How To Be Happy In God

Christianity is not about appreciating God and the truths of the Bible.

It's about experiencing them.

And the way we experience them is by acting on them.

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grand Parkway.org.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we are we have certainty and sureness because your death was sufficient and your resurrection was real.

So when we sing and say, then came the morning that sealed the promise, all the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus.

And so we're here to celebrate your sufficiency and the veracity, the truthfulness of your word that brings authority to bear on our life.

We're not here to ask the culture for permission, God.

We're here to bask in your authority.

And so make of us authoritative people.

That doesn't mean we're bossy or we're loud or we're obnoxious or any of that kind of stuff.

It means we're consequential, we're winsome, and we're free, just like God intended all along.

So, Holy Spirit, illuminate the text today and let it find a resting place in our souls today, an expression in our lives this week.

We ask all this in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a C if you've got a Bible.

I want you to take it and open it up to Psalm 32.

Psalm 32.

I want to talk to you this morning about how to be happy in God.

How to be happy in God.

And now, ladies, nudge your husband if he rolled his eyes, like, are you kidding me?

Not what you think.

Not self-help, not pop psychology, Super Bowl Sunday.

I'm not coming at you with, hey, here's five ways to live a super life.

No, no, no.

How to be happy in God.

And I want to take, I want to say two things by way of preparation.

Number one, we usually start reading verse one, but but right above that, we need to understand what kind of literature this is, what kind of writing this is in the Bible.

It's a mascell.

M-A-S-K-I-L, a mascell, which is a wisdom poem.

Basically, David composed this.

He he writes this, and it's designed to teach someone how to live well, how to live a happy and blessed life.

Now you've got to understand, blessed, uh, it doesn't mean what we take it to mean.

But anyway, uh, and so uh Psalm 32, a little background.

Uh the Psalms are not chronological.

They did not like sit down and say, okay, Psalm 1 and then Psalm 2.

Like Psalm 32 is written after Psalm 51.

Why do I say what's Psalm 32 and Psalm 51?

There are these two great uh Psalms of confession by King David.

Uh basically, King David had screwed up really bad.

Anybody in this room ever messed up really bad?

Say amen.

Yes, and so King David had put it in the ditch royally.

He said, What did he do?

What he did was he was the king, and so he he exercised privilege and lived, every once in a while he'd fallen to episodes of entitlement.

He saw a woman named Bathsheba taking a bath, and he sent his servants to go get her, and he had an affair with her, and she got pregnant, and he tried to cover it up.

And the way he tried to cover it up was he he got her husband to come home from battle, and he thought, well, he'll get drunk and he'll go in with his wife, and they'll think it's his kid.

And her husband had more integrity as a drunk man than David did as a sober man because he slept on the porch.

Okay, he got a little, he had he got overserved with the Super Bowl party, and he went home and David thought this is gonna work, and he said, Nope.

He sat on the porch, he said, My men cannot enjoy their wives, I'm not gonna enjoy my wife.

And so David's like, and so David was deceitful.

And so David said, You know what?

Plan B, he sent one of the commanders the order to put Uriah, this was the man's name, out in front of the troops, and like the front line when they go to battle, and he'll be killed as a war hero, and then I'll be covered.

No one has to know I had an affair and got a lady pregnant.

Well, that happened, and then David, because he's noble, because if you're deceitful, you're also gonna try to be noble as well.

Yeah, after her husband died, David sent for her and said, I'll marry the grieving widow.

And then God sends along a prophet named Nathan.

Everybody likes the prophet until he comes to your house for dinner.

And then it's like, Why we gotta invite this fool up in here?

Uh and Nathan got up in David's business and just told him the truth.

And David repented and I mean wept, laid on the earth for six or seven days, and just cried and didn't eat, all that stuff.

Now, then he writes these two Psalms of confession, Psalm 51 and Psalm 32.

They're not chronological, meaning Psalm 32 was written after Psalm 51, actually, and it's a fulfillment of the vow that David makes.

If you ever read the 51st Psalm, there's a verse in there that says, Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you.

This is that teaching that David promised he would do.

He writes Psalm 32 after he's repented.

He stopped being a goof off and he kind of realized, you know what?

I want other people to learn from my mistakes, okay?

So ask yourself today if you were going to write a psalm, like a little paragraph, and say, I want people to learn from my mistakes, this is what David gives us this morning.

Here's the second thing I want to give you by way of preparation.

We'll see it three or four times.

It's the little word Selah.

Selah.

Besides being a cool name for a daughter, Selah is a literary device.

It means pause and think about what you just read.

It's like a speed bump.

You slow down to go over that.

Okay?

Now, given those two things, let me read Psalm 32, starting in verse 1.

A maskell of David.

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is a man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Say lah.

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Say la.

Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.

Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him.

