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  WHEN ICE FORMS ON YOUR WINGS
  by Carter Conlon
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Summary: This sermon titled 'When Ice Forms on Your Wings' emphasizes
the importance of trusting in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not
on our own understanding, and acknowledging Him in all our ways. It uses
the analogy of ice on airplane wings causing loss of lift to illustrate
the danger of relying on our instincts over God's training. The message
urges believers to push forward in faith, not drawing back in times of
crisis, and to trust in God's direction for their paths.

Topics: "Trusting God", "Overcoming Adversity"
Scripture References: Proverbs 3:5, Isaiah 40:29, 1 Corinthians 10:12, Ephesians 4:25, Psalms 44:1, Ephesians 5:21

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon titled 'When Ice Forms on Your Wings' emphasizes the
importance of trusting in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on
our own understanding, and acknowledging Him in all our ways. It uses
the analogy of ice on airplane wings causing loss of lift to illustrate
the danger of relying on our instincts over God's training. The message
urges believers to push forward in faith, not drawing back in times of
crisis, and to trust in God's direction for their paths.

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CONTENT
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Proverbs chapter 3, please, if you go in your Bible to that, Proverbs
chapter 3. I've entitled this message, When Ice Forms on Your Wings.
When Ice Forms on Your Wings. Father, I thank you with all of my heart
for your word.

I thank you for the anointing of your Holy Spirit. God, you're the only
one who can make these words come off the page. And as you promised,
they would be engraved in our hearts.

And so that's our prayer today, Lord. Lift the words off the page today
and engrave them in our hearts. Make them part of our character, part of
our thinking, part of our confidence in you, Lord.

May we never, Lord, lose sight of your words to us. Give me the
anointing to speak this and give us the anointing to hear it. Lord,
protect us.

Give us grace for the days in which we now live. We thank you for it in
Jesus' name. Proverbs chapter 3, beginning at verse 5, When Ice Forms on
Your Wings.

Trust in the Lord with most of your heart, all your heart. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In most
of your ways, acknowledge Him.

Oh, your Bible is different, is it? In all your ways, acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear
the Lord and depart from evil.

It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all
your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

I want to read to you from a report in the ABC News on February the 2nd
in the year 2010. The National Transportation Safety Board met today to
discuss the findings from a report on the crash of an airplane which
killed all 49 on board and one person on the ground after having left
the airport in Newark and it was approaching the airport near Buffalo,
New York. As it was coming into land, the plane lost speed due to ice on
the wings.

Now, many people don't understand how an airplane flies. We think that a
plane flies because wind gets underneath its wings and lifts it. That's
actually not what lift is in an aircraft.

It's the motion of air flowing over the top of the surface of the wing
that actually lifts the wings. It's lifted from the top up. That's what
lift is in an aircraft.

And when ice gets on the wings of an aircraft, it not only makes it
heavy, but it interrupts the flow of air over the top of the wing and
makes it heavy and it loses what we call lift, which means a plane can
literally plunge straight down out of the sky. It won't come in on a
nice little glide. It just stops flying and falls like a stone to the
earth.

That's what the loss of lift is all about. Now, when the cockpit
warnings indicated that the plane was about to stall, remember, the
stall is just literally stopping in the air and falling. Instead of
pushing what is called the stick shaker forward to increase the speed by
dropping the nose of the aircraft, that's what pilots are trained to do.

If a plane's about to stall, they push the stick forward and the nose of
the plane will drop and the plane will start to now increase in speed,
which brings it back to a position of lift. Then the pilot can lift the
nose and literally take off again. But instead of pushing what is called
the stick shaker forward to increase the speed, the captain pulled it
backwards, not just once, but several times.

The airline involved issued a statement, and here is what they said. By
all accounts, the captain and the first officer were fine people. They
knew what to do in the situation they faced that night a year ago, and
they had repeatedly demonstrated that they knew what to do, and yet they
did not do it.

We cannot speculate on why they did not use their training with the
situation that they faced. In other words, this pilot and this copilot,
as part of the training, had been obviously in classrooms, and they'd
also been most likely in a simulator, where there would be a simulation
of the condition that they were about to face, and they would be trained
and taught how to react to that situation so that they could keep the
aircraft obviously airborne. Yet when they got into that situation, and
it was no longer a simulation, instead of trusting in the training that
they had received, they leaned, at least the captain did.

