Sermons tagged with Family

All right, Grace, well, good afternoon and Merry Christmas. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year, particularly at Grace. I love seeing old and new faces. I love seeing, looking out and seeing families sitting together, three generations sometimes. What a blessing that is. I'm sentimental and hokey, and I think that that's really, really wonderful. So if you get to be here with your family, I'm so happy for you. And I also wanted to express a sincere thank you and my gratitude for choosing to spend your Christmas with grace. I hope that you're blessed by what we're doing and singing and talking about. In this sermon this afternoon, I'm supposed to finish up with our series called Foretold, where we've been going through some prophecies in the Old Testament, seeing their fulfillment in Christ in the New Testament, and kind of reflecting on that impact for Christmas. And as I was writing this week's sermon for the Christmas Eve service, I hated it. I just didn't like it at all. I didn't know why I chose it. I mean, I knew why I chose it. It was Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus' light shines brightly at Christmas. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't make it work. And so finally, I just decided to scrap it and take a minute, the platform that I'm afforded as the pastor, to just tell you what's on my heart at Christmas. What do I want to say to Grace that, it came to me very quickly what I wanted to talk about with you guys. Because I don't know about you. I can speak for a few because I've confirmed this with some people around me. But this December has not felt very Christmassy. This is the least feeling Christmas I think that I've ever experienced. I've never been in a December that felt less like Christmas than this one. And that may resonate with you, it may not. But for me, I'm sitting here going, I can't believe it's Christmas Eve. We just finished up with Thanksgiving. We just got done with that. And now the decorations are up and we're doing all the things and you're rushing to all the meetings and all the plans and all the parties, but it doesn't feel very much like Christmas. And really, if I'm being honest, I just feel harried and hurried and exhausted. And increasingly, we do this to ourselves and our culture does this to us where December, as merry and jolly as it is, as happy as it is, as much of this as this feigned joy as we are supposed to experience at Christmas time and walk around with a dumb smile on our face saying Merry Christmas to everyone. Happy Holidays, this is the best time of year. That's not necessarily true. And increasingly, December becomes a remarkable source of stress, right? In our workplaces, we're trying to do what we've got to do to meet the year end. There's some things we've got to get out the door, there's some things we've got to ship, there's some deals we have to close, there's's some stuff that we got to get done. There's some emails that we have to get out. There's some reports that we have to file. There's so much to do at the end of the year, and we're working late nights. My wife has been working until midnight trying to get some deadlines done a lot of nights in the last couple of weeks. We turn in extra time. I've watched my staff turn in extra time in the months of December working weekends and stuff like that, and I know that you've done that as well. We have parties to get to. We have gifts to buy. We have gifts to wrap. We have things to host, which means houses to clean. We have meals to prepare and to deliver. We have children's recitals to attend. I have to go to John's preschool and watch him stand there still while the rest of the children sing and then pretend like I'm having a fun time. This is how I wanted to spend my Thursday. I'm glad I'm not working right now and getting actual things done. I like to go sit in a room where I can barely see my son. He doesn't do anything for 10 minutes, and then I have to go tell him he did a great job. That's fun. And we had to do three of those, plus a piano recital. But we all, we do it. And we just run through life harried and hurried. And I just thought, the rate at which we are going, we are about to careen into 2025. No more prepared for that and for that year than we are for this Christmas. And if we're being honest, at least for me, I don't think it was just December that has exhausted me. I know for many of us, 2024 has been a difficult year. For some of us, 2024 will forever mark a year of profound loss. And so as we approach this Christmas, that loss echoes and resonates with us. And we can't help but carry it into these places where we are supposed to be merry. In 2024, things, let's just say it out loud, life continues to get more expensive and wages do not continue to be commensurate with that expense. And many of us and many of our families feel that pressure. And that exerts a unique pressure on an individual and on a marriage and on a family, and that's hard. The political year, no matter where you sit, was hard. You have to watch your words. You can't say this thing to that person. You can't bring up this topic in these circles. You have to be very careful and very measured. There's just a low, lying, simmering tension in a lot of the circles in which we exist. It has stressed us out and it has taxed us. And for me, personally, I'm going into 2025 hoping it's just a lot better than 2024 because this wasn't my favorite year. We have private struggles. We have private stresses. I can see the strain of this year on the people who are closest to me. A lot of times when I think about a sermon, I think about what I imagine to be the average person of grace. And I try to aim at that person. And then people to the left and the right, inward and outward, further along, less farther along, have attended a long time, have attended less time, they can catch something as I talk to the mean. But as I wrote this, I thought about the people who are closest to me. So if you don't know me, I hope this helps you. I hope this resonates with you. And I'm not foolish enough to think that it will resonate with everyone. Some of you have had a wonderful December. You're like, no, dude, Christmas has been great. Some of you have had a wonderful 2024, and I'm so glad you have. But a lot of us have not. And a lot of us, if we're being honest, just kind of feel defeated and exhausted and tired. And it's weird to roll into Christmas feeling like that. Because of that, I think it will help us to reflect on the week after Christmas for the Holy Family. The Holy Family is how our Catholic brothers and sisters refer to the earthly family of Christ, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. And I want to turn our attention to thinking about what life must have been like for that week following Christmas. And I know it's probably not typical. I don't have the luxury of going to Christmas Eve services. I only attend the ones I'm paid to speak at. So I don't know what other guys and girls pick to talk about, but I'm guessing it's not typically the week after Christmas. So if you'll indulge me this, what do you think that week was like for them? They have this baby in a manger. Scripture doesn't tell us how long they tarried in Bethlehem. It doesn't tell us if they continued to participate in the high holidays in Jerusalem. It doesn't tell us how long they waited to go back to Nazareth. But my guess is that as soon as she was able to get on a donkey or get in a cart being pulled by a donkey, that Joseph loaded his young family up and got them back to the comforts of Nazareth and to home as quickly as he could. And when they got back to Nazareth, this is what is so amazing to me, I think. Their world became so very small. Their world becomes tiny. It's all about this baby. Joseph, I'm sure, had things to do. I'm sure he had cabinets to build and shelves to hang and closets to arrange. Actually, I hesitate to do this because it's nerdy, but it's important to get things right. Joseph probably won the carp carpenter, okay? Mason and carpenter are interchangeable in the original language. Nazareth is surrounded by stone quarries, not trees, so he probably was a mason, all right? I'm just saying. So he had bricks to build and walls to erect. But he put that on hold because all Joseph cared about that week after Christmas was caring for his wife and caring for this baby and sitting still together and beholding and reveling in the blessings of God. And everything else in the world faded and got very small and life got very still. And for Mary, who must have had all of these thoughts of preparing a house for a baby, when you had your first baby, remember, this is so funny, remember when you had your first baby, your mamas, and the most important thing, you go into this weird nesting thing, and the most important thing in the world is to get that nursery ready. And you just, you ride your husband like a rented mule to get that thing ready on time. And we put, we buy new Allen wrenches, we put together all the things, we paint the room, we hang the stuff, and it's ready. It's month five. It is ready. We're good to go. And then you have that baby and you don't use that stuff for four months. That baby sleeps in your room. You had plenty of time. I'm sure that Mary had all these thoughts about getting the house ready for this child. And she had a wedding to plan. She had things to do. But for that week, when she got home with that baby, all those things faded. And her life got very still and very small. And what I and to reflect on that first week after Christmas. Because I think for many of us, we need to, in this upcoming week, seek to emulate the Holy Family in our life. And seek to be still. And seek to be small. And seek to focus on the blessings of God. I think that most of you in here have been burning it at both ends. I think that most of you in here are tired. I think that most of you in here, if you had a way to hit pause and go to a hotel room and exist in 65 degrees and pitch black for 12 hours, you'd take it running, man. And you would sleep. The sleep of angels. And I wonder when the last time was that you allowed yourself to be still and focus on God's blessings. And I know that it might seem impossible to do this. But what did you do when you had your first baby? For some of you, it's been a lot of years. And those things are cloudy. I think God intentionally erases our memories so we don't warn the next generation about how miserable it is to have a kid. Because I always laugh at people who don't have children who say that they're tired. And I'm like, buddy, I used to think I knew what tired was, too. Bring home a newborn. You bring home the newborn exhausted, and then it hits you, oh, yeah, no one's coming. Like, I'm still not sleeping for three years, right? But when you have that baby, first one, second one, third one, doesn't your world get very still and very small? All the things at work, dad that you had to do and get done and mom that you had to do and get done, don't those things fade away? Aren't you for just this blink in time, just the snapshot, finally able to see things in a perspective that puts work where it actually belongs and stops it from being a five alarm fire in your head because you have more urgent matters at hand. Don't you, moms and dads, see that when you bring home that first baby all the social calendars all the obligations all the half twos and the ought tos all the appointments and all the meetings and all the deals and all the lunches you have this remarkable ability all of the sudden to see them for what they are and to set them aside and focus on what's important to you. We have the ability to make our lives still and small. And so this week coming up, I want to encourage you to make this verse your mantra. It's a very simple verse in Psalm 4610. I'm going to say it to you, and I'm positive that you can memorize it. And I want you to say it to yourself this week. Psalm 4610. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46, 10. Be still and know that I am God. I don't know what your plans are this week. I know that for us, we're going to get up tomorrow, we're going to have Christmas morning, and then we're going to load up with my mother-in-law and we're going to drive to Atlanta. And we're going to spend the week there. And that week is filled with different stressors and different appointments. We've got to get the kids loaded up. We've got to get them down there. We've got to go see mom and dad. We've got to do the thing. We've got to open the presents. I've got to look at Lily and make sure she's adequately grateful for the crap she doesn't need. And then we've got to do all the stuff, right? And I have to smile when I get the things. you got to do all that stuff. And then you got to go to the other family and I don't know what your family dynamics are. You got to watch your words so you don't offend anybody, so you don't give off the wrong kind of vibes or whatever it is. It carries stress. But when I feel myself get stressed this week, I'm going to slow down and I'm going to say in my head, be still and know that I am God. Calm down. I'm with you. Be still. When my head spins forward to the sermon in January, to the series coming up, to the things that we need to do, to what's waiting on me when I get home, I'm going to stop and tell myself, be still and know that I am God. Just for a week, be still. I don't know what your plans are. But my encouragement to you and what I want to say to you today, what I want to say to Grace and to the friends of Grace, is this week, as much as you can, in every moment that you can steal, be still, be small, and behold. Be still, be small, and behold. Let Christmas be a gift to you that re-centers you and refocuses you on Christ. Let Christmas be a pause button in your life. A divinely ordained break. Where you agree with God that this week we will be like the Holy Family. And I will be still. I will let things go. Let the dishes, listen to me, let the dishes pile up longer than you want and sit present with your families while you can. Let the email go. It'll be there in January. I know you think it's going to be the end of the world if you don't respond and that person's going to judge you. Who cares? We don't like them anyways. Let it go. Be still and allow God to speak into your life. Be small. And I mean this. When I say that Mary and Joseph's world got very small when they had Christ, what I meant is it's just them. It's just the family. It's just mom, dad, and son. And so this week, I want to encourage you, like the Holy Family, to be small. Keep your circle small. Focus on who you have around you. Be grateful for your family. Be grateful for your intimate friends. Be grateful for who you find yourself in circle with. And try to keep yourself from enlarging your world beyond these simple blessings of God. Try to keep yourself from enlarging your world to external concerns, to what's going on at work and what's going on socially and what's going on dramatically and what's going on in the rest of the areas of the world. And try the best you can, Grace, to let your world for just this week be small and focus on the blessings that you have around you. And as you're being still and being small, behold. Behold. Behold the blessings of God that sit in your life. Behold the beauty of children. Behold the beauty of a spouse. And listen, some of us have wonderful marriages. And when I say behold the beauty of your spouse, that's a simple thing for you to do. Some of you have really bad marriages. They're rough. And when I say behold the beauty of a spouse, you're like, I don't know. I don't think that's not for me this year. Behold the beauty that you're still together, that you're still fighting, that you still care about each other enough to keep working on this, and behold the beauty of the possibility that it could get better. But if we don't stop and pause, if we just keep running into 2025 like we handled 2024, if we go into it as harried and hurried and exhausted as we are, that will not get better. Sometimes things need a pause to heal. So behold the beauty of the presence of your spouse. At some point in the next day or two, I'd be willing to bet that you find yourself around a tree. When you're there, let me just put this thought in your head. When you're there, you're around your tree and people are opening gifts and you're doing the thing with family. Can you take some time to be still and to behold each person in that room? Can you take some time to express to God gratitude that they exist in your life for who they are and for what they represent? Can you stop and acknowledge God's incredible goodness in your life? If you're a grandparent and you're lucky enough to sit around the tree with grandbabies, can you just pause and don't worry if the temperature's right or if they liked your fruit salad. They didn't. Nobody does. Stop serving it, please. Stop worrying about if they liked your gift. It doesn't matter. It's going to get thrown away in a year or two. Stop worrying about all the things that distract us from the moment and just simply praise God that you have grandbabies and they're there with you. If you're lucky enough to sit around the tree with parents, even if the relationship is difficult, even if they're not who they used to be, will you please pause and behold that blessing from God and praise him for their presence in your life? If there is a seat around that tree that is empty this year and wasn't last year, or is empty now and that absence still resounds, and it causes you grief, can you behold that grief and be grateful for that empty seat? Because the more it hurts, the harder they left you, and the bigger blessing they were. Can we stop and be grateful for the years that God gave us with them? Mamas and daddies, can we be grateful for our kids? Grateful for our brothers and sisters and our friends and our family that are around. Pause around that tree and behold God's goodness in your life. And then this week, I don't know what the rest of your schedule is. I hope for most of you, it has wound down. There's nothing really important happening. If you're going to work, there are cursory hours that don't really matter anyways, and you're going to get it done. You're just going to coast through, and then you're going to go home. You're going to do about 10 full minutes of work a day, and then you're going to call it. I hope that's that's your work week if that's what you're doing I hope you're not frenzied and harried I hope that's not the case and I hope that this week you will steal all the moments you can to be still and be small and behold and just pause with your family and the people that you love. And reflect on God's goodness in your life. And allow that to rejuvenate you. And replenish you. And restore you. As we move into yet another year. And listen, I know that some of you may be thinking, if you have not checked out already, that, yeah, Nate, that sounds like a decent idea. I mean, I like the idea, like, pause, just take a beat and reflect on things. I've got things to do. I'm busy. I've got appointments to hit. I've got things to go to. I've got houses to clean. I have things to get accomplished. All right. If I can't convince you to take a time out, allow Christmas to do that for you, then let's see if Jesus can. In Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 25, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses this exact issue, and he says this. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? No. Just to help you out, no. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Let the words of Christ resonate with you today. Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has its own troubles. Each day has troubles of its own. Grace, I want to urge you as your pastor or pastor for the day. In the upcoming week, to be like the Holy Family. And at the end of what for many of us has been a difficult year, be still, be small, and behold the blessings of God in your life. And in that way, let him replenish and restore you for the upcoming year. Let Christmas be that gift to you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the gift of Christmas. We thank you for the time that it is and represents. We thank you for the family that we celebrate, that we spend time with. I pray for joy and laughter and hugs and tears. God, we pray for those who have lost. We pray that you would comfort them in what is a time full of mixed emotions. God, I know that there are people even now in our church who are suffering. I know that we have folks watching from the hospital right now and we pray for them and for Darlene. God, for a lot of us, this doesn't feel like Christmas yet, but we are trusting you and we are hoping in you. And Lord, I pray that we would find the strength and the wisdom at some point or another in the coming days to be like the family that you entrusted Jesus to. That we would be still and small and that we would behold you and your blessings. Help us to receive this gift. Jesus, we love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, guys. We want to invite you to stand as we just worship together this morning. Let's sing this together. There's a God. There's a God who is real and strong. He's alive and fights for his own. Let me hear you sing it out. Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Our eternity stepped into time The water turned into wine Come on, let's sing it. Come on. Ruler over earth and sky Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Let's sing this out together. Clap your hands. Sing it out. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing again when you are done. Endless praise to the Holy One. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Church, can we put our hands together this morning? Let's just celebrate. Come on. You guys can go ahead and have a seat. All right. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been going to Grace for a long time, this may be the first time in your life you've ever seen my face. I shaved down to a mustache so I could be Mario for Halloween. And now I'm actively trying to grow the beard back so that I don't scare you next week when I preach. So let's just get that out of the way because I'm getting a lot of weird looks in the lobby. All right, with that out of the way, I want to read to you this morning the first four verses from Psalm 122 as we continue in our series called Ascent, where we're looking at the different psalms of Ascent in Psalm 120 to 134. So here's the first four verses of Psalm 122. Listen to this. Every year in the fall, now for the past several years, we pause and we do a morning of worship where the whole service is an opportunity for us as a body to worship God together. We set aside the sermon for that morning, and we let ourselves be ministered to through song as we approach God's throne together. And it made a lot of sense to put this service here in the middle of the series ascent because of this psalm. Because in the middle of these psalms of ascent, in the middle of praising, they stop to acknowledge, they stop before they enter Jerusalem. We're standing at the gates of Jerusalem. So they're not going in yet. They're going in to worship. But before they go to worship, what do they do? They pause and they worship. And last year we did a series called The Songs We Sing. And we focused intentionally on worship for a large portion of the fall. And one of the things that I said over and over and over again is that corporate worship, raising our voices together, singing to God together, proclaiming his praises together is probably the most important thing we can do as a body of believers on a Sunday morning. I tell people all the time, you can download all the best sermons on Wednesday. The best speakers in the world, the most dynamic sermons, you can download those on a Tuesday while you drive to work. You can listen to those anytime you want to. What you can't download is community and corporate worship. What you can't fabricate on your own and experience during the week is what we're going to experience this morning. Coming together, unified as one voice, praising our God together. And as we were coming to church this morning, my wife Jen pointed out to me, this is really an important time this morning because we are in such a consumeristic culture and even time in that culture. We're inundated with news, especially now in this season. We're sitting and we're listening and we're taking in information and the TV is on and a podcast is going or the phone is on or noise is being made and we're just being bombarded with information all the time as we go throughout our days. So it's right and good to pause and not be told things, not have to sit and listen for much longer, but to participate and to praise and allow it to just be your thoughts and your God as we worship together. And I believe that if we do that, that God will speak to each of us in uniquely encouraging ways today as we lift our voices. So let's sing loud, let's give ourselves over to it, and let's allow God to move as we pause to praise him. Please stand and we'll continue to worship. We worship the God who was. We worship the God who is. We worship the God who evermore will be. He opened the prison doors. He parted the raging sea. My God, He holds the victory. Yeah. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out right back. We sing to the God who always makes a way. Because he hung up on that cross. Then he rose up from that grave. My God still rolling stones all way. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. We were the beggars, now we're royalty. We were the prisoners, now we're running free. We are forgiven, accepted, deemed by His grace. Let the house of the lord sing praise we were the beggars now we're royalty we were the prisoners now we're running free we are forgiven accepted redeemed by his grace let the house of the lord sing praise All right, Grace, come on, sing it out. Here we go. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy your praise. We shout out your praise. We shout out your praise. Church, can we put our hands together and let's just celebrate this morning. God is great. Thank you. I've seen a glimpse of your heart a billion years. Still I'll be singing. How can I praise you enough? How can I praise you enough? You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in glory. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Creation calls all to the Savior. We are alive for your praise. In earth and sky, no one is higher. Our God of wonders, you reign. Our God of wonders, you reign. You are the Lord all mine. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Not to us, but to your name, we lift up all praise. Not to us, but to your name name we lift up all praise not to us but to your name we lift up all you are the lord almighty outshining all the stars in glory Great. Lift your voice. Yes. I'm sorry. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you. All of my days I want to praise the tower of refuge and strength. Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you Shout to the Lord All the earth let us sing Power and majesty Praise to the King Mountains bow down I see joy I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Psalm 98, 1 through 9 says, His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Burst into jubilant song with music. Make music to the Lord with the harp and the sound of singing. With trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Let the rivers, to lift our voice, to sing. It doesn't matter if you play an instrument or not. It doesn't matter if you can sing well or not. We are commanded and called to shout to the Lord, to give him glory and to worship his name. So we're going to continue singing this song and we're going to worship the God of all creation. Sing my Jesus. I give all of my days. I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love. My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength. Let's sing it. Shout. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise, all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name I sing for joy at the work of your hands Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Sing this with me. Silence the boast of sin and shame Heavens are rolling The praise of your glory For you are raised to life again You had no rival You had no equal Come on, sing it out. Come on. what a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Let's sing it again. Yes. How great Thou art. We serve a great God. A God whose love is unconditional. A God whose love is never failing and never ending. And whatever, whatever moment you may be wrestling with and whatever moment life may have you in, can we just, can we just declare that truth? Can we just lift up our voices, sing this out, then sings my soul. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Lord, we just ask you to hear our heart. Hear our cry this morning, Lord, that we believe that you are great. Your greatness isn't dependent upon our season. Your greatness isn't dependent upon what's happening to us. We're around us, Lord. You are great and you are worthy of our praise. And so this morning we offer it. We just put you in your proper place, which is above all. We just seek to give glory and honor to your name, Father. Church, can I just ask you this morning, what reason might you have to be grateful? What reason might you have to just give God praise and thanks? With that in mind, can we just do that? We get to this portion of the chorus that says, so I throw up my hands and I praise you again and again and I sing hallelujah. Hallelujah simply means this, I give praise to Jehovah. I give praise to the King of kings in this symbolic gesture of lifting my hands. Father, I surrender all to you. I give you all and I trust all. It's just offering our thanks and our gratitudes. All my words for sure I've got nothing new How could I express All my gratitude I could sing these, as I often do. Every song was dear to you and me. Come on, let's sing. So I throw up my head and praise you again and again. All that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah. I know it's not much. I'm nothing else fit for a king. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I've got just Come on. so i throw up my hands and praise you hold back. Let's just offer a praise inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. Come on, church. Lift it up. Come on, my soul. Don't you get shy of me. Lift up your soul. You've got a lion inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. All right, give it all you've got. Let's shout it out. All right, one more time, shout it Lord. Shout it. So open my hands. Praise you, Jesus. Because all that I have is a hallelujah Come on, shout it out. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. All that I have is a hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. And I know it's not much. I have nothing. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I sing it again so I throw up my hands. So I throw up my hands. And I praise you again and much, but nothing else fit for a king except for a heart singing. We sing hallelujah. We say hallelujah. Hallelujah. are called to worship you. We are called to shout out your name, God. We are grateful, Lord. I pray for everyone in this room. I pray that you are stirring in our hearts, God. We feel you moving in this place, Lord. Thank you. Amen. You can have a seat. We hope you guys are having a good morning so far. I wanted to share with you something that really stood out to me as we read through Psalm 122. As Nate said a little earlier, we're in this sermon series called Ascent. And really what we're doing is we're looking at this collection or a portion of the collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. And it's just songs that the Israelites would sing while they were in route to Jerusalem, while they were on their journey. They would just sing these songs. And then you get to Psalm 122, and I thought it was really interesting that on their way to worship, they begin to sing the song about worship, right? And if you read it, Psalm 122 really reads more like a prayer than it does anything else. And so you may have heard me say this before, that when we come together, when we sing in this moment right now, like we're coming in, we're lifting our voice. Our song is simply a prayer to a melody. That's all it is. In these moments where you sing corporately, while you sing songs of worship in your car, all of these times, you're offering a prayer in the form of a melody. So when you come and you're singing these songs about hope, we have these fear, we have these moments that we aren't sure what's going to happen, and we just start singing about this. I place my trust in you. What you are saying in this moment, God, I need you for my hope. God, I need you for what's coming. I don't know how to deal with what I'm doing right now. When you sit in these moments and we say, God, you are worthy, you are above it all, we trust you, we praise you, and you offer this glory and thanks. What you are doing is from your mouth to God's ears, you are offering this prayer, expressing gratitude, showing thanks, declaring his glory. And that's one of the things that makes corporate worship so beautiful. There's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me because I say wise stuff all the time. But it's not necessary. But no, there's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me, because I say wise stuff all the time. It's not necessary. But no, there's a quote that says, the beautiful thing about corporate worship is not the songs that we sing, but the fact that we sing them together. And so when we come together with that idea that our songs are a prayer to a melody, how beautiful is it that you come together as one body, lifting one voice, serving one God, offering one prayer in unison. It's a gorgeous thing. How awesome and how incredible is that? Does it have to be to God's ears? That's what Nate was saying a little earlier. The thing that you can't have watching online, sorry if you are, but it's true. The thing that you can't have is this unison of prayer, this unison of voice. And so at the end of Psalm 122, it shifts, the prayer shifts just a little bit. What the Israelites begin to do is pray for their family and for their friends. I want to read it for you. Maybe this is going to be more complicated than I thought. Okay, here we go. Psalm 122, verse 6 says this. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. Listen to this. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity. En route. En route to the temple to worship. They are worshiping. They are singing a song about worship. They are offering a prayer about the beauty of worshiping together. And then in this prayer, towards the end, they begin praying for their family and versions. It says, for the sake of the house of the Lord, I will seek your good. In this prayer, where they are praying for their family and friends, they also include a line that says, help me to pursue your good. God, for the sake of my community, it is good that I pursue what you say is good. For the sake of my community, for the sake of the people around me, it is good that I pursue the life you have created me to live. It is good for them, for me to be who you've created me to be. It is good for them. It reminds me of this, Nate said we're not going to talk. He lied. I don't know if he knew I was going to talk like this. I love Mark 7 because that's what this really kind of points to for me. There's this portion in Mark. Jesus is maybe at the height of popularity in his ministry right now. Like everyone has heard about this guy. They've heard of the miracles that he's done. They've heard of his teachings or they have seen the miracles that he's done. And they've heard his teachings himself or they've seen just all of these different things. And so you have this one little section in Mark 7. I think it's in verse 30. But it says that there was a guy who was deaf and could hardly talk. And there was some people in his life, some people in his community that brought him to Jesus. And then it says they begged Jesus to touch him. They brought this guy to Jesus and they begged Jesus to do Jesus things in this guy's life. And it's not isolated to this. There's multiple areas throughout the Bible. You can read just a little bit later in eight. Those are the first two that I'm aware of. But time and time again, you see people bringing to Jesus and then begging Jesus. And I love this. I think it's what we see in Psalm 122, this combination of action and prayer. This combination of doing everything that I can to point people to Christ, to take people to Christ, to move people to Christ, to live a life that reflects the love of Christ and saturating that action with a plea for Jesus to do Jesus things. That's what happened in Mark 7. Hey, I've seen, I've heard you can do this, Jesus. I saw you do this before. I need you to do this for my family. And it's not just a passing prayer. It's a plea. It's a beg, begging Jesus. I think that that's what James would call a works that shows your faith you move towards Christ and you beg to do Jesus things and when I first saw this when I first recognized it I wrote in my Bible I have friends like that right and I underlined it. And then we all kind of want that, right? I have a group of guys that I meet with. One of the guys, he calls it an intimacy group, and I don't like that. So we're not going to call it that because it just feels weird. Put your hand down, Jacob. We're not talking about that right now. But this group of guys, and what I love about it is that we can be open, we can be honest, we can just tell the struggles, and I know. Then we walk away from there. I have a group of people who are pleading with Jesus to do Jesus things in my world. We all want that. That's right and good. I wrote it down in my Bible while I was sitting there. I was like, oh, that's good, right? I felt kind of like this little poke, right? It said, hey, buddy. It felt like Jesus was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could. You could find friends like that. You have. You could also be. Be that friend. You could also be that husband. You can be the husband that lives a life that reflects the life of Jesus. Be the husband that lives a life that reflects the love that you've experienced. Be the husband who reflects a life and lives a life that believes and trusts in the life of Christ while at the same time interceding with prayer. Not just a passing prayer, but a plea, a beg, like such a hurt and such a longing for the people in the world around me, such a hurt and a longing for the people in my community that I'm not just gonna say, hey, Jesus, just help them with that. But it's like, no, you do Jesus things. Jesus, do Jesus things in their life. Like I love them too much to just let this go. And I beg and I beg and I plead. Like be that type of husband. Be that type of pastor. Be that type of leader. Be that type of friend. And then after it hit me, I was so convicted, I just sat back and I wept. It's like, man, how much more faith can you express than living the life that Jesus has called you to live? All at the same time saturating everything that you can do. Believing, living this life, everything within your power, saturating that action, that life with a prayer. It struck me hard. And what I want us to do this morning as we wrap up is I want to give you an opportunity to do that same thing. My prayer is that while I'm talking through that and I say just, hey, begging Jesus for people, interceding in prayer, just lifting, having such a hurt for them. Maybe you have a child who's entering into a new season of life, some new things coming up. Why don't we take some time and just begin to beg Jesus to prepare the path that's ahead of them, to begin to beg Jesus to just move and stir in their life that they experience Him in a way that they never have before. Maybe you have a child or a friend who's dealing with depression and anxiety and they just can't seem to shake it. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in their life, just to begin to put them in the right places, to begin to put the people around them that needs to be there and just help relieve some of the torment that they're feeling. Maybe it's a spouse. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in the area. Maybe it's in your relationship. Maybe there's a fractured relationship. Maybe it's your relationship at home. But I just want to give us a little bit of time to model what we see in Mark 7 and model what we see in Psalm 122. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to shut up, right? Then I'm going to give you some time to just pray. And to close out our morning, we're going to do exactly what we read in Psalm 122. We pray blessings upon the people that we love. We pray for the sake of our family and friends. We will stand together and we will sing and offer a blessing, but also include in that prayer, it says, Jesus, help me to live the life you've created and called me to live. Help me to live a life that is a reflection of you. Help me to live and build my life on your love. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes and then we're going to start singing the song. If you know it, you're more than welcome to stand and sing as well or just stay and remain praying in your own words. But towards the end of that song, I'll invite us to stand and we'll close that off seriously. So take a few minutes and just begin praying for the people that God has laid on your heart. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Amen. Thank you. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every and all of anxiety. To every storm held captive by depression, I speak Jesus. Oh, I just want to speak the name of Jesus over fear and all anxiety To every soul held captive by depression I speak Jesus Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Church, would you stand and sing it out. Jesus for my family Come on. I speak the holy name, Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows Burn like a fire Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is life I just want to speak the name of Jesus over every heart and every mind. Because I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Oh, I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Church, we're just going to make this our prayer. I will build my life on your love, Lord. Let's just sing this out together. Father, we give you our heart, we give you our life, and we give you our hope. Our faith is expressed in the life that we live and the prayers that we offer for our family and friends. Come on, church, time. Sing it out. Let's pray this blessing. generations He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. Come on, sing it out. Amen. Amen. Amen. May His favor be upon you and a thousand generations and your family and your children and your children and your children. and behind is is Just our voice, let's sing it out. One more time. We sing. Amen. Amen. Amen. God, we thank you so much and we praise you, Lord. Grace, we're so glad that you decided to join us today. We hope that it was a good morning for you. Make sure you come back next week. Don't forget Thursday night, the fall fling at Ignite Up. You guys have a great week. We'll see you.

All right, everybody. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us on this June Sunday. It's good to see you guys. It is incredibly hot outside. So thanks for braving that. Before we get into the sermon, just a small announcement. For me, this is my last sermon that I'm going to preach until August. A few years ago, the elders talked and decided that it would be best for the church for me to not preach in the month of July and best for me. And here's the reason why. And so we've been doing this for a few years now. The first and most important reason is this. There are other voices in the church that are very much worth hearing. They are thoughtful and insightful and articulate and wise and godly, and we are better off hearing from them. I don't know if you guys realize this or not. I'm sure you have if you've listened to a number of sermons. I don't really have something to say every week. So it's good for other people whose God has placed on their hearts things they do have to say to share with us. So first and foremost, we want to create an atmosphere of other voices. And that's why periodically in the year, I never go more than six or seven weeks in a row without someone spelling me and getting another voice up here. So that's always been a priority for us. It's always been a priority for me as a senior pastor. The other reason is taking that block of time allows me to focus on other areas of the church that I might not otherwise be able to give as much focus to in the regular rhythm of writing a weekly message. Last September, I stood up here on September the 10th, and I told you guys that I was going to be working hard, kind of in the margins and in the afternoons, behind the scenes, to develop some discipleship pathways for us that I believe is the next big step that we're going to take as a church, and maybe the most important thing I've worked on in the last year. So I've been quietly working on that behind the scenes and with other people in concert with others and putting things together. And I'm very excited in September, we're going to do a series on our five traits. Some of you may be aware that we have some, you might even be able to name one, but we're going to make those more a part of who we are and what we do as a church. And to accompany those, we're going to roll out what we're calling discipleship pathways that are kind of the next step for us to take towards spiritual growth as a church. So I'm finishing those up in July. I'm rolling those out to the small group leaders at the end of the month of July, and then you guys will be hearing about those in September. So that's how that work's been going on in the background since last fall. I'm finally ready to show it to you here as we enter into this fall. Now for this morning, as Mike said earlier, we have our last sermon in our series called Idols that's loosely based on Tim Keller's book called Counterfeit Gods. And in it, he presents this idea of source idols, things that really fuel the idolatry that we have in our life and other areas. Those source idols are power, approval, control, and comfort. And what he means by source idol is maybe our visible idol is greed or materialism, and we just want things. We want to get all we can, can all we get, and sit on our can. We just want more things. That's what we want. And so maybe that comes because we're really motivated by a desire for power. We believe money brings power. Maybe it's control. We believe money brings control. Maybe it's approval. Maybe it's comfort. But it's those source idols that really get sneaky and begin to turn our hearts away from God. And we talked about this idea of idolatry being so important because whatever occupies the space of our top priority in our life, and idolatry is anytime we put something in our life, we prioritize that over our devotion to God himself. Anything that occupies that top spot in our life is by default the recipient of our worship. And what we talked about is that nothing can bear the weight of our worship besides our God. So whenever we get that out of whack and we have something besides our God, besides Jesus Christ as our number one priority, then everything else in our life suffers. This morning, I've been excited to do this sermon because I believe it applies to everyone in the room. I've said along the way, different people have different source idols. We struggle differently with different ones. But comfort is one that even if it's not your number one, it's your number two. It's there. I think we all struggle with it. And the more I thought about this source idol of comfort, the more convinced I became that this is true. When it comes to comfort, we are the frog being boiled in cultural water. When it comes to comfort, we are frogs being boiled in the cultural waters of the United States in 2024. A desire for comfort is all around us. A desire to just be fine, to just be chill, to just feel comfortable, to have things set at the right temperature. Kyle just went back there and messed with a thermostat. You know why? Because we want to be comfortable. Because if we're not comfortable, we're not going to listen to Nate. That's why. So we've got to be comfortable. Here's a few ways I know that comfort is ubiquitously important to us. I have this theory in life that is yet to be disproven, that you can gauge a family's net worth by the number of unnecessary pillows they have in their home. Okay? And if you're thinking to yourself, joke's on you, I don't have any unnecessary pillows in my home, you're the problem. Okay? People have to move things out of the way so they can sit on your couch. And here's what I don't understand while we're here. While we're here, I'm just going to say this for the men, okay? Guys, I'm saying this on your behalf. Ladies, we don't understand why you go to the store and spend $200 on a chore to put on your bed every morning and every night. We don't understand why you go to HomeGoods and TJ Maxx and you dump 200 bucks on pillows to put further out from your sleeping pillows so that at the end of the day, you have to take them off when you're tired. And in the morning, you have to put them back on when you're in a hurry. It makes no sense. And you do it so it looks nice. For who? When's the last time you had a guest over to your house? And when you had them over, you were like, and here's our master bedroom. Nobody does that. Nobody does that. It's weird. Nobody sees your master bedroom. Listen, some of you I have been friends with the whole time I've been here. I am such good friends with you, I can walk right into your house unannounced, and I've done it before. You know what I've never seen? Your master bedroom. Because that's weird. No one sees it. Knock it off with the pillows. All right. There you go. Guys, you can talk about that at lunch. We have these symbols of comfort all over our culture. How many of you in your cars don't have heated seats? You don't just have heated seats. You have cooled seats. Don't raise your hand. Those things are wonderful. Yeah, two hands up back there. Whenever I'm riding with my friends that have cooled seats, I crank those suckers up all the way. I love those things, man. Those things are amazing. How many of you have a carefully negotiated thermostat temperature for your summertime nights and for your wintertime nights? These things have been, sometimes you had to bring in a moderating attorney just to get that settled. How many of you, how many of you, I'm being serious, how many of you have had the chance to fly first class before? and within 15 minutes of takeoff, you thought, I'm never sitting with the peasants again. This is amazing. Or you've been lucky enough to get the pods for international travel, where you extend out and you have a personal screen and there's a door to keep the pores out. That's how it goes. And you tell yourself, here's what you tell yourself. This is so funny. I've heard my friends say this. I need to be refreshed because I got to hit the ground running when I get there. I bet you do, buddy. I bet you do. That's why you chose the drinks that you did on the way over because you got to hit the ground running. I bet you do. That's why you chose the drinks that you did on the way over, because you got to hit the ground running. I bet. Sure. Maybe, maybe you just want to be comfortable. We like our space. We like our accompaniments. We like the things that make us feel good. And here's one of the ways I know that it's not a uniquely American problem, but it's a particularly American problem. I've watched House Hunters International. Have you watched House Hunters International? Without fail, the Americans go over to a foreign country, Costa Rica, Europe, New Zealand, wherever. They're looking at a $650,000 flat in the middle of Copenhagen. And you know what they say? This feels small. And it is. It's like a tiny little dishwasher, a one-burner stove. There's a toilet