FISH AND LOAVES (PREDICADOR: DIEGO UMAÑA)

In this message, the speaker discusses the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 people. They focus on Jesus' question to Philip about where to buy bread, even though Jesus already knew what he was going to do. The speaker emphasizes that Jesus was testing Philip's faith. They also mention how sometimes we ask questions not to change our minds, but just to see what others will say. The speaker shares a personal example of their sister being indecisive when choosing a restaurant. They point out that Jesus wants us to have faith in him, even when things seem impossible. The speaker highlights that Jesus had a plan to feed the people with just a few loaves of bread and fish. They discuss how the disciples' lack of faith disappointed Jesus. The speaker concludes that God always has a better plan for us, and we should trust in Him even when things seem impossible. Hello, everybody. It's always a pleasure being in front of you guys. You know, I always my heart is always filled with joy seeing your faces here. And today we do have a lot of people here. So I'm thrilled that God is going to speak to us today and that the word of God may touch our hearts. Before we start and before I give you guys anything of the theme, I want us to go to John 6, 5 to 6. The version I have is a little different, but it's all the same context in the Bible. And it says, Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, Where can we buy bread to feed all these people? He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do. Right where you are, you guys can bow your heads and close your eyes and put this time in God's hands. Holy Spirit, we come before you, Lord, asking that it's you speaking through me, Father. Let it be your word, God. The same word that spoke to me can can speak to all the people in this place, Lord. I ask that the seed may be planted in every single one of them, Lord, and that we may take something from what you have given us, Father. We put this time in your hands, Lord, knowing that you're here already and that we may understand what you're trying to tell us, Lord. Amen and amen. When I was reading the book of John, the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 is told throughout all the Gospels. But in the book of John, it's told a little different because only in the book of John we see Jesus actually ask the question of Philip and all the other books Jesus. He approaches the disciples, but he doesn't approach the individual, which is Philip, which we find in John. And what I find interesting is Jesus asked Philip a question that you may seem is kind of stupid to ask, because Jesus later on goes on to say that he already knew what he was going to do. So it's almost like Philip's answer was invalid. Like it didn't really matter what Philip was going to say, but it did matter because Jesus was trying to see where Philip's heart was at. And what I'm trying to take you guys is that many times we do the same thing. We ask questions to people around us, but the question is not meant to change our minds, but just to simply see what the other person is going to say. And sadly, a prime example of this is my sister. You know, I love her a lot, but something that does get on my nerves is when we go out to eat, she's very indecisive. And I don't know if it was inherited from my mother or if it's just my sister, but she tends to make me waste my time in naming all the restaurants in a 20-mile radius to, in the end, tell me that she already had something in mind. And the thing that drives me crazy is that I asked her multiple times what she wants to eat, and she tells me it doesn't really matter. But in the end, it did really matter because she had something in mind. What she was looking for was for me to name specifically the restaurant she wanted to, as if I were to read her mind. And we can see Jesus do this right here with Philip, just that the intent Jesus had was to see where Philip's faith was at. And I want us to read the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 because I want us to really understand the answer that Philip gave and the situation that the disciples were found in. And I want us to go to John 6, 1, which the story is told from the beginning of the chapter, which is John 6 to the 15th, which is the 15th verse. And it says, after this, Jesus crossed over the far side of the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went because they saw his miracle signs as he healed the sick. Then Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him. It was near time for the Jewish Passover celebration. Verse 5, Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, where can we buy bread to feed all these people? He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do. Philip replied, even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them. Then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up. Verse 9, there's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish, but what good is that with this huge crowd? Tell everyone to sit down, Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. The men alone numbered about 5,000. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them amongst the people. Afterwards, he did the same with the fish, and then they all ate as much as they wanted. After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, now gather the leftovers so that nothing is wasted. Verse 13, so they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves. When the people saw him do this, miracle signs, they exclaimed, surely he is the prophet we have been expecting. When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself. Like we read in the beginning, we see Jesus ask this question of Philip, and one can say that the answer Philip gave was correct in the human standpoint. Philip's answer was based on what he knew was around him, and there's a different version when we read this exact same story where Philip's answer is not even eight months of work is going to be able to feed the people. We can go to the neighboring towns and cities, and then yet we won't be able to find enough food. Philip's mind was in the human aspect that there was nothing they could possibly do to be able to feed the people, when what Jesus really wanted from Philip was to put his faith in him. And many times we do see this happen around us, that Jesus is there, but what he wants us, he asks us the same question as he does to Philip, and he asks us, what are you going to do? And many times our answers are a human answer, when all Jesus wants from us is to put our faith in him. And any of the disciples could have said anything spiritual, but none of them did. Philip was the only one who at least gave an answer to Jesus, who was able to come with a solution, but even the solution fell short to what God was going to do. And God already had a plan. Jesus had a plan of what he was going to do. I don't think it would have been hard for Jesus to do anything, because he's the son of God. And when we look at what is going on in this story, you can also say that it is early in Jesus's ministry, so maybe the signs that Jesus had done to the disciples may have not been as big as the sign he was about to do, so their faith was not as big as it should have been. But we are talking about the same Jesus who called these 12 men, and that as them being called, they left everything behind. Most of these men didn't need a proof or a miracle sign to follow Jesus. It was simply their faith alone that left everything behind. Most of these men were fishermen or people who didn't have any placement in society and didn't need any proof that he was God. It was just simple that they believed and they had faith in who Jesus was. So their answer was not what Jesus was expecting. I can imagine that Jesus was a little upset, because these men were supposed to be the men who were going to one day preach the gospel of God, and these men were not even capable of having faith in what Jesus was going to do. And in this situation, the response was, God, we can't do anything. And many times we face ourselves in the same situations where we've been fighting this battle all along, and when God is telling us that he wants to help us, when God is there telling us that he's there for us and that he's willing to help us out, we forget about him. It's when our faith needs to be tested that we forget who Jesus is. It was exactly when Jesus was asking them a question about their faith that Jesus just became one of the others. Jesus was no longer the Messiah to them, because they didn't run to him. I don't know if you guys can kind of understand what I'm trying to say. It was when it was the most important time to put your faith in Jesus, they didn't. When it was Jesus about to do a miracle, the last thing they thought was Jesus was going to provide. Their minds were wondering on how they were going to be able to feed the 5,000, and that leads me to take you guys to Isaiah 55, 8 to 9, which I think we've all heard this verse, or at least know part of it, and it says, My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord, and my ways for you are far beyond anything you can imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Jesus will always have a plan for us. The plan that God has for us will always be something better than what we can imagine. I don't think any other disciples in that situation were able to understand what was about to be foretold, what was going to happen before them. I don't think any of them could imagine that God was going to provide out of five loaves and two fishes from a little boy, and it always goes to show that Jesus can do anything out of nothing. Jesus could have done whatever he wanted, but he chose to take the food of this little boy to show everybody that he can feed the 5,000 people, and what is crazy is that the Bible registers that the 5,000 people were just men, which means that amongst those people, they were not including the children or the women, which means the people he fed were an even greater number than what the Bible registers. Time after time, Jesus presents himself to the disciples, and in many occasions, we see the disciples lack faith. In John 6, a little under, we see that Jesus leaves the disciples, and that's when the disciples are in the storm, and when the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, they yet again forget who Jesus is, and it's not until Jesus presents himself and says, don't fear, is that the disciples remember who Jesus is. And then throughout all the Gospels, we see time after time that Jesus predicts, well not predicts, but foretells his coming of his death. He tells them not to fear, that it's okay that he's going to die because he's going to rise again, and time after time, we see Jesus say, it's okay guys, I'm going to come back, but time after time again, Jesus has to remind them because they lack faith, and when they're presented before the cross, they see Jesus die, and after Jesus dies, most of them lose hope. Most of them lose what they had with Jesus. It meant that the three years they walked with God was nothing to them because he was no longer with them, but most of them revert to being back to who they were. Peter, for example, goes back to fishing, and what always captivates me about how Jesus finds him again is that it's the exact same way he called him the first time. The first time he calls Peter he finds him fishing, and he tells him exactly where he wants to fish, and then that's where the fish appear, and then when Jesus presents himself again before Peter, he does the exact same thing so that Peter in that moment can remember who Jesus was, and in that moment, he sees Jesus on the beach, and if we go to John 21, 15 to 16, it's the story of when Peter is confronted with Jesus again. It's when after Jesus had died and he said he was going to come back, it's when Jesus presents himself. This is after Peter has denied him three times, and he's lost hope in everything, and he's fishing again, and John 21, 15 to 16 says, after breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, Simon son of John, do you love me more than this? Yes, Lord, Peter replied. You know I love you. Then feed my lambs. Jesus told him. Jesus repeated the question, Simon son of John, do you love me? Yes, Lord, Peter said. You know I love you. Then take care of my sheep, Jesus said. 17, it says, a third time he asked him, Simon son of John, do you love me? Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you, Jesus said. Then feed my sheep. Once again, we're confronted with Jesus asking a question to Peter, but yet again, Jesus knows the answer to this. Jesus knows that Peter loves him, and what surprises me is in the third time he asked him is when we see that Peter realizes who God is. We go from the disciples not knowing who God is and to not having a solution or faith in him, to Peter himself saying, you know everything, God, and you know that I do love you, meaning that at the point where Jesus had died, we see that the disciples are now activating their faith, and I can only imagine that Jesus probably had a smile on his face as he realized that in this very moment, the disciples finally were able to have faith in who he was. It took all three years for them to finally realize that Jesus was the way and that Jesus did come back, and time after this, we see that Jesus stays with them for 40 days, and after that, he leaves to go to heaven, and he says he's going to leave a friend, and in this time, it's when the disciples are already ready to share their faith. The disciples went from men who didn't know how to feed 5,000s to being able to feed nations with the gospel of God, with the faith they had in God, that God is willing to try again with us. God is willing to be there for us and tell us, I'm going to activate your faith. I'm going to make sure you have faith in me, and he would never get tired of it. He would never get tired of chasing after us, the same way he chased after these men for these men to one day be able to preach the gospel that we know here now. These men were able to spread the gospel of God throughout nations, and because of the faith they had in God, now we're able to speak upon what they did, but it wasn't just a matter of it happened overnight. It was a matter of trial and error. It was a matter of seeing God do work and then doubting God, seeing God do work again, and then God reassuring who he was and then failing him, and then seeing who God was, and then once again falling short of what God expected, and then God lifting him up one more time for them to fail, and then God wouldn't get tired of trying and trying and trying again, because he knew that he had chosen these men. He knew that these men were going to be important to his ministry. He knew that these men were going to be the pillars and the foundation to what we know as the gospel, and God is telling us tonight that he can do the same with us. God is not going to get tired of presenting himself, of asking the question of what are you going to do with your life, but the response God wants, the response that he's expecting is not a human response. It's a spiritual response. It's a faith-based response. It's, Father, I'm here before you and I need of you. It's a response that takes courage. It's a response that's not going to happen overnight, but if we try and if we get close to God, we are going to be able to see that faith work. And the same way that these men once believed they were nothing, that these men once lost everything, lost their master, that their master was crucified on the cross, the innocent man sent by God who called himself the Messiah was killed, and they lost that faith. They lost that sense of direction because Jesus was gone. You can say that they had it a little bit easier because they actually saw Jesus face-to-face, and they had that relationship with him, and you can kind of take that as an excuse to say that we haven't seen Jesus face-to-face, so that makes it a little harder to have faith in him. But simply reading the Word of God, simply looking for him, simply praying is the same as seeing Jesus, is the same as being connected with God because it's his living Word. It's what he left for us. It's what he spoke to them through. Nothing has changed from the time he has died to now. His words are still the same, and God is trying to prepare us the same way he prepared the disciples. I can imagine most of these men never thought that they were going to amount to anything, that these men didn't expect nothing out of their regular jobs. Most of these men just expected to fish the rest of their life, or most of these men expected to do nothing with their lives, but it took God to enter into their lives. It took God to present an opportunity to their lives to be able to change, and most of these men, like I said before, didn't need a miracle to follow God. It was a simple act of faith and a simple act of belief that pushed them to follow Jesus, and that's what Jesus is seeking from us. He doesn't need a miracle for us to believe in him. The simple act that he is God, the simple act that he is Jesus Christ and that he paid the price for us should be enough for us to give our lives to him. John 6, 36-37 says, But you haven't believed in me, even though you've seen me. Whoever those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. God is telling us that if we come before him, he will receive us with open arms. The same way he received Peter, the same way he knew that Peter failed him and denied him three times, the love he had for him, it never changed. The love he showed him was the same as when he first met him, and that's when the word of God comes true, that it says that his