And don't y'all just love that bumper video? Like if I could get that in an alarm for every morning of my life, like start it out, because that's kind of how I wake up, you know, really slow and then get energized. I just love our team and everything that's going on. Hey, can we welcome all of our other campuses that are joining in right now? What's up everybody? We're excited that you're here. I don't know about you guys over at other locations, but we've had church this morning y'all, man, we've experienced the presence of the Lord, Stone County. I know you about to bust out a wall over there, so I know y'all having a good time down there as well. Hey, welcome. We're excited that you're here. My name's Blake, have the honor and the privilege of being part of the team if we haven't had the chance to meet yet, and I'm excited about the series that we're in, uh, this extraordinary series, learning about figures of the faith.

I just think it's such a good time and a good season to walk through the different stories of people, right? We heard about Mary of Bethany last week. Craig did an amazing job unpacking that story of how Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with her hair. I was crying. Everybody was crying on the Gulf Coast, man, it was such a powerful word. But you know, it's also a special season just in culture in general right now. All the graduates we got. Any graduates in the room? Anybody graduating? Yeah. Congratulations, pun intended. Congratulations. Yeah, you've heard that, you've seen that on the card. I'm sure any parents of graduates. Hallelujah. Thank you Lord. All the dads in the room that's graduating their kid, they're like, hello. See you later, man. Cave time. Like I already know what you're doing. I'm excited about my little girl, Henley gra she graduated from pre-K, uh, this past week and uh, yeah, so she runs the house now apparently she walked in with her little cap and gown and said, I'm going to kindergarten. And okay, you've got the world of knowledge. You've got the vowels and your ABCs down, so apparently you know everything. And so, I mean, it's just that season.

So I, I love this about graduation season for sure because like it's not just graduating school, but like we graduate this time of year from a lot of different things. Like maybe you're graduating from that toxic relationship. Maybe you're graduating into the next season of your life. Maybe you're going into, it's a season of transition right now, but it never fails that when it comes to graduation season, there's always one verse that everybody recites. Y'all know what it is, Jeremiah 29 11, for I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. Man, I love that verse. It looks so good on the graduation cards I used to get that I would tear into and ca cast aside looking for the money. Y'all know what I'm talking about, like I'm looking for the gift card. Y'all like I I love scripture. Thank you for putting it on the front of the card, but that's going over here cuz I'm looking for that gift card. If we can get to Olive Garden today, that would be great and uh, you know, it was just all these things.

But there's something about this verse that I love. I love Jeremiah 29 11, what it means and how, I mean, it's just so promising, right? So hopeful, but it's also very perplexing because I think about the dude that wrote it, Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet back in the old days when Israel was just going topsy-turvy. I mean if there was a wrong way to live a life for God, they were doing it and Jeremiah was the prophet that God called into the moment to tell them that they need to turn back to God and give their lives back to, to worshiping God himself and not turn to all these different idols. And man, they were building all kinds of stuff on mountaintops. They were killing babies. I mean it was pretty terrible. And Jeremiah was the guy that God brought into the moment, placed him right there and said, okay, you're gonna be the one to speak to them.

And so Jeremiah gives us a really great verse, but the thing that's perplexing to me when I read Jeremiah 29 11 is knowing the backstory of Jeremiah because he was prophesying and communicating to Israel and the Babylonians and everybody and not one single person listen to him, not one person. He's, he preached for decades saying, come back to the Lord, come back into relationship with God, like bring yourselves back to him, reunify with God and not a single person. Listen to him. And the end, the result of his ministry was he went into exile. Like that's not very prosperous if you ask me. That's not very hope-filled if you ask me. So what is it about Jeremiah's story? That's what makes it extraordinary is it? Today we're gonna look at the life of a guy that persevered in every season and no matter what he faced, he kept doing the thing that God called him to do. He's just an ordinary guy that God spoke an extraordinary vision into his life. And as a result, thousands of years later we're reading his words. I think that that says something about what God can do through us.

