Focus On Your Jewels

Hey there.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that just was hard and you just needed somebody to give you some practical information and encouragement for how to navigate that hard season?

Well, I want to talk about how you can do that well today.

Hey there, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst, and if it's your first time here, welcome. I'm glad you're here. You are either watching me on Facebook or YouTube, or you might be listening to this audio on my podcast. However you found your way to me, I'm glad you made it. I am here every week sharing content with you that I hope helps you to grow, helps you to settle in and to enjoy your life, to live your life well with intentionality, grace, and purpose. I'm here though, because most of the time I have given this talk inside of the Inner Circle. The Inner Circle is a membership. It's full of women who want to live their lives well. They also wanna support the content that I create that ends up here for you to see, hear, and listen to. And so I'm grateful to them.. And because we do some stuff live with them, what you're watching is the buttoned-up version.

What they got is the unadulterated raw version with a lot of fun and foolery mixed in.

So, but that stays on the inside.

What comes outside is Chrystal Hurst all buttoned up and ready for the world. So howdy doody. Listen, I am here sharing content every week. Every now and then the content that happens in the inner circle, it's just gotta stay in there. What we did last Monday, was for them alone. That means that what you're about to see today is something that I've prepared for you in absence of the fun and foolery that we had last week.

This is a teaching.

I am a teacher. My mother always told me, girl, you're a teacher. I love teaching the Bible, and I love teaching practical tips and tools for living life well. Mostly what you get here is the practical tips and tools.

You get practical, girl, how do you live your life?

Auntie Chrystal is showing up. Big sister Chrystal is showing up.

Chrissy's showing up to tell you how to live your life. Because I've lived a lot of life, at least enough to be able to share a thing or two.

But sometimes I really believe that the best way for you to live your life well is to know what the Bible says. And I want to share with you today a teaching that I did local. I was teaching at a church down the street from my house in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and they gave me the recording, and I'm gonna share it with you. Because did you know, did you know that even the most valuable lessons in life, the most valuable memories in your life, the most valuable experiences in your life often come from the seasons in life that are hard. What if the hard season is actually a jewel? What if J-E-W-E-L is an opportunity in your heart for you to grow, for you to learn, for you to become closer to God, for you to be able to see what you're capable of, what you have the capacity for that you didn't know? What if your hard season is actually a jewel in your crown? You know, the crown that you wear because you're a queen, that one that's a little falling to the side right now. It's all right, girl. The jewels are still in there. Straighten it up. You can make it. And this teaching today, I am sure, is going to encourage you forward in your life. Whatever you're going through right now that is hard, here's what I want to tell you. This is what my mother used to tell me: This too shall pass. Don't allow what's difficult in this season to cause you to get lost in the forest because you're just seeing the trees. There is something bigger at work in your life. And if you will continue and be committed to pressing through, doing what you know how to do as right as you can do it, asking God, "Hey, how do you want me to make it through this?" Going to him for help. If you're willing to be that person who just keeps going, what I can tell you is you might find in hindsight that the hard season was a beautiful season, and you have the jewels to prove it. I know that you're going to love this teaching. I know that you're going to be encouraged by it, and I'm glad I get to share it with you. So sit back, relax, and know that while my life story may not be yours exactly, I have been in many a hard season before, and everything that I'm going to share with you in this teaching, I know 100% to be true. Keep going. You can do it. I want to help. Here we go.

If you have your Bibles in your hands or on your phones, I want you to open up to Ephesians chapter 2, and I'm going to skim a few verses in there. I'm going to skim a few things, and then I'm going to get into the meat of what I want to talk to you about tonight. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1: And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. It's by grace that you have been saved.

Verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And that it's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. Verse 9, not as a result of work so that no one can boast. Verse 10, you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand so that you would walk in them. What he wants to establish in this passage, the author wants to establish that you were bought with a price, that God being rich in mercy saw the plight of sin and said about you and I, They cannot help themselves. I have to do something to get them out of the mess they have worked themselves into. No matter how hard, how good we try to be, we are going to mess up because we are human beings. And he said, let me help them out. What I love about verse 10 is it says, uh, for we are his workmanship. We're created in Christ Jesus. Now listen, we've had a lot of focus right, on the royal family.

