Steven Furtick - Don't Make A Scene (01/27/2026)
This sermon, based on Matthew 1:18-25, focuses on Joseph's often-overlooked role in the Christmas story. The preacher argues that we must embrace the real chaos and scandal of the first Christmas, not a sanitized version, and that understanding the full context of Jesus's birth—through a lineage of flawed people—gives us a framework for compassion and purpose in our own messy lives. The conclusion is that when we view our own chaos through the context of God's purpose, we can "take Mary home" and embrace what God is doing, jumping to new, faith-filled conclusions.
The Overlooked Chaos of the Real Christmas
Matthew chapter 1 verse 18: This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother, Mary, was pledged to be married to Joseph. I know Mary is the headliner of Christmas, but let's give Joseph some love today. Okay. Because Joseph had a lot of faith. Would you agree? Look at this. Before they came together, you know what that means? This ain't E-Kids, y'all. Before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Everybody say, uh-oh, Joe. Because Joseph, her husband was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this… I wonder how many things in your life would have turned out different if you would have stopped and thought about them for a minute. After he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. And all this took place. All this took place. I don't know what all this is in your life, but all this took place in Joseph's life. All of the drama, all of the controversy, all of the confusion. Everybody shout. All this took place to fulfill. I like that word, fulfill. Fulfill.
We should do a series about that. Come on, Keith. 2016. Put it on the calendar. Put it on my Google Docs. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him. It doesn't say all of his questions went away, but he acted in obedience to his revelation. See, you don't have to feel something to have faith for something. When he woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.
Joseph took Mary home as his wife, but he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus. Back up to verse 19, where it says, Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet didn't want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. So I want to use, as a subject for this Christmas sermon, a little instruction, a little piece of advice I have for you. You ready? You ready? You ready? You ready? Don't make a scene. Don't make a scene. Touch somebody and say, You need to calm down. You need to calm down. Don't make a scene. Amen.
Embrace the Real, Not the Idealized
Father, open their eyes and open our hearts and open the heavens over us and speak a word. In Jesus' name, everybody shout amen. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you, worship team. Well done. When I get to heaven, I don't want to hear them say medium rare. I want to hear well done. Anybody think Christmas is overrated? I do. I think it's overrated. I think, uh, I don't know. That's a lot to say. Don't throw me out to church. Don't disrespect me as a man of God. I love the story of Christmas. I love the message of Christmas. I love the meaning of Christmas. My Christmases as a child were delightful.
I mean, you can't have better Christmases than I had as a child in terms of just enjoying the season. It's not what I mean. What I mean is, I think that we've done Christmas a disservice in the way that we present the story that actually happened. In cultural terms, I would say we have sanitized the salvation process to the point that it doesn't even resemble the revelation that we see in the Scripture. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's so many ways this is reflected in our songs. Let's take the songs we sing at Christmas, for example. They're beautiful. I sing them too. I love them. They're wonderful. Sing them all. Love them all. They're great. But Jesus cried in the manger. All right?
I know that it says, away in the manger, no crib for a bed. Little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. But I've had three babies, and they were born in hospitals in good conditions, and they screamed their heads off. So you're not going to get it past me that Jesus, who was fully God and fully man, wasn't screaming in a barn, having to sleep next to animals. Don't even try to tell me that he laid on the straw comfortable and didn't scream. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was screaming his head off, and Mary was screaming too, screaming at Joseph for making her ride on that donkey to take the census and not having the foresight to book a hotel ahead of time.
One day, I'm going to write a CD, a whole CD, called Christmas Got Real, and it's going to have Christmas Carols like they really happened. And in my Christmas Carols, Jesus, the little Lord Jesus, isn't going to be asleep on it. Jesus is going to be colicky. Jesus is going to be screaming. All is calm. What Christmas planet are you from? All is calm. All is calm. Again, it just shows me that the one who wrote that hymn had a different frame of reference than my frame of reference. Again, I had a good family, but an extended family, that's a whole different…. My mom is here. She will back me up. My uncles would bring so many girlfriends through.