So can we go to Jeremiah chapter one? We're gonna start in verse one. We're gonna go through verse 10. I want us to get a broad look at Jeremiah's life and what does it mean for us? How can we apply the words of this Old Testament prophet to our lives today when we walk out of fear? And so we're gonna start in verse one. It says this, the words of Jeremiah, the son of Hill. I'm not trying to rap, I promise. One of the priests of Anth in the territory of Benjamin, the word of the Lord came to him in the 13th year of the reign of Josiah, the son of Iman, king of Judah. And through the reign of Jo Hok, son of Josiah, king of Judah, down to the fifth month, the 11th year of Zakiah, son of Josiah, king of Judah. That's a lot of ias, but we'll get to that in a second. Then verse four, it says, the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born, I set you apart and I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. And then Jeremiah says, A last sovereign Lord. I said, I don't know how to speak, I'm too young. But the Lord said to me, don't say I'm too young for you must go to everyone I sense you and say whatever, I commend you. I love this in verse eight. Do not be afraid of them. For I am with you and I will rescue you, declares the Lord. And the Lord reached out his hand and he touched my mouth and he said to me, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.

God gave Jeremiah a weighty vision for his life. And it's the same calling that he gives to you and to me today. Would you pray with me? Father, we pray that you would take this word that you would use it to, to impact our lives to, to move our hearts closer to you. Lord, there's so much in your word. There's so much truth in your scripture that I pray that we would glean today. May it be you speaking in you alone. Lord, we love you Father this in Jesus name we pray and everybody said amen. Amen.

Hey, have you ever had a moment of like expectation and reality gap? Like what you wanted was over here and it was perfect and it was a great scenario, but what you got, ah, it really didn't work out the way you had planned. Am I the only one? No. I remember this one time several years ago, I went on a mission trip to South Dakota with the church that I grew up in and we went with a, the student ministry was seventh through 12th, I think it was high schoolers, ninth through 12th graders. And we decided that it would be a great idea to take ninth through 12th graders, about 80 of us on a bus on a 27 hour trip to South Dakota. You can imagine what it smelled like about seven and a half hours into it with high school kids. It was, it was pretty, pretty crazy. But I remember it was a long arduous trip. I mean like think the bus broke down like twice. We finally get to South Dakota and I remember the leader of the trip coming over to the inter intercom and the bus. He says, all right guys, we're about to make our first stop in South Dakota. It's like the eighth wonder of the world. And the whole time I've been reading, thinking about all the places, cuz we were going up to do uh, we were going up to do a kids camp at a Native American reservation and what a powerful time it was just going. We saw so many kids and families come to faith. That's really what gets me excited about Camp Venture coming up in a few months, like going out and teaching kids about Jesus and their families. I mean just generations coming to know Christ.

And so we went there and then we went over and served at the Sturgis bike rally. I won't tell you about that on stage. It's exactly what you're thinking it was. We parked bikes for these people and I don't know why they let us do that, but we went over there, but in the middle we got to go see all this stuff. And so what he said, we we're about to get off the bus and see our first wonder of the world. It's gonna be amazing. I'm thinking like Mount Rushmore or the Badlands, right? Or like Custer National Park, like let's do this. I'm excited when we park and I get off the bus, my mouth drops because as I look up I see Sping towers of just yellow granules everywhere. We have arrived at the Corn Palace, of all the places we could have gone in South Dakota, we went to the corn Palace and it's exactly what you're thinking about. We look around, it's like, God dad, corny dad jokes on the walls and things are made of corn. They give you a corn on the cob to eat on. And everybody was so excited about being at the corn Palace. It was like a cathedral to corn. And I'm like, what? We couldn't go see Mount Rushmore or something else like the Badlands or anything like that. My expectation was completely different than the reality that we sat in. We were there for like four hours. What do you do with four hours at a corn palace? But we were there so we made the most of it. I ate some popcorn. Kettle corn is really good. The expectation in the reality was different.

And this was the same thing about Jeremiah's life. Jeremiah, at the very beginning when God gave him a calling on his life, Jeremiah said, hey, before I formed you in your womb, I knew you. I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations. You're gonna build, you're gonna plant, you're gonna do all of this stuff. And then Jeremiah gets into his ministry and decades later he has solved the fruit from none of it. The expectation and the reality gap was completely different. But there was something extraordinary about his story because it wasn't the success that kept him going. It wasn't the results of his ministry. It was an endurance that stemmed from somewhere much deeper. And there's many of us in the room today that maybe you're experiencing the same things that Jeremiah was experiencing. You say, God, I've tried to live for you. I've tried to give everything I can. I've tried to give my life over to you, but the results aren't matching up. Lord, my life doesn't look like it was supposed to look like I've read your scripture, I've seen all this stuff I've read, I've tattooed Jeremiah 29 11, like I'm excited about the prosperous part.