You are a hiding place for me, and you preserve me from trouble.

You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Say la.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go.

I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

David said, Hey, I'm a man that's really messed up, made a lot of mistakes, hurt a lot of people.

But if I could tell you anything, this is what I would tell you.

And what he tells us is there's a way to be happy in God.

And so I just want to point out four or five things from the text this morning.

Number one is this that there's a spiritual component to our happiness.

There's a spiritual component to our happiness.

The word blessed is a Hebrew word, Ashir.

Ashir.

E-S-H-E-A-R in English, and it means happy or blessed.

You put them together, and it's this happy blessedness, and it's this exclamatory state of being.

When he he starts off in verse one and he says, Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Verse 2, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit is no, there's no deceit.

When I say there's a spiritual component to our happiness, you have to better understand this, you have to ask yourself, what are the things that I look to to determine and define my happiness?

Like if you always look into your bank account and your investment fund to see how things are going, to see if you should be happy, you'll never be this blessed.

You'll never have this biblical sense of blessedness that David talks about.

If you look on social media and compare yourself with everything you see out there, you'll never know this kind of happiness.

You you just won't.

So it's not uh it's not just a feeling, it's a state of being.

And so hear this.

Here's why David says, oh man, I if you saw David at the country club, and hey man, let's play nine sometime.

By the way, how's it going?

I know it was kind of rocky there a couple years ago.

And he's a man, I'm blessed.

You'd be like, oh, what do you what do you mean?

He would say, Hey, my transgression is forgiven, my sins covered, the Lord doesn't count my iniquity against me.

I don't feel bad coming to church like I'm some kind of a hypocrite.

I can't stand myself, I'm no longer deceitful.

Let me ask you something.

Can you imagine being this way?

Can you imagine being a man or woman who has no secrets and fears nobody?

This is what the Bible talks about.

And this is what I mean when I say there's a spiritual component to our happiness.

You should ask yourself, how often do I think about my spiritual life when it comes to whether I'm happy or not?

If you want to see what I'm talking about, go to a very poor country where people are really poor, not just lazy like in America.

Hello.

Now I'm not saying we don't have poor people, we got more, we got more lazy people than we got poor people.

I mean somewhere where it's really poor people, like I've been to places that don't have running water.

Their house is the tree limbs they cut down six months ago, and they prop them up and they they get plastic or pieces of tin they find on the side of the road, and you walk into that little, they call it a house, and you're kind of like don't sit on anything unless you have a tetanus shot.

Uh and and and their chairs are like logs they got out of the forest, and them cats are so happy.

And I think they don't have TV up here.

You ain't got sports center.

How can you people be happy?

They're happy.

I mean, they're just blessed, they don't have much to eat, and they put it before you, and they stand back and watch you eat because they're gonna do without so you can have it.

And they are poor and they're happy.

They understand this.

Because for them, being happy in God changes everything.

They understand what we need to understand this morning.

There's a spiritual component to our happiness.

Here's the second thing the text tells us that anxiety is real, but not all things are anxiety.

Anxiety is real, but not all things are anxiety.

It's verse three and four.

David says, When I kept silent, in other words, when I kept my sin on the down low, I tried to manage it.

I tried to arrange a hitman to take this man out.

I tried to cover my sin by getting him to come back and sleep with his wife so no one would know my sin.

Then I had to get him killed.

And so there's an old uh uh phrase that says this, Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

And David's just, he's enmeshed in this in a matter of time.

He says, When I kept silent about my bones wasted away, and through my groaning all day long, for night and day your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Say Lah.

It's the first time in this in this great psalm that he says, Say Lah.

Hey, pause, pump the brakes, and think about what I just said.

Again, anxiety is real, but not all things are anxiety.

What we see here is conviction of sin that manifests itself in physical uh uh feelings and even emotions.

And so we gotta ask ourselves, am I experiencing anxiety or conviction?

Uh a lot of times in counseling, I'll ask people, now tell me how, in what ways, if any, are you contributing to your emotional state of being?

And they look at me like y'all are looking at me, like, huh?

What?

And I say it again, in what ways are you contributing to your emotional state of being?

And they go, I don't know what you mean.

Basically, what I'm asking, are you engaged in anything that you know to be wrong or that the Bible would define as wrong?

And then people typically say, because I see a lot of people don't come to our church and and they say, Well, I don't really value the Bible.

I think the Bible's written by men all.

I said, Yeah, absolutely.

If I was not a Christian, the first thing I would have to do is deconstruct the authority of the Bible.

Because if the Bible's right, then you're in deep weeds, my man.

And this feeling you have right now, that's anxiety or depression, it's just gonna get worse.

See, I'm not helpful.

You shouldn't come to me for counseling.

I'm not helpful.

