Abraham (various passages)

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan.

Well, good morning, everyone. Good to see you. So this is kind of a last minute change. Don isn't here this week and possibly next week, thanks to some sickness. Take a guess what that might be. So we'll see how things proceed over the next weeks, but please keep him in your prayer, as well as anyone in our church family who's struggling with COVID through my family.

I'm sure some of you have your own stories. So let's just remember that in prayer. Now, I had a conversation recently with a dear friend who's concerned with an aging family member. There are signs that this aging person is not taking care of themselves, eating the wrong kinds of food, missing medications, missing meals altogether.

And as a result, things got so whacked out internally that this aging person found themselves in the hospital. Now, the family, as you can imagine, is in a tough spot. They're gathering, even as we speak, going, how are we going to talk with this person and help them see what's really going on?

Right, we might call that a family intervention is on the way. Now, the scary part about these things is is that family person, that family member, going to see the truth? Or are they going to say, well, thanks very much, but no thanks, I got this.

I don't need your help. You're overreaching here. Please just leave me alone. Now, the signs are there, everybody sees it, but we have an amazing propensity to move towards self-deception, would you agree?

And we don't often want to admit the truth about ourselves. Now, this morning, I'm not so interested if you're eating McDonald's or donuts too much, okay? We're not talking about your physical health today.

But I wanna have a conversation about our spiritual health. I wanna have you take a hard look, if you're willing, at your faith journey and how is it going these days. There is no lack of things going on in our world that are things that are very challenging to our faith journey.

I'm sure you would agree with that as well. So how is your faith journey going? Has it gotten a little whacked out inside? And do you find yourself faltering, doubting, taking missteps? Is your faith journey different than what it used to be?

So to help us along in this conversation today, and then maybe next week, and if not, maybe at a future date, I thought it would make sense that we would look at an Old Testament character who, physically speaking, is the father of the nation of Israel, right?

But spiritually speaking, he's referred to in the New Testament as the father of our faith. Who am I talking about?

Who?

It's Abraham, right? So we're gonna look at Abraham. When we get to the message, we're gonna take six snapshots over the next couple weeks into his life, and we're gonna look at his faith journey as it progresses over the course of his lifetime.

A great person to study. We learn a lot about our faith from studying Old Testament characters, and I wanna encourage you to jump in wholeheartedly. Now, two last things by way of intro. Why would I come to church to take a hard look at my faith?

I hope that's an easy question. But the truth is is a lot of us can get on autopilot. We can kinda set the thing on, let's just go, and it's not often that we sit back and take an honest assessment about how we're doing.

And so I've always believed that the church oughta be, when we show up on a Sunday morning, a place where we show up to do hard work, and we ask ourselves hard questions about our journey of faith. How's it really, really going?

Are you walking closely? Is it a struggle, okay? 2 Corinthians 13, five says examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. I hope you are in the faith. That's always the first question, right?

I trust that if you're here this morning, you know Jesus as your Savior, but I sat in those pews for years and didn't. That might be you too, and it's okay. We get there by asking honest questions about our faith.

Am I just here for religion purposes? Or is this really something that is guiding my life as I make decisions that sometimes I'm not so sure how to make? Where does faith fit into the real stuff of life?

I think that when we show up at church, we oughta be working and working hard. And so I'm gonna invite you to do that with me this morning as we look at these stories. Here's the second thing. We'll finish with this by way of intro.

Hebrews 11, six says without faith, it is impossible to please God. And again, I'm gonna take it by faith that you want to please God. You're trying to get to know him. You wanna get to know him better.

You've known him for a long time. You wanna keep going. You know that you're not done yet. Wherever you fall on that continuum, right, you want to please God with your life or you wouldn't be here. Or you're searching at a minimum, okay?

So let's ask God to help us. Take a look at these stories here just a little bit in the book of Genesis and the life of Abraham. And let's do some testing. You in it? Let's pray. God, we wanna ask your help now as we go to worship and announcements in these different parts of our morning.

