A Quiet Soul

Good morning.

My name is Matthew Capone, and I'm the pastor here at Cheyenne Mountain Presbyterian Church,

and it's my joy to bring God's Word to you today.

If you are new or visiting with us, welcome.

We're glad that you're here.

And we're glad that you're here not because we are trying to fill seats,

but because we are following Jesus together as one community.

And as we follow Jesus together, we are convinced that there's no one so good

that they don't need God's grace and His forgiveness,

and no one so bad that they can't have it.

Which means that God has something to say to everyone in His Word,

and everyone needs to hear what God has to say.

And so that's why we come week after week to look at God's Word,

because we believe that God speaks to us,

and He speaks to us in ways and in words that we can actually understand.

If you've been with us, you know that we are in the book of Psalms,

and we're going to be in the book of Psalms for just a few more weeks

before we start 1 Peter in September.

And as I've told you many times, the Psalms are the prayer book

and the hymn book of God's people in the Old Testament.

And so it's hard to summarize them, just like it would be hard to summarize any hymn book.

If you look at any book full of songs,

especially songs that are hymns that are in the church,

they're going to touch on all kinds of topics.

If you look in the back of most hymnals, you might even find an index by topic.

And so there's not one thing that we could say,

but many things that we can say about the Psalms.

And so I've given you a lot of different categories and ways.

And one way the Psalms help us, and that we use them,

is the Psalms are their poems, and they're poems that talk about emotions.

The Psalms are a part of the Bible that more than some other parts of the Bible

address directly our hearts.

They direct how we feel, our affections, what we love, how we love.

And so we're going to look this week,

and probably a few more before we're over with the Psalms,

about a Psalm that talks directly about what it is that goes on

and happens inside of our hearts day by day.

The Psalms help us address and diagnose the struggles of our hearts

as we walk through life thinking about various things,

worrying about various things,

having fears and anxieties and ambitions.

And if you sort of are aware of the water that we swim in right now as a culture

and as a people, we are in what some people refer to as an anxious age.

We're at a time when anxiety is at an all-time high, it feels like.

And we worry and fret more than other generations have,

even as we have increasing wealth and comfort.

We face fears about the world in this year and last year

more than we have in other years in this country of other decades.

And the reality is, as we look at our hearts, our hearts reveal our hope.

Our ambitions and our fears and our anxieties and our worries and our dreams about the future

all reveal what it is that we hope in.

And if you're anything like me, you have the temptation at times to maybe be frantic or panic

in the face of life's challenges.

And yet Jesus at the same time tells us in John 14, he says,

My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you.

Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

And so as we come to this psalm, this psalm highlights the temptation,

the temptation that we are tempted to put our hopes in all sorts of things.

And the psalmist instead tells us in the last verse, verse 3,

to put our hope in the Lord.

And so we're going to see in Psalm 131 that because God cares for us,

we can rest in him.

And with that, I'm going to read Psalm 131.

You can follow along in your worship guide or in your Bible or your phone.

And as we come to this psalm, remember that this is God's word.

And God tells us that his word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

In other words, God has not left us to stumble alone in the dark,

but instead he's given us his word to show us the way to go.

And so it's for that reason that we're going to read now, starting at verse 1.

Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

I invite you to pray with me as we come to this portion of God's word.

Father in heaven, we thank you that our hope is in you.

That it's not in ourselves and what we can accomplish.

It's not in our families and what they've done.

It's not in our abilities and our skills.

It's not in our bank accounts.

It's not in our friends and our social circles.

It's not in our reputation or our social media accounts.

But our hope is in you from this time forth and forevermore.

We ask that you would send your spirit now to help us as we look at this psalm

and that we would grow in our hope and trust in you.

We ask these things not because we have earned them,

but because Jesus has earned them for us.

And so we ask them in his name.

Amen.

Now there's lots of things as we've looked at the psalms over the last couple months

that I've mentioned as aspects and ways of thinking about it.

And there's one thing I haven't told you about.

And it is the anti-psalm.

And the anti-psalm is not something that shows up in the psalms,

but it's something that sometimes people will do,

people who study the Bible, to help us understand the psalms.

They'll write an anti-psalm.

And an anti-psalm is simply the opposite of whatever a psalm says.

So you'll have someone who studies and meditates a psalm,

and they'll think, what would the exact opposite be of this psalm

so I can highlight what this psalm is doing?