I didn't know what to call them. Do I call her aunt too? I'll never forget my mom looked at me and said, Don't you call her your aunt. That's not your aunt. Everybody say real. Real Christmas. Real Christmas. Real Christmas. Where your expectations collide with your reality. That's really the problem, isn't it? The problem is that all the people in our lives don't read the script for how they're supposed to act to make our Christmas what we expected it would be. I mean, if they would all just get on the same page and all take their places and fall in on their Mark, we could have a good Christmas. Touch somebody and say, Christmas could be perfect if you would do it my way.
Why Context Changes Everything
And most of us would make a scene in our mind that we want Christmas to look like. Not just Christmas, that we want Monday to look like. And so we get this imagination. But what do you do when the ideal collides with the real? And what you pictured Christmas would be like, when your memories of how it was collide with the reality of how it now is? This could be empty seats at the table. This could be strained relationships that won't resolve. And so I'm not saying that Christmas is overrated in the spirit that it really exists. I'm just saying that I think we have downplayed the drama of what really happened to create the first Christmas.
To the extent that we are disappointed in ourselves that we can't create perfect manger scenes because we're all trying to manage the scene of reality that exists in real life. And when we compare that to all is calm and you look in your life and you see that all is chaotic, what do you do? So I want to talk about these elements real briefly today. I want to talk, first of all, about the chaos of Christmas, the chaos of Christmas, and I made a note to myself. I don't ever look at my notes. I don't know why I bring them up here, but I said, hurry on this point, because this isn't really the point I want to make.
It's just a hurry. Don't get all bogged down in this point. Use up all your clock. But because the chaos, what I want to say about it is really, really simple. Embrace it. Embrace it. I didn't say create it. I said embrace it. I don't believe that chaos should be a lifestyle, but in certain seasons of your life, chaos is inevitable, and in those seasons, embrace it. The Bible says that after Joseph had considered this, he took Mary home to be his wife, and when he took her home, he took, along with her, all of the circulating chaos, all of the scandal, all of the criticism that would accompany his decision.
To be with a woman who had apparently been unfaithful to him, a woman who, during the time of betrothal, had all of a sudden shown up pregnant. Matthew does something interesting to help us with this, because in order to embrace the chaos, you always need the context. That's my second point. I'm flying. You better write this down or it's going to be over and you're going to be home. You're not going to have anything. Christmas is going to suck because you didn't pay attention to the preacher. I want to talk about the context. Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, and he knows that their interest will be in discovering the lineage of Jesus Christ.
They would have been familiar with this lineage through which the Messiah came. And those first 17 verses that I did not read to you, because I didn't think you would enjoy hearing about them, would actually be interesting for you to look at. Because if you read the lineage that Jesus came through, that Matthew takes the time to establish, before he gets to the actual story about what happened when he was born, or the miracles that he worked when he was a grown man, or the price that he paid as he gave his life, Matthew starts his gospel establishing context. Everybody shout, Context. Context is so important.
You know, we're in a political season right now, and I don't pay much attention to the rhetoric, because all they're doing in presenting news to us is taking things out of context to present them to us in the most bombastic fashion, and so they take this thing and this thing, and they put it all out of context, so that the person actually said the words. Now, there are some candidates. You don't even have to take them out of context. They're crazy in context. But generally speaking, the way that they attract attention is to take things out of context. This is how the Enemy, by the way, introduced deception and sin into the world.
If you want to study it, it was a case of context, because God told Adam and Eve, of all the trees in this garden, you may freely eat, but don't touch this one or you're going to die. So there's a permission given, and then there's a consequence established. So when the snake comes slithering up to Eve in the third chapter of the book of Genesis, he takes God's words out of context. He says, did God really say you can't eat off of any of these trees? In fact, that's nothing like what God said. What God in fact said is you can eat from any tree, but if you eat from this tree, it's going to be harmful to you.
But the Enemy knows he can always divorce you from your destiny if he can get you out of context. I almost called this whole message, let's keep Christmas in context. Let's remember that Herod was trying to kill all the baby boys under the age of two at the time when Jesus was born. Let's remember that we're not living in the first day in time or the age where there has been violence in the world. Let's remember that Christ, who was born, O Holy Night, was born into a violent world. Keep it in context. If you ever go to visit the Holy Land and you ask them, oh, can I see Bethlehem? They'll probably tell you, you don't want to go there. It's a ghetto.