But here's the key thing I want to give you. I'm gonna give you the main point up front. I want you to find a place to write this down or put it in your Bible somewhere. This is it. Everything that we're gonna talk about today. Your grit is fueled by a calling that is founded on God's promises. Your grit, your endurance, your ability to persevere. It is fueled by a calling that is ultimately founded on the promises of God. This is Jeremiah's story. If you want to see a sum, a thesis of his life, this is it. So what I wanna do is I'm gonna unpack this phrase by phrase so that we can see how it applies into our lives.

The first thing that we see is his grit. Jeremiah was gritty. There were so many different things. If you look back, let's go to verse one again. And it talks about a lot of different names, but there's so much here as the words of Jeremiah. He was, he was the son of Hill Kay. Now Hill Kay is an important character. If you go back to the Book of the Kings and you read about Hill Kaya, this is the, during a time in Israel now everything was off the rails. They were worshiping anything that moved, they were worshiping anything that didn't move, that was all about just running as far away as they could from God. And then you have this priest named Hill, Jeremiah's dad, hill Kayah. He's kind of walking around in the temple doing his duties. He lives in Ana, thought it's like a suburb of Jerusalem. He's up there and he comes into the temple every week and he starts to do the the rituals of the temple. But there was one day, he's just looking in the back closet, I guess the temple had a back closet and they were kinda looking around and just seeing all the old dusty documents and stuff. And all of a sudden he picked something up and he unfurled it. And it was the law of the Lord. It was the first five books of the Bible. It was the pent, it was. It was this moment where he came in, he was like, this is what we've been looking for. Because God had given hill Kay a vision to bring the nation back to him.

And it's kinda like, you know when I go to look for something in the refrigerator and like Lauren says, hand me the ketchup. And I'm like, okay. I go over here and I'm looking everywhere for the ketchup. And then Lauren comes up and I was like, baby, I can't find it. And she's like, it's legitimately right here. She just picks it up and takes it over to the table. I don't know why she asked me to grab anything at all. But it happens. It's the same thing for Hill Kia. He's just walking around and all of a sudden he picks up the most important document for the entire nation. And so he brings it to this guy named Josiah. Josiah is a king. He's young, but he recognizes that there's something wrong with the nation of Israel. And so what does he do? He takes the law of the Lord and he starts reforming things. He starts bringing the country back to him. He tears down the idols and the the nation is coming back to faith, is coming back to God. This is where Jeremiah starts. Jeremiah starts in Josiah's reign as prophet.

So God calls him and Jeremiah comes in. He is like, all right, let's do this. He's actually got a buddy, Josiah, and they're in this together. All right, I've got my calling, you've got yours. Let's go out into the nation. And things start changing. Things start moving. Until Josiah dies, he dies because he goes off to war. And then Jeremiah's left with no one. And from that moment on, the one person that he had to stand by his side was no longer there. And Jeremiah was left alone in the face of a nation that was turned from God. And the guys that came after Josiah, they were not so kind. Joy Kim and Zakiah, those were the two men that anchored before the exile to Babylon. They were anchored just a terrible time of depravity and despair for the nation of Israel. And for the next several decades, Jeremiah was stuck preaching to a nation that wouldn't listen to him.

But here's the thing that we take away. He didn't quit. He didn't quit for the, it didn't matter whether it was Josiah or Zakiah. It didn't matter who was the king at that time. He had a calling from God. God had given him a purpose and he did not quit. This is what Jeremiah knew, that the only way we lose is if we quit. When it comes to our faith, when it comes to what God, there is so many people who's listening today. Maybe you're at a campus and you're sitting in your seat right now. You're saying, God, I've given you all I got. That's it. That's all I got. Lord, I don't have anything left. Here's the news for you. The only way we lose this battle is if we quit because the victory is ours. Jeremiah knew this instinctively. He knew God's promises and he just kept preaching. He kept going. He said, even if it all falls down around me and I'm standing on the mountain alone, I'm going to communicate the goodness of God because that's the calling he's placed in my life.

