← Mariners Church Weekend Messages
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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast, inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.
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I love Ty and I love Ty's story. And I'm so thankful that God did a gracious work in his life as he was in our youth ministry. Now he's serving in our youth ministry, teenagers and parents. We start not this Wednesday, but the next Wednesday with junior high life groups and then also high school youth night. And so I hope that you'll be involved. Before I begin teaching, I want to announce some really exciting news. I'm really thankful for you. In the month of June, we shared how it was the end of our fiscal year, the end of our ministry year, and that we needed to hit budget to pursue this incredible opportunity. At Easter time, Camp Pendleton asked us to host Easter services. And we did. It was an amazing experience and it went really well. So they asked us to come back this fall and on base at Camp Pendleton to offer Mariners Church worship services. And so I shared that as we were moving into our new ministry season, we needed to hit our ministry budget. And you gave generously. And I'm excited to report that this fall we are going to launch two services at Camp Pendleton. One in the morning for young families and one in the evening, one in the evening for young Marines. So I'm really thankful for your generosity. You are enabling us to do so many things throughout Southern California. And I'm also really proud of you, who took a massive step. So during that month, the month of June, hundreds of you across all of our congregations became a recurring giver. Which means this is a big deal for you. It means that you set giving up as a regular and disciplined way in your life. And this is what I believe. God's going to do an amazing work in your life from that rhythm, from that obedience. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you for making that step. Well, this weekend, if we haven't met, my name's Eric. I'm the senior pastor here. If you're a guest with us, welcome. We're in the middle of a teaching series called When Life Doesn't Make Sense. And this weekend, we're going to talk about anxiousness as we look at a psalm in which a man who's called a man after God's own heart, David says his mind is filled with agonizing thoughts. So he wrestles with anxiousness. In this season, I, in different seasons of my life, have wrestled with anxiety. I've met with therapists and with friends, trying to figure out what are the situations or the context of my life that I'm most susceptible or most likely to wrestle with anxiety. I know that all of us are different, but for me, I'm most susceptible when regular, healthy rhythms in my life are disrupted. So when sleep's disrupted or exercise or time in the scripture, or when I move, like, across the country and everything changes in my life and my work colleagues change, that is when I'm most susceptible to anxiousness. And I know I'm not the only one. In fact, when I moved here eight years ago, I had learned this about myself. So I fought when I first moved here for regular, healthy rhythms that would provide stability for me. But researchers have noticed this, and psychologists have observed this for years. There is a very famous scale known as the Holmes Ray scale, developed by two psychiatrists who have observed that what causes stress in your life isn't often the most painful moments, but it's the moments of change. It's when family dynamics change or your career changes, your job changes, your address changes. And the Holmes Ray Stress scale evaluates the changes that take place in your life. And so counselors will say, it's so wise for you to build regular rhythms, healthy rhythms in your life that will stabilize you in the middle of anxiousness. Mason Curry wrote the book Daily Rituals. And it's about creatives and composers and artists and musicians and poets who have produced incredible work. And many of them, he says, wrestled with anxiousness and even depression. And they built daily rituals in their life that would allow them to produce great work but also stabilize them. And the reason he wrote the book is because research continually shows that of the general population, a subset of people that struggle more intensely with anxiousness and depression are creatives. What causes them to create incredible work is their ability to do deep work, introspection, to be aware of their emotional pain. But that also means they can feel more deeply. All of this has a lot to do with a psalm that we're gonna study today, because in this psalm, David. Everything that bears out about the research is true. In David's life, he is constantly on the run. So there's no stability right now in his life. It's hard to have a daily rhythm because his 20s have been completely disrupted by this man named Saul, who's currently the king who's chasing David all over Israel. And David's also an artist. And because he's an artist, he's a musician, he's a Poet, he's the psalmist. He feels really deeply. He's also a young adult. And according to research currently here in the US the group of people that are struggling most with their mental health are young adults. So David's got the trifecta. He's constantly moving. He. He's a young adult, he's an artist, he's really susceptible to emotional pain. And he pins Psalm 13 about his anxious thoughts. Now, what we're doing in this teaching series is we're not only gonna read the Psalm, which we'll read together in a moment, but we're looking at the account in Scripture beneath the Psalm. And so let me sum up what's happening in David's life. If you wanted to have a map and your Bible, you