Mark

Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Hey, if you are new or if you are visiting, my name is Aaron, and I get the privilege to serve as your worship pastor out here, and I can't tell you how glad I am that you're here today. If you are watching online, I'm half as glad that you're watching just because you're not present, and you're probably stealing your PJs, so it doesn't really count. But no, so, so glad that you guys decided to join us. Nate, thank you so much, man, for allowing me to share what's been on my heart over this last week or so. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Let's see. Let's pray and go home. Hey, so if you're just joining us, I've missed over the last couple of weeks, we've been in a series called Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs if you're an efficient person. And what we did is several months ago, we sent out a request from our small groups. Hey, give us some questions. If you could ask the church anything. If you had any questions that went unanswered. Maybe you grew up in church. There was just some confusion surrounding this. What questions would you ask? And so that's what we've been doing is we're taking some of these topics, some of these questions that were presented, and we're talking about them with you guys. If you guys wish you would have had input, then you should be in a small group. It's just another good reason for that. And so today, what we're talking about is why does an all-powerful God need our worship? And it's a great question. And again, as your worship pastor is one I'm extremely excited to talk about. There is a little bit of a weight to this, though, because as a worship pastor, if I don't do a good job in explaining to us why we need to worship, I may not be a worship pastor tomorrow. So there's a lot more than the next 30 minutes riding on this, all right? So I'm going to do my best to get us there. But it's a fantastic question. Just because the question itself presents this contradiction that we have to wrestle to the ground. Why does an all-powerful God need? Like from the beginning of your Bible, the first words in your Bible talk about how God is the creator of all things. He is all-powerful and in need of nothing. Yet we see throughout scriptures that he wants and needs our worship. It even goes so far to say is he is jealous for our worship? He commands our worship. It just sounds icky, right? I mean, because I remember writing through this sermon, I wrote down that line. Why does God command our worship? It just, there's something about that that feels off. So why? What's the purpose of that? And before we get too far into this, I have to make sure that we're on the same page with what we're talking about when we say worship. It's one of those things that seem to have gotten lost in translation. Some of you remember, because you remind me of it often, when I was trying to impress my wife by speaking Spanish, and I just wanted to tell her that I want to go to Five Guys. And instead, I said, I want five men. That's not what I meant. Like, I said the exact words, but it didn't mean the same thing, right? And so that's happened with worship in our life. Like, we tend to reduce worship down to the acts. Stop laughing. It's not that funny. I'm trying to preach. Nate said I have to do good. I may not have a job tomorrow, and you're distracting me by making fun of me. I hear it. No, but we have a tendency to reduce worship down to singing. Maybe you include in it the acts or the spiritual disciplines, right? Like you'll include praying, reading your Bible, quiet time, going to church. And those are certainly acts of worship. They're certainly involved in worship, but they're actions that come from a deeper form of worship that we read about throughout the New Testament. The word that's predominantly used to describe worship in the New Testament is proskuneo. And it literally means to kiss towards. And it's used to convey this idea and this image of bowing down to surrendering to the will of. It's the same thing that would happen. That's the word that would be used as if you entered a king's court and you bowed before. You would be surrendering to the will of. You would put your hope in. It's so much more than just singing. The worship we're talking about, the worship that God is jealous for, the worship that God asks for from us is a surrendering of our will. A surrendering to his will. It's what we center our lives around. It's what we center our lives around because it promises something that fulfills us. It's the thing that we center our hope and our dependency on. That's the worship we're talking about today. But even that, you have to dig in just a little bit. Why does it matter to God if he's the center of anything? Why does he have to be the center of my world? I mean, we know people like that, right? If you're married, ladies, your husband, when he's sick, is very needy. He has to be the center of attention. And what do we do? Like, it's exhausting. We attribute to people like that that we try to avoid. We say, they're really needy and they need a lot of attention. Maybe we use the words controlling. We say, hey, I just don't want to. They don't care very much about anybody else. They're pretty self-absorbed. And those are uncomfortable questions to sit with. Like how is God any different than that? So that's what we're going to talk about today. Paul addresses this exact question to the people in Athens. He's going on one of his many missionary journeys, and he comes into the town of Athens. And Athens, I haven't been there, but just from the things that I've read about, it would have been an absolutely incredible city to visit because of the architecture. It was just stunning, and the art that existed. I had a chance to go to Paris several years ago and went to the Louvre and got to go into the area that had all the ancient Greek statues and just all of that. Some of them were gold. Some were made of marble, silver, yet stone that they were used of. And those lined the streets in Athens. It would have been an incredible sight. But Acts 17 verse 16 tells us that when Paul walked into Athens, he was greatly distressed. Like some versions of your Bible will say, his spirit was shaken. It just, he was rattled to the core. Because for the Athenians, like they weren't just statues, they weren't just works of art, they weren't just pretty things to look at, but they were, they represented gods. Gods and goddesses. And that it was affectionately known as the city of idols, idols. Like I've heard it said that if you were to go to ancient Athens, that it was easier to run into a god than it was a person. I've heard it, I saw one source that said there were over 30,000 statues and idols that were throughout the city in Athens. And Paul was just rattled by this. He was rattled by seeing all of these objects of worship. And so what he started to do was just tell people about Jesus. He started to proclaim the good news. And some of the philosophers and the Stoics in the area, they said, hey, we want to know about this God you're telling about. Clearly, we're open to all kinds of forms of religion. We have them all over the place. Tell us about your God. I need to know a little bit more detail in here. And so what Paul ends up telling them is as he's talking about their God, he does talk that God wants our worship. But what he points out to them is that God wants our worship because he wants something for us, not from us. When God commands our worship, it's because he sees a need that he's trying to fill. And this is what he says to him in Acts 17 in verse 22. Paul then stood up in the meeting and said, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with the inscription to an unknown God. So you were ignorant of the very things that you worship. And this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. So it wouldn't be a Paul type approach without some kind of dig in there. Like, I don't know what kind of man tries to persuade somebody. Hey, you're just a little ignorant. That's all. That seems like a rough way to start. But Paul is typically a very upfront, very direct, very kind of pull no punches type of preacher, right? Like he's very quick to rebuke. He's very quick to just say what you're doing wrong, but he doesn't seem to take that approach here. The very first thing that he does is he acknowledges, hey, man, I see how religious you are. I see the high esteem that you hold your objects of worship, and I see how much they influence and impact your life because all of the gods, all of the gods represented something that they would want. And so the Athenians' life was shaped around pleasing the gods. You would see festivals thrown. You would see them being marched down the street. You would see songs being sung about them. You would see altars. You would see incense burning. Like all of these different, like they just held in such high regard. And what Paul comments on is, hey, listen, I see that you want deeply. And I see that you hold in a high place all of your objects of worship. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And what they were doing is they were shaping their lives around the promises of these idols, of these objects of worship. They were trying deeply to not offend them. You don't want to get on their bad side. You don't want to do the things that are going to make them not bless you. You also want to do the things that they're going to provide in their pursuit of comfort, in their pursuit of pleasure, in their pursuit of fulfillment and meaning. Their lives were shaped by the gods they trusted. Now, for us, it's hard to relate to something like that because we don't really worship objects like that in the western part of the world, right? Like if I walked into your house, I wouldn't see you rub baby Buddha's belly for good luck. That's just not a thing that we do. We don't bow to Athena. We don't bow to Apollos. And honestly, that's the thing that makes it a little bit more difficult to point out the things that we worship. The things that I was talking about earlier, the things that we surrender our will to. But we don't bow to the will of Athena. But we do have a tendency to bow at the altar of success and status. We don't go out of our way to please Apollos or Zeus. But we will shape our lives around the pursuit of power and influence. And here's the thing. This is what makes these so tricky, is they're not bad things. Like they're good things. Comfort is a good thing. It just makes a crummy God. And this is what Paul is pointing out to them. Hey, you have these desires. You're looking for these things to find fulfillment. You're looking for these things in your life that you feel like are going to offer you value and offer you worth. But look at what's shaping you. Like I love the way that Augustine talks about this. He says that it's a matter of disordered love. Like, it's not that we love the wrong things. We love the right things, but in the wrong order. Because whatever's at the top of the list, like, that's what has the steering wheel. That's what determines our steps. That's what determines who we become. That's what we are placing all of our hope in. And whatever's at the top of the list, it will cause us to make sacrifices, even for things on our list that's just a little bit lower. And so Paul, when he walks into Athens and he sees them so heavily invested in pursuing something, it's not a matter of if we worship. It's a matter of what. It's a matter of who we worship. And this is what Paul is pointing out to the people in Athens. And this is what he says. In verse 24, it says, and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he's the Lord of heaven and earth, and he does not live in temples built by human hands, and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. So right there, Paul immediately answers our question, right? That God's not in need. And I can kind of see this picture of Paul standing around looking at the statues. And what he's telling the Athenians is that God is the only one worthy of your worship because he's the only one who can carry the weight of your worship. Like I kind of have this picture of him standing around and he's looking at the statues, maybe surrounded by some of the idols while he's talking to the people. And he says, like this, like you created this. Like this wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Like you gave this thing shape and it's the thing that you're going to trust to shape your life. Like you legitimately have to dust your gods. What kind of God is that to trust with your life? What kind of God is it? He has no power. And so what Paul is doing, the way he, I think he approaches the topic the way that he does, not with a firm slap, but it's just this empathetic, no, no, no, I understand you have a longing for something. You have a longing for fulfillment. You have a longing for purpose. You were born with an understanding and an awareness of your needs. That need creates pursuit in your life. What you were pursuing to give you that value, man, it's powerless. It wouldn't exist. Like it was created by you. And he contrasts that with God. But look at the God that I serve. Let me tell you about him. He's the creator of heaven. He's the creator of earth. In him, he is the guy who we actually get our breath from. He gives life. Like, he wasn't created. He is the giver of life. He doesn't need you to build him a house. Like, he exists everywhere. He was there before the foundation of the world. And what Paul points out is that, no, God doesn't need anything. But he says it in such a way that compels them to offer their worship, to direct their worship to the only one who can actually satisfy, the only one who can actually do something, the only one who can actually give them purpose, who can give them fulfillment, who can give them satisfaction in the things that they pursue. I don't know what it may be for you. I don't know what it is that has kind of crept in and we have placed our hope in and has grabbed a hold of our heart. Like to find that you can ask questions like, okay, what is it that you feel like I only have value and I only have worth if fill in the blank? And if this thing is taken away from me, like the bottom falls out. And what Paul is pointing to is like, man, aren't you tired? Aren't you exhausted and perpetually disappointed? Like what you're pursuing is a good thing, but where you're going, the direction you're moving forward to try to grab it, like it's, are you not constantly let down at the empty promises of the things you lift and raise to the position of God. I love Timothy Keller. He calls them counterfeit gods. They're full of promises. And so we devote our life to them. They become the center of our pursuit. The way we treat people is impacted by the highest desire. The sacrifices we make are chosen by the highest desire. And I don't know, have you ever been on the other side of that journey? To where something is so heavily pursued, and then maybe you grab it, but you look at who you became to get there. And it wasn't worth it. It left you wanting. It left you needing. Like you thought it was going to provide the satisfaction. You thought the promotion, you thought the raise, you thought the job was going to give you everything. You thought, okay, I'm going to, all I need is this. And then once it arrives, like it arrives, it feels like you're running this race with a moving finish line. You just never can quite get there. And what Paul says to the Athenians, no, no, God doesn't need your worship to give him value. That's like saying that a waterfall is benefited by you pouring a glass of water in it. Like it's the appropriate place. But it does nothing for the water. That's actually the source of the water. And this is Paul's argument. He's, hey, would you, it almost reads more like an invitation than it does a rebuke. Like, are you not exhausted? Like, your pursuit of the career, has it cost you to sacrifice relationship with family? Like, your pursuit of image management, has it cost you to be overbearing and just focusing on the behavior of others? And just, like, is it costing you more than what it's promising to give? That's the question that Paul is putting in front of him. And I love, I love how he finishes that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. He is not far from any one of us, for in him we live, and in him we move, and in him we have our beings. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Like, so what Paul is pointing out, hey, you were created with an awareness for more. You were created with an awareness that you need something greater. You were created with an awareness for more. You were created with an awareness that you need something greater. You were created to pursue more. You were created with an awareness of your limitations. And just that causes us to move towards something. It causes us to yearn and long for something. And what Paul says is all of the things that you've elevated to the status of God, all of these statues, all of these things, hey, you weren't created for them. You will never find, you will never find the satisfaction that you're longing for. You will never find the purpose that you're hoping for. You will never find you being the person you desire to be by elevating these gods to a position in your life that causes you to bow to their will. You were created for God. You were created by God, for God, to be loved by God, and to find fulfillment in God. It's not that all of these other things don't matter. But it's that you're not dependent upon them. You aren't dependent on them for survival, or you aren't dependent, like if they were taken away, you're like, no, that's okay. That's okay. God's in control. I trust him with my life. I trust him with my tomorrow. I trust him with my right now. I am going to continue to offer him my praise. I am going to continue to allow him to be the center of my world. I'm going to continue to allow him to be the one that I place all of my focus on. This is Paul's argument. And what he's telling the people of Athens, and I think he would tell, how he would answer this question. The question that we started out with is God doesn't command our worship because he's controlling. He does it because he's loving. Like I think about this story that we talked about it maybe, I think, in the last series, Mark's Jesus. And in Mark 10, you see this, you may remember, you see this picture and this story of the rich young ruler who goes to Jesus. And he goes to Jesus and he's asking him, hey, listen, I really want, I want to follow you. I want to serve you. I want, I legitimately want to inherit the kingdom of heaven like it's promised. I want to live that life. What do I need to do? And I love the text where it says Jesus looks at him and he loved him. And what he told him is the thing that has a grip on his heart. He said, listen, as long as that's number one, it's never going to let you live the life that you desire because that's what's shaping you. And what's heartbreaking about that story is it says the guy walked away like money had such a grip on his heart. It says he walked away grieving because he just couldn't let go of what he worshiped the most. He couldn't trust God the way that Jesus was asking him to trust him because of the promise that wealth provided. Like I said, I don't know what it may be for you. It's hard to identify. Because with the Athenians, it was a transactional type of worship. It was all external. I'll do this for you, and you do this for me. But for us, it's something that happens internally. It's something that grabs our heart. And it's disguised as good, because it is good. It's just not a worthy God. I can tell you, there was a few years ago in my life, I don't remember exactly what the situation was, but I know control started to get really, really big. Like there was anxiety that was brewing in my life, and I felt like I needed more control over everything. And so I remember reading through the scriptures, and I came to the text where Jesus, just before he started his ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness. He spent 40 days and what stood out to me is he spent 40 days before he began, he spent 40 days in the place where he had to depend on God. He had to be in a place in the desert where he depended on God and as he came out of that, he lived the life that he lived. And so what struck me is like, man, is that what happened in my life? Have I gotten to the place where my dependency on God has fallen below my dependency on something else? And so I did this. It was more of a, it was just a little spiritually intentional journey. That's why I went out backpacking. I don't know anything about backpacking. Never backpacked, but I did it by myself. The only thing I knew is don't come across people because I don't trust them in bear's bite. Like that's the extent. And if you don't eat, you'll starve. So I went with about a 60 pound bag on my back. But it was all with the intention, I need to put myself in a place where I depend on God. Because when I find myself depending more deeply on God, I find freedom. So what Paul is inviting the Athenians to do, hey, rest. He's inviting them to place their trust, their hope, and center their life around God. He's inviting them to a deeper dependency on God. Maybe as we're starting to talk about the things that are idols, it's popped in your mind. Maybe there's something right about that. Yeah, yeah, no, image management's definitely something. Oh, yeah. What's funny is even religiosity can become how holy I look, how good I seem to people. Doing the right things, like that can become something we depend on. Family can become like they can't carry the weight of our worship. Your family, your spouse, your husband, your kids. Listen to me, listen to me. They cannot carry the weight of providing fulfillment, purpose, and meaning in your life. They weren't designed for that. Your work, it can't provide meaning and purpose and fulfillment and value in your life. Because if it's gone, so is everything that came with it. And Paul's invitation is, hey, aren't you exhausted? Depend on God. And so what we're going to do, in one second, I'm going to invite you to stand and just sing this song. And you've heard me say before that our songs, our songs are important. But our songs, when we come together, they're simply prayers put to a melody. Sometimes they're prayers that are saying, hey, God, you're awesome. God, you're great. And oftentimes they're also prayers that say, hey, God, I need you in this area of my life. And there's this line that I want us to focus on in this next song. It simply says, God, I depend on you. I depend on you. And listen, just to make sure that I still have a job tomorrow, singing is important, okay? You got to do it. You got to do it. Otherwise, you got to hire me. But well, and here's the other sad point behind it. If you don't like singing, like I know we got some folks who just wait for the second half of the service, like whenever the message is there and the good stuff happens, you just kind of hang out in the hall. Listen to me. You're going to hate heaven, right? You know what you're going to do? You're going to be singing the entire time. You will be miserable. Because there's no way, there's no lobby outside. That's outside the gate. You don't want to be there, get you behind inside and sing. Like, it's worth it. But I'm going to invite you to stand and just make this your prayer. Maybe it's something. God, I just, I have a hard time shaking this object of worship, this misplaced worship in my life, Lord, and I want to depend on you. Can you help me? Will you help me depend on you? So let me pray for us, and then let's see. Father, thank you so much. I thank you, Lord, for your love, for your faithfulness and for your kindness. God, I thank you for planting in us an awareness of our need for something greater. God, I just ask for you to help. Help us to keep you the center, not meaning that we don't pursue other things, not meaning that other things aren't important to us, but we place them in their appropriate order. And we allow you to shape our life. We allow you to determine who we become. And God, we don't worship you because we get something from you. We worship you because you're worthy. We worship you because you're holy. We worship you because you are the only one who is worthy of our worship. We thank you. We need you. Amen.

Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Hey, if you are new or if you are visiting, my name is Aaron, and I get the privilege to serve as your worship pastor out here, and I can't tell you how glad I am that you're here today. If you are watching online, I'm half as glad that you're watching just because you're not present, and you're probably stealing your PJs, so it doesn't really count. But no, so, so glad that you guys decided to join us. Nate, thank you so much, man, for allowing me to share what's been on my heart over this last week or so. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Let's see. Let's pray and go home. Hey, so if you're just joining us, I've missed over the last couple of weeks, we've been in a series called Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs if you're an efficient person. And what we did is several months ago, we sent out a request from our small groups. Hey, give us some questions. If you could ask the church anything. If you had any questions that went unanswered. Maybe you grew up in church. There was just some confusion surrounding this. What questions would you ask? And so that's what we've been doing is we're taking some of these topics, some of these questions that were presented, and we're talking about them with you guys. If you guys wish you would have had input, then you should be in a small group. It's just another good reason for that. And so today, what we're talking about is why does an all-powerful God need our worship? And it's a great question. And again, as your worship pastor is one I'm extremely excited to talk about. There is a little bit of a weight to this, though, because as a worship pastor, if I don't do a good job in explaining to us why we need to worship, I may not be a worship pastor tomorrow. So there's a lot more than the next 30 minutes riding on this, all right? So I'm going to do my best to get us there. But it's a fantastic question. Just because the question itself presents this contradiction that we have to wrestle to the ground. Why does an all-powerful God need? Like from the beginning of your Bible, the first words in your Bible talk about how God is the creator of all things. He is all-powerful and in need of nothing. Yet we see throughout scriptures that he wants and needs our worship. It even goes so far to say is he is jealous for our worship? He commands our worship. It just sounds icky, right? I mean, because I remember writing through this sermon, I wrote down that line. Why does God command our worship? It just, there's something about that that feels off. So why? What's the purpose of that? And before we get too far into this, I have to make sure that we're on the same page with what we're talking about when we say worship. It's one of those things that seem to have gotten lost in translation. Some of you remember, because you remind me of it often, when I was trying to impress my wife by speaking Spanish, and I just wanted to tell her that I want to go to Five Guys. And instead, I said, I want five men. That's not what I meant. Like, I said the exact words, but it didn't mean the same thing, right? And so that's happened with worship in our life. Like, we tend to reduce worship down to the acts. Stop laughing. It's not that funny. I'm trying to preach. Nate said I have to do good. I may not have a job tomorrow, and you're distracting me by making fun of me. I hear it. No, but we have a tendency to reduce worship down to singing. Maybe you include in it the acts or the spiritual disciplines, right? Like you'll include praying, reading your Bible, quiet time, going to church. And those are certainly acts of worship. They're certainly involved in worship, but they're actions that come from a deeper form of worship that we read about throughout the New Testament. The word that's predominantly used to describe worship in the New Testament is proskuneo. And it literally means to kiss towards. And it's used to convey this idea and this image of bowing down to surrendering to the will of. It's the same thing that would happen. That's the word that would be used as if you entered a king's court and you bowed before. You would be surrendering to the will of. You would put your hope in. It's so much more than just singing. The worship we're talking about, the worship that God is jealous for, the worship that God asks for from us is a surrendering of our will. A surrendering to his will. It's what we center our lives around. It's what we center our lives around because it promises something that fulfills us. It's the thing that we center our hope and our dependency on. That's the worship we're talking about today. But even that, you have to dig in just a little bit. Why does it matter to God if he's the center of anything? Why does he have to be the center of my world? I mean, we know people like that, right? If you're married, ladies, your husband, when he's sick, is very needy. He has to be the center of attention. And what do we do? Like, it's exhausting. We attribute to people like that that we try to avoid. We say, they're really needy and they need a lot of attention. Maybe we use the words controlling. We say, hey, I just don't want to. They don't care very much about anybody else. They're pretty self-absorbed. And those are uncomfortable questions to sit with. Like how is God any different than that? So that's what we're going to talk about today. Paul addresses this exact question to the people in Athens. He's going on one of his many missionary journeys, and he comes into the town of Athens. And Athens, I haven't been there, but just from the things that I've read about, it would have been an absolutely incredible city to visit because of the architecture. It was just stunning, and the art that existed. I had a chance to go to Paris several years ago and went to the Louvre and got to go into the area that had all the ancient Greek statues and just all of that. Some of them were gold. Some were made of marble, silver, yet stone that they were used of. And those lined the streets in Athens. It would have been an incredible sight. But Acts 17 verse 16 tells us that when Paul walked into Athens, he was greatly distressed. Like some versions of your Bible will say, his spirit was shaken. It just, he was rattled to the core. Because for the Athenians, like they weren't just statues, they weren't just works of art, they weren't just pretty things to look at, but they were, they represented gods. Gods and goddesses. And that it was affectionately known as the city of idols, idols. Like I've heard it said that if you were to go to ancient Athens, that it was easier to run into a god than it was a person. I've heard it, I saw one source that said there were over 30,000 statues and idols that were throughout the city in Athens. And Paul was just rattled by this. He was rattled by seeing all of these objects of worship. And so what he started to do was just tell people about Jesus. He started to proclaim the good news. And some of the philosophers and the Stoics in the area, they said, hey, we want to know about this God you're telling about. Clearly, we're open to all kinds of forms of religion. We have them all over the place. Tell us about your God. I need to know a little bit more detail in here. And so what Paul ends up telling them is as he's talking about their God, he does talk that God wants our worship. But what he points out to them is that God wants our worship because he wants something for us, not from us. When God commands our worship, it's because he sees a need that he's trying to fill. And this is what he says to him in Acts 17 in verse 22. Paul then stood up in the meeting and said, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with the inscription to an unknown God. So you were ignorant of the very things that you worship. And this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. So it wouldn't be a Paul type approach without some kind of dig in there. Like, I don't know what kind of man tries to persuade somebody. Hey, you're just a little ignorant. That's all. That seems like a rough way to start. But Paul is typically a very upfront, very direct, very kind of pull no punches type of preacher, right? Like he's very quick to rebuke. He's very quick to just say what you're doing wrong, but he doesn't seem to take that approach here. The very first thing that he does is he acknowledges, hey, man, I see how religious you are. I see the high esteem that you hold your objects of worship, and I see how much they influence and impact your life because all of the gods, all of the gods represented something that they would want. And so the Athenians' life was shaped around pleasing the gods. You would see festivals thrown. You would see them being marched down the street. You would see songs being sung about them. You would see altars. You would see incense burning. Like all of these different, like they just held in such high regard. And what Paul comments on is, hey, listen, I see that you want deeply. And I see that you hold in a high place all of your objects of worship. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And what they were doing is they were shaping their lives around the promises of these idols, of these objects of worship. They were trying deeply to not offend them. You don't want to get on their bad side. You don't want to do the things that are going to make them not bless you. You also want to do the things that they're going to provide in their pursuit of comfort, in their pursuit of pleasure, in their pursuit of fulfillment and meaning. Their lives were shaped by the gods they trusted. Now, for us, it's hard to relate to something like that because we don't really worship objects like that in the western part of the world, right? Like if I walked into your house, I wouldn't see you rub baby Buddha's belly for good luck. That's just not a thing that we do. We don't bow to Athena. We don't bow to Apollos. And honestly, that's the thing that makes it a little bit more difficult to point out the things that we worship. The things that I was talking about earlier, the things that we surrender our will to. But we don't bow to the will of Athena. But we do have a tendency to bow at the altar of success and status. We don't go out of our way to please Apollos or Zeus. But we will shape our lives around the pursuit of power and influence. And here's the thing. This is what makes these so tricky, is they're not bad things. Like they're good things. Comfort is a good thing. It just makes a crummy God. And this is what Paul is pointing out to them. Hey, you have these desires. You're looking for these things to find fulfillment. You're looking for these things in your life that you feel like are going to offer you value and offer you worth. But look at what's shaping you. Like I love the way that Augustine talks about this. He says that it's a matter of disordered love. Like, it's not that we love the wrong things. We love the right things, but in the wrong order. Because whatever's at the top of the list, like, that's what has the steering wheel. That's what determines our steps. That's what determines who we become. That's what we are placing all of our hope in. And whatever's at the top of the list, it will cause us to make sacrifices, even for things on our list that's just a little bit lower. And so Paul, when he walks into Athens and he sees them so heavily invested in pursuing something, it's not a matter of if we worship. It's a matter of what. It's a matter of who we worship. And this is what Paul is pointing out to the people in Athens. And this is what he says. In verse 24, it says, and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he's the Lord of heaven and earth, and he does not live in temples built by human hands, and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. So right there, Paul immediately answers our question, right? That God's not in need. And I can kind of see this picture of Paul standing around looking at the statues. And what he's telling the Athenians is that God is the only one worthy of your worship because he's the only one who can carry the weight of your worship. Like I kind of have this picture of him standing around and he's looking at the statues, maybe surrounded by some of the idols while he's talking to the people. And he says, like this, like you created this. Like this wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Like you gave this thing shape and it's the thing that you're going to trust to shape your life. Like you legitimately have to dust your gods. What kind of God is that to trust with your life? What kind of God is it? He has no power. And so what Paul is doing, the way he, I think he approaches the topic the way that he does, not with a firm slap, but it's just this empathetic, no, no, no, I understand you have a longing for something. You have a longing for fulfillment. You have a longing for purpose. You were born with an understanding and an awareness of your needs. That need creates pursuit in your life. What you were pursuing to give you that value, man, it's powerless. It wouldn't exist. Like it was created by you. And he contrasts that with God. But look at the God that I serve. Let me tell you about him. He's the creator of heaven. He's the creator of earth. In him, he is the guy who we actually get our breath from. He gives life. Like, he wasn't created. He is the giver of life. He doesn't need you to build him a house. Like, he exists everywhere. He was there before the foundation of the world. And what Paul points out is that, no, God doesn't need anything. But he says it in such a way that compels them to offer their worship, to direct their worship to the only one who can actually satisfy, the only one who can actually do something, the only one who can actually give them purpose, who can give them fulfillment, who can give them satisfaction in the things that they pursue. I don't know what it may be for you. I don't know what it is that has kind of crept in and we have placed our hope in and has grabbed a hold of our heart. Like to find that you can ask questions like, okay, what is it that you feel like I only have value and I only have worth if fill in the blank? And if this thing is taken away from me, like the bottom falls out. And what Paul is pointing to is like, man, aren't you tired? Aren't you exhausted and perpetually disappointed? Like what you're pursuing is a good thing, but where you're going, the direction you're moving forward to try to grab it, like it's, are you not constantly let down at the empty promises of the things you lift and raise to the position of God. I love Timothy Keller. He calls them counterfeit gods. They're full of promises. And so we devote our life to them. They become the center of our pursuit. The way we treat people is impacted by the highest desire. The sacrifices we make are chosen by the highest desire. And I don't know, have you ever been on the other side of that journey? To where something is so heavily pursued, and then maybe you grab it, but you look at who you became to get there. And it wasn't worth it. It left you wanting. It left you needing. Like you thought it was going to provide the satisfaction. You thought the promotion, you thought the raise, you thought the job was going to give you everything. You thought, okay, I'm going to, all I need is this. And then once it arrives, like it arrives, it feels like you're running this race with a moving finish line. You just never can quite get there. And what Paul says to the Athenians, no, no, God doesn't need your worship to give him value. That's like saying that a waterfall is benefited by you pouring a glass of water in it. Like it's the appropriate place. But it does nothing for the water. That's actually the source of the water. And this is Paul's argument. He's, hey, would you, it almost reads more like an invitation than it does a rebuke. Like, are you not exhausted? Like, your pursuit of the career, has it cost you to sacrifice relationship with family? Like, your pursuit of image management, has it cost you to be overbearing and just focusing on the behavior of others? And just, like, is it costing you more than what it's promising to give? That's the question that Paul is putting in front of him. And I love, I love how he finishes that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. He is not far from any one of us, for in him we live, and in him we move, and in him we have our beings. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Like, so what Paul is pointing out, hey, you were created with an awareness for more. You were created with an awareness that you need something greater. You were created with an awareness for more. You were created with an awareness that you need something greater. You were created to pursue more. You were created with an awareness of your limitations. And just that causes us to move towards something. It causes us to yearn and long for something. And what Paul says is all of the things that you've elevated to the status of God, all of these statues, all of these things, hey, you weren't created for them. You will never find, you will never find the satisfaction that you're longing for. You will never find the purpose that you're hoping for. You will never find you being the person you desire to be by elevating these gods to a position in your life that causes you to bow to their will. You were created for God. You were created by God, for God, to be loved by God, and to find fulfillment in God. It's not that all of these other things don't matter. But it's that you're not dependent upon them. You aren't dependent on them for survival, or you aren't dependent, like if they were taken away, you're like, no, that's okay. That's okay. God's in control. I trust him with my life. I trust him with my tomorrow. I trust him with my right now. I am going to continue to offer him my praise. I am going to continue to allow him to be the center of my world. I'm going to continue to allow him to be the one that I place all of my focus on. This is Paul's argument. And what he's telling the people of Athens, and I think he would tell, how he would answer this question. The question that we started out with is God doesn't command our worship because he's controlling. He does it because he's loving. Like I think about this story that we talked about it maybe, I think, in the last series, Mark's Jesus. And in Mark 10, you see this, you may remember, you see this picture and this story of the rich young ruler who goes to Jesus. And he goes to Jesus and he's asking him, hey, listen, I really want, I want to follow you. I want to serve you. I want, I legitimately want to inherit the kingdom of heaven like it's promised. I want to live that life. What do I need to do? And I love the text where it says Jesus looks at him and he loved him. And what he told him is the thing that has a grip on his heart. He said, listen, as long as that's number one, it's never going to let you live the life that you desire because that's what's shaping you. And what's heartbreaking about that story is it says the guy walked away like money had such a grip on his heart. It says he walked away grieving because he just couldn't let go of what he worshiped the most. He couldn't trust God the way that Jesus was asking him to trust him because of the promise that wealth provided. Like I said, I don't know what it may be for you. It's hard to identify. Because with the Athenians, it was a transactional type of worship. It was all external. I'll do this for you, and you do this for me. But for us, it's something that happens internally. It's something that grabs our heart. And it's disguised as good, because it is good. It's just not a worthy God. I can tell you, there was a few years ago in my life, I don't remember exactly what the situation was, but I know control started to get really, really big. Like there was anxiety that was brewing in my life, and I felt like I needed more control over everything. And so I remember reading through the scriptures, and I came to the text where Jesus, just before he started his ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness. He spent 40 days and what stood out to me is he spent 40 days before he began, he spent 40 days in the place where he had to depend on God. He had to be in a place in the desert where he depended on God and as he came out of that, he lived the life that he lived. And so what struck me is like, man, is that what happened in my life? Have I gotten to the place where my dependency on God has fallen below my dependency on something else? And so I did this. It was more of a, it was just a little spiritually intentional journey. That's why I went out backpacking. I don't know anything about backpacking. Never backpacked, but I did it by myself. The only thing I knew is don't come across people because I don't trust them in bear's bite. Like that's the extent. And if you don't eat, you'll starve. So I went with about a 60 pound bag on my back. But it was all with the intention, I need to put myself in a place where I depend on God. Because when I find myself depending more deeply on God, I find freedom. So what Paul is inviting the Athenians to do, hey, rest. He's inviting them to place their trust, their hope, and center their life around God. He's inviting them to a deeper dependency on God. Maybe as we're starting to talk about the things that are idols, it's popped in your mind. Maybe there's something right about that. Yeah, yeah, no, image management's definitely something. Oh, yeah. What's funny is even religiosity can become how holy I look, how good I seem to people. Doing the right things, like that can become something we depend on. Family can become like they can't carry the weight of our worship. Your family, your spouse, your husband, your kids. Listen to me, listen to me. They cannot carry the weight of providing fulfillment, purpose, and meaning in your life. They weren't designed for that. Your work, it can't provide meaning and purpose and fulfillment and value in your life. Because if it's gone, so is everything that came with it. And Paul's invitation is, hey, aren't you exhausted? Depend on God. And so what we're going to do, in one second, I'm going to invite you to stand and just sing this song. And you've heard me say before that our songs, our songs are important. But our songs, when we come together, they're simply prayers put to a melody. Sometimes they're prayers that are saying, hey, God, you're awesome. God, you're great. And oftentimes they're also prayers that say, hey, God, I need you in this area of my life. And there's this line that I want us to focus on in this next song. It simply says, God, I depend on you. I depend on you. And listen, just to make sure that I still have a job tomorrow, singing is important, okay? You got to do it. You got to do it. Otherwise, you got to hire me. But well, and here's the other sad point behind it. If you don't like singing, like I know we got some folks who just wait for the second half of the service, like whenever the message is there and the good stuff happens, you just kind of hang out in the hall. Listen to me. You're going to hate heaven, right? You know what you're going to do? You're going to be singing the entire time. You will be miserable. Because there's no way, there's no lobby outside. That's outside the gate. You don't want to be there, get you behind inside and sing. Like, it's worth it. But I'm going to invite you to stand and just make this your prayer. Maybe it's something. God, I just, I have a hard time shaking this object of worship, this misplaced worship in my life, Lord, and I want to depend on you. Can you help me? Will you help me depend on you? So let me pray for us, and then let's see. Father, thank you so much. I thank you, Lord, for your love, for your faithfulness and for your kindness. God, I thank you for planting in us an awareness of our need for something greater. God, I just ask for you to help. Help us to keep you the center, not meaning that we don't pursue other things, not meaning that other things aren't important to us, but we place them in their appropriate order. And we allow you to shape our life. We allow you to determine who we become. And God, we don't worship you because we get something from you. We worship you because you're worthy. We worship you because you're holy. We worship you because you are the only one who is worthy of our worship. We thank you. We need you. Amen.

