The Road So Far // Here & Now: Building Our Future in the Present // Read

“The best is yet to come!” This statement has often been a popular rallying cry, especially for the Church. It’s a declaration rooted in the belief that God has great things in store for his people just beyond the horizon. And it’s a sentiment we’ve shared and stated here at Cornerstone...but, not anymore. Of course, we still believe the future is bright. But who has time for what’s to come when we’re too busy being blessed by what is? You see, the best isn’t “yet to come”—it’s here and now! God is on the move, and he is doing a new thing now, in the midst of our present circumstances. Instead of focusing on the future, we’re determined to follow God’s lead, right here and right now.

We’re not foreigners to the faithfulness of God. Jesus has delivered us through obstacles and trials time and time again. And that faithfulness needs to be celebrated! So before we take a step into the future, we will stop in the present and praise Him for His faithfulness in the past.

Cornerstone. Imagine how I feel if you think you're surprised to see me up here. Pastor Jacob is quite ill; he was not feeling well when he preached last night. It's not anything contagious. He doesn't have a virus, anything like that. But I'm going to ask you to join me in praying for him in a minute. He has had something recurring of this year, several times, the same thing that makes him very, very sick. And we don't know what it is. And he's going to be checking to find out what it is, you know, lots of people suggest it may have something to do with having COVID A couple of times, we don't know that. But what we do know is that God is enormous, and God is mighty. And we do know that Jacob is our God-appointed leader, and we need him, we need him. So I'm going to ask you to join me in prayer right now if you would pay for Pastor Jacob that he will recover quickly and that God will heal him and that will get to the heart of what's going on. Father, we thank you this morning for Jacob; we thank you for your calling in your anointing on his life. We thank you for your presence in his life. I pray that right now. You will encourage him that you will lift up his heart and that you will begin to work healing in his life for the long term. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, I wish that he was here to preach to you because even though he didn't feel well last night, he really, really preached a great sermon and is wonderful. We're heading into our new here. And now the other thing that those that I'm grateful for is I was here, and I took really good notes. I had no idea I would need my notes. He sent me his notes. But you know, it's kind of like Saul wearing or David wearing Saul's armor. It doesn't fit very well. You kind of have to do your own thing in order for you to preach well. But the main points and the thought of this message today are his, but it's got my color in it. This is the anniversary of our kickoff. Wasn't that video from last year? Great. Yeah, it's really great. And there are lots of additions to that, that we'll be hearing about in the next days, bigger numbers, bigger, all kinds of stuff. It's really, really good. But in this building campaign over the last year, we have grown a lot. We have learned a lot; we've matured, we've done that. Have you ever gone through a stage of time that you thought you were pretty cool then, and then later you look back on it? You were like, dear Lord, what was I thinking? Yeah, well, Maddie and I write appears Maddie, and make sure you all know.

This is Maddie; Maddie and I were talking last night before the service. And I don't really know how we got talking on this. But she was showing me some pictures and things that we were talking about styles of clothes and hairstyles that we, you know, used to wear before. And she showed me a couple of pictures of herself. And that's what she said; what was I thinking? Well, what was I thinking? And she said that basically, for the better part of a full year, she was a sideways ponytail. You know, I think she should get a pass on that because she grew up with, you know, a full house. And they, you know, they all wore those so, so I think she could get past but do you have pictures like that? Pictures that you don't want anyone to show? You know, with my grandkids, when they are wearing something ridiculous or doing something ridiculous. It won't be unusual for one of the answer uncle's to say save that show it at their wedding reception. Because that's the kind of stuff, we grow. And we get past things. And we wonder why we thought that way? Well, God does remarkable things as we grow and mature. And it's a good thing that he does. And we as a church have grown and matured not from terrible things. But we're just growing in and getting closer and closer to God. We have grown and experienced and learned so much last year over this last year. And there's so much of it that you could only call supernatural to some of the events because things have happened. We have learned things; we've grown things that have happened that could only be accounted for by God. The title that Pastor Jacob gave to the message today is the road so far, and this is about the road that we've been on. It is how we as a church, a group of people, but not just a group of people, all of us as individuals who have been participating in this walk of faith, what we've learned, and how God has helped us what he's done for us. This sermon this morning is not just for us as a group, but it's for you and me as individuals because this is how God works with us if we want to move forward. So we're going to look at God's goodness that we just sang about. There are so many lessons we can learn now that the guide that we're going to take to look at the blessings of God in our lives and to see what we've learned is from Psalm 77. And I'm going to encourage you to follow along with me as I read it—psalm 77. Starting at verse one, I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord at night. I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted. Have you had a night like that before? Yeah, you've had those. I remembered you, God, and I groaned. I meditated in my spirit grew faint. You kept my eyes from closing. I was too troubled to speak. I thought about the former days, the years of long ago. You know, I remember there was a time when I thought being up at 213 in the morning or 230 in the morning was pretty cool. That day is not today.

