Sermons tagged with Happiness

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that after the service. Just a real quick tip of the cap to Carly, our female vocalist. She was hacking up a lung in the pre-service meeting. She just got a little nagging cough, and she said, I'm just praying that I make it through my song. She said, great job with Honey in the Rock. You made it. Now, I got things to get to. All right, settle down. But now, if you start to cough during the sermon, get out. Go. All right. Carly's the best. She's also our graphics person, and we love her. This is part two of our series called Transformed. Jordan, in the open, kind of told you guys a little bit of what it is about and what it's for. It's based on that verse in Romans chapter 12 that says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so there's some things that we wanted to talk about over this series that will run into mid-October where maybe we can just shift our thinking a little bit. Maybe we can allow God to transform our mind in the way that we think about some things. And maybe that can actually transform our lives. And so this morning, we're going to talk about this transformation from comparison to contentment. One of the most, probably the most ubiquitous desires on the planet. Every person, every culture, everywhere wants happiness. Now we might put different words around that. We might describe it differently. I want to be safe. I want to be provided for. I want to have enough of this. I want to feel enough security here. I want to be loved. I want whatever it is, whatever the ingredients of happiness are for us. But everybody wants for themselves and for their children and for the people they love to be happy. It's a ubiquitous human desire. It is virtually universal. Now, because we're believers, most of us in this room would claim a faith in Christ. We know that the most important thing to desire is a relationship with him. We know that the thing that we want for our children is a relationship with Jesus. And so I'm not arguing that happiness should replace that. As a matter of fact, as believers, we know that happiness is only really achievable if we trust in Christ to bring that about. And that's one of the things we're going to see this morning. But if we think about happiness, what it means to be happy, it can't mean being a smiling idiot all the time, just grinning all the time. Every day is the best day ever. So it has to be something deeper than that. And the deeper foundation of happiness is contentment. It's being content, being content in the moment. This moment doesn't need any more. I love it the way it is. This situation, this season, this relationship doesn't need any more. I'm happy with the way that it is. It's to be content, to figure out how to be content. When we can do that, we can be happy. The problem is that we exist in a culture tailor-made to rob us of contentment. Would you agree with that? We exist in a culture and in a time where we are constantly and consistently berated with messages and images and comparisons that erode our contentment to a place where we are no longer happy and we spend our days wishing we had what we don't instead of being grateful for having what we do because we live in this culture that just perniciously eats away and erodes away at our own contentment. I was talking with a friend of mine and I asked her, what's the biggest threat to your contentment? And she very quickly said, social media, social media. I scroll Facebook, Instagram. Is it X now? I'm not on Twitter anymore. They went from Twitter to X. I scroll and I see other people who are doing better than me. Their SUV is bigger and wider than mine. And so now I feel like it fits nicely into parking spaces. Mine fits nicely into parking spaces. Theirs takes up two. So they are obviously having a better life than me. You know, their vacations are nicer than mine. They've got life figured out. They're in better shape than me. The scrolling relentlessly of social media and comparing ourselves to what we see chips away at a lot of our contentment. And to that, I would just offer this as an aside. Back at the beginning of the year, I think it's sometime in February, I realized that I was wasting so much time on my phone, just mindlessly scrolling apps for no good reason. And I would scroll at the time Twitter, and I would just be angry. I would be angry at the politics. I would be angry at Christians arguing with Christians. It would just make me mad. So then I would switch over to Facebook. Maybe this will be better. And then on Facebook, all it is, I don't know about your feed and your algorithm. All it is is a bunch of people from my life like 11 years ago that I no longer care about. Like, that's great that you were in the strawberry fields on Saturday. That's not what I want to see. That's not like engaging content for me. So I don't even know what's going on with Facebook. And it was a couple of days of scrolling and realizing, I don't know any of these people anymore. Why are they here? And then Instagram for me just became, the algorithm became falling videos and golf tutorials. That was it. That was all I got and the whole thing. And I'm like, this is a total waste of time. So I took everything off my phone, except for TikTok. I watch TikTok sometimes. That's kind of fun. But I took everything off my phone. And I'll tell you this, my happiness meter has gone up since doing that. So for some of y'all, I know I'm joking around a little bit, but for some of y'all, you may not need anything else in this sermon than just kind of a nudge. Why don't you think about taking that off your phone for a while? Is it making you happy? Is it bringing you joy? Is it making you more or less content? Why don't you take it off your phone and see if you engage more with the people around you? See if you look more at God's goodness in your life that's already there. See if you're more present for people. For at least somebody here, I know that that's all you need. I know that's what you need to hear today. Just try that out. See if it doesn't help a little bit. But if it's not online, it's in person, right? It's still, we can still play the comparison game and make ourselves unhappy with the things that we have. I remember in the summer of 2020, for the previous three years since I moved here, I had been driving a Nissan Leaf. And if you were here during that time, if you knew me during that time, you'd love to make fun of me for that because you hate the environment and fiscal savings. No, because I mean that you, if you listen, I drove one for three years. I'm just going to say this. If you drive a Leaf, you do deserve to get made fun of. That's, that's part of the deal. When I bought the car, I wasn't like, people are going to think this is awesome. Like I knew I was going to get made fun of. So when it came time to sell it and get something new, I thought, I want something nice. I want something that I like. For the first time in my life, I want to buy myself a nice car. And so I looked around, and I looked at a Tesla, the less expensive Tesla, but it was more expensive than the Accord that I was comparing it to. It was more money down, less miles a year, more money per month. And I thought, gosh, it's just not wise. I'm not going to do that. And so I leased an Accord. And it was the nicest car I ever had. When I got in it, I was like, I can't believe this is so nice. Like I was really, I was excited. Here's how excited I was about it. As a grown man, here's what I did. I drove I drove it to my neighborhood I parked it on a street I got out and I took pictures of it so I did I took pictures of my new car and then you know I texted them to my parents how lame is that what am I like 17 that's so embarrassing I remembered that I did that as I was prepping for the sermon I remember that's the thing that I did. And I'm like, what is the matter with you? But I did it. That's how proud I was of this car. I was so excited to drive in the lap of luxury of the Honda Accord XLE or whatever it was. EXL or I don't know. And then like a month later, my jerk friend Tyler got a Tesla. And he's like texting us pictures of it and videos. And it was so awesome. And it was way faster. And the whole roof of a Tesla is glass. And I had, I had a sunroof in my Accord, but it was one of the normal size ones from like 1987. Good job, you dope. That's the car you have now. Everything's controlled from a touch screen. I have to still touch buttons like it's 1998. This was terrible. And within a month, listen, I'm so proud of this car, I'm taking pictures of it. Within a month, I hate it. I want to take it back to the dealership and get a Tesla. I hated what I had. I wanted something new. Life just works that way, doesn't it? In the comparison game. I have a 28-inch black stone on my back porch. I like to cook on it. I go to somebody else's house. They got a 36. I'm like, dang, I got to get a 36. There's more quesadillas on there. The guy with the 36 goes over to his buddy's house. He's got a 36 inch blast stone, but it's in a permanent, it's got stone built up around. It's a permanent cook station outside. This is fancy. This is a big deal now. Then permanent blackstone station guy goes to somebody else's house and he's got a permanent kitchen set up with a smoker and a pool. And he's like, honey, we got to get a pool. And then the guy with the pool in the setup goes to his buddy's house and he's got an infinity pool. And he's like, oh, I got to get an infinity pool. And then that person goes to the bigger infinity pool and on and on and on it goes. And we can never just be satisfied with what we have because our culture that we exist in just chips away at our happiness through that comparison game. And here's another thing as an aside that the comparison game does. It is convinced. This is just for the young moms in the room. So basically, you, okay? It has convinced. I watch it happen. And you, okay? I didn't see you over there. It was Jordan Shaw. It's convinced the moms that they're not momming hard enough. That's what social media does. That's what the comparison thing does. It convinces moms and dads that they're not momming and dadding hard enough. They need to do more. Your cupcakes need to look better when you take them to the school. When your treats, when it's your week for snacks, for the soccer game, your cooler needs to be nice. It needs to be better than the other coolers. You need to engage in imaginative play. You need to do supportive discipline and never be angry at your kids. And only talk to them in soft tones because they're all little princes and princesses and they can't handle adversity in their life. So let's be very gentle. And let's not grade their papers in red. Let's use green and encouraging things and tones. Let's do that. And we're convinced, I see this in moms right now, that you're just not momming right. And you go to bed every night with this gross combination of mom guilt and mom exhaustion. I need to do more. I don't have one single ounce left to give, and I might hate my children. It's just this combo platter that's terrible. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's what I want to tell you, young moms. You are very likely a better mom to your children than your mom was to you. Very likely. It's just a generational thing. Jen and I are so much more present with our kids than our parents were with us. We just are. It's generational. It's just what this generation is doing. So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Now we won't know if we're doing it right until they're adults and they're not in prison, but for now it seems like we're doing a good job. You're doing a good job. Let yourself off the hook a little bit. Quit playing the comparison game. You're doing a good job with your kids. I actually watched a TED Talk a couple years ago, and it stuck with me. It's this guy doing studies on happiness. And he made the point that many of us, because of goal setting and attainment, have fundamentally eliminated the possibility of happiness from our life, which is kind of a crazy thought. But he says that when we set goals for ourselves and we say, when I get to those goals, I'm going to be happy. When I graduate college, I'll be happy. When I get a job, I'll be happy. Get the promotion, I'll be happy. When I meet the person, I'll be happy. When I get married, I'll be happy. When we have children, I'll be happy. When the children leave the house, I'll be happy, I meet the person I'll be happy when I get married I'll be happy when we have children I'll be happy when the children leave the house I'll be happy which is probably true and then when and then when when we get to be grandparents I'll be happy and what we do in life is we set the goalposts we set the marker for happy off in the distance and then we think I'm not happy now but when I get there I will be and then we get there what do we do the very second we arrive we move to the next thing. So I never spend any time in the joy that God brought me to. I only spend time anticipating the next thing I'm going to need to be happy. Whenever sit and revel in God's goodness now. So I think it's fair to say that we have a contentment issue. We always want the next thing. We always want a little bit more. Something a little bit bigger. Something a little bit shinier. Something a little bit more peaceful. We're always bugging God or ourselves for whatever could be next. Which is why I think this verse in Philippians is such a helpful verse for us this morning. It's actually, and then don't put that one up on the screen yet. I'm just gonna say 13 and then I'll read them all. It's actually one of the most misused verses in all of scripture. It's neck and neck Philippians 4.13 and Jeremiah 29.11. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, or I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And we see people misuse this all the time. I can do anything I set my mind to with Christ powering me. In the name of Christ, I can do whatever I want to do. I've seen athletes with this tattooed on themselves somewhere. I'm going to complete the pass through Christ who gives me strength or score the goal or hit the home run or pitch the strikeout. Like I'm going to do this through Christ who gives me strength. There's even a Christian apparel line, like Under Armour, but for believers. So it means it's almost as good as the not believing material, but it's a little bit cheaper and a little bit poorly done. And it's got 413 all over it. These, these athletes are on high school fields all over the nation being powered by Christ and their teams are winning all of the state championships, of course, because they're powered by Jesus and he wants them to win. We misappropriate the verse all the time. It does not mean that through Christ who gives me strength, I can close the sale. I can accomplish this thing. I can do this deed. I can accomplish this act. It does not mean that. We have to be very careful when we pluck verses out of context and make them mean what only the sentence sounds like without anything else informing what that sentence actually means. And we use it to mean the opposite of what it really means. Here's what it really means. Here's the context of it. If we read verses 11 and 12, Paul writes this in Philippians. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In's about learning in all seasons to trust God to provide what we need. And I love that the word learn shows up in here two times. I've learned to be in abundance and in need. I have learned to be in plenty and in want. I've learned these things through Christ who gives me strength. And it may seem like, well, man, it would be pretty easy. I don't know how tough that is, Paul. It'd be pretty, pretty easy to be content in abundance when you have plenty, when you don't want for anything, when you're, when you're living a life of luxury and you've got more than what you could ask for. It's got to be pretty easy to be content in that scenario. And to that thought, which isn't all the way incorrect, I would remind you of this proverb. I think about this proverb a lot. Proverbs 23, 1 through 5. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. That is a fancy, poetic way of saying this. Acc breeds more desire not less exposure to nice things a taste of the good life usually breeds a desire for more of that not less we have it pretty good then we go to someone else's house and they have it a little bit better and all of a a sudden we go home and we want what they want. Did you see that serving dish? I want that serving dish. My serving dish is from Kohl's. It is stupid. I would like a nice serving dish from like Nordstrom or something. I don't know. Crate and barrel. That's where you waste money on serving dishes. William Sonoma. That's right. That's a gold standard. That's all Jeffy has at his house. William Sonoma, everything. And Viking appliances, I'm sure. Yeah, because you can tell that the Viking stove heats up the ground beef better than just a regular GE stove, right? Yes, of course. But we all want those things. We all want those things. There's actually the effect of this that accumulation tends to make you want more. I heard this a while back. Steve Harvey, the host of Family Feud, was giving some people some financial advice. And he said, if you're just starting out in your career and you don't have a lot of money, he said, save up enough for a first class ticket somewhere and fly first class. Because once you fly first class, you will never want to fly coach again. And you will reorganize your life and be driven to make the money you need so that you can fly first class. And here's the thing. He's right. Have you ever flown first class? When you fly first class, you don't want to sit back there with the gen pop anymore. That's depressing. Now, here's what I've not done. And if I do this, I'm in big trouble. I've never flown in one of those pods internationally. If I fly in one of those pods where you get to stretch out and you get your own screen, like, I'm done for. But what you do when you get exposed, when you're at the king's table and you're around things that you don't have, is you begin to organize your life in such a way so that you can have those. When you see your friends taking nice vacations, you start to organize your life in such a way so you can too. When you see what you don't have, you start to organize your life in such a way that you can have what you want. And in organizing your life around the things that you want, around materials or experiences, we lose the contentment that's sitting right in front of us. So let's not think it's just a simple thing to learn to be content when you're surrounded with abundance, because it's not. It's really tricky, and it's really sneaky. Now the one that we would all agree is difficult is to be content when we have little. I kind of wondered as I read that, how can anyone be content in the midst of tragedy, loss, or loneliness? When you're sitting in the wake of a divorce, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When you are a freshly minted widow or widower, how can you claim in that moment to be content? When your children are walking through a tragically difficult time, how can you possibly claim to be content, to be happy? I need for nothing, when you clearly need for much. This is where that word learned comes into play, because somehow or another, Paul figured that one out. But that feels impossible. And it feels like really bad pastoral counsel. Someone's walking through a really difficult time in their life. They come to my office to see me, and they're crying about this hardship that they're enduring or that they're watching a loved one endure. And I point them to this verse and go, hey, you can be content through Christ who strengthens you. You should just be happy right now. How do we do that? How is that attainable? In the grace vine that I wrote for this week, I stated that this was a deeply personal sermon for me. Because this topic of contentment and happiness is actually something I think a great deal about. Because back in 2020, in the fall, I started to go to therapy. And I've mentioned before that I've done therapy, and I've mentioned before that I think everyone should do it. Everybody, you should go to preventative maintenance therapy. Most of us, all of us need more maintenance than we're willing to acknowledge anyways. Everyone should go. If you can afford therapy, you should go to therapy. I actually have a really good buddy here at the church. He's a big, tough guy, you know. He feels the only acceptable emotion to him is anger, and all other emotions are for sissies, all of them. And he decided he was going to start going to therapy, and I sent him to a guy, and he literally texts me every time he talks to this guy. Man, I love that guy so much. This is the best. I've never experienced anything like this in my life. Like, every time. Big tough guy loves therapy. You'd like it too. But I remember sitting in this guy's office, and I had kind of come to realize that in life, like, we all chase things. We all chase happiness. Some chase respect. Some chase security, stability, love, approval, just a sense of being enough and worthwhile. We're all chasing something. All adults are little more than just a pile, a comprising of insecurities and desires and ways that we try to cover those things up to make ourselves acceptable to the broader milieu. That's all we are. We're all chasing something. And I sat in his office, and he looked at me and he said, dude, when are you going to realize it? I said, realize what? He said, that thing that you're chasing, you have it. You have it. You have a wife who loves you. You guys laugh together every day. At the time we just had Lily, she said, you have a daughter who loves you, wants to spend time with you. You have rich friendships. People who support you, believe in you. You have a job that you love, a church that you love, and who seems to love you and support you too. When are you going to quit chasing it? You have it. It's right there if you'll just stop to look at it. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, my goodness, I don't know why I'm striving so hard to get the thing that's going to make me happy. I have all the ingredients for happiness in my life right now if I'll just notice them. And I think that that's true of most of us. I think most of us already have all the ingredients for happiness available to us. We already have all the ingredients of happiness available to us right now. Even if it seems like there's this hole in our life, this thing that we want, and I won't be happy until I get it, I would push back and say, no, you have everything you need right now to be content in this moment. It doesn't mean that we should stop striving. It doesn't mean that we should stop trying. It doesn't mean that we should stop seeking, but we can be content in this moment because God has given us everything we need to be content. He's given us all the ingredients to make happy if we will just stop and slow down and see them. And since then, since realizing that, I've just done a lot of reflection on the transformative power of being content. On the transformative power of looking at your life and saying, thanks God, I have everything I need to be happy in you and content in you. And I would be willing to bet that whatever it is you're chasing, you've probably caught it. Whatever it is you think you need, you probably don't. And that all the things that you need in your life to make you content in the Lord, He has provided for you. And as this has washed over me, it's impacted me in profound ways. And so I sat down and I thought, how has just this arrival at contentment shaped me? How has it changed me? How has it impacted me? And I came up with this list. Contentment has transformed my gratitude, perspective, faith, sentimentality, and my prayer life. Most importantly, contentment has transformed my gratitude. It has transformed the way that I walk through life grateful for God's goodness in my life. Every time Jen, my wife, laughs