A recording of the June 15, 2017 After Hours event for men, led by Springhill Pastor and all around great guy, Sam Knight. Enjoy as Sam leads us through his own story of identity & calling as well as that of the Hebrew prophet, Elisha. Learn about God’s calling for you in this video and begin diving into the bible for its longstanding wisdom and guidance for living life well.

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As Daniel said, I’m Sam. My real name is James Michael George night but everybody calls me Sam. And there is a story behind that when, when I was before I was born, I got nicknamed Sammy die die in in in Wales is the Welsh for David or Dally for David and I got Sammy

David Sammy die. And when I was

when I was born, my brother called me, James. I was named Michael, because after St. Michael, because my birthday is September 29, and St. Michael’s day, and I was called George after my grandfather, who was George. And so everybody knew that our family had four children, until they realized that there may be five children because there’s Jennifer, Julian, Julian, and James, and Sam. And so Sam was the one that got in trouble in the village where I grew up. And James was the good boy.

I’d like to tell you, that’s really true, but for most of the time, it wasn’t so but I grew up I grew up in, in a place called Pontypool in Wales. And yes, I did. I did study at Oxford University. So you know, talking CS Lewis, Diana and I were all sitting in the pub one night

Not true. I have I have actually served

beer I was the one of the

one of the pub guys working at the bar. I was a barman at the eagle and child. The burden baby where CS Lewis and Tolkien and the other Inklings used to hang out 11 o’clock on Tuesday mornings, there in Oxford. That was way before I got to Oxford. So, but I will tell you a funny story, though, because American tourists are so gullible. I will just tell you that so the tradition was that the Oakland Inklings would, would meet in the back room of the England child. And so we’d have these Americans coming past the bar, which is right there. It’s about halfway down the building. And they’d go right past the past the bar and they’d go further down, and they’d go into the back room, and they’d look around there take pictures of each other, and they pose and they take pictures and then then you’d have other tourists Asian tourists.

notorious for cameras, of course. So they’re in there, click the click the click, and they walk back out. And I’d say to the landlord, I said, What are they doing? is they’re all they’re taking pictures. I said, Yeah, well, obviously, but But why are they taking pictures up in the conservatory? He said, Well, because it’s the back room to them. Well, the backroom staff just by the bar, there’s a fireplace and there’s a plaque that says, this is where they sit and drink beer on Tuesday mornings. Yet the Americans they said backroom they went to the back room took pictures will go. So I said to the landlord, I said, so do you think we should tell them that now?

Yeah. So there was another occasion where American tourists would come in and I’d been asked to go help at another pub in the morning, because they were shorthand so and after that at the pub, it’s beautiful pub right by the river that runs through Oxford. It’s it’s actually the River Thames that ends up at in London, but through Oxford, they call it the ISIS.

So I’m out on the pub right by this lock, beautiful place this American family come in. I serve them there in the morning, later afternoon, they come into the eagle and child, they go to the back room, take pictures, they come to the bar, they have a pint of beer. And they said, We saw you earlier, didn’t we? I said, Yeah, I was up there working. And so the landlord of the England Charles starts telling them

well, you know, the thing is,

Sam basically owns most of the pubs in Oxford. And so here’s what you gotta do. You gotta go down to the white horse, which is right across from the Bodleian Library, the big famous library doctorate. beautiful little pub down muscle down in the basement, says you got to go down to the white horse. And when you go just say, Sam said to give us a pint. Well, of course they believed him. They call up from the White Horse go is that

is saying, Give us a pie. No, it’s Sam. So this will just play along. Give him a pint so they thought I owned all the post.

Oxford, which, and would have actually been quite a lucrative business.