And Psalm 131 has gotten a lot of attention from various people

because of its, not just its brevity, it's short.

So it's a helpful psalm for us to memorize and remember.

But also because of what it teaches us about God and our relationship with him.

And so there's at least one anti-psalm.

And I'm going to read it to you now.

This is written by a man, a pastor named David Pallison.

And he's written this opposite of Psalm 131.

And it goes like this.

Self, my heart is proud.

I'm absorbed in myself.

And my eyes are haughty.

I look down on other people.

And I chase after things too great and too difficult for me.

That's verse 1.

Verse 2 of the anti-psalm.

So, of course, I'm noisy and restless inside.

It comes naturally to me.

Like a hungry infant fussing on his mother's lap.

Like a hungry infant, I am restless with my demands and my worries.

Verse 3.

I scatter my hopes on anything and everybody all the time.

What the anti-psalm does is it helps us understand what's going on, especially in verse 1.

And the psalmist is telling us in verse 1 what he's not.

And by telling us what he's not, he's probably telling us what he has been in the past.

And so verse 1.

When his heart is not lifted up, a lifted up heart would be someone who's proud and arrogant.

Someone who thinks very highly of themselves.

My eyes are not raised too high.

Another way to translate this would be haughty eyes.

That's how it shows up in other parts of the Bible.

And so not only am I proud and I think very highly of myself, but because I think very highly of myself,

I think lowly of other people.

I think poorly of other people.

I look down on them.

I'm arrogant and proud because I'm able to accomplish and do a lot of things.

And I realize there are other people who are not able to accomplish and do a lot of things.

And so I look down on them.

That's my raised eyes.

And then finally, still in verse 1, this is what this proud person does.

We could call this not just the proud person, but the loud heart.

Because in verse 2 we're going to see there's a quiet soul, a quiet heart.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

In other words, I used to be a person who tried to do things that were impossible for me.

I used to try to accomplish things that were not meant for human people to accomplish.

I tried to do what only God can do.

And I tried to only understand what God can only understand.

In other words, this person that we're meeting in verse 1, this is someone who believes that the world rises and falls on what they are able to do and accomplish.

This is someone who believes that the world is able to accomplish.

That causes their heart to be filled with pride.

And it causes them to look down on other people.

And even more than that, it causes them to think they can do what they can't do.

It causes them to try to do things that are impossible for them.

And you might be wondering, well, it doesn't sound too bad.

There's certainly lots of things that we can do, right?

Some of you think, well, I do have lots of capacities.

There's lots of capabilities that I have.

I wouldn't have made it to this point in life if I didn't.

And yet the problem with this person is that they are the opposite of verse 2.

And so we find out not only that they're proud and they look down on other people,

but they don't have what the psalmist has in verse 2.

They don't have a quiet heart.

Now, it might seem odd to think of someone who's proud as having a loud and busy heart.

And that's exactly what the psalm is telling us.

People who are proud are walking through this world not filled with peace,

but instead they're filled with noise and ambition and irritability and anger and resentment.

They're filled with disappointment as they're not able to fulfill and achieve

and accomplish everything that they believe that they can.

The other side of this is that there are people who don't think they're proud, but they are.

There's a sense in which if we are fretful and anxious constantly, that we're proud.

Because if we're fretful and we're anxious constantly,

it means that we believe that everything is up to us.

And if everything is up to us, we must be a very powerful person.

And so whether we feel proud or not, verse 1 is telling us

that when we believe that the world rises and falls on us and what we can do,

that is when we live in a world filled with anxiety and fear.

That's the world that causes us not to have peace and rest and quiet in our hearts and our lives.

But it's the kind of thought that fills us with pride and anxiety.

It fills us with minds that can't be still.

With hearts that aren't able to fall asleep.

That's the problem that the psalmist sees here.

That's the one that he's bringing to God.

We get another picture of it too in verse 2 because we find out the opposite.

He tells us he has calmed and quieted his soul.

And he's calmed and quieted his soul specifically like a weaned child.

Now I'm going to make a confession this morning that may surprise many of you.

It is true that I have never weaned a child.

I want you to think about that for a second.

But I am told that if a child is not weaned,

and sometimes I experience this, not as a weaner but as someone just in the world,

there's a strange urgency that unweaned children have.

In fact, sometimes if there's a child who's not weaned and they don't have the food that they want,

they communicate in such a way that it sounds like the world is about to end.

And that they are actually going to die if they do not get what they want right now.

