In this sermon, the preacher discusses the story of the Israelites being freed from the bondage of Egypt and their journey to the land of Canaan. He highlights that while God delivered them from slavery, only those who chose to follow Him were able to enter the promised land. Many people struggle to turn away from their old ways and continue to hold onto the patterns of their past. The preacher emphasizes the importance of trusting in God's power and overcoming obstacles through faith and praise. He also mentions that adversity serves two purposes: to demonstrate God's glory through miracles and to refine and strengthen believers.

If you would turn in your Bibles this morning to Exodus chapter 5, we're continuing our study on Moses the servant of God. And actually today we'll cover Exodus chapter 5 all the way through Exodus 6 about verse 9. And our desert survival series, learning principles for the Christian life, how to survive in the desert of life, how to make it. And we're drawing out principles that we can use and we're picking out usually a subject each week to preach on. And the subject this week seems to be adversity, how to respond to adversity. And we're going to look at it mostly from the life now of those that Moses was ministering to. We're going to switch, we're going to look at Moses a little bit. We're going to look at the life of the Israelites as their first approach now with the fact that they're going to be free. Last time we took some time and looked at the family. We looked at the man-woman relationship in the home last couple weeks. But now we're back into some other areas. So let's baffle with a prayer. Holy Spirit, you take over. And you just open up and bless the teaching, preaching of your word. Make us more like Jesus. Help us to see Jesus if we're not saved. We just ask, Father, that your will would be done now. Our hearts may have many things in them. Maybe we have burdens and cares, distractions or whatever. But you help us to focus in on you now. To look at you. To not look around and be off in other places. And you teach us that which you have for us in Jesus' name. Amen. In Exodus chapter 5, I'm not going to read the whole chapter because of the time it would take. But I'll just break it down for you. The first nine verses are the response that Israel had after they found out that God was going to deliver them. Back in chapter 4 and verse 31, it says the people believed. God's going to set us free and they believed. And then verses 1 through 9, we find that Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh and say, Okay, God says let my people go. Nice, respectful request. So the Lord God of Israel says, let my people go that they may hold a peace unto me in the wilderness. So they request and Pharaoh says, no deal. You're not going to get away. And by the way, if you've got this much time to be fooling around, you're idle. Cut out the straw. He's sort of a rascal, isn't he? So he says, no straw. Well, verses 10 through 19, the Israelites get upset and they go and make an appeal to Pharaoh themselves. And he accuses them of being idle. They say, we don't have any straw. You're getting on to us because we can't keep up with the load of brick that we're supposed to make. And he says, you're idle. You won't get the straw, but yet you make just as many bricks as you did before. And they had to go out and get their own straw. And so Pharaoh really put it to them and they were really in a hard case. And so they're in trouble. Now, what's their next response? That's verse 20. Verse 20 through 23 is what they do next. First is Moses and Aaron appeal to Pharaoh. And then the people appeal to Pharaoh. And then now the people complain to Moses and Aaron. And verse 20, it says, they met Moses and Aaron who stood in the way. It might teach us to be careful where we stand. Don't stand in the way of somebody that's mad. But they're standing in the way. As they came forth from Pharaoh. You didn't know that was in that passage, did you? Yeah, it's there. Now, they said unto them, the Lord look upon you and judge because you have made our Savior to be a port in the eyes of Pharaoh. They said, listen, Moses, since you came, we stink. In the eyes of Pharaoh. You have really put us in bad position. And in the eyes of his servants to put a sword in their hand to slay us. These guys are trying to kill us because you've come. Now, what's Moses do? Moses has had a little training, hasn't he? He goes to who? The Lord. He goes to the Lord, it says in verse 22. And Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Lord, have we got problems? He says, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people. Neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. Things look bad to the Israelites. Things look bad to Moses. He said, boy, things aren't going the way you said they were going to go. Go down there, tell Pharaoh to let us go. We were going to go. Well, there's a little extra detail to that that Moses is going to find out about. And we do too in our life. Now, verses 1 through 8 in chapter 6 is God's answer. And we'll look at that a little later on. Verse 9 is Israel's response to God's answer. Now, the whole point of this passage is how do we respond to adversity? This is a trial. How do we respond to adversity? And it seems like we go through this a lot in this study. But every time we get into it, we pick up a little bit something extra that we can use. So I'm sure there's something here that you can use. We haven't learned it all yet. The natural response to adversity is what? Try to remove it. Try to get rid of it. Try to get ourselves out of this jam. Their natural response is, hey man, we don't have any straw. These guys are putting pressure on us. Let's try to get the pressure off. Get our straw back so we can get back to our normal old slavery. We're going to learn some interesting things here about this. But the spiritual response, the thing that God wants us to learn, is to allow this adversity, this trial, this hardship that we're going through, to allow it to reveal our weakness and our area of need. So God can produce in our life and give us that which He wants. And here's a verse for you. Proverbs 24.10 says, If thou faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. That's my propositional statement. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. If you want that translated into English, here it is. If you fold up under your problems, then your faith is small. Not much difference, is it? That's just what it says. If you, as a believer, go through a trial, and the trial will crush you and make us cry and complain, go around bellyaching and everything, then it really shows us that our strength, our faith in the Lord, and our confidence in Him is weak. And this is why we're going through this study, to learn how to respond. Now, why does God allow problems? Why does God allow this problem to enter into their life? As we look at the life of the Israelites, we're also going to see our life. And when we walk out of the door today, I hope that the Spirit of God has taught us something that we can use out there, day by day, as we work with people. Otherwise, we'll have no power of witness in our life. The fact of the matter is, the Lord says that we are to joy in our trials. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into all these strange, weird trials that you get into. Knowing that the testing of your faith is going to produce, actually, the life of Christ is what's going to be produced in us. Now, so why does God allow problems? Why? We always say, why this? Why me? That is the natural response. How can I get out of this? The supernatural response is, praise the Lord, God's going to do something. It's going to be really big, because this is a real big problem. And the bigger the problem, you know, the greater the necessity for a miracle, you know, the greater the glory that the Lord is going to give. So, we'll look at two purposes, at least, for adversity. The first purpose, there are many purposes for adversity, but the first purpose, I believe, the first reason God allows some things to come into our life, many times, is just simply to get our attention. You know, I think this is what he was doing with Israel. He was just getting their attention. It's like down south, I heard about an old colored man. The boss said, you get the mule and go out there and plow. And so, the old colored man, he went over there and picked up a two-by-four and he went walking back by the boss man, and he says, hey, what are you going to do with that two-by-four? He says, boss, before I was going to get that mule to work, I got to get his attention. He's going to go out there, he says, I'm going to go out there and hit that mule right between the eyes. And when I get his attention, he's going to work. And that's the way that God is doing with the Israelites. He's jerking something out of their life to get their attention. He says, hey, pay attention, I'm going to do something. And what do we do? God jerks the rug out from under us and we go crying. Hey, you upset my apple cart. But he's doing that to get our attention because he wants to do something. Now, the interesting thing is, they were in bondage and they were getting comfortable in their bondage. And they started bellyaching because one of their little luxuries was taken away. Their complaint was not that they were in bondage. Did you notice that? Their complaint was not that they were in bondage. Their complaint was that a little bit of their luxury was taken away from them while they were in bondage. And isn't that just what we do? We run into a trial. We get cancer. We lose our job. We have an accident. Somebody runs over our front yard and our car and our dog and everything else. And we get to complaining about it. Our complaint is about our trials. Our plans get messed up. But we never do complain about our spiritual state. I've seen so many people as I've gone into the hospital and I've talked to them. I'm complaining. They complain about their belly and everything else. And I talk to them about Christ. And there's no complaint that they're lost, that their soul is in danger of going to hell. We get concerned about the silliest things when it comes down to it sometimes. So many times these people, they're complaining about this and that about their soul that is going to die and go off into a hell. And we can be just like that. We can be unconcerned about them. And this is the way the Israelites were. They were in bondage. They were bound up. They were not happy. They were slaves to a Pharaoh. Just like you may be a slave to Satan and you're complaining about silly little things when you might lose your soul. An interesting thing, how we have our priorities. And it's so true when Jesus said, He changes the whole world and loses his own soul. We're so bent on these other things. And our neighbors, friends that we have are just like it. They're on their way to hell and they have no concern for their soul. Bound and in bondage. One of the first reactions to adversity that almost everybody does, including the Christians, is try to get rid of it. Instead of looking to say, Hey, is God speaking to me? There are, in that hospital up there, two guys. Two guys. They can see each other right across the hall. And both of those guys, we have been