So I’m here to talk tonight about and I’ve got till when

don’t tell the preacher, you’ve got whatever time you want 930 tomorrow morning, okay. Alright, so I’m going to talk tonight about a couple of characters. And, and really it’s about it’s about issue of identity and priorities. You know, as fellows, we, we set all kinds of priorities and we think about what we want to do we think about what we want to accomplish. We have these dreams of what we want to be one day, and how we’d like to accomplish that. And so, for for this, I’m going to talk about two fellows, one called Elijah, who was a prophet of God and a another fella called Elijah, who at the moment of their encounter, at the beginning, was not the prophet of God. And so if you’ve got a Bible and some Bibles in front of you, turn to First Kings

First Kings

Near the it’s near the front.

In the Old Testament, that first part of the Bible right after the fellow Samuel. good name. Sam. Sam. Sam Bennett. Yeah, you Samuel. Okay. I’m just a plain old Sam. So

we’ll

all right, so. So we’re looking at this fellow Elijah and Elijah chapter 19 of First Kings at verse 19. So first kings 1919.

I don’t I don’t know if I have the same I have an S 365 on those Bibles. Okay. 365 good stuff. So I’m just going to read the story. It’s a very quick story.

Just to give you some background, Elijah has done something really incredible. We’ll talk about that in a moment. And he’s kind of feeling a little bit upset. And then God comes to him and basically says, like, I need you to go do this. And there’s a couple of things he tells him to do in verse

Verse 17, and 18. But at 19, Elijah,

Elijah is told to do this particular thing. So he departs from this place where he’d been hanging out. So you depart from there and found Elijah, the son of chef had, who was who was plowing with 12, yoke of oxen in front of him. And he was with the 12th. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, Let me kiss my father and mother, and then I will follow you. And he said to him, go back again, for what have I done to you. And he returned from following him and took the yoke of oxen, and sacrifice them and bother flesh with the yolks of the oxen and gave it to the people and they ate. Then he arose and went after Elijah, and assisted him. So there’s a couple of different characters that we’re looking at here, Elijah,

the prophet of God and Elijah. So let’s look at this. So So here’s the how the story goes, here comes Elijah. So at this point,

In the people of God, the Hebrew people, Israelites, there’s a lot of stuff going on this.

There’s a king that’s in charge who isn’t a very nice guy, his wife is really evil. And they have, they have kind of just said to God, stuff you we’re going to do our own thing. And so I haven’t decibel, they kind of do their own thing. And there’s all kinds of just really awful stuff going on, in that part of the world. And, and God still has presence there, because there’s this fellow Elijah, he’s like the last prophet of God. Everybody else has rejected God, they’ve gone kind of doing their own thing. Even the king and his wife and his wife, particularly, that has really twisted way people think about God and so so here comes Elijah. So he’s walking as commanded by God to go, as God told him, Go look for this guy called Elijah. He is the son of chef at and you’ll find him and he’s going to be next. He’s going to be the next prophet of

God. So Elijah,

as we pick up in the story, simply as a nobody, okay, if you scour through the Bible looking for this character, Chef, and you’ll see a mentioned one time before, and that’s in the previous verse. So this fellow chef is a nobody in the Bible, he hasn’t done anything incredible. He hasn’t really accomplished a whole lot, potentially, he seems to have a lot of money because there seems to be a lot of oxen around. But safwan is really not anybody famous in the Bible. He’s just kind of doing his thing. And there’s Elijah, who’s his son, and we don’t know necessarily the position, if there are other kids, if there are other brothers, etc, etc. We just know that this fellow Elijah is the son of Shephard, and he isn’t anybody special. So it’s kind of just an ordinary guy in the Bible, but the problem is, here comes Elijah. Now Elijah is a whole different character. Elijah is the prophet of God that is not famous among the people because he challenged the

establishment Ahab, Jesse Bell, and he went up. So he would be, I don’t want to be political, but it sounds like a good illustration. He’s the guy that’s going to drain the swamp. In.