Good morning, and happy pumpkin spice latte season. It is truly the most wonderful time of the year. All the smells, all the fragrance. I'm even wearing my fall colors today. Maybe, I don't know. My wife was asleep when I left, so there's a very good possibility I don't match right now and have no clue. But I'm so glad that you decided to join us today. My name is Aaron, and I get to serve as the worship pastor out here, and I'm so excited to share with you, honestly, something that's been on my heart for the last couple of years. I think around the end of 2020, this really started to just burden me a little bit. And to kind of set up and get our mind going in the right direction, have you ever considered how to navigate the tension of opposing desires within yourself, right? Like, have you ever considered how to navigate a pull in a couple of different directions, specifically around this topic today of compassion? Because I don't think it's possible for anyone to really say, oh, you know what? I'm nailing the compassion game. I have the perfect amount of compassion, unless you don't like dogs. Then, clearly, you today is for you very specifically. Like, no one would say that. If you are, like, you would probably be the person who tries to convince me that, like, the devil didn't get to make cats. That's just not true. I'm joking. My goodness, it got serious. Like he doesn't like cats. It's better than not liking puppies, okay? That's a, no, like all of us would agree. I want to be a more compassionate person. I want to be a person who is kind. I want to be a person that whenever people see me, they see someone who loves well, who they can come to and will understand what it is that will meet the needs of the people who they love. All of us would want to do that. Even if you are a compassionate person, what that's going to do is push you further into compassion and say, you know what, I really could be a little bit more compassionate. And the tension that we feel is today, one of the things that our world really reiterates is this self-focused lifestyle, right? Like self-care, self-love, self-appreciation, self-forgiveness, self... And listen, that's not bad. I love all of those things. I think there's a time and place for all of... I had a membership at one point to a place on Falls. It's called the Float Spa Therapy. Have you ever heard of that? Me either, until I saw it, and I found out that what they do is they put you in a room, stick you in a dark bubble, and you float in salt water. I cannot tell you if it is either a spa or therapy, but I can tell you, you don't have to see the world for an hour, and it is wonderful, right? Like all of this idea, just this stuff, I don't do that anymore because I realized there's other ways to do that. But like there's this pull towards self, and that's a good thing. That's not bad until we become so focused on self-care. We become so focused on self-love that the people around us, the people that God has placed in our life for us to love well, well, they become the problem. They become a challenge. They become a hurdle in my route to taking care of me. And there's the tension. It's good to love yourself well, but we can't forget what Paul said to the church at Philippians. In Philippians 2, he said, do this, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider yourselves more important than others. I'm sorry, consider others more important than yourselves. So I'm going to go back and start over because really what I want to talk about today, nobody else matters. It's all about you, right? So no, consider others more important. Reading's tough. So consider others as more important than yourselves. Next slide. Everyone should not look to his own interest, but rather to the interests of others. And that's the tension that we feel, that we want to live a life that cares for people. But what do you do when people become the problem? When people get in the way? And this is especially true if you're a Christian, right? Not because you're better than anyone else, not because you think you're better than anyone else, or because you're trying to be better than anyone else, but it's because of the example set by Jesus, by the guy who we've devoted our lives to, by the guy who we've said we want to try to become more and more like him. Jesus lived a life that was marked by compassion. I don't remember who's, I think maybe Andy Stanley said this. I can't quite remember. It sounds like something he would say. He said that people who were nothing like Jesus actually liked Jesus. And it's because he lived this life that they knew that he cared for them. It didn't matter their socioeconomic status. It didn't matter their religious beliefs, their political affiliation. It didn't matter if they did the right thing or the wrong thing. It didn't matter what the case was. There was even laws, religious laws set into place that would prevent you from reaching certain people. In Jesus, it didn't matter. Everyone felt cared for. Everyone felt loved. And if you're a Christian, the reason why you feel this tension so strong is because the Holy Spirit is inside prompting you, pushing you, urging you toward this Jesus type of compassion. So what do you do in those moments? Like, what do you do when you're being pulled in a couple of different directions? Like, one of the most remarkable moments that you can see about in Jesus, because he was a real man. He was fully God, but he was also fully man with real emotions, the same emotions that you and I feel, with the same temptations that you and I have. And one of the most remarkable examples that I could have read about with Jesus, we'll read about today in Mark 6. If you've been around the church very long at all, you've heard this story before. It's the story when Jesus fed the 5,000, the text says 5,000 men, but more likely it was 15,000, including women or children. But as I was studying for this, I noticed something in this text that I believe it changes everything. And it shows us in that moment, in that tension, it's what Jesus does to lift the value of others, to care for their needs. To kind of set up the scene, we're at about the third year of Jesus's ministry. He's been going pretty nonstop, him and his disciples, day after day. There's been a few breaks in between, but the mental and physical exhaustion had to be there, had to be present. And his disciples just got back from a ministry trip. And so what he said to them is, hey guys, let's go and let's rest for a while. Not just was he dealing with the mental and physical exhaustion, but he had also just learned about the death of his cousin, John the Baptist. And it wasn't just any death. He was murdered because of a girl's birthday wish. How awkward of a party would that be, right? Like blow out the candles, what you want? That guy. But that's what happened. And so we've dealt with grief before, but that's, can we just admit that's a different level of grief? And so Jesus is dealing with the murder of his cousin. And not only that, but his disciples, a lot of them had followed John the Baptist in the past. They all loved him. They were mentally and physically exhausted, and they were certainly grieving. And Jesus told his disciples, let's get away for a little bit. Let's just go. Let's rest, and we'll get back to work. But while they were en route, people saw where they were headed. And this is what happened. In Mark 6, verse 32, it says this. So they went away, that's Jesus and their disciples. So they went away in the boat by themselves to a remote place, but many saw them leaving and recognized them. They ran on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. When he went to shore, he saw a large crowd. Let me ask real quick, like, how would you respond in that moment? Right? Like, so Jesus, certainly grieving, likely exhausted, he just wants to get away for a little bit. And he has every right to do so. How would you respond? I know what I would say, but he's Jesus. He can't say stuff like that, right? I bet Peter right next to him said it though. Like, what would you do? So something I'm very aware of in my life that I'm trying to work on. On Sunday mornings, man, I can have a tendency to come across more rude than I am, right? It's because I'm focused. Like I'm focused on the Sunday morning, focused on worship. I'm trying to make sure all the volunteers have everything they need, and just really kind of focused on leading worship well. And sometimes I'm just unaware of people. And my sister came down for a visit a few years ago, and I remember she visited church on Sunday and went to my wife. She said, hey, did I make Aaron mad at me? Is he okay? And she's like, no, no, no, no. No, it's just Sunday morning. Just come back in the afternoon, which that wasn't true because I'm even more ferocious about my nap than Sunday afternoon. I'm like a toddler when it comes to nap time, right? Like Sunday morning, I'm just oblivious and unaware of people. Sunday afternoon, I will fight you if you interrupt Sunday. Like fall, best season. Sunday afternoon, best nap time, right? And so it's just one of those things. I'm unaware of people. And I'm talking about a Sunday morning stress, right? Very nominal, right? But Jesus, in this moment, he had every right to say, hey, guys, I just need a second. Like this is one of those head down moments like, okay, let me try to figure this out. Can I have just a couple of minutes, guys? Hey, just a couple of days. Hey, listen, I know you guys heard about what's happening to John. I know you need something from me. If I can have just a few minutes, we'll be back around through time. Like there's, he's certainly right to do that. But in this moment, he sees something different. He sees something that causes a different type of reaction. In a moment when Jesus is sitting in that tension, I need to take a moment for me. I need to take a moment for my guys. These people need something from me. He's face to face with the people he has been placed here to love well. And he sees something that gives him a different reaction. In verse 34, it says this. When he went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. They were like, Jesus, in a moment when he had every right to say, guys, just time out. Need a couple of days. He saw their from their perspective, and it moved him with compassion. Jesus looked at them and felt the pain that they were feeling because he saw life through their lens. Sharing in their perspective caused Jesus to share in their pain. That's what the word perspective, or I'm sorry, that's the word compassion means. It means to suffer with, to pain with, to feel the pain of someone. And it is not possible, it is not possible to feel the pain of someone else while viewing their circumstances through your perspective. Jesus stops. He sees life from their lens and it burdens his heart. I love the word that Mark uses here for the word compassion. It's only used of Jesus throughout the New Testament, but it refers to the internal organs, which was believed to be the seat of the emotions. And so what Mark says here is he saw these guys, and there was such a deep hurt. There was such a longing for them. He shared their passion, and he moved into action. If we can learn to see life through the lens of other people, it will soften your heart towards their circumstances. And circumstances doesn't just mean feeding the hungry. It doesn't just mean giving to the poor. Compassion changes the way you approach things. It changes the way you approach your husband. It changes the way you approach your wife. Compassion restrains your anger. Compassion offers forgiveness. Compassion gives gentleness. Compassion seeks mercy and understanding and walks with people. If we can learn to view life through the lens of other people, what we'll start to see happening is we don't see people as someone we have to walk around. We see people as someone we have to walk with because we share in their pain. Is there someone in your life that maybe we need to seek their perspective a little bit? Let's just admit Jesus had a bit of an advantage there, right? Like Jesus understands people the way, like you have never met someone new for the very first time and told them exactly where they were and what they were thinking two hours before, at least not without a restraining order soon following that, right? Jesus Jesus has an advantage. Like, we've got to go the old-fashioned way. We have to ask questions. We have to seek. We have to consider. Like, how much would it change the way you're feeling in a moment if we were to think about something through someone else's lens? I tried to think about a clever illustration here just to kind of illustrate this point. I thought of several, none of which I'm going to use. Because you've lived this illustration. Like every person in here, at some point in time, has said some variation of this sentence. If they only understood, if they only saw, what just happened? If they could only see how I'm feeling, if they only understood how I was thinking, if they only understood what kind of day I had at work, they would not approach me like, if they only saw this, then they wouldn't feel that like we have all at some point in time realized that if someone else could see through our perspective, it would change the way that they're approaching us. It would change the anger in the situation. It would change everything. It would offer compassion that leads to the things that we crave the most. Reconciliation, hope, peace, love. Because Jesus felt such a pain that it moved him into action. I love what St. Augustine said here. He says, what is compassion but a kind of fellow feeling in our hearts for another's misery which compels us to come to his help by every means in our power? Compassion, especially the compassion that we see in Jesus, is never just a feeling by itself. It's such an understanding and such a sharing of the pain that it moves us. Compassion, Christ-like compassion, is both a feeling and the appropriate action. The goal of compassion isn't to find agreeance that someone's right and someone's wrong, that they need this, and I just do whatever anybody wants me to do. That's not the goal of compassion. The goal of compassion is understanding. The goal of compassion is to sympathize with, to feel the pain of, because it changes everything. It burdens your heart to where sitting still just doesn't make sense. Is there someone in your life whose perspective we need to take a moment and seek? If you don't know where that may be, my suggestion and what I would encourage you to do is to lean into the tension. When you feel that tension again, when you feel the tension that says, I just don't have the capacity right now. I just don't have the energy. I just don't have the time. I just don't have the resources. Hey, I just need a minute. What I believe will happen is the Holy Spirit will tug and say, hey, well, is it possible that this is the moment you should ask a question? You should consider perspective because it burdens you. It burdens your heart and it leads you to a place of action. Let me pray for us. God, thank you. Thank you so much for all that you are, for your love, for your grace. Father, I thank you for how you have, I don't know, Lord, just met us with compassion. I thank you for how you have given us this example of how when we pursue you, it will lead us to pursuing life through the lens of other people, Lord. I just ask that your spirit would guide us, would help us, would move us to slow down, to stop and just consider, is there something I'm not seeing here? Is there something that I can do that will begin to ease the anger, ease the frustration, ease the apathy towards a situation. God, is there something that I can do here to more accurately reflect the compassion that you have shown us? We thank you, Lord. We trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, and happy pumpkin spice latte season. It is truly the most wonderful time of the year. All the smells, all the fragrance. I'm even wearing my fall colors today. Maybe, I don't know. My wife was asleep when I left, so there's a very good possibility I don't match right now and have no clue. But I'm so glad that you decided to join us today. My name is Aaron, and I get to serve as the worship pastor out here, and I'm so excited to share with you, honestly, something that's been on my heart for the last couple of years. I think around the end of 2020, this really started to just burden me a little bit. And to kind of set up and get our mind going in the right direction, have you ever considered how to navigate the tension of opposing desires within yourself, right? Like, have you ever considered how to navigate a pull in a couple of different directions, specifically around this topic today of compassion? Because I don't think it's possible for anyone to really say, oh, you know what? I'm nailing the compassion game. I have the perfect amount of compassion, unless you don't like dogs. Then, clearly, you today is for you very specifically. Like, no one would say that. If you are, like, you would probably be the person who tries to convince me that, like, the devil didn't get to make cats. That's just not true. I'm joking. My goodness, it got serious. Like he doesn't like cats. It's better than not liking puppies, okay? That's a, no, like all of us would agree. I want to be a more compassionate person. I want to be a person who is kind. I want to be a person that whenever people see me, they see someone who loves well, who they can come to and will understand what it is that will meet the needs of the people who they love. All of us would want to do that. Even if you are a compassionate person, what that's going to do is push you further into compassion and say, you know what, I really could be a little bit more compassionate. And the tension that we feel is today, one of the things that our world really reiterates is this self-focused lifestyle, right? Like self-care, self-love, self-appreciation, self-forgiveness, self... And listen, that's not bad. I love all of those things. I think there's a time and place for all of... I had a membership at one point to a place on Falls. It's called the Float Spa Therapy. Have you ever heard of that? Me either, until I saw it, and I found out that what they do is they put you in a