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Sunday morning, the room at 7941 47th Street was fuller than usual.

Fathers came in with sons they hadn’t sat next to in church in years. Men who typically join the stream digitally showed up physically, in the room, with their families, eyes forward. Something about Father’s Day made people move.

And then the message started with one line:

The giants are still there. Good. That means the mountain is still there too.

Caleb was eighty-five years old when he walked up to Joshua and made the most specific request in the Hebrew Bible. He pointed at the hardest territory in Canaan, walled cities, Anakites still armed, still enormous, and said seven words: Give me the hill country the Lord promised me. He named the giants in the same breath as the promise. Present tense. Still there. I will drive them out anyway.

That was not blind faith. Caleb had seen those giants forty-five years earlier. He knew exactly what was standing on that mountain. The giants hadn’t moved. But the man looking at them was no longer who he used to be.

Sunday, people left that room with something they walked in without: the name of one giant they had stopped pretending wasn’t there. If you missed it, you missed a room where something shifted. People went home with a sentence written on paper, placed under the thing they had been avoiding for years.

You’ll want to watch the replay.

Here is what this week comes down to:

There is one thing you keep steering your schedule around. One number you don’t check. One conversation you keep rescheduling. One door you drive past on purpose. You’ve built a whole routine around not having to stand in front of it again. And every time you avoid it, the story gets louder: the giant beat me, so the promise must not be mine.

The promise didn’t move. You did.

Week 5 is this Sunday. Stop Waiting Until You’re Worthy. Be in the room.

Watch the Replay

The Promise Didn’t Move.

The giants didn’t clear. They never got smaller. But Caleb named them and claimed the mountain in the same sentence, and Sunday, so did a room full of people in McCook, Illinois. If someone in your circle has been calling their retreat wisdom, send them this. What they’re calling patience might be silence.

Watch the sermon

Also This Week: The Podcast Is Back

Still Standing Season 2 is live, and the first episode says what most people won’t.

You Stayed Too Long. Let’s Be Honest.

You knew before you admitted it. You knew when the work stopped fitting. You knew when showing up became maintenance instead of mission. But you stayed, and called it commitment.

This episode is 19 minutes. It will cost you more than that.

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify

Support This Ministry

Sunday happened because people who believe this word needs to exist in the world give consistently. If The Promise Didn’t Move was the word your week needed, give with that same specificity.

Give at Mars Hill
Text MHGIVE to 33777

With love and expectation,
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

P.S. Week 5 is this Sunday: Stop Waiting Until You’re Worthy. One week before the series closes. You don’t want to be on the outside of what’s coming.