Cry of the Heart (Part 3): When Afraid

Well, good evening and welcome again to Orchard Hill.

It's great to be together.

I was uh thinking about this weekend, and tomorrow I'll speak in the chapel, and then I'm going to go to Butler and speak at our campus there.

And I was just thinking about the reality of having multiple locations, and there will be six different services, three different locations this weekend that make up Orchard Hill.

Maybe as many as 3,000 people will be at all of the different services.

And uh and I was just reminded of something, and that is that we say around here often, and that is when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works.

And just I just want to encourage you to keep asking God to work in the ministry of this church, in the chapel service, for those who who prefer something a little more liturgical in Butler in the strip district tomorrow, as Joel will be speaking in the strip, Rick here in uh in Wexford in this service, and then uh also in Butler.

So let's just uh let's just pray together.

Father, uh, I thank you just for all the different people who will come to Orchard Hill this weekend and participate online different ways, and God, especially for those who are gathered here tonight.

Lord, I I know just that in any group when we come together, there are those who who come with great hopes and expectations because things have gone well this week, and there are those who come with hurts and sorrows because they've walked through some incredibly hard things this week.

Lord, there are those of us who come maybe with some fears because we're uncertain about what next week or next month will hold.

But God, however, we come here this evening, I pray that you would speak to us, that you would let my words reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We've been in a series that we've called the cry of the heart, and we've been talking about some of the longings that many of us, if not all of us, have.

Maybe our longings are different, maybe they're expressed differently, but there are some pretty universal longings.

And so we looked at Psalm 1 and the cry of the heart for happiness.

We looked at Psalm 2 and the cry of the heart for control or for freedom.

And today we're going to look at Psalm 3, which I believe addresses the cry of the heart when we're afraid.

And the Bible actually has a lot to say about fear, a lot to say about anxiety.

In fact, one of the verses in the New Testament that is often quoted is this: it's Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7.

Philippians 4:6

It says this, don't be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And my guess is, however you hear that verse, it depends on your experience.

And what I mean by that is some of us will hear that verse and we'll say, Yeah, if I'll just give things to God, God will take care of it.

And others of us will hear that verse and we'll say, Really?

Like that seems like the ultimate kind of way that you let God off the hook, in that you say, give God everything, and God will take care of it.

He'll give you a deep inner peace, but not necessarily help you with what's real in your life.

And you may feel a little bit like this.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would be told to eat your vegetables?

Any of you have that experience?

And then you'd say, No, you didn't want to eat your vegetables, and then your parents would say, You should eat your vegetables, you'd say, I don't want to, and then they would say, There's kids starving in Africa.

And then you would say something like, Put it in an envelope and send it there.

I'm sure it'll travel well.

And and you would say, It doesn't help me to say, like your vegetables, or other kids are starving.

I still don't like green beans.

And there's a little bit of uh of this that says, you can say, don't be anxious, pray about everything.

God will give you peace.

But if you're anxious about something, you're anxious about something, whether you're told to pray or not.

Do you know what I'm saying?

And some of us, maybe who come from a little more uh of a skeptical side, will say, and this is even part of what I don't like about Christianity and Christians, is they're always claiming that God will somehow help them.

And I'm not sure I've seen God show up for people.

And so we have have a little bit of a reaction, like, sure, go ahead and pray, have your prayer meeting, but I'm not sure it'll help.

And so we just have a little bit of a reaction that says, this feels like a crutch for the weak.

And if I'm going to make my way in this world, I don't need necessarily God or anything else.

I'll just make my own way in this world.

Well, fear is something that, regardless of your predisposition toward faith or toward God, is something that is a common experience.

In other words, we all have things that make us anxious, that make us fearful.

In fact, this text talks about how God gives him sleep.

In other words, we have some things that keep us from sleeping.

So let me just ask you: what has made you restless?

What has kept you from having good sleep in recent days?

Here's maybe just a few things that could have created this for some of us.

Some of us, it's the fear of maybe being alone, wondering if anyone will love us.

Some of us, it's the fear of failure, the fear that we won't be enough.

Some of us, it's the fear of bad things happening to our friends, to our family.

We hear how other people experience difficulty, and we say, I'm afraid that that might come to me and to my friends and family.