And we all know that Meghan Markle married Harry.

She went over there, then she decided she didn't want to be over there. Now they're back over there doing all the things that they have to do for family business. But when Meghan decided that Harry loved her, she decided to change some things. She decided to change where she lived. She decided to change the color of nail polish that she wore. She decided to add on to her citizenship because she knew that she was in love with Harry. When you realize that you are inside of the love that Jesus Christ has for you and you want to respond to that love, you look at your life and you say, I was bought with a price. I am now royalty, and I'm willing to change who I am to match who you say I am. You need to understand that Ephesians chapter 2 is coming off of Ephesians chapter 1. So if you have your Bibles, turn back a page, or Flip the screen on your mobile device. If you look at verse 3, the Bible says you are blessed. Verse 4, it says you are chosen. Verse 5, you are predestined. There was a plan for you. Verse 5, you are adopted. Verse 6, you are beloved. Verse 7, you are redeemed. Verse 7, you are forgiven. Verse 8, you have been lavished on with all of the wisdom and insight that you need. Verse 9, you are known. Verse 14, you are God's own possession. Now, why am I racing through all of this? Because you need to understand that you are royalty. You need to understand that you did not fix your situation. You did not place yourself into a safe place. God looked down and said, "She needs me. Let me fix this for her." And he didn't just fix you for death forever and separation from God. He said, "Listen, I'm gonna fix this so that she has access to me because of the blood of my Son, Jesus Christ. She can know me. She can walk spiritually alive." She can live a life and have a future that she couldn't have worked out on her own. It's amazing to be royalty and be related to King Jesus. Yeah. So here's what you need to understand though. The enemy knows that you're royalty. The enemy knows that you have been bought with a price. The enemy knows that if he can get you distracted from what Ephesians chapter 1 says about you, if he can convince you that you are not chosen, if he can convince you that you are not bought with a price, If he can convince you that you are not known, if he can convince you that you are outside of God's love and his provision for you, that he will convince you that you're not worthy of the grace, that the mercy does not apply to you. He will convince you that all of the things that God is doing that are good in the world are good for everybody else beside you. He will convince you not to walk according to your title. One of the ways that the enemy does this is by looking at your life and figuring out how he can throw you off course.

Course.

It's called a trial. Things happen in life. Life is just whack because we live in a fallen world, because we are not perfect human beings.

That means other people aren't perfect, and bad things sometimes happen.

And God allows sometimes things to slip through his fingers because he will allow you to be tested by the enemy.

He wants to know, did you get the message? Are you walking and believing the message of salvation that he's applied to you?

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to turn to James chapter 1. Now that we've established who you are, if you've got your Bible, turn. If you don't, flip through your app, your Bible app, or whatever you have. This is what James said: When the enemy— this is Chrystal Hurst's paraphrase—

when the enemy shows up and tries to distract you, dissuade you, convince you of everything that God has already said you are, that you should have, that you will accomplish, that you will see happen in your life. When bad things come, when chaos reigns, when you can't figure out how to solve the problem, when the health diagnosis is not one you understand, when the relationship is breaking apart, when you can't seem to figure out what you should do with your life, Purpose evades you, the job just laid you off again, when you feel alone even though there's lots of people around you, when you are struggling inside, outside, or all around the sides, this is what I want you to do. When chaos reigns, I want you to consider it joy. I want you to do something totally out of bounds, something that does not make sense. I want you to count it Another rendition of the Bible says, "I want you to count it joy." I want you to decide that despite the chaos, that there is something good in here.

I took my 3 boys with my husband to Disney World years ago. It's ridiculously expensive. It's dumb. Why do we do these things?

But we took them.

We had a great time.

We stayed at a park that we could get a boat ride over to the main Magic Kingdom. It was great.

We just kept going back and forth.

Our last day there, our last day there, my husband wasn't feeling well, so he came with us for a little bit and then he went back. He took the boat back to the place where we were staying.