And people are like, people that are not Christians look at me and they kind of go, you know, that makes sense logically, but I don't think I want to believe it.

I'm like, okay, we're done.

Come on, let's go.

Uh no, here's what I'm saying.

Again, anxiety is real.

Okay?

We believe medication.

We believe in medication, take medication.

We I believe in counselors.

I have a referral network, I refer people out.

Yes, I think you would be greatly helped by that.

So if you need that, there's no stigma around that from me, and more importantly, from the biblical text.

But the Bible does say, hey, everything's not anxiety.

Sometimes it's conviction of sin.

And that's what we see here in David.

When I kept silent about my sin, my bones waxed old, your hand was heavy upon me.

Listen, God puts his hand on you, not to punish you, but to bring you back to him, to bring you to repentance.

That's why the book of Romans says of God that it's your kindness that leads us to repentance.

Third thing we see in the text is this is that we have the capacity to affect our own happiness.

We have the capacity to affect our own happiness.

If you if you'll notice, look at verse 5.

The Bible says this.

He says, Let them turn one page too many.

Uh verse five, he says, I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Selah.

There it is again.

Hey, this is it's basically the Bible saying this is good.

Stop and think about that.

Now, if you'll notice the first six sentences, the first five verses, I believe, are six sentences, and they start with this kind of cadence.

Blessed, blessed.

For, four.

I, I.

The first two sentences start with the word blessed.

The next two start with the word for.

The third, the the the the fifth and sixth one start with I.

David says basically, I'm blessed because I did something, okay?

I didn't sit around and blame everybody else for my life.

I took personal responsibility and I came clean before God.

And he said, I did something.

What did he do?

He did three things.

Number one, he acknowledged his sin.

He acknowledged his sin.

To acknowledge means just to recognize and to admit, okay?

Secondly, he says, I did not cover my iniquity.

I did not cover my iniquity.

Now, if you go back to the Garden of Eden, we've been covering ourselves since Adam and Eve.

We've been coming up with a way to cover the shame of our sin.

The Bible says that the eyes of, it says, way back in the garden, it says when they sinned, their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked.

Did you know that's in the Bible?

Their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked.

Why is that a big deal?

Have you ever been anywhere naked and didn't know you were naked?

Yes.

See, here's another crazy thing I say to people in counseling.

Hey, what is your sin taught you about you?

And people just shake their head and they're like, you are a weird little man.

Now the Bible says when we sin, our eyes are opened and we realize things about ourselves.

Now, Adam and Eve, when they realized that they were naked and they and their eyes were open, they realized they were naked, what'd they do?

They covered themselves.

They made coverings for themselves.

We traditionally believe it was fig leaves.

And so, some kind of leave, they covered themselves.

Now, watch this.

God comes along later and God says, Hey, there's a consequence for sin, and he deals out the consequence, and then God does this: he sacrifices an animal and he covers them with animal skins.

And the Bible's kind of winking at us saying, here's a little foreshadowing.

In response to sin, somebody's gonna be sacrificed to cover your sin, to take it away, actually, in the New Testament.

And so it's almost a subtle messianic promise because it's pointing to Jesus.

And he says, I did not cover my iniquity.

Here's the third thing.

I want to drill down a little bit on this.

He says, I confess my transgression.

I confess my transgression.

The picture behind the word confess is to is to cast out.

It's like you're throwing something from inside of you onto God.

Let me say that again.

The picture behind the word, he says, I confess my transgression.

It means to cast out.

It's like you're taking something inside of you and you're throwing it onto God.

Now, why is that a big deal?

Because Isaiah 53, it says that God was pleased to place upon Jesus all of our iniquity, all of our sin.

And so when you confess your transgression, you're casting something, you're throwing something out of you onto God because that's where it belongs in the first place.

That's why the Bible says of Jesus, he's our sin bearer.

A lot goes on in you emotionally.

You're dysregulated often because you're carrying things that are not yours to carry.

Somebody said to me this week, thank you so much.

This is so helpful.

I think I should be saying more than thank you.

I don't know what to say.

And I said, This is not Neil.

This is the liberating power of the gospel and the truth that it compl that it contains.

And then the person was like, Well, can I hug you?

No, we don't hug.

Clearly, you don't go to church here.

I hug my wife, I hug my daughters, I hug about five people in my church, and that's my quota.

And the person said, But this is like I said, this is the gospel.

And what I say to this, what I say to this person is, God doesn't want you walk, what want you walking around, just weighted down by your sin.

He says, Hey, cast this upon me.

Why?

Because I've already taken it upon myself.

He's like, huh.

Oh, uh, uh, uh, okay.

I confess my transgression.

Now there's a responsibility for us in confession as well.

I love I love what the preacher and writer John Piper says.

He says, confession to God is not merely admitting our sin is real, but also rejecting our sin is repulsive.