Or maybe we have legitimate enemies, or we fear the future, or we fear some financial storm that's on the horizon.

Maybe we have fears around our kids and our parenting, maybe we have fears around grandkids, or fears around aging parents, or we have fears around our career.

In other words, there are a lot of reasons for us to be afraid.

And so with that, we come to Psalm 3, and the way the Psalm 3 starts is with this little title, and this is the first time in the Psalms that we get a title, and a title is something that when you read the Psalms, you often don't read the little title, but the title gives us context.

And so Psalm 3 starts, and it says, a Psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom.

Now, my guess is that unless you've been really into Bible study, you probably don't know who Absalom is.

You might not know who David is.

So let me just give you a little bit of context.

David was the king of Israel, one of kind of the three big kings of Israel: Saul, David, Solomon, and then the kingdom divided, and there were all kinds of kings and things and all the kind of weird names that are in the Old Testament.

You go, I can't keep it straight unless you try to memorize a list.

Absalom was David's son.

So when this Psalm says, this is the Psalm of David, and Psalm here literally means the song, this was the song of David when he was fleeing from his son.

Now, I don't know about you, but if you ever have to run for your life, that is a scary situation.

And to make it worse, is it's when it's your son who is actually trying to take your throne, take your life, take everything from you, and take away what has been your life.

Now, again, just a little more context, Absalom did this in part because he wanted the throne, but in part because there had probably been some seething resentment toward David.

David had another son, and this son had sexually assaulted another one of the family, and David hadn't dealt with it, and so now Absalom comes along and he says, you know what?

This man's not fit to be king.

And so, even though David here is legitimately the king, in a sense, Absalom has some reason to say, you know what, I don't want you to be in charge anymore.

I want somebody else to be in charge.

And so David begins the process of running, and this is all talked about in 1 Samuel in some different places.

And as he's running, he has this psalm, this song, where he affirms God, and he doesn't deny his fear.

And here's why this is important, because what a lot of people think that faith means is that we act as if nothing makes us afraid.

But here, what he does instead is he says, I'm going to affirm God in the midst of my fear, but I'm also not going to act as if I'm not afraid.

You've probably heard this if you've been around church, but there are 365 times in the Bible where we're told not to be afraid or not to be anxious or to fear not.

And some have quipped that that means that we have one for every day of the year.

In fact, this is the most common command in the Bible to say, don't be afraid.

And again, some of us may say, well, it seems hard to command somebody not to be afraid, but but what's happening in those commands is it's like God saying, Look, I know how you're wired.

I created you.

I know that you're going to be concerned and anxious about many things.

But I want you to affirm who I am in the midst of that.

Here are just a few examples.

1 Kings chapter 17, verse 13.

1 Kings 17:13

Elijah said to her, Don't be afraid.

Go home and do as you have said, but first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and I will make something for yourself.

Make something for yourself and for your son.

This is when a widow was starving to death, and Elijah comes along, he says, Don't be afraid, God will provide, even when you don't feel like he will.

Then there's this, 2 Kings chapter 6, verse 16.

2 Kings 6:16

Don't be afraid, the prophet answered.

Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

And this was when they were facing a big battle and they had a sense of God's protection.

Then there's Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10.

Isaiah 41:10

It says, So do not fear, for I am with you.

Do not be dismayed, for I am with you, and I will strengthen you and help you, and I will uphold you by my righteous right hand.

God's saying, I've got the strength.

You don't need to be afraid.

And then there's a promise of companionship, Isaiah 43.

But now this is what the Lord says.

He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you and I summoned you by name.

You are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I'll be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, you they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba for your stead.

So here they are again in a difficult place.

And he says, I'm going to give you presents.

And then Matthew chapter 10, verse 30, and even the very hairs of your head are numbered, so do not be afraid.

Matthew 10:30

You're worth more than many sparrows, many worthless birds.

And he says, You are somebody that I care deeply about.

And then in Revelation chapter 1, verse 17 and 18, it says, When I saw him, I fell on his face, I fell at his feet as though dead.

Revelation 1:17

Then he placed his right hand on me and said, Do not be afraid.

I am the first and the last.

I am the living one.

I was dead, and behold, I'm alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys to death in Hades.