Because God, we do wanna show up and give our best to you today and examine ourselves, to test ourselves, to see if we're in the faith, to see how we're doing. Because no doubt, every person in this room has difficulty in trials and things that don't make sense.

And so as we study Abraham this morning, I pray you'd encourage our hearts and help us in our journey with you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Everybody set?

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Recast.

Oh, I'm Jordan DeHart and I play drums and my wife, she helps in the kids' ministry.

My name's Jordan DeHart. I play drums. My wife helps in the kids' ministry. This alleged worship leader is David Bunt.

That's right. You're right. You're right.

On your way in today, you should

Oh, oh, I know this one. Hey, if you reach under your seats, taped underneath is a paint by numbers. This goes along with Don's sermon every week. You'll find a brush and some colors.

Or it's a worship folder that you should have been given on your way in with all sorts of announcements and information about the church. If you look inside, you will find this item right here.

What?

Oh, we have a t-shirt cannon.

Every time for all the new people,.

Between Don's opening lines and what is it?

The third song? We shoot off the t-shirt cannon.

It's a total surprise. Super fun. Wait for it.

Literally every single thing you said was incorrect there, except the t-shirts exist here. This is a connection card.

We don't have

If you give us an appropriate amount of information, and if you're a first-time visitor, you will get a t-shirt. Also in there, you will find this item.

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Give us money.

We don't ask anybody to give, but if you feel led to give, please use the envelope and the giving slot in the main lobby.

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I got it.

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All right, so we just have three quick announcements. First, we're hoping to have a Christmas kids program this year. Just keep an eye out for any announcements regarding that.

There's gonna be a trapeze.

There is not going to be a trapeze.

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Also, Recast is hosting a blood drive on November 23rd from 11 to 5 p .m. You can go to recastchurch .com to see more information about that. Also, Madeline Area Pantry is doing a Christmas distribution through here in December.

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I get to follow that. So let's transition to pray and ask the Lord's blessing on the rest of the service. Heavenly Father, thank you that we can meet today. Lord, a lot has changed this year, but one thing hasn't, and that's you.

And we're excited to hear from your word. We pray for Dan. We also pray for Don today. God, just bless the rest of our service, and we just thank you for everything you give us. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, if you've got a Bible, could you grab that and turn to Genesis 12? We're gonna look at the first, what I hope there's time for, is four scenes of the life of Abraham here. And if you forgive me, as I talk, I'm just gonna call him Abraham, okay?

He's known as Abram in the first several chapters of his story, and then there's a name change, which is very significant. We're not gonna highlight that. But just so I'm not getting goofed up back and forth, you all probably know this character as Abraham, not Abram so much, and so I probably will goof it up some, but I'm just going with Abraham, okay?

When we read the text, though, I'll read it the way it's written. So take a look. Chapter 12 of Genesis, verses one through four. I'm gonna give each of these little sections a title. So if you're a note-taker, I hope this is helpful for you.

Again, this all kind of happened last minute, so there's no slides, okay? So we found out here a couple days ago that Don was coming down with stuff. So this first section here, scene one, Genesis 12, one through four, I put down, Abraham receives a call.

Abraham receives a call, all right?

Here we go.

Now, the Lord said to Abram, go, and I would highlight that word. Might underline it. I bolded it.

Go.

Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Not gonna spend a ton of time there, but there are seven things God promises to Abraham right here.

And they're unbelievable blessings. You're gonna be a nation. You're gonna be a blessing to the whole world. God's doing something big here through this man. Look at Abram's response, verse four. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.

Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. All right, number one. Why is this such a great story of faith to start? And it can be highlighted just in these couple of words that I've mentioned to you, and here's just a couple more.

God shows up to Abraham at age 75. He's not a young man. Okay, he knows the ways of the world. Granted, he lives to like 175, but he is not a young man. When he finally has his first kid, he's already called an old man in the scriptures.