praying for and witnessing for. One of them, one of them, Jules, witnessed through down in the Sandhills last Monday morning at a brandy. He came up to town, come right around the corner here where we have some trees that were planted this week. You notice our forest that we have and he came up and parked his pickup and guess what I started talking to him about? The very same thing Jules was talking to him about that morning. And when I found out Jules was talking to him and then he came up here and I was talking to him, I said, Tom, the Lord is trying to get you saved. And he said, I think so. And he wanted it. I think God is working on his life, working in his heart. That guy, the next day, was in an accident, was in the hospital. We went up there, we were up in the hospital visiting somebody and we saw his name, we couldn't believe it. We went in there and we started talking to him again. And you know what he's asking for? He's asking for everything we can give him to read about Jesus. He wants tracts and whatever. And then right across the hall there's another guy that Brian and I started praying for, his buddy that got into an accident too. He's got a bruise on his ankle. Both have been running from God. And God just clipped both of them down so they can see each other across the hall. They see us talk to one and come over to the other. One of them prayed and received the Lord yesterday. I went over to the other one and I said, your buddy is ahead of you. He got saved. These guys are motorcyclists, they're tough guys. And they love it, just straight out. He says, not yet. Keep talking. I'm listening. And they do, listen to God. I think they're listening. A lot more than maybe some other people do. But we try to get out of our problems. Well, Israel did it. Moses did it there. Why do we have the problems? Moses went back to God and said, Lord, what's going wrong? What's going wrong? The interesting thing is, God uses you and I, we keep learning as he uses us. And Moses is doing that too. Well, all I can say is, if you go to hell, it's going to be nobody's fault but your own. It won't be because we didn't pray for you. We're praying for you. Everybody, this morning, Brian and I were down in my office praying. We said, Lord, everybody that comes in here today, we claim their soul for Jesus if they're not saved. You care for them and we care for them. We pray for them that you'll save them. Now, why does God want to get your attention? There's two reasons why God wants to get our attention. Number one, to get us saved. If you're not saved, there may be something that comes into your life and God does it so he can get you saved. And number two is if you're saved to make us more like Jesus. There's not a thing that happens in our life that doesn't have a purpose in relation to making us more like Jesus and also for using us for God's glory. But he wants us to make us like Jesus. We always see the worst in our problems. We always see the worst. Isn't that true? Last Sunday morning, I went out, I looked out the window and I said, hey, it didn't rain, did it? Because underneath my car was a puddle of oil underneath the rear end. I said, it didn't rain? How come it rained last night and the only place that got wet was underneath the car? I looked under there, sure enough, man, there's oil all underneath the rear end of the car. You know, my first thought is, oh, there goes the rear end, four or five hundred dollars, you know. My first response is always the worst. And so I let the car sit a couple days and look over it a little bit and think about it. You know, I hate to take it down and get the news broke to me. So finally, you know, I talked to my dad about it and he said, well, maybe the dealer will cover it so maybe you better take it into the dealer and let them check it because you've had so much trouble with that thing. So I took it down there and said, okay, you just look and check it over and they did. It was just a simple little thing, but when we sit like this, we just see the worst that can possibly be. But if we get around to surviving in our desert, we see that little puddle of oil, well, praise the Lord, it rained right underneath the rear end of my car. And we know it didn't rain, but we say, Lord, you've got something in mind. And we learn, we grow. People say, you fool, what's wrong with you? Praise the Lord, your motor just fell out, you've got four tires, your wheels are due, and you're just praising the Lord. I tell you, God gets excited. He says, look at that crazy guy down there praising me. I've been pouring it on and he's just praising me. Now watch me bless. And he'll come through just in the nick of the time, just before we get hung. It's just right. I don't know, the Lord really, my wife always accuses me of, I just cut it so close, I want to get somewhere just right on the dot. And we'll get a red light or something and he's always like that, isn't he? He's just right on time. But we always think he's late. Or we think he's not even going to make it. You know, you watch the old cowboy movies, the guy who's there with a rope around his neck and somebody's trying to get there to rescue him and boy, it just hits the horse and the rope goes tight and he goes stretching and choking and that old guy runs up and pulls out his whistle and shoots that rope just in the nick of time. Well, God's never late, is he? We haven't got hung yet, have we? So, he says, listen, don't get all uptight if I jerk the straw out of your program. I've got a reason for it. You know, those Israelites are just like us. They thought they needed straw, didn't they? Wasn't that their problem? No straw, when actually they needed