All right, nobody’s throwing bottles at me this point, I think I’m okay. But so so Elijah is the guy that’s been called by God to clean things up. So this is how he does it. This is how the story goes. And you can read about it in a couple of previous chapters in First Kings that sometime later, but he tells this story, or the story is told of him, how he challenges the establishment, and he challenges the prophets. The religious leaders that they have in decibel have put in place they’re called prophets of bail or bar depending on which part of the world you come from, and how you think it’s supposed to sound that nobody really knows how to say it. So the prophets of bail or the prophets of Baal and, and there’s 450 of them. So So Elijah, this one guy who has

Faith in God goes and says, Okay, this is how we’re going to do it. So he challenges these 450 prophets of bail these established religious guys who this is kind of his draining of the swamp type of thing. And he goes and challenge he says, Okay, this is what we’re going to do. I want you to pick a pick a ball, I’m going to pick a ball, I want you to, to lay your ball on an altar. And then I want you to ask your God to burn this sacrifice up. So then I Oh, yeah, yeah, there’s 450 of us. We’re all devoted to this thing. This bail bar character and yeah, we’ve got this going on. So so they set up their altar, they set up this, this, this ball to sacrifice it, and then they start like, I don’t know dancing around doing incantations declaring, Oh, come on, just because we believe it. It’s going to happen kind of thing or, or we’re actually they take it a little bit further. They start cutting each other

Cut themselves. They take blades and swords and they start to there’s gushing blood everywhere. I mean, it probably would make a pretty good action movie, don’t you think? Yeah. So,

so they’re doing all this kind of stuff and there’s nothing happening. nothing happening. You know, it’s like you had your eye on that girl for a long time. And you’ve just been building up to it. You’ve been building up to it. You’ve been building up to maybe what in America, the promise coming home coming. We don’t have any of those kind of things. So I don’t know how to say homecoming without doing an American accent, even though it’s probably poor. But you got and you’ve been building up, you’ve been been on up and you go.

Today’s the day, I’m going to ask. So you walk up. I mean, she’s the prettiest girl in school. And you may not be the prettiest guy in the school. So you walk up and you I will you go come to come in with me. silence

and then she and then she walks away. And you there. Yeah. So

So this is how it was going up, there was

nothing going on. So after they had pretty much destroyed each other, cutting each other up and really hurting one another.

Elijah says, Okay, let’s do this. Where he was, there was a pile of rocks already because there been an altar, a special place where people are connected with God there before. So he gathers these stones up this 12 stones, because the 12 tribes of Israel, he gathers these stones he builds them up, and then he then he gets the ball and he kills the ball. He places it on there. And then he does something really strange. You know, he’s got the firewood ready to go. What you don’t do on a fire is pour water over it is it? It’s really hard to burn wet wood. I’ve learned that several times.

So he he calls for these guys, he didn’t just say pour water over them. He says pour water over them again. And our third occasion says pour water over them again. So you’re going to imagine this word, these rocks swimming with water and there’s a there’s a trial

That’s been formed around it and there’s water just sitting there.

And then he looks up and he says, Okay God, you are the one is almighty

do something. And at that moment, the Bible tells us that fire came down from heaven. It burnt up the sacrifice, it burnt up the word, it burned up every and all the water, everything to care. And of course, the people like Ha, ha.

So they started to follow God again. So this is who is turning up Elijah turning up with this fellow chef at son, Elijah, who is nobody so you can imagine this is what goes on. It’s like some some famous football player. And I mean football, like David Beckham turning up or or Gareth Bale, the great Welshman, you know, leading his charge to to us for championship. Good Welshman, or, or, or maybe Simon Jones, you’ve heard of Simon Jones. The cricketer. Yeah, or alternate

Lewis who was my father’s father’s friend in school Tony Lewis and other cricketer Yeah, okay, how about this? Let’s How about moving Davis? You know, no movement is really famous rugby player anyone, Gareth Edwards. Or Come on surely you saw the 1979 barbarian game when when he scored that track it didn’t even see that. Okay. How about this and how about Alan Watson?