And we stayed about half a day and then I told the boys, "Well, let's go back and check on Dad." When we got back to the place where we were staying, He was running a high temp.

I had to go to the little store where we were staying and get a temperature. What do you call that thing?

A thermometer. Thank you. Y'all knew what I meant though. Took his temperature, was like 104. He's shivering and he had had some other health things going on which made me think he's gotta go to the ER. I said, "Baby, I think you gotta go to the ER." He agreed. So, it's our last day at Disney World. And an ambulance comes and takes him out of the lodging that we were staying at. My sons watched their dad on a stretcher get put into an ambulance. My husband, because he's a tall giant but a very gentle giant, said to me, "I'm fine. You know it's gonna take them forever to get me through emergency and into a room or whatever. Go back to Disney World. It's the last day." Now, this were magic hours, y'all. Magic hours mean when everybody else has to go home, if you are staying in a Disney property, you get to stay late after the park closes.

So it was the last night. They had been looking forward to this.

And he said, "Enjoy the magic hours." So y'all, he goes to the ER and I take the kids back to Disney World. I'm calling people. I'm trying to find out, is there somebody in the area who can help me out?

We're in Florida. Like maybe somebody I know knows somebody that knows somebody. 'Cause am I gonna have to take all these kids with me to the ER?

You know, I was trying to just figure that out.

And come to find out, a friend of a friend, once we got back, 'cause the boys had the time of their life, 'cause you know when you're young, you're just like, "They'll be fine.

I just wanna go back on the roller coaster." Y'all, someone that we knew came, a friend of a friend came and stayed with the boys. I went to go see my husband in the hospital. Long story short, he was in the hospital for 10 days. Now, 2 days after he gets in the hospital, Y'all know who Priscilla Shire is, I'm assuming. Priscilla is in Florida for an event with Anthony.

So, while my husband is in the hospital, they say, "Let the boys come stay with us." They went back to Disney World. They went back to Universal. They had a whole second run of Walt Disney. When we look back on On that trip, they have barely any recollection that my husband was in the hospital for 10 days because they took what was a crazy, chaotic situation and they enjoyed the opportunity to have joy despite the chaos. And here's the truth. They were at Disney World having a good time and I was sitting in the hospital with my husband We were chilling, watching movies, you know, I was getting stuff done, reading books, sleeping because my children were taken care of. My husband was stable.

And in the chaotic situation that we had, we found something to be joyful about.

There is always something to be joyful about. You just have to look for it. When we look at pictures of that vacation, there are no pictures of my husband in the hospital. There are no pictures of him being taken away to the ambulance, to the ER. There are no pictures of the boys coming to visit him in the hospital. We have pictures of our trip to Disney. We have pictures of their trip again to Disney with Uncle Nini and Auntie Sylla. We have pictures of them with their cousins and all the celebrations because we decided what we were going to frame.

You have to decide what you're going to frame.

Because will there be chaos?

Yes.

Is Satan after you to say, "You know what? Forget about the fact that you've been saved by grace. Forget about the fact that you're alive in Christ. Forget about the fact that you are Jesus Christ royalty. You have royal blood flowing through your veins. Forget about the fact that you have not just found citizenship on earth, but you now have citizenship in heaven. Forget about the fact that when you die, you will actually never die. You just close your eyes for a hot second." because when you know Jesus Christ, you open up your eyes in eternity. I want you to forget about that and I want you to focus on the chaos, which means you have to decide to count it, decide to look at it, decide to consider it all joy. Hebrews 12 says that Jesus, for the joy set before him, in verses 1 through 3, that he fixed his eyes on the cross because he knew that after the suffering, there was gonna be glory forevermore. He understood that when he got up from the grave, he was gonna sit at the right hand of his Father. He understood that what was there in the here and now was not all there was. But if you get stuck on the chaos you see right now, not only will you not experience joy, not only will you be embroiled in chaos, not only will you be inviting sadness to sit with the funk, longer than what you need to, not only will you miss out on the opportunities that await you, but you will also deny yourself the beautiful experience of knowing that God is with you in the middle of the chaos. James 1 says to count it all joy.