We don't know about the first officer, but at least the captain leaned
on his own instincts and not on the training that he had been given. How
much different are we in the house of God? You're in a simulator this
morning, and we're looking in the Bible, and we're reading about stories
of others and how they've reacted either positively or negatively to
situations, and we're being trained and taught the right way to speak,
the right way to think, the right way to act, so that when we get into a
crisis situation, we don't have to stall, and we don't have to come
crashing down, not only destroying ourselves sometimes, but taking
others along with us who may have been trusting in our influence, our
leadership, or our authority. It's so important, as I prayed this
morning, that the words of God not just be on the page, but we have to
lift them off the page, and they have to become part of our character,
so that we will instinctively respond through what we have learned, and
what we have been taught, and what we have embraced.

It can't be just head knowledge in the house of God from the Bible,
because if it's only head knowledge, it will, in a sense, as Paul the
Apostle warned in the last days, it will be just an accumulation of
knowledge without power. Just knowledge, but has no ability to carry us
in these moments when we really need God to be the one that keeps us
afloat as it is. When you go to the book of Isaiah, let me read it to
you, chapter 40, verse 29, the scripture says, He gives power to the
weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
fall. In other words, there's a season in every one of our lives. If you
haven't faced it yet, you will.

There's a season that comes into every heart, every life, that says,
God, I can't go on. I'm about to lose lift. I feel like I'm going to
crash and burn, spiritually speaking.

I don't know how to get through the struggle I'm in, the storm, the
trial. I used to be able to rise above it, but I find myself now in a
situation where I don't know what to do, and I just don't know how to
get through. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be
weary. They shall walk and not faint.

Now, the word wait means intertwined as by twisting. That's really what
it means. It's not just waiting on the Lord, just sitting there and
waiting for God to do something.

That's not the context. The context is I am interwoven with Christ, and
He is interwoven with me. I have asked for His heart to become mine.

He promised me new thoughts. I've asked for those thoughts to be
embedded inside the character of my life. I have asked Him to be my
strength, my guide, the one who governs my life, who sits on the throne
of my heart.

I have loved His word, and the Scripture says, the entrance of your
words gives light. He is the light for my feet and the lamp for my path.
And so I've made a choice, which every one of us need to make.

Lord Jesus Christ, intertwine this word around my heart, and let your
life become mine. Let your thoughts become mine. Help me, God, to trust
you and not to lean on my own understanding.

Help me in all my ways to acknowledge you. In other words, as I go
through my day, to acknowledge what you have said and not to give in to
my lower instincts, to do something that maybe my unregenerate heart
wants to do. But God, you're within me saying, that's not the way to
safety.

That's not the way to the life that I have for you. All of us face
seasons when coldness threatens our calling, and the weight of the
moment causes us to fear that we're about to stall and crash. Coldness
gets into the heart.

Coldness gets into the heart because of repetition sometimes, of just
doing the same thing every day, all day. That's why marriages get into
trouble, because there's no effort on the part of the husband or the
wife to rekindle that flame of love that was the bedrock of that
marriage. And quite often, that's what will happen to that relationship.

And coldness can get into our walk with God, where we're just so used to
doing things repetitively that we're just doing it almost on autopilot.
We're not even thinking about it anymore. And then the weight of
repetition, the weight of personal trial, the weight of family problems,
the weight of the struggles in our own mind even, starts to weigh upon
us.

And before you know it, we feel like we're in a stall, a spiritual
stall. We feel like we're losing lift. We feel like we're about to go
down.

And we don't know what to do. Now, God has told us what to do. And it's
in these moments that it's imperative that we go back to our training.

In these moments, it's imperative that we recognize again what God has
spoken. And in spite of our own instincts, our instinct is to pull back
when God says push forward. That's what the pilot did.

He drew back, and the Lord was, or the training he had was telling him
to push forward. And sometimes when we get into trouble or we get cold
in our walk with God or the weight of the hour comes upon us, our
tendency is to pull back, even from the house of God. Pull back from the
service to God.

Pull back from the Word of God. When God's saying, no, now is not the
time to pull back. Now is the time to push forward.

