Purpose When it Feels Pointless

It's good to have you here in the room or online tonight, Tuesday night. It's special for me, because this is my first time being here in Dallas officially as part of The Porch team, as the director of discipleship, and I am so honored. My family and I, about a month ago, made the trek from Houston, Texas, to the promised land, Dallas, Texas.

Hey, here's a picture of my family. My name is Tyler, by the way. Here's my family. That's my wife Jen, and then my daughter Emery Kay, my son Ty (who's holding the coconut, or whatever that is), and then Malachi. We call him the "Ma-lotchee, ka-lotchee." We're so glad to be a part of this family. Thank you for welcoming us in. Thank you for those of you who are here, and thank you for those who are tuning in all across the country and the Porch.Live locations. We're so glad you're here.

There's one thing I want to say, as I've been thinking about tonight. I remember sitting in the seat you're sitting in, and sometimes I would wonder, "Hey, that guy who's up on the stage… Is he the real deal or is he just playing some game, kind of manipulating people?" You make your judgment about me, but I just want to say something about the man who's typically up here, my friend for years, Kylen. I've known Kylen beyond stages. I've seen him at high highs, and I've seen him at low lows.

I just want to say to those of you who call The Porch home that the man you think Kylen is is who he is. I have watched him weep in prayer on his face on behalf of revival across our country, on behalf of you. He might not know your name, but he's praying and begging God to move in your heart. One of the reasons I'm here is to be an adrenaline shot for his ministry. God is working in Kylen Perry's life, and it's just an honor to come alongside him. So, can we show honor to Kylen? Man, thank you.

Hey, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open up your Bible to 1 Kings. I don't know when the last time you were in 1 Kings was, but we're going there tonight…1 Kings, chapter 19. No big deal if you need to use your table of contents to get there. As you're turning there, I want to tell you one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received in my life. That piece of advice is that all frustration in your life is rooted in unmet expectation.

So, I want to ask this tonight. As you look back on your life, has there been a season of frustration that you remember living through (some of you are living through it now), that you can look back and say, "That season was marked by unmet expectation"? You know, I've been thinking about my life this week, and I thought about back when I was in college. I was a finance major. Yeah, finance bros in the room. Come on. That's awesome.

I remember being in class with you guys, and y'all are geeking out about assets and liabilities and P/E ratios and Patagonia sweaters, and all the while… I'm getting into it, but I started to feel this passion in my heart for ministry of all things. I'm reading the Bible, and I'm discipling guys in my fraternity, and I'm going, "Oh no. I think I may be called into this thing for my life."

So I ended up, on a whim, applying for this yearlong residency at a church up here in Dallas called The Village Church, and somehow they let me in. That started in August. I graduated in May, so I had the summer, and I went and found a three-month internship in student ministry with middle schoolers. Just snot-nosed middle schoolers running all around.

While I'm there, the youth pastor leaves to go be a lead pastor of a church, and that church offered me the job to be youth pastor. So I'm conflicted. I'm like, "Do I take this full-time job or do I go and be a resident for a year at The Village?" I remember one Tuesday night praying, "O God, make it clear. What am I supposed to do?"

Then Wednesday rolls around, and there's a middle school event. I'm at the middle school event, just hanging out, handing out pizza, or whatever, and I get three wet willies in my ear from middle school kids. Do you know what wet willies are? They lick their finger and put it in your ear. After the third wet willy, I was like, "I am a finance major at Texas A&M. I should not be getting wet willies."

After the third wet willy, I had made up my mind. "I'm not doing student ministry. That era is done. I'm moving on to adults at The Village. This is going to be better." So I respectfully decline. I move up to Dallas. I start the residency, and pretty early on I realize, "Oh, I'm at the bottom of the food chain here." I'm just doing all the behind-the-scenes work.

But I finally got a meeting with one of the executive staff, one of the big names. Not Chandler, but another one. I finally set it for months later. The meeting comes. The day before, I'm in Houston, and it floods in Houston, and I can't make it back to Dallas. So I have to message this guy. "Hey, I'm so sorry. I can't make the meeting. Can we postpone?" He goes, "Okay." He sets it for a month later.

I wait a month. No joke. I'm back in Dallas, and a hailstorm hits the night before. The power goes out, and I sleep through my alarm and miss the breakfast meeting. I call him. I go, "I'm so sorry. I'm on my way." He goes, "Tyler, don't worry about it. We're not going to meet." I find out later… The Village Church is Matt Chandler, if you've heard of Chandler. I've looked up to Chandler my whole life. This guy goes and tells Chandler, "Tyler Moffett? That guy is a moron." That's what he said. I found out later. I'm crushed, like, "Oh!"

