The short version
Pastor Josh moved to Birmingham for full time ministry and ended up training managers at Starbucks for two and a half years. Standing in a drive-thru with a headset on, he asked God why he was there. The answer, and the whole point of this message, is that God will often do something in you long before he does something through you. Joshua 1 and Romans 5 show what the pressure is producing: good character, godly confidence, great courage, and growing consistency.
Picture a very country woman pulling up to a Starbucks drive-thru window.
She leans toward the speaker and orders a granny laddie with some whipped cream.
On the other end of that headset is a guy who has no idea what she just said. He asks her to repeat it. She says it again, exactly the same way. He looks at the girl next to him, who apparently grew up a little country too, and she translates without blinking: grande latte with whipped cream.
That guy was Pastor Josh. And in that moment, holding the headset, he was not thinking about coffee. He was thinking, God, why am I here?
He and Amber had moved to Birmingham in 2004 to work at Church of the Highlands. He was called to ministry. He was ready to serve. In his mind he already knew what the story was supposed to look like, and God was surely about to open the door in a big way.
Except he didn't. Instead of full time ministry, Josh took a job training managers at Starbucks. And Starbucks trains managers by making them work every position first, including the drive-thru.
I love highly caffeinated people. But I did not feel called to grande caramel macchiatos.
The prayer most of us are actually praying
Every one of us has prayed some version of this: God, if you would just change my circumstance. Fix this one thing. Get me out of this.
And God's answer is very often, I'm going to grow you through this long before I ever get you out of this.
That sounds inspiring in a message. It is much less fun in month fourteen of a season that has not moved. But it is the sentence the entire Bible keeps repeating, and Josh said it twice on Sunday:
God will often do something in you before he does something through you.
The Israelites are the case study. They spent 430 years in slavery. God promised to bring them back to a land he had already sworn to their forefathers. They got free, they prayed for the promised land, and God took them to the wilderness. Nobody signs up for the wilderness. But that is where comebacks come from. They come from failure, from brokenness, from having great plans that did not work out the way you wanted.
Which means if you want to come back, you first have to admit you went somewhere you need to come back from.
Joshua was standing at the exact same edge
There is a moment in Scripture where the baton gets passed and the next generation steps up to a comeback that is right in front of them. God is talking to a young leader named Joshua.
Josh loves that the text calls him the son of Nun, which was an actual name, though he pointed out the man had to be the son of someone. Joshua had no special title. He was Moses' assistant. Moses had just died, and Moses had done some pretty wild stuff through the hand of God, so the shoes were not small.
"Moses my servant is dead. Therefore, the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites, across the Jordan River into the land I am giving them. I promise you what I promised Moses: Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you. No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you. Be strong and courageous."
Joshua 1:2-6
Timeout, he said in the middle of reading it. You are the parent who is going to lead your family to salvation. You are the leader who is going to affect your neighborhood. But you have got to be strong and very courageous.
Here is the detail worth noticing. God says be strong and courageous to Joshua three times in that one chapter. At the end of the chapter the people say it back to him, which makes four times in a single chapter, one message to one man. He needed to hear it.
Three things that actually produce a comeback
God does not just tell Joshua to be brave. He gives him a process, and it is worth writing down.
Face the reality
God tells Joshua to study the book of instruction, and Josh's read on that is practical: studying helps you find out where you actually are. Not where you wish you were. Where you are.
You cannot change what you refuse to confront.
Some of us do not need another promise. We need an honest look in the mirror. And most of us are already experts at this, just pointed the wrong direction. We know exactly what is wrong with our spouse. We know exactly what is wrong with our teenager. We know exactly what is wrong with the coworker who will not stop gossiping. God is not worried about them. He is looking at you.
Let God's word examine you
The next word in the passage is meditate. Not skim. Look so deeply that the word of God starts examining who you are.
Culture tells you how you should feel, and your emotions tell you what you want to be true. God's word tells you what is actually true. Which produces the line that stung the most on Sunday:
You can't use your feelings to interpret Scripture. I meditate on Scripture to interpret my feelings.
