Moment of Surrender | Tyler Moffett

Kylen Perry: Porch, it's good to see you. How are we doing tonight? Yeah? Awesome. It's so good to have you here. I'm so grateful you would trust us with your evening, not only those of you here in the room, which it's great to see you, but also, all of you who are tuning in online, it's great to have you with us. Special shout-out to our Porch.Live locations. Can we give them a round of applause, please? We love that God is doing a work here, but he's doing a work out there too. Special shout-out to Des Moines, Dayton, and Fresno. We love that you guys are a part of the evening.

Porch, I am so excited. Let me tell you why. Tonight, you get to hear from (and I'm not just saying this; this isn't empty lip service) one of my favorite communicators of the Bible. Before I introduce him to you, what I want to tell you tonight is something we're committed to here at The Porch is introducing to you new voices, voices that maybe you haven't heard before but need to hear and will be glad you have heard from, people who don't just stand on the platform of trend but stand on the platform of truth. That's the guy who's coming tonight.

The individual who's going to be teaching you tonight is a good friend of mine. We knew each other in Houston, Texas. He is genuinely someone that I look at the example of and say, "Man, I want to love Jesus like that. I want to walk with Jesus and believe in Jesus and have the kind of intensity and fervor that guy has." You're going to see exactly what I mean in just a minute. Porch, will y'all do a great job of helping me welcome my friend Tyler Moffett?

Tyler Moffett: Porch, how are we doing tonight? Come on! Man, it's surreal for me to be up here, because I did the math. It was 10 years ago almost to the day… I grew up in Houston, but I spent a number of years in Dallas, and I was living with a host family up in Allen, Texas. Anybody from Allen? Go Eagles. Right?

Anyway, I come down 75 all alone about 10 years ago, and I'm like, "I'm going to go to The Porch by myself." I show up, and I sit right up there, so I understand what you guys are feeling. I had no idea what to expect when I walked in, and I was just blown away by what you just experienced worshiping, thousands of young adults across Dallas giving praise and honor to Jesus. I'm like, "Man! There are so many of us. This is amazing!"

Then Shane & Shane was leading worship. I'm like, "Shane & Shane!" I was a fan. So, they finish, and they pray. Everyone bows their head. The lights get dark. I'm like, "My roommate has to know I saw Shane & Shane." So I take out my camera from my iPhone 5. I'm like, "I've got to get a picture." So, I take a picture, and it goes, Flash! Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash! Flash! Flash! Everyone, mid-prayer, turns around like, "What the heck, moron?" I'm standing there alone, like, "O Lord, the rapture could come right now. That would be awesome."

But you know what? I came back and came back and just got poured into through this place. I love Kylen. Kylen and I got to know each other in Houston. Man, he is the real deal. He's on his knees, praying, begging for revival in this city and in your hearts. So to be here is amazing. Hey, really quickly about me, and then we're going to dive into the text.

I think we have a picture of my family. This is my wife Jen and our three little kiddos, ages 4, 3, and 1, just turned 1. They wanted to come, but my wife was like, "I need them in bed." I get it. So they're not here. We live down in Houston, but my wife and I actually met here in Dallas. In fact, I was working at a different church, but my wife was going to Watermark. True story. Some of you are going, "That's all I need. I can find marriage at this place. Let's go." Right?

Seriously. She was here, and I would slip over Saturday night or Tuesday night to The Porch or to Watermark to come and hear from the Word. As I look back on my time in Dallas, there are some really sweet years, but also…I even felt it as I was driving up 45 today…my time in Dallas was some of the most insecure years of my life. I mean, I failed at my job, in relationships, and with my family more during my time in Dallas than any other season. Some of that began to wash back over me even as I was driving in.

I thought maybe some of you here tonight… Some of you are killing it. You drove in on your Tesla just loving life, but others of you are in that insecure place. I get it. I feel that. I think God wants to speak to us tonight. Wherever you are on that spectrum, he wants to speak to you, so we're going to dig into his Word. If you have your Bible, or there on your phone, go to the book of Isaiah. We're going to be in Isaiah, chapter 49.