Last part of the story. Three-fourths of the way through the residency, my boss sits me down and says, "Hey, Tyler, as we've been kind of analyzing you, and as we've been really thinking about your gift set, we've determined that you would fit better in student ministry." I'm like, "Oh!" I just remember going home. I'm just being honest with 2,000 of my favorite friends.

I remember driving home, and I was frustrated. I had all of these expectations for ministry, that I was going to be a part of changing the world and jumping in on some big, massive revival, teaching big crowds, and I'm stuck with middle schoolers. I remember, as I was in that place, all the zeal I had for ministry evaporated. I'm just being honest.

I'm curious for you tonight, as we have this revival series… If you've been tracking with us, we've been talking about how statistics are showing that there's this quiet revival that's going through our country. More and more people are returning to God. They're returning to Christianity, specifically among young adults. It's exciting, and you go, "Oh, this is amazing." Then some of us, like me right out of college… You look at your life, and you go, "That's great, but that's not what I'm feeling in my life right now."

Tonight, we're going to talk about, specifically, zeal that persists, that lasts through the mountaintop and the valley. How do you have a passion for God, a zeal for God, that goes beyond just the mountaintop camp high moments, but even in the low part, you go, "I'm still red hot in my passion for God"? How do you get that? That's what we're going to look at.

Here's the definition of zeal as we're looking at it today. Here's how we define it. Zeal is an energetic pursuit of and unwavering commitment to God. How do you get that? That's what we're going to look at. Let me pray, and then we're going to dig into 1 Kings 19.

God, like the songs we just sang, we really want to commune with you, the God of the highlands and the God of the valleys. God, you are not hiding from us. You want to reveal yourself to us, so, God, we are asking…please come. O God, we long for an encounter with you tonight. Maybe it's a big fanfare moment of emotional excitement for you or maybe it's the still, small whisper of knowing that you are real, you are good, and you see us and have a plan for our lives. O Jesus, we just want you. We long for you. It's in your name we pray, amen.

All right. First Kings, chapter 19. A little background. This is the story of Elijah. Elijah is the prophet in the midst of a godless society, yet Elijah's greatest goal is to see Israel revived. He wants what our series has been about. He wants to see revival break out among his nation, yet there's a problem. The king and the queen are evil. Not just a little evil…the worst evil Israel has ever seen. It's Ahab, who you've maybe heard about, and he's married to his beautiful wife Jezebel.

Jezebel says, "Hey, the national religion in Israel is now Baal worship," and all of the people just go, "Okay," and they go into Baal worship. They're all sacrificing against God. So, the first thing Elijah does is he prays that God would cause a drought on the land. You go, "Why would he do that?" The reason is because back in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, it said, "There are blessings for your obedience. There are curses for your disobedience." One of the main ones was drought.

If the Israelites were paying attention to their Torah, to the Bible, they should have known, "Uh-oh. Drought equals God is punishing us. We should return to him," yet they miss it. So then, in chapter 18, Elijah goes nuclear. He says, "All right. Here's what we're doing: Your prophets versus Yahweh's prophet. Four hundred fifty prophets of Baal versus one prophet of Yahweh. We're having a showdown on Mount Carmel."

The whole town shows up, and the 450 prophets of Baal are dancing around their idol, trying to get their god to send down fire. Nothing, for hours. Elijah is making fun of them. He's like, "Oh, maybe your god is using the bathroom." This is in the Bible. He's like, "Maybe he's asleep. Maybe if you cheer louder, he'll wake up." Nothing.

Then Elijah says, "All right." He puts water on his altar. He prays, and he says this in chapter 18, verse 36: "O Lord, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that they have turned their hearts back to you." He says, "More than anything else, I will have a zeal for you, and I want to see the return." Fire comes down from heaven. After fire comes down, the 450 prophets of Baal are killed by the people, and then this is what Elijah does.

He runs to Jezreel, where the king and queen are. He runs. He hightails it, and he says, "I want to watch this revival play out. It's going to be amazing, because either the king and queen are going to see this and repent or the people are going to cause an uprising and kick them out. The status quo cannot stay the same." Yet look at what happens in 1 Kings 19:1. So, all that has just happened. Chapter 19, verse 1:

"Ahab [the king] told Jezebel [the beautiful queen] all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, 'So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them [one of these prophets you killed] by this time tomorrow.'

Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, 'It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.'"

Okay. What's going on here? All of Elijah's expectations, everything he expected God to do, are unmet, and he's incredibly frustrated to the point where he says, "I'm done. I'm done being your prophet. I'm done trying to live some life for you. Kill me. If you have any mercy, God, kill me, because I'm just done. It's enough. I'm no better than anybody else." He's just ready to die.

I'm curious. Have you been here? You know, I was just thinking and writing down some things. Maybe some of you were expecting things to end in marriage, yet, instead, you got the text from that person that said, "I hope we can still stay friends." You're going, "What? My whole expectation was this was going somewhere. Everything they were communicating seemed like this was heading in the right direction, and then you're just going to say, 'Let's just be friends; I don't want to be with you anymore'? What?"

Some of you moved halfway across the country to Dallas, or wherever, to be a part of a job that you're passionate about and your calling is, and you're sitting in traffic on 635 in 110-degree heat, going, "Really? This is the rest of my life? This is it?" Some of you made it through that recovery program. It was incredibly embarrassing, incredibly difficult, but you beat it, only to find yourself, a few months later, in the same crap you just got yourself out of, so you thought.

This is very relatable. Where Elijah is right now is where we often are in life. So, what does God do? In the rest of our time together, we're going to see with our own eyes what God does to the one who was expecting great things and is incredibly frustrated. We're going to see God doesn't freak out, but he starts the work of restoring Elijah's zeal. In fact, God does three things to restore Elijah's zeal.

1. God cares for the body as well as the soul. Let's look in 1 Kings 19, starting in verse 5. All this had just happened. He says, "God, kill me." Verse 5: "And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, 'Arise and eat.' And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.

And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, 'Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.' And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God." Notice, the first thing God does to Elijah, his prophet saying, "Just kill me…" The first thing God does is nothing. There's no lecture. There's no counseling. There's no therapy.

All God does is send DoorDash, angel version. Literally, the angel touches him… I mean, I'm just thinking of this scene. Elijah is like, "Oh, kill me," and the angel pops up and is like, "Hey, buddy. Have a snack." That's what happens. He's like, "Oh, I could use a snack." There's this weird exchange. The angel is like, "Go to sleep, buddy; here's a blanket," and he sleeps under this tree. We're reading this, like, "Oh, yeah," and then it happens again. The same day, he wakes up, and he's like, "Oh, where am I?" "Here, have a scone." It's the same thing.

Here's what's so interesting. This is why I love the Bible. It's such a great book. The Bible realizes how human beings are made. God knows how you're wired, how you're made. In the moment of frustration… You're at your wit's end. You're at the suicidal point of depression. God goes, "You know what? I'm not coming bringing you a lecture first; I'm coming bringing you a snack and some food and a nap."

Elijah didn't need a sermon; he needed sleep. Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is take a nap. Hallelujah, somebody. Right? Now, here's what's important. I'm not talking about self-care here. We kind of live in that culture of self-care, "Care about yourself." That's great, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Here's the reality: Some of you are blaming God. You are angry at God for the circumstances in your life when the reality is the way you have wired your schedule and your habits is burning you out. It's killing you, and God is saying, "Stop it. Slow down. Eat a snack. Go to bed. Stop doom scrolling on your phone for two hours, and then waking up, going, 'I don't have time to spend with you, God.'" It's like, "Really?" Maybe your habits, your lack of sleep, the way you're exercising or not… All of those things are feeding what's going on in you.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was a medical doctor before he became a pastor, said, "You cannot isolate the spiritual from the physical for we are body, mind, and spirit. The greatest and the best Christians when they are physically weak are more prone to an attack of spiritual depression than at any other time and there are great illustrations of this in the Scriptures."

The reality is we are body, we are mind, and we are spirit, and God is the creator of all three. We're embodied souls. So, we're not going to spend a ton of time on this, but some of you have lost your zeal for God. You're blaming God, you're blaming community, and you're angry, and the reality is your rhythms, your habits, are out of whack. God, like with Elijah, will start in your life there.

You know, for me… My wife and I have three kids, a little different season than most of you. At the end, we do dinnertime. We play and wrestle. I get a black eye from my 2-year-old. Then we give them a bath, we put them down, and then my wife nurses our youngest and I kind of clean the kitchen. If Jen is watching, I clean the kitchen, and I kind of relax and turn off my brain.

