Man. Wow, that was amazing. Do you ever, like, were you ever on a group project where like you just come in at the very end, everybody else did all the work and then you get an A plus, then you never, that's how I feel like standing up here after that video. Like I, that was amazing. I love hearing that story.

And one of those poems, this was, it is really important to our family and that's what we're gonna be about here today is do the next thing. Leaning in on that. Hey, we wanna welcome all of our campuses right now. Welcome in. If we haven't had the pleasure of meeting my name's Blake, maybe you're tuning in online.

We wanna say thank you for being here and a big resounding Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, to all the mamas out there, we can celebrate 'em at all of our campuses. You guys are amazing. You look great and you made it. Wow.

Congratulations on getting all of us knuckleheads up and over to church. That's, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Celebrate your mom, man. That's what I'm talking about. We're, man, we're so excited for today and we love Mother's Day.

Like this is one of our favorite days all year. We talk about it in the weeks leading up to it because we love to celebrate Mamas just because of all that you do. Like it's incredible to see how you bring families together. I love, and a little bit earlier, Craig here at Lincoln Road, he mentioned that life doesn't come with manuals, it comes with moms. I love that quote because it's so, so true.

There is no way on God's green earth that my family would be, I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for my wife and how amazing she is with our kids. I'd probably, nevermind. I can't say where I'd probably be, but if it wasn't for her, we're just thankful, very thankful for her. And man, just all the mamas in our lives, we wanna say thank you for everything that you do. We we lean in on today because of you and we are here because of you both figuratively and literally.

So thank you for that. But we also know Mother's Day can be funny, right? Like it can be a very funny time, it can be interesting. There's so much that comes with Mother's Day and all that the day surrounds. But I know that just as many moms that are in the room that are celebrating and hopefully you've got reservations for the restaurant after church.

If you don't, this is the time. Dads, sons, daughters, cousins, everybody like you can pull out your phone. I won't judge you. Find one you won't. But try and you know, I, it comes with all of that excitement, but at the same time, there's a lot of people in the room you're hurting.

This is a difficult day. There's so much that comes with today in terms of loss and the loss of dreams, the loss of what you wanted to be true of your life. And you, you come today to Mother's Day with a dread, and here we are once again, another Mother's Day. And that feeling starts to come back up no matter what story you may be. And there's so many different people.

I know that there's both, but here's what I love y'all about the Church of the Living God. Romans 1215 says this. It says, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn. You know why I love that verse? Because there's no or in the middle, like it's not rejoice with those who rejoice or weep with those who weep.

No, no, no. It's just rejoice with those who rejoice mourn with those who mourn together. Both the church of the Living God, this family at all of our locations, no matter where you were listening to today, the beautiful thing, the only thing that the church ha ha, this is the thing that only the church can do is bring both of these emotions together. We can rejoice with the mamas in the room and we can mourn with those who are hurting today. And today, I believe that God wants to speak a word to both, no matter your story, no matter where you've been around this idea of do the next thing because we see you, we see you, we see the work that you're putting in, we see the families that you're raising, the generations that are being raised up in the name of Jesus.

Like that gets me excited. And we also see the woman who's sitting there today empty, armed again this mother's day, or the woman who's recently lost her own mother. Or maybe for you, you're estranged from your kids and Mother's Day just doesn't have the same flavor that it used to have today. I want us to go to a story of Scripture that I think is profound. It's one of my favorite stories.

It's in Acts chapter nine. It's a very unique story. But the reason that I want us to go here is over the past few weeks we've been in a series called There's More. There's More. And I've started to ask myself the question too, this Mother's Day around, what if there's more to Mother's Day?

What if there's more? Because we know what culture says, right? We know that culture says, all right, for Mother's Day, you gotta be prim and proper. Everybody's got to be on their P's and Q's. Like all the kids gotta be straight laced and ready to go.

You better get it right. You know, all of these things have to be perfect so that we can look good and present ourselves for Mother's Day. But what if there's so much more to this idea of mother? You see in our culture, most of the times when we think about Mother, we think of the the noun mother, right? The name that we receive after we fulfill a certain set of obligations or things that make us a mother.

But what if the most beautiful picture of the word mother isn't from being a noun, but from being a verb to mother, the act of mothering. And when you look at it that way, it has such a rich biblical understanding because you start to see that this idea of being a mother, it expands far beyond the scope of the biological connections that you may have. But to mother is to take someone in to love them well. And we're gonna learn from someone named Tabitha today in Acts chapter nine about how to mother well and how to do the next thing. The beautiful thing I love about this, this story though is that Tabitha and nowhere in Scripture is it actually mentioned that she's a mother, one of the best mothering passages in all of the Bible.

