July 26th, 2026

Uh it might not be so easy to trust him when things are a little bit darker, a little bit more difficult, and a little bit more threatening or incomprehensible or painful.

But Paul is sort of this hallmark in the scriptures about trusting trusting God.

I mean, Jesus certainly did that.

Jesus lived that trust.

Jesus was the embodiment of that trust.

But Paul, as a human being, you know, taught it and exampled it for us.

And so we can know that that's a place we can come from.

We can come from a place of trust in terms of who God is and where he is and what he is and what he's doing and how he works with us and through us and through his own auspices and through all the things that are the elemental in our creation.

You know, the the idea that God is in everything and through everything and works in everything and through everything.

So there can be a natural trust if we think about it, if we pursue it, like Paul is teaching us in this moment.

So Philippians 4, 10, we'll begin with 10 through 13 is his expression, really.

The expression of his trust is to rejoice.

So let me get to that passage and we'll start working this passage 10 through 13.

And Paul says, because he's in prison, and because he's been provided for by a church that he that is beloved to him, they sent up uh uh a prophetitus to him with gifts and provision because he needed that in prison, because you don't you have to care for yourself, as Pastor Michael's been telling us through this uh uh through this series through Philippians.

Uh so this is his expression of thanks, thanksgiving.

And he says, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that now at length you have made your thoughtfulness, thoughtfulness for me to blossom again.

That was a matter indeed about which you were always thoughtful.

By you, by you had no opportunity.

Not that I speak as if I were in a state of want, for I've learned to be content in whatever situation I am.

I know both how to live in the humblest circumstances and how to have far more than enough.

In everything, in everything, don't miss this, in everything and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of being hungry, of have to have more than enough and to have having less than enough.

I can do all things, because in everything, I can do all things through him who infuses strength into me, Jesus.

So it's a really profound statement.

And it's kind of one of the top ten you know passages that we we think about and refer to, especially this I can do all things through him who infuses strength into me.

And so we're gonna kind of think about how that works for a little bit here.

So so the the idea here in this in this um in this visit that we're having this morning is about providence, trust, and joy.

And so we're gonna go through those three, these three three elements under which we sort of operate and we can operate if we're conscious of it and we tap into it and we trust it and we believe in it and we work through that like Paul is expressing to us in this in these three verses here, his rejoicing in all things, because I can do all things to the one who infuses strength into me.

And so it sounds cool, but how does that work?

Okay, well, let's think about it.

Paul uses one of the great words of Greek and Roman ethics, and it's called, and the word is it's a it's a Latin word autarchase, which means entirely self-sufficient.

You know, in Christianity, we don't like the idea of self-sufficiency.

You know, we don't think that way, it seems secular, but but he uses that word because you know his environment is Greco-Roman thinking.

And so powerfully representative in Greco-Roman thinking are the Stoic philosophers of the day.

And they had a pretty strong influence on the culture there and how they how the culture viewed life and how to do life, and the Stoics were influential there.

So Paul's tapping into this thing that he knew his audience would already kind of understand.

Paul was good at that.

He could take a cultural element and kind of turn it on its head, and that's what he's going to do here with this, with this idea of being entirely self-sufficient.

And so autarchai, self-sufficiency, was that was the highest aim of stoic of Stoic ethics.

By it, Stoics meant a state of mind in which an individual was absolutely independent of all things and of all people.

They proposed to reach that state by a certain pathway of the mind.

They propose, get this.

See if this works for you.

They propose to eliminate all desire.

That's how they're going to do it, okay?

You know, how I mean, okay, but you know, show me how that works for human beings.

The Stoics believed that contentment consisted not in possessing much, but in wanting little.

If you wanted to make a man happy, they said, add not to his possessions, but take away from his desires.

The Stoics believed that the only way to contentment was to abolish all desires until a stage had been reached when nothing and no one was essential to life.

Sounds kind of dry to me.

This was done by deliberate act of the will, our own act of the will.

They believed that the human person could, through the act of will, eliminate all desires.

So they don't have to rely on anything or anybody, be an island, right?

Okay, no man is an island, but they said you could be.

Okay, so it's a deliberate act of the will.

The New Testament scholar T.

R.

Glover said, the Stoics made of the heart a desert and called it peace.

So we see at once the difference between the Stoics and Paul.

The Stoics said, I will learn to be content by deliberate act of my own will.

Paul said, I will learn to be, I can do all things through Christ, who infuses his strength into me.

So he's flipping this idea about how to become content, not by eliminating, but by taking on.