And here what he's talking about is he's saying, You don't need to be afraid, even when you face death, because I've been there, I've seen it, and I can tell you what's on the other side.

So now here's the question, really.

The Bible just repeatedly says, Don't be afraid, God's greater than anything you're facing.

So how do we deal with then the reality of some of the fears that we face?

Well, I think one of the first things we need to do is we need to talk about the kinds of fear that we have.

And we see this right in the beginning of Psalm 3.

It says this Lord, how many are my foes, how many rise up against me?

So in verse 1, we see that he has external reasons for fear, and that these are possibly true.

In other words, Absalom actually wants to kill him.

And lots of people have come to his cause, and now they are chasing and pursuing David.

In other words, sometimes we have a legitimate reason to be afraid.

In other words, to simply say, don't be afraid.

There's no reason to ever be afraid.

Sometimes you really do have an external reason that has legitimate cause to bring concern to your life.

And then verse 2, we see a second kind of type of fear.

And I'd say this is an internal fear, and likely this is not true.

It's likely not true.

It says, Many are saying of me, God will not deliver him.

Now notice how it shifts from external real issues to internal.

Many are saying, in other words, people are saying, and there's almost a voice that sometimes you hear, probably not a literal voice, but a sense in which you have an internal dialogue that starts to say, you know what?

That situation is never going to work out well.

That's the internal side of fear.

So sometimes you have an external thing where you go, that's real.

And then what comes from it is this internal reality where you start to create a dialogue that says, it will never be this way.

It will always be this way.

By the way, the words never and always in self-talk are generally really bad choices of words.

Because what you're doing is you're allowing fear to say this is how it will always be.

Now there's a healthy fear and an unhealthy fear.

And I think we see this right here in these two verses.

A healthy fear is something that's named, it's constructive, and it's specific.

And an unhealthy fear is something that is unnamed, that's paralyzing and nonspecific.

Now, now, just for clarity, I'm not talking here about an anxiety disorder.

That kind of paralyzing is another issue that may cause us to need to seek professional counsel.

What I'm talking about here is the kind of fear that immobilizes us from action.

And it's unnamed and it's not specific.

So let me give you just a couple examples just to flesh this out.

So uh we own a little cabin up in northern Pennsylvania.

It's a camp.

Uh it has the outhouse, everything else.

My wife's grandfather built it in the 60s and bequeathed it to her dad, who bequeathed it to us.

So we inherited this little camp.

My wife has literally gone here her entire life.

It was built before she was born.

And so that this has been a fun place where we've gone.

And one of the things that it was built for was hunting and fishing.

I don't hunt or fish.

But my kids and I have had a great time going there and playing, and then sometimes I'll go there and I'll study, I'll prepare for things I'm gonna be talking about.

And we have some neighbors who who also have a camp, kind of right in the same basic area.

And these guys are really into the hunting and the fishing.

And so they have the cameras set up in the woods to track the bear and the deer and everything else that's going on.

And they show me pictures from time to time of the bear that are in the area, and it's a little unnerving.

So I was up there a couple years ago, and I had seen the pictures, and they'd shown me a picture of a bear and a cub, which, as you know, if you know anything about bears, that's like the thing that you don't want.

And one night it was it was dusk, and I went out for a walk.

There's a bunch of property behind where the camp is with a stream and woods, and you can walk for a long ways just undisturbed.

It's beautiful, it's it's just a great, great kind of place to just walk and be.

And I was out walking, and as I was walking, the sun went down, it started to get dark, and I started to think about the pictures of the bears.

The video that they had showed me.

Now, let me just say, and and I don't necessarily want to admit this, but what what did I have?

I had external reality, there are bears in these woods, to everything that I heard became maybe that's a bear.

And all of a sudden, I found myself breaking into a slow jog back to my camp because I was concerned that maybe I was being stalked by a mother bear because I had like crossed her cub or something.

Now, what had happened was I had gone from a reality to an internalized fear where I was thinking this like this could be the end.

I don't have cell service, nobody will find me for days.

Now, let me tell you another situation.

Years and years ago, when I was in high school, I let my mouth get me in trouble with an older guy.

I said some things I probably shouldn't have said that weren't awesome.

And uh and this guy had decided he was going to beat me up.

And I remember this because um he would have.

There was a power disparity here.