It's a beautiful place, but it's no place you would want to visit on your itinerary for a vacation because God is born into contexts that people reject. Jesus was born to a virgin, to a Palestinian girl. That is the context of your faith. When Matthew says, Abraham begot Isaac, who begot Jacob, who begot Joseph, you might want to skip over that stuff, but go back and read it, because if you read that whole lineage, it'll give you a context for the message of Christmas. That Jesus came through a lineage of murderers, and Jesus came through a lineage of fugitives, and Jesus came through a lineage of liars, and Jesus came through a lineage of backstabbers.
One woman who's mentioned in the context of Christmas is a prostitute. So, before you look down your nose this Christmas on people who don't have their act together, you better remember the context of Christmas is that Christ came into the world through sinners, for sinners, and you're one of them. Let's somebody say, you're one of them. Context. Context is everything. Don't you think? Context is so helpful for determining why someone is committed. If you meet someone who's really committed, I bet you they went through a season of struggle. And if you meet someone who's committed to their job or committed to their calling or committed to their ideals, the most successful people I've ever met, if you get a little bit of backstory and see, you need a little bit of backstory to understand the baby in the manger.
Because if you go straight to the baby, you'll miss it. But Matthew says in verse 18, this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. This is how. How did he do it? Did God drop him down out of heaven in a handcrafted box? Did God put him behind glass and send him through the clouds and drop him into palatial spaces where royalty reside? No, no, no, no. This is how. In chaos and confusion through the lineage of sinners. So the most successful people I've ever met went through a season that was so difficult that now they are driven by their desire to never have to go back there.
And so that's why they stay up late and that's why they work hard, but you'll never understand their commitment until you've understood their context. Some of you haven't struggled enough and you will never be successful until you struggle because you don't have the context yet that can contain success. So why would God give it to you? I'm going to come over here and preach. I said, God is not going to drop blessing into somebody who's never been in a barn. I'm going to try the center section. Everything's falling apart now. I might have to move to the overflow before it's all said and done. I said, your struggle today is a setup for your success tomorrow. There it is.
But you have to go through some stuff in the cradle before you can get to the cross. You have to establish a context. A context can also help you understand someone's celebration. You know, there are people who will be really happy this Christmas getting less than you got because their context is they've never had it before. They'll take shoe boxes through Operation Christmas Child, which we've supported Samaritan's Purse for years, and when they drop them off to the kids, toys that your kids would walk past, these kids will cry over. Context. Context. The person sitting next to you might be a little more exuberant than you. When we were worshiping, they might have been kind of loud, and you might not understand that.
But if you understood their context, you might understand that the person next to you didn't even think they'd see their 30th birthday. But God stepped in some kind of way and delivered them from all their fears, and so when I start preaching and when we start praising, there's a celebration. Do me a favor. Touch somebody and say, You don't know what it's like to be me. You don't even know all the fights I had to fight. You don't even know the wars that God won on my behalf. You don't even know what I stepped across to get to church. You don't know what it cost me to raise my kids. Context.
We went to a baseball game a year ago that Graham was playing in, and the kid on the other team hit the ball. The ball dribbled past the pitcher, and the kid got on first base, and the whole other side… The kid was on the other team, and the whole other side starts cheering like the boy had hit a home run, like he had rounded home plate, like he had hit a grand slam, won the World Series. All these parents going wild, which I thought was ridiculous until one of the parents told me that the reason they're cheering is because the kid had never played before. When he came out there, he didn't even know how to hold the baseball bat because there was no dad in the family, and it was his grandma that brought him out.
So, just to see him make contact, that's the context, to understand that somebody's small step is a big success. Maybe there are some things this Christmas that you need to put in context. If you would put it in context, you would celebrate your crazy kids if you put it in the context of somebody's kid isn't with them this Christmas. Somebody's kid is in prison. Somebody's kid is in the hospital. Somebody's kid is dead. It would help you appreciate your living parents to understand that somebody has no living parent to visit. Even though your mom has dementia, it might help you to see a little bit of joy in a hopeless situation if you could ask God to give you a context. Context.
How Does Context Create Compassion?
I'm going to say something else about context. Can I preach? I'm going to say something else about context. The reason some of us don't have compassion is because we don't have context for other people's conflict. Compassion is a result of context. It's kind of easy for a white man in America to say that racism doesn't exist anymore and see things on TV and say, Oh, well, they're always complaining about black people because you have no context for the conflict. You have no compassion. You've never had somebody follow you around a store because of the color of your skin. I'm not going to talk about this if y'all aren't going to help me. You never had to have a talk with your kid about how to deal with a police officer on that level.
