Celebrating 10 Years of God’s Faithfulness: The Journey of Three Timbers Church - 3TC Podcast - Jeff Ryan - 3/30/2025

Jeff Ryan and the congregation celebrate Three Timbers Church's 10th anniversary, reflecting on its journey and God's faithfulness. Jeff emphasizes the church's imperfections and the importance of confessing sin for forgiveness. The church's origins in Bennington, initial challenges, and God's provision of spaces for worship and offices are highlighted. Jeremiah 32 illustrates God's promise to gather and transform His people despite their disobedience. The theme of "Glorious Unfolding" is discussed, emphasizing God's ongoing work and the church's role in His greater plan. 

Welcome to Three Timbers Church! We are so glad you found us online and encourage you to explore all there is to learn about our church located in beautiful Bennington, Nebraska. When you come to Three Timbers, you can come as you are to experience the love of Jesus through the people of God. ​

Whether young or old, single or married, new to church, or a lifelong attendee, there's a place for you here. We invite you to join us toward a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ. Our goal is to share the passion, power, and presence of Jesus with others. We believe in supporting families through service, education, and loving one another as Jesus loves us, unconditionally.

Transcript

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Welcome to the three timbers podcast. We hope this will encourage and uplift you today. Touching touchy and personal, three words that describe three timbers, church on hopeful. I love that we put that together for three timbers in in three words. It's really cool to kind of hear, kind of the themes of how God has has done amazing things over these 10 years. And you know, if you've been a part of this for whether it's 10 years or five years or one year, you know that we are not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes. We have faithfully made lots of mistakes for 10 years as a church and and we know we're not perfect people, but I think that's what makes us God's people, is that we know we're not perfect, and one of the things that we feel is so important to do is to confess that imperfection of who we are, because we can't hide it from God. We can't do anything behind God's back. He knows that we are not perfect people, and when he confess our sin, we are forgiven. And so we are very intentional about taking a moment within the service to come before God, individually, corporately, confess our sin, that we will read responsibly the joyful, joyful news that we are forgiven. Let's come before God confessing our sin. Father, God, as we come and we gather here in this place, we are reminded of your perfection and our perfection, Lord. We know that we have fallen short of your glory, but yet you love us, yet you forgive us. So, Father, we confess that maybe we didn't always say or do or think the right way, that maybe we haven't been as faithful as we should. So Lord, we give that to you, Lord, and we we know that you don't give us back anger. You give us back love and mercy and grace forgiveness, because you are our Father, and so we come before you Lord in confessing our sin and knowing the joy of forgiveness, and we say those words now as we read together Proverbs, 2813, whoever conceals their sin does not prosper, but the One who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Amen You. It is really tough to believe that we are celebrating 10 years. It is absolutely amazing that we are celebrating 10 years. And one of the things that we've done over those 10 years, and one of the things that maybe you've experienced in your church journey, is typically a pastor or a worship leader will throw out a phrase and then the then the congregation will respond. For example, when I say God is good, the Church says, let's try it again. God is good all the time. Now that just isn't a really kind of cool call a response that's actually the three timber story. It really is amazing when we look at how good God is and how good and faithful God is. When we began this back in 2015 we had no idea where God was calling us to plant the church. There was a group of us that would get together and pray and try to discern and we look all the way out to 200 and fourth to all the way down to Midtown. We had no idea. And then God spoke through one of our members and said, How about Bennington? And so we had kind of come out to Bennington, and there's only one established church. And then we thought, Well, where can we meet? So we thought, the school. Well, we try to get into a school. And there weren't as many schools in Bennington then as there are now. And we really didn't have a school that was available at that time. And so we prayed and prayed, and we were kind of starting to get on the clock that we had to transition out. And then literally, at the last minute, we got a call. Pine Creek Elementary is available. And that's where the All of this began. In 2015 we began to worship God there, and again, we saw the faithfulness of God. You know, we say passion, power, presence. We always wanted a presence in our community. But where, but how. One day, I was driving down Second Street here in Bennington, and there was a little