It is the opposite of what most of us do, which is feel something first and then go hunting for a verse that agrees with us. Your feelings are fickle. If you ate pizza for breakfast and it did not sit right, you can feel completely differently by lunch. If you are chasing a feeling, you are probably not facing the reality.
Obey what he shows you
Every parent has said it. If you would just be obedient, we would not be in this situation. And every parent has then heard God say, that is exactly what I have been trying to tell you.
Transformation does not happen because you know more information. Transformation happens when what you know changes how you live.
The phone call he did not want
Back to Birmingham. Josh was on his way to a meeting he believed was finally going to get him out of Starbucks and into the role he had moved there for.
On the way, his district manager called. His name was David Thomas, and he was a genuine believer. Here is what he said:
Josh, I'm praying for you to be humble enough to accept God's decision.
Josh did not like that message. He did not like that David said it to him. It was not what he wanted to hear, and it was definitely not the prophetic word he had been praying for. He wanted thus saith the Lord, your breakthrough cometh today. King James, if possible.
Instead he got a message on humility. God was working on his character in a way that felt like surgery.
He stayed bi-vocational for another year and a half. Two and a half years total, working near full time in ministry and full time at Starbucks. And looking back, he sees it clearly:
I thought God was keeping me from something. God was actually preparing me for this.
What changed in those years was how he saw people and how he loved people. He learned he was as much a pastor at Starbucks as he has ever been in any church in the world. Which leads to a line a lot of people in the room needed: the top left-hand corner of your paycheck does not determine your ministry or your place in life. God has you there on purpose.
So what is the pressure producing?
The Old Testament shows you the story playing out in somebody's life. The New Testament tells you how to make sense of it. If Paul were explaining Joshua's situation to us, he would say it like this:
"We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."
Romans 5:3-5
That is church language for we get excited when it gets tough, and Josh was honest that nobody gets a flat tire and shouts praise God. But the mechanism is real. Hard times produce something. Here are the four things.
One: good character
Most of the problems in our society trace back to bad character. Somebody lied. Somebody stole. Somebody cheated. Somebody wanted what was not theirs. Most of the wars in this world come from the same place.
What good character looks like is not mysterious. Paul already listed it: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You learn to love people you did not love before. You have joy in a season that did not used to produce joy. You have peace in a storm, the way Jesus slept in the boat while the disciples panicked.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
Galatians 5:22-23
Against such things there is no law. Meaning there is no limit. You can have all of it in abundance.
Then Josh got personal, and this was the most honest moment of the message. Two years ago he was in a situation that turned angry and ugly. He thought he had self-control, and he did have a level of it. But that Tuesday he had to face how angry he actually was.
What that person did to me didn't produce that anger. That anger was already in me.
What they did was wrong. Terribly wrong. But they did not put that anger in him. It was already there, and God used the situation to reveal it. He said the same thing about marriage: whatever word you want to use, discussion or fight, you are at least 50 percent of the problem. Face that reality and you start to grow.
And the goal here is bigger than behavior management. The goal of Christianity is not to make bad people behave better. The goal is to make you more like Jesus. God cares about who you are becoming.
Two: godly confidence
This was the first message Josh wrote for the whole series, because he felt like God wanted somebody to hear that the fruit of what they have been through is going to be confidence.
What the enemy does is manufacture insecurity, so we keep repeating the same negative habits instead of seeing ourselves the way God sees us. Godly character reverses that.
I know who I am because I know whose I am.
Not because he has it all worked out. Because he is a child of God, adopted into the family. Confidence is not found in feeling better than other people. Confidence comes from knowing you are accepted by Jesus.
"Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant."
2 Corinthians 3:4-6
You are inadequate by yourself. When you call on the name of Jesus, he makes you adequate to the task.
Three: great courage
Confidence is the inward sense that you are going to make it because you did the work and you honored God. Courage is what you do with it. Courage runs into the fire. Courage runs at the challenge.
Remember God telling Joshua to be strong and courageous four times in chapter one? Fast forward to chapter ten. Israel has just won a huge battle, and now it is Joshua doing the talking.
"Do not fear or be dismayed. Be strong and courageous, for thus the Lord will do to all your enemies with whom you fight."
Joshua 10:25
Do not miss the transformation there.