at one of my jokes, I say a little prayer of gratitude to God. Because as long as she'll laugh at my jokes, I know we're good. When she stops laughing at my jokes, we're in in trouble because I don't really have any other tools in the tool belt besides trying to make her laugh. Like I'm not romantic. That's it. It's changed the way I think about my children and the moments that I'm grateful for with them because here's the reality. Parents with young kids. When that kid is crying and you have to walk in there at 3.30 in the morning when all you want in the whole world is to sleep and you pick them up and you calm them down and that little head is resting on your shoulder and that little arm is on the other shoulder and you calm them down and you get them back to sleep and you lay them back down in that bed. Let me tell you something that's super depressing. You won't know when it is the last time that you just did that. One of those times is going to be the last time and you won't know that it was. And there's a bunch of parents whose kids are grown up who would give anything in the world to have that moment with their kid one more time. So be grateful for those moments. Be grateful for the sleepless nights because you only get so many of them. I was sitting in my house the other day and John and Lily, Lily's seven, John's two, they're running around the downstairs. We asked Lily to vacuum the kitchen and we got this little thing that she can do it with. And she did for a second. And then she just started running laps around the kitchen and the dining room. And she's screaming and John's screaming and no work is getting done. And I'm sitting there. And Jen was a little bit exasperated with him. And I'm just grinning like an idiot. Because I think one day we're going to miss these days. One day I'm going to miss a noisy house. And when you're content, when you're determined to see the good and what God has provided for you right now, annoying things become moments of gratitude. Frustrating things become moments of peace and reflection. It transforms the way you walk through life. It was in this season that I stumbled upon this verse in John 1 16 that I say all the time. You guys have heard me say it. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I love that verse. From God's fullness, from his goodness, from his generosity and his mercy and his grace, he has given you so many blessings. And it's up to us in the moments to acknowledge those. Next time you're with friends and you have a great conversation and it's life-giving and dinner is good, be grateful for it. Tell them so. Thank God for them. Next time you get one of those good laughs where your eyes tear up and you can't stop and you go for so long that you can't remember why you started, even if it was about something inappropriate, anyways, still praise God for laughter in your life. It was good and those moments are sweet and we don't know how many of them we get. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. I know. Some of us are in hard seasons. Some of us are in seasons of abundance. But I know that we all have God's goodness in our life. We just sang that song. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. And Aaron and the band laid out and I heard you guys saying that. If it's true, then be content in that goodness. And I love that line, why should I fear? The evidence is here. That's how it changed my faith. I said it affects my gratitude. It changes my faith. My faith in God. My faith in his goodness. I know that things are going to work out the way that he wants them to work out because he wants them to work out that way. He's inviting me into it. But I have nothing to fear from the future because God is orchestrating it and I am in his hands. And I've said last week we launched the part two of the campaign to build a building. And I said last week, and you'll hear me say a bunch, if God wants us to build it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. But that doesn't change one little bit what I get to do and what he's called me to do. That doesn't change one little bit what he's called you guys to do, what he's called us to do as a church, which is make disciples and grow closer to him, connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. That's what he's called us to do. That mission doesn't change if we get into a building. It doesn't change if we stay. Now, if we go, I'll be excited. If we don't, I'll be sad. But not for very long on either way because if God wants us to do it, we will. If he doesn't, we won't. I'm content. I'm happy getting to do what God has asked us to do in whatever capacity, in whatever location he's asked us to do it. This God opening my eyes to contentment has changed my perspective on life. In the middle of this realization, we were walking through a season of need. It was a hard one. We were walking through pancreatic cancer with Jen's dad. We ended up losing him at the end of that year. It was not an easy time for everyone around us to be content. It wasn't an easy thing to watch my wife just be sad and try to be content with that. But one of the things I learned is that life has seasons. And sometimes they're abundant, and sometimes they're lacking. And in the abundant seasons, we should revel in them and praise God for them and find joy in them. And in the seasons of need and hurt and want, we can take solace that it's a season that every day won't feel like today. Every month won't feel like this month. And a lot of times I'm not even sure. Sometimes we operate as Christians that God takes us into hard seasons because he has a lesson that he wants us to learn. So we allow these things to happen to us. And I just kind of think that's a pretty myopic view of God's will. He's orchestrating all these other things and all these, all this ripple effect and all these other people's lives so that you can learn this lesson about being grateful. Maybe, maybe you're that important in God's kingdom. Or maybe life ebbs and flows and good seasons and bad seasons come and go. And when we're in a bad season, we just say, I'm in a bad season. This is tough. But I know that God is with me and I know that everything won't feel like this. It's changed my perspective. It's changed my sentimentality a lot, like a lot. Because of those sweet moments, from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace. And you reflect upon those sweet things with friends or children or family or whatever it is, I cry all the time. Like, if I'm watching TV with John and he's on my lap and Lily sees it and gets jealous and she comes over and she puts her head right here and she says she wants snugs and now I'm cuddling with both of my children at the same time, I have the 100% chance I'm going to cry. I just will. I'll just sit there and I'll think, this is the good stuff. Like I'm such a sap. I don't know if I told you guys this already, but we got a piano in the house and Jen's playing just a little bit. And she was playing a hymn. I said, go play a hymn for me. She said, what hymn? I said, I don't care. I just want to hear you play a hymn. And she goes and she plays it. And I went and I stood next to the piano and she's playing the hymn. And I started crying and she was like, what are you, like, what's the matter with you? And I'm like trying to explain to her, like, I just imagined like 20 years down the road, John and Lily coming back with their kids and we're standing in this very dining room and we're singing Christmas carols and hymns. And she was like, you got to get it together, man. And she, I mean, she's right. But I've seen it revolutionize that in me too, savoring every moment as sweet and as God's blessing. And then lastly, I think that contentment radically changes our prayer life. I've talked about this a couple of times, but Jesus starts the Lord's Prayer with your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Over the years, my personal prayer life has gotten a lot shorter. The most words I use when I pray is when I pray in front of other people. It's not that I'm praying for shorter amounts of time. I just use a lot less words. Because I just pray, God, here's the thing. Would you do with this thing what you want? And would you help me to accept what that is? God, here's a concern. Would you be in this concern? And would you help me to be content in your answer? God, this person is sick. I'm just lifting them up to you. I don't know what to pray for them. But will your will be done in their life and in the life of their family? God, Lily's struggling. Will you help her? According to whatever your will is, because I know that this struggle might be important for who she's gonna become. But in all things, God, your will be done. And when you pray like that, then you can just kind of rest in the assurance that he will do his will. So I by no means have figured out contentment. And it certainly wasn't by my own desire that I arrived there. I didn't decide one day, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be content. I'm just going to decide to be happy with my life. I didn't do that. It washed over me like a ton of bricks because someone was ministering to me and they said, hey, you have all the ingredients for happy in your life right now. Maybe you should stop reaching for other things. And so I would like to say that same thing to you. You very likely have all the ingredients you need right now to make happy. If we just stop reaching and grabbing. And then here's what happens. I said earlier, it's impossible. It feels impossible to be content in a season of want during loss or loneliness or tragedy. But what happens is when we learn to be people who are content, that word learn, Paul says it's a process. When we learn to be people who are content with what God has provided for us in this moment and in this season, then when we are in a season of need, when we are in a season of hurt, if you're sitting there and I'm like, hey, you've got all the ingredients you need to make happy, you're like, I don't. I don't. I've got a big hole in my life. If that's you, here's how being a content person even transforms that mindset. Trusting God and being content allows you to say, you know what? I might not have all the ingredients in my life. I think I need to be happy, but I have Jesus and he's enough. He has provided himself for me and he is enough. And I trust him that not all seasons will feel like this season. And then we come full circle back to the verse and make this point. True contentment is only possible through the sanctifying work of Jesus. Sanctify, I always say, is to become more like Christ in character. It's a process after we claim a faith in Christ and then we're taken up to heaven in glory. Everything that happens in between, the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us more like Christ in our character. That's a sanctification process. And that's only, true contentment is only accessible through the sanctifying work of Christ. That's why Paul says, I've learned to be content. How? Through Christ who gives me strength because he allows me to do all things. And when we find our contentment in Christ and in his strength, we come full circle and we get to say, along with Paul, I have learned in seasons of plenty and I have learned in seasons of little to be content and happy because I can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Let's pray. Father, we do, we do. We see the evidence of your goodness all over our lives. Lord, I pray that we would look at your considerable gifts, at the fullness that has leaked out onto us, and we would see the good things that you've given us, the good friends who love us, the good family that supports us, the good job or the good role or the good thing in our identity that we get to do to express ourselves and exercise our gifts, God, would we look at the many, many rich blessings that we have in our lives and be grateful to you. Father, for those with us who don't feel content, who do feel sad, who do feel like they are lacking some essential