Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
I get to have the honor, actually, of introducing a dear friend to both Ben and I.
Pastor Dave Daly was on staff here with us for many, many years.
And last July we sent him and Noel and the kids with our blessing. But we're still a little hurt. But our blessing down to Los Angeles, where Dave is the pastor of vintage la Santa Monic and a thriving church. He's doing such good work in LA and we're so glad he's back today. Many of you might be here, a part of our church, because the first person that you connected with was Pastor Dave over coffee or in the office.
And that's why you're here. I know many of you, that is the story. And so with other guest speakers, it's like, oh, isn't it great to have somebody with a fresh take on things with Dave? It feels like one of us is back here. And so we're so grateful to hear from Pastor Dave today. Would you welcome Pastor Dave Daly.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Thanks, dude.
Good morning, Westside.
How we doing?
Good. It is great to be back with you. Greetings from sunny la.
I'll be honest, we lived here in Bend for seven years before the Lord called us down to la. And LA has made me soft.
It is so cold.
My body has forgotten how cold it is. But gosh, it's so good to be with you all. I am sending love from Noelle, my wife, our three girls. We love Westside. We love this community.
It's a joy to be with you. As we wrap up 2025 and I was praying for this time together, what the Lord might say, what he would want to do. And I'm very expectant for, like what God's gonna do right now. In our time together, it has been a wild ride for us. 18 months we've been in LA and a lot has happened, but it'll be 10 days. In 10 days, it'll be a year anniversary of the wildfires that happened. We had been in LA for six months at the time the wildfires happened.
I was in a leadership meeting with our church down in LA and we started getting text messages that morning and people were saying, hey, the wind's really going. It sounds like something started burn in Palisades. And we turned the news on and 20 acres had burned. And we were like, oh, my gosh, wow, 20 acres in the Palisades. And turned the TV off. Back to our meeting.
About 30 minutes later, our phones are just going crazy. Everybody just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Turn the news back on.
200 acres had burned in, like, a very short amount of time. And you guys know the story. Like, it just kept going. We were evacuated from our home for 14 days before we could get back in.
And praise the Lord. Our house was spared, but 45 families in our church lost their homes, burned completely to the ground.
And when something like that happens, there is a natural response in us of why, why this, why now? Why us?
And that why is okay.
Everyone has permission for the why.
What's on the other side of the why is what defines us as Jesus followers.
And there's several camps in our church community, three main ones. A group of folks who just said, I'm done. I'm done with la. I'm done with California. I'm done with everything. And moved to, you know, Nashville or Austin or Bend. You're welcome.
Migrated up here.
A second camp of people are kind of in the in between where they're working with insurance and contractors and red tape to see can I do, I want to rebuild. Will I stay here? Not sure.
But then there's a remnant. There's a small group who believe God is doing something, that the ashes are not wasted in the kingdom of God.
The ashes in their life are not wasted in the kingdom of God. And I want to tell you about two people, Chad and Amy, who are walking this story out. They're part of our church.
Their grandparents were bought the home in the Palisades two generations ago, built it from scratch, lived there. Their parents were raised there. They were raised there and planned to be there all of their lives. And then last January, their house was burned to the ground. Nothing standing.
But Amy in particular has this radical faith that is a legacy of our Christian faith that says God, what are you up to?
Yes, the question why? Why us? The tears, the anger, which is all fair, all reasonable, but there's something on the other side of that says God, what are you up to?
Our church participated in this volunteer effort when the wildfires happened, where we took teams with a nonprofit that does this across the country. And this is sad, but wildfires are happening so often now. There's actually a nonprofit that goes. When they see a fire happening in a major city, they take a team of people with their trucks and equipment and everything, and they do something called ash outs. Has anybody heard of this? Ash outs? Okay, I had never heard of it.
They go. They're trained professionals for going into these kind of environments, and they take the families with a team of Volunteers, and they literally sift through the ashes of their property to see if anything survived.
And for so many people, this is the first time they're stepping back into what was their home and is very cathartic and oftentimes very encouraging when they find just Grandma's old ring or this little hand me down or some random thing.