The book of Isaiah is kind of wild, because there are a lot of coffee cup verses, a lot of cute "your grandma has it in her house" verses, but you read the book of Isaiah, and it's judgment, wrath, fire, and exile, and you go, "This is not that nice." Yet in chapter 49 there's a bit of a shift, and that's what we're going to see today. Wherever you're at in this place, I believe God wants to speak to you tonight, so let's pray and ask him to come and commune with us in a mighty way, and then let's dig in. Let's pray.

Father, we believe you reign above it all. Everything we just sang is not just some cute word; it is true. So, come, Holy Spirit. Invade this place. May there not be one inch of our lives that you leave untouched after an encounter with the living God. We expect big things tonight. So come. Speak through your Word. Your servants are listening. In Jesus' name, amen.

I remember when my wife and I first got married, we decided we were going to do Whole30. Do any of you know what Whole30 is? Okay. Wow! Some Whole30 enthusiasts. Whole30 is where, for 30 days, you don't eat any gluten, any sugar, or any dairy. Some of you are like, "You just described my diet." That was me. For 30 days, no gluten, sugar, or dairy. My wife and I were excited. We'd been eating a lot in our wedding and after, and we were like, "Let's go for it."

So we did it. We made it three-fourths of one day through Whole30. Breakfast…we killed it. Lunch…killed it. For dinner, we got invited to BJ's for a friend's birthday party. We had the talk on the way there. We were like, "Salad. No croutons. No cheese. Oil and vinegar on the side. We got this." So, we sit down at our table, and sure enough, the waitress starts with us. "What do you guys want?" "Salad. Oil and vinegar on the side. No croutons. No cheese." Fist pump, you know.

She's like, "Okay." Then, before she goes to the next person, she goes, "Oh, by the way, pizza is half off tonight." We're like, "Ooh." Then we hear every one of our friends… "Pizza. Pizza. Pizza. Meat lover's. Pepperoni. Pizza." Then we get to the end. She's like, "Anything else?" And right before she leaves, we're like, "Yeah, change ours to pizza. We want pizza."

Here's the thing. The ideal of Whole30, the idea of getting in shape and eating healthy, sounded so good until we were confronted with sugar, dairy, and gluten in a BJ's pizza. Now, here's why I say that. So often, everything we sing about, the gospel we declare, is an ideal that many of us… If it was on a test, we would go, "That's what I want. That's what I want in my life. In fact, I intellectually believe it. I've done the whole thing. I've gotten baptized."

But deep do8wn, when you start living the reality of life, it's a little more messy. Right? Sometimes we would go, "Oh, yes, I believe it's true; you reign," yet deep down we're just staring at these ceiling tiles going, "God, I want to believe it's true, but the reality of my life right now feels a lot different." See, the reason we're in Isaiah is the book of Isaiah was written by a prophet named Isaiah, written to people in Babylonian exile, going back over Israel's history. What he's telling them is "Look. There's a reason you're in the place you're in."

So much of the book is judgment, judgment, judgment, but then it changes and shifts to a moment of salvation. Look at Isaiah 49:13. Here's God saying, "This is the salvation I'm bringing. It's soon. It's eventual. It's ultimate." Then verse 13 is the climax. God says, "Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted."

He says, "Despite all you're experiencing right now and all the judgment and all of the things that came because of your sin, salvation is coming, so you'd better start singing. Comfort is coming. Compassion is coming." We're going to watch in the next three verses how Israel, the people of God, respond to this amazing word of salvation.

The first thing we see from the people is an honest feeling, an honest complaint to this salvation that's coming. Look at Isaiah 49:14. "But Zion [the people of God] said, 'The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.'" Okay. They just heard, "Salvation is coming; sing for joy; comfort and compassion," and their response… They interrupt God and say, "That's great, but you know what we feel? We feel forsaken by you. We feel forgotten by you. That's what we feel."