Now is the time to believe. We're supposed to be renewed in strength.
We're supposed to be enabled again to rise above these things which come
against it.

I've experienced it. Many of you have experienced it, and some of us
will experience it again. Trials and difficulties come into every heart.

They come into every life, every situation. Knowing that we're supposed
to be renewed in strength, the question comes now, what would cause a
believer in Christ to suffer a crushing defeat in their walk with God?
Now, in many cases, it's because they begin to take lightly both their
calling and the instructions that God gave to perform it. They begin to
take it lightly.

They don't take it seriously. They forget that there's an eternal reward
for what we're called to do. Each one of us are called of God.

You're not just an observer in the church. If you're born again by the
Spirit of God, you have a calling of God on your life, a calling that
only you can fulfill. Nobody else can do it.

Only you can do it. It's your calling. It's what God gave you to do, and
he gave you giftings to do it.

He gave you abilities. He gave you reasonings. He gave you instruction.

It's all there. Everything is there to fulfill your calling. But
sometimes people don't take their calling seriously.

They don't recognize. They become focused on the now, on reward now, on
satisfaction now, and they forget that now might be hard. As with the
apostle Paul, there might be difficulties beyond measure.

You might be pressed down, as Paul once said, to the point where you
despair even of life. Those that are looking for the reward to be here
now quite often are going to be disappointed. Yes, there are moments of
joy.

There are moments of victory, but there's also moments of incredible
hardship. If you don't take seriously your calling, and don't take
seriously the instructions of God to finish this race and to finish it
well, you can end up losing lift, spiritually speaking, and not only
causing harm to yourself, but causing harm to others. Think of Samson,
just for a moment, a mighty man of God.

In the Old Testament, given incredible strength to bring deliverance to
many. That was the purpose. That was the calling on his life.

He was separated from the womb. He was ordained by God, just as you
were. From the moment of his birth, he would have had training and
instruction from his father, from his mother, from perhaps people who
knew the ways of God and the ways of separation of that generation.

He would have had this incredible training. He would have known the
purpose and the calling on his life. The Bible tells us in 2 Peter 1,
verse 10, to be diligent, to make your calling and election sure.

Be careful. Be careful to fulfill your calling. Be careful to find it.

Be careful to walk in it. Be careful to appreciate it. Be careful that
you don't let it slide through your fingers.

Be careful that you don't get to a point that you think that what God's
given you to do is somehow insignificant in his kingdom. Instead of
being diligent to make his calling and election sure, Samson began to
live by his own reasonings, moving in his own mind and actions farther
and farther away from God's intended purpose for his life. In other
words, what was happening to Samson as he was on this journey that God
had called him on, his ice was forming on his wings, and he had no idea
where it was going to lead him.

He didn't appreciate what he was given to do, and he wanted
gratification now, so he began to look away from God's purpose on his
life, and he began to look to the things around him that would give him
pleasure. Now, it could have been many things. In his case, he seemed to
have a weakness for women in his life.

In Judges 16, verse 17, he kept falling in love with people that were
outside the kingdom of God and the family of God. Now, it's a type of
those who are constantly seduced by the things of this world, enamored
with what everybody else has or seemingly has, and looking around to say
what makes them happy, maybe I should go in that direction. And so he
took up a relationship with a woman called Delilah who was being used of
his enemies to try to find out the source of his strength.

In Judges 16, verse 17, it says, He told her all his heart, and he said
to her, No razor has ever come upon my head. I've been a Nazarite to God
from my mother's womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me,
and I shall become weak like any other man.

In other words, Samson told her, My strength comes from my separation to
the purpose of God for my life. That's where my strength comes from. And
he has given me instruction to fulfill that calling.

Now, one of those instructions, of course, was that he was not to be
shaven. But in his compromise, he gave away the secret of his strength
to his enemies. And Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart.

She sat and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up
once more, for he's told me all his heart. So the lords of the
Philistines came near to her and brought the money in their hand. Then
she lulled him to sleep on her knees.

He fell asleep on the knees of his own desires. You know, a lot of
people get involved in the work of God, and then they suddenly start
looking around, and look at all these things that I'm missing in life.
Has my life really amounted to anything? Am I really doing something
that's worthwhile to the kingdom of God? And he just fell asleep on the
knees of his own passion, his own desire.