And it's never explicitly stated that Tabitha was a mother. In fact, it doesn't say that she was a wife either. But her story shows a beautiful picture of what it means to love people. Well. So let's dive into Acts chapter nine.

We're gonna start in verse 36. And it says this, in Japa, there was a disciple named Tabitha in Greek. Her name is Dorcas. We are going to call her Tabitha. She, there's a lesson in there somewhere, whatever the name is, just call her mama like she was always doing good and helping the poor.

About that time she became sick and died and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Little was near Japa. So when the disciples heard that Peter was in little, they sit two men into him and urged, and please come at once, you've gotta come. And Peter went with them. And when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room and all the widows stood around him crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

And Peter sent them all outta the room. And then he got down on his knees and he prayed turning toward the dead woman. He said, Tabitha, get up. And she opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up and he took her by the hand and he helped her to her feet. And then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and he presented her to them alive.

And this became known all over Japa and many people believed in the Lord. And Peter stayed in Joah for some time with a tanner named Simon. Now I know this story is crazy. We're talking about Tabitha in one verse, in she dies, then there's a resurrection. And if you haven't been a part of church for a long time, you hear the word resurrection, that gets really funny.

But today what I want us to see is that God's plan works through anything, especially for you mama, especially for you broken hearted one. So I'd love for us to pray and then let's learn from Tabatha's life together. Father, we do come to you in this moment. Some of us come elated at the story that we've been able to live. Some of us come in the midst of despair and every emotion in between is present in every room in our house today.

But Lord, I pray that in this moment, God, that Holy Spirit, would you fall on us? Would you speak a fresh word to us, a worship of a word of comfort, a word of peace. Let us learn what it looks like to truly do the next thing to trust you with everything else. We love you, father. It's in Jesus' name we pray and everyone said amen.

Amen. You know, I, I love my mama. She's amazing. I talk about her often on this platform actually just because she's so cool and she's helped me out with so much in my life. She's been through so much y'all, she's endured so much.

But one thing that she was always so good at was being there for me in the moments that were very tough in my life. Most of the time it came around this idea of athletics. Now one thing that you know, you probably have heard about me is I am not the most athletic person on our team here at venture or in this room or in any room. Honestly. I'm probably like on the low end of the totem pole there.

But when I was a kid, I was excited about basketball. In fact, I was so excited. This was during the years of Duke and JJ Reddick. Any anybody know like the three point shooter man? He was, he was good from the three point line.

And I loved watching Duke and JJ Reddick play basketball. In fact, I even had uh, a Duke, a uniform that I bought and wore all the time. I wore it outside in our, my front yard. And we had like this um, basket that we put up on a pole and it was like my little basketball on some, I dribble on the grass and my little JJ Reddick feeling like I was ready for the NBA and we were ready to rock and roll it. So I told mom, I was like, mom, I've got my uniform.

I have been playing basketball for two and a half weeks. I am ready for the NBA. She said, I don't think so. But here's what we can do. We can take you to the local school peewee team and you can try out all my Jones County people.

I was in the Calhoun gym and now I was there. I was ready to be a Calhoun jet. So I went and tried out, did everything I could, missed every layup, still was excited. And they came out with the results and they said, you know what, we want every kid to be able to play basketball this year. And so we are going to have an A team and then we're going to have a B team.

You can guess which team Blake was on the B team. That's right, that's right. They were like, we're excited. You know the A team, they're good. My buddy Ashton, he was doing all the thing, he was on that team.

All my buddies over there, we were over here and they were like, Blake, we're gonna have a B team. It's gonna be the second team. We're so good. We're gonna have two teams. I was like, ah, that's amazing.

But they said, there's only one issue. We don't have a coach for the B team. Oh man, I don't know what we're gonna do. Well, my mama being awesome as she is, never played basketball a day in her life, said, you know what? So that my boy can play basketball badly.

I am going to be the coach of the be team Calhoun Jets. And she did it, y'all. And she brought us over there. I don't think we won a game. I don't really remember what scores were or anything like that.

But what I do remember was my mama stood in the gap for me. She came in and she coached that team. She gave everything she had. She didn't know anything about basketball. She didn't know anything at all.

But what she did know is that she loved me, but not just me. The other kids that needed an opportunity to play and she stepped in the gap. I want you to see that about Tabitha's life as well because she reminds me so much of Tabitha, Tabitha had this this thing going for her to where she loved people well, and what is it about her? What is it about Tabitha that made her that way? What is it about so many of the moms in our church that make them that way?