where you can control the shower nozzle from there. Like, it's all, it's real tight. And as Americans, we look at that and we're like, no way. I need my space. This desire for comfort is a particularly American struggle. In a culture, and this is true, where if you choose, if you have a desk job, and you choose at that desk job to stand, you have one of those high desks, people are like, look at the health nut over here. Look at Captain Fitness not sitting in a chair for eight hours a day. This is how much as a culture we prize comfort. And it's not just physical comfort that we prize, although that is a very good indicator. But mental, spiritual. We don't like to be challenged spiritually. We like to go to church. There's a certain amount of conviction that's okay. But over that, it's like, come on, man, you're being a jerk. And I'm not going to sit in this week after week. We want to be comfortable spiritually. I'm just going to edge right up to this and then I'm going to back off because I'm scared like you are. There are certain things I can't talk about and you know I can't talk about them because if I did, everybody in here would get fidgety and uncomfortable and it would feel like this. So I don't. And I talk about other things where we're comfortable, right? There are conversations that we need to have, but that conflict and that tension makes us uncomfortable, so we avoid them. In myriad ways, in myriad situations, we live in a culture that prizes comfort almost over and above all else. And what I want you to see this morning is we are like frogs being boiled in a cultural water. I came across this fact a couple of weeks ago in one of the books that I was reading, but it noted that if you, that there was an officer in the Spartan army circa 400 BC who got dishonorably discharged from the army because he was charged with taking a warm shower. He was charged with allowing himself the indulgence of a warm shower and he was deemed unfit to be a Spartan. How far we have come and the comforts and the things that we demand. So here's what I would say. And here's what I want us to realize this morning. If we don't idolize comfort, we've got to at least admit we have a tendency towards it. I doubt very much that anyone came in here this morning going, oh, comfort, that's me. I very seriously doubt that at the beginning of the series, when I did the first sermon five weeks ago and introduced this idea of idols and idolatry, that any of you went, oh gosh, if I just kind of survey the landscape of my life, I think comfort's probably my idol. I don't think anybody did that. And yet, I think it is prevalent and persnickety and pernicious and corrosive in all of us. And like I said, not just materially, but parents, how many things do you need to broach with your children that you don't? Because it would just be a hassle. I don't have the energy for that fight. I don't have the energy for that discussion. I know, and maybe it's confrontational. Maybe it's sympathetic. Maybe it's relational. Maybe you can see they're hurting and you just, you want to wait another day because it's going to be a hard conversation and you're tired. How many times do we choose our own comfort over what our kids need? Spouses. How often in our marriages do we tolerate a fragile peace? Because breaking that peace would cause so much discomfort that we don't want to deal with it. It's easier to just exist at this simmering tension. How much of what God asks us to do is blocked by the amount of comfort that we desire? I have a good relationship with my neighbor. I don't want to make it weird by inviting them somewhere or asking them about things. I have a good relationship with my coworker. I don't want to jeopardize that by asking an odd question or bringing up an odd topic. It's not just physically that we allow a desire for comfort to begin to derail us in our thought process. It's emotionally. We build up walls. How many of us, listen, how many of us know, know that God wants us to see a counselor? That we have some issues and some things in our life that we need to deal with that are rippling out and spilling onto the people that we love the most. And that what we need more than anything is to talk to someone that he has blessed and trained up to serve the kingdom in this way. And we need to go talk to them, and we don't. And you know why we don't? Because it will be uncomfortable to begin to deal with the things that could be brought up. So this desire for comfort goes way beyond throw pillows and first-class seats. And it permeates into every area of our life. And here's why this idol of comfort is so dangerous. Because idolizing comfort causes us to build our life around protecting it and we end up wasting it. Idolizing comfort causes us to build up our life around protecting that comfort, and we end up wasting our life in the process. I don't love admitting this, but I will, because I think some of us can relate to this in some way. After the first time I flew first class internationally, I got home, and I'm being dead serious. I started thinking to myself and racking my brain and talking to friends. What sorts of side hustles can I do to begin to generate more income so that when I travel, I can travel like that? What kinds of, how can I market myself in other areas? What kind of extra income can I make so that when I travel, I can get the upgrade? I can be in the excellence club. I can be the gold member. What can I do so that when my family has these experiences, I can turn them up a notch because I liked it so much? And listen, listen, that is so honest. It wasn't for other things. It wasn't, what can I do to monetize myself more, to work a little bit harder so that I can give more to God's kingdom, so that I can provide a more comfortable life for my family, so that my wife and my children can have a little bit nicer things and live life a little bit more easily. No, it was as simple as, God, I really like flying first class. I'd love to do that again. I don't want to have to fly back there with the peasants anymore, so let's see what I can turn up to travel nice. Listen, listen to me. How stupid is that? How stupid is that? But some of you do it for golf memberships. Or the cooling seats. Or the nice whatever. And isn't this so easy to do? Isn't it? Isn't our culture tailor-made to suck us into that trap? I was having lunch with a good friend this week. He's 35. And he's kind of come to a bit of a crossroads in his career where he could go this way or that way. And his entire career, he's been headed this way. He got the job. This is what the people in charge of me do. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is the next thing. This is what I'm going to do. And now he's picking his head up at this crossroads going, is that even what I want to do? And how often does that happen? For how many of us is that our story? How many of us have friends with that story? Who graduated high school or graduated college or got their masters and entered into the workforce? And when you entered into the workforce, all you were trying to do is prove yourself and make enough money to survive at some sort of level that you liked and that you wanted to attain. And then you got it. And then you needed to continue to pay for it. And then you married somebody. And then you looked and you said, okay, we're doing this thing together, either single income or dual income. We have goals. And then you spin it forward and you spin it forward and you spin it forward and you just put your head down and you do the next thing and you get the next promotion and your friend buys a white SUV and now I want that. And your friend flies first class and now I want that. And your friend buys this house and now I want that. And oh shoot, we're doing beach houses now? I guess I'll figure this one out too. I didn't know I needed white marble in my bathroom, but I really, really do. This tile is terrible, right? And we just need the next thing. And we never think about if we're spending our life and investing our years in the right thing. It's just the next thing. And by the time, listen, by the time we pick up our head and we wonder, is this even the direction I'm supposed to go? We have mortgages and we have and we have bills, and we have a standard of living, and we have certain expectations that we've built up. I took the kids to Turks and Caicos last year, so if I don't do it this year, I've somehow failed as a father. And on and on it goes. And we stay on the treadmill, organizing our life around comfort without ever realizing we had done it. This is what makes this the sneakiest, most pernicious idol of them all. Because none of you started your adult life and verbalized, you know what I want to do? I want to be comfortable. And I'm going to organize my whole life around it. But as you sit here, you're wondering if that's what you've done by accident. And if that's how we invest our whole life, we will have wasted it. And for me, there is nothing more sad, there is nothing I am more afraid of than getting to the end of my life and looking back on the decades and knowing in my heart of hearts that I wasted it. That I didn't use my years for things that mattered. And let me tell you what ultimately doesn't matter. Your comfort. It just doesn't. And I bring this up because I do think it's so easy to slip into this pursuit. I do think it's so easy to, without realizing it, almost by mistake, to have organized our entire life around building comfort and then marshalling our resources to protect that comfort without ever risking anything for God's kingdom. I can think of no better example of this in the Bible than in a parable that Jesus told of someone who in this instance marshaled their life around protecting comfort. And we see how the master responds to them. It's a well-known parable found in Matthew chapter 25. I'm just going to read verses 24 and 27. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there, but this is the parable of the tenants. I'm going to read from the NIV. It says bags of gold. That's one of the places where the scholars have let you down. It's talent. It's a talent. It's a denomination of money that may feel like to us a bag of gold. But in this parable that you guys know, but in case you don't, or in case you need a refresher, there's a master of the house. The master of the house represents Jesus. And the master of the house is leaving. He goes to these three servants and he says, hey, I'm going to go out of town for a while. Here's some money. Give me a report on what you did with the money when we come back. To the first servant, he gives five talents. To the second servant, he gives two talents. To the last servant, he gives one talent. And he goes out of town. And then he comes back in town. And when he gets back in town, he goes to the servant with the five talents. And he says, what'd you do with the money? And the servant says, see, I took the money, I invested it, I traded and sold, and now I'm giving you ten talents in return. I've doubled your investment. And the master says, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will make you lord over many. And then he goes to the two-talent person. And he says, what did you do? And the two-talent person says, see, I have bought and sold and invested, and I have doubled your money. I'm giving you back four talents. And the master says to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you Lord over many. And I would pause right here and just say this. I should do a whole sermon on it, but I'll just say this and maybe it'll sit on some of you like it sits on me. That phrase, well done, good and faithful servant, is worth living your life for. Pursuing that phrase, chasing hearing that from your God in your eternity, at the end of your life, marshalling all of your resources and all of your time and all of your talents and all of your interests and all of your effort and all of your discipline so that one day when we stand before the Lord, he will look at us and he will say, well done, good and faithful servant with the life and the time that you had. That phrase is worth your whole life. You will never be disappointed by the things that you pursue to hear that. And what's wonderful about that phrase is the five-talent person got the same response as the two-talent person. God doesn't care how big of an impact you make or how wonderful your work is or how many people know who you are or how many people come to your funeral or any of that stuff. He does not care about the size and the grandeur of your impact. What he cares is about the faithfulness and your small actions. What he cares about is that you are a good and faithful servant, and he will say, well done, whether you have five talents or two or one. I love that. But then he goes to the servant to whom he gave one talent to you. His master replied, you wicked, lazy servant. So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. Well, then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned, I would have received it back with interest. He goes to the last servant. He says, what did you do? And