And she called for Amanda and had him shave off the seven locks of his
head. Now, seven really speaks to the perfection of God, the victory of
God. Of course, in Christ, we know that's our victory.

And suddenly, one at a time, the sources of his strength began to be
taken away from him. Then she began to torment him, and his strength
left him. You see, when you're getting cold to the work of God, torment
is the first sign that you're on the wrong path.

Torment in your mind. Anger in your mind. Questions in your mind.

A loss of satisfaction in your mind is the first sign that you're
falling asleep on the knees of your own desire. So sad. You remember,
the pilot of this aircraft fell.

The plane actually landed on top of a house. That's why there was one
person killed on the ground. In Samson's case, the house landed on him
at the end of his life.

He had no idea what was going to happen to him. That's why the Bible
says, lean not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all
your heart.

When you don't understand, when it looks like the worst course of
action, when it doesn't make sense to your natural mind, trust in the
Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all
your ways, acknowledge him. Not some of your ways.

In all of your ways, acknowledge him. Let me just read to you some
passages of Scripture. Paul, the apostle, in 1 Corinthians 10, beginning
at verse 7, he says, and do not become idolaters as were some of them.

As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to
play. That's idolatry. It's coming to the house of God, for example, and
sitting down and we're eating of the word of God, we're drinking in of
the presence of God, yet it doesn't reform our character.

We leave this place and go back out to play in the things of this world.
Neither let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one
day 23,000 fell. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted
and were destroyed by serpents.

In other words, let us not question the integrity of God. His promises
to us are true. They are yea and they are amen.

Let us not challenge his integrity. Nor complain as some of them also
complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things
happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition,
upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No
temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man, but God is
faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able,
but with the temptation will also make a way of escape that you may be
able to bear it.

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. And the idolatry at this time
that I believe that Paul is immeasurably speaking about is the idolatry
of the human heart taking the place of God. Flee from becoming God in
your own life.

Flee from putting your own thoughts above the thoughts of God. Flee from
pulling back on the throttle lever when you should be pushing it
forward. Flee from human instinct that always wants to rise up and take
the place of the word of God.

Because that's the essential nature of sin. When Satan came into the
Garden of Eden he sowed that in the human race. You can be as God is or
as judges are and you can determine what is good and you can determine
what is evil without consequence.

That was the temptation. That was the theological fruit that Adam and
Eve bit into and it was subsequently sown in the human race. That's why
the Bible says don't lean on your own understanding.

Don't try to figure out how to get out of this situation in your own
strength. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and in all your ways
acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. The book of Ephesians
chapter 4 verse 25 and onward.

Therefore putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his
neighbor. We are members one of another. Speak truth, be angry and do
not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil.
Let him who stole steal no longer but rather let him labor working with
his hands what is good that he may have something to give to him who has
need. That's a particularly pertinent verse considering this is tax
time.

Let him who stole steal no longer. Stealing from the government is still
theft, my brother, my sister. You can't have it two ways.

I'm sorry. And don't lean on your own understanding. Well, God knows I
need the money more than the government does.

They're only going to waste it anyway. That is leaning on your own
understanding. The Bible says let him who stole steal no more.

Let him labor working with his hands that he may have something to give
to him who has need. So this verse seems to indicate to me that if we're
willing to do it God's way, God will make a way for us to make the
income we need to make and there will be an oversupply to give to
others. That's what he says.

Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth but what is good for
necessary edification that it may minister grace to the hearers. Is our
speech clean? Are we ministering grace to the people that are listening
to us? And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed
for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor,
evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind to one
another tenderhearted forgiving one another even as God in Christ
forgave you.

It's getting quiet in here. It's going to get even quieter in just a
moment. Ephesians 5 husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church
and gave himself for her.

Wives respect your husbands. Ephesians 5 21 for wives and husbands
submitting one to another in the fear of God. So here's my point.

If your marriage is going down, don't pull away from the pages of God's
word. Don't draw that throttle back. Push forward and get your heart and
get your mind back in the word of God.