sign in the storefront, and it said, for rent. I. It wasn't very big. And so I called the number, and the gentleman owned it and told me, okay, well, what are you looking to use it for? I said, Well, we kind of want to have our church office there and do everything but Sunday morning. And he says, Well, if you're a church, I can't charge you that much. And he allowed us to come into that space, and that's where we began doing everything but Sunday morning, and then, as we began to worship the pandemic, none of us knew what to do, where to go. How do we do this thing online? What does this look like? Well, we had a relationship with Nick's stumble and bar, and we said today, would there be any chance that we can hold our worship services in the upper room at the stumbling because the schools just weren't ready to let us come back in and Nate stumble in. Just gave us the keys. I've never known a bar to give a church key, but there we were. We had keys to the bar. It was amazing. After a little while, that great office that we had while it was being sold. So we had to find a place. Where are we going to office out of? We had no idea. Well, down on the corner of Second Street and warehouse, we saw this really interesting building going up. We had no idea what it was going to be, but we thought, let's call on it. And so we called on it, and we had the staff come down, and we got a tour of that is now the Ministry Center, and it was beautiful. And we just kind of came out laughing, like there's no way we could ever afford anything like this. So I had our business manager, Rick Blum at the time, I said, just for giggles, run the numbers and tell me a number that if we could lease it for we'd at least have to pray about it. Rick ran those numbers, and it was an odd number that he came back with, because Rick is very detail oriented. And so when I called this gentleman, I said, Look, we loved your place. Would you ever consider leasing it? And he said, Sure. And I said, Well, how much would you charge? And I kid you not, he gave me the exact number that Rick gave me exact and it was a hot number. Once again, God is faithful, and that's what we're celebrating today, the faithfulness of God. And it's been interesting since we've been here at Bennington High School. God's really put on our leadership team's heart that maybe God was calling us to get a place of our own. And I would literally have people walk into the Ministry Center and say, We're buying this land up here. Would your church like to build on it? Yes, we really would. And we would look at that land, and we looked at the Bennington Christmas tree farm as a potential place. We looked at all of these places, and we thought, God, why do you keep sending us out to these places if none of them is going to work out? And then one day, about a month and a half ago, I got a call from a realtor, and he said, I know that you guys have been looking and a place is going to come on the market that I wanted to let you know about. And it was the space that was formerly Earl and gray at ignition church. And I think we've got some photos of this space. And so our, our leadership team got together, and we said, Is this the the opportunity is this? Is this our, our boat and playing moment where God's like, I'm finally ready to give you a space? Well, we knew what the man was offering, and once we kind of came back to consciousness. After that, we decided to say, What could we afford? And so we prayed about it. We said, This is what we could afford. And so we made the offer, and it was much lower than what this man was asking. And he said, Yes. He said, Yes, the faithfulness of God. And so we are in the process. We just got approved and recommended by the planning commission of Bennington, and now it goes to city council on April 14, and we feel very good about that, that once that is approved, we will close, and we will have our first ever very own starter home worship space, amen. God is faithful, and that's what we're here to celebrate today. We're not here to celebrate three timbers. We're not here to celebrate the impact that three timbers has had. We're here to celebrate the faithfulness of God, and we're going to take a look at a text today from Jeremiah. And I'm going to be reading from the New or the NIV. It'll be Jeremiah 32 verses, 36 through 41 and as you pull that up on your Bible app, or you've brought your Bible, let me just pray for us, Father God. We, thank you. We, thank you for your faithfulness. We, thank you Lord, for the privilege Lord, to be your people. Father, I pray that every word that is said would be to your glory by the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that you would get my sinful heart out of the way. And Lord, I could just be an. Deep vessel that you would speak through to each and everyone of us, Lord, that you would bring us comfort and conviction and hope and joy. Father, would you be glorified by your word? We ask this in the name of Jesus, amen. So we're going to read Jeremiah 32 verses, 36 through 41 you are saying about this city by the sword, famine and plague. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon. But this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, I will surely gather them from all the lands where I have banished them, and my furious anger and great wrath, I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will go well for them and their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them. I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and will assure they plant them in this land with all my heart and soul, I've always loved the prophet Jeremiah. He was a prophet for some 40 years, and they were hard years. He was not what we would call successful by any stretch of the imagination. In the Old Testament, he would not be considered successful today, he was persecuted. He was in prison, and God gave him one of the most unpopular messages he had to take to people. That message was, repent of your sin. That's not one of those things you see on a bumper sticker a lot, repent of your sin, because it just doesn't move people. But that was the message that he had to give. And so what we need to understand is the overarching theme here in the book of Jeremiah. So let me lay that out. The first is you have sinned against God. Jeremiah make sure that the people knew you have sinned against God. Secondly, he says you're going to be judged because of your sin by God through the Babylonians. And third, despite all of that, God is going to show you his faithfulness in the midst of your disobedience, the people of God broke their covenant with God. They stopped putting God first. They stopped living for God. They worshiped false God. And God said, I can't have that. If you're my people, you can't do that. And so what God was going to do was he was going to remove any tangible evidence that these people were his people. The city of Jerusalem was going to get sacked. The temple was going to be destroyed. It was not going to go well for them. And then, in the midst of this chaos, in the midst of this impending judgment, in midst of the wrath, in midst of the judgment, all that was coming. God says, I want you to do something Jeremiah, and it's not going to make any sense. It's going to seem ridiculous. It's going to seem illogical. It's going to seem crazy, kind of like planting a church with somebody who has no idea how to plant a church, but that's what God said. God said, I want you to do this thing? And he says, it's going to seem irrational. It's going to seem foolish, because you're about to get exiled from the very land that you said. But here's what I want you to do. He says, I want you to buy a piece of land in this place. What mean the place that we're about to get exiled from. You mean the place that's about to be destroyed. You mean the the place that, because of our disobedience has brought this judgment. You want us to buy a piece of land in, a land that we're not going to be in? And God says yes. And so what is Jeremiah doing? He thinks, he prays and he praises God. He says, God, if this is what you want, then this is what we're going to do. So despite the impending judgment, despite the impending do, despite the chaotic nature of what was about to come on, the people of God, God says, I'm about to do something so amazing. I'm about to do something that you won't even understand. I'm about to do something that's going to bring such amazing change in your heart that you can't even see it right now because of what's going on and what he is doing. He is offering hope and see that's what God does. He offers us hope in the midst of chaos. He offers us hope in the midst of frustration and disappointment and discouragement. God says I will be your hope in the midst of these difficult times. Because it's just counterintuitive to say I'm about to exile you from a land you're about to have judgment on you. Through the Babylonians, and now I want you to buy a field. So why? Why would God tell Jeremiah to do something that any of us can look at say that makes no sense. Here's why, because God always has a greater Kingdom plan for his people than the people have for themselves, right? God's God's got a bigger plan. We just see a small piece of the picture. God sees the whole picture, and his plan was restoration. His plan was to reform people, to redeem people, to repurpose his people for His glory, because that is what God does. And in the middle of this, God said, Let me tell you how it's going to happen. You're going to have a family member come to you. Jeremiah, at this point, is in chains. King Zedekiah chained him up see if you're going to have a family member come in and say, Look, you're the next of kin this field has died, or the the person has died, you gotta buy the field. And it happened exactly the way that God said it would happen, cuz we know that all things are possible with God, amen, right? What do we learn in the New Testament? For I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, because God is faithful. And so when we look at verse 36 if you go back just a couple of verses, I want you to look at verse 27 it says this, I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me? Was it too hard for God to provide a piece of land in the midst of chaos and judgment? No, was it too hard for God to plant a church in Bennington with people who had no idea how to plant a church? No, because God can do all things. He gave hope in the midst of hopelessness. He gave faith in the midst of faithlessness. God said, I'm going to gather my people back