It's a pretty unlikely story. We'll get to that. But God shows up to Abram at age 75 and says, go. I can imagine if there were a dialogue started and I'm gonna contend that there is a dialogue between Abraham and God their whole lives and when that dialogue is happening, things are going pretty well.

When it shuts down, it doesn't go so well. So maybe it went something like, go where? Well, God gives him this in verse one, to the land I'm gonna show you. Well, what land is that? We'll get to that later.

Just go. Okay, this is why his faith is so remarkable. He goes not knowing where he's going. Can you imagine? If God showed up to you and said, go 75-year-old or 55-year-old or 15-year-old. I got a plan for you, you go.

That's all I'm telling you. Abraham goes, okay. And so I highlighted verse four, the first three words. So Abram went and this is the beginning of the most incredible faith journey in the whole Bible.

Yeah, you could argue with me on that. But it's one of the greatest and this is why he's referred to as the father of our faith. It takes faith to go to places you don't know where you're going. It takes faith to hang in there when you don't know how the story turns out.

Abraham's told to go and by faith, he just goes, okay. And he's 75 years old. This is not like a teenage conversion to Jesus that some of you may have experienced. He's an older man who's got a lot of life experience but he says, okay, I'll go.

Now, at the risk of oversimplification, here's the point I wanna make in this first section. How does God show up in Abraham's life and start this relationship? How does he do it? He simply talks to him.

He opens up a dialogue, okay? Now, in each of these little stories, these little vignettes we're gonna look at out of scripture, I'm gonna talk about a faith enhancer and a faith detractor that I hope you can apply to your life.

Here's the first faith enhancer. When God opens up a dialogue, when you continue that dialogue back with him, you're gonna find your faith journey makes more sense. If you can keep the dialogue open, it's gonna go well for you.

God wants to talk to you. Did you know that? I tell this to my kids all the time. What's God say? He wants to talk to you. Are you talking to him? Are you talking, is it a two-way conversation? Right, okay, now, listen, we're here this morning because we're testing our own faith.

So I want you to be answering these questions as much as you're willing in your mind as we talk. You talking to him? When's the last time you had a conversation with God? When he asks you to go, are you going?

Are you willing? What's happened to the dialogue? Has it minimized or is it non-existent these days in your life? Or are you still in a place where you're kind of tender before him and you're looking to hear from his voice?

And he speaks lots of ways, right? He speaks through friends, through dreams, through feelings. Now, be careful about some of those, but we know these for sure. He always speaks through scripture. Right, when we read that, that's God's word to you, Don says it every week, and it's true, and we love that.

This is God's word to you. He speaks, right? Creation, worship, circumstances, lots of different ways God is trying to get through to you. Are you talking back? Ever tell you about Frank Scarpelli? I never, probably never did.

Well, how would I?

Let me tell you about Frank Scarpelli. Frank Scarpelli is exactly, looks like he sounds. Okay, he was, when I was a pastor at a big church leading a sports ministry, he was one of my captains of a basketball team.

6 '5", black leather, okay, Frank Scarpelli. He was as scary looking as he sounds, right? You would have guessed he might have been involved in the mob, perhaps. But I got to know him. He captained a team, I captained a team.

I was the pastor over the ministry. I got to know him, he didn't know Christ. I started sharing Jesus with him. We're talking about different stuff through the months. Finally, one day, we're driving together.

I don't even know why. We're driving back to his house. It was either after a game, one evening or whatever. And I've been talking to him about the Lord. And all of a sudden, Frank, he's driving his car, big black leather jacket.

Every time I was with him, I was like, I think I'm talking to Rocky, you know? Frank Scarpelli. And he goes, Dan. And I'm sitting over in the passenger seat. He's driving the car. He goes, Dan. I go, what?

I'm talking to him. All right, Frank, you're losing it. Who are you talking to? I'm talking to him.

God.

Oh, I'm tracking with you, because we've been talking to him about talking to God. He'd never opened up that dialogue. He didn't know Jesus as his Savior. And almost in an embarrassed way, he goes, you know, I'm talking to him.