The first thing that we see about Tabitha is their character. The character of Tabitha in the story is amazing, but it comes in the very first word. If you go back to verse 36, look at this, the very first phrase in Japa, there was a disciple, a disciple of all the things that they could have told us about Tabitha, of all the things Luke could have written in acts to describe Tabitha, he could have said that she was an amazing mom. Could have said she was an amazing wife. It could have said she was an amazing cook or she was really, really good at linguistics.

I don't know. She like, she could have been anything in the world, but what they decided to write was that she was a disciple. First and foremost, the thing that made her who she was, the inside, the outside, the thing that exuded out of Tabitha as she lived, as she breathed, as she worked, as she went, as she went to sleep and woke up in the morning, the thing that people knew Tabitha as was a follower of Jesus Christ that changed everything about her life that formed her as she lived her life. She was being formed in the image of Jesus. We talk all the time, especially on Mother's Day about the Proverbs 31 woman, right?

Y'all probably expected that when y'all came out was like, man, this dude in Ax, where? Where's the Proverbs 31? I'm gonna give you some here it is, just a little bit. I love that. Proverbs 31 says, this says, she opens her arms to the poor, poor and extends her hands to the needy.

She was being a Proverbs 31 woman. But that did not come apart from her deep love and her deep heart for Jesus. She was a Jesus follower. First the disciple walking in his way, taking in everything about this is important because in Japa in this day, Japa is a city outside of Jerusalem. And in Japa, these believers, they were actually, they were pushed out of Jerusalem and they were sent to the city of Japa.

Japa was a brand new church, a fledgling church that was just getting started because of persecution that was happening in Jerusalem. And so Tabitha was one of the women who in this brand new city with a brand new church where everything was falling apart around the Christians at that time in Jerusalem, she was standing in the gap. She was living her life for Jesus no matter what. And what was she doing? If you go back up to verse 36, it says, she was always doing good.

She was always helping the poor. It was her character that made her transformative, not just in her own life but in the life of others. She wasn't a big communicator. She didn't get up on stage and preach. She didn't go do all of these things.

She didn't write books of the Bible. But what she did, she did consistently and she did compassionately. And she did it day after day after day after day. And she loved well, and she kept loving and she kept doing good. She kept helping the poor.

And all the while her character was being formed more and more into the image of Jesus himself. And she was becoming more loving, more, giving more heart filled towards other people. Her character was being formed. And it's, it's in the quiet, there's, there's little moments that the deepest things about ourselves are formed. I love what Phillips Brooks says.

It says, character is made in the small impact of our lives. The small moments, the small seemingly insignificant moments where you were stuffing another sandwich in the bag and the small seemingly insignificant moments where you are once again going to serve in KXP with those kids who love you, but you don't have kids of your own. Those moments where you are once again bringing the grandkids in and you're giving them another set of trees because they get to go home. And mama and dad, they don't have to stay with you. Like those moments, each and every time where you choose to love Jesus in the moment you're formed, we all are into the image of Jesus.

What happens when our character is transformed into his image? It begins to, to see an impact go out that radiates beyond ourselves. This is the second thing we see from Tabitha is the impact that she made. Go back up and see in verse 37, it was after she died, they sent two people. It says she became sick and died and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room.

Now, Litta was near Joppa and Peter was at Litta. So when the disciples heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to meet him and urged him, please come at once. So Peter went with them, and when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room. And then check this out. This is so interesting to me.

All of the widows stood around Peter, they were crying and they were showing him the robes and the other clothing that Tabitha had made while she was still with him. Why would Luke write that? Why would Luke bring that piece in? So Peter, he comes over from Litta, he comes to Joa, he comes into the upper room and they're sitting around. Tabitha, were some, some widows.

This speaks to Tabitha's character in a profound way. Y'all, this says something about her, not to mention that when this lady died, when she passed away in Japa, that what was the first reaction of the disciples in that city? The first reaction was, Hey, I heard that one of the 12 apostles, Peter himself is a town over. We're gonna do whatever we have to do because we want Peter to see Tabitha. She is worth that much to us.

We're gonna do whatever it takes to have him pray over her. And when he gets up there surrounding Tabitha are the widows. This is significant because the widows in that culture were, were not just women who had lost their husbands widows in that culture were at the very bottom rung of society. They had nothing when their husbands died. So did everything else about their lives, what they owned, what they could say, who could speak to who they could be around.