And why?

He said, because I want you to understand that this race that you're going to be running is going to require endurance. And endurance is gonna have to have a work in you. It's going to have to do something in you for it to produce something out of you. I ran a marathon one time, and then I ran through the finish line and ran right into Cracker Barrel, and that was the end of that. But here's what I can tell you. I can tell you, if anybody's a runner in here, doesn't matter how long you've run, how far you regularly run, the first mile is always the hardest. I regularly know when it's time for me to get back to working out because whether I'm walking fast or trying to run, the capillaries that light up my thighs are not happy about all the blood that is running through my veins. I call it the fat itch.

Do y'all know what I'm talking about?

Okay. But the only way you get rid of the fat itch is to keep running. The only way that the capillaries, that the blood vessels in your body stop freaking out is when they realize, oh, the blood is supposed to come here. The only way that you realize that your lungs are not gonna pop or that you're not gonna run out of air is because you teach your body, listen, I'm gonna run this first quarter, this first half, this first mile, and you will obey me. And the thing is, is you go from a quarter to a half to a mile to a half a marathon to a full, and the whole way you are building endurance. And none of the way does that feel good.

It doesn't. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

But here's the other part of it. The reason why I did enjoy running was because there's also something called the runner's high.

It is what happens when the endorphins start flooding your system and all the good hormones start making you feel good.

But you don't get that without pushing through the part that's painful. You have to choose to expand your capacity. And the only way that you expand your capacity to not only consider it joy, but to keep running towards the finish line is because you have to press through what doesn't feel good.

Here's the deal.

If you are waiting for God to make your life easy so that you can live it for him, you'll be waiting a long time. If you are waiting for God to show up in your life and do the miraculous, if you are waiting for God to answer your prayers in a crazy way, if you are waiting for him to look at your obedience and give you the next steps, But you don't wanna do anything uncomfortable. You will never move past the perfection that he wants to see happen in your soul because he needs you to push past what doesn't feel good. Stop expecting to feel good. You consider it. You decide that you're going to celebrate what there is to find that's good. Then you choose to push past the uncomfortable parts so that he can expand your capacity to receive the joy that you say you want. And why are you doing these things? Because you have chosen to believe that if he truly is your Father, if he truly owns the cattle on a thousand hills, if he truly has given you everything you need for life and salvation, that he won't hold back on you. But you have to do your part. And too many of us, because it's difficult, because it's painful, we quit. We quit. Building endurance is a part of him building his work in you. He also wants you to know that he wants you to be wise.

Verse 5 of James says, but if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. I understand that sometimes it's very difficult to walk as if you're a daughter of the King. It's very difficult to reframe the difficult things that are happening in your life.

It's very difficult to believe that you are loved and chosen because some of your world, a lot of your world does not make sense. You simply are desperately trying to make decisions to figure out what he wants you to do next. And it seems very cloudy and blurry. And what do I do? But the Bible says you don't have to figure it all out on your own.

If anybody lacks wisdom, ask.

Hey there, listen, I'm so glad you're here. And I want you to know that if you are just getting to know me, you may know about the podcast, cast. You may know about the videos, but you may not know about the Bible studies. I love God's word, and right now Faith Gateway is inviting you along with me to participate in the 28-day prayer journey Bible study. If you want to enroll, it's free. Simply go to faithgateway.com, and if you scroll down on their home page, you scroll a little far enough, you'll see my face, the Chrystal Hurst along with a button to help you register for this free journey in prayer. I believe that most of us, including me sometimes, we don't prioritize prayer because we're not even sure if it works. But here's what I can tell you: the ability to talk to the God of the universe, to have fellowship, and to know what's happening, because the God who lives in a spiritual realm can connect you as a spiritual being to what he's doing, It is powerful, and you have to prioritize it in order to experience that power. So here's to 28 days of prioritizing talking to God. And I really believe that the resource that I created on my own journey to doing just that will help you too. Again, that's faithgateway.com. Scroll down the page, look for my picture, and sign up right now. The prayer journey begins October 24th.

Proverbs 7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It starts with understanding that you're his child.