Some of you are parents who have experienced this.

Some of you are parents who will experience this.

Some of you are parents who are experiencing this.

This is a child who is frantic, panics easily.

They want anything to solve their problem as quickly as possible.

Some of you have had the experience, perhaps you picked up a child that's not yours,

and that child has started trying to nurse you.

Because it's thinking, anywhere and anything that I can do, as fast as possible,

I need to have this need met right away.

There's no ability to wait.

These children are fixated on a solution, on one solution.

It's their solution.

There's only one way to solve this problem.

They only know one way, and they're the ones who are going to have to make it happen.

And there's this knee-jerk reaction that comes from the unweaned child.

Their need has to be met immediately, and so they're upset.

They're hungry.

They're frantic.

There's no ability to be still and rest and be quiet.

And so that's what happens if we have a verse 1 kind of heart.

If we have the loud heart, the psalmist is telling us that we are like unweaned children.

We're constantly frantic and worried and scared, looking around, needing our needs to be met immediately,

believing we're the ones who know the solution and that we have to find it.

And if it doesn't come right now, then we are actually going to die.

That is the belief of the Psalm 1 heart.

That's the anxious heart, the fearful heart, the proud heart.

The heart that doesn't have hope in the Lord.

And so the first question that Psalm 131 puts to us, the verse 1 question,

and by the way, this psalm has three points and three verses.

It's very convenient that it works out that way.

Where is your heart loud with fear and anxiety and control and pride?

Where is your heart loud?

Where does your heart believe that you are actually going to die if your need is not met right now?

And where does your heart, even more than that, believe you are the only one that can meet that need?

That you have to squirm and reach and grasp for everything that you could have and get.

Where do you struggle to trust God?

Where do you struggle to have contentment?

To know, like a weaned child, that you may not have what you want right now,

but that God is going to provide.

That he hasn't left you alone.

And then where are you trying to be God?

Where are you trying to fix and solve and control things that God did not mean for you to fix and control and solve?

That's the proud heart and the arrogant heart that we see in verse 1.

It's the heart that is loud.

And so the psalmist doesn't just leave us, thankfully, with the loud heart,

but he gives us the quiet soul here in verse 2.

He tells us that he has calmed and quieted his soul like a weaned child with its mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

So I've told you about the unweaned child.

Now we have the weaned child.

The weaned child is not frantic.

The weaned child doesn't panic.

The weaned child, we find out here, is able to be still with its mother.

The weaned child has trust.

The weaned child knows that she is not going to die if she's not fed right now.

If the weaned child is hungry and upset, the weaned child can pull herself together

because she knows that her needs will eventually be met.

She knows that her mother loves her and cares for her

and will provide for her what she needs when she needs it.

The weaned child is more mature.

She knows that the world is bigger than being comforted and fed.

And so the weaned child doesn't need to grasp constantly squirming,

trying to find the next source of food,

trying to do for itself what it can.

And so as Christians, as people who have hope in God,

as we struggle with fear and anxiety and control and ambition and failure and greed,

our goal, our hope, is to be like weaned children.

This psalm has its own illustration.

We want to have calm and quiet souls, not frantic souls.

The psalmist before, verse 1,

there was only one source,

him and his abilities.

Whatever he could do.

Whether that made him proud and arrogant or anxious and afraid,

there was only one way for him to be provided for.

After, there's the mature Christian here.

He's moved to a calmness, a quiet from knowing that God is in control.

That he can trust.

He knows that he's going to be fed when he needs to be fed.

So verse 2 gives us a picture here.

It gives us a picture of what it looks like when we trust God.

What it looks like when we know that it's not up to us to make everything happen.

It's not up to us to provide for ourselves.

But that God is bigger and greater.

That he knows what we need.

That he's with us.

And that he's for us.

But verse 2 does not just give us a picture.

It also gives us a process.

Because the psalmist tells us this is something he has done.

He has calmed and quieted his soul.

These are action verbs.

It's something actively that he's done.

If you've ever weaned a child, unlike me,

you know that this is something that doesn't happen instantly.

It's a process.

It's a process to convince and help a child understand that he or she is not going to die.

And so the same is true for us as well.

Verse 2,

The psalmist has calmed and quieted his soul.

The challenge is for us to calm and quiet our souls as well.

And so what does it look like to cultivate a calm and quiet soul in a busy and frantic world?