And so Amy had scheduled their ash out with our church to go to the site and sift through the ashes of their home.
And Amy prayed before she went and said, lord, I expect you to show up.
I'm going to this place of devastation in my life, going to this place of loss and grief, literally a graveyard of our home.
And I expect you to show up and be there, say something.
So Amy's in my office the day after her ash out, and she says, pastor Dave, guess what?
Jesus showed up.
This was the first thing that Amy saw when she walked onto her property.
It's a little statue of an angel.
And Amy said, I've never seen this statue before.
I never remember this statue being on our property. I never saw it. I don't know, like, how it got there, but it felt like this little whisper from Jesus, my presence is here. I am here.
Even if all this is gone, I'm still here.
The second thing Amy found was this little grouping.
I don't know if you can see it in the middle there. Obviously, everything is burned completely house to the ground. But in the center here is a set of teacups, as if someone had had tea after the fires and just set them there, just unburned.
And Amy said, these teacups were from when I was a missionary in India.
And in India, when you're a missionary, you don't go to Starbucks to meet people.
You welcome them into your home.
And when you welcome them, you make chai tea from scratch.
And the whole house smells with the aroma. And you welcome them to a table, and there are these specific teacups you use to serve chai tea. And with these teacups, Pastor Dave, with these teacups, I introduced dozens of people to Jesus.
With these teacups, I prayed for people to receive Jesus.
And it was of everything that could have been left in her home afterwards, these cups remained.
And she felt the Lord say, I'm not done.
I'm not done with you. This story's not over.
It's still happening.
Amy wrote a book that's called Teacups in the Ashes. Carrying a Dream.
When life Falls apart.
I encourage you to check it out, hear Amy's story. I Get no royalties from this. It is not a plug for me.
Support Amy and her family. You can read that story. It's beautiful.
Amy was living a life of expectation.
She was living a life that even in the grief and the sorrow and the pain of something I hope none of us ever experience in our lifetime, that God would be there, that he would show up.
And that is a legacy of faith that we live in collectively, together. And the stories of scripture carry this legacy to us.
And we're going to read about a few people who lived out this expectation, this life of expectation that God was at work. It's from Luke, chapter two. Let's read this together.
Verse 25 to 40. It says this.
Now, there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout.
He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. Let's pause there for a second. Okay, do we get the little pieces here of who Simeon is?
Righteous and devout man, loves the Lord, Waiting in expectation for God to do the thing he said he would do for Israel, all of their existence. He's waiting in expectation. Not. This is a story for some, like, distant future, not like, oh, maybe some other generation.
Simeon showed up in the temple.
He listened to the Holy Spirit and he said, today's the day.
And then the next day he showed up to the temple, heard the Holy Spirit, said, today's the day, and then the next day, and then the next day, and then the next day until it was the day when the parents brought the child Jesus to do for him what was the custom of the law. So on the eighth day, the baby is named, brought to the temple, circumcised, and it is their dedication ceremony.
When the parents brought the child Jesus to do for him was custom of the law required. Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, sovereign Lord, you had promised this, and now you may dismiss me, your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations.
A light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel, for all of humanity.
The child's father and mother, Mary and Joseph, marveled at what was said to him, said about him.
Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, this child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too.
There was also there a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher.
She was very old.
She had lived with her husband seven years after marriage and then was a widow until she was 84.
She never left the temple, but she worshiped night and day, fasting and praying, coming up to them at that very moment. She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
When Mary and Joseph had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth, and. And the child grew and became strong, and he was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him.
Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we just proclaim that your word is alive and active. Would it be alive and active in our hearts in this moment, right now, in this space? Would heaven break into this room right now? Lord, would you give us, awakening us, an expectation of who you are, what you will do in us, through us, in our time? In Jesus name, amen.
What are the ingredients of a life lived expectantly?
There are seeds planted here that we get to see that take root, and they grow and flourish into a life of expectation.
We see here Mary and her humility, Joseph and his obedience.
Simeon and his faith.
Anna and her joy.
Let's look at these four, and hopefully we can kind of pull some encouragement out of this.