Everything was lost when their husband passed. And so Tabitha being the woman that she was loving Jesus the way she did, what did she do? She sewed. She sewed. She sewed garments for these women who were low and downcast and she kept sowing.

She made garments for these women. And why did she do that? She said, because I want to bring dignity to their life. They may not be my own. They may not be my flesh and blood, but I'm going to do what I know how to do.

And through my love of Jesus, I'm going to keep sowing because she deserves dignity. Because this woman deserves dignity. Because every single person deserves to have dignity in the family of God. And I'm going to do the thing that God has given me to do. No matter what my story may be, I'm going to keep showing so that I can lay dignity and clothing and honor on someone else so that they can have the love that I've found in Jesus.

And little by little, the impact kept coming. The impact kept coming. And then when she passed away, all of those women, when Peter got up to the top of the room, looked over at him and held it out and see what she made for us. Do you see what she did for us? Do you see the impact that she had on our lives?

This is her legacy. This is her testimony. This is what she did for us. John Stott said this, the true measure of a person is not about how many served him, but how many he serves my friends. I want you to know this.

No matter what your story is, no matter what you are experiencing, no matter what Mother's Day brings to you, each and every year, there is a purpose for you to serve. There is an impact for you to lean into. If you will love God, well be formed by him and just serve and do the next thing. Use the gifts that God has given you. Keep sowing, keep sowing.

Find the people around you to love. Well find the people even if they're not your own kids, even if they're someone at work or someone who's in your community or kids around your neighborhood, whatever that is, love them well in the name of Jesus. And the impact will be profound. I love what Hebrews chapter six, verse 10 says, he says, God is not unjust. He's not gonna forget your work and the love that you have shown him as you have helped his people.

And as you've continued to help them. Tabitha knew this. We don't know anything about her story other that she loved Jesus as she loved other people. She took God at his word, said, God, I believe that you're gonna use this. I believe that you're gonna take this and you're gonna do more with it than I can do myself.

That you're gonna take so much and you're gonna do so much more because it's in the insignificant moments of life that God uses to transform us and to transform the people around us. Keep sowing, keep sowing, keep giving. But you say, Blake, this is not how the story ends. Tabitha dies. I know it's a heartbreaking thing.

Tabitha's life is taken from her and the widows are surrounding her and they call Peter and they bring it. They don't know what's about to happen. They don't know. They just know that they need someone to be with her. But at the, the very real reality is that Tabitha did die.

She lost her life. It can be easy to move past that moment, but we need to sit there for a second because maybe for you, maybe for you, you are like Blake, you've got the wrong part of the story for me. It's not the part where I'm sowing. I feel lifeless. I feel like there is nothing inside of me anymore.

I feel like there's nowhere to go. Maybe you've been a mom to so many kids, but none of them took the path that you thought that they would take and you're estranged to them and you don't know where to go next. Every dream that you have had for your life has been crushed. Everything in you is gone. It feels like there is nothing left for you.

And you sit there on the bed lifeless, just like Tabitha. You gave it your best shot and you have nothing else. Can I tell you, my friend, that there is no such thing as hopelessness with Jesus. There's no such thing. That's what these disciples knew.

It's what they pushed for. And so the moment that Tabatha took their last breath, they said, call Peter. Why did they call him? Because when he came, he did the exact same thing that Jesus did when he raised guys his daughter to life. He did the same thing.

Go back with me in this story. Peter goes into the upper room, he sends them all out of the upper room, and then he gets down on his knees and he prays and turning toward the dead woman. He said these words, Tabitha, get up, get up. And she opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up and he took her by the hand and he helped her to her feet. And then he called for the believers, especially the widows.

And he said, Hey, y'all come and see this. And this became known in all of Joppa. Can I tell you friends, there's nothing that's gonna stop God's plan. No matter what your story is, no matter what you've experienced in your life, there is nothing that God that is going to keep God, that is going to hinder him from accomplishing the work that he has set out to do through you. We say this all the time.

I wonder what God's plan is for my life. Can we reframe the question and can we say, God, I want to know what you're gonna do through my life. Because no matter what I face, no matter what I go through, no matter what season of life I find myself in, I trust in you. You give me strength, you give me hope. And Jesus Christ looks at every single one of us, every single day in the eyes, in the midst of our death, in the midst of our brokenness, in the midst of our despair.

And he says, get up. Get up. Tabitha, get up. Arise. Because our God is a God of resurrection.