ingredients. God, would they feel this morning that you really are enough? Would they feel this morning that Jesus really is enough? Would they trust that these seasons of need and want, they come and go, and that you're in these seasons with us just like you're in the seasons of abundance with us? Help us be a grateful people. Help us pray with faith and with trust. And God, help us learn like Paul did to be content in all seasons and to find that joy and that contentment in you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Now's not a good time. I'm busy. Happy Mother's Day for those to whom it applies. As we were singing that last song, I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. I think that's an excellent song for Mother's Day. I think about my wife, who's an incredible mother. I think about the mom that I got to grow up with. I think about the kids that we have and share together and see God's evidence, the evidence of God's goodness all over my life. And hopefully for Mother's Day, that's something that you get to reminisce and think about too. Hopefully you have a great mom. Hopefully you've gotten to experience being a mom if that's something that you want to experience. But I also know that for others, Mother's Day is hard. We had a lot of hard Mother's Days when we wanted the gift of children and we didn't have it yet. And so I always like to just acknowledge that and pray in gratitude for good moms, for good memories, for the blessing of motherhood, but also pray for strengthening for those for whom Mother's Day is difficult for myriad reasons. So if you'll join me in prayer, I'll pray, and then we'll dive into the sermon. Father, we're grateful for good moms, moms that love us,oms that love us enough to get on to us, to keep after us, to not give in. Moms who wake up in the night with us. Moms who are always there, who leave notes in our lunches and who pray with us every morning. We thank you for moms that we've seen read your word and seek you diligently. We thank you for moms who raised us to help see you. And God, we thank you for the gift of motherhood and parenthood. And those of us who have children, God, are so grateful that you've given us that gift. And so we pray that we would be the mom and the dad to them that we need to be. God, also lift up those for whom holidays like this are difficult. Maybe it's difficult because their mom's not here anymore, and that's hard. Maybe it's difficult because they want to be a mom and they're not. And that's hard. Maybe it's difficult, God, because we thought we were going to be a mom and then we weren't. So, Lord, I pray just for special strength, protection, grace, and peace onto those folks. And that, God, those of us who feel blessed by today would see you as the author of that blessing. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is part five of our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at different stories and instances in the Bible where we see these emotional flare-ups, these blow-ups and these blow-outs, and kind of just ask, what can we learn from that? Because this blowing up is a very part, it's a part of the human existence. It's something that we all experience. And so earlier in the series, we talked about, I talked about Peter cutting off the ear of one of the soldiers in the garden, and I kind of compared that to when we lash out at people. We just get angry, and we lash out, we're cutting off ears, and we should try to cut off less ears. And we talked about what can we do when we feel like lashing out. And so I thought it would be good to look at the other end of that and say, what do we do when we're the one whose ear just got cut off? What do we do when someone lashes out at us? So the question for today is, what should you do when someone blows up on you? When you are on the receiving end of unwarranted anger, of unjust frustration, of unfair lashing out, what should you do when someone blows up on you? And I thought that this would be appropriate for Mother's Day because what is being a mom if not getting blown up at eight times a day because you had the audacity to suggest that now might be a good time to brush your hair or not wear Crocs with a church dress or not get out of bed at 630 to make Mother's Day breakfast. Not that any of those things happen in our home, but with your children who are less good than ours, I'm sure that they blow up at you. And I can only imagine, you know, right now we've got a seven-year-old daughter. John is two. He doesn't really know how to blow up at anybody. He just clenches his fist really tight and you can just hear, he screams and you can just see this visceral anger coming from him, which is great. And, but Lily knows how to blow up. She's seven, but they're seven-year-old blowups, you know, like they're not, they don't really sting a little. I bet the 17-year-old blowups are rough. I bet those, I'm not looking forward to those. And then something tells me that the older your children get, the worse those instances become. And I also know that on the other end of the spectrum, I've talked with enough people, with aging parents, that sometimes as parents get older and older, their filter is just used up. It's just used up. They don't have a new one. There's no replacement. You can't get one from Amazon. It's just gunked up and they've tossed it aside. And they can say things that aren't so nice sometimes. And that's tough. It's tough when someone blows up on you. It's tough to be on the receiving end of unfair anger. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was going to pick up my dad at the airport. And I was at the airport and just kind of started to, I was near the terminal, so the traffic kind of starts to funnel in and slow down and whatever. And this cab, like a literal taxi cab, I don't even know, like, what are you guys even doing anymore? Like, who's using cabs? And not, why does it even exist in Raleigh? I don't understand this. It's like, it's like, it's like seeing the yellow pages on your front door or something. Like, didn't we, didn't we cover this? Anyways, cab comes blowing past me, swerves into my lane, like, and, and, and like slams on his brakes. Like he's mad at me. And I'm like, what in the world's going on with this guy? I have no idea. I did not see him anywhere in my rear view. I was not aware. I didn't even think that I had changed lanes recently. He just decided he was mad at me. He gets in front of me and I'm like, whatever. So I, I actually, I didn't even need to be in that lane and he was now going slow to mess with me. So I, I I just went around him like I got to go to the second terminal, buddy. And I look over, and he is aggressively hanging the bird at me. And I don't know how you do that non-aggressively, but this was aggressive. Shaking his fist, yelling things. I literally, like honestly, I'm on the stage, okay? I'm preaching to people. So before God, I have no clue, no clue what I did that upset this guy. And so I just kind of looked at him and went, and kept driving. I don't know. I wasn't mad, but he was really mad at me. So what do we do when someone gets really angry with us and we don't deserve it? We didn't do anything. We don't know what to do. How do we act in those moments? How does God want us to act? And what's really cool is not even how does God want us to act just so that we behave well, but how can we act in those moments that will actually draw people, the people who are angry and the people who can see that anger, that will actually draw them closer to our Father. What can we do in those situations when someone blows up on us? When I was thinking about that, there's one story that comes to mind in the Bible. To me, it's the best blow-up story in the whole Bible. It's one of the biggest ones. I can't think of many others that are like it, if any at all. But it's in 1 Samuel. We see the first part of it in chapter 18, and then I'm going to point us to chapter 19. So Saul is the king of Israel. He's the first king of Israel, but there's this kid named David who's been anointed as the next king of Israel. Normally, Saul's son Jonathan would take the throne from him, but God has used the prophet Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel. And then after getting anointed, David does this really annoying thing where he goes down in the valley and he kills a giant that everybody else in the whole country was afraid of, including Saul, and he does it without Saul's armor. And so Saul's a little ticked at him. And then he puts David in his army, and there's this song. This is the English translation of the song. Maybe it sounds better in the original Hebrew. I don't know. It's a pretty dumb song, if you ask me. But it was, Saul has killed his thousands, but David has slayed his tens of thousands. I don't know what the melody is on that. Maybe I should get Roburg to help me out. That seemed to work for you. But I don't, that was the song, right? So there's some jealousy there between Saul and David. And so Saul was a man that was given to what we would probably identify as anxiety or depression, bouts of despair and anger. And one of the only things that could calm him was David coming to the palace and playing the harp for Saul. That would calm him down. And so David's doing that one day, and Saul is just seized with anger and throws his spear at David to try to kill him two times. David dodges both of them and then gets out of there. Then after that, Jonathan, who was David's closest friend in the world, goes to Saul, his dad, and he's like, dude, this is a paraphrase. He says, dude, what are you doing? What's the problem here, man? This guy, he loves you. He serves you. He's a good servant. He's faithful. He's a good leader of men on the battlefield. He's there to play the harp when you need him to. I'm not mad at him. I'm happy that he's going to be my king. You don't need to be mad at him for me. Just like knock it off with David, with hating David. Can you do that for me? And Saul says, yes, I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Which just as an aside, if you ever in your life have to promise to stop trying to kill someone, you just need to take a look in the mirror. That's all. I'm not going to make a bunch of points about that, but that's a sentence that no one should say. I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Then we pick up the story in 1 Samuel 19. Turns out Saul's a liar. He just really liked trying to kill David. So here we go. Then a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, and he sat in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the lyre. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul so that he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, If you do not escape with spear two times, leaves, gets invited back to the palace, goes back to the palace. He's playing the lyre again to try to soothe Saul. And Saul, for a third time, throws a spear at David. David eludes it and gets out of there. Which, as an aside, I'd just like to point out, this is one of the fundamental differences between David and I. I have a one-spear-throw policy. If you throw your spear at me one time in anyone's house, I'm leaving that house, and I'm not going to trust you around spears again. David has a three-spear policy, much more gracious than I am. So he eludes it for the third time. He leaves. McCall is actually Saul's daughter that was given to David in marriage, and she helps him escape. Later on, we see this poignant scene where David and Jonathan meet in a field, and Jonathan tells David, you're going to have to go until my dad dies. He's never going to stop wanting to kill you, so you got to go. So David, for I think about this 20 year period goes and he just lives in the wilderness with a band of some of his soldiers. And they just elude Saul at various times. Saul chases David through the wilderness, trying to capture him and kill him. And there's actually two really poignant scenes in the wilderness where David has a chance to kill Saul and he doesn't. There's one where they're in the En Gedi, the caves on the edge of the En Gedi plain, which is in the southern part of Israel, close to the Dead Sea. And Saul's army must have been close because David and his men were hiding in a cave. And Saul, now at my house, when someone says they have to go to the bathroom, we say, do you have to go to the bathroom or the bathroom bathroom? Saul had to go to the bathroom bathroom. So he goes into a cave to take care of business. While he's in there, just so happens, that's where David and his guys are. And David's guys are giving David the eyes like, dude, you could totally kill him right now. And David realizes this. But he says, shame on me if I harm the head of the Lord's anointed. So he takes his knife and he cuts off an edge of the robe and Saul leaves. And once he's a little ways off, within shouting distance at least, David feels terrible that he even did what he did. And he goes out and he gets Saul attention, and he shows him the robe. And Saul feels so bad about the grace and forgiveness that David shows him that he decides, I think I'm going to be done killing David for a while. And he goes back to the palace. It wasn't long before he started hunting for David again. This time, David and a guy named Abishai snuck into the tent at night, and Saul's laying on the ground asleep with all of his men around him asleep as well. And Abishai looks at David, and he says, let me strike him with the spear. It will only take once. It will not take twice, which is a really, like, it's one of the cool lines. Like, I only need to do it once, man. I won't need two on this one. I'll get him. And David says, no, shame on me if I touch the Lord's anointed. And then in a battle between some of David's forces and some of Saul's forces, Saul ends up being killed. And the person who takes Saul's life, David actually takes their life for being willing to do that to the Lord's anointed. So what we see from David is that although Saul blew up on him, had completely unjust, unfair, unwarranted anger at David, David always, his whole life took the high road. His whole life honored Saul. Never once did he raise to meet Saul where he was. And so if we're going to ask, what should we do when someone blows up on us, when we are the object of unwarranted anger and frustration, I think we can look to this example of the life of David and see what he did, and we can mimic those things in our own life. And what's really helpful about this is I think that there are three really important New Testament passages, verses or passages, because some of them are two verses. I think there are three really important New Testament passages that honestly, every Christian, if you're here and you call yourself a believer, you should have these memorized. You should be able to say these off the top of your head. These should be things that show up in your life that you think of often enough so regularly that you can quote them. You might not know where they're from. You might not know how to find them. You might have to type them into Google to figure out the reference like I did this week, but you should know them. You should know what to type into Google. And so I want to look at three verses that display three behaviors that David displayed in this story about his interaction with Saul. So let's look at three things that were true of David and try to make those true of us. The first thing we see in this story is that David was slow to anger. He was slow to anger. And I know he was slow to anger because David could have, by all accounts, by all accounts, he was a better warrior than Saul. By every measure, he was superior to Saul. When Saul is in his house and potentially drunk and throwing spears at him, David could have very easily taken that spear out of the wall and gotten his vengeance on Saul right there. Now, you might say, well, he couldn't do that. There's guards. He could have been killed. Yeah, maybe, but what we know is that he didn't raise up in red-hot anger and do what some of us would do if somebody tried to hurt us. He kept his cool. He was slow to anger, which is really not the typical response in the human experience, right? That's why James writes this verse to remind us to do it. In James 1, 19 and 20, he says, does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. This is one that we should know. This is one that we should have memorized. This is one that we should remind ourselves of, particularly when someone is blowing up at us. Because human nature is not to stay calm and stay down here. Human nature is to rise and meet the anger with anger, isn't it? You guys who are married know this. You know this. You've had those fights, those days, where you look at each other and you're just mad at each other. You're just mad. And finally, one of you goes, what are you mad about? What are you even upset for? And the other one says, I don't know. You're mad at me, and I don't know why you're mad, so I'm mad at you. Well, I don't know why you're mad. So I'm mad at you. And then you kind of go back and forth. You're like, what was the first thing that made us mad? And nobody knows. And like, can we just agree to just kind of set the arms down and slowly back away from this one? Are we done here? We're like, yeah, we're done here. But that's typical in human interaction to meet anger with anger. I remember years ago, very early on in our marriage, Jen and I were at each other's throats about something. I don't remember what. But as we were talking about it, she gets really upset. She storms up the stairs, slams our bedroom door. Now, what did I do? Did I, because of my maturity and wisdom, think to myself, she's probably overreacting, but I'm going to let her stay up there and simmer because we don't want to say words in anger. And, you know, I'm sure that she'll kind of calm down. She'll realize maybe that was a little bit too much, and she'll come and apologize and tell me I'm right. That's probably what I need to do. No, I did not do that. I did not do that. Instead, I thought, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to tell her that she does not need to be slamming doors in our house. So I go upstairs, and I open that door, and I start getting on to her for the way that she's expressing her anger. And she, again, I don't want to talk to you right now, and leaves the room and goes into the guest room and slams that door. Now listen. Here's what I know. I don't know what we were fighting about. But if I make that sweet woman act like that, it's my fault. I was wrong. I don't know what we were fighting about. I know I was wrong. That's what I know. Now when she went into the second room and shut that door, did I leave her be? No. Because I wanted to poke it. So I walk up to the guest bedroom and I open that door. And I said, you know, I can open this door too. I can open all the doors. I don't know what happened after that. Things just kind of went red, I guess. It was just a blur. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's mad at us. Oh, I'm going to get mad at you. Some cab driver hangs you the bird, you're like, hey man, forget you. You know, like whatever. Your kid snaps at you, you've had a stressful day, you meet them there and you snap at them. Your spouse, your co-worker, your parent. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's angry with us, we raise to meet that anger. Well, James tells us, don't do that. Don't do that. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's important to be quick to listen and slow to speak too, because in those moments when we're frustrated, we have things that we want to say. But if we'll calm down and listen, we'll probably learn new information that may change what we want to say, that may help us be slower to anger. So when someone's angry with us, wisdom says, I'm going to be quiet, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to listen, and I will not meet anger with anger. This is what David does. The second thing that David does is David was quick to forgive. He was slow to listen and quick to forgive. He moves to forgiveness very, very quickly. We see no evidence whatsoever in any of the texts that David was ever angry with Saul or that David could not forgive Saul ever through the rest of his life. We see David offer Saul quick forgiveness, which is right in line with what Jesus teaches Peter in Matthew chapter 18. When it says that Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me that should I forgive him? As many as seven times? And Jesus says to as many times as you need to. Forgive again, forgive again, forgive again, forgive again. And it feels pretty generous for Peter to ask that. How many times, when my brother commits the same offense against me, how many times should I forgive him? Up to seven, which makes sense. Your friend comes over to your house, he gets too rowdy, he breaks your new TV. You forgive him that one time. How many more times should I forgive him? Seven? That's a lot of breaking TVs. And Jesus says, no, as many times as you need to forgive them, forgive them. The way that I think about it is, as many times as we hope God forgives us, forgive other people that many times. When someone offends us, when someone lashes out at us, when we are the object of someone's unfair anger and unfair frustration, we should as quickly as we can move to forgive that person. Because holding that grudge is only going to hurt us. It's not going to hurt them. Now, I will also say this. Last year at Lent, during the Lent season, I did a sermon on forgiveness. And I basically just preached to you from the perspective of my good friend, whose husband was having an affair on her, and she had to really learn what forgiveness looked like because they had five kids, and that was really, really tough. And one of the things that she said that was super helpful, if you're a person who's struggling with forgiveness or wants a more robust explanation of forgiveness and what it looks like, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to that sermon. But one of the things she said that I found very helpful and others have commented to me too that was very helpful is forgiving someone does not mean that you have to trust them again. And so I would say this to you. If the person who is blowing up at you is making a habit of that, if they do it regularly, if it's not just a one-off that you can ascribe to a set of circumstances that are no longer true, but you have someone in your life who's blowing up at you again and again and again, you should be slow to anger in those situations, and you should be quick to find a path to forgiveness in those situations. But let me tell you what David did not do. He did not go back into Saul's palace again. He did not make himself vulnerable to a spear the fourth time. He did not trust Saul again. Did he forgive him? Yes. Did he honor him? Yes. Did he give him grace? Absolutely. But did he put himself back in that home? No. No. If you have someone in your life who is habitually blowing up at you, it is perfectly good and wise to remove yourself from that situation until something changes and you feel like you can trust that that's not going to keep happening. As we talk about what do we do when someone blows up on us, it's... I'm mostly talking about people who aren't our spouses. If it's our spouse and they do it all the time, if it's our brother or sister or friend or mom or dad and they do it all the time, that's a separate sermon. But what I would say to that separate sermon is, it's okay to not put yourself back in a situation where someone's going to blow up at you all the time, where you feel like you're just around a ticking time bomb. We should seek to forgive, but we don't have to trust and keep putting ourself in a place where that is going to happen over and over and over again until we believe that something is going to be different. The last thing David does is David was a conduit of grace. He was a conduit of grace. He was connected to God's grace. He was pouring grace out onto others. Back in the fall, I did a series called The Five