I don't like it anymore. I don't like it anymore. Because if I'm awake now, I'm troubled. Most of the time, I'm troubled. If I'm awake, then something is concerning me. And maybe you can identify with that. I remembered my songs in the night; my heart meditated. And my spirit asked me, will the Lord reject for forever? Will he never show his favor again, has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time, has gotten forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld His compassion? Again, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of you who have felt that you've thought God must be mad at me; something must be wrong; I don't feel me answering my prayers here. Then I thought to this; I will appeal, the years when the Highest stretched out his right hand, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago; I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds. We can learn from this song right here, how to get ourselves through, and how to make sure that we're living in the goodness of God; the very first lesson that we as a church have learned, I've learned it individually. I hope that you have the very first lesson is there in verses 10 through 12. God's favor isn't limited to the famous it's not limited to the big shots. It's not. It's not just those, you know, who wrote this song, who wrote most of the songs, David Wright, he didn't write them all. He wrote most of them. There were a couple written by Moses, and we all know who he is. But there are a few others written by this guy who wrote this, just a few. His name is used. And pretty much the only thing we know about him is that he was a member of the worship team. That's what we know. Yeah, yeah. I hear some yeas over here. That's good. He was a member of the worship team. And yet, here he is, all of these centuries later, being used by God. God is using him to bless other people. He was much lesser known than David and Moses, much lesser-known, but God showed favor on him and blessed him and used him. Isn't that a good thing? That's a really good thing. When I think about Cornerstone Church, I, you know, I look at it. And I know we're not a megachurch. We are not a megachurch, not one of those great big churches that everybody knows who they are. As a matter of fact, if you Google Cornerstone Church, you'll find lots of Cornerstone churches, you'll find lots of those. And so you want to make sure you put Cornerstone Church, Akron, Ohio, you want to make sure that you do that. And you'll find it especially if you're sharing with people. There's when I hashtag when I post quotes from Pastor Jacob on Sunday morning; when I hashtag Cornerstone Church, I have to be really careful because there is a huge Cornerstone Church, a huge Cornerstone Church, that is doctrinally and in all kinds of the way very different from us. And I do not want our church to get mistaken from with them. But they have on their thing. They have more than 80,000 tweets. That's a lot. That's a lot more than 80,000 hashtags. And ours has more than 5000, which is great, but we're so much smaller than they are. But guess what? Our size doesn't matter. We get the favor of God. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? And it doesn't matter about you? The same way you get the favor of God. Don't we have anybody notice that? We don't have millions of dollars around here. Yeah, we don't have that. But many of the churches that we look at and you know, we hear about they have big-name pastors, their names are immediately recognizable. They have money running out of their ears; they're always doing updates. They're always doing those kinds of things. We don't have that they have 1000s of followers, they have a name, name recognition, they have all kinds of things, but they do not have a not a monopoly on the favor of God. They do not have the favor of God; God has done so much for us. He's done so much for us. And, and it's nothing short of miraculous the money that has been pledged and come in. And here's the amazing thing. You'll hear more about this because we have lots of updates on this. But one of the amazing things about it is that in the money that we've raised so far, which at this point is well over $300,000 that we've raised in cash, very little of that has come from gifts that are $5,000 or more. Most of it has come from smaller gifts, with individual people obeying God and doing the right thing. Isn't that wonderful? God is showing his favor on us as we believe. It's only God, and it's the same in your life. It's the same in your life. You don't have to be big and famous; you don't have to be the best, the coolest, the most anything for God to smile on you. God's favor isn't just limited to the ones who look good and seem to be the biggest lesson number two, the best indicator of God's future provision is God's past faithfulness. That's what self did. When he's awake at night. And he's feeling like, man, God's not answering my prayers. And what's going on here? Has he forgotten who I am? Or worse yet? Is he angry at me? What's going on here? What did he do about it? He looked at God's faithfulness in the past, he said, I will look at the years when the Lord Most High stretched out his right hand, I will remember the deeds of the Lord, I will remember all your miracles, I will consider your works and meditate on them. Nothing is better when you're in a low moment. And you're lacking faith than to look at the faithfulness of God because He will always be faithful. We can look at what God has done for us right now. Just right now, the building that we're sitting in is evidence, excuse me, of God's faithful mistress. Now, of course, we all know it's not nearly big enough. If you think it's big enough, just try to go to the lady's restroom in between services. Okay, you'll find out that that's not true. The only reason that this is being able to serve us now is because of COVID that we have so many people who watch online, our online attendances more than triple what we have here. But, you know, with three services now that we have COVID, we can do it here. God didn't plan COVID, you know, for us to get a