room, stick you in a dark bubble, and you float in salt water. I cannot tell you if it is either a spa or therapy, but I can tell you, you don't have to see the world for an hour, and it is wonderful, right? Like all of this idea, just this stuff, I don't do that anymore because I realized there's other ways to do that. But like there's this pull towards self, and that's a good thing. That's not bad until we become so focused on self-care. We become so focused on self-love that the people around us, the people that God has placed in our life for us to love well, well, they become the problem. They become a challenge. They become a hurdle in my route to taking care of me. And there's the tension. It's good to love yourself well, but we can't forget what Paul said to the church at Philippians. In Philippians 2, he said, do this, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider yourselves more important than others. I'm sorry, consider others more important than yourselves. So I'm going to go back and start over because really what I want to talk about today, nobody else matters. It's all about you, right? So no, consider others more important. Reading's tough. So consider others as more important than yourselves. Next slide. Everyone should not look to his own interest, but rather to the interests of others. And that's the tension that we feel, that we want to live a life that cares for people. But what do you do when people become the problem? When people get in the way? And this is especially true if you're a Christian, right? Not because you're better than anyone else, not because you think you're better than anyone else, or because you're trying to be better than anyone else, but it's because of the example set by Jesus, by the guy who we've devoted our lives to, by the guy who we've said we want to try to become more and more like him. Jesus lived a life that was marked by compassion. I don't remember who's, I think maybe Andy Stanley said this. I can't quite remember. It sounds like something he would say. He said that people who were nothing like Jesus actually liked Jesus. And it's because he lived this life that they knew that he cared for them. It didn't matter their socioeconomic status. It didn't matter their religious beliefs, their political affiliation. It didn't matter if they did the right thing or the wrong thing. It didn't matter what the case was. There was even laws, religious laws set into place that would prevent you from reaching certain people. In Jesus, it didn't matter. Everyone felt cared for. Everyone felt loved. And if you're a Christian, the reason why you feel this tension so strong is because the Holy Spirit is inside prompting you, pushing you, urging you toward this Jesus type of compassion. So what do you do in those moments? Like, what do you do when you're being pulled in a couple of different directions? Like, one of the most remarkable moments that you can see about in Jesus, because he was a real man. He was fully God, but he was also fully man with real emotions, the same emotions that you and I feel, with the same temptations that you and I have. And one of the most remarkable examples that I could have read about with Jesus, we'll read about today in Mark 6. If you've been around the church very long at all, you've heard this story before. It's the story when Jesus fed the 5,000, the text says 5,000 men, but more likely it was 15,000, including women or children. But as I was studying for this, I noticed something in this text that I believe it changes everything. And it shows us in that moment, in that tension, it's what Jesus does to lift the value of others, to care for their needs. To kind of set up the scene, we're at about the third year of Jesus's ministry. He's been going pretty nonstop, him and his disciples, day after day. There's been a few breaks in between, but the mental and physical exhaustion had to be there, had to be present. And his disciples just got back from a ministry trip. And so what he said to them is, hey guys, let's go and let's rest for a while. Not just was he dealing with the mental and physical exhaustion, but he had also just learned about the death of his cousin, John the Baptist. And it wasn't just any death. He was murdered because of a girl's birthday wish. How awkward of a party would that be, right? Like blow out the candles, what you want? That guy. But that's what happened. And so we've dealt with grief before, but that's, can we just admit that's a different level of grief? And so Jesus is dealing with the murder of his cousin. And not only that, but his disciples, a lot of them had followed John the Baptist in the past. They all loved him. They were mentally and physically exhausted, and they were certainly grieving. And Jesus told his disciples, let's get away for a little bit. Let's just go. Let's rest, and we'll get back to work. But while they were en route, people saw where they were headed. And this is what happened. In Mark 6, verse 32, it says this. So they went away, that's Jesus and their disciples. So they went away in the boat by themselves to a remote place, but many saw them leaving and recognized them. They ran on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. When he went to shore, he saw a large crowd. Let me ask real quick, like, how would you respond in that moment? Right? Like, so Jesus, certainly grieving, likely exhausted, he just wants to get away for a little bit. And he has every right to do so. How would you respond? I know what I would say, but he's Jesus. He can't say stuff like that, right? I bet Peter right next to him said it though. Like, what would you do? So something I'm very aware of in my life that I'm trying to work on. On Sunday mornings, man, I can have a tendency to come across more rude than I am, right? It's because I'm focused. Like I'm focused on the Sunday morning, focused on worship. I'm trying to make sure all the volunteers have everything they need, and just really kind of focused on leading worship well. And sometimes I'm just unaware of people. And my sister came down for a visit a few years ago, and I remember she visited church on Sunday and went to my wife. She said, hey, did I make Aaron mad at me? Is he okay? And she's like, no, no, no, no. No, it's just Sunday morning. Just come back in the afternoon, which that wasn't true because I'm even more ferocious about my nap than Sunday afternoon. I'm like a toddler when it comes to nap time, right? Like Sunday morning, I'm just oblivious and unaware of people. Sunday afternoon, I will fight you if you interrupt Sunday. Like fall, best season. Sunday afternoon, best nap time, right? And so it's just one of those things. I'm unaware of people. And I'm talking about a Sunday morning stress, right? Very nominal, right? But Jesus, in this moment, he had every right to say, hey, guys, I just need a second. Like this is one of those head down moments like, okay, let me try to figure this out. Can I have just a couple of minutes, guys? Hey, just a couple of days. Hey, listen, I know you guys heard about what's happening to John. I know you need something from me. If I can have just a few minutes, we'll be back around through time. Like there's, he's certainly right to do that. But in this moment, he sees something different. He sees something that causes a different type of reaction. In a moment when Jesus is sitting in that tension, I need to take a moment for me. I need to take a moment for my guys. These people need something from me. He's face to face with the people he has been placed here to love well. And he sees something that gives him a different reaction. In verse 34, it says this. When he went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. They were like, Jesus, in a moment when he had every right to say, guys, just time out. Need a couple of days. He saw their from their perspective, and it moved him with compassion. Jesus looked at them and felt the pain that they were feeling because he saw life through their lens. Sharing in their perspective caused Jesus to share in their pain. That's what the word perspective, or I'm sorry, that's the word compassion means. It means to suffer with, to pain with, to feel the pain of someone. And it is not possible, it is not possible to feel the pain of someone else while viewing their circumstances through your perspective. Jesus stops. He sees life from their lens and it burdens his heart. I love the word that Mark uses here for the word compassion. It's only used of Jesus throughout the New Testament, but it refers to the internal organs, which was believed to be the seat of the emotions. And so what Mark says here is he saw these guys, and there was such a deep hurt. There was such a longing for them. He shared their passion, and he moved into action. If we can learn to see life through the lens of other people, it will soften your heart towards their circumstances. And circumstances doesn't just mean feeding the hungry. It doesn't just mean giving to the poor. Compassion changes the way you approach things. It changes the way you approach your husband. It changes the way you approach your wife. Compassion restrains your anger. Compassion offers forgiveness. Compassion gives gentleness. Compassion seeks mercy and understanding and walks with people. If we can learn to view life through the lens of other people, what we'll start to see happening is we don't see people as someone we have to walk around. We see people as someone we have to walk with because we share in their pain. Is there someone in your life that maybe we need to seek their perspective a little bit? Let's just admit Jesus had a bit of an advantage there, right? Like Jesus understands people the way, like you have never met someone new for the very first time and told them exactly where they were and what they were thinking two hours before, at least not without a restraining order soon following that, right? Jesus Jesus has an advantage. Like, we've got to go the old-fashioned way. We have to ask questions. We have to seek. We have to consider. Like, how much would it change the way you're feeling in a moment if we were to think about something through someone else's lens? I tried to think about a clever illustration here just to kind of illustrate this point. I thought of several, none of which I'm going to use. Because you've lived this illustration. Like every person in here, at some point in time, has said some variation of this sentence. If they only understood, if they only saw, what just happened? If they could only see how I'm feeling, if they only understood how I was thinking, if they only understood what kind of day I had at work, they would not approach me like, if they only saw this, then they wouldn't feel that like we have all at some point in time realized that if someone else could see through our perspective, it would change the way that they're approaching us. It would change the anger in the situation. It would change everything. It would offer compassion that leads to the things that we crave the most. Reconciliation, hope, peace, love. Because Jesus felt such a pain that it moved him into action. I love what St. Augustine said here. He says, what is compassion but a kind of fellow feeling in our hearts for another's misery which compels us to come to his help by every means in our power? Compassion, especially the compassion that we see in Jesus, is never just a feeling by itself. It's such an understanding and such a sharing of the pain that it moves us. Compassion, Christ-like compassion, is both a feeling and the appropriate action. The goal of compassion isn't to find agreeance that someone's right and someone's wrong, that they need this, and I just do whatever anybody wants me to do. That's not the goal of compassion. The goal of compassion is understanding. The goal of compassion is to sympathize with, to feel the pain of, because it changes everything. It burdens your heart to where sitting still just doesn't make sense. Is there someone in your life whose perspective we need to take a moment and seek? If you don't know where that may be, my suggestion and what I would encourage you to do is to lean into the tension. When you feel that tension again, when you feel the tension that says, I just don't have the capacity right now. I just don't have the energy. I just don't have the time. I just don't have the resources. Hey, I just need a minute. What I believe will happen is the Holy Spirit will tug and say, hey, well, is it possible that this is the moment you should ask a question? You should consider perspective because it burdens you. It burdens your heart and it leads you to a place of action. Let me pray for us. God, thank you. Thank you so much for all that you are, for your love, for your grace. Father, I thank you for how you have, I don't know, Lord, just met us with compassion. I thank you for how you have given us this example of how when we pursue you, it will lead us to pursuing life through the lens of other people, Lord. I just ask that your spirit would guide us, would help us, would move us to slow down, to stop and just consider, is there something I'm not seeing here? Is there something that I can do that will begin to ease the anger, ease the frustration, ease the apathy towards a situation. God, is there something that I can do here to more accurately reflect the compassion that you have shown us? We thank you, Lord. We trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic. It's those old Bible stories, the ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes, David and Goliath, Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, Mailman Kyle. Good morning, everyone. If you missed on the video, my name is Mailman Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace. Before we get going, I just wanted to make you all aware. I had COVID about a month or so ago, and I have a cough that has not yet subsided. So you see a lot of things on this table. I've got tea, I've got water, I've got loose cough drops, all of the things that I need. But there may be a time where we run into me coughing a little bit, and I promise you that as annoying as it is for you, it's at least as annoying for me. So let's just get through it together. But I am so excited this morning to finally be kicking off our summer series, Kid Stories for Grownups, where we take these stories that we've heard and been told so many times if we grew up in the church. And if you're parents, you've probably either read or more honestly, you've probably recited all of these stories to your kids over and over and over again. These stories that we know back and forth. And we take a look inside of those stories and we dive deep into them and are reminded that, hey, like, certainly these are awesome stories for kids, but these stories are incredibly rich and they're incredibly deep and they're incredibly beneficial to us as grownups and as adults as well. And maybe as we go through these stories, we highlight something that maybe isn't the thing that jumps out of the page, that maybe, hey, I've always taught this story and read this story and taken this from this, but maybe there's something more or something deeper we can take away. And this morning, as Nate so beautifully told us, we're talking about Jesus walking on water. And I know a lot of us probably know this story. This story comes on the back of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Jesus has come to earth. He has left heaven and he's come to earth. He has begun his ministry. He has gone and he's found his disciples and they have walked together in ministry, serving people, teaching, preaching, doing all those things. Well, he comes to this crowd, and as he's preaching to them, he realizes, hey, these people are hungry. They've been here all day. We've got to feed them. And so what happens? They have five pieces of bread, two pieces of fish, and Jesus breaks those apart until literally every member of the 5,000 plus the wives and children are fed with food to spare. An unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle into this second unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle of Jesus walking on water. After he was done ministering, he sends the crowds away, and he sends his disciples on a boat. So the disciples head out, and Jesus goes up on a mountain, and he prays. He spends time recharging and refocusing. He spends time with his father. He spends time praying. Well, as the disciples are on the boat, winds are crazy, weather's crazy, the water's up and down, all of those things, and they're a bit scared and they're a bit afraid. Well, their fear then suddenly increases by tenfold because then a man starts walking towards them in the like middle of the morning, like 3 a.m. Here comes this man walking up and starting to talk to them. So they get terrified. Literally their response is, is this a ghost? Are we seeing a ghost right now? What is going on? And Jesus's response to that is wherever it is in my, oh, looks like my, I turned the page. I'm very sorry about that. His response is, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And we look at that and we're like, that is unbelievable. That is incredible. This is literally Jesus walking on the water. An unbelievable miracle, back-to-back miracles to say, look at this. This man, who is definitely a man, is definitely not just a man. This is clearly the Son of God because no one else, no other human would be able to do such a thing. And we look at that and we tell and we learned about that story as a kid and we're like, wow, look at what Jesus is able to do and look at what he was able to do when he was on earth. But that story continues. And I think if we cut the story short by simply talking about Jesus walking on water, then we miss some of the meaning and we miss some of the gold that we can find if we keep going. And so I want to start off by reading the rest of the story. We're going to be in Matthew 14 and reading 28 through 33. It says, But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why do you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the Son of God. Not only does Jesus walk on water, but so does Peter. Once again, an unbelievable, incredible miracle of what happens when the power of Christ says come. But then Peter falls in. As the wind is going crazy, as he looks and he sees the crazy seas, he gets a bit blinded to the power of Christ. He begins to doubt, hey, I don't think I can be doing this, and he falls in. And Jesus comes and grabs him. And to help us draw a bit more from this story, I think that the best and the easiest way is to connect to another story that a lot of us grew up listening to. A lot of us grew up learning, and a lot of us have taught our kids as well, and that is later in the Gospels, in the Gospel of John, with another disciple, Thomas. When I mention Thomas, a lot of us in our minds immediately think of one characteristic of Thomas. Thomas is a disciple. He's mentioned plenty in Scripture. He's mentioned plenty in the Bible. There are times where he shows absolutely incredible courage and incredible faith throughout the Gospels and throughout Scripture, but that's not the characteristic that we're thinking of. Those of us who grew up in church, or those of us who have begun coming to church and reading the Bibles for ourselves, we know Thomas by a nickname. What's that nickname? Doubting Thomas. We know him by Doubting Thomas because when Jesus hung on the cross, when Jesus died and was resurrected, Thomas didn't immediately believe. This man that Thomas had followed for years, had absolutely love, had complete and utter faith in, had gone up and he had watched him be killed and die. And in his sorrow, he isolates himself and just sits and wallows and is so overwhelmed in sorrow because he's like, this guy that I believed in, maybe he actually wasn't who I thought he was. And so the beginning of this story with Thomas comes when a lot of the disciples were together. And when they were together, Jesus, after he had been resurrected, after he had come back from the dead, had gone and visited those disciples. And the disciples, obviously, absolutely threw the roof, crazy excited that Christ actually was who he said he was. He actually had been resurrected. He is alive again once more. They go and they tell Thomas, Thomas, he's back. He's back. He did what he said he was going to do. He's here. He's living. But Thomas, so overcome and overwhelmed with his grief and with his sorrow, just can't bring himself to believe. And so he responds to them, unless I see him, unless I see and I feel the holes in his hands where the nails went, unless I'm able to see that and to see him, then I'll never believe. And so that is where we pick up and we read John 20, 26 through 29. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas this time was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed. Here we have the story of two disciples of Jesus, two of Jesus' closest friends, these two people who Jesus had been preparing them for the whole time that they were together to fully have faith and believe and trust in what Jesus has to say. I am with you. I will not leave you. I am in complete control of what is going on here. Yet in both circumstances, we find two disciples wrestling with doubt that puts them in places of turmoil. We've got Thomas flailing about in the water and in the winds, yelling and asking Jesus to come and to save him. You've got Thomas sitting isolated, crippled by sorrow, and crippled by the doubt that maybe Jesus isn't the guy I thought he was. But that's not the only connection of the two stories. Because what drives those two connections home is the way that Jesus responds and the way that Jesus reacts to that sorrow, to that fear, and ultimately to the doubt that both of them experienced. And he responds by going to them. He responds by literally putting his hand out, giving them his hand. Peter reaching down, reaching his hand down, pulling him up, putting him in the boat, and calming the winds. Thomas, he shows up, he offers his hands, he says, look, put your fingers here. See me, believe that I am who I said that I am. He reminds them that he is in complete control. He reminds them that he never went anywhere. He was always with them, and all they had to do was believe, and all they had to do was have faith. I love these stories, and they remind me of this commercial that I've seen. I've seen it a few times, but I couldn't find it on the internet. So I think that it was a commercial about adoption and just how great parenthood or fatherhood is or whatever. One of those. And in the commercial, it starts off, it's this kid who's kind of running around the house and it's pretty frantic. Like he's running, he's like, dad, dad, dad. Like where you can see where he's like, dad, dad. and then like it just kind of elevates to frantic of he's running around, and he's worried, and he's looking around, and he's trying to figure out where his dad is because he can't find him in the house. And as his calling turns to be a bit more frantic and a bit more fearful, then his dad comes out from a hiding spot, gives him a hug, and basically the response is, hey, we're just playing hide and seek. I promised you I was never gone. Hey, I was here the whole time. I would never actually leave you. There is absolutely no reason to fear. And I think it connects pretty well to maybe both sides of both Peter and Thomas' doubt, right? That at the slightest amount of doubt, his fear took over. The kid's circumstances were such that he couldn't find his dad, and his fear took over, and he forgot about the fact that if he would have sat back and thought, he'd be like, oh yeah, dad would never leave the house and leave me. But his circumstances were bigger than that and he began to fear. Or at its deepest, he did think about it. And at his deepest, he went around and as he's looking and he can't find his dad, he goes, maybe he would leave me. I can't find him. I can't see him right now. I can't feel where he's at. So maybe he's not who he said he was. But ultimately, the point and the purpose of the video and the point and the purpose of the commercial is not to rest on why is this kid doubting that his dad would be there. Ultimately, the point and the purpose of the commercial is seeing the dad's response to the kid getting afraid. And that is to show up and to say, hey, I'm right here, and I never left. I've always been here, and as soon as the kid needed to seek out, and as soon as in his worry and in his frantic energy goes, dad, where are you? His dad instantly came to his side, put him in his arms, and said, buddy, I'm right here. I was never anywhere else. And I think that's what we see with how Jesus responds to Peter and with how Jesus responds to Thomas. In their doubts and in their worry and their sorrow, their fear, and all of it, Jesus literally seeks them out. He offers his hand, not simply to save them, but more importantly to restore their faith that he never wasn't there. He never wasn't with them. He never wasn't for them. He's always going to be who he said he was. And I believe that these two passages are a lot deeper in that way than simply focusing on the miracles. Certainly, walking on water is a miracle that is unbelievable. And it's like, yes, this must be the Son of God. This is incredibly important to see that this man is no simple man. He is literally walking on liquid. That's unbelievable. Or on the other end, far more importantly, this is a man who came not only to live, but also to die. And when he dies, he brings our sin with him. And ultimately, we get to see and realize, just like Thomas and just like all of the rest of them, that he is raised back to life. That as we believe and have faith in that, then we too do not live our final chapter by death on earth, but we just begin eternity. Both of those things are incredibly important, but at the same time, I think both of these passages are meant to encourage us, those of us in our lives who have experienced doubt, to help restore our faith and to help remind us that Jesus is exactly who he said he is. I don't think it's too presumptuous for me to say that we've probably experienced doubts similar to Peter and doubts similar to Thomas. Like Peter, there may be times where our circumstances feel heavier than the peace and the assurance that Jesus offers. I know that Jesus is bigger. I know that Jesus is better. But right now, everything is so big and everything feels so hard and so scary that it just makes me just forget. And so I begin to doubt just for a second that Christ is who he says he is, and he is in control. Or maybe like Thomas, there may be times where we wrestle with doubt or struggle to believe that Jesus really is everything that he says he is. I think many of us have felt this way about Christ. There are times where our circumstances overshadow the goodness of God and we simply fail to believe or even remember that Christ truly is in control. And for that reason, we have passages like this. We get to see that even Jesus' best friends dealt with doubt, and we get to be reminded of how Jesus responds to us in our doubt as well. I love the way that William Barclay puts it in his commentary about Jesus and Peter walking on water. When he says, in life, the wind is often contrary. There are times when we are up against it, and life is a desperate struggle with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our temptations, with our sorrows, and with our decisions. At such a time, no one needs struggle alone, for Jesus comes to us across the storms of life with hands stretched but Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, still reaches his hand out to us in our times of fear, doubt, and everything in between. And if you're like me, there's times where we kind of wish it would be reversed, right? There's times where I'm just like, Jesus, if you would just for once physically grab me and pull me out of my storms so I would know that you're here. Jesus, if you could just one time come and show me those scars that you showed Thomas so I could feel them and I could know for certain that you are still here and that you are still alive. But Jesus pushes back on that fully. In John 16, he basically tells the disciples, it is better for you that I leave, that at some point I'm going to go, at some point I'm going back to heaven, and it is better for you that I leave, because when I leave, there is a helper that is coming, that I am sending the Holy Spirit, And he assures us that the most intimate connection that we could ever have with Christ on this side of heaven comes only through the Holy Spirit, not through his physical presence, not through his hands, not through seeing his hands or foreshadowing that one day it's coming that I'm not going to be here at all. But I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, while he's not offering a physical hand to pull you and a physical hand to say, I'm right here. It's going to be okay. I have control. I am still exactly who you believe I am. But he instead offers us Christ's heart. And when we seek after his heart, we find his heart, which is far deeper and far greater than simply his hand. Maybe the best way I've heard that put is by an author, Dane Ortlund, in a book called Gentle and Lowly that I've had the opportunity to read with my small group and read also with the staff. It's just a perfect and beautiful quote that reminds us and tells us, hey, when we have the Holy Spirit, we have the full living and active heart of Christ inside of us. The quote's a bit lengthy, but we're going to read it together. It's going to be on the screen, and so as I go to read, would you please just read along with me? You don't have to read it out loud, but just read along as I read. The Spirit makes the heart of Christ real to us. Not just heard, but seen. Not just seen, but felt. Not just felt, but enjoyed. The Spirit takes what we read in the Bible and believe on paper about Jesus's heart and moves it from theory to reality, from doctrine to experience, from knowing to believing. It is one thing as a child to be told your father loves you. You believe him. You take him at his word. But it is another thing, unutterably more real, to be swept up in his embrace, to feel the warmth, to hear his beating heart within his chest, to instantly know the protective grip of his arms. It's one thing to hear he loves you. It's another thing to feel his love. This is the glorious work of the Spirit. When we fear, when we experience sorrow, when we get overwhelmed, there are times where that can lead to doubts. Where is Christ and why isn't he here? Or can Christ actually be real if this is what's going on in the world, in my life? In those times, all that Christ asks of us is to seek after him. In the same way that that boy sought after his dad, and the second he did, his dad was there simply to give him a hug and remind him, hey, I've been here the whole time. You were never alone, and you were never in danger. There show his heart to us, and we allow him to remind us that why would we ever doubt because he is exactly who he says he is. So that we may believe. So that our faith may grow. So that our faith may exceed where it currently is and we may not doubt again. The end of both stories. You see worship and praise. Surely you are the Son of God. Praise be to you, the Son of God. Christ gets on them a little bit. Why would you doubt me? But ultimately, he gets on them after coming and showing himself to them and saying, I'm going to be here. When you doubt me, I will be here to remind you and prove to you that I am exactly who I say I am, that my heart is still for you, and that I still love you with all of my heart. And when I show up, I want that to increase not only your joy and not only your worship of me, but your faith in me. When you look at the kid's perspective in that hide-and-seek commercial, if that was real life, I imagine if they're playing hide-and-seek again, he's a little bit less fearful if it takes him a minute to see where his dad is. Because he knows. He's experienced it. He's experienced his dad show up and say, I'm right here. You are never in danger. And in the same way, maybe the next time we experience certain circumstances that are overwhelming or bring us to fear or bring us to sorrow, then maybe we wouldn't doubt. But when we do, because we know Jesus has showed up before, then maybe we would pray the prayer of Mark 9, 24. It says, I believe, Lord Jesus, help my unbelief, knowing full well that he's right there with us and he's ready to offer us his hand. Let's pray. Lord, we love you so much. Lord, I wish that in our life of faith that there would never be a moment or never be a time where we would doubt you, doubt your goodness, doubt your heart, doubt anything about you. But Lord, I also know that we live in a fallen world and there are times where it gets hard to trust in what you say. It gets hard to believe in you. And so Lord, in those times, may we as your children turn to you and seek after you and allow you to remind us of your heart and remind us that you are perfect and exactly who you say that you are. And Lord, as we seek after you and as we find you, as you wrap us in your arms, may our faith grow ever stronger through our experiencing you. We love you so much. Amen.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic. It's those old Bible stories, the ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes, David and Goliath, Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, Mailman Kyle. Good morning, everyone. If you missed on the video, my name is Mailman Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace. Before we get going, I just wanted to make you all aware. I had COVID about a month or so ago, and I have a cough that has not yet subsided. So you see a lot of things on this table. I've got tea, I've got water, I've got loose cough drops, all of the things that I need. But there may be a time where we run into me coughing a little bit, and I promise you that as annoying as it is for you, it's at least as annoying for me. So let's just get through it together. But I am so excited this morning to finally be kicking off our summer series, Kid Stories for Grownups, where we take these stories that we've heard and been told so many times if we grew up in the church. And if you're parents, you've probably either read or more honestly, you've probably recited all of these stories to your kids over and over and over again. These stories that we know back and forth. And we take a look inside of those stories and we dive deep into them and are reminded that, hey, like, certainly these are awesome stories for kids, but these stories are incredibly rich and they're incredibly deep and they're incredibly beneficial to us as grownups and as adults as well. And maybe as we go through these stories, we highlight something that maybe isn't the thing that jumps out of the page, that maybe, hey, I've always taught this story and read this story and taken this from this, but maybe there's something more or something deeper we can take away. And this morning, as Nate so beautifully told us, we're talking about Jesus walking on water. And I know a lot of us probably know this story. This story comes on the back of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Jesus has come to earth. He has left heaven and he's come to earth. He has begun his ministry. He has gone and he's found his disciples and they have walked together in ministry, serving people, teaching, preaching, doing all those things. Well, he comes to this crowd, and as he's preaching to them, he realizes, hey, these people are hungry. They've been here all day. We've got to feed them. And so what happens? They have five pieces of bread, two pieces of fish, and Jesus breaks those apart until literally every member of the 5,000 plus the wives and children are fed with food to spare. An unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle into this second unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle of Jesus walking on water. After he was done ministering, he sends the crowds away, and he sends his disciples on a boat. So the disciples head out, and Jesus goes up on a mountain, and he prays. He spends time recharging and refocusing. He spends time with his father. He spends time praying. Well, as the disciples are on the boat, winds are crazy, weather's crazy, the water's up and down, all of those things, and they're a bit scared and they're a bit afraid. Well, their fear then suddenly increases by tenfold because then a man starts walking towards them in the like middle of the morning, like 3 a.m. Here