Taking on Christ.

Infusing the self with a divine.

Okay, that's the strength.

The strength is divine strength.

Not a barren desert of nothing and relying on that and being content in that, but instead relying on the infusion of the strength of Christ into us so that there can be contentment in all things.

Okay.

And so it's a so Paul's brilliant here, and that he's taking on the sense of self-sufficiency that people would be thinking about and understanding, but he's saying, this is how you do it.

This is how you get to that.

And I'm living it.

I'm living it in prison.

And I'm okay, and I'm good with that.

I've been provided for.

For the Stoics, contentment was a human achievement.

For Paul, it was a divine gift.

It's cool.

I mean, isn't that great?

Don't miss that.

Please don't miss that.

Please hear that the contentment is a divine gift.

It's a provision.

The Stoics were self-sufficient, but God, but Paul was God sufficient.

Stoicism failed because it was inhuman.

Christianity succeeded because it was rooted in the divine.

Paul could face anything, anything, as Miss Natalie talked about, because in every situation he had Christ.

Those who walked with Christ, those who walk with Christ can cope with anything.

So let's talk about this grand idea of providence because it's a big topic.

It's a huge topic.

And I I mean I've thought about it here and there along the way, just different times, especially when I got provided for, you know, I'm like, hey, provision.

I like that.

That's good.

It feels good.

You know, I like me, I like to get that gift.

And in fact, there was a time in my life when uh I was uh sort of in venture capital and had taken on this big project, and it was a big project for us.

And um and it was really hard, and uh and it was sort of crashing and burning, as can happen in venture capital.

You take big risks, big rewards.

Uh and you know, our reward was to be a little bit discontented uh because it wasn't working.

And and so uh we had to shut this project down, and it you know had an a financial impact on me, and I had to really like pull it in a little bit and kind of you know, like, ooh, this is rough.

You know, I wasn't expecting this, but this is where I was.

And so I had this friend, in fact, Don Stevens, and he's played with us up here, and I Don and I have played music together for a long time and different situations and worship and and walked to Emmaus, and we've done music teams and we've done gigs and a Sam's burger joint.

I mean, you know, he's a really close good friend, and we're music guys and great friends, and we've done a small group together for 30 years.

And uh so we're having a little bit of a test financially, right?

Myself and my family.

And he calls me out of the blue and he says, Hey, I was just watching TV, watching the news, and your name was put up on the screen on the 6 o'clock news.

They were doing a story about this state fund where these where monies go into this state fund and and and uh entrust uh that haven't been claimed.

Um and they had some San Antonio people that were on that list.

My name was on that list.

And he goes, here's the phone number.

Call this phone number, you know, call them up, man.

There's some money there waiting for you.

And I'm like, are you serious?

I mean, what?

Out of nowhere.

I mean, I'm in a state of discontent, of fear, of concern, you know, things are shaky.

He calls me out of nowhere.

Out of nowhere, right?

Out of nowhere, randomly, fortunately.

Right?

Is it?

Is it random?

Is it fortunate?

Is it just out of nowhere?

So I call the number,$5,000 is sitting there.

$5,000.

It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was to us in the moment.

It was great provision.

It was provision when we most needed it.

And it got us through, you know, a little bit of a tight and brought us out into the clear.

But it was because he called me.

I don't he saw, I didn't have the news on.

I wasn't watching TV.

He was.

He saw my name.

He called me.

Hey man, call this number.

I didn't even know, I didn't even know how the money got there.

I don't even remember now how, why, what it was from.

It was from some insurance thing that had reserves in it that weren't distributed and they couldn't find me, so they put it in this fund.

And it's just sitting there,$5,000.

What do y'all think that was?

Can I hear somebody?

Providence.

Providence, right?

Provision.

Provision in a moment.

I mean, it's just the perfect real-time example of how out of nowhere, you know, when we were in a little bit of a type and had some anxiety growing up in there, and here he here comes God.

So Christians have, I believe, and we can have, and we should have, and we can develop an acute sense that this is our Father's world, and that the affairs of men and nations in the final analysis are in his hands.

That is what Paul's expressing in Romans 8.28, a sure knowledge of divine providence, when he says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

That's an expression of the understanding of God's providence.

Paul concludes, what then shall we say from these things?

In other words, what should be our response to the sovereignty of God and to the fact that he is working out a divine purpose in this world and in our lives?

The world repudiates that truth, but Paul answers this way: If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

And if we don't know that Jesus was the ultimate providence, we got to catch up.