building. Not at all; he doesn't do those kinds of things. But what he does in Romans 828, in all circumstances, he works for the good of those who love Him. We had checked out this property before been in here many times. But it just was not going to happen, even though it was a beautiful property. And there was nothing else around here until COVID. And when COVID happened, it became very clear it was going to be a long haul. The Board of Directors checked it out again, came and looked, and said, Yeah, we think we can do this for this period of time. And God has us here. It was a great price. Absolutely working for us. It's great. And we found again that we are living in the goodness of God. We're living in the goodness of God. And he's done that for us all the way through. We have lived in the goodness of God. Think about what God has done for you. Now just like my coal miners hat, that is such a blessing to me. It's such an encouragement to me; when I see it hanging on the wall, I see it every single day. It always sparks faith; it always sparks the thought. I never pass it without thinking about it. The stories in your life when you meditate on them. When you think of the goodness that God has shown to you in your life in your past. You know, you need to make sure your family knows about that. You need to make sure that your spouse knows about your children your friends; tell them that because it will help them and it will help you because you remember that if God's been faithful before, He will be faithful in the future. And his faithfulness goes ahead of us. I told you that if you are at my house, you might think that you're in a museum because the reminders of God's faithfulness are everywhere in the house for me; let me tell you about another one of those. A Charlie and I were married in 1974. And we were going to graduate school in the blizzards of the late 1970s. Is there any other old person here that can remember those blizzards? Okay, they were rough. They were really, really rough. They were something like now, only at least in my memory. They were worse than what we experienced right now. At that time. We were in a ten by 5050 1950 little pink trailer. We lived in Wilmore, Kentucky. We were going to grad school, and we were there on a wing and a prayer. We had no money. We had some student loans. I worked as a house cleaner picking up individual jobs. Charlie did landscaping, and he was a proud member of a very highly rated official in the Kentucky Bluegrass basketball. Association. And that's how we made our money. And we pastored a little tiny church that we got $72 A week for pastoring there. And we had to drive back and forth from Cincinnati to Kentucky to go there. In the middle of this blizzard, our furnace caught on fire and went out. We were hustling to get things out of there that we thought had to be saved, and we got the furnace the fire put out. But then we had no heat for the rest of the winter. And we lived in that furnace. With no heat, it was cold; it was called. We spent as much time as we could not in the trailer but out of the trailer in other places. But to sleep there, we would pull out the mattress from our little bedroom in the back. And we would put it on the floor of the kitchen, living room area that went together. And, you know, we were pretty well newlyweds, and it was very romantic. We slept in sweat, sweat pants, and piled up with blankets. And you know all of this with the propane oven open, so we could get the heat from that. I already know that's not safe. So you don't need to lecture me on that. We live through it. But anyway, that's how it was. And we didn't tell anybody. We didn't tell our friends, we didn't tell either set of our parents because both of us were very convinced that we needed, we felt like, you know, we had no idea what pastoring would be like really, but we knew that we needed to learn to have faith and our faith couldn't be in people coming through for us, it would need to be God. So we didn't, we didn't tell them. Now here's the other thing, we didn't have money for food either. We went 31 days straight; there's a whole story connected with that I don't have time to tell you. But we went 31 days straight where we either had peanut butter or a jelly sandwich because we didn't have enough of that to go around too, you know, but it was both on the same piece of bread. We either had that or green beans. And so you know, that's the way we lived. And it was okay, we were making it, it was so cold in our bathroom that you know, and the water was frozen, you couldn't take a shower, do anything like that, and the water wouldn't run out of the picket. So we would go to the gymnasium to take a shower and the at. At nighttime, we would bring a bucket of water back to the house. And it would be there to wash our face and brush teeth and everything with that in the morning. It was so cold in the morning you had to poke through the ice to wash your face or to brush your teeth. But that's the way we were doing it. And it was okay. We knew it wouldn't last forever. Spring would come, and we'd eventually have enough money to fix that furnace. It was Valentine's Day, and I hadn't even given a thought to the fact that it was Valentine's Day because there was a special event at the school, but we weren't going because we didn't have the money to pay for the tickets. And we didn't have anything planned for Valentine's Day because we had no money. And I had forgotten it was that Charlie got up early that morning, and he went up to the gymnasium to take a shower. When I got up, I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I was so shocked when I went in. We had a big mirror that went all the way across the vanity in this little bathroom and sprayed all over of the mirror was frozen shaving cream that he had used to decorate the edges of the mirror and pictures drawn in my lipstick. And in the middle of it was this not in a frame then just this piece of paper. And he had made me a Valentine's Day card. And this is what it said. Happy Valentine's Day. We have no heat. We have no money. We can't buy meat. We can't buy honey.