could track this yourself. It's 1st Samuel 18 all the way through 1st Samuel 28. It's 11 chapters. And if you had a map, you could map out exactly where David is. So David has been promised that he's going to be the king. But there's a current king named Saul who wants to kill David because David has risen in fame because he slayed the giant Goliath. And everybody loves David now. So Saul looks at David with a jealous eye. Saul tries to kill David twice. And after the second time, David starts a life on the run. We looked at the first four cities he went to last week. I'll give you all the cities this week from 1st Samuel 18 through 28. Listen real quickly. Here we go. He goes to Ramah and he meets with a prophet, and he leaves from Ramah. He goes to Knob, and a priest gives him a sword. Actually, the sword he took off of Goliath. He goes from Nob to Gath. He pretends to be insane because he thinks the king of Gath wants to kill him. And so then the king of Gath sends him away. He goes from Gath to Adam. This is where we stopped last week as we looked at Psalm 142, where David prayed from a cave. He lives in a cave in Adam. He's been promised the palace, but doesn't live in the palace. He lives in a cave in Adam and he prays. Psalm 142 and Psalm 142 was amazing. It's an epic psalm. And not everything's better after he prays. Which I appreciate that the Scripture's honest, that it's not as if if you're going through a struggle and you pray, everything's going to be fine. In fact, things seem to get worse after Psalm 142. He leaves the cave in Adam and he goes to Moab. A prophet goes to David, says, no, no, no, you can't go to Moab. Moab is outside of Israel. That's outside of the land where you're going to be the king. You got to Israel. So David leaves Moab, he goes to the forest of Hth. He stays in the forest of Hereth for a little while, and then he hears that the Philistines are going to attack the people in Kilia. K is a city that David then goes to defend. And he says to God, should I defend these people from the Philistines who want to attack them? And God says, you should. So David defends them and saves them. All of them are saved because of David's bravery and the bravery of his men. You would think at this point that the people in Kalia are going to be loyal to David because of what he's done to him. But David has a spidey sense that Saul, who's chasing him all over the country, is going to betray him. And so he asked God, is Saul going to. Are these people going to hand me over to Saul? And they. And God says they will. They're going to actually betray you. So David, of course, is crushed. He leaves Kalia, he goes to Zip. He stays in Zip for a while, then he goes to Mahon. And then he goes from Mahon to En Gedi. And in Gedi, he lives in another cave. I mean, if you were a friend of David, you'd be like Ra. You'd made a lateral move from cave to cave. I mean, if you're gonna go to a cave, at least make. Is it a better cave? And what kind of cave is this in Egeti? Ein Gedi is actually beautiful. If you have been to Israel with our church, you have been to En Gedi. I went to Ein Gedi several years ago, and it's in the middle of the desert, but yet you get inside Ein Gedi. It's actually a national. It's like a park now. There's streams and trees. It's lush and it's beautiful. And. And I'm in Egi, and I'm looking at the side of the mountain and you can see there's all kinds of caves on the side of the mountain. It's really amazing. You're reading the Bible, like David lived in one of those caves. Now, in this cave, the cave in Gedi, it's different from the cave in Adam. So Adam was where he prayed Psalm 142. Now he's in a different cave. He's in the cave in a Gedi. This is in 1st Samuel 24. It's insanely epic, this account. David is in the cave, and Saul goes into the same cave that David is in. Know that David is in there. He's chasing them all over, and he goes into the cave. Do you know why he goes into the cave? If you think the Bible's boring, it's because you haven't read the Bible. If you're like, I think the Bible's boring, I think you're boring. He goes into the cave. The scripture says this. Saul goes into the cave to use the bathroom. This is in the Bible. Saul goes into the cave to relieve himself in the original language. And. And David is in that cave. And evidently the bathroom that Saul is using is the one that takes a long time to use. And so Saul is using the restroom. At this point, David's men are surely saying, david, this is the moment. Kill him right now. I mean, kill him and be, how do you like me now? I mean, this should be awesome. But David knows he's not gonna do that because God has placed Saul in that position. So David comes behind Saul as he's using the restroom. He cuts off a piece of his robe. Saul doesn't even realize that David has done this. Saul then leaves the cave. David goes out of the cave after Saul's far away, and David cries out, saul, Saul, look, I have some of your robe I've cut off. But I didn't betray you. I didn't kill you. Why are you chasing me all over? Saul weeps when he hears David's voice, but yet he still is out to ruin David's life. So David leaves from En Gedi and he goes to Gath, actually, I'm sorry. He goes to Zip. And in Zip, he senses that Saul's never going to stop chasing me. It's never going to end. This trial's never going to end. So he goes back to Gath. Gath was the same city that he went to earlier when he pretended to be insane. This time he goes to Gath, which is a city occupied by the Philistines. And he says to the king of Gath, will you let me live here? The king of Gath lets him and all of his men and their families live in a city that he gives them. It's a frontier town known as Ziklag, which isn't awesome because it sounds like