Traits of Grace, the five characteristics that make us who we are, The five things that we want every partner to exhibit. And one of those things is to be a conduit of grace. To be attached to the grace of God so that the grace that we receive flows out onto others. This is the verse that I think of when I think of this. This is probably, if you're going to memorize any verse at all, if you don't know any of these, start with this one. Start with this verse. Put it on your mirror where you get dressed. Put it on your dashboard if you get angry in the car. Put it next to where your emails are if those things make you angry. Whatever sets you off, whatever stokes your fire, just put this verse so that you can see it. And it's super easy to memorize and it's super impactful. For from his fullness, John says, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God's grace that pours out on us, we have all received grace upon grace. When we think about a couple of weeks ago on Palm Sunday, I did a sermon about the earned wrath of God on us for placing his son on the cross and that Jesus on the cross exhausts the wrath of God for his children. When we think of the wrath that we don't have to experience because God poured it out on Jesus instead of us, that's grace. And God knew, as I said, God knew that we were going to cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. He knew that we were going to do that. He knew what you were going to do after you prayed the prayer and after you accepted Jesus as your Savior. He knew that you were going to move through that awful season of your life that you'd like to forget. He knew that and he forgave that. He knows what lies ahead and he's forgiven that. When we think about the grace that we feel every week when we come to church and we sit here and we sing the songs and we have this voice in our head that reminds us of who we are and what we've done and where we've been and that if the people here knew what I was capable of, if the people here knew what I know, then I would have to find a different church to go to. And yet God chooses me and God loves me and God blesses me and he's given me grace upon grace. When we realize that, that that God is so good to us, that that God is so patient with us, that that God will watch us go through years where we don't have quiet times, where we're not praying to him, where we're not seeking him, where everything about our Christian life is compulsory and cursory. He will watch that zombie walk through life and still try to breathe spiritual life into us at all times, calling us back to him. He is excited every time we come home. He is excited every time we utter the words, dear God, and we begin to pray. He is thrilled in his heart every time he hears your voice praise your creator. When we receive from his fullness that much grace, it is very easy to pour grace out onto others. And this is what David did. He had grace for Saul. I think he understood Saul's plight. I think he had patience for him and his depressions and his moods, even in understanding his desire for his own son to be on the throne. And one of the best pictures of grace we see, maybe in the Bible, but definitely in the life of David, is once Saul has passed away, David has ascended to the throne. Anybody who's watched the History Channel or read any books about old kings and kingdoms knows that once a king takes over, one of the first acts of orders of business is to kill everyone associated with the bloodline that preceded him so that there's no threats to his throne. And there was no one left that they knew of, but then one day somebody found a relative of Saul's. It was a nephew or a cousin or something, I can't remember which. Named Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, it says, had a disability. And that's important because that made it more difficult for Mephibosheth to earn money and provide for himself. So he was a person who needed help. And they brought him to David, expecting David to kill him, to put him to death, to be done with the line of Saul and move on. Instead, David, learning who he was, had mercy and grace on him, made a seat at his table for him, and invited Mephibosheth to live in the palace and dine with him and be with him and considered him a family member for the rest of his life. That was how David showed grace and honor to Saul. That's the kind of grace that we're to show to others. The grace that says, I'm not saying I did this in the moment, I'm not trying to give myself credit, but the grace that says, you know what? It would be super stressful to be a cab driver. I don't know how they do it. I went to Chick-fil-A and Home Depot the other day. I was about to lose my mind, and that's like five minutes away. I don't know how they do it to be a cab driver. And you know what? I bet I did something inconsiderate that I wasn't even thinking of. So I'm going to give them them that. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. They're probably in a hurry. They probably need to get where they're going. Or, if this helps, life would be really hard to be that dumb. So I'm glad that God didn't make me that dumb. Whatever you need. We offer others grace. And I'll tell you who's the world's best at offering other people grace. It's Jen, my wife. She will do this all the time. We will be in traffic. Someone will cut me off, cause me to have to slam on the brakes. Our children are crying. We're terrified. And I'll say, my gosh, can you believe that person? And she'll say, now, Nady, because she calls me Nady. If you want to call me Nady, too, you can. It'd just be weird. She says, now, Nady, you don't know. His wife could be in the passenger seat in labor right now. And we just need, tell me I'm lying. And we just, we don't know what's going on in their life. I could be walking down the road, I promise you. I could be walking down the road and some guy could just come up to me and dog cuss me in front of my family. And then I could get out of the situation and walk down there and be like, can you believe that guy? What a jerk. And she'd be like, now, lady, you don't know what's going on in his life. His wife may have just left him and his parents may have just passed away. You don't know. That kind of grace. And when we remind ourselves of God's goodness and grace to us every day, it is easy to pour that out onto others. And I say start with that one, memorize that one, because if we're full of grace and we're offering other people grace, can't we be more quick to forgive when they mess up? Can't we remember that hurt people hurt people and just assume that they're hurting and maybe actually help them get to the bottom of their hurt rather than piling on and making them feel shame for blowing up in a way that they regret? If we're full of grace, won't we be slow to be angry? Won't we stay here longer? Because we're trying to see the best in them and we're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in the situation. I think if we just abound in grace that it takes care of the rest. And then the amazing thing that happens when we do this, when someone blows up at us unfairly or unjustly, if we do what this says, when someone blows up on you, be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abound in grace. When we do that, what are the people around you going to notice? What are your children going to pick up on? It's the easiest thing in the world to match anger for anger. It's the easiest thing in the world to lash back out. It's the easiest thing in the world to let someone say something nasty to you, say something mean to you, to have a server who's curt with you, one of those servers who acts like they don't even want to be there that day. It's perfectly human to let them walk away and then you venture frustration to the people around you. But what if you meet them with grace? What if you're slow to anger when other people would meet? What if you're quick to forgive when other people would hold on? What if you're abounding in grace when other people would abound in suspicion and doubt? Then not only have you brought that person who blew up at you a little bit closer to Jesus, not only do you bring yourself closer to Jesus, but you bring the people around you who see that and who marvel at that closer to Jesus too. Simply by being someone who, like David, is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and always abounding in grace. Let's pray. Father, would we in this way be more like David? And so be men and women after your own heart. God, when we are the subject of unfair anger, unfair frustration, when people treat us in ways that we don't deserve to be treated, would you help us to be slow to anger? Would you help us to stop and to listen? Not meet frustration with frustration? Would you help us to be quick to forgive where we can, to give us an earnest desire to find a path to that forgiveness? And God, more than those things, would you help us be people who abound in grace, who walk in this acute awareness of the grace and the love and the mercy that we have from you. Let us be people who walk in an acute awareness that from your fullness we have received grace upon grace, and let us freely and excitedly and happily give that grace to those around us, even when those around us treat us unfairly. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sometimes in life, we simply need to pause. We need to stop and sit and rest and think and reflect. In these moments of rest, often what we need most is for God to refresh us. We need Him to speak to us and breathe fresh life into us. We need for God to move and restore and encourage. This is why we observe Lent. It is a moment for us amidst all the busyness of our years to pause and focus on Jesus. Lent reminds us of what Jesus has done for us, how much he loves us and how he relentlessly pursues us. So let us together right now, be still and set our collective focus on Jesus, asking him to speak to us in this holy pause. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see you on this Sunday. As your pastor, I should tell you that if you attend church on Spring Forward Sunday, you do get an extra jewel in your crown in heaven. That's just scriptural. It's in Revelation. You can look it up yourself, particularly if your basketball team lost last night and then you got up anyways. Boy, howdy. That's two jewels. Well done. Good for you. The love of Jesus is strong in you. That's great. Or maybe after your attitude, you just needed some church. I don't know. One way or the other. Before I just launch into this, I don't do this very often, but I kind of thought it was pretty sweet, and I wanted you guys to be able to just, I don't know, celebrate it, know it too. But Jeff, he's standing up over there, so we can all look at him again. He led us in Amazing Grace. He shared with me before the service that that was the first time that he led Amazing Grace since his dad's funeral. So we're grateful for Jeff. Thanks, man. All right, that's good. Just relax. It's tough enough as it is. Yeah, so we're in the middle of our series called Lent. We're observing Lent as a church for the first time since I've been here, and I sincerely hope that you guys, if you're a partner of grace, that you have been following along, that you've been participating. We've got the devotionals available. There's still some on the information table and they're available on the website in PDF form if you prefer that way. But hopefully you're following along and reading those every day along with the rest of the church. I love all the different voices that speak into it. And as an aside, what a gift when you're a pastor to get to, for me, I write sermons on Tuesday. So what a gift it is on Tuesday to sit down and be like, okay, I'm preaching on this topic this week. Let me open this handy book and see what five wise, godly people in my church think about this topic and then steal their ideas and make it my sermon. Like, this is fantastic. We're going to do a lot more devotional writing, I think. But it's been really cool to let other voices