How to be Bold Week 3

Just Believe

I looked up and saw a man dressed in linen clothing, with a belt of pure gold around his waist. His body looked like a precious gem. His face flashed like lightning, and his eyes flamed like torches. His arms and feet shone like polished bronze, and his voice roared like a vast multitude of people. Only I, Daniel, saw this vision. The men with me saw nothing, but they were suddenly terrified and ran away to hide. So I was left there all alone to see this amazing vision. Daniel 10:5-8

My strength left me, my face grew deathly pale, and I felt very weak. Then I heard the man speak, and when I heard the sound of his voice, I fainted and lay there with my face to the ground. Daniel 10:8-9 1.

GOD CARES ABOUT YOU MORE THAN YOU DO.

Just then a hand touched me and lifted me, still trembling, to my hands and knees. And the man said to me, “Daniel, you are very precious to God, so listen carefully to what I have to say to you. Stand up, for I have been sent to you.” When he said this to me, I stood up, still trembling. Daniel 10:10-11

But you’ll welcome us with open arms when we run for cover to you.  Let the party last all night!  Stand guard over our celebration.  You are famous, God, for welcoming God-seekers, for decking us out in delight. Psalm 5:11msg

2. GOD IS DOING MORE THAN YOU UNDERSTAND.

Then he said, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia. Daniel 10:12-13  

Just because you can’t see anything happening, doesn’t mean He isn’t working.

3. GOD’S STRENGTH IS MADE PERFECT IN YOUR WEAKNESS.

How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my lord? My strength is gone, and I can hardly breathe.” Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!” Daniel 10:17-19

 Until you understand your weakness, you won’t appreciate God’s strength.

 Discussion Questions:

Where in your life have you been praying for something that feels stuck right now?

If your spiritual life were a diet, would you say you are feasting, snacking, or starving right now?

How does that show up in your faith, peace, or confidence?

How does it change your perspective to think that God may be doing more than you can see in your situation?

What is one area where you feel weak right now and need God’s strength instead of trying to handle it on your own?

Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today’s message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved

Transcript

21 Days: Purpose And Push

SPEAKER_00 0:26

All right. That was that was awesome. We all need that little bit of pump, especially during 21 days of prayer. Sometimes it feels like, why am I even getting out of bed? I can't eat. I can't eat what I want to eat. But we got one more week, and the the rewards are great. Whenever we get closer to the Lord and we have his presence in our life like never before, then we have we live like never before. So stay strong, stay focused. Let's dig deeper. Let's go uh further into his word, further into our time of worship, into our time of prayer this week. Um, I am so excited to be on week number two of how to be bold. How many of you guys are excited to be a church today? Most everybody. Most some of you guys might not be as excited, but that's okay. You'll get there. Tell your neighbor sitting next to you, hey, it's gonna be a good one today. I feel ready, I feel confident that this is the word that we need to hear today and that it's gonna challenge us, it's gonna take us somewhere. God's gonna speak to today during the message through his word. Um, but 21 days of prayer and fasting is an amazing place to be. It's not comfortable, it shouldn't feel good. If it feels good, then you're not doing it right. If it's comfortable, if there's no pain in 21 days of prayer and fasting, then that's not really fasting. We're making ourselves uncomfortable. We're losing something so that we can gain something. That's where we are. So let's keep doing that. Let's keep pressing in. I also want to look at the camera and say welcome to all of those who are joining us every week. I feel like there's always somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe a hundred people that that check in, click in to join us and worship and opening God's word and celebrating who he is, who he's made us to be. So I just want to say welcome. I know it takes boldness to step out and uh reach out and connect. I know that's true for everybody who's in the room. Maybe you're new, maybe you're still kicking the tires over late. There's no pressure for you to join or become a part of anything. I just want you to feel comfortable today. If you're at home today, I have a little bit of a different agenda. If this is your church and I'm your pastor, my my challenge, my hope is to challenge you a little bit and to urge us on. I won't stand behind you and whip you and push you, but I will hopefully, like the Lord does to us, he says, He's our shepherd, and he says, Come on, let's go. I'll lead you. So we're going there together. Um, and I know that 21 days seems like a long time, but in the in the uh grand scheme of things, it's not that long to give up a little bit. In fact, last night we were uh sitting, we were invited to sit around a bonfire with some of you guys, and um we were sitting around the circle, and they were going around the room asking, uh going around the circle, asking, What's your word of the year? Just tell us, and we'll we'll all share. And so it gets all the way to me. And I said that my word of the year is gonna be ribeye. Because that seems like all I can think about right now because it feels like it's such so far out there. But uh no, we we we're in the short term and long term. And today, in today's message, we we've looked at what it looks like to be bold and lots lots of first practical steps. But today I want to address a specific um part of I think all of us. It's not a specific person, it's a specific part where we all have an area of life where we are praying and asking God and believing and needing God to show up in a specific place, but it feels like maybe it's been a long time. Maybe it's been a person in your life that you've said, God, I need you to show up in this relationship or in this uh financial restriction, or there's there's a place where you feel between a rock and a hard place, and you're like, I don't know if this is ever gonna change. I don't know why. I even try to pray. What's the point? Because it's been years sometimes. I felt like they that way with family members where I'm praying, God, they need you, they need transformation. They're not, but they're still locked in the place where they're at. God, show up, move, and reveal yourself to them. Maybe it's in a place where you've had you've been held like feels like captive in an area. We've talked about how Daniel was taken captive, that Jerusalem was invaded and um taken, they they took the young guys and made them captive, brainwashed them. And maybe there's a place in your life where you feel like you have been captive or um held by addiction or held by a stronghold, and you just think, God, if you could just help me show up, show up and help me break through this thing. And it feels like God's not answering. It feels like you don't know where God is, like God shows up in all the other areas, but this area. Why did this just doesn't make sense? Maybe it's a depression, or you're praying for a family member, or uh husband, wife, your children, your parents, brothers, sisters. Maybe it's uh forgiveness, or feels like there's this root of bitterness, or you just don't know how to for so long, maybe weeks, maybe more than 21 days, maybe it's been years or decades even, that this has just remained. I want to pray for that thing today. I want to I want us to think about how I can be bold in that area. And so today, as we pick up Daniel's story, we started in week one with Daniel chapter one, and he was a young guy at probably 12 or 13 years old. Last week we talked about Daniel at Daniel chapter six, he was maybe 80 years old. We're