You fear, you honor, and you say, "God, what do you want me to do? I don't even know what to frame.

I can't even find anything to have joy about. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm struggling to breathe. The fat itch is unbearable. Will you please tell me where I'm going?" Give me direction.

You get that through prayer. My dad and I, when we were younger, my dad would take us to Baltimore every summer, and we would go to AAA, the AAA office right off of 75, New Knox Henderson. I don't even know if it's there anymore, but we'd walk in and we'd walk up to the front. We'd tell the lady we want to go to Maryland. She'd pull out these pieces of paper and she would assign assemble this little book. It was called a triptych, and the triptych was a flipping map, flipping the page map, and she would take a highlighter and she would mark out our trip. So you didn't have GPS then.

You had to have somebody tell you where to go.

And then we would get in the car and my dad would hand the triptych to me and I would sit there in the minivan flipping pages.

Dad, you got a few miles until you gotta turn on the Highway 40. And then you're gonna be on 44.

It looks like about 80 miles.

I had to read the map.

I had to know every inch meant this many miles.

So it was a written word, and then it was the spoken word. You want wisdom? The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. You want to know the word— the Lord? John 1:1 says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. You want to know what he wants you to do? You open up the written word and you listen to the spoken word of the Holy Spirit. But I can tell you that if you don't make the trip to look at the map, you'll be driving and have no idea where you're going. He wants you to have joy, yes. He wants you to have endurance, yes. But he wants you to operate in wisdom. How do you get wisdom? You ask for it. Who do you ask? The Lord. Why? Because wisdom starts with the Lord. How do you know the Lord? You open his word. And y'all, we make this so hard. We make it so hard. We will stand in worship and y'all listen, I'm a worshiper. I get it.

I love it.

I want the download in worship service. But sometimes y'all, we come and we stand and we hold our hands up for worship. We're like, Holy Spirit, teach me, love me. And he's like, but I need you to open my word.

I need you to leave the service, leave the event.

I need you to go home after church. And I need you to open up your Bible and get to know me.

The Bible says in James 4:8, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. We always sometimes say, well, I just feel far from God. Well, maybe he didn't move, maybe you did.

Matthew 6:33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. Seek him, seek righteousness, and then all the things come. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek me and know me when you search for me with all your heart." He is there waiting to be found. The wisdom you need, it's waiting right there for you to pick it, but you're not going to find it if you're not coming to him. He wants you to have joy. He wants you to walk in endurance. He wants you to exercise wisdom, and he wants you to operate with evident faith. It says in James 1,— But you must ask in faith without doubting, verse 6, because the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

Don't be double-minded, verse 8 says.

Hebrews 11 talks to us in verse 1 and verse 6 that faith is the evidence of things not seen. The fact that you have faith, it says, I don't see it. We want to have faith. Because we see it. Evident faith says, "I don't see it and still I stand firm. Still I stand firm." I want you to know that when you see people who, who you admire, who seem—

you know that their life is chaos, but they seem steady, steadfast, the Bible It says, "Immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." They just, despite the chaos, seem like their feet are planted. That is a decision to have faith, and their steadfastness is evidence of their faith. It's not that it's bad for you to worry, but the Bible does say, "Cast all your cares upon the Lord, for he cares for you." It does tell us that every "Every hair on your head," Luke says, "is numbered." It does say, "If he cares for the sparrows, then why are you worried about him caring for you?" So he acknowledges the fact that we're gonna have some anxiety, but then after you cast your cares, after you say, "Lord, there's actually nothing I can do. I've done as much as I can do, and things are a little cray-cray in my life.

I'm gonna choose to believe what you said in Ephesians 2. I'm gonna choose to believe that you would not have gone to the ends of the earth to send your one and only Son to give me grace, to give me mercy, to make sure that I could spend heaven with you, that you wouldn't have brought me into the family of God, that you would not have royal blood flowing through my veins if you did not also intend to take care of me.

He intends to take care of you. And your response to that, God, is to say, "Despite what I don't know and what I don't understand and what I can't see, I'm gonna stand here, and the evidence of my faith is that I'm still standing.