I've been doing this thing where I pull up the YouTube Shorts. So, it's not Reels, it's not TikTok, but it got me. YouTube Shorts got me. It's action film scenes that I've never seen that I don't care about, but I'm like, "Oh!" and I'm watching. Or it's random politicians yelling about things. I don't even know what they're yelling about, but I'm like, "Oh." I'm just glued into this, and I spend an hour barely doing anything in the kitchen.

Then Jen is like, "Come on. Are we going to hang out?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah." Then I get the kitchen, then I'm so exhausted, then I wake up late because I went to bed late, then I'm rushing in the morning, and then I'm getting to work. This has become a routine in my life, and I didn't even… I wasn't trying. It just came upon me. For some of you, this is happening in your life.

For some of you… We don't talk about this a lot, but maybe it's video games. Come on. Some of you are like, "It's my community, man." You stay up until 3:00 a.m. with your community, playing video games, which I have nothing against, but I'm just saying you're doing that, and people who care about you in your life are like, "Hey, maybe that's too much." Like, "Stop it!" And you don't let them in. Maybe God, like with Elijah, would go, "Hey, hey, hey, let's start with the video games." Right? It doesn't sound spiritual.

For some of you, it's your friends. It's your girlfriends. They always get you with that text, like, "Hey, do you want to take a sweet treat trip?" Uh-oh. Hitting home. And you know, "I already brushed my teeth," but you fall for it every time, and you're going because of the mems. Here's all I'm saying. Sometimes your zeal that you want to blame on "God is just not present…" The first thing is analyzing, taking a diagnosis of your life and your habits and going, "Where am I out of whack?" God wants to meet us there first. God cares about the body as well as the soul. That's the first thing.

2. God offers his presence in the silence. So, God deals with him by going after his physiology, but then what he does is he offers his presence in the silence. Let's pick it up in verse 8. "And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?' He said, 'I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.' And he said, 'Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.'

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave."

Did you catch what God said at the beginning? So, Elijah goes. He finds a cave. He goes to the cave, and God says, "What are you doing here?" I was just thinking about each of you tonight. I just wonder, if God were to come to you right now in your seat here at The Porch and ask, "Hey, what are you doing here?" what would you say to him? I'm serious. What would you say to God?

If you were honest, gut-level honest, would you say, "Man, I'm kind of lonely in this season of life, and to be honest, to just be in a place where there are other young adults would be amazing"? Some of you, if you were honest, would be like, "Man! The bar is not the best place to find a lover, so The Porch is where I'm at." Maybe that's why you're here. Some of you, if you're honest, have that longing, like, "Man, God, I really want to meet with you, like that music we were singing. I just want it." But what is it?

Here's the deal. God comes with those words to Elijah, and Elijah has his speech ready. And he's ticked. You can hear it in this. He goes, "Man, you want to know why I'm here? Because I was jealous for you," which is the Hebrew word for zealous. "I was passionate about you. With longsuffering, I loved on these people and was with them, and nothing. I'm the only one, God, who still loves you. Everybody else has forsaken you. I'm the only one left. You want to know why I'm here? That's why." God is like, "That's cute. That's awesome."

Think about this. He goes, "Do you want to actually experience me?" Now, Elijah is ticked. He's in his cave. "Do you want to experience me?" He's like, "Okay." Now, here's the deal. He's at Mount Horeb. You go, "Big deal. I don't know Mount Horeb." Mount Horeb has another name. It's Mount Sinai. This is the same mountain where Moses met God.

Moses goes, "God, I want to see you," and God says, "You can't see me. Are you kidding me? You'll die. But if you hide in this cave behind the cleft of this rock, you can see my back." But now God is saying to Elijah, "Come out of the cave and experience me." Elijah all of a sudden is going, "Oh man! What even Moses couldn't do, I can do."

It's the fanfare you would expect. A tornado rips through, like DFW. It's just rolling. He's like, "Oh, this is God!" It rolls past, and he's like, "Man! God wasn't there." Then, all of a sudden, an earthquake starts. He's like, "Oh, it's the earthquake." And God is not there. Then fire, like he saw at Mount Carmel, begins to come, and God is not there. Then, all of a sudden, there's a low whisper. Hebrews says it's like a still silence. It's in the still silence, after all that has passed, that God is there. He wraps himself, and he goes and appears before God.