a little bit further along than that. Uh, no longer are we dealing with King Nebuchadnezzar. Okay, thank you. First row. Bad guy. We're no longer dealing with that bad king. Uh we're we're we're a little bit later in so he's 80 years old now, and he uh at 12 years old was taken captive and his city wiped out, the temple destroyed, and he's praying and believing. God, God, I'm staying strong, I'm not eating their food, I'm not living there, I'm not embracing their culture, I'm in a dark place, but I am a light that's shining. I'm continuing, he continues to pray three times a day. He's fasting, he's believing, and yet he's not seeing the kind of results like God showing up, rebuild the temple, uh, setting the captives free, bringing them out of uh slavery. It's not happening. Where are you, God? And so he in chapter 10 of uh the book of Daniel, we see him have this vision, open vision. He's the only one who sees it, but it's a life-changing, impacting moment where the presence of God shows up and he begins to see a vision. And what is maybe not as encouraging as we would like when we we want an answer from God that's like, yes, I'll do what you're asking for. And that's not exactly what he gets. In fact, what he gets is uh this vision of war and what might look like coming impending doom and more destruction. And so he has a 21-day uh praying and fasting. Again, he decides I'll humble myself even more. I'm gonna reach for an answer from God. Uh, and we we're not gonna read all of it, but where it says that not only is he not eating, which I'm hoping, I hope that you're giving up something in these 21 days, uh, a meal, a kind of food, or uh even a soul fast. We're giving up social media or tea. There's something we're giving up. But Daniel goes even further than that, and he says that he's not using uh scented lotions, fragrant lotions, and that actually it means more than he's not just putting on lotion. It means that he's not taking a bath for 21 days. So just to let you all rest easy, I am taking a bath for these 21 days, and I hope that you're taking some kind of shower. You don't have to go that far. Unless you feel called to, then you can. In this vision, where we pick up in verse 5, Daniel sees a man. It says that he's like a man uh or an angelic being. Most scholars and uh most believe that this is a Christophany. This is that not just an angel or an angelic being, but this is we know that Jesus is present at creation. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, but God created, and uh in the beginning, the word was with God, and the word was God. John chapter 1, it describes that he was the light of the world, and the light came into the darkness, darts, darkness did not comprehend them. But Jesus, we know, was in the beginning, and he's all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. He's born. The story of Jesus' birth is in in the second half of your Bible. In the New Testament, we see his life described from four perspectives Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But even before Jesus is born, we know that Jesus exists as the Son of God, with God, and God, the third part of God, the second part of God, the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. He's there from the beginning, and we see an image of him showing up whenever he speaks to uh to uh Abraham or whenever he speaks to different men, and we see what it doesn't implicitly say that it's Jesus, but we know it is based on the description, and we're gonna read some of that. It's a Christophany or an image of Christ. And Daniel says, I looked up and saw a man dressed in linen clothing with a belt of pure gold around his waist. His body looked like a precious gem, his face flashed like lightning, and his eyes flamed like torches. This is almost a perfect parallel to the book of Revelation, where John describes Jesus, named in Revelation chapter 19. It says, His arms and feet shone like polished bronze, and his voice roared like a vast multitude of people. And it says, Only I, Daniel, saw this vision. We know that Daniel is a uh sanctified man. He's he's holy and set aside, he's different from everyone else around him, and yet, even beyond those who are different, it says that he was the only one who this was a uh a special dispensation or gift or or vision for Daniel to be able to see this story. He says, Only I, Daniel, saw this vision. The men with me saw nothing, but they were suddenly terrified and ran away to hide. So I was left there all alone to see this amazing vision. Okay, I want to pause for just a second just to acknowledge this idea and this thing that there are some things in life. There are some things in this moment, there are some things when you open your Bible, there are some things in your relationship with God that you're gonna experience and no one else is gonna get it. There's some things that you're gonna share with somebody, you're gonna wake up in your time with God, and He's gonna, the, the, the, the word of God's gonna explode off the page, and your mind is gonna be blown, and you're gonna try to share it with someone, and they're gonna be like, Oh, yeah, I read that a long time ago. And you're like, no, no, you're not hearing me. This is amazing. And you you could try to explain and show people, but until their eyes are open to see it and their ears are open to hear it, they might not get it. And they might think that they might belittle you or run away terrified because they just don't understand it. They can't explain. You might tell somebody, hey, you know what, I'm gonna start going to church every week. I'm