And so for several days, I remember having to like like try to avoid this guy in every direction that I went, real fear.

And then my older sister stepped in and told him that if he messed with me, he would be messing with her, and he stood down.

I appreciated that.

Now, here's again what can happen though.

Real situation, and all of a sudden, what would be the internalization of that?

I can't stand up for myself, I don't have the ability to defuse the situation, I need somebody else to protect me.

And then you can carry it with you.

Now, here's my point, and that is for all of us, what happens is we may have some legitimate fear that gives way to a nonspecific fear, to a generalized fear, to a paralyzing fear that keeps us from doing or or accomplishing or being what it is that God has given us to do, be, or accomplish in this world.

And the problem with that in many ways is that the second approach or the second fear, the internal, the unhealthy, the nonspecific fear, often centers around something.

And it's mentioned right here in this text.

Verse 3, it says, But you, Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, the one who lifts my head.

Now, why do I say that that mentions it?

Now, again, I've already said David here affirms who God is, that he's his shield.

It says later that he sustains him and that he uh gives him salvation.

I mean, those are all here, but but here's the the word that I think is most interesting.

You're my glory.

Because here's what happens with fear.

You have something that that's legitimate, something that's out here, and you say, I need to deal with that, I need to neutralize it, I need to address that.

But when it becomes internal, what it usually is, is that we've located our glory in something that makes us say, if I don't have that, then I'll never be enough.

And then we start to internalize it in such a way that it dominates us.

We can't sleep, we can't uh do anything because we're so afraid of what will happen if that thing doesn't come true.

You see, whether you're particularly religious or not, whether you you feel like God matters in your life or not, here's what I know about you because it's true about me, and I think it's true about everybody.

We have something in our life that we say, I need this to feel good.

I need this to feel okay, I need this to tell me I'm worthwhile.

And we get it from different things.

You see it in kids when they're starting to grow up, they say, Well, I'm good looking, I'm cool, I'm smart, I'm good at music, I'm good at sports.

And what they're doing is they're borrowing some kind of a validity from something outside of them and saying, I'm good because I have these things.

If you've been around, you've probably heard me say this.

I think sometimes as parents, we do kids a disservice when we basically say, Well, they're not good at something, so I've got to find something that they're good at because what I want them to do is to feel good about themselves with something that's borrowed worth.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you don't try to find something your kid's good at, but what I'm saying is you aren't dealing with the root issue, and the root issue is saying, I've got to find that thing, because what will happen to kids who grow up always saying, I have to find that thing, is they become adults who have to find that thing.

And if you grow up as a kid saying, I have value because I'm cool, because I look good, what will you do as an adult?

You'll say, I have value because I'm cool and I look good until something threatens it.

And by the way, age threatens that all the time.

It just does.

And you may say, Well, well, I was smart in school.

And then somebody will come along who's smarter than you, who's more successful than you, and it threatens it, and all of a sudden you you you have something that's threatening your glory.

The Hebrew word for glory is a word that means wait.

In other words, you're glory.

Glory is what you put something, what you put weight into.

In other words, what you say, this is most important.

This is what defines me.

And if you locate your glory, if I locate my glory in something besides God, that thing will always be tenuous and I'll be susceptible to fear.

And this is exactly what David is driving at here when he says, listen, my foes are many.

My son's out to take my life.

And many are saying of me, the Lord won't even deliver them.

Now, why were they saying the Lord won't deliver them?

Because they were probably saying, David David never got his just reward for the stuff that he pulled with his family, with Bathsheba, with Uriah, all that stuff.

He never experienced what he deserved.

And what does David do?

He says, But you, Lord, are my shield around me.

You're my glory, the one who lifts my head.

I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain.

So how do we move forward?

How do we actually say, okay, I'm going to locate my glory in God in something that's eternal rather than in something that is temporal?

And I'd like to just suggest three things.

Here's the first, and the first is this.

We have to move from a horizontal to a vertical perspective.

And this is all of what verses three through seven is about.

Instead of looking around, we've got to say, I'm going to look to something greater.

And the only way that we'll do that is if we understand that what it is that we tend to locate our glory in will never give us what we want it to give us.

That's hard for us to believe, if we're honest.

Because we just believe if I could just get that next thing, then I'll be okay.