acne cream. And that's where David and his men Live now. That's David's twenties. That's his twenties. Constantly moving, constantly disrupted, feeling the deep emotional pain. And scholars say somewhere along that map is where he prays. Psalm 13. So we're going to read Psalm 13. The prescript is for the choir director. This is a Psalm of David. Let's stand together and read God's Word in honor of His Word, asking him to teach us today. Will you read with me aloud? How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, Agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemies dominate me? Consider me an answer, Lord my God, restore brightness to my eyes, otherwise I will sleep in death. My enemy will say, I have triumphed over him. And my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. This is God's word. Lord, I pray over your sons and daughters. I pray you would use this text to encourage them wherever they are in this season. In your name I pray. Amen. You can be seated. I want to pull 2 thoughts from this text for you to encourage you. My goal today is to be helpful. I know that some of you anxiety or depression or mental health is this nonstop reality in your life. I hope to be helpful to you today. For some, you're like me. Anxiousness isn't this consistent battle or struggle. But there's seasons in your life when you find yourself in that moment. And for some of you, you never have wrestled with anxiousness. This is not a struggle for you. But you have a spouse or a child or a friend or someone in your life group, and this would be helpful for you to understand their pain and understand how to encourage them. I want you to see that there's two lessons we can grab from this text, and they're both really beautiful and really helpful. Number one, tell your God the truth about your thoughts. I love that this Psalm is in the scripture, that right now, if you are dealing with emotional pain, if you are struggling, that you have a God who has placed the Psalm in the scripture, that he fully understands you, that he gets you. He's not intimidated by you or your thoughts, and he welcomes you to Himself. He wants you to feel as if you can go to him and tell him the truth of everything you that you're experiencing and that you're feeling. I want you to see how David does this notice the psalm that we read? Four times he asked God, how long? How long? How long? How long? How long is this going to last? Some of you, the pain that you're in, a major aspect of the pain is the uncertainty of how long this is going to be. How long is this trial going to last? If I just knew when it would be over, I could perhaps be sustained. How much longer? Oftentimes, the pain that we face is connected to the uncertainty of how long the trial will be when I fly. And the pilot says, flight attendants, take your seats, please. And then he announces, we are about to go through 12 to 15 minutes of turbulence. According to the radar and according to air traffic control, there's been planes flying through this area all day. And there's some chop, light chop, probably get to some medium chop. I don't feel it that much. I'm used to this all the time. But for your sake and your safety, I'm going to ask you to stay seated for the next 12 to 15 minutes. You'll see the fasten seat belt sign on in 15 minutes or so. We'll be able to take the fasten seat belt sign off, and you'll be able to go throughout the cabin. But right now, expect turbulence for the next 12 to 15 minutes. When that happens, I'm on my laptop working. There's a clock at the very top right corner. I look up and I'm going to look back in 15 minutes, and everything is going to be fine. That's very different from when a flight attendant says. When a pilot says, flight attendants, take your seats. And says nothing. Doesn't announce anything of how long it's gonna be. It's so much more helpful when you know how long the painful season is gonna last. You know, when I moved here eight years ago, I fell in love with mountain biking. There is a trail in Laguna Canyon called Old Emerald. And you go down it. It's super fun. But coming out of it is a challenge. Cause it's a long ride up out of the canyon. And the guys in the church who took me told me, eric, this is gonna be a long one. It's called three Bs. What's three Bs? Does it stand for three baddies? They're like, no, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And so we just kept going. And the first time that I went through that trail, it was so painful because I didn't know how long it was gonna be. Now I ride that trail all the time, and I know exactly how long it's gonna be. It's still painful, but it's less painful. Cause I know how long it's gonna be. How long? Part of the pain that David is experiencing is he doesn't know how long this is gonna be. Some of you, that is your prayer right now. You have asked God the same thing. You are saying the same prayer that the scripture calls a man after God's own heart praise. So I don't want you to feel that you have done something wrong when you. About the totality of his pain. It's really multifaceted. How long, Lord? So part of this struggle is God. It feels like you have forgotten me, Lord. How long will you forget me? Forever. Why is this trial still going on? How long will you hide your face from me, God? I know that I'm yours. So he's not doubting God. He believes in God, otherwise he wouldn't be praying, but he's asking God. It seems to me, it feels to me in this moment that you've forgotten me, Lord. You've promised me these great things, but seems like right now you've hidden your face from me. It's not only God that he's wrestling with, he's also wrestling with himself. How long will I store up anxious concerns within me? Agony in my mind? This is a