It doesn't say they don't believe in God or believe in his promises. What it says is despite what they intellectually believe, they feel forsaken. They would maybe even say, "God, I believe in your promises, but it's not what I feel right now. I don't feel loved by you." This happens in relationships all the time. Some of you know. You're trying to have an intellectual conversation about truth. "Do you love me?" or something like that.

It can happen either way, but sometimes the guy says, "I love you," and what does the girl say? "Yeah, but I don't feel loved by you." For some of you, this hits close to home. "I don't feel it. I'm hearing the words you're saying, but I don't feel it." Here's the thing. When you don't feel loved by God, you have to get that love from somewhere. Some of you have that void. Again, you would say, "I believe in God," but you don't feel loved by God, and when you don't feel loved by God, you have to get it from someone.

Some of you are in relationships right now where everyone in your life is saying, "This is a toxic relationship. Get away from this guy. Get away from this girl. What are you doing?" yet you keep going back, like a gravitational pull. People are going, "What are you doing?" and it's because you go, "I don't feel loved by God, so I have to…" Maybe you wouldn't say this, but "I have to get this love from them."

For some of you, your career… You have to get acceptance from your boss or from your coworkers. People are going, "Why are you burning yourself out? You're going to run off a cliff," and you go, "I have to be accepted by them. I won't be able to go to sleep at night if my boss doesn't feel like I've done a good job."

For some of you, it's your parents or relationships or friends. You're actually up at night having panic attacks, anxious, because you're managing everyone's opinion of you. That's just how you spend your life. "Oh, maybe she's mad. Oh, he said that one thing. Oh, they used a period at the end of their text, so they're ticked at me."

You're just constantly juggling people's opinions of you, and you're going, "What is wrong with me?" I just want to say maybe it's that you don't feel secure in the fact that God loves you, because if you did… If you felt secure, if you walked around with the confidence that God loved you, it's like a superpower. No one on this earth can say something that will lead to anxiety at night, because you're secure in God's love.

The first thing we see with the people of God is they own it. "We feel forsaken. We feel forgotten." So, what does God do? How does God respond? We see what God does is he responds with comforting words. Look at verse 15. They say, "The Lord has forsaken me. He has forgotten me." Look at what God says. "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."

Notice what God doesn't do at the beginning. They say, "We feel forsaken by you." God doesn't say, "Well, suck it up. Big whoop. I'm Creator. You're creation. Figure it out." He also doesn't pander to them. "Oh, I'm so sorry. What can I do to make it feel better?" What God does is he uses an analogy, a simile, and he says, "I want you to think." He says, "I want you to think of a nursing mother with her baby," which is a little weird, but this is what God says.

God says, "Think of a nursing mom with her little baby." This hits very close to home for me. We have a 1-year-old. He nurses with my wife. God says, "My love for you…think about it…is like a mom nursing her baby." When you actually look into the science behind a nursing mom, the love, the connection that goes on, there are actually three layers to this love of a nursing mom to her baby.

A nursing mother is giving physical love, physical comfort to her baby, literally providing for the baby's physical needs. That's the first thing. Then the nursing mom is providing emotionally. There's actually something in the brain called oxytocin that is released when a mom is feeding her baby that bonds her to her baby.

The third thing about this kind of love is it's unconditional. It's all give and no take. It's all "give" from the mom and all "take" from the baby. She doesn't get to the end and go, "That's going to be $27.32 for that. No tax." That's not how that works. It's all give. God says, "My love for you is physical. My love for you is emotional. My love for you is unconditional."

But it's even more. God says, "Even these may forget you, but I will not forget you." The truth is, as great as moms are, some of our moms are not good moms. A lot of you probably have great moms. Some of you would go, "Man, my mom didn't love me." God goes, "I know." Even for those of us who had good moms, eventually our moms will pass away and die, but God says, "My love for you will never die. My love will never be destroyed."