love is true and his love, there's nothing that compares to his love, because Jesus could have easily denied Peter for failing him, for denying him, but the action that Jesus took was to receive him as if it were the first time, and Jesus once again presents himself before us day after day like it's the first time. It's a clean slate. He comes to us and he presents himself as if it were the first time, and that's what's beautiful about God, that many times we think because we failed him once, there's nothing we can do to obtain his favor or to obtain his presence, and that's one of the biggest lies the enemy can ever tell us, is that we can never find favor in who God is. We can never be forgiven because of our sins, but it's clear that every single one of the people in the Bible being men and women at one point fell. At one point they failed God, and it wasn't until they realized their mistake, and it wasn't until they got back up and they said, God, here I am again, for then Jesus to enter into the disciples again, for Jesus to enter into Peter again and say, here I am. If you truly do love me, take care of my sheep, and what God was trying to say is take care of the people who are going to come after you. I've been forming you these three years so that one point I'm going to be gone, and what you guys have learned, what I've taught you guys should be enough to preach my good news, preach that I was a good father, preach that I was a merciful person, and that's what God wants from us. He wants our hearts. He wants us to give ourselves to him, and day after day he's going to ask us what are we going to do with our lives. The same way he asked Philip, how are you going to feed the people? Our response should not be a response that comes from our understanding. Our response should be a response that relies on God, that we put our faith in who God is because I know that things may get hard. I know that you may not want to continue, but it's there when you need to prove that you love God. It's there when you need to activate your faith. The disciples' job was never to feed the 5,000. Jesus was not expecting the disciples to provide something for the people. The only thing in that instance that Jesus wanted from them was their faith. Many times we see someone struggling, but we don't act or help them because sometimes it's better for them to understand when they fail, when they make a mistake, and then it's when they realize that they've made a mistake where they come and they ask someone who knows more, and that's when they're humble enough to be like, I need help. But many times, and it's not until we fail, it's not until we've done something horrible that we realize that we need help. And many times, God does the same thing with our lives. He lets us go and He sees how far we're willing to go on our own, how far we're willing to try things until we end up running back to Him because there's nothing in this world that we can do outside of Him. There's nothing that on our own strength we can ever accomplish. And it's proven in the disciples. The disciples, when they didn't have Jesus, they went back to their old ways because that's all they knew how to do. At least when Jesus was there, they had someone who was guiding them. But as soon as that guidance was gone, they didn't know what to do, which means that this whole time that they were walking with Jesus, it wasn't based on faith. It was based on only what they were able to see Jesus do. And it was necessary not only for Jesus to die for our sins, but it was necessary for those men to realize who Jesus was after His death, to realize that they were nothing without Him. It took Jesus to die for them to go back to their old ways, to see how miserable it was without Him. Because once you've experienced who God is, once you've experienced His love, there's nothing outside that can compare to being with Him. There's nothing that can compare to being in His presence. There's nothing that compares to coming here and listening to the Word of God or providing a worship to Him. When you've already experimented what Jesus is, when you've had that encounter with God, there's nothing that can ever fill that void. You may try again and again like the disciples tried with going back to what they used to know, but it was never enough. And once again, Jesus presented Himself. Peter was not looking for Jesus, but Jesus had called Peter, and He was not going to leave Peter alone until what He had promised Peter was going to come true. And Jesus tonight is telling you guys the same thing. I have called every single one of you guys, and there's a reason for you guys being here. And I'm going to complete what I have told you guys. I'm going to complete what I've promised, because I'm a man of my word. And God is going to try and try again until He gets what He wants, until He's able to lift us up and He's able to use us, because God wants to use people who are willing to be used. God is willing to use people who don't see a purpose in their life, because then He can prove that He's able to do anything. The same way He fed the 5,000 out of nothing, He can use people who don't see a value in their lives to prove to people that there is a God. And that's the whole purpose of the gospel. It always points back to Jesus, to Jesus being in control. There was never a time where Jesus doubted who God was. There was never a time where Jesus didn't know what was going to happen. But yet again, He would ask these questions to see where His disciples were standing. And Jesus, time after time, is going to ask us what we're standing on. He's going to try to see where our hearts are at, because many times we present ourselves Sunday after Sunday, Friday after Friday, but our hearts are nowhere near God. We're away from God's presence, and the only thing that's here is our body. But our minds are wandering somewhere else, and God is calling us tonight. God is trying