gonna start going to a small group, I'm gonna start reading my Bible, and they'll be like, Well, I mean, okay, I guess if you want to, I'm sure, fine. They just they're not gonna get it. The thing is, God has some things for you that maybe only you can walk in. And if you're so caught up in what other people think that they all run away, you think, well, I must not, I must not should be here either. Then we remove ourselves from what God has for us because we can't imagine that God has something just for me. God has some things just for you. And other people may or may not. Uh there may be some people sitting in the room today, and the message, maybe the last few weeks, maybe going into 2026, you have an expectation of faith building, and the person next to you, they they're just thinking about what's for for lunch today. Don't look at anybody, come on. Watch what happens whenever uh this this he starts to really this vision starts to rest on him. It says, My strength left me, my face grew deathly pale, and I felt very weak. Then I heard the man speak, and when I heard the sound of his voice, I fainted and lay there with my face to the ground. So all of this, he's trembling and he's scared, but then as soon as he hears his actual voice, it's like he begins to crumble. And I can tell you, having had that similar experience, where I felt like my whole world was rocked by the presence of God in that moment, in that um life-changing moment. I don't care how strong or macho or how important you think you are when you truly encounter that life-changing moment with God, it's out of the routine. That's why 21 days of prayer. That's why we interrupt our life, because there are some places that God wants to take us that are off the beaten path. There's some things that God wants to speak to you and do that you it's not in the routine, it's out of the routine, and you gotta leave the routine to find it. For me, the first time I can remember having an experience, I I grew up in church. In fact, I even beyond that, I've said this many times that I grew up with a drug problem, and the drug problem was that I was drugged to church every week for as long as I could remember. I didn't have a choice whether or not I went to church, and I appreciated that later, but in the moment I did not appreciate it. But I I love the Lord, I love I love church. I ended up loving going to youth group and all the things that I loved worship, I loved the Bible, I loved reading my Bible, I loved waking up in the morning at 13, 14 years old, reading Proverbs every day because there's 31 of them, and I can fit it in the month. One chapter a day. I love that, but there was a different experience. I remember going to youth camp one year, and you know that if you've ever been to youth camp or any any type of uh thing like that, then you know that they make a call. If you've never given your life to Jesus, we want you to come up here to the front and we're gonna give our lives to Jesus. A whole bunch of people came up and then they made another call. They said, if you want more from God, because God has more for you, I said, Okay, I want more from God. I do, but I don't want, I like, I want more, but I don't want that much, so I'll just go up to like I didn't go up to the front front, I went up to like the mid front. Hiding in the crowd back there, and I didn't put my hands all the way up, I put my hands up like this. I want this much of you, God. I don't know what happened in that moment. It was either just enough faith or someone else's faith for me that in that moment I was surrendered enough to where somehow, some way the power of God hit me in a way that I had not experienced before, and all of a sudden it was like a physical experience. And listen, I growing up in church, I loved God, but I also was a little bit cynical of everybody else thinking, okay, dramatic. You you get you're dancing, twirling around, and raising your hands and falling down on the ground. I don't need that much of God. That's a little dramatic. At this moment in my life, probably 15, 16 years old, I'm standing there at youth camp in the mid front area. Worship is happening, and I'm praying, and my eyes are closed, and all of a sudden, it was just like something physical hit me. It's almost like the the the physical voice of God was speaking to me, and I don't, I couldn't stand up anymore. I'm down on my knees and like weeping. Think I'm thinking, everybody's seeing me cry. Of course, no one's caring if I'm crying. I don't know if I was there for five minutes or five hours. I I just know that God was like sh rip showing me a picture of my life with him, and like I was seeing things in a way I'd never seen before. That's I know that's the experience, that's the experience I want for you. That's the experience that God wants for you. There are those moments that are out of the out of the routine, and that is I I it resonates with me whenever I read Daniel talking about how he just hears God's voice and then falls down on the ground. And so today I want I want us to go a little bit deeper. Uh the first week we we looked at what it means um to be bold. How how can we practically be bold? And the first step is really just understanding that it means I have to stand out, I have to stand up, I have to be uh I can't blend in. And so that's a big challenge if you're not committed to that. The very next week um we talked about how much easier it is to be bold when you get strong. Like strength matters. Uh uh a strong warrior can be confident to walk out on the battlefield uh boldly because they're strong. And so there's