This is the truth, the amazing truth of what we sing, the amazing truth of what we declare. It's amazing. It's great, but it's all talk. It's still all talk, and here's the problem with talk. When all you have in a relationship is talk ("I love you, I love you, I love you") and no action, you can conclude there's no love. For some of you, that's what you needed tonight. If all you hear is talk ("I love you, baby; I love you, I love you"), but you don't see any action, it's all talk.

There's a sense in here where we hear these words from God ("God loves you; God loves you; God loves you"), and we go, "That's great, but it doesn't feel like that in my life right now. It just doesn't. Talk, talk, talk, but I don't feel it." That's why God takes it one other level in verse 16 where he has a powerful display of his love. Look at verse 16. He says, "Behold…" Which is the Greek word for "Look at me." "…I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me."

He says in verse 15, "Just like a nursing mother, that's my love for you, and even more so," but then he says, "Behold [look at me], I've engraved you on the palms of my hands." This is a weird, interesting text to read in the original language, Hebrew, because even in their context it would be somewhat normal for a master's name to be tattooed on a servant's arm or hand. That would be somewhat normal, but it would never be the other way around. It would never be the name of the servant tattooed on the master's hand.

The thing is it doesn't say tattoo. The word is engraved. Engraved in the Hebrew is actually the word for pierced with a chisel or a spike. Now, why in the world would someone, out of love, trying to display their love for someone else, allow their palms to be pierced with a chisel or a spike? What a horrible image. Yet, years later, there would be a man named Thomas. Do you know Thomas, doubting Thomas?

Thomas is going to hear all kinds of great talk about what has just happened with Jesus. "He's alive. He has risen. He's the Messiah." What does Thomas say? Do you remember? Thomas goes, "Nah, I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes." And what does Jesus say to him? Jesus comes and appears before Thomas and goes, "Thomas, come here. Look at the palms of my hands. See my love that I have for you. This is not just talk; this is action on a bloody cross for you."

Two thousand years ago, the man Jesus, whom we love to sing about and talk about and raise our hands to in this place, whom every knee will bow to… He not only was in heaven, but he took on human flesh and came to this earth. He lived a perfect life, and he said a lot of words. In fact, people called him a good teacher, but he was so much more than that. Jesus came to not just show us the way to God or the way to life. He came to be the "Isaiah 49:16" fulfillment, the display of the love of God in your life.

When he stretched out his hands on that cross and allowed those Roman soldiers to pierce his hands on that cross and suffocated to death, he was saying in that moment, "I see you in the midst of your pain, your broken relationship, your failure at work, the insecurity you have driving down 635 every day, hating traffic, hating life." He goes, "I see you, and I don't just tell you that I love you; I'm displaying it right now." No other religion on the planet has that.

Our King didn't just say, "I want to come and have you dwell with me. I'm going to come down and display my love for you." For us, when we come to Jesus, he says, "I will accept you." It's interesting. Romans 5:8 says, "…but God shows [demonstrates] his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Then, if we come to him, Jesus says in Matthew, chapter 11, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

This is what I've been praying for you. Some of you are here tonight because it's time to release that burden you've been holding on to. Release it. Surrender it fully to Jesus. That's scary, and that's unknown, and it's not going to fix all of your problems overnight, but that kind of surrender is what Jesus is calling us into.

I mentioned my family and how I have three kids, an older daughter and two sons. My son Ty… I think we have a picture of him. This is Ty. He's 3 years old, and he is my buddy. He's my junior. We named him after me, not just because I'm vain (maybe) but because we just believed, "Man, we want to name him Ty."

Everything about his birth was great. Everything about the delivery was great. This was three years ago back in 2021. He was born happy and healthy. Everything was awesome. The night after he was born, my wife is holding him. She's looking at him, and she goes, "Man, he looks a little blue. His lips are a little blue. Do you think that's weird?" Typical husband, I'm like, "Eh, babies turn weird colors. I'm sure he's fine." Then he got better.