comes this man walking up and starting to talk to them. So they get terrified. Literally their response is, is this a ghost? Are we seeing a ghost right now? What is going on? And Jesus's response to that is wherever it is in my, oh, looks like my, I turned the page. I'm very sorry about that. His response is, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And we look at that and we're like, that is unbelievable. That is incredible. This is literally Jesus walking on the water. An unbelievable miracle, back-to-back miracles to say, look at this. This man, who is definitely a man, is definitely not just a man. This is clearly the Son of God because no one else, no other human would be able to do such a thing. And we look at that and we tell and we learned about that story as a kid and we're like, wow, look at what Jesus is able to do and look at what he was able to do when he was on earth. But that story continues. And I think if we cut the story short by simply talking about Jesus walking on water, then we miss some of the meaning and we miss some of the gold that we can find if we keep going. And so I want to start off by reading the rest of the story. We're going to be in Matthew 14 and reading 28 through 33. It says, But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why do you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the Son of God. Not only does Jesus walk on water, but so does Peter. Once again, an unbelievable, incredible miracle of what happens when the power of Christ says come. But then Peter falls in. As the wind is going crazy, as he looks and he sees the crazy seas, he gets a bit blinded to the power of Christ. He begins to doubt, hey, I don't think I can be doing this, and he falls in. And Jesus comes and grabs him. And to help us draw a bit more from this story, I think that the best and the easiest way is to connect to another story that a lot of us grew up listening to. A lot of us grew up learning, and a lot of us have taught our kids as well, and that is later in the Gospels, in the Gospel of John, with another disciple, Thomas. When I mention Thomas, a lot of us in our minds immediately think of one characteristic of Thomas. Thomas is a disciple. He's mentioned plenty in Scripture. He's mentioned plenty in the Bible. There are times where he shows absolutely incredible courage and incredible faith throughout the Gospels and throughout Scripture, but that's not the characteristic that we're thinking of. Those of us who grew up in church, or those of us who have begun coming to church and reading the Bibles for ourselves, we know Thomas by a nickname. What's that nickname? Doubting Thomas. We know him by Doubting Thomas because when Jesus hung on the cross, when Jesus died and was resurrected, Thomas didn't immediately believe. This man that Thomas had followed for years, had absolutely love, had complete and utter faith in, had gone up and he had watched him be killed and die. And in his sorrow, he isolates himself and just sits and wallows and is so overwhelmed in sorrow because he's like, this guy that I believed in, maybe he actually wasn't who I thought he was. And so the beginning of this story with Thomas comes when a lot of the disciples were together. And when they were together, Jesus, after he had been resurrected, after he had come back from the dead, had gone and visited those disciples. And the disciples, obviously, absolutely threw the roof, crazy excited that Christ actually was who he said he was. He actually had been resurrected. He is alive again once more. They go and they tell Thomas, Thomas, he's back. He's back. He did what he said he was going to do. He's here. He's living. But Thomas, so overcome and overwhelmed with his grief and with his sorrow, just can't bring himself to believe. And so he responds to them, unless I see him, unless I see and I feel the holes in his hands where the nails went, unless I'm able to see that and to see him, then I'll never believe. And so that is where we pick up and we read John 20, 26 through 29. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas this time was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed. Here we have the story of two disciples of Jesus, two of Jesus' closest friends, these two people who Jesus had been preparing them for the whole time that they were together to fully have faith and believe and trust in what Jesus has to say. I am with you. I will not leave you. I am in complete control of what is going on here. Yet in both circumstances, we find two disciples wrestling with doubt that puts them in places of turmoil. We've got Thomas flailing about in the water and in the winds, yelling and asking Jesus to come and to save him. You've got Thomas sitting isolated, crippled by sorrow, and crippled by the doubt that maybe Jesus isn't the guy I thought he was. But that's not the only connection of the two stories. Because what drives those two connections home is the way that Jesus responds and the way that Jesus reacts to that sorrow, to that fear, and ultimately to the doubt that both of them experienced. And he responds by going to them. He responds by literally putting his hand out, giving them his hand. Peter reaching down, reaching his hand down, pulling him up, putting him in the boat, and calming the winds. Thomas, he shows up, he offers his hands, he says, look, put your fingers here. See me, believe that I am who I said that I am. He reminds them that he is in complete control. He reminds them that he never went anywhere. He was always with them, and all they had to do was believe, and all they had to do was have faith. I love these stories, and they remind me of this commercial that I've seen. I've seen it a few times, but I couldn't find it on the internet. So I think that it was a commercial about adoption and just how great parenthood or fatherhood is or whatever. One of those. And in the commercial, it starts off, it's this kid who's kind of running around the house and it's pretty frantic. Like he's running, he's like, dad, dad, dad. Like where you can see where he's like, dad, dad. and then like it just kind of elevates to frantic of he's running around, and he's worried, and he's looking around, and he's trying to figure out where his dad is because he can't find him in the house. And as his calling turns to be a bit more frantic and a bit more fearful, then his dad comes out from a hiding spot, gives him a hug, and basically the response is, hey, we're just playing hide and seek. I promised you I was never gone. Hey, I was here the whole time. I would never actually leave you. There is absolutely no reason to fear. And I think it connects pretty well to maybe both sides of both Peter and Thomas' doubt, right? That at the slightest amount of doubt, his fear took over. The kid's circumstances were such that he couldn't find his dad, and his fear took over, and he forgot about the fact that if he would have sat back and thought, he'd be like, oh yeah, dad would never leave the house and leave me. But his circumstances were bigger than that and he began to fear. Or at its deepest, he did think about it. And at his deepest, he went around and as he's looking and he can't find his dad, he goes, maybe he would leave me. I can't find him. I can't see him right now. I can't feel where he's at. So maybe he's not who he said he was. But ultimately, the point and the purpose of the video and the point and the purpose of the commercial is not to rest on why is this kid doubting that his dad would be there. Ultimately, the point and the purpose of the commercial is seeing the dad's response to the kid getting afraid. And that is to show up and to say, hey, I'm right here, and I never left. I've always been here, and as soon as the kid needed to seek out, and as soon as in his worry and in his frantic energy goes, dad, where are you? His dad instantly came to his side, put him in his arms, and said, buddy, I'm right here. I was never anywhere else. And I think that's what we see with how Jesus responds to Peter and with how Jesus responds to Thomas. In their doubts and in their worry and their sorrow, their fear, and all of it, Jesus literally seeks them out. He offers his hand, not simply to save them, but more importantly to restore their faith that he never wasn't there. He never wasn't with them. He never wasn't for them. He's always going to be who he said he was. And I believe that these two passages are a lot deeper in that way than simply focusing on the miracles. Certainly, walking on water is a miracle that is unbelievable. And it's like, yes, this must be the Son of God. This is incredibly important to see that this man is no simple man. He is literally walking on liquid. That's unbelievable. Or on the other end, far more importantly, this is a man who came not only to live, but also to die. And when he dies, he brings our sin with him. And ultimately, we get to see and realize, just like Thomas and just like all of the rest of them, that he is raised back to life. That as we believe and have faith in that, then we too do not live our final chapter by death on earth, but we just begin eternity. Both of those things are incredibly important, but at the same time, I think both of these passages are meant to encourage us, those of us in our lives who have experienced doubt, to help restore our faith and to help remind us that Jesus is exactly who he said he is. I don't think it's too presumptuous for me to say that we've probably experienced doubts similar to Peter and doubts similar to Thomas. Like Peter, there may be times where our circumstances feel heavier than the peace and the assurance that Jesus offers. I know that Jesus is bigger. I know that Jesus is better. But right now, everything is so big and everything feels so hard and so scary that it just makes me just forget. And so I begin to doubt just for a second that Christ is who he says he is, and he is in control. Or maybe like Thomas, there may be times where we wrestle with doubt or struggle to believe that Jesus really is everything that he says he is. I think many of us have felt this way about Christ. There are times where our circumstances overshadow the goodness of God and we simply fail to believe or even remember that Christ truly is in control. And for that reason, we have passages like this. We get to see that even Jesus' best friends dealt with doubt, and we get to be reminded of how Jesus responds to us in our doubt as well. I love the way that William Barclay puts it in his commentary about Jesus and Peter walking on water. When he says, in life, the wind is often contrary. There are times when we are up against it, and life is a desperate struggle with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our temptations, with our sorrows, and with our decisions. At such a time, no one needs struggle alone, for Jesus comes to us across the storms of life with hands stretched but Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, still reaches his hand out to us in our times of fear, doubt, and everything in between. And if you're like me, there's times where we kind of wish it would be reversed, right? There's times where I'm just like, Jesus, if you would just for once physically grab me and pull me out of my storms so I would know that you're here. Jesus, if you could just one time come and show me those scars that you showed Thomas so I could feel them and I could know for certain that you are still here and that you are still alive. But Jesus pushes back on that fully. In John 16, he basically tells the disciples, it is better for you that I leave, that at some point I'm going to go, at some point I'm going back to heaven, and it is better for you that I leave, because when I leave, there is a helper that is coming, that I am sending the Holy Spirit, And he assures us that the most intimate connection that we could ever have with Christ on this side of heaven comes only through the Holy Spirit, not through his physical presence, not through his hands, not through seeing his hands or foreshadowing that one day it's coming that I'm not going to be here at all. But I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, while he's not offering a physical hand to pull you and a physical hand to say, I'm right here. It's going to be okay. I have control. I am still exactly who you believe I am. But he instead offers us Christ's heart. And when we seek after his heart, we find his heart, which is far deeper and far greater than simply his hand. Maybe the best way I've heard that put is by an author, Dane Ortlund, in a book called Gentle and Lowly that I've had the opportunity to read with my small group and read also with the staff. It's just a perfect and beautiful quote that reminds us and tells us, hey, when we have the Holy Spirit, we have the full living and active heart of Christ inside of us. The quote's a bit lengthy, but we're going to read it together. It's going to be on the screen, and so as I go to read, would you please just read along with me? You don't have to read it out loud, but just read along as I read. The Spirit makes the heart of Christ real to us. Not just heard, but seen. Not just seen, but felt. Not just felt, but enjoyed. The Spirit takes what we read in the Bible and believe on paper about Jesus's heart and moves it from theory to reality, from doctrine to experience, from knowing to believing. It is one thing as a child to be told your father loves you. You believe him. You take him at his word. But it is another thing, unutterably more real, to be swept up in his embrace, to feel the warmth, to hear his beating heart within his chest, to instantly know the protective grip of his arms. It's one thing to hear he loves you. It's another thing to feel his love. This is the glorious work of the Spirit. When we fear, when we experience sorrow, when we get overwhelmed, there are times where that can lead to doubts. Where is Christ and why isn't he here? Or can Christ actually be real if this is what's going on in the world, in my life? In those times, all that Christ asks of us is to seek after him. In the same way that that boy sought after his dad, and the second he did, his dad was there simply to give him a hug and remind him, hey, I've been here the whole time. You were never alone, and you were never in danger. There show his heart to us, and we allow him to remind us that why would we ever doubt because he is exactly who he says he is. So that we may believe. So that our faith may grow. So that our faith may exceed where it currently is and we may not doubt again. The end of both stories. You see worship and praise. Surely you are the Son of God. Praise be to you, the Son of God. Christ gets on them a little bit. Why would you doubt me? But ultimately, he gets on them after coming and showing himself to them and saying, I'm going to be here. When you doubt me, I will be here to remind you and prove to you that I am exactly who I say I am, that my heart is still for you, and that I still love you with all of my heart. And when I show up, I want that to increase not only your joy and not only your worship of me, but your faith in me. When you look at the kid's perspective in that hide-and-seek commercial, if that was real life, I imagine if they're playing hide-and-seek again, he's a little bit less fearful if it takes him a minute to see where his dad is. Because he knows. He's experienced it. He's experienced his dad show up and say, I'm right here. You are never in danger. And in the same way, maybe the next time we experience certain circumstances that are overwhelming or bring us to fear or bring us to sorrow, then maybe we wouldn't doubt. But when we do, because we know Jesus has showed up before, then maybe we would pray the prayer of Mark 9, 24. It says, I believe, Lord Jesus, help my unbelief, knowing full well that he's right there with us and he's ready to offer us his hand. Let's pray. Lord, we love you so much. Lord, I wish that in our life of faith that there would never be a moment or never be a time where we would doubt you, doubt your goodness, doubt your heart, doubt anything about you. But Lord, I also know that we live in a fallen world and there are times where it gets hard to trust in what you say. It gets hard to believe in you. And so Lord, in those times, may we as your children turn to you and seek after you and allow you to remind us of your heart and remind us that you are perfect and exactly who you say that you are. And Lord, as we seek after you and as we find you, as you wrap us in your arms, may our faith grow ever stronger through our experiencing you. We love you so much. Amen.