Pittsburgh Steelers. Great Welshman, but he played in the 1970s How about john Norris and real famous guy now the watchman playing for Chicago? bears in 1987 you know

all right maybe some Peyton Manning them. Who’s that fella? Yeah Peyton Manning you know that one? Yeah. Always a Louisiana boy. Okay, so so so we pretend like it’s it’s Peyton Manning coming and and you know buddy and that’s the kind of experience that Alicia has when when Elijah turns up so painting

banning of the Hebrew world is turning up to this field. And the other thing about chef at CERN, Malaysia, who doesn’t seem to be anybody in particular, is that he’s plowing a field with 12 pair of oxen. And he’s got the end of the line. So there’s two things we could probably read into that. One is Elijah’s dad, Jeff had, seemingly had quite a bit of money because he had enough to have 12 pair of oxen. And the other part of that is that if he’s got the 12 pair, that means 11 pair of oxen have already been through that piece of the field. So he’s doing something, he is somebody that is nobody, and he’s doing something that somebody else has already done. That has how I don’t know about you. That’s how I feel pretty often when I look at other people. I’m not really doing anything. I’m not really anybody’s famous son. I’m not anybody. In fact, my dad is a Baptist pastor in Wales. And growing up I was always Clive night, son, when I moved to the States, first to Texas.

Some people came over. When my parents came over to visit. They’d go Oh, are you Sam? Nice Dad? Yes, I’ve arrived. But he still isn’t very famous anyway. So. So chef had his chef had similar she was doing something that doesn’t seem that terribly important. And then here comes the hero of the people of Israel, the Peyton Manning of the day. Everybody knows about Elijah.

And what is Elijah do? He comes through the Bible tells us the scripture says, He throws his cloak on him. So that’s the symbol. That’s like Peyton Manning. Come on along and going there, Dennis.

You’re up. Here’s my helmet. Here’s my glove. Here’s the playlist, get on the field. But that’s the problem, Elijah. He’s like, Who are you look at that. This is Elijah. And he throws us Pokemon. So there’s a couple of things that goes on here in the story. And I think it’s perspective for us about identity Elijah

Immediately says, I’m coming with you.

But first, let me do something. And Elijah realizes what he’s doing when he’s putting his coat on him. It’s a symbol

that that he’s next up. It’s a symbol, the word we use as he lays his mantle upon him. You know, he’s like the next one in line to do this. It’s like somebody mentioned Diana, Princess of Wales. I gotta tell you, Charles and English pretender, really wasn’t the Prince of Wales. The English made him that the Welsh put up with him. But Charles is the next in line for the throne of England. So it’s it’s like this investiture this, this mantle this symbolism, that you’re next that’s what happened to Charles and in Wales that a castle can have on in Wales. He was made, basically your next this is what happened with Elijah and Elijah, your neck. So what does Elijah and Elisha do? Elijah throws his

cloak on him. And he and Elijah gives us a bread to this is big. This is really big. What have I done? The Scripture says, What have I done to you saying, This isn’t me doing and I’m not just some random person says God is doing this in you. This is what’s next. So So Elijah says, Okay, I need to take care of some business. So what is his business that he takes care of? Scripture tells us that he, he goes, and he says, Let me let me go kiss my mother and father. So he goes back and he deals with his family. He’s saying goodbye. He’s saying goodbye. He says,

I got stuff to do. I’m going to see you late. So his first identity, his place in his family, he sets that aside and says, I’m going to, I’m going to do this. So I’m going to say goodbye to my family, and he does something else. And I think pretty much as spectacular and as much as you and I think about how are we going to provide, many of us are married, many of us want to be married and one of the things that we often

Think about is how are we going to provide? When I met my wife, Jennifer

20 years ago, July 2,

actually was 20 years ago, July 20 22nd.