We see the first thing the psalmist does is that he is talking to God.

Verse 1, he addresses God.

Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up.

My eyes are not raised too high.

In other words, he prays.

And if that sounds too simplistic, remember that every time we pray,

we are acknowledging that God is able to do things that we can't.

And we're acknowledging that God is in control and we are not.

And so the very act of the psalmist praying here is a reminder.

It's a way of quieting his soul because it's recognizing and admitting and acting on the knowledge

that not everything he needs is something he can do or accomplish.

And so we quiet our souls by coming and praying to God.

That's what verses 1 and 2 are.

They're a prayer.

That's what our New Testament reading said, by the way.

We looked at Philippians chapter 4 last fall.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

And we also looked at it this morning.

And Paul tells us that the opposite of anxiety is prayer.

If we don't want to be anxious, then we present our concerns to God.

And it tells us in Philippians 4,

the peace of God which passes all understanding will be with us.

So this process of weaning, this process of calming and quieting his soul

is something that the psalmist does for himself.

He does it by coming to God over and over.

The assumption of many of the psalms is that they are telling us a story in very short form.

That they're telling us something that happened over a long period of time

and the psalmist makes it very succinct.

So that's most likely true of Psalm 13, the psalm of lament.

It's probably, I would guess, true of this psalm as well.

That the psalmist had a long process of calming and quieting his soul.

And then finally he was able to write Psalm 131.

Not only do we wean our souls by praying to God,

have a calm and quiet soul,

but I would actually encourage you,

and I don't do this with every psalm,

but I've done it with a couple,

I would encourage you to memorize Psalm 131.

It's very short.

It's only three verses.

When you come into a situation where you can feel

your anxiety rising,

your fear rising,

you can catch yourself,

and you can say to yourself,

if you memorize it in your head,

you can say,

Oh Lord,

my heart is not lifted up.

My eyes are not raised too high.

I do not occupy myself with things too great

and too marvelous for me,

but I have calmed and quieted my soul.

And so as you're struggling to have a calm and quiet soul,

this psalm is a tool for us.

And it's an especially potent tool

because of how short it is.

There are some scriptures that we memorize

that we're going to use more than others.

I'm going to suggest to you that Psalm 131

is a high ROI psalm.

There is a high return on investment here.

There's a psalm that you're going to memorize.

In fact,

I would encourage you to think about this summer

as we go through the psalms,

pick one psalm.

It doesn't have to be this one.

I'd encourage you to consider this one.

Pick one psalm that you want to shape your life.

And be a Psalm 1 person about it.

And meditate on it over and over and over again.

Let it shape the way you think,

the way you feel.

If you're struggling to face injustice in the world,

Psalm 5 might be your psalm.

If you are struggling to believe

that God is the most powerful person in the world,

memorize Psalm 2.

And if you struggle with a loud and noisy heart,

memorize Psalm 131.

A man named Paul Miller says this about Psalm 131.

He says,

And then he says this,

God knows

that we face many things in this life

that would cause us to panic and be frantic.

And so he's given us this psalm

as a lamp to our feet

and a light to our path

to show us the way

when we face those situations in life.

So how do we quiet and calm our souls?

One way is talking to God.

We pray to God.

The way you can do that is memorizing this psalm.

The other thing that we can do

is talk to ourselves.

I'm going to jump ahead a little bit,

but in verse 3,

the psalmist is not talking to God anymore.

He's talking to the rest of the Israelites

who are gathering

and he's telling them to hope in the Lord.

So he talks to God about his hope and his quiet

and then he talks to the other people around him.

We would say he talks to the other Israelites.

I would say we, as people in the New Testament,

can talk to other Christians

and we can say,

O Christians, hope in the Lord.

Church, hope in the Lord.

When we sing here in church together,

we are primarily singing to God

songs of worship to him.

We are secondarily reminding

and singing to each other.

And so the weaning process,

the process by which we have a quiet soul

rather than a noisy, busy soul,

the process by which we have peace

rather than being frantic,

is one that involves both talking to God

and talking to ourselves.

We remind ourselves of God's faithfulness

and his love.

It's exactly what we talked about

in the Psalms of Lament,

that we're remembering

what God has done for us in the past

and we're reminding ourselves

over and over again.

We're whipping up.

Remember we talked about the cream

that you make into whipped cream.

We're whipping up the hard peaks

of faith and trust

and hope and confidence.

And so the Psalms present us

with that process.