The nurse came in, and we said, "Hey, his lips were a little blue, but other than that he's fine." Really seriously, she was like, "Hey, if that happens again, you let me know." We were like, "Okay. Okay." Sure enough, a couple of hours later, I'm holding him. His lips turn blue again. His whole body starts to turn blue. So we call the nurse. She comes running in, picks him up from me, shakes him, shakes him again, and then runs out of the room without saying a word. We're like, "What?"

About five minutes later, she comes back in with the doctor, and they sit us down. They're like, "Hey, you need to know what just happened with your son is called an apnea spell, which means he stopped breathing for at least 20 seconds and began to turn blue. We had to use some measures to bring him back." They said, "This shouldn't be happening with a term baby, so we need to monitor him in the neonatal ICU, the NICU, for the next five days."

We were supposed to go home that next day. We were so excited. We had a little party ready. We're just like, "What is going on?" They said, "Oh, by the way, because it's COVID, you have to go home at night, and he has to stay here." My wife was like, "What? Are you kidding me?" So, we're like, "O Lord." I'm kind of trying to fight it, like, "Are you sure? I didn't sign anything." We just do this whole thing. They're like, "No. We have to monitor him. This could be really serious." We're like, "Whatever."

So, we begin the process of being in the NICU. Some of you know this world from siblings or friends. We're going back and forth. Day one. Day two. Day three. At the end of day three, on a Tuesday afternoon… My wife would be going up there back and forth all day. I remember telling her, "Hey, let's go home for an hour. You need to shower, and I'm going to cut the grass, and then we'll come right back." She was like, "All right."

So, we go home. We're not home for 15 minutes before we get a call from the nurse practitioner. She says, "You need to get up here right now." We're like, "What?" So we get in the car. We head to the hospital, and he's hooked up to even more machines. I think we have a picture. They said, "Here's what happened. Your son had another apnea spell, and this time we had to use artificial breath to bring him back. He was dying, and we had to bring him back."

They said, "We don't know what's going on. We need to give him a head ultrasound, we need to give him a spinal tap, and we may need to transfer you to another hospital." I'm ticked. I'm like, "What? What is going on? No. We're getting out of here." I remember the nurse practitioner looking me in the eyes and going, "Mr. Moffett, listen to me. Your son could be very sick. You need to hear this. Your son could die." Then they sent us out of the room to give the spinal tap.

I remember my wife and I, in shock, going down to the hospital lobby, sitting down, and just beginning to weep. Some of you have had this moment. In our tears of frustration, confusion, anger, and sadness, some words I had memorized years earlier from Psalm 73 came over me. I said, "Whom have I in heaven but you, God? There's nothing we desire besides you. Ty's heart and flesh may fail, but, God, be the strength of his heart and portion forever."

Then the end says, "As for me, it's good to be near God." I don't even know if I believed those words. I just said them. That night, we went home, and we were incredibly sad and frustrated. We went to sleep. Next morning, my wife went straight to the hospital, and I was like, "I just need a minute." I remember getting in my room, shutting the door, getting down on my face before God, and having that moment that some of you have had where I just cried out to God.

"God, what is going on? I'm supposed to be Ty's dad. I'm supposed to be his protector, his provider. I'd rather trade places. What is going on? Are you in control or not? Are you God or not?" Just weeping, like, "God, what's going on?" In God's timing, I was listening to a soundtrack in my room, and this song came on. The name of the song was "Sovereign Over Us" by Jeff Johnson. The words went like this:

There is strength within the sorrow,

There is beauty in our tears,

And you meet us in our mourning

With a love that casts out fear.

You are working in our waiting,

You're sanctifying us,

When beyond our understanding

You are teaching us to trust.

The chorus says this:

Your plans are still to prosper,

You have not forgotten us,

You are with us in the fire and the flood,

You are faithful forever,

Perfect in love,

You are sovereign over us.

The bridge says this:

Even what the enemy means for evil,

You turn it for our good and for your glory.

Even in the valley, you are faithful,

You're working for our good and for your glory.