God demands that we turn from sin with repugnance because he's in the business of not just covering our sins, but also of shaping our character.

Hear that last part.

He's in the business of not just covering our sins, but also shaping our character.

Now, in verse 5, I said we're going to drill down a little bit.

Uh there's an important distinction you need to see in here.

Because in verse 5, he lists three different things.

He lists sin, uh transgression, and iniquity.

Now, if you're not careful, you'll go sin, transgression, iniquity.

Oh, those are all the same thing.

No, they're not.

Not at all.

Sin, it's a Greek word homartia, and it basically means missing the mark.

Missing the mark.

Transgression is crossing the line, more of a willful rebellion against the giving standard.

When your kids were little, you said, no, don't do that.

And your kids looked at you, don't touch that, and your kids looked you right in the eye.

And they're like, this thing right here, that I'm in the process of touching.

That's transgression.

They just cross the line.

You say no, and you're like, oh, well, and then you're like, I'm gonna count to three, and they're like, okay, count to ten.

No, no, that's transgression.

It's willful.

But here's the one I really want you to understand: iniquity.

Iniquity.

We don't really talk enough in the church about iniquity.

Uh, but here's iniquity.

It refers to the twistedness in us as a consequence of sin and transgression.

Let me put some words around that.

It refers to this twistedness in us, this crookedness in us as a consequence of the other two.

Because the more you sin and the more you you transgress, you just cross the line, here's what it sounds like in you.

You're like, well, I mean, I'm only human.

God knows I'm only human, and my God's a God of love.

What you're doing is you're accommodating iniquity, which is this you you did this twistedness and this crookedness that takes place inside of us.

It's more the inner character, and it points to this moral distortion which produces crooked behavior.

And so it's sin is something I do out there.

Transgression, I knew better, and I crossed the line.

Iniquity, I am becoming somebody I do not like.

And I and I feel like I have no power to do anything about it.

Some issues are sin issues, and some issues are iniquity.

It takes a different approach.

It's just this inward bent.

Uh, you say, no, why is that such a big deal?

Uh uh allow me to demonstrate.

You ever lie, steal, cheat, do something you knew was wrong with little or no thought about it?

You didn't have to plan or prepare, it just came out of you.

You're just like, man, I just told the big fat whopper of a lie, and I didn't have to make it up.

It just jumped right out of me.

Or you cheat, you you steal, you you just break the rules, you break the law.

And you got all kinds of rationalization, but you know deep inside that it's wrong.

See, this is iniquity expressing itself.

It's it's basically I've become twisted and crooked, and therefore twisted and crooked things come out of me.

Uh again, why is this important?

Here's why.

Uh Philippians chapter 2, verse 14.

Philippians 2:14

Listen to what the Bible says.

Now, again, iniquity is this twisted and crookedness that takes place inside of us as a result of sin and transgression.

Hear what the Bible says in Philippians.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that do not run in vain or labor in vain.

Here's why this is important, beloved.

Put these two together.

If the culture is crooked and twisted, and we are crooked and twisted because of our sin and our transgression, and we get to this place of iniquity, uh, then how does anybody get converted?

I mean, who brings any good news to the table?

Who brings the capacity to change human nature?

Who brings this perspective that says to the to the crooked and twisted culture, hey, it doesn't have to be that way.

You don't have to self-medicate because you have so much anxiety in you because of your sinful choices.

Who brings that to the table?

You see, the Bible says unapologetically, not hating on anybody, but this is a crooked and twisted generation.

If God's people are so have such indwelling iniquity that we're crooked and twisted as well, what are we going to say to them?

It explains or it should explain to you why most Christians live their entire life and never see anybody come to Christ because of them.

They go to church all the time, but they never experience what Jesus said.

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

The fourth thing we see from the text is that our prayers become our experience.

Our prayers become our experience.

Let me back up for a second because I think we came up too quick from that.

Let me just back up to iniquity.

Think about it like this.

I don't want you to go, well, I got iniquity.

What can I do about it?

Nothing.

No, no, no, no, no.

In counseling or what I call spiritual direction, I'm listening for.

Is this a sin issue?

Is this a transgression issue?

Or is this iniquity?

If you have habitual sin, a sin you keep coming back to, what's happened is you got something crooked and twisted in you, the way you think about that, and you have to rationalize it.

It's what I call maintenance versus maturity.

Maintenance, most people spend most of their spiritual energy on maintenance, but not maturity.

Maintenance, oh God, I'm sorry, please forgive me.

I won't do that again.

I know it's wrong, blah, blah, blah.

That confession, good thing, but it's maintenance.

You're trying to maintain a relationship that you don't really enjoy.

Maturity increases your capacity to enjoy God and your relationship with God.

You hear the difference in the two?