Obviously, we've been talking about the story of Mary for the last month or so.
And Mary is this teenager, this single teenager, and an angel arrives to her and gives her really great news.
Guess what, Mary, you're gonna love this. Mary, you're gonna get pregnant.
No man involved. It's gonna be great.
Now understand this. I think you know this, but let it set in a little bit.
Mary's like 14, 15, 16, something like that, probably.
She's engaged, we know.
And she gets this news, you're gonna be pregnant out of marriage.
It's going to be great.
And what would your response be?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.
For her, this could be a death sentence.
This could be complete ostracization from her community and her family.
This could be living as a poor beggar.
There's so many bad possibilities that in our human mind could look at this situation and say, no, thank you.
But what is Mary's response? Do we remember what her response was?
I am a servant of the Lord.
I'm a servant of the Lord.
This doesn't make sense. This is going to be really hard. Nobody's going to believe me or understand. But if you're in it, Lord, I'm in.
I'm here.
Mary's humility makes the Jesus story possible.
It's incredible.
It's a seed of expectation that God is a God of character who does things for his glory. And where God's glory shows up, great things happen.
Mary believes that in some way, sense or form, to be able to say, I am a servant of the Lord. I don't know how this all works out. It doesn't make sense on paper. I'm in.
And then there's Joseph. Gosh, I love Joseph. Joseph is like a hero to me.
And he rarely gets talked about. It's like just this moment at Christmas. He kind of gets a little bit of airtime.
But Joseph is this man of character before any of this happens. He shows he's an honorable man because his fiance comes to him and says, hey, pregnant.
But it was God, right? Right. Great. Cool, Mary. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.
Well, let's just do this quietly. Right? This could be for Joseph. If the story ended here and he's like, I'm out already, there would be shame for Joseph already. There would be ridicule for Joseph.
Even if the story never moved forward from there, what he's going to bear in this moment is going to be painful. And yet he says, without even hearing from the Lord, yet, let's just. I'll do this quietly to spare you.
He's an honorable man.
And that honorable man gets a word from the Lord in a dream, which seems to be a way the Lord speaks. We're going to talk about that in just a second.
He gets a word from the Lord in a dream that says, don't worry, this is all good. I'm in it.
Marry Mary and go make a life together.
And Joseph wakes up and it says, he did what the Lord commanded.
Gosh, the ramifications of this. The snickers, the jokes, the I's, the comments, what he will live under the rest of his life. We know all this on this side. We know Jesus. Life, death, resurrection, Easter Sunday, woo. All the good stuff.
He doesn't know any of that.
He says, yes, he did as the Lord commanded. What an encouragement. His obedience becomes this fuel for expectation.
All right, Lord, I'm gonna trust you. Cause of who you are. I'm gonna do as you say. And I believe you're gonna make something of this.
It's a life of expectation.
And then we have Simeon and Anna. Oh, I love these two. I love these two.
Simeon and Anna had watched their entire life, the nation of Israel, get lower and lower and lower to decrease and decrease and decrease as Rome move becomes more brutal and taxes them more and pushes them to the edges of society and just overwhelms them. Their life is just this.
Year after year, decade after decade of just life getting harder.
And these two keep showing up.
And they don't just show up like, okay, here I am.
They show up with expectation.
Simeon goes into the temple, hears from the Lord, is a devout man, like, walked with God, and he's rewarded at the end of his days, in the sunset season of his life. He's rewarded by seeing Jesus with his own eyes.
And all he has to do is see him and he rejoices.
He says, today's the day.
Every day I'd shown up, it wasn't the day, although I was ready. Today's the day.
Here he is. And nothing will be the same again.
And then Anna, gosh, to be a widow in this time, married 7 years and then alone and 84 years old means that she was poor, means that she had, like, no standing in life or society at all.
And she showed up and she worshiped and she fasted and she prayed every single day.
This wasn't like a showing up, like, woe is me.
Oh, look at the joke my life turned out to be.
No, it is like, come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord.
Here I am, Lord.
Show up, Lord.