freedom. And that's what God is doing. He took from them the insignificant to give them the significant. He took from them just nothing. It was of no consequence, straw in relation that they were slaves, they were bound. And you and I may be like that. We get something taken away from us that's just a little material thing. Of no consequence, really. When God wants to give us something far more greater, freedom from something that is binding us and a bondage, and so he lets us go through that. This is why we're doing this study in our desert. And then God is doing that and all the time God is in the process of delivering them from the bondage. You know what they're doing? Belly aching the whole way. They're complaining about the way God is doing it. When you and I reach the stage of where we are mature in Christ, we won't complain about the way the master wants to run his business in our lives. We say the Lord is ours, he's our savior. I am his, he bought me, he purchased me with his blood. He can do whatever he wants to do. We say it in words, but many times in reality we complain about the way he does what he wants to do. And that doesn't carry much weight with the world. And so if you fold up under the problems, and if I fold up under the problems and just reveal that our faith is small. So if we fold up under the problems then it just shows us we need that problem. So we won't fold up, that's why he sends it. Now God has another reason, not only just to get our attention, but there's a second purpose for adversity. And this is an interesting thing. God said not only am I doing this to get your attention, and we're just like a mule sometimes, God's got to use the 2x4 on us, doesn't he? Stubborn rascals. Every time he comes out to harness us up to go plow, the old colored man takes his 2x4 out there and whack! We're just like that so many times. It seems like the Lord's just got to come along with that 2x4. But after a little bit, well we get a little sore and we learn, hey, better not do this anymore. The Lord says go do this, I'll just go do it. Now, not only did he want to get their attention, but do you know that he wanted them to confirm his love? Now, that doesn't make sense, does it? Didn't look like God loved them, did it? They said, hey Moses, this God that's going to set us free, he's getting us in a lot of trouble. The circumstances didn't look like God cared for them at all, did it? We're in bondage, we're strangers down here, and not only that, we don't have any straw. How do we know? How do we know? Well, I was reading a verse this morning, you know Hebrews 11.1 says, that faith is the evidence of what? Faith is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not seen. If we really love God, and we go through our trial, then we're going to see, and we're going to see, and we're going to say, God is doing something. You know what gives us the evidence? That he's doing things? His past record. I've shared this before, probably one of the greatest things I've learned about faith, is the past. Faith builds our past, and I see that God has not made a mistake in my life, in the past, and I'm slowly learning that he's not going to make one today, and I'll just hang in there. Faith is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not seen. In other words, faith is the ability, faith is the ability to see God in every circumstance, to become God conscious, God conscious, in every circumstance. I heard about, a story about Pray and Hide. If you don't know about Pray and Hide, you don't know about one of the giants of prayer. But Pray and Hide was a giant in prayer, and not in so many years past. I know a man that knew Pray and Hide, to give you an idea of how recent he was, but he was invited to speak at a Keswick conference, a revival conference, and this is a big conference, and he got up there to speak, and he was of slow speech, he couldn't get going very fast, and he sort of stumbled along, you know, for about 15 minutes, and the audience took their song book, and stood up and started singing, because he was just sort of stuttering along, and having a little trouble getting going, and she got impatient, and she got a bunch of other people to start singing too, and pretty soon the whole crowd sung him down. And he came down off of the platform, and went back in the back. And one of the men, that was a friend of his, came out and he said, oh Mr. Hide, you're a great man of God, what they've done to a great man of God. And he said, oh this is awful what they've done to you. And he turned to him, and he says, oh no, it is the Lord, let him do with me as he pleases. Well I'll tell you, that spoke to me. He was a dead man, he was dead in Christ, the Lord could do whatever he wanted to. It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth good, it is the Lord. Well how did God confirm his love? Look at chapter 6 now, Exodus. In verse 1, he says listen, this is what I'm going to do, I am going to destroy your enemy, this is how I'm going to show you that I love you, by destroying your enemy. In verse 1, then the Lord said unto Moses, this is when Moses went back to God, and said hey what's going on? Then the Lord said unto Moses, for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land, to confirm his love by destroying the enemy. You know what? When Jesus died on the cross, he paid for the penalty of our sin, right? But let me tell you, he destroyed the hand of the enemy. Romans 6.6 says that the old man has been destroyed, the power of him to dictate to us what we should do, if we sin we choose to sin. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, the power is destroyed, the nature is still there, the capability is still there, but he doesn't have to dominate us anymore, and this is what he's saying, I'm going to destroy the slave master of your life, I'm going to destroy the Pharaoh that's telling you I'm going to destroy him, but when Jesus saves us, he destroys the slave master, Satan, over our life, we have a new master. And then something else, notice in 4 and 5, he says, I'm going to confirm my love by giving you the land that is your land. What were they? They were out of their land, their land was Israel, their land was the land of Canaan, I'm going to give you your land, look at verse 4, and I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers, and I have also heard the groanings of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant, so I have done this to destroy the slave master of your life, and to give you back your land. This land represented the victorious Christian life, it represents to us the victorious Christian life, it was the land of their pilgrimage, notice, the land of their pilgrimage, God never intended, God has never intended for a Christian to live in the land of bondage, in the land of defeat, in the land of discouragement, he doesn't intend for us to live there, this is why Jesus came to deliver us, to deliver us from the bondage of sin, and so I am going to put you in that land, Jesus said I have come that you might have life, eternal life, and also that you might have the abundant life, the spiritual life, the free life, you know the truth, the truth will make you free, he said I have come, and then a third thing in verse 6, and he says I am going to show you that I love you, not only by destroying the enemy and by giving you the land, but if you look at verse 6, by removing their burden of bondage, this is what all God is going to do, and while he is going to do it, they are going to belly ache, what are they going to get out of the deal, they are going to get free, and instead of rejoicing and praising the Lord for a few inconveniences, and for a few more weeks of waiting, they are just like us, we get impatient, I was reading this morning in Psalms and the Lord just really impressed to wait, Psalms 37, wait, just don't get so impatient, just keep waiting for me, just keep waiting, well how did God remove their burden of bondage, I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, and I will rid you out of their bondage, I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments, he did it by blood, when it all came down to it, it took the blood to set them free, and they put the blood of the lamb on the post over the door, which symbolized the shed of Christ to your soul, you will never be free, you will be in bondage on this earth until the day you die, and then you will go into an eternal bondage that God never intended for you to experience, if you don't trust Christ, apply the blood of the lamb over your life, accept the blood that was shed for you as your substitute, and you will be free for eternity, you say that's rough, that may be rough, but if it happens, it's not God's fault, it's your fault, well, the blood, you know the Israelites had to do two things to be free, they had to apply the blood, and then they had to walk away from Egypt, so many people had to apply the blood of Christ in their life, but they will not walk away from Egypt, they will not let go of the things that are in their life that bound them before, they think they've got to keep some of these things, and they just keep some of it, it's like being set free from prison, but you walk out the door and there's nothing in the past that was hindering us from getting to God, if it hindered us from getting to God, it will sure hinder us from having fellowship with Him, so if God's working on your heart on something, let it go, I don't know what it is, let it go, it ain't worth it, fellowship with Jesus is a lot better, well, he removed their burden of bondage by redemption, and then verse 4, he restored fellowship for it says, and I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of Egypt, did you know that God wants to fellowship with you every day, He wants to enjoy your fellowship, do you enjoy your God? Man, I woke up this morning, I try to do this every morning, just immediately get my mind on the Lord, and it doesn't take me just a few seconds usually, before I remember why I'm even alive, and I'm dead, and then as soon as I can get things to working a little good, I say, okay Lord, I want to die now, and I want you to live your life through me, you take over, and I got to have him helping me before I jump out of bed, I've got to have the Lord, and I want them all, and he wants that fellowship with us, and they restored the fellowship, you know in Genesis fellowship was lost, Genesis 320 fellowship was lost in the garden, and you come all the way across to Revelation, and Jesus says, you can have fellowship restored, he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man will hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and will fellowship with him, and he with me, it was lost in the garden, when Adam and Eve sinned, but it can be regained, because the blood was shed to pay for our sins, our sins separated us from God, and caused us to go the wrong way, and the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, so we can get back into fellowship with him, but if you will not fellowship with Jesus here today, you will not fellowship with him tomorrow in eternity, you must start it today, so this is a real salvation message that we got out of this, well, that's it, how does it end up, all of those things, he wanted to get their attention, he wanted to confirm his