It's like having a car you spend$200 on about every five or six weeks.

That's maintenance.

Maturity is let's get a newer car.

You hear me?

The same thing's true in marriage.

You just get this established pattern.

I know people that have been married 20 years.

They don't have a 20-year marriage because they're not maturing in their relationship.

They have a two-year relationship cycle that they repeat 10 times.

That's maintenance.

Maintenance flattens everything out.

Maturity means there's progress to the relationship.

And if you're not careful, you'll just find yourself kind of thinking about God and Jesus, the church, the Bible, everything.

Just going, it's just not working for me.

That's because you don't have the energy for any more maintenance.

So when you think about iniquity, think about those two words.

Fourth thing the text tells us is that our prayers become our experience.

Our prayers become our experience.

Look at verse 6.

He says, Therefore, let everyone who is godly, let me stop right here.

Up to this point, it's been individual.

David's been saying, hey, here's my mask.

Here's what I learned about being a liar and an adulterer and a murderer.

I mean, I have no right to tell anybody what to do, David says.

But this is what I learned.

And he says in verse 6, therefore, let everyone, he says, hey, all of you can learn it too.

Let everyone who's godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.

Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.

You're a hiding place for me.

You preserve me from trouble.

You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

And then he drops that word on us again, Saylah.

Selah.

He says, therefore, because this is true, it calls us to specific action.

Because Christianity is not about appreciating God and the truths of the Bible, it's about experiencing them.

And the way we experience them is by acting on them.

And David says, hey, here's three things that God did for me and he does for the person who comes clean.

Number one, he says, you become a hiding place for me.

You become a hiding place for me.

He doesn't hide from God, he hides now in God.

Secondly, he says, You preserve me from trouble.

You preserve me from trouble.

Now, important distinction.

To preserve me is not to prevent me from having trouble.

Let me say that again.

To be preserved, he says, You preserve me from trouble.

That doesn't mean you're not gonna, he's gonna prevent trouble from happening, okay?

You're going to get in some difficulty sometimes.

But in that, what he's saying is, God acts as a watchman and he preserves me from this.

This is not going to, I say this to my kids, hey, boat in the water, that's good.

Water in the boat, not good.

And they're like, I start saying that to them, they're like eight or nine.

I would say to them at supper, hey, you want dad to say something to you because I'm smarter than you?

Now what my two kids would both respond differently.

One of them would be like, the other would be like, bring it, dad.

And they're like, okay.

What boat in the water?

That's natural.

That's good.

Water in the boat, not natural, not good.

Now the one that is 22, and she's like, whew.

Yeah.

She's in ministry.

She's like, Dad, there's a lot of people water in the boat.

And they're just bailing.

They rather bail than fix the hole.

Because to fix the hole, you gotta get the boat out of the water and dry dock that bad boy and get up there under it, and you gotta address the problem.

And it's gonna cost you something.

She's like, whew.

Now it's important to grasp the difference between being preserved and being prevented, because a lot of Christians allow their theology of suffering to be shaped by this ethic of avoidance instead of engagement.

Which is why I love this last thing he says.

He says, You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Look at it there in verse 7.

He says, You're a hiding place for me, you preserve me from trouble, and you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Ask yourself the simple question.

He says, You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Who's shouting?

Ever think about that?

You should read the Bible and kind of go, shouts of deliverance.

That sounds great, but uh, because he's already said, it's a pretty loud background here.

He says, you put uh after he says in verse 6, let everyone who's godly offer prayer do at a time when you may be found, surely in the rush of great waters.

That's what I want you to hear.

Surely in the rush of great waters.

Surely with all the chaos that's breaking out around you, trying to figure out where you're gonna go to college and are you gonna get a scholarship and is he gonna propose?

We've been dating for two years, is this going anywhere?

What are we gonna do?

How am I gonna care for my aging parents in this rush of raging water all around us?

The Bible says God surrounds us with shouts of deliverance.

Here's who's shouting: the one who's coming to deliver.

It's not, and it's God, and he's not shouting at them, he's shouting over them.

God doesn't shout at you, he shouts over you.

You say, What do you mean?

Because this rushing waters is kind of like, oh man, God, hello, God, can you see all this?

And all of a sudden, above that, you should hear God just kind of shouting.

Uh and when our when our girls were little, uh, like babies, we had a baby monitor.

Now all we have was like a$30 baby monitor from Walmart.

You suckers nowadays got like black light cameras in there, and you got a like a monitor, like a flat screen TV monitor in your bedroom, motion sensors.

Oh, the baby rolled over.

I mean, my neighbor would hit their garage door opener, I'd hear my baby monitor.

My wife, she's hitting the crib.

I mean, no, no, no.

It's the neighbor's garage door opener.

They just got home.