And she is so excited to see Jesus, she can't help but tell everyone she sees, he's here, he's here, he's here. It's happened.
This is life that has lived in expectation for this moment.
Are you catching this?
You guys, listen. The economy's bad, politics are a mess.
Society, culture, the nation, the world, all of it. Guess what? We're the Jesus people.
We're the Jesus people.
We show up in these moments.
John said that the light showed up in the darkness, the light showed up in the darkness. And what do you remember? Let's be reminded.
The darkness cannot overcome it.
Not will not, not, might not, cannot, cannot overcome it has no possibility. If this room went black, no lights at all, and I lit the smallest match, that room could not overcome that.
Could not.
Are we living with that expectation that the light has come and the darkness cannot overcome it? The economy cannot overcome it. Politics can't overcome it. Whatever's happening in your personal life, your relationship, your marriage, you're limping into 2026. You will not be Overcome Jesus, Jesus, Mary's humility, Joseph's obedience, Simeon's faith, Anna's joy. These are all things we can hold on to. They can be our way of living into expectation.
And we're not alone. These are not like stories of a bygone era. This is happening right now. And I'm gonna share two stories of how this is happening right now.
The first is the story of a man named Ibrahim.
Ibrahim grew up in Iran.
Iran, in his lifetime, has been one of the most hostile places for the Christian faith, like death sentence if you are found to be a follower of Jesus in Iran, intensely oppressive.
And Abraham grew up in a Muslim family that had been Muslim for all generation. Anyone could remember.
It is what you are if you live in Iran.
And Abraham had a dream.
Jesus came to Ibrahim in a dream and said, follow me.
And he was so convinced in that dream that. That Jesus is real, that that life is the way to go. That against all odds and all rejection and all the pain, like Joseph, he said, I will do as the Lord commands.
And so he goes to London to study the Bible. And he meets one of our pastors, Pastor Amy, there in London.
And Amy works with the Bible Society there in England.
And Abraham comes to Amy, and she said, ibrahim, so good to meet you. What's God doing in Iran? He said, oh, he's on the move, and I'm digging a hole in the desert.
And Amy says, I don't know what that means in Iranian. That doesn't mean anything to me. He said, no, no, Pastor Amy, I'm digging a hole in the desert and I need a million Bibles.
Okay? What are you talking about? He said, iran will not be like other places.
I'm prepared and ready. When the spirit of God breaks out in Iran, we will be ready. Because I have watched in Russia, when the Wall fell and the west moved in, the church was not ready. The people were not prepared. And as the church moved in, so did pornography and consumerism, and all of the west moved right in with it. Two decades later, Russia is right back where they were.
This will not be the story in Iran.
And Amy, she's like, Abraham, I love your faith, man. But, like, Iran's a hostile place.
And Abraham prayed and he prayed and he prayed and he dug his hole in the desert. And last year, 30 years later, Pastor Amy saw Abraham at a Bible convention in London. Said, abraham, what's going on with the hole?
He said, it's empty.
All of the Bibles have been moved into the churches in Iran, which are exploding Right now, the churches are like wildfire moving through Iran. Pastor AMY I need a million more Bibles.
Abraham had prayed for decades with expectation. Not just prayed. Oh, God, it would be so great if you would save some of my family members. Not just, oh, it would be cool to see.
Oh, I've heard these stories of the Bible. Lord, that sounds great. No, Lord, do it in my life, in my country, and I'm putting money on this. I got skin in the game. I'm gonna put a million Bibles in a hole in the desert until you say yes.
Second story was for Noel and I. We were in London in May and our church has a sister church in London. So we go back and forth. There's quite a bit. And we were there in, in London in May of 2025.
And I don't know if you all have have known this, but for decades the expectation has been that the church in England would die, that the English church had just ponied up with the government. It's one thing there. Church and state are one thing. And so in every community of 200 people, they built a church. And in the Church of England. And so there's empty churches all over England. Nobody goes to church. No one is following the faith. And the report was the church will be dead after this generation. The church will be dead.
It'll be a relic of history.