together. Look at what he says in Jeremiah, 3237 one day, I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. Feel that God is in the gathering business. God loves to gather people. He loves to gather his people from all different places. He loves to gather his people who have such opposite journey of another person that he's gathered. He loves to gather people who are all over the place, from all over the place, all who have a different story, a different journey, a different experience. God said, I'm going to gather people for my purpose. I'm going to gather people for My glory. I'm going to gather people so that they can worship me and they can be the church. And God has gathered people for 10 years to say, You're my people, you're my church, and it's part of his greater Kingdom plan. But God doesn't just gather people. He transforms people. When we started 10 years ago, he said, Well, God, what's the mission that you've called us to? And God told us clearly, to connect people to the transforming and redeeming love of Jesus. So God doesn't just gathers, God transforms. And that's what God says. Here he's I'm going to transform them. I'm going to give them a singleness of heart. And that word fear, there is reverence. God said, they are going to have such a reverence for me. Our theme for 2025 is recapturing reverence. Our theme for our 10 year celebration is glorious unfold. And those two things are connected that when we recapture our reverence for God, we will see and be a part of the glorious unfolding of his faithfulness. God is restoring his relationship with his people. God is redeeming his people. He is making them his covenant people. And we see this fully manifested in the person of Jesus, because in Christ, we are gathered in Christ. We are redeemed in Christ. We are restored in Christ. We are renewed in Christ. We are repurposed, individually and corporately to be the people of God, and when we do that, we see this glorious unfolding of how faithful God is. And that should encourage you and I as the church, that means God's not done that God that glorious unfolding. It's not to a point and stop. It's ongoing. We had our dinner last night. I shared this last night. It's tough to believe 10 years and there have been ups and there have been downs, and I know so many times I've come home to Christie. And I was just saying, Man, I am messing this thing up. So bad, man, I'm messing this up. And she would always tell me, you and we, and us are not big enough to mess up God's plan. Look, I've tried really hard. You all know that I've tried very long, but we're not big enough, just like the people here, they weren't big enough. Yes, they broke the covenant. Yes, they turn away from God. Yes, they worship i But God had a plan that was bigger than them, and God has a plan that's bigger than us, and God has a plan that's bigger than we could ever imagine. This is just the beginning of the beginning, friends, because this is going to go on for eternity that we get to come together and worship God see the glorious unfolding is that you and I, we don't just get to talk about or sing about or see a glorious unfolding. We get to experience it. Church plants aren't supposed to last beyond 18 months to two years friends, you're sitting here 10 years later. Why? Because we were really smart, because we were really strategic, because we really had a great plan that was no way it could fail, no because of God's faithfulness, because of how good God is, and what this text, I hope, is doing for you, as I know it does for me, is it encourages me to trust God in the midst of difficulties and discouragement and despair and to trouble and to fear and the failings, we can trust God and see when we remember the faithfulness of God in the past that becomes the foundation of our faithfulness to God now and in the future. And we can say, I don't know what's going to happen, but I can trust God. I'm not sure how this is going to work, but God is faithful in my life. Have experienced it before, and I know I will experience it again, and so we celebrate that faithfulness. Life is uncertain. None of us are guaranteed anything. I remember when I was in seminary taking some classes, and somebody talked about, what do you think about those church planners? Say, man, those poor suckers, no way. I couldn't do that. God's like, Oh, really, really, see about that. We sometimes have a plan for our life, for our church, for our ministry, and it doesn't go that way. And that's a good thing. That's a really, really good thing, because our plans can't match the glorious unfolding of God's plan, because what we see is out of the depth of despair and destruction and discouragement. What we see is that God is going to do something great, that God is going to going to allow us to see this glorious unfolding of his faithfulness. Because God is so good, and God has a plan. And when God transforms his people, it's not just an external. It's not just all just give them a new place. God changes heart. I don't know about you, my heart is really different today than it was 10 years ago. I understand more just how feeble I am, how ill equipped I am, I understand how good God is. I never would have experienced that without these last 10 years. And whether you've been here 10 years or two years, I