So now when you hear somebody else's conflict, you don't have any compassion because you don't have any context. Christmas is God stepping into humanity and giving us a context for compassion. That he would breathe your air. That he would take your sin. That he would take your shame. That he would walk your earth. That he would walk your ground. That he would take your struggle. It's real. It's easy to criticize somebody whose context you've never experienced. I'll tell you, if I were the pastor of that church, you don't know. Well, start one then. It's a little Christmas devotion. Come on, smile, y'all. Smile, smile, smile, smile. Context.
It's real easy for a straight person to talk about what a gay person ought to do, but until you've spent a day in their context, you'll never understand the feelings they have associated with the church because of people who quoted Scripture at them, but they quoted it out of. Please don't use the gospel as a context for hate. Please don't use the gospel as a context for judgment. Please don't call yourself a Christian until you're willing to be like the one who carried your cross. Context. Clap if I'm preaching right. We'll treat people better when we put their conflict in context. You know, I don't know what it's like to be a single mom. I don't know what it's like to raise teenagers.
I'm not going to do a parenting series until all mine are gone out of the house. I don't know how he's going to act at age 16. I don't know, so I don't want the measure of judgment I used to come back on me because I preached it out of… So I'm just hanging on, man. You know what I'm saying? Well, if I had their money… You don't. You will make some of the worst relational decisions of your life when you take things out of context. When somebody has been good to you for 10 years and they do one thing that makes you mad and you write them off, you mean you're going to take the 10 years that they were good to you and one thing they said is going to make you cut the relationship off?
You're going to take one thing out of the context of the whole relationship now and be done with the person? What if God did that with you? Bubba Lou? Anyway, I'm boring some of y'all, so I'm going to rush to the conclusion here. I'm just saying, you know, maybe you need to put your current situation in context because the Enemy would like you to think that there's nothing to your life and it doesn't matter and it doesn't make a difference and all this. You have to remember that the hope of the world was born in a barn. That is the context of Christmas is that God saved the world from a stable. The next time the Enemy tries to tell you it doesn't matter and it's not worth it and you're not much, just remember the context of your faith is that your Savior came from a stall.
I said, I wonder what little thing there is in your life. It just looks like a seed right now, but every oak tree you drive past was a seed at first. The context of the tree is that it started as a seed. The context of salvation is that it started as a stable. The context of every big thing God's going to do in your life is that you're faithful in the small things. Keep it in context. Come on, high-five people. Tell them, keep it in context. Don't get discouraged in the day of small beginnings. Keep it in context. Keep your failure in context. Your failure is a portal to your future. Keep it in context. The empty tomb was made possible by the bloody cross. Keep it in context. Hope came to humanity. I can't preach this. I don't have a church.
I've got to find me a new church where I can preach this. Maybe I'll preach it to the wall. If you're feeling depressed and discouraged and defeated, it's because the enemy has gotten your hope out of context. But I came to tell you that everything that happens in your life happens for a reason of context. The gift of context. Those of y'all that don't want to stand when I preach, would y'all start sitting in overflow? Because I need some people in church who know how to praise him, who know how to celebrate, who know how to clap your hands. Come on, this is a worshipful atmosphere. This is a victorious atmosphere. Joseph came to a conclusion based on a context, and when the angel showed up—watch this. You're going to love this.—the angel didn't change the circumstance.
Jumping to New, Godly Conclusions
The angel gave a context to the circumstance that Joseph wasn't aware of. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well. Say it, Furtick. All right. The angel gave a context that led Joseph to a new conclusion. Oh my God, did you hear me? And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according—oh, you missed it. My calling is my context, and if all things work together for my good, whatever conclusion I come to means I win. So I start with the fact that I win, and I work my way backwards. He had considered this. He thought about it, and he thought it over. Touch somebody and say, think it over. No, no, no, no. I'm not saying think it over again. I'm saying think it over.
I'm saying God said, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and my ways are higher than your ways. So what are you doing up under the circumstances when I've given you a context of a conqueror? I am the head and not the tail, only above and never beneath. I have a new context, and all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called. So the conclusions that I come to in my mind are a result of the context that I have created in my heart. If I create a context in my heart where I expect perfection from the people around me, when they disappoint my expectation, I want to dismiss them from the stage. But you aren't the centerpiece of this manger scene, baby girl.