Several years ago during Covid, Lauren and I, we, we very seldomly take walks around our neighborhood and we'll talk. This was a season where the school that she had been a part of had had shuttered its doors and they didn't know where they were going to do next. And so we were walking around. This was also during Covid and we were trying to plan a church on the Gulf Coast. And these were just very tiring. I'm just gonna be honest with you. And we were walking around doing a good bit of complaining, just saying, man, we don't know what else to do. We don't know where to go next. We don't know the next step. God, we're just so tired. We're so tired. What do you have for us next? And that's where I felt in that moment, that phrase, the only way we lose is if we quit the calling is we just keep going. God pulls us in. He equips us. How does he do that? Because Jeremiah was gritty, but he wasn't gritty on his own. He wasn't persevering our endurance on his own. Like God gave him something deeper because there were several times in Jeremiah he wanted to quit. He came to God. He said, I'm done. You could take this call in and shove it cuz I'm gonna go do something else. And God was like, all right, but you'll be back. Lo and behold, Jeremiah comes back. Why? Because the grit that he had was fueled by calling. It was fueled by calling.

Look again in verse four. I I think if there's anything that you circle in these 10 verses, circle this one verse four. The word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as a prophet to the nations. That's enough to get your fire roaring. When you think about God calling and that word calling, isn't it? So it's such a buzzword nowadays. It's so packed and with meaning that we put on it and cultural meaning different things. What is Colin? I had a buddy one time that looked me straight in the face, said, man, what even is calling? How do you know if you're called? How do you know if God's called me into this? Isn't Colin the only thing for preachers like are ministers or pastors, aren't they the only ones that get calling? No.

I love what Oswald Chambers says. He says this. It says, the call of God is not just for a select feu, but for everyone. It's for everyone. It's for all of us. Whether I hear God's call or not depends on the condition of my ears and exactly what I hear depends on my spiritual attitude. Friends, just like Jeremiah, each and every one of us have a calling on our lives. Even if you don't feel it right now, it has nothing to do with the position God's placed you in. It ev everything to do with the posture of your heart and listening to what he's got for you. God called Jeremiah, he appointed him before he was known and before you were born, before you were formed in your mother's womb, God had a plan for your life. It's a calling that he promises to fulfill. It's something that he gives to each and every one of us.

Well you say, Blake, how do I hear it? That's why I love verse four. Did you catch that about God's calling? It said, and the word of the Lord came to me. I think so many of us feel like we have to go out and find it. We have to discover it. We have to build it ourselves. God, I got this. I actually don't need to listen to you because I'm busy doing it myself, but the word came to Jeremiah. This is the encouragement for you today. If you want to identify the calling of God in your life, maybe you're in a season of transition. This isn't just for graduates, this is for all of us. Ground yourself in the word of God, ground yourself. He is speaking to you. He is calling you. He is appointing you and it's all right there in His word. The greatest thing that we have ever been given on the face of this earth is the scripture with which we learn about His son. Dive into it. It's not just the rule book Emmanuel, A list of dos and don'ts for life. It is the very words of God that are speaking into your life today. When we encounter the word of God, we don't just read it, it reads us and it changes our lives.

But don't just do it alone. Do it in community. Do it with other people so that they can affirm the things that you're learning and you can talk about it. This is why house searches are so vitally important. Get in a community of people where you can learn about it and as you go, it transforms you. It moves your mind and more into the mind of Christ. I love what Romans 12, two says. Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Why? That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. If you wanna know God's will have your mind transformed by his word. It'll change your life forever.

And that calling is what fueled Jeremiah, but it's not the deepest heart transformation that he experienced. There's a final foundation that we see in Jeremiah's story, and this is that it wasn't just fueled by calling, but that calling was founded on God's promises. It had its basis on it. The foundation of the calling was on the promise of God because Jeremiah's God, I can't do this. I'm too young, I can't speak. He started giving excuses. Here's the thing, if you're calling is something you think you can handle, it's not. It's not the one God has for you. This whole phrase, God won't give you more than you can handle. That's bologna. You can just toss it to the side because he will, because it's not gonna be your strength that accomplishes the calling. This is what he told Jeremiah. Look again in verse eight. See what he says to Jeremiah. He says, don't be afraid of them and do not say, I am too young in verse seven, for I am with you and I will rescue you.