some things that God can we can reach for God's strength. And today I want us to look at this, and it uh it's simply this that to be bold, we just have to believe. And uh and I appreciate those of you who are taking it at face value that uh it but it's also not easy to just believe. Uh Jesus says in uh Matthew chapter 5, he comes into a situation where a girl has died, a young girl has died, and people are arguing, why'd you even bring Jesus here? It's already too late. And Jesus stops the argument and he says, Don't be afraid. Just two words, just believe. I want to quickly kind of give you a psychological reason why just believing matters. Why does it matter that we just believe? Okay, so if I if we all start the year saying, hey, uh we're gonna do better this year, right? We'd probably all raise our hands. Who wants to do better? Yes, who wants to have better behavior? We want to act differently, we want our behavior to be better, we want the result of our life to be better. Sure. That would that would be like Jesus saying, just do better, or just act better, or just um behave. That's not what he said. Why? Because our behavior is informed or determined or um affected by how we feel. Because sometimes I want to behave, I want to act different, but I don't feel different. And so I don't. In fact, you can think of it this way: like my kids, when they were four or five years old, we had a pool in the backyard, and I would tell them they're standing on the edge, just jump in. And you know, if they felt like jumping in, then they would jump in. But the feelings go deeper. The the thing that determines our feelings, we can back it up even further than that. Psychologically speaking, like a self-help book might tell you if you want to change your uh behavior, you have to change your feelings to feel like doing eating better, working out. It but even if you don't feel it, your thoughts can affect your feelings, can affect your behavior. So I have to I have to start changing my thoughts. But this is not just Jesus saying, hey, this is the power of positive thinking. If you'll think better, you'll feel better, you'll act better. No, he doesn't say that. He says, just believe, because at the deepest part of who we are, we act, feel, and think what we believe. And if I believe that dad's gonna catch me when I if I jump in the pool, then I have no problem jumping in the pool. That's why as we get older, it becomes more and more difficult. Because we know more. And it and when when the kids were, I don't know, 10, 11, 12, and they get ready to stop just jumping in the pool and swimming, now it's time to learn to dive in. And I tell them, just dive in, you'll be okay. I don't think so, Dad. Because it doesn't feel like I'll be okay. This feels like it's gonna be painful. Right? But when we believe, when we still when it gets to the core of us, so it's important what we believe. So today I'm gonna give you three things. If you will believe, just believe these three things, then your boldness will increase exponentially because all of a sudden, okay. Now I think different, I feel different, I'm acting different because of what I believe. So the first thing, pull out your notes. We are a note-taking church. Somebody say amen. We take notes because it sticks better. We hang on to it better, we remember it better. Number one of three. Number one, God cares about you more than you do. God cares about me more than I do. And here's what happens: we think that God is off doing some God thing up in heaven, out in the somewhere that I don't, I've never seen, don't know about. And if I might could get his attention, he might, you know, toss down, kick a little. I've heard people say, if he could just kick a diamond out of heaven down to me. Like I'm some insignificant thing, but God has better things to do. That's not that's not how God sees us at all. God cares about you more than you care about you. In chapter uh 10, verse 10, Daniel goes on, just then the hand touched me. So Daniel had fallen on the ground when he heard his voice speaking, fell on the ground face down. Just then a hand touched me and lifted me. Well, let's just stop right there for a second, because I need you to understand that when the hand of God comes to you, what we what we often think, maybe you were raised this way, maybe you had a disciplinarian as a father or mother or uh an authority over you, and you just you're trying to fly under the radar of God, and you just don't want, God don't pay any attention to me because I know I'm not exactly right. And you think if God actually pays attention to you, what you're gonna get is a hammer and not his hand. Because what God actually wants to extend his hand to give us is a lift. God wants to pull it. David said, You pick me up out of the miry clay and you set my feet on solid ground, still trembling, my to my hands and knees. He lifted him up. Daniel humbled himself, fell on his face, and the hand lifted me. And the man said, Daniel, you are very precious to God. You are very precious to God. So listen carefully to what I have to say to you. I I I I would you just say this out loud, you are precious to God. That's so important. So listen carefully to what I say to you. Stand up, for I have been sent to you. And when he said this to me, I stood up, still trembling, still, still maybe struggling, but he's following the voice of the Lord. Isn't it amazing that we serve a God, a king? Jesus said, I've come uh to serve, not to be served. He wasn't looking for us to just bow down to him. He came, he came to serve, to seek and save the lost, to help and