If my context is, you know, Jesus, be the center this Christmas, and would you work in my life in all the ways you're working? The context is, God, I don't want perfection. I just want purpose. Purpose. And are called according to his purpose. When your context is created by your preference, you'll always be disappointed. When your context is created by God's purpose, you'll never be put to shame. When your context is created by your pain, you'll always carry with you a sense of sorrow and regret. But if you frame your pain in the context of purpose, you'll realize there's a reason for everything I went through. The good, the bad, the ugly. I wonder what conclusions you've been jumping to in your mind because you've allowed the wrong context in your heart.
I wonder… It's so easy to do, man. Me and Holly, you can sit down for a minute. I'd like to chat another ten if you're good. And then we have a giant to slay. But the context of Christmas and the context of my life and the context of your life is the framework by which we make decisions. Now, I'm not going to holler anymore. I'm going to just tell you a little story. Me and Holly were coming back. I preached in Dallas a few weeks ago. We were coming back home. Wasn't that the trip? It was an embarrassing story to tell. I'm humiliated about it. I got that out of the way. So, we're about to get on the plane, and they're boarding, and we can't hear it because the speaker system is from 1920 in the airport, apparently.
It's very crowded at the gate. Apparently, the airlines no longer believe that it is important to corral the customers. Just let it turn into a total anarchy lord of the flies and see if anybody comes out alive. Everybody fight for your spot. God forbid we have a system of order to the boarding process. Who would want that? So, it's chaos. Everybody say chaos. Chaos. Context. Conclusion. All right. So, chaos at the gate. Holly walks over. There's a woman kind of blocking the whole way, and Holly asks her nicely. Now, Holly is not an edgy person. Holly is a nice person. Holly doesn't say things offensively. Holly is a people pleaser. So, she walks up to the woman, and she says in a very nice tone, very, very nice tone, because I'm watching the whole thing from a distance, and she says, excuse me, did they call Zone 1?
The lady looks back at her. I'm watching from a distance, and the lady goes…. Now, I need to make a few observations here about my own nature that I've learned over the years. Whenever someone disrespects me, I don't do well. When they disrespect my wife, I go BC. You understand? You got the picture? So, the woman made this face, this whole face. So, I slid over to the scene. Everybody say, don't make a scene. Don't make a scene. I slid over just to let the woman know that Holly wasn't a solo traveler to establish the context. Do you understand? I said to the woman, not real loud, not real forceful, just said, what's your problem? The traveling companion with her said, she can't hear. She was hearing impaired. How many relationships have you ruined because you came to a conclusion without understanding the context?
I was so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed. I didn't even know how to apologize. That's one of those where you just drop your head and start over, you know, whatever. But we do it all the time, you know? We do it all the time. We get mad at people for what they say that really isn't an indication of how they feel about us is what they're going through within themselves. And so a question Christian would be, if the cross is our context for how we relate to God, shouldn't it be the conclusion we come to in how we relate to others? If the basis of my relationship with God is that he had to die for my sins, that he had to shed his blood for my sins, if that's what it took for me to be right with God, shouldn't it be enough for me to be right with others?
In the chaos of Christmas, keep your context of compassion, and you will come to a new conclusion. And my conclusion is exactly what the angel said to Joseph. It's one thing I know no matter what I go through, no matter how it feels, is that he's with me. I think if I could just put the Christmas message in a single three-word phrase, I would say, you're not alone. You're not alone. It's amazing how lonely you can feel this time of year with a crowd around. It's amazing how lonely you can feel even with people you love gathered around. But the angel showed up to Joseph, who was dealing with all of this in his heart. Remember, he was making a decision. Do I send Mary away or do I bring her home?
When the angel said, you shall call his name Emmanuel, and he shall be called Jesus, he was telling Joseph, watch this, your dilemma is going to be your deliverance. Your dilemma is going to become your deliverance. Jesus came to deliver his people from their sins, and so the angel says to Joseph, and the angel says to you this Christmas, take Mary home. Embrace the chaos and the craziness. Embrace all of it, man. It's not perfect. Neither are you. Establish a context in your heart this Christmas. I'm just glad to be here. I'm just glad to be here. My favorite thing he told me that I want to tell you is it's time for you to jump to a new conclusion. Time for you to jump to a new conclusion. You know this phrase, stop jumping to conclusions?
