Sheryl Brady - Acing the Test

Today, I just want to talk about this subject I’m going to read from, actually in a moment. I don’t mean Hebrews chapter 11, but I’m going to talk about the subject «Acing the Test.» This is the eighth Sunday that we have had to worship online, and my goal throughout this crisis has been to help you navigate through this season with strength and stability, even though things around you might not be stable. That has been our goal. That’s why we’ve come on during the week and had prayer. That’s why we pray constantly among our staff. We’ve brainstormed, put our minds together, and worked very hard to ensure you could feel a sense of stability in your life during these unstable times. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t been discouraged; it doesn’t mean that you haven’t faced discouragement, distress, disappointment, or a whole bunch of other things because I feel like we’ve experienced the full range of emotions. This has been a very testing time, a very testing season. We have felt worried, scared, fearful, and troubled. We’ve even felt indecisive because just when we say we’re going to do something, something else comes out, and we find ourselves thinking, «Oh, I better not do that.» Thus, we’ve struggled with indecisiveness, not able to make a well-thought-out decision. We’ve struggled with not being able to hug those we truly love and be near them. Now, that’s a significant struggle. We have faced loss and grief, feeling all of these things. We have felt uncertainty, and as hard as we work to help keep you stable, you have felt unstable at times. There have been moments when we have even felt quite insecure. I think we have pretty much experienced every kind of emotion that one could feel in the middle of COVID-19. These feelings accompany, or more accurately, accompany a pandemic, and we didn’t know that before because we had never really lived through a pandemic. Actually, I think we’re living through two pandemics right now: the physical pandemic where our bodies are affected and the emotional pandemic that brings significant stress. As if that weren’t bad enough, some of what we’ve been going through has been intensified. A few days ago, I noticed that strong tornadoes were ripping through the South, tearing homes apart. One image that remains in my mind is of a house that had been shifted off the road it was on and was now sitting in the middle of the road. It had been blown off its foundation, moved to the center of the street. Living in Texas, we know firsthand some of the damage a tornado can cause; we have experienced it. However, that image of the house that used to be by the side of the road but is now in the middle has been ingrained in my mind. To me, it resembles a metaphor for what is happening in our lives at this moment. We’ve been hit by an incredibly strong wind called COVID-19, which has blown our lives around, shifted us, unraveled many of us, and unglued several of us. It has lifted us out of our normal lives and into an abnormal one, and we are trying to get through it. The winds were fierce, and they’ve taken what was perhaps once settled. We may not have known it was settled at the time, but when those winds start to blow, we’re left saying, «God, if I could only go back to just that, I would be okay.» But everything is like that tornado; everything is up in the air. Gates, fences, and even animals will get caught up in the air when the wind blows hard enough. Everything in life has been blown into the air, and many of us have seen our stress levels skyrocket. They have skyrocketed because, let me tell you, I trust that this will help you today: the reason our stress levels have been so high is that we are in a test. We are in a test, and today I want to talk to you for a few moments from the Word of God about the life of a man named Abraham. Abraham went through four areas of testing in his life, so get a pen, paper, iPad, or something else to write these things down because I’m going to share about the four major tests that Abraham encountered, which you and I experience as well. When it comes to tests, how many of you, as I said, would like to hear you say, «Amen»? I see you, but when I was a kid, we would go to…