He's a God of power and strength. I want you to see that today there are so many people who are hurting and there are so many mamas who are just trying to get by one more day. Who can we go through one more day? If you got a kid under five, I know your pain. I get it.

Get up. Do the next thing. Love Jesus. Become like him and serve other people well. I love Ephesians through tenus.

For we, we are God's hand work. We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared advance in advance for us to do. That word, masterpiece. Same word that they use for poem. You're a work of art to our king mama.

If you're hurting right now, if you're sad, if you're broken, you're a masterpiece. God has built a life for you that he promises to bring to fulfillment. He has a plan for your life to work in you and through you, but not just only for you. This is where we get stuck sometimes to think that the life that God has planned for us is only for us. But do you see what happened when Peter told Tabitha to get up?

What took place after that? Well, the widows, they come back in and they see Tabitha again. And the disciples start to go out and tell the word of what happened to Tabitha. Hey, come see what happened to Tabitha's life. Come see.

Come check out. You can't. You're not gonna believe this. This is unbelievable. And as a result of her death and resurrection, the death of her life, and maybe the death of your dreams, God, raising it to life, giving you new purpose to walk in saying, get up, people come to know Jesus.

So many people in the city came to know it exploded. Her impact was pushed even further, not just in spite of her death, but because of it. And not only that, I think this is amazing. If you look at the very last sentence, this is verse 43. It says, Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with the tanner named Simon.

Peter comes to Joppa from Litta because of Tabitha, and he stays in Japa. If you go to the very next chapter, where do we see Peter? Peter is with this tanner named Simon. When Cornelius comes to him, Cornelius is the one who receives the Gospel. And the entire world of the Gentiles now becomes opened to to the Gospel.

Peter was there in Japa awaiting his next assignment because of what God was doing through Tabatha's life. We are all here, my friends, every single one of us hearing the good news of Jesus Christ because Peter went to Japa for a woman named Tabitha, you may feel like your story's insignificant. You may feel like you have nothing, or maybe you feel like you are at the very end of your rope. Do the next thing. Keep sowing, keep serving, keep loving.

Keep waking the kids up again. Keep taking them to practice again. Keep loving the people around you. Well again, do it again and again and again, and watch God work through your life to accomplish purposes that you never even knew about. There are stories that we will never know this out of eternity about the impact that you were making.

Build the character of Christ in you. Allow that to form you and to release an impact so that God's plan can be pushed forward by doing the next thing. This is Tabitha's story, and it can be your story. How I want us end today is simple. I wanna speak a prayer of blessing over all the mamas in the room at all of our campuses.

Also, all of the women who are hurting, who maybe your story wasn't what you thought it would be. I wanna speak a prayer of blessing over you. So would you bow your heads? And everyone in the room, close your eyes at all of our campuses, even online. And we're gonna move into a time of response after this where we're gonna sing.

If that's you, who's hurting today, know that we see you. We are for you. We are believing with you. And allow this to be the moment where someone steps into your life and says, get up. You've been down for too long.

You've been hurting for too long. You've been stopped for too long, and God has a future for you, a plan for you. So today, if you want to respond, you can come down to the crosses. And maybe for you, you need to come down to the cross. You need to write it down.

Whatever it is that's been holding you back, whatever it is, the hurt that's been causing you to stay locked down for so long, you need to just write it down, put it on the cross as a way, and say, Jesus, I give it to you. We're gonna make that available to you today. Let me offer this prayer of blessing to you. Father, today as we gather on this Mother's day, we turn our hearts towards every woman in the room. Each one is precious.

In your sight is one, is a unique reflection of your incredible love. Lord, we thank you for inspiring us with the story of Tabitha who showed us the profound impact of the simple act of doing the next thing. Like her. There are so many women right here who are sowing goodness and grace into the fabric of our community, nurturing and caring beyond measure. Bless the servants Lord, multiply the works of their hands.

We ask a special blessing on the mothers among us. Equip them God with strength and wisdom. Let their lives be marked by joy and by peace, reflecting your love in every word and in every action. And God, for those who are feeling ache today, those missing their children, those yearning to be mothers and those grieving the loss of their own moms, would you hold 'em close? Lord, hold 'em tight.

May they feel your presence surrounding them, a medicine to their souls. You are reminding them that they are deeply loved and they are never alone on for every woman here, Lord, we pray that they would grasp how long, how deep, how wide, how high your love is for them. Empower them Lord, renew them, and bless them abundantly that the truth of your love would shine brightly in their lives for your glory and for your renowned king Jesus. In His name we pray, amen.