Well, I think it's time we started jumping a little higher. Jumping past all the junk and the anxiety and the worry. You know how some of y'all are. You worry about everything. Everything. Stomach hurts. It's pancreatic cancer within three minutes. I feel it in my pancreas. You know how some of you are. They're five minutes late. You've got them in a car wreck. They're through the windshield by the time you don't get a text message. You know how some of you are. Somebody looks at you one way, and all of a sudden now, do you see how they looked at me? They better not ever look at me like that again. I knew they had something against me. That's just proof right there. You build out a whole conclusion based on an inaccurate context.
What if they looked at you funny because their stomach hurt? What if they had pancreatic cancer? What if they just got bad news? What if they're lonely? I wonder, could you go into Christmas like this? He took Mary home. Do you know what that cost him? Do you know what people said about him? Do you know what people thought about him? To be the baby daddy, but not really? Do you know what it would have felt like to wake up next to her and wonder, did an angel really show up? She was kind of friendly with Mark. I mean…. Come on, y'all. Come on, y'all. To embrace a life of faith means you need a new frame. So I go into it knowing that God has a purpose in all of this.
Did you hear it? It said, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord spoke through the prophet. Amen. I want to declare to you today that everything in your life happened for a reason. I'm not saying God did it, but I'm saying that within the context of redemption, there is nothing you've been through. There is nothing you'll go through. There is nothing people will do to you that God will not somehow get a hold of, and the God who brought hope out of a barn can bring hope out of broken situations in your life this Christmas. If you believe it, get up on your feet right now and let God know, I'm in it for purpose this Christmas. God, I want to see your purpose come to pass. I have a new conclusion. Whatever happens to me and whatever doesn't happen for me, God is overseeing the whole thing.
I'm not going to make a scene in my mind, because you know what? Sometimes what you have in mind isn't what God has in store. Joseph had it in his mind. I'm telling you, there are some of you, you are about to divorce your destiny because of a disappointment. Joseph was going to divorce Mary, the very one he was called to assist in bringing Jesus into the world. He was about to divorce. This message is strong. If you can get it, if you can get it, if you can get it, he said he took Mary home to be his wife. He said, Come on, girl. We're going to do this together. Come on. We're going to do this together. He took Mary home, and he said, I have a new context. The angel of his man.
You see, you don't need the angel to show up tonight and tell you all this that I'm telling you, okay? God already told you he knows the plans he has for you. I said, God already told you he has plans for a hope and a future. You better listen to this, preacher. That's your context. Take Mary home, whatever the hard thing is. I'm not saying she's a hard thing to take home. I'd like to take her home. I'll take her home in a minute, and it's going to be great. But I'm saying, whatever thing… I want to clarify the illustration so she doesn't take it out of context. Have you been pushing away the very thing that God brought into your life to produce your purpose at a new level?
Because, see, the way you deal with disappointments in your life determines how you experience your destiny. It may be the thing that's bringing you the greatest pain and confusion right now. It may be the thing that releases the greatest glory in your life. If you take Mary home, every hardship in your life is headed somewhere. It's headed somewhere. Touch somebody and say, it's headed somewhere. It's headed somewhere. I feel the Spirit of God in this place. Lift your hands. Lift your hands. Don't be in a hurry to rush out. You don't need your purse. Nobody is going to take it. You have a little $20 in there anyway. Lift your hands. Lord, we thank you for your presence in this place. Hallelujah. God, we thank you for your provision and your purpose prevailing in our lives.
We even want to take a minute to thank you for all the things we don't understand. That's what creates our faith. Yes, Lord, the thing I don't understand is the breeding ground of faith in my heart. Lift your hands. Stretch them high. Come on. This is the season where God came near. This is the season where he wanted you to know he's with you. This is the season where he wanted you to know he's for you. Shout it out. Say, God is with me. Say, God is for me. Say, God is in me. Now I want to ask you a question. If he's with you, if he's for you, if he's in you, who can be against you? You have a new context. Give me the context. Come on, lift your hands and worship him. Mercy is for me. Mercy is for me.