What God once had to speak over him, God eventually spoke through him.
That is growth. The encouragement you needed becomes the encouragement you give somebody else. Josh described what that looked like for him in ordinary settings: telling somebody going through a hard time that he would love to pray for them, then walking away without forcing it. He kept leaving the door open. And people kept coming back later to ask how he got through his own anxiety.
Four: growing consistency
The goal here is getting off the roller coaster. Our culture chases a high everywhere it goes, and highs never last. If you climb higher than your character can sustain, the fall is going to be terrible.
Immaturity is incredibly emotional. Maturity looks different, and Josh put it in one sentence:
Spiritual maturity doesn't mean you stop having emotions. It means your emotions stop having you.
The extreme swings get smaller. Instead of riding the wave of emotion or culture or fear, you start riding the confidence God has given you. No more yesterday I was so godly, today I looked like the devil.
"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."
James 1:5-6
He loves me, he loves me not. I'm good enough, no I'm too far gone. None of that matters. God loves you, and there is a consistency that comes from settling that.
The part where it turns back to you
Joshua could study. He could meditate. He could hear be strong and courageous four times in one chapter. But eventually he had to step into the battle.
Some of you are waiting on God to change something. God is actually waiting on you.
Maybe your comeback does not begin with a new opportunity. Maybe it begins with obedience. Maybe it begins with you deciding to do the right thing.
Takeaways
- Stop asking only for the circumstance to change. Ask what God is building in you while it does not.
- Confront one thing you have been avoiding. You cannot change what you refuse to confront, and no additional promise substitutes for an honest look in the mirror.
- Read Scripture to interpret your feelings, not the other way around. Your feelings are fickle. The word is not.
- Own your 50 percent. In the conflict you keep replaying, what did the situation reveal that was already in you?
- Obey the thing you already know to do. Transformation is not more information. It is what you know changing how you live.
Next steps
Watch the full message and catch up on Comeback Season from the beginning.
New to One Hope or coming back after a while? Plan a visit. Wherever you are in life, you have a purpose, and you are welcome here.
If the honest answer is that you are far from God, the first step of obedience is surrendering control of your life to him. The Bible calls that salvation. Pastor Josh closed the service by inviting people to pray this, and you can pray it right now, wherever you are reading this:
Lord Jesus, I'm giving you my life, and I'm asking you to be my Lord and my Savior. God, would you forgive me for my sin. Would you forgive me for trying to live this life my own way. And God, would you give me the power to follow you all the days of my life. In Jesus' name.
If you prayed that for the first time, we would love to know. Tell us here so we can help you take the next step.
Questions people ask about this
Why isn't God changing my situation?
Pastor Josh Canizaro's answer is that God is usually working on you before he works on your circumstances. We pray for God to fix the situation, and God often responds by saying he will grow us through it long before he gets us out of it. The delay is not God ignoring the prayer. It is God building the character, confidence, courage and consistency that the next season is going to require of you.
What does be strong and courageous mean in Joshua 1?
God says it to Joshua four times in a single chapter, right as Joshua takes over from Moses with no title and no track record of his own. Being strong refers to character, the inner work of studying, examining and obeying God's word. Being courageous refers to acting on it. The repetition suggests Joshua needed to hear it more than once, which is a comfort to anybody standing at the edge of something they feel unqualified for.
What does Romans 5:3-5 mean about suffering?
Paul writes that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. The point is that hard seasons are not pointless. They manufacture something that easy seasons cannot. In this message Pastor Josh names four specific things the pressure produces: good character, godly confidence, great courage, and growing consistency.
How do you grow in godly character?
The process God gave Joshua was three steps: face the reality of where you actually are, let God's word examine you rather than using your feelings to interpret it, and obey what he shows you. Character grows in the confrontation, not in the promise. As Pastor Josh puts it, you cannot change what you refuse to confront, and some of us do not need another promise, we need an honest look in the mirror.
What is the difference between confidence and courage?
Confidence is the inward sense that you are going to make it because you did the work and you honored God. Courage is what you do with that confidence. Confidence is knowing you are accepted by Jesus rather than feeling better than other people. Courage is acting on what you believe, running toward the challenge instead of away from it.