speak into us, and I've really enjoyed that. And I hope that you're fasting as well, that you picked something to fast from during this period. And just by way of reminder, if the fast to you never gets past just grinning and bearing it, like I've given up sweets or I've given up Coke or I've given up whatever it is, and all you're doing is getting through another day and going, yes, I didn't do the thing I wasn't supposed to do, then it's really, the fast isn't really serving you spiritually because a want for that thing is supposed to take us and put our eyes on Jesus. It's supposed to remind us that this is how we should long for Christ. So there's a second place to go when we fast, and I hope that you're going there as you're experiencing your fast as well. Now this morning, as Kyle said at the beginning of the service, we're focused on stillness. We've been talking about stillness in the devotionals this week. That's what you have read this week to kind of prepare our hearts for this service. And that's where we want to put our focus is simply on being still. And so as we put our focus there for the sermon, I would bring our attention to the same place that one of our devotional writers brought it, to Psalm 62. Kelsey Healy wrote this devotion, and I loved the psalm that she kind of used as her launching point, and so I thought I would start us here as well this morning. But in Psalm 62, the psalmist writes this, And I think that that struck me this week as I considered this message and this topic because of that word silence. And I thought to myself, and I wanted to pose to you guys this morning, when is the last time you experienced silence? When is, like, seriously, when is the last time you comfortably and by choice sat in silence? And I don't mean lack of audible noise. I also mean lack of mental noise, lack of distraction, in silence with nothing else, simply waiting on the Father and inviting him to speak. I started out the devotion, I wrote a little note to kind of set up this season of Lent, and I use the passage from Samuel when he says, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. When is the last time in our lives we sat in silence with no noise or clutter to distract us, and we said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. Like, God, talk to me. I'm listening. I'm here. I'm waiting. Whenever you're ready to speak, I'm ready to listen. Because there's a waiting there. I think sometimes we go, okay, God, I'm ready to hear from you. And then it doesn't happen right away. We don't look up and see the sun shining on a particular bird that tells us a thing that we were wondering about. And so we just go, well, God's not speaking to me today. And we go on with our day, and we didn't sit in silence. And it just made me wonder, when's the last time you chose silence? When it was quiet. And to stifle the quiet, you didn't pick up your phone. You didn't let your mind start to race about that thing that's making you anxious. You didn't start to solve the unsolvable problem and start to try to control the uncontrollable events. When is the last time we sat in silence? And here's the other thing that occurred to me about the effort to sit in silence and stillness before God and wait for him. We exist in a period of time in all of human history where it is incredibly difficult to choose silence. It has never, ever, ever been harder to avoid distraction than it is in 2022. And I mean, I kind of think about that and just the clutter and the noise that exists in our life and how it would be processed by someone who was around in the time of the Bible, by someone who was part of an agrarian society 2,000 years ago, and how they would process all the noise and clutter in our life, I think it would be a little bit like taking them on a tour of a gym. Whenever I go to the gym, which is all the time, I chuckle a little bit because I look at all the contraptions that we have set up and they're really just set up to simulate ancient life because we don't need to do any of that stuff anymore. And I've thought about how fun it would be to take like an ancient hunter-gatherer and bring them to lifetime and just let them look around, you know? And be like, what's that over there? Well, that's a treadmill, man. Well, they're just walking. Like, yeah, that's what you do on a treadmill. Well, why didn't, like, they don't live here, do they? Like, no. Why don't they just, like, walk here? Well, we have, dude, we have cars. What do you think, man? Like, we got cars, buddy. We drive here so that we can walk in place around other people. We don't need to do that anymore. What's that guy doing over there? Well, that's called the bench press. Why is he doing that? Well, so he can develop muscles in his chest. Why doesn't he just like hunt? And like, doesn't his life require him to pick up heavy things? No, never. We pay people to pick up heavy things. We don't do that. Basically, if we don't come to the gym and simulate your life, we waste away as frail and fat, like just fragile people over the course of time, if we don't try to simulate your life. I think it would be so foreign to them what happens there that I think similarly, trying to explain to a person who would have originally read Scripture, to whom Scripture was originally written, trying to explain to them the clutter in our life would be equally challenging. Before electricity, you put the kids to bed, and what do you do? They didn't have books. Only the most wealthy people had scrolls. And if you do, I mean, you've only got a couple. How many times are you going to read that scroll, man? Like, what do you do? You can't pick up your phone and scroll Twitter. You can't turn on the TV. You can't grab a magazine. You can't call a friend. What do you do? You sit there. You just be still. You think about your day. Talk to your spouse. When you're on the hills shepherding all day and the sheep are eating and you can't pick up the phone, what do you do? Well, you sit. You're silent. You wait. And it's worth, I think, pointing out this unique challenge that we face for stillness and silence in our lives. Because it is so vastly different from a large swath of human history. And it makes me wonder, can this possibly be good for us as people, for our spiritual health, for our mental health? Can it possibly be good for us to be so distracted and so diverted all the time? Can it possibly be good for us to cure our boredom this quickly? That can't possibly be healthy. Surely, surely the enemy looks at our devices and is delighted with the distraction that they provide. And surely the Father looks at the clutter and does not marvel at the fact that he struggles to make it through that clutter into our hearts and into our lives and into our ears. And so, I think that the point that my wife Jen made this week as she and I were discussing this is a good one. That being still requires an action step. Now more than ever, if we want to be still, if we want to be silent, we're not going to stumble into it. It's not going to happen by default. It's not going to happen while we're watching the sheep, right? We're not going to stumble on it. We have to choose stillness. It requires an action step. It requires us to actually do it. And this is modeled for us by Christ. Jesus models for us this choosing of stillness. And I can't imagine what it must have been like to be Jesus in ancient Israel. And every city you go to and every little town you go to and every street you walk down, people are clamoring towards you and they want and they want and they want and they need and they need and they need. So the only way for Jesus to just take a breath was to do what is said in Mark 1 35 that Doug read for us at the beginning of the service when he says, and rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. Jesus models this choosing of stillness for us. And that's not the only place it shows up in the gospels. He does it over and over again where he goes away to pray. And without fail, this is not the point of the sermon, but it's just worth pointing out about our Jesus. I marvel at the fact that he would go and pray and be still. And as soon as he would say amen and take a step back towards civilization, he was covered up with people who wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted. And to me, I don't need anything else to prove to me the moral perfection of Christ than to see his relentless patience and grace with the crowds that swarmed him. Because let me tell you, who would not have that patience? I marvel at that. But Jesus models for us this need to choose stillness. And so I wanted to put in front of you this morning the thought exercise. Let's take a minute, and actually I'm inviting you into this thought with me. You answer this question in your head, not to one another, because that would be distracting to me as I try to preach, but answer this question of what would it look like for you to choose stillness? What would that require of you? What kind of action step do you need to take to choose stillness, to join God in the stillness that he's created for you and invited you into? Is it a quiet car ride? Maybe there's a consistent car ride throughout your week. To work, back home from work, to lunch, something. Maybe there's a daily time when you're in the car and maybe for that car ride, you could choose to put the phone in the center console and refuse to look at it and not be notified about anything and not turn on the podcast and not turn on the music to just drown out the noise, to distract you from the silence, but choose to sit in silence and talk to God and wait on him to speak to you. One of the things that I've tried to start doing with varying degrees of success is that this helps me have a moment of stillness in the middle of my day. When I have a lunch meeting, I usually try to get to the lunch meeting early because I don't like to be the pastor that shows up after the people with real jobs, all right? So I feel like I need to show up early and look good and get a good table for us. And so I'm usually, I've got about 10 to 15 minutes to spare. And I try to sit there and not pull out my phone during that time. And just say, okay, God, I'm here. What do you got? Is there something in this conversation? Is there something in this meeting that I need to listen to or lean into? Is there something coming up? You know, my heart's restless about this. Help me trust you. Whatever it is. it's just a little pocket of stillness that I've intentionally chosen. Like, okay, here I can be quiet and not invite other noise into my life. When I was running, past tense, I would, I looked forward to the runs because I would put in my AirPods and listen to a book. And there were good books. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, anyways, I thought of 12 jokes there that I was like, nope, nope, no, no, can't make that joke. So anyways, they were good books, all right? They were helpful books. But one day I forgot my AirPods. I think I went home from church to run and I left them here. I was like, oh shoot, this is going to be the worst. But I ran in silence with my thoughts and it was great. And so then I started picking one run a week where I'm just going to do this one with just me and God and no other noise. And it was a good time. Maybe for you, you get up early. You go to bed early, earlier than you normally do so that you can get up earlier than you normally do, which I realize is a particularly cruel challenge on Spring Forward Sunday, but let's just consider it. Maybe when we eat lunch in our office, we don't turn on the thing that we normally turn on or read the thing that we normally read. Maybe we just sit and we invite God into that space. What does it look like for you to choose stillness? And as I contemplated stillness this week, it also occurred to me that you don't have to be still to be still. You don't have to be still to be still before God. You can be still before God while you do your yard work. You can be still before God while you go on your hike, while you go on your run, while you fold clothes, while you do the mindless things that life requires of you. We can all choose pockets to be still before the Father, to crowd out the rest of the noise, and to invite him into that space. And to say, speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm listening. What do you have? And in that silence, as we're told in the psalm that we started with, wait. Wait for him. Focus on him. Wait. Allow God in his time, in his way, to speak into you. Don't rush him. His timing is perfect. He will move when He wants. The Spirit will move when it wants. But we need to choose these moments of stillness because we need to acknowledge that they will not happen by default. They will not happen by accident. God ushers us into them, and we should respond to that. All through the Bible are calls to stillness. The most famous instruction is Psalm 46.10, right? Be still and know that I am God. Just calm down. Just stop. Just quit thinking about all the other stuff. The stuff that your mind is racing on, the things that you can't control. The things that you're anxious about. The unsolvable problems that are keeping you up at night. Be still and know that I am God. Trying to figure out Christianity and all the things and what to believe and where to go and what to do and what's going to please God and how do I even navigate this and am I doing it right? Be still and know that he is God. Let's start there. There's a reason that God throughout scripture invites us into stillness with him. There's a reason that Jesus throughout his ministry intentionally seeks that stillness with his Father. And I think that there are more reasons than this, but the three reasons I would give you are this. Stillness tunes, settles, and anchors our hearts. Stillness before God where we wait for him in silence. Tunes, settles, and anchors our hearts. Stillness before God tunes our heart to his. It aligns our heart with God's heart. It sets us in the morning. It sets us in midday. It sets us in the evening where we are aligning ourselves with God's heart, where we are making space for him to speak into us, where he reminds us that we are his child. The psalmist writes that if we delight ourselves in the laws of the Lord, that he will give us the desires of our hearts. And that doesn't happen. That makes it sound like if we just love the Bible and we love God and we delight ourself in God's laws and he's going to give us what we want. We're going to have yachts and like lots of money and sweet golf course memberships. If we just delight ourselves in the laws of God, then we're going to get all the things that we want. And that's not really how that works. The way that works is the more we delight ourselves in the laws of God, the more we delight ourselves in the presence of God, the more we take joy in the things that bring joy to the heart of God, the more our hearts begin to be attuned with God and beat with God for the same things. And so by delighting ourselves in God's law and in God's love and in God's presence, he aligns our hearts with his so that our will becomes a mirror of his will. And we know that sovereign God brings about his good and perfect will. And then lo and behold, all the things that we want because we've delighted in him and allowed him to attune us to him, they happen. He gives us the desires of our hearts. Why? Because we are attuned to him. Because we are aligned to him. Through making space. Not because we pursued him. Not because of something we did. Through simply choosing to make space for God to speak into us. And I think, for what it's worth, that this is how we be obedient to all the verses that I kind of think of as consistency verses. The instructions in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. How do you do that? How do you go through your whole day in a conversation with God? Well, I don't know, but I bet it starts with tuning our heart to God. I bet it starts with making some stillness and seeking his presence and setting that as the beginning of our day and setting a midpoint and setting an end of our day. I bet it starts with pursuing the presence of God. Philippians 4.8, you know, finally, brothers, whatever things are true or noble or trustworthy or praiseworthy or of good report, think upon these things. How do we do that? How do we think upon things that only honor God and none of the garbage that doesn't honor God? I don't know, but I bet it starts with tuning our heart to God in stillness and in prayer. I think being still intentionally and regularly is something that begins to tune our hearts to God's heart and makes us grow in who we are as believers and walk in obedience to those consistency scriptures that seem so challenging to us. Stillness not only tunes our heart to God, but it settles our heart before God. You know, there's, this has been for the Rector family a little bit of a stressful week. Not for anything extraordinary, just life stuff, man. Just stuff going on. And it's been stressful. And I went to bed last night thinking about things, and I woke up this morning thinking about things. And I was thinking about everything but the sermon. And I got to my office, and I sat down, and I was having a hard time focusing, and so I just prayed. And it occurred to me, I don't know if it was the Holy Spirit or just me actually drinking enough coffee to think, but it occurred to me, why don't you, like, just for once, practice what you preach and be still for a second? And so I was still. And in the stillness, I was reminded, hey, the things that you care about, I care about too. The things that matter a lot to you, they matter to me. And guess what? I'm God. So I'll work it out, man. And the things that are supposed to happen are going to happen. And you can't control them. So why don't you just rest easy in me? Because I've got a plan. And then it's like, cool. Great. Sorry. Sorry about all that. The last 12 hours were dumb. I apologize, God. And then you can just preach and go and do. When we seek out stillness and invite God into our space and wait and listen, the things that seemed such a big deal, the things that seemed so heavy, God takes from us. It settles our hearts. He says, you don't need to carry that anxiety. I've got it. You don't need to try to solve the unsolvables and conquer the unconquerables. I've got it. Why don't you just be still and know that I am God? When we choose stillness, it settles our hearts before God. It offers us that peace that passes all understanding that Paul talks about in Philippians. When he tells us in prayer and in stillness, don't be anxious for anything, but through everything, with prayer and petition, present your request to God and the God of peace, who transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Where is that found? It's found in stillness before the Father. It tunes our hearts. Stillness settles our hearts. And stillness anchors our hearts. The world will send us a lot of messages about who we are. You're attractive or you're not. You're valuable or you're not. You're successful or you're not. You're loved or you're not. It'll tell us a lot of things about who we are. But in the presence of God, we are reminded, no, no, no, you're my beloved child who I dearly love, who I sent my son to die on the cross for, to rescue you and claim you into eternity with me. I love you so much that I wanted to share my perfection in heaven with you. And even though you're so broken that you can't get here on your own, I sent my son to die for you, to claim you into my kingdom. I love you. And when we sit in the presence of God, he has a way of reminding us, you're enough. You don't have to perform. I love you as much as I possibly could. Yeah, I know you messed up. I forgave that already. Just sit still and be easy with me. He reminds us that we are a beloved child. We are a beloved child of the Father. He reminds us that we're good, that we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ and that we are enough. He reminds us that he has a plan for us. And in experiencing that, we're ready to go out and our cup is filled and we're ready to go out and pour out for others, but we are anchored in the knowledge that God loves me, that God invites me into his presence, that it doesn't matter where I've been, that he always is waiting on me like the father of the prodigal son, anxious for my return, that he is always seeking after me, that he is relentlessly pursuing me with his spirit. And when I sit in his presence and allow myself to be caught and held, I am reminded that he loves me. So stillness before the Father anchors us in the knowledge of his love. It settles our hearts when we are anxious about things. It reminds us of his sovereignty and it tunes our heart with his heart, and aligns our will with his will, and allows us to walk as we are called to walk. I would tell you that I believe it is fundamentally impossible. See what I'm talking about? I mean, they're everywhere. It is fundamentally impossible to flourish in our Christian life if we do not choose stillness. If this is the closest semblance to stillness you get every week, worship and my sermons, and then until next Sunday, you can't possibly flourish in your Christian life. And I'm not saying that to convict anybody, make anybody feel bad about the noise and the clutter that exists in all of our lives. I'm just saying that as a friend and a Christian. How can we possibly grow if we don't seek out stillness, if we don't intentionally choose it, if we don't invite God into that space with us? And then here's the thing, and I love this point that Alan Morgan made in his devotional this week. God creates a stillness and invites us into that stillness because he's waiting on us there. He is waiting to meet us there. He's waiting for us to slow down and to settle down and to calm down and to put everything else away in a stillness that he created, that he invites us into, in which his presence is waiting on us. And unless we allow ourselves to sit in that presence and be tuned and be settled and be anchored, how could we possibly expect to flourish and grow in our love for the Father and in our experience as Christians. So this morning, Grace, I just want to press on us to choose that. And normally, when I press on something, I kind of finish a sermon and I say, so this week, focus on blank. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna say, so this week, Grace, let's focus on stillness. I'm gonna say, so for the rest of your lives, all right, as long as you've taken in air, make this a priority. Not this week. Not today. Forever. Make this a priority. And choose stillness. And sit with God. And be comfortable in silence and just sit there and invite him in. So I'm gonna pray and we're gonna sing and worship together. As we worship and as we sing, I wanna invite you to do whatever feels most appropriate to you. Stand and sing if you want to sing. Kneel and pray if you want to do that. Sit in silence and invite God into that moment. And then at the end of the song, we're going to have a chance to be still together before we launch back into our weeks and all the things waiting for us outside those doors. Let's take a minute in worship and then in literal stillness to invite God into this space with us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the way that you love us. Thank you for sending your son for us, to claim us, to die for us, to love us, to show us, to model for us, and your spirit to empower us. Father, we live such noisy lives. You cannot possibly be pleased by all the access to screens and information and distraction and diversion that we have that cannot possibly make you happy. So God, I pray that we would be people who choose stillness. That we would be people who identify and abhor distraction. And I pray for fresh life breathed into us this week by simply choosing to sit and wait on you in silence. Would you please do that for us, God? Would you meet us in the stillness that you've created for us and invited us into? It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.