She says, What are they doing now?

It's 11:45.

It ain't any business, okay?

Don't be Mrs.

Kravitz from Bewitch, your nosy neighbor.

Don't insult me in the middle of the night.

And so my wife said, we took turns getting up, and when my wife would get up, my wife would get up and she would walk back there to the house, down the hall, open the door and go, shh, shh, shh, mommy's here, and pick them up.

When it was my turn, I don't know why I did it, but I would throw the cover off and go, Daddy's coming, daddy's coming, shh, shh, shh, sh, daddy's here, daddy's here.

And one night my wife stopped and she goes, Hey, hey, hey, don't start telling them in here, they can't hear you.

Okay, it wakes me all the way up, and then I can't get back to sleep for a couple hours.

And now I remember when I studied this, I thought I'm surrounding my children with shouts of deliverance.

I'm letting them know I'm coming.

And by the way, if they got so used to it, they would do something.

I mean, they're my wife would go, she's fine, she's fine.

I'd be like, you know, she's fine.

We couldn't see anything.

We'd have a monitor.

I'd go in and check and make sure there's still something they'd be looking for, that pacifier.

I'd line up six of them on the changing table, lob a couple of them in.

Uh-oh, there you go.

But as they got older, they realized any noise I make, my dad comes.

And my dad comes going, shh, shh daddy's here, shh, daddy's here, daddy's here.

And that made it all better.

And they got to be about three years old, one of them in particular, Sophie, uh, would call out, and we had the monitor.

I don't know why we had the monitor.

She's three years old, we'd have the monitor, and I would go in there and she'd be standing up in her bed.

Daddy, Daddy, I want you to sit on the floor by my bed.

And I would.

I would try to be frustrated with her, and she would flop back down, and she'd say, Sit on the floor by my bed and hold my hand.

She'd lay down, drape her hand off the mattress, and I would sit there on my back, hold her hand, and she'd go, squeeze my hand, daddy.

And I'd squeeze her hand.

And I go, baby, Daddy's tired.

Daddy's gotta go to bed.

You can sleep on my floor, Daddy.

And I would.

Now, every one of you in this room that's had a little kid, you do the same thing.

Your kids don't understand that.

And I'd wake up an hour and a half later with a bad back and my hippie throbbing, oh man.

And I would very quietly try to back out of that room.

One time I was backing out, I had the door, and she goes, Where are you going, Daddy?

You're not done watching over me with shouts of deliverance.

Yeah.

Here's what I'm saying to you.

You're that way towards your children that are helpless because God's that way to you when you're helpless.

He surrounds you.

You got to train your ear not to hear the rushing water.

You got to train your ear to hear God who's coming to deliver with shouts of deliverance.

Ask yourself, what do I hear God just announcing over me today?

Here's the last thing from the text, and we'll be done.

God is intimately keyword and affectionately keyword, acquainted with everything having anything to do with you.

Let me say it again.

God is intimately and affectionately acquainted with everything having anything to do with you.

What do you mean?

Here's the intimate part.

It's verse 8.

It's the only time that God speaks in this whole thing.

He says, God says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go.

I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

You ever wonder if God's aware of what's going on in your life?

God says, Hey, I got my eye on you.

And what I say to you is based on what I see in you, around you, and about you.

I don't need you to inform me.

I'm watching.

I'm not a sleeping God.

I never sleep.

I don't slumber.

I don't take a day off.

I don't party hard on Super Bowl Sunday and call in sick on Monday.

Like some of y'all are gonna do.

No.

God says, hey, I my eye is on you.

Everything I say to you is based on intimate awareness of everything that's got anything to do with you.

And because of that, and he says in verse 9, you don't have to be like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curved with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.

The person, bless you, the person that lacks understanding has to be disciplined.

The person that believes that has understanding, they relate to God out of desire.

Let me say that again.

The person that lacks understanding has to be disciplined.

They got to have a bit and a bridle.

God's got to yank their head to get them to go where he wants them to go.

He's got to discipline them because they don't have the desire.

The person that has understanding, with that understanding comes this desire.

And they say, you know what?

God's eyes upon me.

Everything, every counsel, every bit of counsel he gives to me is based on his intimate awareness of me and everything going on in my life.

So I don't have to inform him.

I can ask him and then I can trust him.

And then I said intimately, and then I said affectionately.

Remember, I said that's a key word.

Look at verse 10.

He says, Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

Therefore, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

It said, uh, the second part of verse 10.

He says, Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love.

That's the affectionately, steadfast love.

Some translations say unfailing love.

Some translations say loving kindness.

I remember reading the word loving kindness in the Bible and thinking, what is that?

That sounds like a manner's lesson.

Loving kindness.

Actually, those are okay words, but they they pale in comparison to what they're it's the Hebrew word hesed.