It's exactly as I was coaching him and hoping he would do, because I think this is how the relationship starts with God. God prompts, you hear, you respond. A dialogue starts. Can I tell you how excited I was to hear Frank Scarpelli lean over and go, hey, I'm talking to him, you know?

Me and God were starting to talk a little bit, and he was kind of liking it. And I believe he came to know Christ. Okay, are you talking? You talking to him? Is it happening for you still, even after all these years?

Or has it gotten kind of mundane? Has it gotten off track? Gosh, I hope you're talking to him. A faith enhancer for you is when you open up your dialogue with God and keep it going. Press that little mark on the app that says stay signed in.

Abraham Hangs Up

You know what I'm talking about? Love that. Stay signed in. Don't hang up. Keep talking to him. Scene number two. I titled this when Abraham hangs up. This is Genesis chapter 12, 10 to 15.

You ready?

Now, there was a famine in the land. So Abraham went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. And when he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a beautiful woman in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say this is his wife.

Then they will kill me, and they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me, because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. When Abraham entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. All right. You ready for scene number two, Abraham hangs up. And I say that because what I don't see anywhere in these verses is this dialogue continuing.

It's almost as if this first trial comes into Abraham's life, and he doesn't ask the obvious question. How I wish that this hadn't happened, and if you're with me in verse 10, now there was a famine in the land, and right there, wouldn't it have been beautiful if it said, and so Abraham inquired of the Lord what to do next.

But it's not there. And nor is it anywhere in those verses. And if you study his life, you will see that Abraham and God are talking back and forth an awful lot. But it's as if Abraham faces his first tough trial, his first tough test in life.

That's what this is, and he fails it miserably. He's the father of our faith. He just failed his first test miserably. Can you relate? By now, God has spoken to him on more than one occasion.

Crystal clear. Here's the plan.

You're gonna be a father. Many nations, you're gonna be a blessing. If you do the math, right, he cannot go down to Egypt and get murdered. Can't, because then God's promises wouldn't have come true, and they always come true, and God told him it's gonna happen.

Have you ever been in a place where you knew God's promises, and it just didn't seem to be enough? And might that be you today? We're examining our faith journey, right? You're with me. You're asking these hard questions, right?

Have you been in a place where the truth of Scripture, although is crystal clear, it just didn't seem to be enough for you at this moment? Because what happens here is evidence of our first faith detractor, right, we talked about faith enhancer.

Open up your dialogue and keep it going. Here's the first faith detractor, it's fear. Fear is a huge detractor to faith. Now, did Abraham have legitimate cause for fear? You bet he did. He's a 75-year-old man who knows a lot about the ways of the world.

He just doesn't yet know a lot about the ways of God. He knows the ways of the world. He knows that if he wanders into a strange land where people are more powerful than him and he's got a beautiful wife and lots of herds and people, he's in danger and his life is in danger.

This is not some irrational fear. This is a real fear for him. But he also is in a relationship with God who says, I have you. Trust me. I'm going to do these things in your life. So, no, you're not gonna go down there and be killed.

But it doesn't seem like that dialogue ever happened. You get my drift here? So, fear takes over, and I want to suggest that wherever fear, well, let me put it this way. Whenever your dialogue with God stops, fear takes root.

Fear is a takeaway from faith every single time. We are all prone to it. The scripture talks about don't fear hundreds of times. Because we're so prone to it. We're doing a self-examination today. Where is fear taking hold in you?

What part of your life might you not be trusting God with even though he's made it crystal clear through scripture, he has a plan, he sees you, he wants to talk with you, but he's asking you to trust him.

Abraham got scared. Abraham stopped talking. Abraham started to make his own decisions. And I want to suggest that whenever fear-based decisions are made, many people around you suffer. Look what happened in this section.

Actually, I'm not reading all of it for you, so I'll just tell you. But he puts his wife in mortal danger. He puts himself in danger. He actually put all these Egyptians in danger because God struck him with sickness.