But there's a small remnant that prayed, said, not in our lifetime. Lord, no.
And something crazy has happened in the last five years, you guys.
The attendance in churches has moved from 8% of the population to 12% of the population, which for them is this massive jump in people attending church.
And we had heard these kind of rumblings. They call it over there the quiet revival.
Go check it out. You can Google the quiet revival. And there's all of these statistics of, like, what's happening right now. So Noel and I were over there, like, what are you up to? Or like, what's going on?
And we met Pastor Al, who pastors a church in Hackney, England, and he was hosting a prayer and worship night in his church. And so we were there for that prayer and worship night. And he was telling the story of what God had been doing. And in 2023, he had heard that God was on the move in a little place called Asbury in Kentucky.
This little college, this little Christian college in the chapel there that the students had broken out in worship that hadn't stopped for a month.
24, 7, for a month, no one left the room. They just worshiped and worshiped and it never stopped. And someone would stop singing, and randomly, someone else would go up and continue worshiping. And people started coming from all over.
And Pastor Al heard about this thing. He said, if it's true, I don't want to miss that.
So he flew from London to Kentucky.
And Pastor Al said, when you got out of the car, he could feel the weight of the Holy Spirit, like it was a physical presence in that place.
And he went in, he's walking into the church. He's walking in with a group of people, and he looks over and there's another pastor from London walking next to him.
This pastor was from another part of London, and they had planted their church around the same time. And if he was honest, he felt like this pastor was like a rival pastor.
And they're in this revival meeting in Little Asbury, Kentucky, together in this moment, at the same time, same day. And they end up at the altar just weeping and repenting.
And the one pastor comes to Al and he says, the Lord has told me to repent to you, that I have seen you as a rival in our city.
And so they prayed together and repented together. And as they were praying, the other pastor says to Al, lord, would you bring this revival to London and would you start in Al's church first?
And they both are just weeping. And Al gets back on the plane to fly back to London, and he hears the Lord say, it's coming.
You have 18 months to prepare.
Don't do anything.
Don't change anything in your church. Don't promote anything. All you do is pray, repent, and prepare your heart for what I'm about to do.
And we were there, you guys.
May of 25. We're on the ground in this space where they're about to hold a worship and prayer night from 7pm to 7am who's signing up for that?
7pm to 7am on a Friday night in Hackney, London.
Who's going to show up to that yet? Noelle and I are there, and we're. I'm laying on the floor of this church just weeping because I can feel the weight of the presence of God in that place.
And there's an expectation in me. God, when would I get to see you do something?
Would you do it here?
And they open the doors and this is what we see.
This is what we see.
This is what we see. Nope, one before that.
This is what we see.
2,000 young people who are waiting outside the. Hold on. Wait. Save it. It gets better.
2000 young people waiting outside for an Event that wasn't promoted, wasn't put out on social media.
They heard somewhere, some way that something was happening for a night in Hackney, London, and these people were waiting to worship Jesus.
And we opened the doors and you guys, from the moment the stick hit the snare drum, it's like heaven exploded in this place. And this is what the night looked like for 12 hours.
All night long, worshiping, praying, prophetic words, people being healed, all of this faith. And it is the. It was the expectation of a generation that prayed that this might happen that broke out that night.
So I leave this with you.
I don't know what 2026 holds for any of us.
Everyone around you will tell us it's only gonna get worse, but we're the Jesus people and we have story after story after story in the legacy of our faith that God shows up, the light cannot overcome him.
So would we be people of expectation as we go into this year together? Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I ask, even in this moment, Lord, would you awaken in the people of this room in Bend, Oregon, for this moment, such a time as this? Would you awaken lost dreams and hopes that people have asked for and given up on?
Would you awaken God, a desire to see our neighbors, Lord, even see our enemies fall in love with you and be healed and set free?
Would you awaken in us that Holy Spirit discontent that we're not satisfied with just another year of the same old, same old?
Would we have great expectation? Because you are great, because you love us, because you love this city and where you show up, God, your promise is you will make all things new.
So would you do it in us first and would you do it through us? For your glory in Jesus name?