But I have you, and you have me. God will take care of us. Just wait. I love you too, really; if you think he was magnificent, you have no idea. He was wonderful. He was wonderful. And you know why that hangs in our house and why it has for all of these years. It's because as we took a road trip through our memories, we realized how faithful God was to us. Going through that hard time together, learned how to make things work, learning how to not blame each other when there were problems. But to trust God and keep moving on. It just caused us to have so much faith in God and so much faith in each other. We realized as we looked over our past that our hard times had actually bonded us in such a great way. We couldn't think of ever leaving each other. We couldn't think of starting over with anyone else. We couldn't think of giving up On this relationship that had so much invested in it, but here's the thing, when we were going through it, it didn't feel like God's faithfulness. It didn't feel like our marriage was being made. It just felt hard. When we went back over that, though, with the 1980s 1990s 2000s,

eyesight, we saw that God had been incredibly faithful to us, then and many, many times later, Charlie knows in full now how faithful God has been to us. And I see with 2022 hindsight that God never let us down. He was always there. And so when I'm awake at night, and I wonder, Where is God? Is he hearing me? I think about his faithfulness. And I think well; he's always come through for me before, why would he not now? I want to encourage you. Remember what God has done. When you are in a hard moment, think of that what a miracle it is that you're even here. And when you get to heaven, you'll find out all kinds of stuff that God rescued you from that you didn't even know. God has been so faithful to you, it will give you faith for the future, and it will help others too. And you need to share what God has done for you. You need to tell your stories; you're not bragging on you; you're bragging on God; you need to do that. You know, as I became a widow, I decided that I would be who I've always been. And I'd be very vulnerable about myself and just tell where I was and, and so I have made tons of friends with many, many windows. I got to speak at a one-word event in Sugar Creek yesterday, and there were a lot of women there. And there were numerous ladies that I'd never met before who had started following me on Facebook. And one of them. I recognized her name, but I'd never met her before. She's probably in her early 50s. And she came up to me, and she introduced herself to me. Her name was Terry. And I said, Oh, I know you. I'm so sorry. I know your husband died this past year. He sounds like he was a wonderful man. And she said yes. And she said, I love reading your post, you know, they helped me so much. And she said I want to tell you something that I hope you can tell. And it will help somebody else if you know someone that will help them. She said, you know, Russ was such a godly man. And I loved him so much. And I had no idea how I would make it when he died. So suddenly, and it was, you know, just so hard on me. And she said I've wept. You've seen my stuff. You know, I've written to you before, she said, I want to tell you what I did. She said I was praying. I told God, God, could you just do this for me sometime? Could you give me some kind of a witness that wrestles with you? And everything's gonna be okay. She said I prayed that in faith, but nothing happened right away. And I'd kind of, you know, let it go, kind of forgotten that I had actually prayed aloud to God. She said Russ was a long-distance truck driver. And most of our serious conversations happened when he was on the road, and we would talk on the phone, and then we just had fun when he came home. So she said one night I went to bed, and I was sleeping hard. And all of a sudden, I hear the phone ring. Of course, this was her dream. She said I picked up the phone. And it was Russ. And she said his voice was so joyful. He was so happy. He was just so wonderful. And he said, Babe, I can't wait for you to see this. You can't imagine how wonderful it is here. Everything we believe is true. Stay strong. She said that was the conversation, and he was gone. She said I couldn't tell you. Did it make me not be sad anymore? No, but I can't tell you the strength that it poured into me. And she said, Brenda if you have anybody who needs to tell that hear that story. You tell that to them. I couldn't wait to get home because I have a young friend with three children who just suddenly lost her husband. And I knew how much it was going to matter to her to read that. And I sent it to her right away. I couldn't have encouraged her the way, and it really encouraged her. But I couldn't have done that. If this lady wouldn't have had the courage to tell me how faithful God had been to her. Tell your stories and our church; we need to tell our story. The same is true for us. Everything we have believed about God is true. Stay strong. It's more wonderful than we know. Lesson number three. Lesson number three. Everyone likes miracles. But no one likes how they're made. My brother Jay, when he was a young guy not too long out of high school. He walked. He worked for a while in a meat processing plant. And Charlie and I came up from Cincinnati and visited and when we We're here. He came home from work to my mom and dad's, and we asked him how he liked his job. And he was drinking coffee. And he said, he said, It's okay. He said It's okay. But if you really like hot dogs, no one ever asked me how they're made.