Remind ourselves of God's faithfulness

to us specifically.

We remind ourselves of God's faithfulness

to us and all Christians

through Jesus.

That we look to everything

that God has done for us.

And so we're asking for God's help

rather than relying on our own.

Now if you're thinking

that I'm telling you to memorize

and remind yourself of Psalm 131

to pray to God

as a way to escape

the problems in this world,

the way to escape personal responsibility,

to escape doing what you need to do

to accomplish what's before you,

that is not what I'm saying.

And I'll tell you a story.

I recently found out about something.

Many of you probably already know about this.

I've heard this is a big thing

in the military.

It's called box breathing

or tactical breathing

or combat breathing.

And it's where when someone

is feeling nervous and anxious

and they're facing a high stakes,

high stress situation,

they'll go through certain

breathing techniques

that will calm their body down.

So they'll breathe in for four seconds.

They'll hold their breath

for four seconds.

They'll breathe out for four seconds.

And then they'll let their breath sit out

without breathing in again

for another four seconds.

I'm not going to demonstrate for you.

You're welcome.

And this is often for people

who are in really high stressful situations,

in high combat,

in special ops.

The Navy SEALs apparently use this.

Now I'm going to suggest to you

that no soldier who uses this technique

thinks to themselves,

man, this is a really high stress situation.

I just need to escape for a little bit.

The enemies will understand.

I'm going to tell them like,

hey, it's a timeout right now.

I've got to do my box breathing.

I'm really stressed.

And if you could just give me a second,

then I'm going to get back into the game.

Okay?

No, the box breathing

is not an escape from combat.

It's not an escape from moving forward

and making hard decisions in life.

It is what allows soldiers

to calm themselves down

so that they can proceed in combat.

When we have a quiet heart,

when we're praying to God

and trusting Him,

it is not to escape from this world.

It's not to absolve ourselves

of our responsibilities.

It's not to say,

well, I'm not going to be proud

so I guess I can't do anything.

I can't accomplish anything.

Instead, it's to say,

I'm going to move forward

in this life,

this busy life,

with a quiet heart.

And I'm going to face

the challenges that are ahead of me

doing what I need to do,

not being controlled

by believing that everything

rises and falls on me,

but knowing that God

is the one who is in control.

He's more powerful than I am.

He's more powerful

than the challenge that I face.

And so I'm going to pause

and stop not to retreat from life,

but to be able to move forward in it.

It is prayer,

it is Psalm 131

that is the box breathing,

the combat breathing

of the Christian.

This is how we pull ourselves back

as we are in the challenges

and the friction of life.

And we're able to remind ourselves

that God is in control

so that we can move forward.

We are asking for God's help

rather than relying on our own power

and strength and ability.

It's knowing that we can't make things happen.

It's not all up to us.

It means that we can have quiet hearts.

And so this doesn't mean

that we're passive.

It just means that we're not restless anymore.

We can have peace

in the midst of difficult circumstances.

It's sitting with someone

who is hurting

and remembering,

my words are not going to be able

to solve this situation.

That would be something too great

and too marvelous for me.

And so I am now able

to actually sit with

and be with this person.

It's applying for jobs

and knowing I have to be faithful

in pursuing work.

But I can't make this happen.

And so I'm going to trust God

and have a calm and quiet heart

in the midst of it.

It's facing illness

and knowing there may

or may not be a solution

or a cure to this.

But I can't heal myself.

And so I can trust God.

I can seek out doctors and solutions

with a quiet

and prayerful trust

and hope in God.

Jesus asked this question

at one point.

He says,

in Luke,

in which of you by being anxious

can add a single hour

to his span of life?

Our hope

is not in ourselves

and what we can do,

but it is in God.

And so that's how we end

in verse 3.

O Israel,

hope in the Lord

from this time forth

and forevermore.

this isn't some sort of

mindfulness technique

in which the psalmist

pulls back from his situation,

but it's a reminder technique

in which the psalmist

remembers

that God is his hope.

Now, hope can sometimes be

something of a pie-in-the-sky word.

We might talk as Christians

about hope

without giving a firm

and clear definition.

And we've seen

various types of hope

in the psalms already.

As the psalms define hope,

it's several things at least.

First of all,

it's our hope.

The previous psalm,

Psalm 130,

talks about this.

It's our hope

in God's forgiveness.

As Christians,

part of our hope

is that God

is going to forgive us

of our sins

because of Jesus' death

for us.