the last servant says, well, I'm scared of you. I did not want to risk losing your money, so I buried it. Now, I cannot tell you in good faith and a good conscience that I have a depth of insight into a fictional character's soul in a very short parable in the Bible and can tell you that that man struggled with the God of comfort, but here's what I can tell you. In that moment, in that instance, that's what he chose. He chose to not risk anything and to be comfortable. And in that story, Jesus is represented by the master. And what was Jesus' response to that? You wicked and lazy servant. And he takes the talent from the one and he gives it to the one with the five because he knows it's going to be in better hands. This is what's at stake if we choose to marshal our resources around comfort and by default waste our life. Just bury the gifts and the talents and the abilities and the plan that God has given us because we're too afraid to risk anything. Then one day when we stand before him, we will not hear well done, good, and faithful servant. And here's the thing I want us to go home with today and understand. The more I thought about this God of comfort and how it juxtaposes with works of the kingdom, I was sure of this. Stories of kingdom-building faith always require a sacrifice of comfort. Stories of kingdom-building faith always require a sacrifice of comfort. You will never find anyone who's doing things for the kingdom who didn't, in order to do those things, have to give up some of their comforts in life. Later this week, next Sunday, I'll be flying to Ethiopia to visit Addis Jamari over in Addis Ababa. And I think of the women that founded that ministry. I think of Suzanne Ward and Cindy Douglas. And Cindy is over there months on end. She's over there months at a time with two teenage sons. You don't think that she's had to give up some comfort and that her family's had to give up some comfort for the sake of what God is doing over there in Ethiopia? And what God's doing there is amazing and needed and absolutely necessary. It's a wonderful work of the kingdom for which she had to sacrifice comfort. If you think of the godly people you know in your life, the people who love well and who serve well and who are always here during the week setting things up, they're always at their place wherever they serve, wherever they pour into, they're always pouring into it, they're always doing, they're always serving. Those people give up the comfort of doing that. When you think about good and godly parents, you have to give up your comfort for the sake of your children. Good and godly spouses give up their comfort for the sake of their spouses. Good and godly friends give up their comfort for the sake of their friends. You will never, ever find an act of the kingdom and an act of faith that is done without giving up some comfort on the other end. And we see this biblically in story after story. Two that spring to mind right away are of Saul changed to Paul. And I have to go quickly because we still got communion to do. And I think I'm going long, but just bear with me. When I think of Saul, he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. Jesus appears to him, blinds him, sends him to a room, names him Paul, and says, I've got big plans for you, pal. And then goes to a guy named Ananias, and he says, Ananias, I need you to go see Saul, turn to Paul, and get the scales off of his eyes, because he needs to start serving me now. And Ananias says, no way, I'm not going to do that. He's a Christian killer. That does not sound very fun. And God says this in one of the most ominous statements in the Bible, Acts chapter 9, verses 15 and 16. But the Lord said to Ananias, go, this man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. But no, no, by all means, God is super concerned with your comfort. He is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. Do you understand that Paul is the most influential post-disciple Christian to ever exist? No one has influenced the church as widely and deeply and profoundly as Paul. And in order to do that, he sacrificed all comfort. And God said, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Shipwreck and beatings and floggings and imprisonment and disease and poverty. He endured it all for the sake of God's kingdom. In the Old Testament, I think of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi. Ruth was a Moabite woman. There was poverty in Israel because of the drought, and some families started moving to Moab, and she happened to marry one of these Jewish boys that had moved over. And then the dad and the two brothers died, and it left the mom, Naomi, with two daughters-in-law. And the other one said, hey, I'm going to stay here. And Naomi looked at Ruth and said, you need to stay here in Moab. You're young and pretty. You can marry, and you'll be fine. But Ruth knew that if she did this, that Naomi would be destitute. And so she said this in this famous line, no, where you go, I go. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And she did the right thing, and she stayed with Naomi. She ended up marrying a man named Boaz. And if you fast forward several hundred years, you come to the book of Matthew. And in the first chapter of the book of Matthew, you have the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And when you read those genealogies, what you find is that you can trace a line from Jesus back to King David, the second and greatest king of Israel. And King David came from a man named Jesse. And Jesse came from a man named Obed. And Obed came from a woman named Ruth, married to Boaz. Because of her great act of faith and her sacrifice of comfort, God included her in his family tree. So first of all, we never will do anything for the kingdom that doesn't require a sacrifice of comfort. Second, we have no idea what can come out of that sacrifice and what God might do. The greatest example of this we see is Jesus himself, who gave up all the comforts of heaven to condescend and come here. I don't know what the pillow situation is in heaven, but I bet it's pretty good. I don't know. It can't enumerate all the comforts that Jesus gave up. But when he came here, it says in Matthew chapter 8, verse 20, that foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. For three years, Jesus sofa-surfed so that he could do ministry to us and build up disciples to leave us, to establish the church in which we now sit. Jesus is the greatest example of all time of what it means to give up comfort for the sake of a work for the kingdom. And what I want us to understand about this, because we do, all of us, somewhere have this God of comfort, that our proclivity for comfort stands in direct opposition to our desire to be used. I know most of you. I know a lot of you really well. And I know in your hearts more than anything you want to be used by God in this life for his kingdom. I know that you do. And what I want you to see this morning is that your desire for comfort stands in direct opposition to your desire to be used by God. God wants to use you in mighty ways. You are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. And I know you want to walk in those good works. But your desire for comfort almost more than anything else is what's keeping some of us from those. So here's where I would end with this simple question for you to consider as we move into a time of communion together. When is the last time you did anything at all that made you uncomfortable for the sake of the kingdom? When is the last time you made an intentional choice to allow yourself to be uncomfortable for the sake of the kingdom of God. This could be in a conversation that we know we need to have. This could be in a neighbor that we know we need to approach. This could be starting a small group that we know we need to start. Starting a ministry that we know we need to start. Volunteering with a place or with an area or in a team here where we know we need to do, we just haven't done it. This could mean broaching a subject with our spouse. This could mean taking the step to go into counseling and begin to let things tweak there so that we can do a little bit better for the people around us. This could mean what we give towards the kingdom of God. When's the last time our giving made us uncomfortable? When's the last time you intentionally chose to sacrifice your comfort for the sake of God's kingdom? And let me tell you this. I have never, ever talked to anyone who got towards the end of their life and said, gosh, you know what I regret? Just doing so much for Jesus. You know what, I think we gave too much. I think I did too much. I think I, here's what I've never heard. I should have made my life more about myself. Wish I would have. We have no idea what can happen when we begin to sacrifice this dearly held comfort for the sake of God's kingdom. And so I would simply ask you to consider as I pray and as we move into a time of communion, what is God pressing on your heart? Where is he asking you to sacrifice your comfort? I believe he's pressing something on each and every one of us. What conversation does he want you to have or action does he want you to take or invitation does he want you to extend or discipline does he want you to adopt or habit does he want you to give up? Where is God calling you to be uncomfortable? Let's pray. Dear God, thank you so much for sending your son who took on all of us and all of this and left behind all of that and all of you for our sake. God, we confess that we are slaves to comfort far more than we intended to be. That not being upset and not being rattled and not being stressed and not feeling uncomfortable in any way imaginable matters to us far more than we would have been willing to admit and perhaps more than we're still willing to admit. But Lord, in your gentle way, where you just navigate into our souls, will your spirit bring about the necessary conviction that you would have for us here? Help us to see with your eyes where we are choosing our comfort over you. And give us the courage, God, to choose you and to find out what happens on the other side of that choice. God, thank you for your patience with us. Thank you for your grace with us. Give us the strength to walk in the good works that you have planned for us and to set aside the comfort that keeps us from that so often. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So good to see everybody. And it sounds like to me that only the singers come during the summertime. You guys were singing great. And that was really always love it when the church sings together like that. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby. After the service, you have dropped in. If this is your first time, you've dropped into the middle of a series called Idols that's loosely based on a book by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods. If you haven't picked up a copy of that, we are out, but they are competitively priced on Amazon and will be brought right to your door for ease of purchase. So I would encourage you to grab one of those and kind of read through that as we finish up the series. This is week four. Next week is the last week. Week five, we're going to talk about comfort next week, which I'm very excited to talk about that because I think it's something that every American alive needs to hear. And I think it's going to be an important one next week. This week, we're looking at the source idol of control. And when I say source idol, one of the more interesting ideas that Tim Keller puts forward in his book is the idea that we have surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are the ones that are visible to us and people outside of us, a desire for money, a desire for friends, a desire for a perfect family, for appearances, things like that that are a little bit more visible. Source idols are things that exist in our heart beneath the surface that fuel our desire for those surface idols. And he identifies four. Power, which I preached about two weeks ago. That's the one that I primarily deal with. And then approval, preached about last week that's what he deals with a lot that is not one that that's probably the one I worry about the least and then control this week and comfort next week so as we approach this idea of control in our life I want us to understand what it is and what it means if we struggle with this source idol. And again, an idol is anything that becomes more important to us in our life than Jesus. It's something that we begin to prioritize over Jesus and we pour out our faith and our worship to that thing instead of to our Creator. About four or five years ago, I was in my therapist's office. I was seeing a counselor at the time just doing general maintenance, which I highly recommend to anyone. It's probably time for me to get back in there and let them tinker around a little bit. But one day I got there and whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, what a cliche, but whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, he would always ask me what's been going on, what's happened since I