The evidence of my faith is that I'm choosing to believe even when my feelings are all up, all round and round in my body. It says I am choosing to call upon the name of the Lord, believing that he will hear me and that he will answer my prayer. I'm choosing to not practice with my mouth words that will disturb my soul. I am choosing to speak life and not death. I am choosing to let my faith be resident, not just in what I say in my heart, but what I say with my lips and what I will allow to ruminate in my head. You have to be transformed, Romans 12 says, by the renewing of your mind, which means you have to keep casting your cares on the Lord because you gotta stand in evident faith. It doesn't mean that you're faking it. It just means when the concerns come, you toss them out. I see what's happening in my family. I'm gonna bring my concerns to the Lord. I'm going to lay my concerns at his feet. I'm going to pray and I'm going to ask for wisdom, and then I'm going to stand still and watch the Lord work. I'm going to be obedient. I'm going to find out what he wants me to do in righteousness. I'm going to make sure that I am agreeing with my life, with what my— with what my God says should be seen in my life. I'm going to walk out good things, as Ephesians 2 tells us. He has planned good things for me to walk in. I'm going to do my part, and then I'm going to stand still and wait for God to do his.

So many of us, because we're focusing and we're putting all the bad stuff in the frame.

You want to know how you can tell that all the bad stuff is in the frame?

Because that's all you talk about. Does anybody ever get sick of hearing themselves?

Like, like you call your girlfriend and before you even start talking about what it is, You say out loud, "Girl, I don't even feel like talking about this anymore." You're sick of yourself.

I heard my sister just share recently that while we know no weapon formed against us will prosper, the enemy is busy forming weapons, and often what he He needs, the material he needs for his weapons, we give him with what we say. It doesn't mean you can't talk, you can't share.

Listen, a good friend, a good therapist, listen, it's good.

What I'm talking about is ruminating on it.

Because if I take a picture, we know we have a million pictures in our phones, right?

But the ones you really remember are the ones you print.

The ones you put on the wall that you see every time you walk by. Those are the ones that are seared in your memory. Think about the pictures in your parents' home or the ones that were on the wall that never got changed. You remember those because you were seeing them all the time. I'm not talking about taking the photo. It happened, you took the photo, you took 7 selfies, really probably 77, and only 1 of them were good.

I'm talking about what you frame, what you decide to hang in the hallway and walk by a million times so that it's seared in your memory. You can choose what you frame, and every picture you take doesn't deserve to be in a frame. Everything that happens doesn't deserve your time and energy to ruminate over. Evident faith says, I see all the things that have happened, but because I'm gonna stand in the best of what God is doing in my life, I'm gonna focus on the joy that I believe is coming. I'm gonna believe Philippians 1:6 that says that he is going to work things out in me, that he will finish what he started.

I'm gonna stand in that. I'm not gonna focus on the things that just seem like They're not quite cleaning up.

I'm gonna choose to stand in faith, and then I'm gonna be focused on the long term. James says, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial." Perseveres means you have to hang in there. And why would you hang in there? Because you're focused on the end result. You don't go to college because you love finals. You go to college because you're focused on the end result.

You don't have a baby because you enjoy labor.

You have a baby because you're focused on the end result. I don't go shopping for clothes because I enjoy shopping. I go shopping because the end result is I need to be standing in front of you with clothes on. Trust me, I would rather not be. I'd rather be wearing a black muumuu. I have 6 of them. They come from Amazon. I'll give you the link afterwards. Even my nephew said, "Why does Chrissy always wear the same black dress?" 'Cause I don't enjoy getting dressed.

I don't enjoy thinking about clothes, but when I go to the store because I have to get dressed for y'all, I'm thinking about the end result. Nobody needs to be walking around town in Ellis County talking about Chrystal was naked.

Think about something you didn't enjoy while you were doing it, but you sure did love the end result. Because it's the focus of the end result that keeps you going when you're uncomfortable, when you're in pain, when you're not enjoying the journey, when you realize that this is but a momentary pain, this is a momentary discomfort, this is a momentary distraction. I'm focused on the end result. Satan's job is to get you to stop focusing on the end result, to focus on what you want right now, to focus on what you think you need right now, to focus on what you want to do with your time right now. His job is to keep you focused on the right now so you'll miss the long-term view.