Because they took this man's wife, right? He made this decision in fear and lots of negative things began to happen. Where is fear getting a hold of you these days? Is it messing up your faith? Is there something you're concerned about that you're not trusting God with?

I know what that's like. Certainly, Abraham does as well. Just want to remind you, Abraham sins here, right? He just acts out of faith and does a bunch of stuff. Lies and tries to manage things himself.

He gets out of step. But God's faithfulness to him does not change. And so too with you. If you're struggling, let's get back on track this week. Let's open up the dialogue. Let's address the fears. But believe me, God has not given up on you.

Abraham's Humility

Nothing can separate us from him. That is what the scripture says in Romans 8. Scene three. Genesis chapter 13, eight through 13. You want to flip there. Scene three. We're going to call this one Abraham's humility.

Abraham's humility. Where are we going with this? Well, I'll give you a heads up. I want you to assess your own humility before the Lord these days. How are you depending on him? Do you need to win at stuff?

Are you trusting him when things aren't going your way? Humility is a faith enhancer. Let's read this story. Then Abram said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me. Lot, by the way, is a relative and has lots of belongings.

God's blessing him right along with Abraham. They've done this journey to this point together. And between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen, is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me.

If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord.

Like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zohar, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus, they separated from each other.

Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tents as far as Sodom. Now, the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord. I think Abraham here demonstrates incredible humility, right?

Lot is his junior, his nephew. Lot is a younger man. God has promised all of this land to Abraham as part of his promise. And now, together, they are so powerful and so wealthy in possession that the land can't sustain them so they need to part ways.

And Abraham the greater lets Lot the lesser choose. Shouldn't it be just the reverse? Well, it should be, according to the way of the world, right? The boss makes the decision, not the junior. The boss grabs the best and the junior gets the less.

That's typically how things go the world's way, right? And you would expect that to happen here. Lot and Abraham get together. Look, we're arguing and fighting because we're just on top of each other.

We need to separate ourselves. Okay, but Lot, I want you to choose first. Abraham's humility here is overwhelming. How did it get to this point? Well, I just want to suggest that from the time his journey started till this point here, there's a number of years now that have gone by and Abraham continues to walk with God and he's learning to trust him more.

And his faith is deepening. He's on the way to becoming this father of our faith and you're seeing it demonstrated right here when even though the land is supposed to be his, he's able to say, you take what you want.

Somewhere back in there, in his dialogue with the Lord, Abraham probably remembered that it's gonna be okay. Just do the right thing. And in this case, to avoid conflict, Abraham takes a very humble route and lets the other guy win.

Do you have to win all the time? Can we just trust God and say, he's gonna bring about his plan in due time? You don't have to fight and argue and claw and scratch and make a name for yourself in this world because the goal isn't this world.

It's not about getting ahead, finishing first, looking out for number one. And so the question for you as you examine your faith is are those kinds of lies which you will find every single day in every TV show you watch or movie you watch, wherever you go to work, right?

This is the way of the world, right? It's look out for myself. It's win.

I deserve it.

I'm important. I, I, I, right? And the lesson of faith here is whenever we take a prideful approach, we're gonna miss the dialogue with God who says you don't have to win. Will you just trust me? I'll bring it about in due time.

Abraham's humility is a faith enhancer, right? Obviously the opposite of that is pride. That's a faith detractor. And so in your self-assessment today, this is the question I'm posing before you here from scene number three.

How is your humility? Are we staying humble and tender before the Lord? Philippians chapter two says something like this. It says consider others better than yourselves. Tough one. Tough one. I call it the Copti principle.

I teach this to my kids. Copti, C-O-B-T-Y. Consider others better than yourselves. It's the Copti principle. Are we doing that? Are we living that way? Are we trusting God that we can put others in front and that we don't have to win, right?