And what happens is you get it or you don't get it, and either way, you end up saying, well, now I need something else.

In fact, in some ways, it's easier if you don't get it, because then you live with the illusion that says, if I could just get it, then I'll then I'll be be good.

But when you get it, what happens?

Again, just go back to your childhood.

What happened when you made the team, when you got first chair in the band?

What happened when you when you started your first real job, when you got your first house, when you bought your first nice car?

What happened?

Did you say, now that I've got my first nice car, it's all good, I'll never be unhappy again, I'll never be afraid?

No, of course not.

What happened was you just moved the line farther out and you said, now I need something else.

That's what happened.

And so we need to move from looking around to get our glory to locating it in God Himself.

And then here's the second thing we need to move from the theoretical to the personal.

Verse 3 and 4, it says, But you, Lord, are a shield about me.

Do you hear that?

Around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head.

Verse 5, I lie down to sleep, I wake because the Lord He sustains me.

Verse 4, He answers me from His holy mountain.

See, you may say, Well, that's David then.

What about me now?

But 1 John chapter 4, verse 18 says, the perfect love casts out fear.

1 John 4:18

And what we're seeing here when he says, You deliver me from your holy mountain, that is where Jesus went to die.

And so when he says, You deliver me from my holy mountain, he wasn't saying, God, you're going to need to just swoop in and do the miraculous deliverance, although God did restore him in a sense here.

But I think he's actually looking all the way ahead to the day that Jesus died, and what he's doing is he's saying, he's saying, the reason that I know that God is for me, the reason that I know that I can live without fear, that I can locate my glory in something bigger than this earth is because of what Jesus Christ will do on that cross.

And you see, we can look back now and we can say that God has already delivered those who believe in him from our greatest danger, which is alienation from God.

And he's said, now, I will be your glory, I'll be the lifter of your head, I'll be the one who is a shield about you, who sustains you.

And the reason you can have confidence, the reason I can have confidence even when we're afraid of things in this world, is because we can say that I've seen the heart of God and I've made it personal.

One writer put it this way: he said, How well we sleep sometimes indicates how much we really trust the Lord.

In other words, the more that we find ourselves anxious and awake at night, what it indicates is that we've located our glory in something temporal and we're not believing that God is at work, and we've made it theoretical to say I trust God, if at all, rather than personal.

And then there's this, and this I think is actually the surprising piece of this, and this is we have to move from survival to blessing.

Verse 7 Arise, Lord, deliver me, my God.

And then this is what in the Psalms is sometimes thought to be almost an inappropriate kind of response or prayer.

It says, strike all my enemies on the jaw, break the teeth of the wicked.

In other words, here, even though David initially was in the wrong, he's able to say, God, I want you to come to my defense because I believe that through Jesus, ultimately, through you, your holy hill, my cause is right, but then listen to this, verse 8.

It says, From the Lord comes deliverance, may your blessing be on your people.

And the reason I say that we move from survival to blessing is because what many of us do when we come up against fear is we say, God, just get me through, just get me to the other side.

But what I want you to see here is God's heart for you, God's heart for me isn't just that we get through something and we go, oh, there, I barely got through it, but that we actually experience the blessing of God so that we can be a blessing in this world.

And here's how I kind of come to this in this verse.

It says, May your blessing be on your people.

Notice he doesn't say, just restore me to my place.

He says, May your blessing be on your people.

Here's what Derek Kidner writes about this in his commentary on the Psalms.

He says, This Psalm ends by looking beyond the eye and the me of all the previous verses to thy people and to thy blessing, which goes as far beyond victory as health and fruitfulness go beyond survival.

Without this, even a reunited people will lack the breath of life, and with it, from with, or with it, from which they can bless the world.

And here's what he's what he's saying is he's saying, if we just want God to help us get through something, rather than seeing that God's heart is to bless us, then what happens is we end up not understanding and trusting that God is for us.

Maybe here's a way to put it, and I've probably said this many different times in different ways, but being a parent is often one of the best ways to understand theology because you understand emotionally some things that before that you understand propositionally.

And what I mean by that is you can say something, but sometimes you don't feel it until you've experienced it in a context that's similar.