to prepare us. And a verse that I just thought was beautiful was John 21, 25, and the way the author closes this book is captivating. It says, Jesus also did other things, many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. Once again glorifying who God is, once again proving that not everything God did was written in the Bible, but those miracles that weren't written in the Bible still impacted people, still changed people's lives, and we don't need to walk by the miracles that Jesus has done or the miracles that God can do in our lives, because what's more important than that is the worship that we may provide to Him. It's our hearts. It's the faith that Jesus is looking after. It's our faith, because many times we walk this life with Jesus, but it's not based on faith. We don't truly believe that Jesus can change us. We only show up because to a certain extent it fills our hearts with our ego. It validates our actions. It validates our sinful lives, but Jesus is calling us day after day. He presents Himself in the same way with a kind heart, gentle, with open arms, and all He's asking is for us to have faith in Him. All He's asking is for us to take that step forward and to give everything we are to Him, because alone we're never going to be able to carry the weight of the world. Alone we're never going to be able to be successful or to amount to anything, and God is telling us His... The Bible says that the yoke of God is lighter to give your burdens to Him, because He is willing to take that pain. He already did, but many times we forget who Jesus is. Many times, like the disciples, when it came to prove their faith in God, when it came to prove that they truly love God, is when they failed. Any other time they knew who Jesus was. When they were eating supper with Jesus, they knew He had power. When they were walking through the streets, they knew He was the Messiah, but when it came to a circumstance that they needed God's power, they forgot who He was. And the reason why we forget, the reason why we don't understand who God is, is simply because we don't look for Him. It's simply because we don't have that relationship with God, is that His presence and His love for us is unknown. It's something that we're not familiar with, and the only way we can come to agree that God is good, that we can come to understand that He's merciful, is by spending time in His presence, is by giving our hearts day after day, is by running to Him and saying, God, I know you're changing things in me. Even if I can't see the things happening around me, I know that you're always working in my life. And it's faith. Little by little, our faith is going to grow. The disciples' faith didn't change overnight. It wasn't a process that was super quick, but it was something that took time and it took trial and error. And the most beautiful thing out of all of that is that God does not get tired of trying with us. We may get frustrated that we fail God. We may seem like we're failures in front of God, and we may seem that we can never obtain His favor, but God won't get tired of presenting Himself. God won't get tired of giving us His presence. And something that always seems to blow my mind is that sometimes we pray with conviction. We pray that we failed God and we don't want to fail Him again. And in that moment, that prayer is true, and God gives us His presence. But the next day, sometimes we end up failing Him. And what's beautiful about God is that in the moment you made the prayer, in the moment you felt the conviction, He didn't deny His presence. Even though He knew that the next day you were probably going to fail Him or the next day you were going to forget about Him, in the moment you prayed, in the moment you felt the conviction and you activated that faith, God was merciful enough to give you His presence. God was so loving and so understanding of your condition that in that moment, He made you feel His presence. And that's something that we can never comprehend about God is His love for us. We may try to explain who God is. We may try to put His love in a box, but we will never be able to because His love for us is just so vast. And God's going to ask us, what are you going to do? That's the main question that He's going to keep asking us in our lives. And it should be a response of faith. It should be, Father, I want You to take control. If only the disciples would have said, Jesus, You feed the people. We know that You're the Messiah. We know that You have power. We know You can feed them. The story may have been different, but in that moment, the disciples were not ready yet. They still were walking based on what they saw. They still didn't have faith in Jesus, which is a little sad because they had already been with Jesus. They had already seen who Jesus was, and God had already done marvelous things in the people around, moving through the cities. And many times that happens in our lives too. We see Jesus do many things in our lives. We see God start to change us. We see God start to change our families. And then there's certain circumstances that come, and we end up forgetting who God is again. We end up starting at zero. We end up going back to who we used to be, and we forget that God is there. We forget that it's just a simple act of faith, a simple act of saying, God, take control. Every day it should be a prayer of surrendering yourself to God, surrendering everything you are to Him. Because day after day, the enemy will come, and he will try to try to bring you to the person you used to be. He will try to take you back to the person that didn't have God, to the person who didn't encounter God. And I can only imagine what the disciples may have gone through as they saw Jesus being crucified, the thoughts that may have ran across their mind of, Jesus just died in front of us. The man who was perfect, who we never saw sin, was crucified. He was taken away from us. And