It's hard to describe it, Porch, but in that moment, that song going on, on my face before God, I met God. I had been in ministry. I'd done baptism. I'd said the prayer, but that was the moment for me where all that I was holding on to, all the control I had in my life that so much of my insecurity leading up was built around, just melted away. I just said, "God, all right. You're either God or you're not God, and I trust right now, in the midst of the valley, you're God. So, Father, if Ty never gets better, I will trust you."

Then I remember saying, "And, God, if you take away my son's life, you're still good and you're still God, and I will worship you." I remember getting up, getting in my car, and driving to the hospital. I hated that drive to the hospital. I hated it. All of a sudden, that very drive became a moment of worship. I realized for maybe the first time in my life, my worship cost me something. Sometimes we just sing the songs. "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

This was the first time I was going, "You are good. You are good. Right now, you're good. You're on the throne. You reign. You are King. You're sovereign and in control. I believe that right now. I believe it." I remember parking my car and getting in the elevator. I used to hate that elevator ride up to the fourth floor. All of a sudden, I began to go, "Okay, God. This is a moment of ministry. It's a moment of communion with God. I love you. I love you. I trust you."

I walked into that NICU room. I hated that NICU room. It became a moment of seeing other people who were in that room with worse issues than us, and all of a sudden, we began to ask them, "What's going on?" and God infused his presence in the midst of my brokenness and our valley in a way that's hard to describe.

The end of the story is five days passed, and he never had another apnea spell, so they said, "Hey, look. We can't promise that this thing isn't going to happen again, but you're free to go home." We were like, "Okay." We drove home kind of in fear and trembling but trusting God. Three years later, he hasn't had another one. Praise God.

There's a deeper healing that went on. You know, I praise God. Every time we look at Ty, we're like, "Thank you, God. Thank you." Yet the deeper thing that went on was communion with God in the midst of the valley, trusting that he was good even when I didn't feel it, knowing that beyond words, Jesus had my name, and yours, engraved on his hands at the cross.

I know some of you have walked through similar things, and some of you have gone through harder. For some of you, the outcome didn't turn out like this. God never promised us peaches and roses. I have a lot of stories where the ending didn't turn out like this, yet it's the moment of surrender that God goes, "That's what I'm after in your life."

For some of you, that's where you are tonight. I mean, come on. You're in the routine, you're coming to The Porch, you're singing the songs, but you don't believe it. You don't. You intellectually can get there, but your heart is broken. Your mind is wandering. You look at that same screen night after night, pleasing yourself, going, "Why won't it stop?" I'm telling you, you need to meet with God.

You have to have a moment of surrender, going, "I'm done. God, even if nothing changes, I see it. My name is engraved on your hands. Your love has been displayed on that bloody cross, and no matter the outcome, I trust you." I want to end with this quote. Ray Ortlund says, "Satan doesn't fear our brilliance. He's more brilliant. He doesn't even fear our good behavior. He can twist morality into hypocrisy. What Satan fears is someone shattered, stripped of their dreams, so devastated that all they have left is Jesus—and to Jesus they turn."

Porch, is that you? Some of you have had your dreams shattered, yet in the midst of the broken pieces you go, "It's him. It's all about him. It's all about him. It's all about him right now." This side of heaven, it's the only time in the midst of brokenness we can say, "God, right now I want to worship you. I want to worship you."

So, we're going to sing another song. Come on. For some of us, that declaration of surrender needs to happen right now. "God, I declare it. You are good." Some of you need to come. We're going to have a team up here. Some of you need to get up out of your seat and go, "I've got to talk to somebody. I've got to tell somebody." It's bold. You have a thousand people watching you. Who cares? We're talking about Jesus. Come up here and talk to somebody, and then worship. Give him your worship, because he is worthy of it.

Father, we love you, we love you, we love you. Despite what we feel, we know this to be true. You are good. So have your way in our lives. You are God. You reign above it all. You are King. You are sovereign over us, and we love you. Come, Holy Spirit. We long to encounter a living God who displayed his love on the cross. In Jesus' name, amen.