfulness.

This past fall, Jake and Natalie Partain made the decision to get things right in their lives. That's their words to describe it. Part of that is they had been praying and wanting to have a family, start a family. Natalie became sober, giving up addiction. They started coming to Bayside. They drove by one day and they just decided they were going to give it a try.

Well, they felt welcomed as soon as they came in. They met James Johnson, our discipleship pastor, and they talked one day at church, ultimately decided and ended up going together to dinner one night. While they were at dinner, Jake shared that he wanted to become a follower of Jesus Christ—over some Hawaiian Brothers chicken, by the way. Jake made a decision that he wanted to follow Jesus. Soon after that, he was baptized.

Natalie had already had some experience. She'd become a Christ-follower early in life and been baptized, but had drifted over the years as she'd walk through some difficulties. But as they began to attend our church, God led them to take several next steps of faith. And you know what? They kept saying yes every single time. And what they have seen is God's faithfulness.

After Jake was baptized, they came to Group Launch, they connected to some other people, and they're now a part of a small group. At Group Launch, Natalie even shared that she was pregnant and she knew it was because she had decided, they decided, to follow Jesus together and they recognized that God had chosen to bless them. They'd been praying for quite some time and they knew in their hearts that God had met them as they had stepped towards him in faith.

Since then, they've brought several people to come and experience Bayside with them, but next weekend you'll even see Jake serving on the parking team, helping other people experience the same power of God that he's experienced, that they've seen transform their lives and their future. You see, when you take a step of faith—I'm not talking about intellectual faith—when you take a step of faith to trust God at his word and do it, God always shows you, he meets you in his faithfulness.

Doesn't mean everything's going to happen how you want it to happen, but it means you will see God's faithfulness and his presence in your life. That's the same offer that God makes to you today through Jesus Christ: to offer to give you peace, to overcome your doubts, and bring new life to you.

One of the ways that we celebrate this as a faith family is through communion. So when you came in here today, you should have received a communion packet. If you didn't, if you just slip up your hand, we have some guys that are going to make their way around the room and bring those to you, so just hold your hand up. Don't be bashful, they'll get to you here over the next minute.

This communion packet represents—it's just a symbol. There's nothing special about the bread or the juice. It is a symbol of something that we're to remember and that Christ calls us to remember together. It's a symbol of the life and the faith and the hope that as we look to Easter next week, it's a symbol and a reminder that this is what God did for you and me in Jesus Christ.

As we talk about doubts today, this symbol right here is the anchor that reminds us of how much God loves you and that he will never leave you nor forsake you. Scriptures teach that Jesus gathered his disciples together and he was teaching them. He was getting ready to leave them and he was trying to help them understand what all was going on in this moment. He was telling them, "Look, as often as you observe this, as often as you eat of the bread and drink of the cup, this is what I want you to do."

He said, "You need to know that this bread represents my body, which is broken for you." That his body, that he would suffer the punishment for our sin, the wrath because of our sinfulness, because of our inherited sinfulness, we are separated from God and we are due all the punishment of all of our sins. But Jesus said, "My body's going to be broken for you, and I'm going to take upon my shoulders, my back, the punishment for your sin, the wrath that you deserve." Jesus said, "You need to know that each time you eat of this, you are reminded that that punishment that was destined for you, was destined for me, Jesus took upon his shoulders." He said, "You do this in remembrance of me."

Bible says in the same way, after they partook of the bread, they took the cup. Jesus explained to them that it wasn't enough to just have to take their punishment on for them, but for you and for me that his blood had to be shed according to the Old Testament, that there had to be a sacrifice—blood that would be shed for our sin. Jesus was telling them that now you can have a relationship with God by faith, the forgiveness of your sin, to be made right with God through the once-and-for-all sacrifice of my life.

He was telling them what he was going to do, and now as we're gathered together, we take of the cup as we're reminded that it is the blood of Jesus Christ, his death upon a cross and ultimately his resurrection that gives us life. It meets us in our doubts, and that's why Jesus says, "Each time you do this, you do this in remembrance of me."

You see, this picture of our faith is more than just something that we do every so often in a service. It's a reminder of the depth of God's love for you. Let's pray together.