Elevation Point Church

We tend to focus on what we’re going through, instead of who we’re going with. We feel unhappy because: The divorce was too much, we can’t figure life out, or life got rocky. But Paul says “no no, don’t focus on everything going on OUT HERE — it’s about WHO you have IN HERE. On the outside, it may not seem that there’s much to smile about; but as followers of Jesus, our smile comes from what He’s done on the inside.

Moving on from seasons, people, and experiences is rarely ever easy. It’s natural to even need to mourn those things leaving our lives. While we know that what God has in store is always better, there’s still an understandable connection to what we’ve lost or left. It’s never wrong to feel sad for a moment, as long as we don’t stay there. We have to be willing to get up and move forward into what God has ahead of us.

The Israelites are stuck. They’re at a mountain. No doubt, many of us feel this way or have felt this way at some time or another. Stuck in the same place we’ve been, with limited to no progress. The Israelites appeared to be stuck. They had been in Horeb for about a year — in the same place for an entire year. And what makes matters even more discouraging is that what God promised them was on the other side of the mountain. Can you imagine how frustrating this must have been for them? To know where they were “supposed” to be, but to be camped out on the other side? To know what God said, but for that not to be what you see? To have a mountain, obstacle, or hindrance blocking your view? But see, many times we convince ourselves that we’re stuck because of something else; when the truth is, we’ve chosen to be stuck. We’ve become complacent and comfortable. We’ve turned a momentary situation into forever, when it was never meant to be forever.

Have you ever faced a time where things didn’t go how you expected? Have you ever had a plan, but nothing went how you planned it? In those moments, it’s difficult to see how our wrecked plans could ever be a good thing. In Luke 24, Mary and Mary expected to pay their respects to Jesus in the tomb where He had been laid. They expected Jesus to still be dead. They expected the tomb to be closed. Instead — the tomb was open, and Jesus was gone. But as they found out — when Jesus is involved, what looks bad becomes good.

Palm Sunday teaches us that God doesn’t always show up in our lives the way that we expected Him to. And while it’s easy to say we understand that, it’s difficult to live out. We all have expectations of how we want Jesus to show up in our lives and what we are believing for Him to do. The tension comes when He doesn’t do it how we wanted. In those moments, we often begin to doubt and reject what God is doing. We begin to question and quit on God’s plan and purpose simply because we don’t understand it. What we must remember is this: God never said we had to understand everything in the beginning, He just promised it will be revealed to us in His time.

For the most part, we acknowledge that God has the ability to use us in significant ways, even though we may have a flawed past before knowing Him. However, what happens when we make mistakes after deciding to follow Him? We often feel like our present imperfections, rather than our actions before following Jesus, disqualify us. We may start to doubt that God can still use us after we've "messed it up." Nonetheless, God isn't restricted to only empowering us once; He can continue to do so over and over again. Just as He did it before, He can do it again.