hope that you feel that God has been transforming your heart, making you into the person that he created you to be, not the one that the world told you to be, or not the one you think you need to be, but the one that God said that's who I created you to be. My first day of college, my professor, Raul, sitting there, way to go, and he said this statement, the only thing consistent in life is change that makes a lot of sense in a secular way, but we know differently. In Hebrews 13, eight, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. God never changes God's faithfulness, never changes God's goodness, never changes his faithfulness. His goodness is not dependent on our faithfulness and our goodness, because God has this incredible, glorious unfolding of a plan for your life, for his church and for his people. And he says in this text, he goes, no longer are you going to be overwhelmed by fear? Because the people had a lot to fear. Right judgment was coming, Jerusalem was going to be set, the temple was going to be burned, they're going to be exiled. There was a lot to be overwhelmed by fear, but God said, No, you're going to be overwhelmed by my faithfulness. Who doesn't want to be overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God? Versus the fear in the world. That's what God offers you and I, and he says this to his people so friends hear these words. He says, I will never stop doing good to them. Man, God has done so much good for you and for me and for Astra. God says, I'm never going to stop sometimes people do good because they want something. God does good because he is good. He says that you and I have uninterrupted unity with God. Nothing can stop them. He says these words and these words and we we sang about this, but God says they will be my people, and I will be their God. You are God's people. You are God's Church of the people of the world. God chose you to be His Church in medicine. Think about that. God chose you. He didn't have to. We didn't earn it. We don't deserve it, but because of the goodness of God, he says, I choose you to be the church, to be the light that I want you to shine at your jobs, in your neighborhoods, in your family, in your home, and as the church, that doesn't mean life is easy. Just because you are God's people, you follow Jesus. Here are the people of God, and they're going to suffer. They're going to be exiled. It's going to be hard. These 10 years, there have been some hard, hard days, but after a little while, God says, I'm going to bring you back together because of his faithfulness. And you know, what God takes the most joy in is when his people delight in him. When we delight in the faithfulness of God that brings God joy. It doesn't bring God joy, but we keep doing things. It's when we delight in him. We say, God, you are so faithful, you are so good, and we celebrate that that brings him joy, and no matter how chaotic, no matter how crazy life can be, when we are connected to God, through Christ, we experience this glorious unfolding. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 11, he says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, pride, gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls when we experience the glorious unfolding of God's faithfulness in Christ, when we are yoked to Jesus, we will find peace even in the midst of chaotic and crazy and ever changing moment we can have and we can find that hope. And then God says this in verse 41 he says, and I will plant my people in this land with all my heart and all my soul. God says, I've got a plan, and I'm going to put you where I want you. I'm going to plant you 10 years ago, God had a plan to plant a church in this community, and he chose you. He chose all of us to be a part of this glorious unfolding as we stand here today and celebrate 10 years. But this isn't the end. It's the beginning of the beginning of what God is going to do. When we launched 10 years ago, the very first meeting that we had, the very first thing that we did was we played a video, a song called glorious unfolding, which we're going to sing here shortly. And maybe that time we thought the glorious unfolding was that we were going to quickly rise and be a big church and have a lot of people and and have a big building. Maybe that's what we thought the glorious unfolding was. If we did, we were wrong. The glorious unfolding is that over 10 years, we've been able to experience the faithfulness of God to provide buildings, locations, resources, amazing staff, amazing elders, amazing volunteers, amazing people. That's the glorious unfolding that we celebrate today, and that is His faithfulness. Amen. We're going to show a video here in a moment, but I just want us to take the take the time and and a time of reflection and and prayer. And if there's something that you just want to praise God for or pray about, you can shout it out, bow our heads and close our eyes. You can just shout out whatever you want to praise God for, and then I will close us in prayer. And then we're going to watch a video. So let's, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Thank you for joining us. For more information about three timbers, church, ministries and services, visit three timbers.org We would love. For you to join us in person you.