That's kind of the way it is about miracles. We like miracles, but we don't want to know how they're made. We don't want to; we don't want to remember that a miracle was not when you find a parking place downtown. That's ridiculous. That's just a lucky coincidence. And we say those thing like it was a miracle. You know, I found coffee on sale, and I did this. No, that's not a miracle. It's not a miracle. A miracle is when you are at the end of your capabilities at the end of your capacity. And if God doesn't come through for you, you are sunk. That's what a miracle is. And you can't pray for miracles. Unless you're willing to depend on God in that way. You just can't get them. I have always loved biographies. When I was a young girl, my mom and dad got me for Christmas, one year, a packet of 12 biographies of great men and women of the faith, and I devoured those things. One thing I didn't like about them, though, was that every one of them had a really hard period in their life; everyone had gone through something desperate, where God had to come through for them. And this is what I found out, as I've lived all these years, that wasn't just true of these 12 people, that's true of every great person you will ever meet. If you ever meet a person who is consistently great throughout the course of their lifetime, they're great for God; they're great for their families; they're great for themselves. This is one thing that you will find out for sure about every one of them. They've been through some really hard times where God had to do a miracle, or they weren't going to be okay. That's the way it works. You have to be willing to turn your desperation over to God and not believe that you can handle everything by yourself if you're going to have a miracle. And when you are faithful through your hard times, and you let God's God work. That is what makes you great. You say I'm not sure that's true. Okay. Think of one person that you know of who is consistently great, who lived their lifetime, honestly, for God and people and did not mess up their legacy. And tell me, when you find out everything about them? Did they go through any desperate situation where they had to find God? You will never find an exception to the rule because it's just that God does his best work in hardships. We want miracles without situations that cause them to be necessary. But it's not that way. Romans 828 tells us that God does his best work in hardship every single time. God does it. That's why he does it. Now I could entertain you for a very long time by talking about all kinds of things that our church has been through over the last 42 years. But I'm just going to concentrate on the last five; I'm going to just tell you a couple of things from the last five years. If you've been here for five years or more, you know these stories in much more detail than I'm going to tell you. If you're new, some of this might surprise you a little bit. But let me just tell you a couple of those. First of all, we lost our building; we didn't lose our building because of a lack of financial integrity or poor stewardship or anything like that. We had a beautiful building on what Realtors told us was the prime piece of property for building something in Coventry Township. We lost this building that we built with our own hands, and people had invested their funds in their time and effort. They had been married there; they'd had funerals in their family there; they love this place. We lost that building, not because of a doctrinal issue, not because we were unfaithful in one way or another, but the denomination that we belonged to at that time. A lot of great people, they're wonderful people, their doctrine is great good people. But their financial policies at that time began to really infringe on what we believed was our mission here at the church. And we worked with it as long as we could. And when it began to impact our ability to reach the world through Clearblue. Our board of directors combined that with a few other things and said this is it. But if they want to do this, we're going to have to leave the denomination. Now the denomination that we ran is like many it had a trust clause in it that said that if a church leaves the denomination, the building, no matter who paid for it, the building goes back to the denomination. We didn't think that was fair. And we checked to see if we could keep this building. We got legal counsel, and we found out absolutely we could keep that building that in the last couple of years before this happened to us that the same trust clause had been tried four times. in Summit County, and every time the local church one, and the attorneys told us you'd win this easy, not a problem. Well, there was a little problem. The little problem is that in the New Testament, it says that two Christians should not take each other to court, that they should settle their agreements is between themselves. We took that very seriously. And we told the leadership that we were working with that we believe that it would not be honoring of God for us to put this out in public and make God's people look bad to our community. And so we wanted our building, we thought it was only fair and right, they should let us keep their build, keep the building, but the if they were determined to take it,