last saw you. That was always the first question, so I knew that was the question. So in the car, in my head, I'm thinking, how am I going to answer him? I can tell him about this thing and this thing and this thing. I think that'll be enough. Well, I'll start the bidding there, and we'll see where it goes. So I go in, I sit down and he asked me the question, how's it been going for you? What's been happening? And so I told him my three things, five or eight minutes. I don't know. And I get done with it. And he just looks at me and he kind of cocks his head and he goes, why'd you tell me those things? And the smart aleck in me is like, because you're a counselor, because this is the deal? Because that's what I'm supposed to do? What do you want me to do? But I said, well, I knew that you were going to ask me what happened, and that's what happened. So I told you those things. And I don't remember the exact conversation, but he pushed back on me and he goes do you do you ever enter a conversation without knowing what you're going to talk about and what the other person is probably going to talk about and I said not if I can help it I always plan ahead whenever I have a conversation or meeting coming up I always think through all the different ways it could go and how I want to respond because I don't want to be caught off guard in the moment. And he said, how many times are you in a situation that's taken you by surprise and you didn't expect to be there? I said, very rarely. And he goes, yeah, I think maybe you've got an issue with control. Because you have a hard time not being the one driving the bus, don't you? And I was like, you have a hard time not being the one. And I kind of thought about it, and I said, my gosh, is it possible that this need for control is so ingrained into me that the reason I told you those stories is so that I could control where the conversation went and we would talk about things I was willing to open up about and I could steer away from the areas that I wasn't willing to talk about. He said some effect of, and circle gets the square. Good job, buddy. And so this need for control that some of us all have to varying degrees can be so sneaky. Sometimes we don't even recognize it in ourselves until someone points it out in us. So let me point it out in you. Some people deal with this so much that it shows up in every aspect of their life. For me, it's relational, it's conversational. I don't want to look dumb. If someone has something negative to say, I want to be gracious and not be caught off guard, whatever it is. But for some of us, we're so regimented and ordered that we have our life together in every aspect of it. We have our routine. We wake up at a certain time. We go to bed at a certain time. Our kids do certain things on certain days. If you have a laundry day, you're gaining on it. If you make your bed, you're gaining on it. Like there are things that we do. We have a workout routine that we do. We have the way that we eat. We have the places that we go. We have our budget. We have our work schedule. We are very regimented. And a lot of that can come from this innate need to be in control of everything. I think about the all-star mom in the PTA, the one who runs a better house than you, who drives a cleaner car than you, and who makes cupcakes better than you, that mom. And her kids are always dressed better than your kids. This is this need for control. And if you're not yet sure if this is you, if this might be something that you do in your life where everything needs to be ordered, and if it's not ordered, your whole life is in shambles. I heard in the last year of this phrase that I had not heard before. I'm in the last year of the Gen Xers. I think the millennials coined this phrase. You boomers, unless you have millennial children, you probably have not heard this, but maybe you can identify it. It's a term called the Sunday Scaries. Anybody ever heard that term? You don't have to raise your hand and out yourself, but the Sunday Scaries. Okay. Now for me, I have the Saturday Scaries because about three times every Saturday, I kind of jolt myself into consciousness and ask if I know what I'm preaching about in the morning. So that's, that's what I have for me. Sunday scaries are when you take Sunday night to get ready for your week. And on Sunday afternoons and evenings, you begin to feel tremendous anxiety because the meals aren't prepped and the clothes aren't washed and the schedule isn't done and the things aren't laid out and the laundry isn't all the way ready and you start to worry, if I don't, I've got this limited amount of time, if I don't start my week right, everything's going to be off, it's going to be the worst and so you get the Sunday scaries and you experience stress on Sunday night. If that's you, friends, this might be for you. And when we do this, when we make control our idol, when we order our lives so that we manage every detail of it. And listen, I want to say this before I talk about the downside of it. Those of us who do live regimented lives and who are in control of many of the aspects of them, that ability comes from a place of diligence and discipline. That's a good thing. That's a muscle God has blessed you with that he has not blessed others with, but we can take it too far. And we can allow that to become what we serve. And we can allow control over the things in our life to become more important than the other things in our life and to become more important than Jesus himself. And here's what happens when we allow this sneaky idol to take hold in our lives. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful of the control we try to exert over them. I'll never forget, it's legendary in my group of buddies. I've got a good group of friends, eight guys, and we go on a trip about every other year. And one year we were in another city and one of my buddies named Dan just decided that he was the group mom on this trip. And I don't really know why he decided that, but he was bothering us the whole time. Don't do that. Don't go here. Where are you guys going? What are you guys talking about? Come over here. Be part of the group. Put your phone down. Let's go. Like just bossing us around the whole time. And we got mad at him. He spent the whole trip anxious. He didn't have as good a time as he could. And we, we spent the trip frustrated with Dan to the point where whenever he starts it now, we just call him mom and tell him to shut up. When we try to control everything in our life, we make ourselves anxious and we make the people around us resentful. We make ourselves anxious because we're trying to control everything. Everything's got to go according to plan. And now that we've structured this life, we have to protect this life with all the decisions that we're making and see all the threats, real and imagined, to this perfect order that we might have. And then the people around us grow to resent us because we're trying to exert unnecessary control over them as well. And it's really not a good path to be on. And the best example I can find in the Bible of someone who may have struggled with this idol of control and made herself anxious and everyone around her resentful is Sarah in the event with Hagar. Now, I'm going to read a portion of this, Genesis 16, 1 through 6, to kind of tell the story of Sarah and Hagar and Abraham. A couple bits of context. First of all, I know that at this point in the story, technically, her name is Sarai and his name is Abram, okay? For me, it feels like saying the nation Columbia with a Spanish accent all of a sudden after I've been talking in southern English for 30 minutes. So I'm not just going to break out into Hebrew. Okay, so they're going to be Sarah and Abraham, and you're going to bear that cross with me. And then what's happening in the story is in Genesis chapter 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He was in the Sumerian dynasty. He says, I want you to grab your family. I want you to move to this place I'm going to show you that became Canaan, the promised land in modern day Israel. And when he got there in Genesis 12, God made him three promises. He spoke to Abraham and he said, hey, this land is going to be your land and your descendants' land forever. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. He made those three promises to Abraham. Can I tell you, the rest of the Bible hinges on those promises. If we don't understand those promises, we can't understand the rest of Scripture. But all of those promises require a descendant to come true. Sarah and Abraham were getting on up there in age, maybe in their 80s. And Sarah had still not born Abraham a child. She was barren or he was impotent. And she begins to get concerned enough about this that she takes matters into her own hands. She arrests control away from God's sovereign plan. And this is what happens in Genesis chapter 16, verses 1 through 6. We're going to read it together. I don't see any problems so far. Okay, a little recap here. I, for one, am shocked that the story went that way. After she said, hey, here's what you should do. I have an Egyptian slave. You should sleep with her. She'll carry a baby, and then we'll raise that as our own child. I don't know what Abraham's moral compass was at this point in his story, what laws of God he had been equated with and not. I don't know how aware he was of the myriad egregious sins happening in this one instance. But this goes exactly how you'd think it would go. After a wife, likely much older than her slave, says, why don't you sleep with my slave and you all have a child together? And then what happens? She gets anxious. She gets resentful. She sees that Hagar is haughty towards her. And then she begins to resent Abraham, blames it on him. This is your fault. Excuse me. I'm sure it was your idea. And then runs Hagar off. By taking control in this situation, she made herself anxious about everyone around her, and she made everyone around her resentful of who she was. You can see it in Abram's response in verse 6. He says, listen, she's yours. You deal with it. Don't come to me with those problems. He's tired of dealing with it. And as I was thinking about the sin of Sarah, and as I was thinking about what it's like when we take control of our own life, when we kind of take the wheel from God and we say, I've got it from here, you can ride passenger, I'm going to be in control and orchestrate everything. That what we're really doing when we take control is this. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. We just get in the way. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. What did Sarah do? She got in his way. He had a story that he was writing with Isaac. He knew exactly when he would, God knew exactly when he was going to allow Abraham to make Sarah pregnant. He knew exactly how the rest of the story was going to go. Ishmael doesn't need to exist. That root of Ishmael doesn't need to exist. If Sarah would have just been patient and waited on God and his timing, if she had just been patient and waited on God to write the story that he intended, if she waited on his sovereignty and his will, but she got tired of waiting, she thought it should be happening differently than this, so she took control. And as a result of that control, we have this split in the line of Abraham that has echoed down through the centuries that we're still dealing with today, over which we are still warring right now in Abraham's promised land because Sarah took control when she wasn't supposed to. She got in the way of the story that God was wanting to write. And the more I thought about that, what it's like to be getting in God's way when he's trying to direct our life the way he wants it to go, I thought about this. Now, you can raise your hand for this one. Who in here loves themselves a good cooking show? I love a good cooking show. Just me and Jeff and Karen. Perfect. Nobody else likes cooking shows. You're liars. I love a good cooking show. At our house, the things that are on the TV are house hunters, cooking shows, and sports. That's it. By the way, my three-year-old son, John, calls all sports golf. Yesterday I was watching soccer, and he said, Daddy, you watch golf. And in our house, we have a rule. When a kid is making a dumb mistake like that, we do not correct them because it's adorable, and we want them to do it as long as possible. Like the days gone by when, to Lily, anything that had occurred before today was last-her-day. Could have been last year. Could have been last week. Could have been a couple hours ago. It happened last-her-day, and it was great. At some point, she figured it out, and now we don't like her as much. But I love a good cooking show. And my favorite chef, no one will be surprised by this if you know me, is Gordon Ramsay. I really like Gordon Ramsay. I like watching him cook. I like watching him interact. I think he's really great. And so I watch most of what he puts out. And I was thinking about this, getting in God's way. And I think this fits. Let's pretend that at an auction, at a charity auction from Ubuntu, which