description, some say of deep anxiety, others say even depression. Because later he's gonna ask God to restore brightness to his eyes. He has a struggle within himself. How much longer will I have this challenge? But he also wrestles with his enemy. How long will my enemy dominate me? So he's struggling with the Lord. He's struggling with himself. He's struggling with his enemy. This is the total experience of his struggle. How long is this going to last? Some would look at this and say, wow, it seems like David doesn't have much faith. Actually, David has great faith because he's bringing all of his struggles to God. Some of you knew what we were gonna speak about this weekend, and you were in a season of being overwhelmed with anxiousness. And I'm so proud of you for being here. You don't have a lack of faith for having your struggle. You have great faith because you're bringing your struggle to him. And I'm proud of you for taking your struggle and bringing it to your God. But notice here, David doesn't say Amen. This is not the end of the prayer. It's not as if this is when it stops. No, David didn't stop here. And you shouldn't stop Here either. Don't stop with only bringing your struggles to God. Notice then David prays. He asked God for some things, three things, actually. Consider me. Answer me and restore brightness to my eyes. God, will you please remember your son? Consider me. Answer me. Notice what he calls God. You are the Lord. In the original language, this is the word Yahweh. It means the self existing one, the God who's over everything. You are the Lord. And this is so awesome. You're also my God. You're my God. You know, not only God, but you're my God. You're the God over everything, but you're mine. And answer me, God, restore brightness to my eyes. I maybe saw himself in a reflection in a mirror or a piece of glass. And he sees himself so downtrodden, and he's asking, God, would you please intervene and restore brightness to my eyes. So here's an honest, raw prayer. And he brings his thoughts to God. So you tell your God the truth about your thoughts, number one. But that's not all David does. Second, and equally important, this is what you have to do. You have to tell your thoughts the truth about your God. So first you tell your God the truth about your thoughts, but then you have to grab your thoughts because your thoughts can spiral. Your thoughts can take you to really dark places. You have to grab your thoughts and tell your thoughts the truth about your God. Notice this is how David ends this really beautiful and short psalm. He says, but I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. Notice when David says, I will sing to the Lord. Nothing has changed in his circumstances. Not as if Saul has stopped pursuing him. In the middle of the psalm, everything is the same. Here's what David is saying. My circumstances the same even in the midst of his circumstance. I'm asking you to restore my brightness to my eyes. And I'm gonna sing to you in the middle of the trial. I'm not waiting until the other side of the anxiousness to sing. I'm not waiting to the other side of the depression to worship. I'm not waiting to the other side of this trial being over to give you my praise. I am going to sing right now in the middle of it. And this is what David does that is really beautiful in this text. And this is gonna be really helpful for you. He reminds his soul the truth about who his God is. He says, I have trusted. He's telling his soul, I have trusted in your Faithful love. Now I want to show you this. This is beautiful. Hang in with me. This in the original language is one word. So we're clearly reading from English. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament Jesus forward was written in Koine. Greek translators then take the Hebrew and the Greek and put together our English Bibles. Translators wrestle with this one phrase because it's one word in the Hebrew and they say this is such an amazing, powerful word. It's the word hesed. And the reason that they wrestle with it is because, let's be honest, in our English words we have cheapened the word love. We use love all the time. The word love is a junk drawer term for anything and everything that can go in it. I overuse the word. I love my wife, I love my kids. I love basketball. I love mountain biking. I love New York style pizza. I love barbecue. I love college football season. I just say I love all the time. It's a junk drive. I overuse the word chesed is such a different word. It's such a powerful word. And so when you look at how translators have taken this one word in the Hebrew and translated, here's all the words that are used in the Old Testament to try to capture it. These are words in your Bible. From this one Hebrew word, hesed, love, mercy, kindness, loving, kindness, goodness, loyal in love, unfailing love, covenant of love, unfailing kindness, devotion, steadfast love. This translation faithful love, covenant, loyalty, gracious covenant, covenant, friendship, marvelous love, loyal, mercy, favor. This word is so key for you to understand, but it's hard because we don't have an English word that even comes close to it. This is hesed, his faithful love. And David, in the middle of his anxious thoughts, is preaching to his thoughts the truth that God has chesed love, faithful love, covenant love, loyal love for him. Michael Card is an artist and an author and he wrote a whole book about this one word, hesed. He spent his entire book looking at all the occurrences of hesed. And the name of the book is Inexpressible. And Michael Card came up with this definition. He says, this is my definition of what hesed means. It is when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything that God has chesed love for you, that