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic. It's those old Bible stories, the ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes, David and Goliath, Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, Mailman Kyle. Good morning, everyone. If you missed on the video, my name is Mailman Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace. Before we get going, I just wanted to make you all aware. I had COVID about a month or so ago, and I have a cough that has not yet subsided. So you see a lot of things on this table. I've got tea, I've got water, I've got loose cough drops, all of the things that I need. But there may be a time where we run into me coughing a little bit, and I promise you that as annoying as it is for you, it's at least as annoying for me. So let's just get through it together. But I am so excited this morning to finally be kicking off our summer series, Kid Stories for Grownups, where we take these stories that we've heard and been told so many times if we grew up in the church. And if you're parents, you've probably either read or more honestly, you've probably recited all of these stories to your kids over and over and over again. These stories that we know back and forth. And we take a look inside of those stories and we dive deep into them and are reminded that, hey, like, certainly these are awesome stories for kids, but these stories are incredibly rich and they're incredibly deep and they're incredibly beneficial to us as grownups and as adults as well. And maybe as we go through these stories, we highlight something that maybe isn't the thing that jumps out of the page, that maybe, hey, I've always taught this story and read this story and taken this from this, but maybe there's something more or something deeper we can take away. And this morning, as Nate so beautifully told us, we're talking about Jesus walking on water. And I know a lot of us probably know this story. This story comes on the back of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Jesus has come to earth. He has left heaven and he's come to earth. He has begun his ministry. He has gone and he's found his disciples and they have walked together in ministry, serving people, teaching, preaching, doing all those things. Well, he comes to this crowd, and as he's preaching to them, he realizes, hey, these people are hungry. They've been here all day. We've got to feed them. And so what happens? They have five pieces of bread, two pieces of fish, and Jesus breaks those apart until literally every member of the 5,000 plus the wives and children are fed with food to spare. An unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle into this second unbelievable, incredible, awesome miracle of Jesus walking on water. After he was done ministering, he sends the crowds away, and he sends his disciples on a boat. So the disciples head out, and Jesus goes up on a mountain, and he prays. He spends time recharging and refocusing. He spends time with his father. He spends time praying. Well, as the disciples are on the boat, winds are crazy, weather's crazy, the water's up and down, all of those things, and they're a bit scared and they're a bit afraid. Well, their fear then suddenly increases by tenfold because then a man starts walking towards them in the like middle of the morning, like 3 a.m. Here comes this man walking up and starting to talk to them. So they get terrified. Literally their response is, is this a ghost? Are we seeing a ghost right now? What is going on? And Jesus's response to that is wherever it is in my, oh, looks like my, I turned the page. I'm very sorry about that. His response is, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And we look at that and we're like, that is unbelievable. That is incredible. This is literally Jesus walking on the water. An unbelievable miracle, back-to-back miracles to say, look at this. This man, who is definitely a man, is definitely not just a man. This is clearly the Son of God because no one else, no other human would be able to do such a thing. And we look at that and we tell and we learned about that story as a kid and we're like, wow, look at what Jesus is able to do and look at what he was able to do when he was on earth. But that story continues. And I think if we cut the story short by simply talking about Jesus walking on water, then we miss some of the meaning and we miss some of the gold that we can find if we keep going. And so I want to start off by reading the rest of the story. We're going to be in Matthew 14 and reading 28 through 33. It says, But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why do you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the Son of God. Not only does Jesus walk on water, but so does Peter. Once again, an unbelievable, incredible miracle of what happens when the power of Christ says come. But then Peter falls in. As the wind is going crazy, as he looks and he sees the crazy seas, he gets a bit blinded to the power of Christ. He begins to doubt, hey, I don't think I can be doing this, and he falls in. And Jesus comes and grabs him. And to help us draw a bit more from this story, I think that the best and the easiest way is to connect to another story that a lot of us grew up listening to. A lot of us grew up learning, and a lot of us have taught our kids as well, and that is later in the Gospels, in the Gospel of John, with another disciple, Thomas. When I mention Thomas, a lot of us in our minds immediately think of one characteristic of Thomas. Thomas is a disciple. He's mentioned plenty in Scripture. He's mentioned plenty in the Bible. There are times where he shows absolutely incredible courage and incredible faith throughout the Gospels and throughout Scripture, but that's not the characteristic that we're thinking of. Those of us who grew up in church, or those of us who have begun coming to church and reading the Bibles for ourselves, we know Thomas by a nickname. What's that nickname? Doubting Thomas. We know him by Doubting Thomas because when Jesus hung on the cross, when Jesus died and was resurrected, Thomas didn't immediately believe. This man that Thomas had followed for years, had absolutely love, had complete and utter faith in, had gone up and he had watched him be killed and die. And in his sorrow, he isolates himself and just sits and wallows and is so overwhelmed in sorrow because he's like, this guy that I believed in, maybe he actually wasn't who I thought he was. And so the beginning of this story with Thomas comes when a lot of the disciples were together. And when they were together, Jesus, after he had been resurrected, after he had come back from the dead, had gone and visited those disciples. And the disciples, obviously, absolutely threw the roof, crazy excited that Christ actually was who he said he was. He actually had been resurrected. He is alive again once more. They go and they tell Thomas, Thomas, he's back. He's back. He did what he said he was going to do. He's here. He's living. But Thomas, so overcome and overwhelmed with his grief and with his sorrow, just can't bring himself to believe. And so he responds to them, unless I see him, unless I see and I feel the holes in his hands where the nails went, unless I'm able to see that and to see him, then I'll never believe. And so that is where we pick up and we read John 20, 26 through 29. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas this time was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed. Here we have the story of two disciples of Jesus, two of Jesus' closest friends, these two people who Jesus had been preparing them for the whole time that they were together to fully have faith and believe and trust in what Jesus has to say. I am with you. I will not leave you. I am in complete control of what is going on here. Yet in both circumstances, we find two disciples wrestling with doubt that puts them in places of turmoil. We've got Thomas flailing about in the water and in the winds, yelling and asking Jesus to come and to save him. You've got Thomas sitting isolated, crippled by sorrow, and crippled by the doubt that maybe Jesus isn't the guy I thought he was. But that's not the only connection of the two stories. Because what drives those two connections home is the way that Jesus responds and the way that Jesus reacts to that sorrow, to that fear, and ultimately to the doubt that both of them experienced. And he responds by going to them. He responds by literally putting his hand out, giving them his hand. Peter reaching down, reaching his hand down, pulling him up, putting him in the boat, and calming the winds. Thomas, he shows up, he offers his hands, he says, look, put your fingers here. See me, believe that I am who I said that I am. He reminds them that he is in complete control. He reminds them that he never went anywhere. He was always with them, and all they had to do was believe, and all they had to do was have faith. I love these stories, and they remind me of this commercial that I've seen. I've seen it a few times, but I couldn't find it on the internet. So I think that it was a commercial about adoption and just how great parenthood or fatherhood is or whatever. One of those. And in the commercial, it starts off, it's this kid who's kind of running around the house and it's pretty frantic. Like he's running, he's like, dad, dad, dad. Like where you can see where he's like, dad, dad. and then like it just kind of elevates to frantic of he's running around, and he's worried, and he's looking around, and he's trying to figure out where his dad is because he can't find him in the house. And as his calling turns to be a bit more frantic and a bit more fearful, then his dad comes out from a hiding spot, gives him a hug, and basically the response is, hey, we're just playing hide and seek. I promised you I was never gone. Hey, I was here the whole time. I would never actually leave you. There is absolutely no reason to fear. And I think it connects pretty well to maybe both sides of both Peter and Thomas' doubt, right? That at the slightest amount of doubt, his fear took over. The kid's circumstances were such that he couldn't find his dad, and his fear took over, and he forgot about the fact that if he would have sat back and thought, he'd be like, oh yeah, dad would never leave the house and leave me. But his circumstances were bigger than that and he began to fear. Or at its deepest, he did think about it. And at his deepest, he went around and as he's looking and he can't find his dad, he goes, maybe he would leave me. I can't find him. I can't see him right now. I can't feel where he's at. So maybe he's not who he said he was. But ultimately, the point and the purpose of the video and the point and the purpose of the commercial is not to rest on why is this kid doubting that his dad would be there. Ultimately, the point and the purpose of the commercial is seeing the dad's response to the kid getting afraid. And that is to show up and to say, hey, I'm right here, and I never left. I've always been here, and as soon as the kid needed to seek out, and as soon as in his worry and in his frantic energy goes, dad, where are you? His dad instantly came to his side, put him in his arms, and said, buddy, I'm right here. I was never anywhere else. And I think that's what we see with how Jesus responds to Peter and with how Jesus responds to Thomas. In their doubts and in their worry and their sorrow, their fear, and all of it, Jesus literally seeks them out. He offers his hand, not simply to save them, but more importantly to restore their faith that he never wasn't there. He never wasn't with them. He never wasn't for them. He's always going to be who he said he was. And I believe that these two passages are a lot deeper in that way than simply focusing on the miracles. Certainly, walking on water is a miracle that is unbelievable. And it's like, yes, this must be the Son of God. This is incredibly important to see that this man is no simple man. He is literally walking on liquid. That's unbelievable. Or on the other end, far more importantly, this is a man who came not only to live, but also to die. And when he dies, he brings our sin with him. And ultimately, we get to see and realize, just like Thomas and just like all of the rest of them, that he is raised back to life. That as we believe and have faith in that, then we too do not live our final chapter by death on earth, but we just begin eternity. Both of those things are incredibly important, but at the same time, I think both of these passages are meant to encourage us, those of us in our lives who have experienced doubt, to help restore our faith and to help remind us that Jesus is exactly who he said he is. I don't think it's too presumptuous for me to say that we've probably experienced doubts similar to Peter and doubts similar to Thomas. Like Peter, there may be times where our circumstances feel heavier than the peace and the assurance that Jesus offers. I know that Jesus is bigger. I know that Jesus is better. But right now, everything is so big and everything feels so hard and so scary that it just makes me just forget. And so I begin to doubt just for a second that Christ is who he says he is, and he is in control. Or maybe like Thomas, there may be times where we wrestle with doubt or struggle to believe that Jesus really is everything that he says he is. I think many of us have felt this way about Christ. There are times where our circumstances overshadow the goodness of God and we simply fail to believe or even remember that Christ truly is in control. And for that reason, we have passages like this. We get to see that even Jesus' best friends dealt with doubt, and we get to be reminded of how Jesus responds to us in our doubt as well. I love the way that William Barclay puts it in his commentary about Jesus and Peter walking on water. When he says, in life, the wind is often contrary. There are times when we are up against it, and life is a desperate struggle with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our temptations, with our sorrows, and with our decisions. At such a time, no one needs struggle alone, for Jesus comes to us across the storms of life with hands stretched but Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, still reaches his hand out to us in our times of fear, doubt, and everything in between. And if you're like me, there's times where we kind of wish it would be reversed, right? There's times where I'm just like, Jesus, if you would just for once physically grab me and pull me out of my storms so I would know that you're here. Jesus, if you could just one time come and show me those scars that you showed Thomas so I could feel them and I could know for certain that you are still here and that you are still alive. But Jesus pushes back on that fully. In John 16, he basically tells the disciples, it is better for you that I leave, that at some point I'm going to go, at some point I'm going back to heaven, and it is better for you that I leave, because when I leave, there is a helper that is coming, that I am sending the Holy Spirit, And he assures us that the most intimate connection that we could ever have with Christ on this side of heaven comes only through the Holy Spirit, not through his physical presence, not through his hands, not through seeing his hands or foreshadowing that one day it's coming that I'm not going to be here at all. But I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, while he's not offering a physical hand to pull you and a physical hand to say, I'm right here. It's going to be okay. I have control. I am still exactly who you believe I am. But he instead offers us Christ's heart. And when we seek after his heart, we find his heart, which is far deeper and far greater than simply his hand. Maybe the best way I've heard that put is by an author, Dane Ortlund, in a book called Gentle and Lowly that I've had the opportunity to read with my small group and read also with the staff. It's just a perfect and beautiful quote that reminds us and tells us, hey, when we have the Holy Spirit, we have the full living and active heart of Christ inside of us. The quote's a bit lengthy, but we're going to read it together. It's going to be on the screen, and so as I go to read, would you please just read along with me? You don't have to read it out loud, but just read along as I read. The Spirit makes the heart of Christ real to us. Not just heard, but seen. Not just seen, but felt. Not just felt, but enjoyed. The Spirit takes what we read in the Bible and believe on paper about Jesus's heart and moves it from theory to reality, from doctrine to experience, from knowing to believing. It is one thing as a child to be told your father loves you. You believe him. You take him at his word. But it is another thing, unutterably more real, to be swept up in his embrace, to feel the warmth, to hear his beating heart within his chest, to instantly know the protective grip of his arms. It's one thing to hear he loves you. It's another thing to feel his love. This is the glorious work of the Spirit. When we fear, when we experience sorrow, when we get overwhelmed, there are times where that can lead to doubts. Where is Christ and why isn't he here? Or can Christ actually be real if this is what's going on in the world, in my life? In those times, all that Christ asks of us is to seek after him. In the same way that that boy sought after his dad, and the second he did, his dad was there simply to give him a hug and remind him, hey, I've been here the whole time. You were never alone, and you were never in danger. There show his heart to us, and we allow him to remind us that why would we ever doubt because he is exactly who he says he is. So that we may believe. So that our faith may grow. So that our faith may exceed where it currently is and we may not doubt again. The end of both stories. You see worship and praise. Surely you are the Son of God. Praise be to you, the Son of God. Christ gets on them a little bit. Why would you doubt me? But ultimately, he gets on them after coming and showing himself to them and saying, I'm going to be here. When you doubt me, I will be here to remind you and prove to you that I am exactly who I say I am, that my heart is still for you, and that I still love you with all of my heart. And when I show up, I want that to increase not only your joy and not only your worship of me, but your faith in me. When you look at the kid's perspective in that hide-and-seek commercial, if that was real life, I imagine if they're playing hide-and-seek again, he's a little bit less fearful if it takes him a minute to see where his dad is. Because he knows. He's experienced it. He's experienced his dad show up and say, I'm right here. You are never in danger. And in the same way, maybe the next time we experience certain circumstances that are overwhelming or bring us to fear or bring us to sorrow, then maybe we wouldn't doubt. But when we do, because we know Jesus has showed up before, then maybe we would pray the prayer of Mark 9, 24. It says, I believe, Lord Jesus, help my unbelief, knowing full well that he's right there with us and he's ready to offer us his hand. Let's pray. Lord, we love you so much. Lord, I wish that in our life of faith that there would never be a moment or never be a time where we would doubt you, doubt your goodness, doubt your heart, doubt anything about you. But Lord, I also know that we live in a fallen world and there are times where it gets hard to trust in what you say. It gets hard to believe in you. And so Lord, in those times, may we as your children turn to you and seek after you and allow you to remind us of your heart and remind us that you are perfect and exactly who you say that you are. And Lord, as we seek after you and as we find you, as you wrap us in your arms, may our faith grow ever stronger through our experiencing you. We love you so much. 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.

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.

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.