I had LASIK when I was 29, y'all, and I was so excited.

I'd worn glasses all my life, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I can finally see." The doctor told me, "This will last until your 40s. I won't be able to protect you from not needing to wear bifocals." Well, I turned 50 this year. I still don't need bifocals. Praise God. But, but I did realize that my vision at night was getting a little blurry. So I went to my doctor, and she said, "Now, you don't— you still don't need to wear glasses," but But if you want crystal clear, then I can give you a prescription. She said, "Here's the problem though.

I'm gonna give you a prescription to fix the long term, but it's gonna mess up your short term." So I'm one of those people now that wears regular glasses, but if you give me something to read, I have to lift 'em up because I can't see near and far at the same time.

I had to choose which one was I gonna focus on. Do I wanna see long range or do I wanna see short range when I'm behind the wheel wheel. And when I'm driving and I have somewhere to go, I decided that I wanted to stay focused on my destination. You have to decide that you're gonna stay focused on your destination. And the thing is, when you decide to focus on the long term, the things that are right in front of you, you're gonna realize that they don't matter as much as you thought they did. The problem is a lot of us y'all are focused on what's right in front of us, what we want right now, and and what we think we can't live without right now. But that's because you're choosing to put that in the frame. I don't want to focus on what my hands are doing on the steering wheel when I have a car to drive. I have somewhere to get. And in this life, you have somewhere to go. So why are you spending all of your energy focusing on your fingernails when there is a destination God has in mind for you? Do you realize that he has you on track to go somewhere and that every time you choose to focus on the pain, you choose to focus on the sorrow, you choose to focus on what you don't have right now, you are taking your eyes off of where he's taking you. You're a royalty. I gave you 5 words. Joy, endurance, wisdom, evident faith, and a long-term view. That spells JEWEL. And every crown of every queen I've ever seen has a jewel in the crown, multiple jewels. I have a ring on my finger. My husband and I went to our jeweler and he said, "Well, this ring is a great ring, but I need to see you every year." I said, "Why?" Because I had him shine it up. He said, "Because I You want me to keep these jewels tight in there. The jewels have too much value for them to accidentally get loose and fall out. You wanna make sure they don't fall out. You come back, you let me tighten everything up because it's too— it has too much value for you not to take care of it. What this evening is tonight, y'all, we're tightening up the jewels.

We're tightening up our understanding of joy, of endurance, of wisdom, of evident faith, and of having a long-term view. Now does that mean that you can go off in your week this week, in your year, the quarter, and carry on? Absolutely. But that's why we come back to church. That's why we need to understand the gathering of ourselves together in community. This is why we come to events like this, because sometimes, y'all, those jewels get loose or the crown, the whole crown to itself just tilts to the side. But you know what you need to do sometimes? You just go back to the jeweler and let him reset the stone. And if you need to go to the jeweler and let him reset the stone, that doesn't even necessarily doesn't necessarily mean that anything's wrong. You just want to make sure you're tight and right. The reason why we do a lot of things, y'all, is 'cause we trying to make sure everything is tight and right. Why wouldn't you want to make sure the same is true of your soul?

And you have a God who purchased your soul, who speaks blessing over you in Ephesians chapter 1 and chapter 2, and you have an enemy that seeks to steal that from you every single day. So how do you do that? You focus on your jewels. You decide to have joy. You stick it out when you don't feel like it. You ask God for wisdom. You stand firm in evident faith despite how you're feeling. You can stand firm. And then you choose to focus on the long-term view. You choose to focus on where God is taking you and not always exactly focus on exactly what's right in front of you because the enemy is trying to distract you.

If he can't rip you out of the fingers of God's hand himself, he will at least make you not comfortable while you sit there. Don't let him take your joy. Don't let him take your destiny. Don't let him take your purpose.

And the way you do that is by focusing on the jewels God has given.