Push forward my brother, push forward my sister. And he says and he
shall direct your paths. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean
not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. It's
not time if you're in trouble. It's not time if you're heavy.

It's not time if you find you're getting cold to the work of God. It's
not time if you don't know how you're going to get through tomorrow. To
draw that stick back and pull back from the word of God.

It's time to push it forward. This is the instruction and get your face
back in the word of God again. Instead of lifting up your head and
looking for an alternate solution and looking for something from your
own heart and from your own mind and a source that comes from your own
strength.

Instead of drawing back from the word of God, push forward into the word
of God. And acknowledge him in all of your ways and he promises to
direct your paths. And we know the pathway of God.

He says I know the thoughts I think towards you. Thoughts of good and
not of evil to bring you to a desired end. To bring you to that place
where you need to be.

To bring you to that freedom that you long for. To bring you to that
place of strength that you need. To bring you to a renewed vision of
what your whole life is all about in the first place.

To bring your marriage back to where it began and even beyond. Even
higher than it's ever been before. That's who God is.

That's what God does. That's the promise of God. That's our inheritance
in Christ.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. With all your heart when it
doesn't make sense. With all your heart when everything in you wants to
draw back and God's saying no.

Now's not the time to draw back. Now's the time to push forward. Now's
the time to trust your training.

Now's the time to find out if you really have learned anything at all in
the kingdom of God. You don't learn, you don't find out whether or not
you passed the test when you're in a simulator. It's when you're in the
crisis of life.

It's when you have to trust God for your finances. It's when you have to
believe for your family and for your children and for your grandchildren
and for your marriage. It's when you don't have the strength to go
forward.

But God says, look to me, I have all the strength you need to be
everything that I've called you to be. It's when in honesty we can turn
to God and say, Lord, I've lost the passion for your word. I've lost the
passion for your work.

I've lost the passion for your presence in my life. I've lost the
passion for your flowing through my life. Everything now is heavy.

Everything now is looking like I'm going to go down. And God says, you
may have lost the passion, but I haven't lost the passion for you. And I
live inside of you.

My spirit is inside of you. You push that stick forward and you will
find yourself gaining lift again. You get back in the word of God.

You say, Lord God, would you help me not to lean on my own
understanding? Would you help me not to try to figure out a way out of
my dilemma in my own strength? But God, I acknowledge that your presence
is in my life. The Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of God that moved over
the face of the waters when life was commanded. The same Holy Spirit
lives inside of my life.

And God, I choose to acknowledge your presence in my life. You have the
right to my life. You purchased me with your blood.

You said, you told me, you told us that a nursing mother could forget
her child. But you said I can never forget you. I engraved you on the
palms of my hands.

You said that you would never leave me or forsake me. You said that
whatever I asked for, believing that I would receive it. So God, I'm not
turning away from you.

I'm turning to you now with all of my heart. And I'm asking you to lead
me through this time in my life. This time when everything is heavy.

This time when I look to be losing lift. This time, oh God, oh God, oh
God, let me do things the way that you have taught me to do them. Let
all my learning now not be in vain.

I want to close with just reading to you some words from King David.
When he said in Psalm 44, The psalmist said these words, We have heard
with our ears, oh God. Our fathers have told us the deeds you did in
their days, the days of old.

You drove out the nations with your hand, but then you planted. You
afflicted the peoples and cast them out. For they did not gain
possession of the land by their own sword, and neither did their own
arms save them.

But it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance
because you favored them. You are my king, oh God. Command victories for
Jacob.

Through you we will push down our enemies. Through your name we will
trample those that rise up against us. I will not trust in my bow,
neither shall my sword save me.

But you have saved us from our enemies and put to shame those who hated
us. In God we boast all day long and praise your name forever. You see,
the psalmist is saying these words.

You've told us, Lord, what you've done in days gone by. You brought your
people out of captivity and you brought them into the place of promise.
Not by might, not by power, not by human intellect, not by human
reasoning, not by human strength.

But by the spirit of Almighty God. The psalmist is calling out and
saying, God, so knowing the history, I'm not going to trust in my bow or
my sword. I'm not going to trust in my own strength or my own reasoning.

You are the one who has saved us from our enemies. And you are the one
who always puts to shame those who hate us. You will be my boast all the
days of my life.