serve and lead, not just to be a king riding in on a horse so that everyone could bow down to him. That is the the presence of God in our lives. He wants to lift us up and serve us. In Psalm 23, we see this picture of a shepherd that's taking care of its his sheep. He says, You prepare in verse 5, Psalm 23, verse 5, it says, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. That's that's way that's mind-blowing. That's way beyond just someone who's gonna take care of care of us if he gets a little bit of time. God, if you just if you could just take a minute and help me. Imagine you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You think of it this way: if you're a soldier on a battlefield in the presence of enemies, imagine you're on the front line and there is an army on this side and an army on this side, and you're right up on the front lines fighting in your army, armor, army, armor, I'm gonna get it. Fighting in your armor and your sword and your shield, medieval times. And then your uh commanding officer comes up and calls you off the front line and says, Hey, let's go, come on, Sean, Megan, come, come, come see, and calls you back up off the front line. Leave the fighting. I've got something for you. And then the closer you get to the back of the line, maybe a thousand yards, maybe a couple of thousand yards off the front line, you can still hear them fighting in the presence of your enemies, but at the back of the fighting, here comes you a big tent, a big tent, and up alongside the tent, here comes the king. What's the king? Did he come out of the castle to come and and all he says is, hey, I set up this tent for you. Come on inside, and you come inside the tent, and oh, I'm just a soldier, I I'll be okay. I have my sack lunch, and he's like, No, no, no, no. I've got a table, I set up a table just for you, and he's got his food and his prepared meal, a feast prepared for you. And there's a big sign, and it says, I love Sean, I love Sherry, I love Angela, signed the king. You know what we think? Uh, you're doing too much for me. I this I don't need this. This I'll be okay just over there sitting on a little log and having my that's but God loves us. He says, I prepare a table before He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemy. He wants to take care of me, he wants to lift me, he wants to care for me. In fact, I would say that for many of us, that that feast has been prepared in the presence of God's word. He pre-he lays out a feast for us to consume and to feast on every day. And some of us we go, sadly, we show up to church on Sunday morning, we have our one meal a week. We wonder why we don't believe what God says about us. We wonder why we don't, what, why it's not in my heart. The Bible says, uh David said, I have thy word have I hidden my heart that I might not sin against you. It's when I put God's word in my heart, then it becomes a lamp unto my feet, then it's leading me, then it's God. But if I don't have it in there because I haven't been feasting on his word, I've just been saying, Nah, God, that's okay. I got this. So, how often are you feasting? Somebody might be thinking, You're feeding us right now. That's true. I've been I'm feeding you God's word, I hope. And I hope it's going well in you. You're receiving it well. But listen, my goal for you and God's goal for you is not that every Sunday you saddle up in your high chair and then I hand feed you. The goal is that you can feed yourself, and we can. I I'm always gonna be here with God leading, let's go somewhere together, yay. But it's beyond that. We gotta be opening up our Bibles every day because when we get God's word in us and we start realizing who he is and who we are, and that he cares about us more than we care about ourselves, and that he has a plan that's bigger than my plan, and the things that he has designed and destined and purposed and planned for me are way better than things that I could do for my own self, then my life changes. And I start walking in boldness and I say, Okay, God, this is your show. I don't worry about you guys, I don't worry about this church because it's his church. So I can boldly stand up and say, God's gonna take care of his church. Every issue, every problem, every need that arises, I can boldly say, the need's right here. God's gonna supply. I sometimes harder than others. And if I start feeling like a uh a doubt forming, if I start saying, Well, I don't know if God's gonna, you know what I have to do? I have to open up my Bible and start feasting again. I start building up my faith by the renewing of the word. I have to start hearing the word of God so that my faith is built, so I can walk boldly. And if you if you need to hear this today, I think there's some people in the room that need to hear this today that you are precious to him. He cares about you more than way more than you care about yourself. I he cares about you more than I care about you. And I care, I care about all of you, but you're not precious to me. My kids are precious to me. Some of you are you're far from precious to me. I love you. I need to move on. I'm just trying to be honest. Number two, number two, God's doing more than you understand. God is doing more than you understand. We pick up in verse 12. Then he said, he speaks to Daniel again, don't be afraid, since the first day you began to pray. Everybody says, since the first day, since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before God, your request has been heard in heaven. Now, this is gonna get a little bit crazy. For some of you with you thinking this is already