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Living Hope SDA Church

Heidi Martin

Christian Martin

Move Over, Mountain

And today I'm personally blessed because I am thankful to God that I can take an opportunity to share a message from God's word, not alone behind this podium, but together with my beloved wife.

And so today it is our joy, our blessing to be able to share this time with you as a family.

Today Elijah and Mariah will also have a moment to share with you as well.

So this is a blessing for us as a family to share with our church family as we share a message that we've entitled Move Over Mountain.

So as we begin, let's have a word of prayer together.

And Heidi, would you pray for us as we begin?

Dear Lord, thank you so much for the privilege of opening your word, of feasting on your word.

Bless us this morning as we share in Jesus' name, amen.

You know, every year we celebrate Heidi's birthday on February 9th, and then less than a week later, it's February 14th, as we heard during the children's story, it's Valentine's Day.

And so every single year, it's double the fun for me because that means that I get to come up with an extra special surprise for my wife.

After all, we're celebrating her life and we're celebrating our love, therefore it's our love life celebration that happens every February.

So there's a special, something special about that time and and and I look forward to it every year.

And you know, on 1 particular year, I'm still trying to see these notes here, they're a little small, so we gotta get them so I can see them.

On 1 particular year, he did something that probably tops everything that he's ever done.

Now I'm going to have to tell you, right?

So I showed up early in the morning to her workplace, before she arrived, of course.

So I showed up early and I had a basket full of rose petals.

So what I did was from the parking lot, I created a pathway of rose petals all the way down the parking lot, down that walk, into the building, down a few halls.

I was spreading rose petals all over the place.

And then right into her office, where I dumped the rest of those rose petals right there on top of her desk.

And I place an invitation to a dinner at my apartment and there I put a huge bouquet of a dozen roses.

Mind you, I worked in a skilled nursing facility with many people who were in wheelchairs, who couldn't walk.

When I got to work that day, I'm walking in, my coworkers are looking, everyone's watching.

And I didn't realize that it was for me until someone said, that's for you.

Some of the residents are up, and they're watching.

Well, that evening, when I went to Christian's apartment in response to the invitation, I walk in there to his place and I was speechless.

Maybe because I anticipated something better.

Because right there on the kitchen table, there were 2 paper plates, 2 paper cups, and a pan, a pot of beans.

And I was like, okay, this is interesting.

By that time, I'm pretty sure he knew that I really liked him, but man, seemed like he could have done a little bit better right?

You know there's something better coming, come on now.

So what I did was just before she sat down, I said, oh wait, wait, wait, wait, before you sit down, I took her by the hand and I took her to another room.

And before we opened the door, I said, now, Heidi, I want you to close your eyes because you're about to open the door and I have something better for you because I love you.

And then you opened the door and she was speechless once again.

I walked into a banquet hall kind of atmosphere with strings of lights, wrapped in white tulle, beautifully arranged with red roses.

There was even nice, soft saxophone music playing in the background.

No, it was 1 of those moments that I was like, praise the Lord, Lord, you inspired me with this because this is heavenly.

Little did she realize that I had emptied that room completely and put everything into a friend's house, moved it all over just so that I could create a surprise, an unexpected surprise of something better, of something better.

You know, in many ways, in more ways than 1, in the same way God loves to give, give something better.

Now, I, we give as well because we can be loving.

And it's the very nature of God to give because he is love.

And not just to give, but to always give something better.

And 1 particular story found in the Bible that demonstrates how God always wants to give us something better, and our choice to either receive his something better or reject his something better is found in the book of Numbers chapter 13.

Please go there with us, Numbers chapter 13.

Come with us to Romans 13, where we're gonna be spending most of our time today as we take a look at an ancient story.

First I'm going to give you the immediate context of this story.

It took place on the outskirts of the promised land, the land of Canaan.

So if you can use the imagination, I was blessed a few years ago that it didn't simply have to be a figment of my imagination.

I actually had the privilege to go there myself.

And here I stand overlooking the land of Canaan from the top of Mount Nebo and it truly was a vast and beautiful land as it is now.

In Numbers chapter 13 God has just told the people of Israel, look I have set the land before you and I'm giving it to you.

I'm gonna give you this land, it's yours.

And what's interesting is that this same story appears in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 1.

And what's interesting that in that account, it was the people of Israel, not God, who proposed the plan to send spies into the land.

God never, it was not God's idea to send spies.

That was their idea and they proposed it to Moses.

Moses in turn told God and God said go ahead and do that.

If that's what you want to do, send the spies.

You know we could pause right there and already discover something about God's character.

It reveals a beautiful aspect of his character and that is that God is so good that he meets us where we're at.

You see, there are times when he wants to freely give us something.

Move Over, Mountain

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