You know, it's interesting. In light of Elijah's story, he was expecting the big fanfare. "God, if you're real, show off like you're God." He saw Mount Carmel, and he saw the drought. He was part of raising a young boy from the dead. Yet, all of those things passed, and it didn't bring revival. Now God is going, "Look. I work in those big things. I move in power." When the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, it's a breath, a wind. When God speaks to Moses in the burning bush, it's a fire. Yet the normal, day-to-day way God speaks is through a gentle, soft whisper.

The question God is asking Elijah is the question he's asking us in 2025: "Are you willing to meet with me in the whisper? Are you willing to meet with me when the fanfare all goes away, when the camp high is gone, when the breakup happens, when you lose the job?" Are you willing in that place of brokenness to go, "God, you feel really distant right now, but even in the quiet, I want you"?

God has moved in power throughout the Bible, and he has moved in power throughout history in massive moves of revival, but I believe that if God was going to move in powerful nationwide revival today, it would start in solitude. It would start with a group of young adults going, "This whole thing is great, but what I'm most hungry for… Oh, just give me some space alone with God." Why do you think Satan attacks the secret place, the silent place, most?

Have you ever tried to just get away alone in the quiet with God? Have you ever tried? Your mind starts racing. People start distracting you. Your phone blows up. All of a sudden, your mom starts really bugging you about all kinds of things, and you're like, "What?! Mom, I'm trying to get some alone time." It's because Satan is working through your mom. Maybe not, but you know it's that place Satan is trying to attack. Here's the reality: if you try to meet with God in the silence, it's hard, but God is there.

I remember the first time that… I was single, before I was married. I went out into the woods. I put my phone away. I just had my Bible and a journal, and I was like, "God, I just want you to meet with me." Like, "Come on. Silence, alone time… This is going to be amazing." I remember sitting down and opening up my journal. I'm starting to write. I'm just looking around, like, "God, you're so awesome. Man, look at the birds and the trees. Why am I still single? God, what's going on with my job?" All of a sudden, it just got dark.

The reality is we so often suppress what we're really feeling with noise, and when we do that, we miss God in the silence. I have a million more things to say on this, but in Christianity today, we're just obsessed with hype. We just are. I think there's a remnant of you in here who go, "Hey, I'm good with hype. I'm not a hater on that stuff. I just… Man, where's the place where I can just be alone with God?" I really believe that when that starts happening, revival will break out.

Tyler Staton says, "Prayer is a journey that starts with need and ends in relationship." You start coming to God with "I need, I need, I need," and then, all of a sudden, you begin to meet with God in relationship. When you really love someone, you don't need to be talking. You want to, but there are times just being together is enough. God goes, "Is that enough? Is it enough to just be with you?"

3. God reveals he's working in ways we can't see. Let's pick it up and read the rest. Let's start in the second half of verse 13. "And behold, there came a voice to him and said, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'" Elijah said his same speech again. "He said, 'I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.'

And the Lord said to him, 'Go, return on your way [where you came from] to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.'"

So, God asks Elijah the same question again. I've wondered, "Why did God do this?" Is it because he didn't understand Elijah's answer the first time? Is it that Elijah said the wrong thing? I think it's that God is testing his heart. "Did your encounter with me in the silence change?" And we see it didn't. He's still stubborn.

So, God takes a different approach this time, and this is what he does with us. If you're in a suicidal, depressed time, where you're like, "I'm just done," God doesn't come going, "Well, get up!" He starts with care, then he moves to an experience of his presence, and then he hits him with the hard truth. The reality is Elijah had fled south to Jezreel, and now God says, "No, I want you to go back to where you came from, and I want you to anoint a pagan king, and I want you to find your replacement."

Those are relatively normal things for a prophet to do. He basically says, "Hey, I want you to go back to where you came from, and I want you to do normal prophet things. No fanfare, no credit, just what you're supposed to do." It's as though God is saying, "Yeah, I do the Mount Carmel thing, but it's not how I normally work. I work and I speak in the midst of your normal life. I am working in ways you can't see."

You know, it's interesting. God is working in ways we can't see that oftentimes it takes perspective later for us to see it. I think back to my story at the beginning when I went to youth ministry. I was transferred from adult ministry to youth ministry. I was embarrassed at the beginning, and then something happened. As I began to love on these middle school kids, my life came back.