That Jesus has taken

the penalty for our sins.

And so we can hope

in forgiveness.

But we're not just hoping

in the forgiveness

of our sins.

The psalms also talk

about God's steadfast love.

That's also our hope.

Not just that God

has forgiven us,

but that he's also adopted us.

We are Jesus' brothers

and sisters

because of what he's done.

And so God's never stopping,

never giving up,

unbreaking,

and always and forever love

is with us.

It's something that we can rest in

and hope in and trust in.

That's part of what

the psalmist is saying

when he says hope in the Lord.

Hope in the Lord

for his forgiveness.

Hope in the Lord

because of his steadfast love

that he's not going

to leave you

or forsake you.

We've also seen

in Psalm 2

and Psalm 6,

we hope,

or Psalm 2

and Psalm 5,

we hope in God's justice.

That's part of our hope.

Our hope is that one day

God is actually going

to make everything right.

And so when the psalmist says

in verse 3,

hope in the Lord,

he is not talking about

a pie-in-the-sky hope.

He's not talking about

an ambiguous,

undefined hope.

He is talking about

the trust and confidence

and love that comes

from knowing

that God's forgiveness

and his love for us

are unshakable.

and knowing

that his justice

is unstoppable.

And so it's that hope

that allows the psalmist

to not have a lifted up heart

but instead to calm

and quiet his soul.

His hope as the psalmist

in the Old Testament

and God's people of Israel

is our same hope

even more clearly defined

in the New Testament.

That as he looked

to God's forgiveness,

he did not know

exactly how it was

going to happen

and yet we as Christians

in the New Testament

know exactly

how it happened.

The forgiveness

of our sins

comes because

Jesus took the penalty

for them.

Because Jesus lived

the perfect life

that we should have lived

and then he died

the death

that we should have died.

And so we look

to his death

and his resurrection

as our hope

for forgiveness.

Jesus is also our hope

for God's steadfast love.

Because Jesus died

we are now

his brothers

and his sisters.

We are God's children.

And so not only

is God's forgiveness

with us

but his steadfast love

is with us as well.

Jesus earns

God's favor

and his care for us.

He earns

what we need

to be able to have

calm and quiet hearts.

Jesus says

in Matthew chapter 10

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

are not two sparrows

sold for a penny

and not one of them

will fall to the ground

apart from your father.

But even the hairs

of your head

are all numbered.

Fear not therefore

you are of more value

than many sparrows.

And then he says

in John 14

I will not leave you

as orphans

I will come to you.

And finally

our hope

is not just

in God's forgiveness

and his steadfast love

but also in his power.

That he is

actually powerful enough

to care for us

and provide for us.

There's a story

in Matthew 8

where Jesus' disciples

are afraid.

The pastor I mentioned before

David Pallison

connects this psalm

to this story.

They're afraid that

their boat is going to sink

and they're going to die.

They wake Jesus up

and Jesus

and they're going to die.

They wake Jesus up

and Jesus is able to

disciples say this

in Matthew chapter 8

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

What sort of man is this

that even the winds

and sea

obey him?

That is the God

in whom we have

a quiet confidence

and a quiet trust.

And so when we're

tempted to put

our hope

in all sorts of things

the psalmist tells us

to put our hope

in the Lord.

We put our hope

in him

because he cares for us

and he loves us

he provides for us

because he is

the powerful king

who's able to do

what he promises.

And so I invite you

to join me

as we pray

to that king

right now.

Father in heaven

we thank you

that even the storms

and the seas

obey you.

We're tempted

to believe

that it's our job

to calm the seas

and the storms

and yet you remind us

that that's only

pride and arrogance.

And so we ask

that you'd help us

that you'd build

a calm

and quiet

trust in you

as we face

the challenges

of this world.

And we thank you

that we can have

that trust

and that confidence

not as the

pie in the sky

confidence

but a true

and steady hope.

And it's true

and steady

because we look

to our hope

and we look

to Jesus

as the one

who provides it.

And we trust

in the truth

and the steadiness

of his life

and his death

and his resurrection

that pays the penalty

for our sins

and brings us in

as part of your family

the family

that you care

and provide for

and will bring justice

for fully and finally.

And so we ask

these things

not because

we have earned them

not because

we're capable

of achieving them

not because

we're better

than other people

but we ask them

because Jesus

has earned them for us

and so we ask them

in his name.

Amen.