When I get to the finish line, I'm going to have a testimony. Only God
could have done this. Only God could have done this.

And you and I will be able to look back if the Lord should tarry to a
generation coming after us. And like the Apostle Paul, we're going to be
able to say, follow me as I followed Christ. I was crushed.

I was distressed. I was pressed down. I had the sentence of death in
myself at one time.

I didn't think I could go forward. I suffered betrayal. I suffered
imprisonment.

I suffered scorn and ridicule. I suffered almost every conceivable
suffering that could come into the heart. But I had the sentence of
death in myself.

And I did not trust in human strength, but I trusted in the one who
raises men from the dead. That's what Paul said. I trusted in the one
who has the power to lift us out of all heaviness, out of all conflict,
out of every trial, every difficulty.

I trusted in him. And we're going to finish saying, he didn't fail me.
He didn't fail me one time.

And he won't fail you. I'm telling you young people, I thank God our
balcony seems to be filled with young people today. He won't fail you.

He won't fail you. He won't fail you. David the King said, I've been
young and now I'm old.

And I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed baking bread. By
the grace of almighty God, he has kept us and will continue to keep us.
You know, before a plane takes off in cold weather, a truck shows up.

And I'm always glad when I see that truck. And it has a solution called
a de-icing solution and it sprays it on the wings of the plane. Thank
you.

Thank God. Because I don't want to ever be in a plane that loses lift.
It's not a good thought.

I guess some of you need to be de-iced. Before you take off from here
today, you need to be de-iced. And it's a spray called trust.

God, I will trust you. I will trust you. As we have a song, we sing,
I'll trust you in the darkness.

I will trust you with life's problems. I will trust you. I will trust
you, Lord.

And so if you're going through a crisis in your life, in your mind, in
your ministry, in your marriage, whatever it is that you're going
through, would you let God just touch you afresh today? Would you let
him? May I just say it this way? Just spray your wings with his love,
his promises, his power, to let you know I'm not going to forsake you.
You're not going to fall. You're not going to fail.

I'm going to be with you. So I just want to open this altar in just a
moment. And if that's you, I'm going to ask you to come.

And then we're just going to pray together. And miracles happen when we
pray. We're going to pray that God lift the heaviness.

Some people here, you've been heavy for a long time. I'm going to pray
for a renewed vision. I'm going to pray for a renewed understanding of
what your life is all about.

A renewed passion for what God's given you to do. We're going to just
pray. And believe God, believe God, that you will rise again and not go
down.

Now, Father, I just thank you. I thank you, Lord, for your heart, for
the people here today. Thank you, Lord, for what you have called us to
be and what you've called us to do.

God Almighty, I ask in Jesus' name, Lord, that you would set every
person here free who's in danger of losing the lift that you've provided
for their lives. And I thank you for it, and I praise you for it in
Jesus' name. Let's take a moment to pray together.

Lord, I just thank you with all my heart, God, for my brothers and my
sisters at this altar today, Lord. God, truly, truly you are the one
who's our glory and the lifter of our head. Lord, we learned over time
to thank you for our trials, because it's in these times we find out
that you really are God.

I thank you, Lord, for just driving away despair at this altar this
morning and discouragement and wrong thinking and delivering us from
trying to solve our problems in human effort. Lord, we turn to you, God.
Turn to what you've spoken to us, and we believe it with all of our
heart, that you'll give us life and you'll give it to us more
abundantly.

That's what you promised us. You told us that we would find fulfillment
in the calling that you've placed on each of our lives. So we're not
willing to settle for less, and we're not going to substitute it with a
calling of our own making.

It's what you called us to be, Lord, and called us to do. So I thank
you, Lord. I thank you, God.

Lord, you are setting us free from ourselves. Thank you, God, for the
strength. The strength, Lord, that's here at this altar today.

In every heart. In every home. God, we bless you, Lord.

Thank you for the knowledge that there are no write-offs in the kingdom
of God. Not one. Not even one.

Lord, morning by morning, new mercies we see. This is a kingdom of mercy
and forgiveness, God. So thank you, and thank you for new strength.

Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, God.

Thank you, Jesus.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/o2E2hI6XVrE.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/carter-conlon/when-ice-forms-on-your-wings/
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