I began to teach the Bible. They're throwing paper airplanes in the back and picking their noses, but I loved it. I began to disciple them and watch them grow. Then I got a job in Grapevine as a high school pastor, and I loved it. Fast-forward to a few years ago. I've left that job. I'm down in Houston. I get a call from one of my former students who says, "Hey, I'm engaged, and I'm about to get married to a girl who was in the youth group." He said, "Will you officiate our wedding?" I'm like, "Oh man! That's awesome."

So, I drive up to Dallas, and I go there for the rehearsal, and I see that… You know, when we do the rehearsal, she's supposed to walk down with her dad, and she's walking down the aisle alone in the rehearsal. I'm like, "Hey, what's going on there?" She said, basically, "Some things happened with my dad, and he's not going to be at the wedding. He has kind of deserted our family in this season." I was just heartbroken for her.

Afterward, I pulled her aside. I'm like, "Hey, no pressure, but would you be okay if I walk you down the aisle?" Little tears started welling up in her eyes, and she said, "I would love that." The craziest thing happened. The next day, it's the day of the wedding, and my daughter is the flower girl, which was cute. We're in the back. The groomsmen have gone out, the bridesmaids have gone out, and it's just me, my flower girl daughter, and this bride, my former student.

I remember looking at her. Now and then I have tears in my eyes. She has tears. I just look at her and go, "You are so beautiful, and I'm so proud of you." I started walking this girl down the aisle in the church where I was a youth pastor. In that moment, it was so surreal, but it was like God was looking down and going, "See? See? You couldn't see it. When you were a youth pastor just ordering another round of pizza, just dealing with another dramatic high schooler and all of their issues, just dealing with another parent yelling at you about how someone…

What you can't see, Tyler, is one day… Stay faithful, man. One day you're going to be able to walk one of these girls down the aisle and make her day, being a father figure for her in this moment. You can't see it, but stay faithful, man. There's perspective if you keep going." Some of you have lost your zeal, going, "This is pointless."

I promise you, on the authority of the Bible, if you stay tethered to God and remember, "He's doing something I can't see," then I promise, one day, when perspective hits, either in this life or the life to come, you'll see it. You'll see the picture God was weaving together that, right now, in your young adult years, you couldn't see. John Mark Comer says the truest sign of maturity is finding the goodness of God in your actual life. Do you want to know if you're mature? That's how you know you're mature.

I want to end quickly with two takeaways. The first takeaway, as we think about zeal, is we need a correct understanding of the gospel. If you want to have your zeal, your life, your passions restored, first, you need a correct understanding of the gospel. The truth is Elijah was too optimistic and too pessimistic at the same time.

He was too optimistic. He thought, "God, if you send the drought, if you rain down fire from heaven, if the people see it, then revival will break out. I'm sure of it." He was too optimistic, and when it didn't happen, he was depressed and flipped over to being too pessimistic. That didn't work out, so then he's going, "Forget it. It's all done. Nothing can happen." He did this emotional swing, and the reality is the gospel goes after both.

Tim Keller says, "The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." At the same time, our pessimism and our over-optimism is confronted with a man, a God-man hanging on a tree who's going, "You are so much more broken…"

You think you're bad right now? "Oh, I'm just so bad." You're way worse. A bloody Savior on a cross declares, "You're far worse than you even think you are," yet that bloody Savior on the cross declares to you, "You are far more loved than you have even the capacity to understand." You're way too optimistic of what you think of yourself. The gospel declares both.

The second thing, the last thing, is the fire of godly zeal is stoked with surrender regardless of circumstance. This is a lot, but this is so important. The fire of godly zeal is stoked with surrender regardless of circumstance. Some of you refuse to see zeal for God as an option, because in your mind, your situation is too dark, too hard, too broken. "Until my circumstance changes, I cannot be passionate for God." I just want to tell you it's not true. It's not true.

One last quick story. When I was in Houston, I had the chance to go to a maximum-security prison a few times, not because I was the prisoner but to visit. I remember the first time I went I went begrudgingly. I was like, "Oh, I'm a pastor. I should probably do this. I've got to go love on all of these broken people." Then I step into this chapel service of life-sentence guys, and I saw worship… You thought today was cool? I saw worship like I've never seen.

I started hearing each of these guys' stories, and I was blown away by their willingness to talk about their brokenness and their ability to accurately communicate the full extent of the gospel and how it had changed their life. Yet every guy I would meet… I'd hear their story. It was crazy, and then they'd go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. My story is crazy, but you've got to hear John's story." I'm like, "Okay." Then the next guy. His story is crazy. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. My story is crazy, but you've got to hear John's story."