Jeremiah went decades preaching God's goodness, preaching God's repentance, bringing the people back, bringing and calling the people and not one person listen to him. What kept him going was not just a calling but the foundation that God was going to complete. The thing that he said he was gonna bring. He believed in the promise of God where he said, I'm gonna make the nation of Israel Almighty nation. That's what fueled his calling. That's what fueled him. And maybe for you today, you need to recognize the promises of God in your life. You need to recognize that there's nothing in our lives that we can experience, that God has not already been there, that the promises of God in scripture, did you know that somebody did a study and he looked at the promises of God and there were 7,148 promises of God speaking directly to people. God has promised that he will be by your side. He says, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. I will raise you up. I will mount you on wings like eagles. You will run and grow, not grow weary. You will walk and you will not faint. I am always going to be by your side. You are a mighty warrior because I am lifting you up. God promises these things to you. He gives you grit and endurance because that's fueled by calling that he's placed on your life. But that's ultimately founded in the promise of God.

I love Romans 8 31. It says this, it says, when, if God is for us, who can be against us? I love that. I love that verse. I love that heart in which we see it. But here's the thing, Jeremiah 29 11 is a great verse, but it's only it's most powerful when you read it in the context of verse 10. Look at Jeremiah 29 10. It says, this is what the Lord says when 70 years are completed for Babylon. He's talking about the exile, them going off and this point they are living in exile in Babylon, the worst nation in the world has ever seen. He said, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. Then he says, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. This is the beautiful thing about when God promises. When God promises, he isn't saying, I'll try. He's saying I will, and you can rest your life on that.

So my question to you today is this, what promises are you founding your calling on? What promises are you founding your life on? Is it the promises of this world, success and greatness and fame and prestige? Are you founding on those promises or are you founding on the promises of God? Well, what promises, Blake, you say, I've never really encountered this. Can I give you the greatest promise that God has ever given to us? It's found in Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two. I love this. This says, in the past, God spoke to our ancestors through prophets many times and in various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he also made the universe. God has spoken and given many promises, but the greatest promise he's given to each and every one of us today is his son, Jesus. It's his son, the promise of the risen savior, the promise of the Messiah who came and died and gave his life for you and was resurrected so that you could live in victory. This is the promise that we rest our lives on. This is the promise that our calling is founded on. It's the first and greatest promise that we receive.

Have you taken hold of that promise? Cuz here's what I think in Jeremiah 29 11, when God is saying, I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you. Those plans that he were talking about, it was before the beginning of time. Before time ever existed, before your life ever existed. God had a plan and his plan was that his son would come and die and give his life and then be raised in victory so that we could walk in it so that we could experience the life of Jesus. If you want to see endurance in your life like you've never experienced before, tap into the word of God and experience the calling. What is he calling you to? He's calling you to his son. He's calling you to Jesus. He's calling you home.

So today at all of our locations, we're gonna have an opportunity to respond in to the word that God's given us. My prayer for you is that you would found your life not after the shiny, glittery things of this world, the promises that they give it's graduation season. We're all looking for something. Would you cast that to the side and say, Lord, I want to receive the promise of your son. I want to receive the calling that you've placed on my life because before I was born, and even right now, I don't know it, Lord, I don't know it, but I'm gonna give myself over to you and I'm gonna trust you completely at all of our locations, we have an opportunity for you to respond. The crosses are available. Maybe you need to come and write something down and pin it to the crosses. A way of saying, God, I'm, I'm turning from that. That's not me anymore. Maybe you need to come and pray for someone. There's someone in a, at all of our locations, in a room. This says, there's someone that needs the promise of Jesus today. Today is the day of salvation scripture, sin found yourself on his promise. Come pray with someone if you need it. We have communion available, the Lord's Supper. If you'd like to come and take that, maybe you wanna take it as a family to reflect on what it is, the promise that we received in Christ.

But I'd love to pray for you right now, whatever season you're in. Can we pray together? Father, we love you. We rest in your promise today. Lord, if there's anyone who's listening today that does not know you, that has not experienced the promise of the cross, the promise of the resurrection, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that promise becomes the foundation in their life. Would you raise us up? Would you igni ignite a calling? Initiate a calling in our lives, a passion for telling others about you? No matter what the circumstances hold, no matter what comes our way, no matter what the results are, we are gonna leave fruitfulness up to you, God, because faithfulness is our calling. Would you move in our hearts and just like the nation of Israel, would you call us back to yourself? We thank you for the extraordinary story of Jeremiah and how you're calling us as well. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.