And when Abraham did this, God blessed him. You know what happens right after this passage? There's so much here in scripture. We're not reading it all. But God comes right back to him and says, buddy, well, buddy, it's gonna be okay.

I'm so proud of you. I mean, I can just, I'm obviously making this very contemporary when I talk this way. But I want you to hear that. Because I want us to read scripture as if God's talking to us. And I just, I feel like that's what I read when I, like, it's gonna, all this land is gonna be yours someday.

You did the right thing. Thank you. I'm so proud of you. I mean, I hope you're hearing this dialogue from the Lord. Are you? If not, check back in and make sure that by the end of this week, maybe even today in communion, maybe even right now, you say, Lord, what am I doing?

Why have I cut off the conversation? Let's get back to that place. Let's face some fears. Let's take a humble approach. And let's not be in a hurry about everything. Trust God. All right, scene four. Abraham gets in a hurry.

We're gonna call this one Genesis chapter 16, one through four. I titled this little subsection of scripture, Abraham's hurry. Wow, isn't this interesting? He just shows humility. He's not in a hurry.

And all of a sudden here, two chapters later,.

He's in a hurry.

I love the Old Testament. I love these characters. Right, you need to study them because they're you. They just are. And Abraham had an up and down struggle with his faith just like you. We don't look at the Old Testament characters and go, oh my goodness, I can never be like that.

Because the problem is we often measure our faith against Abraham's finished faith, which we'll hopefully look at next week or sometime in the future in Genesis chapter 22 when he puts Isaac on that altar and get ready, we'll talk about that.

And we often judge ourselves based on that step of faith. And we forget all these up and downs that Abraham had through his life. You have up and downs. I have up and downs. Right, but we study these characters to gain encouragement and truth so that we don't stop.

Right, so Abraham just makes this wonderful display of humility and then he gets in a hurry. Right, now to his defense, years have gone by and no kids are showing up. He's getting nervous and he's getting scared again.

Can you relate? Genesis chapter 16, Abraham gets in a hurry. Now Sarai, Abraham's wife, verse one, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to him, behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Go into my servant so that I shall obtain children by her. Underline this, and Abraham listened to the voice of Sarai. It's his wife. You would think good godly counsel would come from her, but it doesn't.

I'm not saying don't listen to your spouse. I'm saying you always listen to God first. And once again, the dialogue here is missing. Do you see anything here where Abraham goes to God,.

Says, um, is this a good idea?

Now, I was reading some commentators on this. Up to this point, there's nowhere that says that that baby's gonna come from Sarah. It just says it's gonna come from Abraham. So maybe Abraham reasoned on his own, oh, okay, well then maybe this isn't such a bad idea.

All this, you know, it's okay according to, not really okay, because you're not supposed to have more than one wife. But they got around some things in the Old Testament in a way that wasn't super honoring.

But this was sort of understood that if you can't have a baby through her, you have a baby through this one. And that's unfortunate and not a great choice. But Abraham never says, is this a good idea?

His dialogue, again, seems to have gone quiet in this season. And once again, great pain comes about as a result of it. What's the fear, her? He's in a hurry. He got in a hurry. God, you said this thing was gonna happen, and I believe it's gonna happen, and I see it's gonna happen, and it looks like it should happen, and it all ought to line up, but it's not happening.

So maybe I need to make it happen. And so Abraham tries to make it happen. And he listened to his wife when he should have been listening to God. So after Abraham had lived 10 years, that's a long time in the land of Canaan with no promises coming true yet, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife.

And he went into Hagar, and she conceived, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt upon her mistress. And I'm telling you, this hurry, if you read on your own this week, brought all kinds of pain.

It brought about Ishmael, but it brought about lots of struggle between these two women and fighting, and Abraham seems to be pretty passive and doesn't know what to do, and it's one headache after another.

Why?

Because of hurry. Are you in a hurry? We're talking about our faith now, our faith journey. Where are we in a hurry these days? Where is it? Where are we tending to lose patience? God has promised he's gonna take care of you, buddy.