would be a great prize, I won a night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. First of all, I was given a significant raise. Second of all, I've spent it all on this night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. And the night comes around. I'm so excited. I would be thrilled to do this. It would really, really be fun. I do like to cook. And so let's say that night finally rolls around and I go to his kitchen and I walk in and all the ingredients are out on the counter. And he hasn't told me what he's going to make, but all the ingredients are there. And what I don't know is he's planning to make a beef Wellington. That's one of his signature dishes. I've only had one beef Wellington in my life. I loved it. I would kill to have one that was cooked by him for me. That would be amazing. But the deal is, I look at the ingredients and he's going to teach me how to do it. So he's going to walk me through it step by step. First, you want to sear the loin. Get that, get the skillet nice and hot, sear it. Then you rub the mustard on it. Now dice up some mushrooms. And I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. I'm just following him step by step doing what I'm supposed to do. And his goal is to show me how to make a beef wellington that we've done together. Great. Except stupid me sees the ingredients, sees the steak, sees some green beans, and I go, you know what, Gordon? Actually, I've got this. It's your night to cook with Nate. What I'd like you to do is just go sit behind the bar on the other side. Let's just chat it up. I'd like to hear some of your stories. I'm going to make you steak and green beans. And I take those ingredients, and I get in his way, and I go make overdone steak with soggy green beans, and I slide it across the table to him. Having no idea what I just missed out on. Because I insisted on taking control and making what I thought I should make with those ingredients. I think that when we insist on turning all the dials in our life ourselves, taking control of every aspect of our life. That what we do is very similar to being in the kitchen with a master chef and telling him we've got this. We see the ingredients available to us and we make the thing we think we're supposed to make. Having no idea that he had so much better plans for those ingredients than what we turned out. And as I was talking about this sermon and this idea with my wife, Jen, who has a different relationship with this source idol than I do, she pointed out to me, she said, you know what they're trying to make? If your idol is peace, you're trying to make in that kitchen or if your idol is control. She said, we're trying to make peace. People with the idol of control, you know what they're trying to do with that control? They're trying to create a peace for themselves. They're trying to create rest for themselves. If this is your surface, if this is your source idol, and you try to control every aspect of your life, chances are that what's really motivating you to do that is a desire for peace in all the areas of your life. It's why your spirit can't feel at rest until your bed is made. And this is true. Why did I think of the things that I wanted to say to the counselor? Because I didn't want to get sidetracked. I didn't want to get surprised. I wanted to walk into that office with peace. Why do we prepare ourselves for the situations that we're going to face? Because we want to be peaceful in the midst of those situations. Why do we prepare for the week and get the Sunday scaries? Because we want to enter the week feeling at peace, feeling ready to go, feeling that we are in a place of rest and not a place of hurry. But here's the problem with the peace that we create with our control. It's fragile. It's threatened. It's uncertain. It's always at risk. We can do everything we can to create peace in our life with the way that we control every aspect of it. But the reality is we are one phone call away. We are one bad night away. We are one accident in the driveway away. One bad business decision. Two bad weeks of just being in a bad spot away from ruining all that peace. There are so many things that happen in life that are outside of our control that any peace that we have created for ourself is only ever infinitesimally small and thin and fragile. And when we live a life, even achieving peace, but when we live that life of a threatened peace so that now we have peace, we've done it, we've orchestrated, we've controlled, we have what we want, everything is ordered as it should be. Things are going well. Then where does our worrying mind go to? All the things that could possibly happen to disturb this peace. All of the threats real and imagined to my peaceful Monday. And then here's what we do. I know that we do it. I've seen it happen. Then we pick a hypothetical event that could possibly happen three months from now to threaten the peace that I've created, and we decide to stress about that today. And it's not even happened yet. But we're already jumping ahead because our anxiety monster needs something to eat. And I am reminded with this idea of a threatened and a fragile peace of the verse we looked at in our series, The Treasury of Isaiah, Isaiah 26.3. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Isaiah says, and God promises, that he will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. And so what's our part in that peace? It's trusting in Jesus and not ourselves. And it occurs to me, I'm not saying this for sure, because it could just be poor planning, but I kind of believe in the Holy Spirit and the way that he times things out. I've seen over and over and over again how we've had a sermon planned for eight months, and I'll preach that sermon on that day, and someone will say, this is my first time at Grace. I'm so glad I heard that sermon. That's exactly what I needed. It's the Holy Spirit. I know that we just visited this verse. And I know that we just talked a couple weeks ago about a fragile peace. But maybe we're doing it again because some of us just need to hear it twice. Maybe some of us in this room need to hear this again and let the Holy Spirit talk to us again and be honest with God about what we're holding dear to our heart and what we may be idolizing without having realized it. Because what God promises us is a perfect peace. You know what perfect peace is? Perfect peace is an unthreatened peace. Here's what perfect peace is. Jen's family used to have a lake house down in Georgia on Lake Oconee. And my favorite thing to do when I would go down there was to kind of separate from everybody, big surprise, and go and lay in the hammock right next to the lake. Because when I got in that hammock, and I could hear the occasional boat putter by several hundred yards away, and I could hear the waves slowly just kind of lapping against the wood at the edge of that lake, and I could hear the birds and the sound of the lake, that was all I could hear. It drowned out everything else. It never seemed to matter what was happening in life when I laid down in that hammock. Everything was at peace and everything was okay. When we trust in God's sovereignty and in God's peace instead of our own, it's like laying down in that hammock next to the lake. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. God is in control. He knew this would happen, and I trust in him. I don't know what story he's writing. I don't know where he's going. This is not what I would have made with these ingredients, but I know that he wants what's best for me, and he wants what's best for the people that I love, so I trust him with the results of this. It's laying in that hammock and trusting in the sovereignty of God. Perfect peace is trusting in God's sovereignty, in God's goodness, in the truth that we know that he always, always, always wants what's best for us. And that he will bring that about in this life or the next. And we can trust in that. So, here's what I would say to you. My brothers and sisters who may struggle with control. I'm not here this morning to make you feel bad for your worry or your anxiety or to make fun of you for your Sunday scaries. I think all of those things are natural and a normal part of human life. It would be weird if you never worried about anything. I think it's a good goal to grow towards. But I'm not here to make you feel badly about that. But here's what I would say. If you're a person who's given to worry and anxiety and seeks to exert control, and when you don't have it, it starts to freak you out a little bit, that doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like laying in the hammock next to the lake trusting in God's protected peace rather than trusting in your fragile, unprotected, risky peace. You see? And so what I would encourage you to do is to see things this way. Excessive worry is a warning light. Excessive worry on the dashboard of your life is a warning light that should cause you to wonder what's really going on and what you're really worried about. A few weeks ago, I talked about those of us with the issue of power being a source idol and how that begets anger, and I said the same thing. Anger is the flashing warning light for us. When I'm having days when I'm excessively angry or frustrated all the time, I need to stop and pause and go, what is the source of this, and why am I so upset, and why do I have a hair trigger? What's going on with me? And wrestle that to the ground. For my brothers and sisters who who struggle with control maybe more than you realize before you walk in the door excessive worry and I don't know what excessive worry is I can't define that for you that's that's between you and God to decide how much is too much but here's what I do know excessive worry is a warning light and here's. And here's what it's telling you. It's telling you I am not existing in perfect peace. And what's our part of perfect peace? To keep our mind steadfast by trusting in him. So somewhere along the way, we've started trusting in ourself a little bit more to grab those ingredients and make what we want. Somewhere along the way, we've started taking control back from God, trusting in our sovereignty, not his, and beginning to create our own peace that is fragile and stressful. And so the question to ask yourself when that warning light starts to go off is simply this, whose peace am I trusting? I don't know what to tell you to do. Because I'll be honest with you. Like I said, I talked this sermon through with Jen. And she kind of said, yeah, all that's true. Okay, I get it. I agree. All true. What do I do? How do we not do those things? How do we not worry more than we should? What are my action steps? And I said, well, what advice would you give to so-and-so? She goes, I don't know. You're the pastor, so I'm asking you. Here's what I would simply go back to, is this question of whose peace am I trusting? Am I trusting in the peace that I've created? Or are my eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, so that my mind is steadfast in him and I'm trusting in his peace? Whose peace are you trusting? My prayer for you is that you'll experience the rest of trusting in God's peace. And as I enter into prayer for you, there's a prayer that I found in a devotional that I have from the Common Book of Prayer from 1552. It's amazing to me how timeless the truths of faith and spirituality and Christianity are. And how this could be written today and still every bit as accurate. But I'm going to read this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. And then we're going to enter into a time of prayer together and then we'll worship. Oh God, from you all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works proceed. Give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that both our heart may be set to obey your commandments, and also that by you we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Father, we love you. And we thank you that through your Son, we can have perfect peace. God, we are sorry for not claiming this gift that you offer us more readily. God, we are sorry for grabbing the ingredients and trying to make our own peace and write our own story. God, we are sorry that we sometimes trust in our wisdom and our sovereignty more than yours. Lord, I pray that no matter where we sit with this idol or how we might wrestle with it, that we would leave this place more desirous of you than when we came. And God, for my brothers and sisters that do struggle, that do find it difficult to give up control, that do find themselves battling that demon of worry sometimes, God, would you just speak to them? Would you let them know that you're there, that you love them, That you have a plan for them that they don't see but that they can trust? And would you give us the obedience to just do the next thing that you're asking us to do, not worrying about what the result is going to be, but worrying about just walking in lockstep with you? Father, make us a people of peace so that we might give that peace to others and that they might know you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.