in that moment, they were vulnerable. In that moment, yet again, they forgot who Jesus was. After Jesus had told them time after time again not to worry that His love, that His presence is more than enough, that He was going to come back, when they saw Him crucified, the only thing they thought about was that He was gone forever. And that's what the enemy is going to try to do to our lives. Try to tell us that it's over, that God's no longer with us, that Jesus isn't moving in our lives, because many, many times we live in a world where we need to see things in order to believe. But the Word of God is the complete opposite. The Word of God is something that, the presence of God is something that you can't see. And it's only then when you have to activate your faith and truly believe in who Jesus is and believe that He did pay a price and that there is power in His name that we can truly begin to see God working our lives. But we have to give everything we are to Him. We have to surrender those areas that we're not willing to, those areas that always seem to bring us back to the person we used to be without God. And Jesus Christ will present Himself before us. He will come before us and He will open His arms. And He may even ask us the same question He asked Peter, if we truly do love Him, what are we doing for His kingdom? If we truly do love Jesus, what are we doing to grow that relationship with Him? What is in our hearts? What do we provoke in Jesus? Is it only that we love Jesus because the people around us tell us to love Jesus? Or because it's something new, something modern that can take my mind off the problems that I don't truly love Jesus? What are we doing in His kingdom? It's clear to me that if we truly do love Jesus, we must take care of what He's left behind. And what He left behind is a nation that needs God. It's people outside who need Jesus Christ. The disciples were, their purpose was to get, to be formed so that one day they were able to preach the gospel of God. So that the people who one day felt the same thing they felt when they didn't have Jesus, they were able to tell them that there's a God out there that loves them. And what we're doing right now is a prime example of loving Jesus and loving the gospel. We're congregating in His name and learning about Him and preaching that He's a wonderful God so that we can be informed. So when people come up to us and tell us, who is this God I've heard about? We can explain to them that God is the one true God, that God is all we need. I can't emphasize enough how much we truly do need God and how much our lives are empty without Him. And there's no purpose in our lives without Jesus. There's nothing we can ever amount to without Him. And I won't get tired of telling people that we need to run back to Jesus. Our lives should be a count. We should seek God, always seeking the presence of the Lord, always running to Him so that our faith day by day may grow so that when Jesus presents Himself before us, we have a viable answer. We have an answer that He's looking for. When He presented Himself before Peter, Peter at that moment realized when he said, God, You know everything. It took all this time for Peter to realize that God knew everything and that even when he denied Jesus, even when he turned back and he went back to who he was, Jesus didn't care and presented Himself once again before him. And that's what God is doing tonight. This is the night where God is presenting Himself yet again before us and telling us that He is right here with open arms, that He is willing to try again if we're willing to try. If we're willing to try one more time and the same way that the disciples failed, the same way that they didn't believe the words that came out of Jesus' mouth, it's okay as long as in the end we have a relationship with Him. If in the end we have faith. Jesus never got tired of trying again with the disciples and yet again Jesus won't get tired of trying with us too. Jesus, the only thing He wants is our hearts, seeking our hearts, not because He needs it but because He knows that we need Him. He knows that without Him we're nothing. Without His love we're nothing and because He's such a loving God, He presents Himself before us because He knows that we need His love and His mercy is for us as long as we're willing to try again. As long as we are able to shut the voice of the enemy and we're able to try and try and try again because God won't get tired of looking for us. God won't get tired of waiting for us. It's only a matter of if we truly want God or not. It's a matter of if we truly want to be used by God because I know many of us have goals, we have ambitions, but they're outside of God. We create plans, we create a life for ourselves without God and without God we're just doomed to fail. There's no success without Jesus and Jesus needs to enter our lives and activate the faith in us because everything that we do with Christ is about faith. Jesus moves through faith. We don't seek Him now, but we know that He is present. We know that He transforms because we all have a testimony of what He's done in our lives or what He's done in the people around us. So we do know that Jesus is there, but like I said before, when it comes to proving that we love God, when it comes to activating our faith, that's when we fail Him. And what we need to do is always run to Him, always have Him on our mind, always trust and rely on who Jesus is. And tonight is the night where God is calling us, where He's presenting Himself yet again before us, not to judge us, not to condemn us, but to say, I'm willing to try if you are. And where you guys are right now, if you guys could bow your head and begin to think about the Word, begin to put your desires, to put everything that you have not been able to give to Him in His hands. And this is the opportunity and when you can present yourself before Him and He is willing to listen.