And here's what I mean: when you have children, one of the things that you have to navigate is the tendency to protect them from everything, or to let them experience some hardships through their own choices and thus mature and end up having a bigger blessing on the backside of that whole thing.

So, for example, if you have a child and your child is really disrespectful in school as a grade school child.

Now, what you can do is you can go in and say, Well, the teachers, the teachers, the teachers are problems, and you know, their first grade teacher, their second grade teacher, their third grade teacher, their fourth grade teacher, they're all bad.

Or you can say, maybe one of them was bad, but at some point maybe the child's got an issue.

And maybe I need to let the system teach them something rather than insisting that I fix it.

Now, now here's my point.

That's painful as a parent if that is your situation, and we could talk about dozens of situations like that.

But if you really love your child, sometimes what you do is you let them go through something that will be painful because on the other side there will be something that will be much better than the short-term pain.

And sometimes I wonder if, when we're afraid, if if God isn't saying, I'm drawing you to take your lesser glory, the things that you locate your glory in, the things that you say, this is everything to me, and before we have the pain of ultimately realizing that we live for something that doesn't satisfy God saying, I'm gonna let you see it in a small dose here and now, so that you'll live for something that actually will live on.

Because if I live, if you live for something that has very little significance ultimately, even if it has significance here and now, then what happens is we get to the end of our life and we find out that what we thought was so important maybe didn't matter like we thought that it would.

One writer in writing about this psalm said this: it says, To the degree that we embrace Jesus Christ, we'll become impervious to fear.

I actually think that that's overstated a little.

Because I don't think that we become impervious to fear.

I think what happens is we become people who say, I can look at fear, acknowledge my fear, but I can also acknowledge that there's a God who's for me.

And because of that, because of that, whatever it is I'm afraid of, I can say, God, you are the one who's my shield and my glory, the lifter of my head, no matter how this works out.

I realize that that's not easy.

And I realize that if you were one of the people that I mentioned earlier who said, uh Christians are always saying, just pray, just uh, you know, be a person who doesn't worry, but be prayerful, and God will take care of it.

That you might say, Well, well, didn't you just come down on the same same side?

And I'd say, absolutely not.

I would say there's something greater than this.

I'm not saying don't pray, but what I'm saying is this, and that is when you and I understand God's heart, what it does is it frees us from simply saying, if I don't have that, then I can never be okay.

You see, it's our longing for happiness that says, I'm afraid that if I don't get something, that then my life won't be worth living.

And the invitation here where he says, God, you are the one who sustains me.

You're the one who is my deliverance or my salvation is a beautiful foreshadowing again of what Jesus will do.

And the hope ultimately for any of us is to come and acknowledge to God that we put our glory in other things, but because of Jesus, we can turn back to God and say, God, I want you to be the glory in my life, the lifter of my head, the one who will surround me and sustain me no matter what.

You know, we live in a world that is dominated by fear, where everybody around us has some substantial fear.

And what's distinct about people of faith isn't that we don't have anything that makes us afraid, but that we are able to say, whatever that is, it's not as weighty to me, it's not as important to me as something more, something else, that being God.

And there's a beautiful freedom that comes that's winsome.

In fact, that that's one of the things that you see, and maybe even if if you're a person who says, I've been annoyed at those people who say, just pray, sometimes it's their very weighty, weightlessness to some of the things that are going on, where they say it's not that I don't care, I care deeply, but I say I've got something that's so much bigger than the thing I'm afraid of.

And that's what allows us to approach fear without being dominated by it and to sleep well.

Father, we pray tonight very simply that you would help each one of us here not to be consumed by our fears and our anxieties, but instead to see the way that we have maybe elevated something to be so important to us that it's caused us to be fearful rather than ultimately seeing you as the most weighty thing.

And thus coming to a point where we can say, I understand all these commands that say, Don't be afraid, don't be anxious, but I come to you in in prayer and say, God, you are my shield, you are the sustainer, you are my glory, you are the lifter of my head.

I pray that be true, God, for me.

I pray it be true for each person here.

And Father, for those who maybe are here tonight and and are saying, I'm not even sure exactly where I am, but this makes some sense in a way that that maybe I haven't understood before.

I pray that even just the conviction of this moment would allow them just to say, maybe God, there's something to you and to Jesus once again.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

May God bless you as you go.

Have a great evening.