you have the right to expect nothing from him, yet he gives you everything. What do you mean I can't expect anything from him? You can't expect anything from him because all of us have been disloyal to him. All of us have wandered away From Him. All of us have pursued things other than Him. All of us have said to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we don't want you to be the king. In our lives, we're gonna take the crown off of you. In our lives, we know you have the crown throughout all of eternity. But in our lives we're taking the crown off and we're crowning something else. We're putting something else before you. All of us have rebelled against Him. And because we have spat in his face and mistreated him and walked away from him and wandered down our own path, we have the right to expect nothing from Him. Yet because of His Hesed love, He gives you, if you have believed in him, everything. He gives you everything. Everything you have is a gift from Him. And if you have believed in him, you have received his unconditional, unending love. You received his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness. You've received everlasting life. You will live with him in everlasting paradise. You have received everything from Him. You deserved nothing and you received everything. This is Hesed love. And if you're saying, I don't know if God really loves me that way, I understood the first part. I for sure have wandered away from him. But I don't know if he wants to give me everything. You just need to look at Jesus, God the Son, to remember God's Hesed love for you. We see the hesed, unending, faithful love of God expressed in God the Son, Jesus, the Christ who stepped into your pain, who stepped into this world. He submitted himself to all of the sin and brokenness and shame in this world. He went to the cross for you because he loves you so much. And on the cross he absorbed in his flesh all of the times that I've rebelled against Him. All of the times you've rebelled, he absorbed in his flesh all of the punishment that should have been mine for my sin and should have been yours for your sin. Jesus, God the Son entered this world, placed Himself on the cross, absorbed in his flesh our sin and our shame, to in exchange give us what we do not deserve, all of his forgiveness, his grace, his mercy, his love and everlasting life. We deserve nothing from Him. And Jesus gives us everything. And Jesus on the cross understood from fully the weight of what David was praying in Psalm 13. Because in Psalm 13 David says, It feels God like you forgot me. It feels God like you've hidden your face from me. Oh, and who understands that more than God the Son, Jesus, the Christ who went to the cross for you. And on the cross he yelled out as he was dying for you, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because as Jesus was dying, your sin was placed on him. And Jesus felt the separation from God the Father. He experienced in his flesh, the agonizing pain that God doesn't want me in this moment because all of my sin and your sin was placed on Jesus. This is what Jesus did to make you his own. So that when you go through an agonizing trial, you never go through it alone. Because Jesus was forsaken on that cross so that you will never be forsaken. So that you will forever be his son and daughter and be filled with his joy and his peace in the middle of your trials. And this is what Jesus did for you. His hesed love for you is so real and so tangible. He loves you that much. So here's what David does. Let me get real helpful and practical to you. This is what David does. He told his thoughts the truth about God's tested love. He's feeling abandoned, but he knows that his feelings are not the ultimate reality. His feelings are true, your feelings are true, but they're not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is that God has hesed faithful love for you. David has reasons to be filled with anxiousness. His entire 20s have been ruined by this madman egomaniac king named Saul who's chasing him all around the country, deploying all kinds of military resources to chase down David. He's ruining his 20s. David has reasons to be anxious, but he knows that the ultimate reality in his life isn't the circumstance. The ultimate reality is, is the covenant loyalty that God has for his own, the hesed love that God has expressed to David. And so he tells his thoughts the truth about God's love. And so here's what you have to do. When you find yourself in a moment of anxiousness, you bring your thoughts to God. He wants to hear from you, but then you tell your thoughts the truth about God. Martin Lloyd Jones is a pastor that I've read, I think almost everything that he's written. He passed away many years ago. He was a pastor at Westminster Chapel in London in the 1940s and he wrestled with depression. He was a pastor who lived with depression. He wrote a book called Spiritual Depression. And in the book he wrote this. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself, you have to take yourself in hand. You have to address yourself, preach to yourself. Which is what David does. He grabs his thoughts, which are real, and he says, thoughts, God's love for you is faithful. He has faithful love. This psalm is a really important psalm in our family. Psalm 13. Because when Kay, my wife's father, passed away, Kay really wrestled. And Kay did not read the Bible for a whole year after her dad passed away. The reason is because she believed that if she read the scripture, she would be filled with joy. And she didn't want to be filled with joy, because she believed that if she was filled with joy, she would be dishonoring her, her dad. And so one day she saw her reflection in a mirror, perhaps like David did when he said, please restore joy to my eyes, brightness to my eyes. Kay saw her reflection in the mirror. And this is why I love that you're a church. Because right now, God's word is getting in you, even if you don't know what's getting in you. Because when she saw her reflection, she just remembered Psalm 13 and prayed, God, would you restore joy and brightness to my eyes. And remembering this psalm is what brought her back to the scripture, where she started to throw herself in God's truth again and took God's truth and applied God's truth to her thoughts. Now, I'm not saying for all of you that that is the only thing you need to do, as if the only thing you need to do is read the scripture more. I don't think that's accurate. Some of you have been diagnosed with clinical depression or clinical anxiety. And it's really helpful for you to be in the office of a therapist or a counselor. I'm thankful for the. For the therapists and the counselors in our church, for some of you need to seek medical attention. And I'm. And I'm thankful for the doctors in our church who provide that care. I'm really thankful. There are experts who have spent their whole life studying the human psyche, and so we can benefit from their research and their work. But I am saying that all of us can benefit from this lesson from David, that when we have moments of anxiousness, we can take the truth of God and we can preach the truth to our thoughts, that this would be a helpful tool for all of you. So you take your thoughts and you tell your thoughts the truth about your God's faithful love for you. Okay, Eric, but how do I do that? Let me show you. Some of you have this thought. I won't be able to make ends meet. So you take that thought and you grab the truth of God and you preach the truth of God to that thought. The truth is God will supply all my needs according to his riches and glory. Some of you have the thought, I'm alone, I've been betrayed, walked out on, I'm alone. And that thought continues to spiral. And as that thought enters your mind, instead of listening to yourself, you preach to yourself. You preach to yourself the truth that he will never leave you or abandon you. Some of you have the thought, I'm too weak. I'm too weak for this, the trial in my life. It's too much. I'm too weak. Instead of letting that thought spiral, you don't listen to yourself, you preach to yourself. He says, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is perfected in weakness. Some of you have the thought, I can't carry this, it's too much. He says you don't have to. The truth is, cast your care on him because he cares for you. For some of you, the thought is this pain is never going to subside. The emotional pain that you're carrying. How long, oh Lord, how long? How long? The physical pain. Some of you are in chronic physical pain. It's never going to subside. The truth is that you must grab and preach to your thought. Instead of allowing that thought to spiral, you grab the truth of God and you preach to yourself that whether in this life or in the life to come, that he has promised that one day everything is going to be made right. That the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. That one day you will be no more pain. Thought I'll never experience joy again. For some of you, that's what you've said since the divorce or the death or the called off engagement or the estrangement or the job loss. I'm never going to be where I'm never going to experience joy again. The truth is, if you belong to him, that you are going to experience everlasting joy. One day Christ returns and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Grief, crying and pain will be no more. You will not live with this pain forever. You will experience joy again. Thought some of you have this one. Maybe it's your first time at church or first time in a long time and you thought, I don't know, you're talking about God's hesed love, faithful love. I don't know if he would ever love me with what I've done. God can't love me because of what I've done. That's not true. That is not true. The truth is, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the truth. His love is greater than all of your sin, greater than all of your shame. You cannot outrun his mercy. You can't out sin his grace. His love for you is bigger than you've ever imagined. So moments of anxiousness tell your God the truth about your thoughts. But you tell your thoughts the truth about your God. We're gonna sing. David says I'm singing in the middle of the pain. We're gonna sing, but we also wanna pray for you who are in the middle of a season where perhaps you don't even know how to pray. It's so painful. Maybe you're dealing with anxiousness right now. I want you to be able to be prayed over. I'm going to ask our prayer team and our shepherding elders to come forward. They're going to stand down front. They're going to go ahead and come forward now. They're going to stand down front. And as we sing, you can come forward and receive prayer. Father, I pray as we enter your presence that we will sing. We'll take the lesson from David and sing in the middle of our trials. And I pray for those who need prayer that they will come forward and receive prayer through these leaders. Lord, I pray you give our leaders the words to pray over your sons and daughters. We want to meet with you, sing to you, sing of your faithful love. In your name I pray. Amen. Let's stand. Let's sing together. You come and receive prayer if you need it. All right. Extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week that you would remind them that you were gentle, approachable and that you love them. Cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.
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