I’d moved it to Texas ready just to be there for two years. And the plan was two years and then then I’d be back to to the UK to the army British chaplain as as an army chaplain and off we go. But I met this girl Texan, beautiful. July 22. I met her by the, by the, by the fourth day later, I’d asked her to marry me. And one of the first things after that, that my father in law to be asked me when I then went back and said, so I’ve actually gotten to marry me. She said, Yes. And I probably should check in with you. And the first thing he said was, you heard her, I will kill you.

And he meant the second thing he said, How are you going to take care of my daughter

certain expectation you’re gonna provide so. So when you look at what he did this fellow Elijah, who’s really nobody doing something that really isn’t important, but he gave up something, he gave up his livelihood. So imagine back in the day when you’re about to ask your wife

to marry you think you better go talk to the deck is that’s the good traditional thing to do. And so you go and you’re this kind of young buck ready to take on a life and the father in law says, so how you going to provide for my, for my daughter, you know, like, wow, you know, I got this great pair of oxen. They’re really sturdy, good, good, good animals. And I got this beautiful flower just had it made look at Oh, it’s just beautiful. It’s going to do the job. It means I can plow the fields. I can plan I can take care of your daughter. Will you let me have your daughter’s hand in marriage? And of course the father law to be like, dude, that’s a nice flower.

It says Of course. Yes. So what is it? Why should he takes it any. He chops the word up, it takes the plow and he builds

Fire. And then he takes the takes the meat, the oxen kills them. And he puts it on the fire. So it’s kind of like a barbecue in Hebrew times, although it’s boiled a little bit. So I don’t know what that does to the meat that might be different, but but you know, he gives it to everybody. So what is he saying about that? He’s talking about his identity, again, he has said to his family, I’ve got to go do this. That’s part of his identity that he says, I need that to come secondary to something else. And then he takes his opportunity for his livelihood. Again, for most of us our identity. I noticed when I first moved to America, the way that people introduce themselves and then and then talk to each other like, Hey, what’s your name? Hey, Aaron, how are you doing? Hey, Aaron, what do you do?

What are you doing? your realtor?

a rhetorical question. No, no, it’s a real question. But as how often people will ask you and they’ll say, Hey, nice to me. What do you do and it’s

Almost as if it’s a judgment on us, when when we have to answer. So what do you do? That’s the question, what is the life should do? I should players fields. And I mean around here in Bozeman, Montana, that’s a known thing, and that’s a pretty good livelihood. And but for most of us when we say, I don’t know about you, but when I say, when asked, so what do you do? I’m a pastor.

The best is sitting on an airplane. They can’t go anywhere.

And I’ve also noticed on the ski lift, it’s a good chunk of time. And they’re getting further and further over to the far corner, as if I’m some kind of leper, but,

but it becomes, but you and I know you, you’ve asked these questions, and you’ve answered these questions. We judge on what we are doing as a question of our identity. And friends. We can’t do that. Because if it’s always about what we do, what happens if that

livelihood if that career is taken away, and many people have had to go through those experiences, many people have set out with their course plan that for what they’re going to do the my plan, I was going to be a helicopter pilot and the Navy Prince Andrew, one of the princes of, of the royal family at the time when I was a kid

going into grammar school, so I’m about 12 or so. He’s flying helicopters in the Falklands war fighting against the Argentineans. That’s back in 1981 and 82. So a long time ago, some of you may remember that some of you may not remember that. But that’s what I want to do. Prince Andrew became a hero for me. That was my identity. I’m going to be a helicopter pilot and the Navy applied. They said you ever heard of the army?

So that was not part of God’s plan for me to be a helicopter pilot. And,

and I tried and I tried, and I tried so I thought, okay, I realized God was calling me into ministry and I ok if I

I’m going to do this I’m going to do it my way. I thought what army chaplain, I’m going to get to fly in a helicopter. That’s the plan. Maybe they let me fly it one day. That’s the plan. If I’m going to do it this thing, I’m going to do it my way. Why? Because I was centering my identity in the things that I wanted to do. And the way I wanted to do it, so if I have to be a preacher, God, I’m going to do it in the army. Well, I got there, had an opportunity went through a training course. And they said, right, we want to give you a commission. And they have to do two years in civilian church full time because I’ve never done that before.