Hesed.

Let me just give you a definition of Hesed and we'll be done.

Because look at me.

You have to ask yourself, am I comfortable being loved the way God loves me?

Because I don't think most of us are.

Because this is Hesed.

This is what the Bible means, what talks about this love God has, this unfailing that is hesed.

It is the consistent, ever faithful, relentless, constantly pursuing lavish, extravagant, unrestrained, furious love of our Father God.

Now hear that again.

It's the consistent.

Think about all the people who said they loved you and they were inconsistent.

Ever faithful, relentless, constantly pursuing.

Think about the people that stopped pursuing you a long time ago, and yet they still tell you they love you.

Lavish.

Think about all the stingy people that loved you.

I tell my kids this hey, people that love you, make your life easier.

People that love themselves, make their life easier.

And they're like, uh, I think I got some of those friends.

Extravagant, unrestrained.

Here's my favorite, furious.

Ladies, what if you got up tomorrow?

And your husband was just standing there when the Batman posed and he looked at you and said, I got some furious love in me for you, woman.

And I took a vacation day because I just want you to understand the furious love that I have for you.

Would you have any frame of reference for what he meant?

Or would you be like, you just stay right there, your drunk self.

Pastor, I hate to bother you, but can you get over here?

My husband talking about furious love.

That fool ain't said furious in the whole 28 years we've been married.

Hurry.

Yeah.

Because it's so unfamiliar, you gotta ask yourself, am I comfortable being loved the way God wants to love me?

Because what God's not gonna do, and we're done.

We're done.

You're ready to be done.

You ready to be done?

It's not a trick question.

You're like, well, I got a brisket on a smoker, and I got something out there in the yeti in the garage.

Uh, it'll be there.

Enjoy all of it responsibly.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, it's just, it's it's hard to become comfortable with something you've never experienced.

And yet, this is what the Bible says.

When he says, but steadfast love, that doesn't even get close to it.

Really, what it ought to say is many are the sorrows of the wicked, but consistent, ever faithful, relentless, constantly pursuing lavish, extravagant, unrestrained, furious love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

And here's what this comes to.

Because if this is true, and it is, then why would you not want to be in a relationship with a God that loved you like that?

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, relax.

We like to teach the Bible and then give you some space to think about it.

And so I'll voice a prayer and some questions come up on the screen.

Don't try to write them down.

You can just take a picture of your phone.

Those are for our community groups.

So sit around and kind of just talk and say, hey man, what what about this?

We help each other better understand what the Bible says and what it means for our lives.

Let me voice a prayer.

Lindsay, may sing something over you.

You just kind of think and ask the Lord, man, what do I walk away thinking about?

God thinks that the Bible is provocative, instructive, right, true, and it's able to, it's it's able to be understood.

That's why we preach the Bible, not just our ideas, because your ways are better than our ways and higher than our ways.

And we've never been loved like this, and so it's kind of hard.

It feels too good to be true, and yet it is.

So, Lord, we just want to marinate in this truth just for a few moments.

Lord, to be loved like this is home.

It's like a hot bath on a cold winter day.

It just kind of warms your bones.

It's unfamiliar because many of us, it started a long time ago.

People failed us.

And people were inconsistent, and they they said one thing and did another, they didn't pursue us.

But you don't love like that.

The steadfast, furious, always coming after love of God is what surrounds those who come clean with you.

So let us be motivated to stop hiding.

Because our heart is on lockdown and you hold the key.

That's the message of the Bible.

So I pray for anyone here that feels locked up, jammed up, or fed up.

They just realize you know what?

This is not religion, this is a relationship, and it finds me and it unwinds me.

Lord, for that we're grateful.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Uh, if you're a guest, let me say thanks for being part of our church.

Uh, if you're comfortable and you'd like to, uh, we would like you to fill out one of those guest cards that's in the seat back pocket row in your row there.

Uh so we can have a record of your being here.

We're not gonna jam you up and show up at your house or apartment or whatever, but look at me.

Understand this.

Uh, I love that you come to church, but uh more than just coming to church, I want to be your pastor.

I want to know your kids' names.

If you're going through something, I want you to be able to say, hey, pray for us.

We're kind of uh my own wife said to me last night, I've heard a lot of your voice.

I'm gonna go in our room and watch something I want to watch.

Oh, that's how it's gonna be.

Well, since we're being honest, she goes, What are you gonna do tomorrow?

I know you have church and you have an elder meeting.

I said, I'm gonna come home, take a nap.

I'm gonna get up at six o'clock, and I want radio silence for the rest of the night.

And she said, What's going on?

And she likes it when I start saying something.

I said, Woman, it's the Superbowl.

She said, Excuse me, woman?

My name is Marcy.

Anyway, let's keep that between ourselves.

She's not here.