crazy, this is a crazy story. This is like Star Wars crazy. This is like um fantasy level crazy, unless you realize that there is a spiritual world, and this is almost like we're pulling back the curtain, seeing beyond the the natural world. He starts to describe to Daniel something that's bigger than Daniel's ever seen with his physical eyes. He says, I have come in answer to your prayer. So you prayed, God heard your prayer since the first day, which was 21 days ago, but for 21 days, the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. So this supernatural being is on en route to answer Daniel's prayer and to speak to him and give him an answer from God, and the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia. In other words, there's spiritual warfare going on. We've been speaking about this every week. We're not going to unpack this too much, but um the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not physical. We don't see them with our eyes. It's not a sword that we can hold in our hand. They are spiritual. And so you have to know that there is a spiritual world that is much more real than the natural world we live in. So right now, I want to talk to those who have been praying for a long time. You maybe you've been praying for 21 days, and you you you set a prayer request that the you just I'm gonna believe God to answer this issue. And on the first day of 21 days, God heard your prayer, and yet God's moving, but you can't see it. God's in route, God's taking action, but he's doing things that we can't necessarily see because there are things happening that we don't know about. And maybe it's not 21 days or 14 days ago, maybe it's a year ago, or five years, or 10 years, 20 years ago, there's something that you've been hanging on to and not knowing why, God. If you don't care about this, I'm just gonna give up on. Don't give up. Because there's things happening that you don't know about and that you can't see. And from the first time you prayed, God heard the cry of your heart. Who is the spirit prince of the king of Persia? I don't know exactly, but most, many agree that this is some kind of demonic force, principalities, powers. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, and that there are rulers of the unseen worlds, the spirit world, fallen angels. And just because he didn't see what was happening, the angel reminds him, or the the Christophany, the Lord reminds him that there's more happening, Daniel, than you know. So stay strong. Don't be afraid. And although we live in a I want it now society, we have to realize that everything doesn't happen within the two minutes that we punch in on the microwave and push start, and it better be done. God's not a microwave. He's not DoorDash, are they? a sovereign king ruling a nation, nations. And so that's the second thing. God's doing more than you understand. And I want to close with number three and invite the band to join me back, and we're gonna worship. But I need you to know this that God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. Often we can't see past our weakness to why God must not be answering my prayers because he's punishing me. Wait a second. Hold on, that that's not necessarily true. That's we go to, well, I can't sit on the front row at church, or I can't go, I'm not the kind of person that goes to church 52 Sundays out of the year because of, you know, X, Y, Z, the things that I do. I'm just not that prayer. I can't read my I can't commit to reading my Bible or 21 days of prayer. Or uh I've talked to people about, hey, would you consider being uh a small group host? Why you it's like if you knew who I really was, you wouldn't ever ask me to do that. Wait a second. It's in our weakness, it's in the the place where I'm weakest, where I can admit that I'm not all powerful, I don't have all of this under control, that I become strongest because of his strength in me. That's why the worst thing that we can do, the thing that God hates, God opposes the proud. Because we if I think I don't need him, he's not gonna force me to use his strength. But his strength comes so easy whenever I'm willing to like Daniel, I'm gonna humble myself, bow my head, bow my heart. Like my my posture is that real, true worship where I'm nothing, God. I need your strength, I need your power, I need you to lead me. God, that's why I need the Holy Spirit. And watch this in verse 17. Daniel says this, How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my Lord? My strength is gone and I can hardly breathe. Then the one who looked like a man touched me again. This is the second time because he started the conversation with don't be afraid, you're more precious to God. He he tries to put this into perspective for Daniel and let Daniel have the right perspective, and yet he has to do it again. And he touches, he says, the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. He says, Don't be afraid, I said, for you are very precious to God. Peace, be encouraged. Can you imagine? He already said this. But again, the Lord touches him and says, Peace, be encouraged, be lifted, be strong. You're more precious, you are so precious to God. I can tell you that some of you in the room right now, you think the problem or your weakness or the issue, the obstacle that you have made so huge in your own eyes is nothing to God. And that all it takes is one touch from the Lord, and everything can change. One moment of surrender where you say, Okay, God, this problem, this issue, my insignificance, my insecurities, my my struggle is nothing compared to you, even though it seems like my