I’ve got this opportunity go to America. I’ve got a plan. Two years in America, great adventure, what a wonderful thing to do. I go back and I fulfill what I wanted to do.

And I met a girl

and the story.

My identity has been captured up in what I wanted to do so many of us have had those crises.

seas of identity. Because that which we had planned, didn’t happen, the job that we wanted to do, didn’t happen, the opportunities that we thought were there, didn’t pan out and the things that we are forming in terms of our identity. Just don’t give us a true identity. So you got two things that ally should does. It says goodbye to his family, that’s a significant thing. It’s not like you never would see them again. But he sets them in a different place in his level of priorities. And then he takes his livelihood, his oxen, and his and his, and his player chops it up and he feeds the people BBQ. It’s another question of his identity being set aside. He looks at it differently because of what now has happened to him. So for you and I, when we think about our identities, when we think about our reactions, his reaction was I gotta go set my family in the right place.

The reaction was, I’ve got to set my livelihood in the right place. And then he sets his priorities, the end of the story. He follows Elijah and becomes his attendant, he becomes a servant. So he’s giving up something that takes something else on that he finds his identity in what he then does forgot. And some of us we struggle with this question of identity all the time. Because we don’t know how to set our priorities in the right place. We know there’s got to be something more than what we’re doing. We know there’s got to be something else beyond our experiences today. So what is that for you? What’s that struggle that you have? How have you set about maybe, maybe, and I and I know it for my own self, maybe you’re struggling? Because the things that you wanted, the things you desired, the things that you thought you could accomplish? Didn’t happen? Didn’t happen. So you find yourself in a

crisis of identity. I know we’ve got some young guys, and we’ve got some older guys. And I know for from counseling with a lot of different people when they when they retire, and they’re no longer doing the job that they did for however many years that they did it. There’s often a time of crisis. So if you are close to retirement, or a long way off from, from retirement or even in retirement, you’ve got to realize something really important. Your identity is not in what you do.

Your identity is not in what you do, even though some of you are thinking, I really want to be a professional golfer. So when I retire, that’s what I’m going to do. Well, it doesn’t happen. We’re still missing out on our real priorities. What do we do? Or what we do is not our identity, whose we are is where our identity found his family. Now when I say that it isn’t it isn’t about the girlfriend. It isn’t about the wife.

How many

How many guys are married here?

Okay, good, good chunk of you. How many guys have got girlfriends? That should be a different group from those that have

to be clear about that. All right.

So so we’re thinking now, and making those people, our spouses and our features versus the highest priority, when that that really is a good, noble thing to do. So when we think about that, we then think about how do i do my best to provide for them. So then you set a high and noble priority of provision, working, working hard, doing as much as you can, providing as much as you can. And then you you think into them as a noble and high priority about the family that you might have and what you want to give or what you want to offer them. And you said that as a higher noble priority, and it’s good stuff, guys, but it isn’t who you should be. And it certainly isn’t who you are.

Elijah, that okay.

Let’s do this. So he set aside his family. And it wasn’t a negative thing. He was re prioritizing the things that were important. And he set aside his career, His provision opportunities, because he then had to trust. And he followed this famous guy said, Okay, what we’re doing, and what’s next. And sometime later, we realized that these priorities for a live show paid off. Because Elijah dies, the story tells us that the Bible tells us that Elijah was actually taking up into heaven on a chariot of fire. I mean, that’s, that’s how much of a hero this fellow was. I mean, it was a big deal. And this, Elijah then witnesses this, and then at that moment, he receives the power from God that completely changes everything for him, and he becomes the next prophet of God. So the hero is witness been taken away. And I can imagine poor Alaska going hi

Crap right now.