Okay?

I mean, that's it.

That's it, it's the ultimate example of providence, okay?

And so he's saying, look, you know, he's for us, he's not against us, and look at what he provided for us as his own son.

He gave his own, he gave his own son to us.

Oh my gosh.

It doesn't get any bigger than that, right?

Does it?

It's eternal.

It's final, it's the ultimate.

There's nothing else but that.

Okay?

That's the provision that God has for us.

One of the oldest sayings in the ancient church summarizes the essence of the relationship between God and his people, like this, and it's this Latin term deus pro nobis.

It means God for us.

God for us.

That is what the doctrine of providence is all about.

It's God's being, it is God's being for his people.

What then shall we say to these things, Paul asks?

If God is for us, who can be against us, and who can separate us from the love of Christ?

Paul is saying that in prison.

None of this is going to separate me from my understanding, my trust in God.

My trust in God, my Savior reigns.

Okay?

Is it going to be distress, peril, the sword, persecution, suffering, sickness, human hostility, financial stress?

Is it?

Paul is saying that no matter what we have to endure in this world, as Christians, nothing has the power to sever the relationship we have to a loving and sovereign providence.

The word, and I wanted to look up providence and kind of really get digged down into what that means.

And the word providence is made up of a prefix and a root.

The root comes from the Latin videre, videre, vid, videre, from which we get the English word video.

Okay, that's cool.

Julius Caesar famously said, Vini, viti, vici.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Vidi, I saw.

The viti in that statement, I saw, comes from videre, which means to see.

That is why we call television video.

I didn't know that.

The Latin word, I'm learning, I'm learning.

It's good to learn, you know.

Part of understanding and experiencing providence is to learn.

You know, learning in and of itself is a type of providence.

So uh the Latin word pro video, provideo, pro video, and I thought about fideo.

I mean, South Texas guy fideo, you know, like I love fideo, you know.

I mean, you know, I like fideo, and then I like, you know, super fideo, which got the you know, the ground beef and the and the frijoles in it, and I get a vision when I drink when I eat it because it's so good.

You know, it's like powerful stuff.

But this is not that, it's pro-video, which we get our word providence, which means to see beforehand.

To see pro-video, provideo means to see beforehand, a prior seeing, a foresight.

However, theologians make a distinction between foreknowledge of God and the providence of God.

Even though the word providence means the same thing as the word foreknowledge, the concept of providence covers significantly more ground than the idea of foreknowledge.

In fact, the closest thing to this Latin word in our language is the word provision.

Provision.

Okay?

Consider what the Bible says about the responsibility of the head of a family.

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Ooh, wow, that's strong, right?

That's from 1 Timothy 5.8.

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, does not provide.

So the responsibility is given to the head of the household to be the one who provides and makes provision.

That is, that person has to know in advance what the family is going to need in terms of the essentials of life, then meet those needs.

When Jesus said, do not be anxious for your life, what will you eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what will you put on, from Matthew 6, 25.

He is not advocating for a careless approach to life.

He was taking, he was talking about anxiety.

And we are not to be frightened.

You know, Paul didn't have any anxiety in prison.

I would.

I'd be anxious.

Especially if I had to defend for myself.

I'd be a little anxious.

But Paul wasn't.

So at the same time, God entrusts us uh uh to a responsibility.

It's a partnership, right?

A partnership to the uh to heads of household to be provident.

That is to consider tomorrow and to make sure there is food and clothing for the family.

You know, help me with my real estate brothers and sisters, raise your hand, real estate people, my friends in the real estate business, y'all.

Okay.

Y'all know about y'all know about partnerships, right?

Participate in partnerships a lot.

I mean, that's sort of the basis of how real estate transactions are done, commercial side of things.

And there is the general partner and the limited partner.

Okay, and we all have a role to play in in our partnership agreement.

But our general partner has the fiduciary responsibility to provide the elements of the partnership, the management, the taking care of the money, making sure things are done according to the partnership's agreement.

And the limiteds are you know have a you know a smaller role, but we we contribute too.

And I kind of like that metaphor of a general of a of a real estate partnership.

We've got a managing general partner and we've got limited partners.

God is our managing general partner, and we're his limited partners.

But that means we participate, we take part in this, right?

Okay, take part in provision, live provision, do provision, accept provision, recognize provision.

The first time we find the word providence in the Old Testament is in the narrative of Abraham's offering of Isaac upon the altar.

God called Abraham to take his son Isaac, whom he loved, to a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice.