I'm like, "Where's John?" They're like, "He's back behind the sound booth running slides for chapel." I'm like, "All right." So I go find him, and I'm like, "John, right?" He's like, "Yep." I'm like, "I heard you have a crazy story." He's like, "Oh yeah. Let's go sit down." So we go sit down, and John says… I'm going to tell you the abbreviated version, but he says, "Man, Tyler, I did a lot of things wrong when I was young. At 21 years old, I ended up with a life sentence in this prison. I'm never getting out."

He said, "When I came here, I had a 1-year-old son, and I loved that son with my whole life. I would live for visitation to see my little buddy." He said, "In the course of years in this prison, I actually met God and surrendered my life to Jesus and would spend that time with my son proclaiming the gospel to him." Fast-forward 18 years. His son is murdered by another man. John is obviously heartbroken.

Through COVID… This happened pre-COVID. In the midst of COVID, there was a shake-up of the prison, and the man who killed John's son ended up at his prison. Not only that; this man ended up in his cellblock. So, John knows who this guy is. This guy doesn't know who John is. All of the guys in the cellblock go, "Bro, we'll get you alone so you can kill him." John is telling me this. I'm like, "What?! This is a crazy story!"

He goes, "I remember I went up, and I talked to this man who killed my son. I just started asking him questions, just getting after him." The guy finally goes, "Man, who are you?" and John goes, "My name is John. You murdered my son." The guy, a little scrawny guy, goes in the corner. He's like, "Man, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to. I'll get transferred out." John goes, "Hey, me and you are talking tomorrow."

John goes into his cell, and he gets on his face alone in the silence before God and pours out his heart to God. This is a broken man with a past, who has surrendered his life to Jesus, on the floor of a dirty prison cell, going, "God, everything in me wants to kill this man. Everything in me from a justice standpoint thinks it's right. Even my buddies in the prison… What are they going to do…throw me in prison if I kill him? This is what I'm going to do."

He's confronted with the God who forgave him. As he's there, God gently, following this path, cared for him, met with him, and spoke to him. As he spoke to him, it was a reminder of "John, right now, in the midst of where you're at, I forgave you way more than what you even realize. You can forgive this man. And, John, you must forgive this man or you will be the one who dies. You'll be the one spending the rest of your life living in that vengeance. You must forgive."

The next day, John goes and meets with this man. He says, "I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to tell you about someone who changed my life," and he shares the gospel with this man. This man is hardened, so John comes back the next day and the next day and the next day. After a matter of weeks, finally, that hard shell breaks, and this man surrenders his life to Jesus and receives forgiveness, not only from John but from God.

Then, over the next year, John discipled this man. Think about this. A year later, they transferred this man out of the prison, and John is telling me, now in tears, "When they transferred him out, it was like I was losing my own son." Now I'm losing it here in this story. I'm like, "What?" And he's losing it.

Here's why I wanted to end with that. I know some of you. Some of you are at The Porch, and you're just excited. "This is great." Some of you, though, are walking through dark, dark, dark seasons, and you're thinking, "There's no way. There is no possible way I can walk with God in the midst of this season and have zeal and passion for him." I'm going, "I know." In your own strength, absolutely not, but the God who worked in a dirty prison cell in John's life can work in yours. Don't wait for your circumstance to change. Surrender to a God who meets us in the still silence right where you are. That can happen right now. Let's pray.

Father, more than anything else, we long to encounter the still, small voice. Yes, we want the fanfare. Yes, we want the hype at times, but there's a generation, a remnant of young adults who have seen that show. We're not angry about it, but there has to be something more. And there is. Lord, I just pray tonight… I'm feeling this tug that there are some people here who have never had that dirty prison cell floor moment of surrender to Jesus. Lord, I pray today is that day. No circumstance change. The darkness is still there. The silence still feels quiet, yet I need that. I need that.

Lord, I pray that the gospel would ring out that God loved us far more than we can imagine despite us being far worse than we even know. Lord, would your Spirit meet us right now? Would we see Jesus and surrender fully to him? I pray some tonight would go, "I'm in. I am all in for that," and they would just say simply, "Father, I receive your grace. I confess that I'm in such darkness right now, and I need you. Jesus, come. Be my sacrifice. Be my everything, even in the still, small voice. I love you, and I trust you." God, we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.