God provided what was needed in that moment. So you and I as we think about life and priorities how do we think about that what’s what is number one priority in our life and for me as a as a Christian, it is first and foremost

being a child of God

when I was when I was in seminary a girl who I do not know

by two or three interactions

brought brought a stuffed under my door my flat in Oxford a letter I still have that letter. So at this point now my my time I’ve said okay, I’m going to do the preaching thing I’ve already planning on on doing the chaplain thing. And the the letter said things in that nobody knew about me.

Nobody knew about me except God.

She had this stuff written out in this letter, oh my gosh, she’s been.

She’s been talking to, nobody knows this.

And in the letter, there’s a word in there that changed my perspective and changed my life. And it simply said, If God says, I never want to use you ever again, will you believe yourself to be a lesser child of the one who created you?

I don’t want to use you again. So this is you know, I’m going to be a preacher. This this all for God’s glory, of course. But God, God in that letter said, if you if you were to never be using if you would never preach another sermon, would you be lesser

as a child of God?

The truth is, first, I was thinking, yes. Truth is God revealed. No, not at all. It isn’t about what I do. Doesn’t matter what I accomplish, even for God’s glory.

It’s whether I’m accept whether I’m it

Child of God or not a Son of the Most High King,

son of the one who created me. That’s the priority. That’s the place. So before and I confess this before I came here to Bozeman. I’ve been serving in a couple of different large churches over the course of several years, one in Orlando and one in Houston, Texas. And

I really didn’t know what was next the my, my role at the church in in Houston as the interim lead pastor had come to an end. And I was traveling a bunch for a denomination that I was working with and helping and helping to start up and doing a lot of representation for them and different organizations and stuff. So I was traveling, but I won’t, I won’t be preaching, and I didn’t have a church I was serving, but I knew that’s what I was supposed to be doing. So for nine months, my identity went into crisis. As a preacher, I didn’t have a pulpit. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. It didn’t make any sense to me nine months without a job.

Doing doing what I was, I thought, creative and call to do. I tell you what reminded me.

I remember that letter.

And I remember that God said, I never use you again. Would you be less of a child of mine? And his answer is certainly.

You are my chart. So friends, guys, our identities, first and foremost need to be as children, sons of the Lord God who’s created us, were his, we belong to Him. And as a believer, as a Christian, I believe that’s where I find everything for my beginning. And when I send to that in the right direction, my identity is that not in my job, not in my family, that I’ve got a great family three kids beautiful wife.

Not in those things. But in him, him first then everything starts to pan out. So even now as a as a pastor, you think you know, he’s cool.

So high priority calling. I’ve told the congregation I’ve served at all the elders of the church, my first calling in life is to simply be a child of God, a man of God, godly man, that has to be my priority. And then my second calling is to be a husband and a father. That’s next. And the third thing, well, that, that’s when I can be a pastor. I can’t mess it up and put it the wrong way around. It’s like you in whatever calling whatever position, whatever job you’re doing, you’re there for a purpose. If you’re if you are not centered in your identity in God first, as simply his son, because he loves you.

Then you have to ask the question, why am I struggling?

That’s why. That’s why. So Elijah follows this great, incredible famous guy. And then he himself becomes pretty cool, and very famous to be trusted. And he put all his identity and he followed and said, okay, God,

Let’s do this. Let’s do this. So I’ve got a study I want you to look at. And I’ve got some questions I’m going to ask if some guys can help me hand these out. To do these in a group together and, and share together around this question and, and really, I’m not going to tell you what I’m looking for because the questions will help you discover it. It’s actually a it’s called the discovery Bible study. And hopefully that’ll help you. So fellas

so in your, in your groups, if you just sit around together and talk somebody through and before you do that, can I pray for you?

And I Yeah, all right. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank you

for who you are, and who you want us to be. So as we look at your word further again tonight, Lord in groups, open our hearts and our eyes to see what you have for us in Jesus name.

Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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