love, well, interesting thing, God got them free from the bondage of Egypt, but only those that chose to got to go into the land later on, many people get free from the bondage of sin, the penalty of it, but they just have a hard time turning away from the ways of Egypt, the patterns of Egypt stayed in many of their hearts, and when God brought them up, just in a short time, he brought them up to the entrance to Canaan, and he said, go in, the grapes are so big, it will take you three days to eat one, think about it, it's such a land of abundance, and they wouldn't go in because they just weren't sure, they said, listen, there are some problems over there, there are some giants, and Joshua and Caleb said, man, they are nothing, God is going to take care of them just like he took care of Pharaoh, you know what, Joshua and Caleb were willing to go into the land because they were living by faith, because of what God had done in the past, and for 40 years they had to wander around in the desert to wait for those dead beat unbelievers to die so the believers could get back into the land, God wasn't going to ship a bunch of unbelieving people into the land of Canaan, mess up the land, they just wouldn't believe, and he got them out, but he couldn't get them into the land, so many Christians get saved, but they refuse to go ahead and go all the way and just completely let God do what he wants to do in their life, and they never live and enjoy the life, I wouldn't go back to where I was before I was saved, you couldn't budge me one inch towards that, I want where I'm at right now today, growing with Jesus it gets better and better, as the old song says, every day it gets sweeter, well, Christ has purchased our salvation, but only those who choose to receive Christ will be saved, why do we have adversity? To get us to Jesus and to get us to be like Jesus, two basic things, if you're not saved God may be allowing something to happen in your life just to get you to Jesus, or if you're saved God may be allowing something in your life to make you more like Jesus, a memorial Christ lunch, so if we faint in the day of adversity our strength is small. Do you know that up in Canada we had a part of this revival, but up in Canada before the revival hit they were having a great depression, I described the difference between a recession and a depression this morning, but they were having a great depression up there, a recession, whatever you want to call it, because up in this one town, this one area, there were 40,000 people out of work, 40,000 people, well we don't even have that many people in this end of Nebraska, but 40,000 people out of work, you know all the complaining, and it was wheat farming, mostly wheat farming, but you know because of that God started a revival that has been going since 1970, that's the thing that built up and I have sensed in our area a lot of people are beginning to get discouraged talking to Ivan this morning how it's really bad up there around Sheridan, no rain, plus people are going, I ask them where are they going, getting out of there, going to look for jobs, I just wonder if God isn't allowing all of this to happen because he wants to send a revival in our nation, we're praying for it, we need it, but also, I just wonder if maybe God isn't doing something in your life to draw you to him, that adversity you've been going through just to get you to him, are you saying I don't have any straw, hey, I've got a bad problem, there's no straw, when the fact of the matter is your soul may be lost, and God's not trying to say, listen, straw isn't your problem, I can give you straw, but you're in bondage and I want to set you free, let's bow our heads and close our eyes, two messages today, one, maybe your trials have been so you can come to Jesus, what do you have against Jesus, what is it you've got against him, that you wouldn't want to give your life to one that gave everything he had for you, the one that would sacrifice everything for you, what do you have against him, what do you have to gain by holding out, what will it profit you if you hold out another day, you're a gambler, if you do hold out another day, you may never make it to wherever you think you're going to make it tonight, why don't you just simply give up struggling, give up fighting, kick him, just turn your life over to Christ, you plan on fighting against God, and what are you going to do if you win, if you win, you get to pay for your own sin and go to hell, if you lose, God wins, he'll save you and take you to heaven, sort of a crazy deal, that's the way it works, Father, thank you for your word, and you had quite a message to us as believers too, we need it, we need it all the time, we're just so forgetful, thank you for what you've given to us, and Lord, there's one here that's been fighting against you, all I can do is pray for him, I don't know, I just pray that they'd understand that you love them, you love them so much, as your word says, for God so loved the world, each one of us, that you gave your only begotten son, that whosoever would believe should not perish, but have everlasting life, I pray if there's someone struggling right now, that you would win, and they would lose, and in the process, they would win, because you are allowed to save them, thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ, Lord, I pray for the victory to be today, if there's a struggle going on in their life, help them Holy Spirit to trust Christ, maybe there's a believer here struggling with something in their life, a habit or a sin, or something that their conscience pricks them about, I pray that they would get the victory too, in Jesus name, amen.