Yes, I want to watch Chopped at 6:30 tonight.

Uh anyway, yeah, I don't want to I I'm glad you come to church, but but I'm not gonna force myself on you.

I I just want you to know that we want to walk alongside you and just be a resource and a and a community of faith to you.

That's all, okay?

Uh if you would fill that out and drop on these wooden boxes.

And for the rest of us that call this your church home, uh, that's where you demonstrate stewardship as well.

Speaking of stewardship, let me give you just a piece of information, and I'm gonna show you a brief video.

You still with me?

You got two minutes?

Uh we practice full disclosure, and so this is why I'm telling you this, because we've been we're we're in the process of building a new sanctuary.

Uh we have three services, and it's like crazy.

Uh, that's the new sanctuary, a little green space right out there.

We met with the construction company last week, uh, and we set the budget on the they said, you know, this will be plus or minus five percent.

We said we get that.

We understand we built stuff before.

Uh, and here's the here's how much the new sanctuary is going to cost.

Uh yes.

Now, by the way, if you're whistling, uh the last the last note we took out was a little over 4 million, and we paid it off in almost five years.

And so you could whistle at that, but really, given our history, that's really not anything.

Uh, and so we meet with our banker this week, and he's like, ha, and I'm like, hey, we want, I'm we're gonna say to him, we want to pay as much as it off because we're signing the contract with the architect, and they'll go into what's called technical drawings, which takes five to six months, and then they start building, which takes nine to eleven months.

Uh, and so during that period, five, nine, fourteen, fifteen months, uh, we can pay as much as that down and just pay for it out of pocket.

Yes, I'm hurrying.

Don't pitch the baby.

Uh she's good.

We've all been there.

Relax.

Uh I would just silently put my hand over my kid's mouth, and my wife said, They're blue, stop.

Uh I did this one time.

I had the kid in the car seat, and I was strapped in, and I was swinging like this, and I'm like, hey, Marcy.

And my wife exploded into tears.

And I said, I'm sorry.

It was a it was a quiet ride to Chili's that night.

Anyway.

Uh, so anyway, that's uh, and we'll be talking more about that, but just be begin to pray.

How God wants you to be a part of that.

That's all.

Uh, we have a lot of things going on, but one thing I really want you to understand and and begin to pray about, uh, I want to make you aware by way of a video announcement.

I first came upon Nagmay about five or six years ago when she was thrust onto the national scene because her husband had been imprisoned in Iran.

And um his imprisonment was due to his Christian faith.

So it kind of came on the national scene.

And Nagmay, though she was uh quiet and private, she uh began to advocate for him all over the country, speaking in front of the United Nations, meeting with President Obama, um, things that uh she never imagined she would be uh doing.

So in the midst of that whole situation, I reached out to her to see if she would come tell her story to us.

And she did.

She came, she shared with us um what it had been like to grow up Muslim, she shared about her salvation experience, and she told about what it's been like to advocate for her husband, even though he was still in prison at the time.

Um little did we know that um his imprisonment would be the very thing that would lead to her freedom.

And so what she's gonna come back and talk to us about is really the rest of the story.

So on February 23rd, Natame is going to be back with us to tell the rest of her story, and she's coming along with another woman named Miriam Ibrahim.

They have stories that include domestic abuse, unwanted divorce, religious persecution leading to a death sentence, and even giving birth in prison with feed and chains.

But their stories also include salvation, rescue, healing, and hope.

Though total strangers a few years ago, they have come together to draw attention to the plight of women like them all over the world.

I hope you'll come and be reminded that God loves to take ordinary people like Nagame and Miriam, like you and me, and write extraordinary stories.

I hope you'll join me there.

Uh that is a ladies-only event that's taking place on that Sunday night, uh, 6 30, February 23rd.

Uh the cost is free.

Uh somebody stopped me in the lobby and say, how much does this cost?

It's free.

If you're coming and you need child care, we just need you to register for child care.

Uh, but we husbands, we are glad to spend time with our children because when we do that, we're not babysitting because they're ours.

And so we'll be glad to watch.

We'll be glad to to announce shouts of deliverance over our children while you're with some ladies.

Uh uh also uh Nagmay will be in our service that the 23rd that morning.

I'll be interviewing her, uh, and that'll be our service that day.

Incredible story.

Uh, if you know anybody, ladies, that's in a difficult marriage or is just kind of going through a hard time, you want to invite them to the table that night.

It will be overwhelming, all right?

Uh let me speak a blessing over you.

If you have any questions about anything you've heard today, we'll be available down front.

Stand to your feet.

Hold your hands out.

Your God sees the rushing water rising around you.

And today you have to ask yourself can I hear him announcing shouts of deliverance over me?

Depart now and train your ear to hear the shouts of deliverance.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.