whole nation has been destroyed, the temple's not been destroyed. I haven't seen an answer for 70 years, but all it took was one touch from the Lord, and his strength began to return. I hope that for you today that the Lord is able to touch you, that you're willing for him to touch you, and then your strength begins to return. When he touched me, I felt my strength returning. Maybe it's the strength in your marriage, maybe it's uh the strength and resolve of your finances. Okay, I don't know what on paper it doesn't look good, God, but I trust you. All of a sudden, my strength starts to come back. Maybe my uh my relationship, relationship with my kids feels strained or broken, or it feels so distant, and I have no hope for this, but one touch from the Lord, and all of a sudden my strength starts to come back, and I feel like, okay, God, we can do this. Hope starts to rise up in you for the things that you think are broken or lost. It just takes one touch from the Lord. Maybe it's the peace that you feel like you've lost, maybe it's hope that you feel like you've lost, or forgiveness that you feel like you're is it's an impossible situation, a place where you felt so weak or unaccountable, or felt like this addiction or this stronghold has a grip on you that can't be broken. One touch from the Lord changes everything. But until you understand your weakness, you won't appreciate God's strength. Until you understand your weakness, you won't appreciate God's strength. So today, in closing, we're gonna do three things to walk in boldness. We're gonna do three things. And the first one is that we're gonna uh believe that he cares about me more than I do. Believe that God cares about me like I am his long-lost child, and that when I come home, he's ready to throw a party for me. That's what the Bible says. That when one lost sheep returns, that all of heaven rejoices. That's his heart for you. And number two is that he's doing more than we understand. And I might not see it, I might not be able to put my finger on it or write it all out in detail. But number two, I know he's doing more than I can see. And finally, number three, that his strength is made perfect in my weakness, and that even though I am weak, if I can walk in that week, just say, okay, God, I surrender. That's surrender. Surrender is saying, I'm not enough, God. But I know that's okay because it makes me strong. Would you stand on your feet today? I want you to commit your life, commit your heart, commit to the last week of 21 days of prayer, and fasting. I'm gonna walk and not give up. I'm gonna let hope rise. I'm gonna let one of the Lord change everything. Let's wish the heart. Today, before we go, I I want to give an invitation to everyone who's in the room. Maybe you've never felt a touch from God. You've never begun a relationship where you're reconciled to a father that loves you more than any. Maybe you're that one that has a hard time even imagining a father that loves you more than anything. You'll have to take my word for it until you experience his love. Until you feel that. But I can tell you this that when you decide to surrender your life to him, it's like he takes the blinders off. I told you earlier about uh John chapter 1. It says that when he came into the world, the world doesn't understand him. I can describe it all day long, but and while I'm still in the darkness, I don't get it. That doesn't make sense. But we're given this promise that God has life for us. But we still have to accept it. We still have to decide to live in that life. He says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. It's as simple as deciding to call on him, to follow him. Jesus said, come follow me. That's his desire for us is to take up our cross and follow, just live life the way he lived. That doesn't mean we have to go die on a cross. It does mean that we follow him. And so today, I would invite you to make a decision. That is the first step. That saying this prayer of surrender is the first step in a journey of faith where we follow him. We follow him together. But the price he paid was enough that if it was just you, it would be enough. And so today, if you've never made the decision to follow him, I would invite you to say it. I won't call you out or call you forward, embarrass anyone. But you can just repeat these words after me and we'll take that first step together. Would you just bow your head and close your eyes right where you are? And whether this is your first time to say this prayer, or maybe it's it's time to realign yourself with him and recommit your life to him and decide that this is where everything changes. Would you just repeat these words after me and would you say this? God, today I give you my life. Take my old life. And in exchange, I receive strength and hope and power. Thank you for lifting me up. Thank you for taking me out of the darkness and into your light. Thank you for paying for my sins on the cross. From this day forward, I choose to follow after you with all that I am. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's put our hands together. Thank you guys for coming today. I'm proud of you if you said that prayer and I'd love to know about it. If you'd like to pray with someone before you leave, the prayer team is gonna come now and join me at the front during this worship song. I can't wait to see you guys for prayer service. And next Sunday is our anniversary service. It's our birthday, so we're gonna have a celebration. We're gonna have a lot of fun together, and I can't wait to see you there. God bless you guys. We'll see you next week.