Quite naturally, Abraham anguished under a great internal struggle with God's command.

And as Abraham prepared to obey, Isaac asked him, Behold, the fire and the wood, but hey, bro, where's the lamb for the burnt offering?

He's getting a little anxious.

This is from Genesis 22, 7.

Abraham replied, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

How do you know that?

He trusted God.

He trusted the one who was guiding and directing him.

And God did provide.

So Abraham spoke here of the Jew of the Jehovah Jereh.

God will provide.

It's the first time we see Jehovah Jereh.

And he even marked the spot as the this is the place of Jehovah Jere.

God will provide.

That is the first time in the scriptures that uh that the Bible speaks of God's providence, which has to do with God's making provision for our needs.

And, of course, this passage looks forward to the ultimate provision he has made by virtue of his divine sovereignty, the supreme Lamb, Jesus, Jesus, everybody, who was sacrificed on our behalf.

Provision.

Scripture.

Speak of it over and over and over and over again.

Let's catch it.

Let's feel it.

Let's know it.

Let's live it.

Therefore, in order for me to be conceited, Paul says, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a message of Satan to torment me.

But he said to me, My great Paul's asking for relief from this thorn in his fresh in his flesh, and God says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Why?

Why?

Why?

Tell me.

You all can talk.

Tell me why.

Why can we be street uh how can we be strong when I'm weak?

That doesn't it doesn't seem like a logic problem, right?

But what's Paul telling us?

How can we do that?

Trust in his provision.

Trust in his provision.

It's there.

It will come.

A guy will call you, he's watching TV.

Hey, there's money in a bank sitting over there for you.

What?

Okay, thank you.

So, you know, this provision thing is such a big picture.

And so I want to think about a little bit about the big picture of the of provision for a second.

Get sort of cosmic here for a second.

I'm sorry I'm doing that, but I just can't help it.

I love I love uh astronomy and and and and space and how that creation and the universe is so magnificent and amazing.

And and I was I've seen this thing about how how um how our solar system works, right?

And our solar system is just this, it was described as this giant spaceship, giant spaceship, you know, several billion miles wide, ultimately, hurdling through space, right?

In a galaxy, in an arm of a galaxy that's a hundred thousand years across.

One galaxy in the midst of trillions of other galaxies of equal size or bigger.

That's the vastness of creation.

But creation is a very difficult and dangerous place.

There's a lot of energy and there's a lot of gravity and there's a lot of gamma rays and things that are dangerous for us, right?

That that impede life.

Okay, so we have this solar system that's hurtling through space, and it's got this engine in the middle of it.

It's called the Sun, right?

And that sun is an 8 billion year long engine.

It's gonna run for 8 billion years.

Wow.

Who thought of that, right?

Okay, and can you like you know when you're a kid, you know, when you used to light his firecracker, you know, light off a big big rocket, you know, you're gonna sit, sit back, and let see that thing, you know, go up into the sky and burst, and a big star burst comes out, you go, oh wow, and it lasts for a second, right?

Can they think about God, God lighting that fuse for the sun to fire up?

He goes, I can't wait till everybody sees this.

You give his excitement in the moment when he fired up the sun for an 8 billion year purpose.

Provision was its purpose.

Provide energy and life and warmth, you know, and a gravitational attraction that keeps us in circulating around it and around it.

And our our planet is in exactly, precisely the right orbit for life.

A little bit further in, too hot.

A little bit further out, too cold.

Die either way.

We're right in a sweet spot.

Right there in a gravitational pull, hurtling through space, and a galactic arm that has an 8 billion year path of no other stars in its way, no other impediments for this provision to operate.

That's a big picture idea of provision.

We also have a moon that goes around us at just the right orbit that moderates, helps moderate our weather, tides, it keeps our system, helps keep our system in balance.

Do you think that's random?

Do you think that's just random?

Just happened?

And then we have Jupiter a billion miles away that's sucking up all kinds of comets and asteroids so we don't get pummeled to death by all the debris and asteroids and comets that would destroy life.

It's a vacuum cleaner.

It's working too.

It's in synchronicity, it's in a pocket.

I'm gonna go talk about a pocket here in a minute.

But the pocket is perfect.

It's perfect.

I mean, come on.

I mean, it's just like it's so obvious sometimes, you know.

It's like, how does this happen?

It is happening.

It's cool, it's providence, it's provision.

It is a life-giving engine that was fired off by God so that we could sit right here in this place that He provided so we can talk about this and wonder about it and think about it and let it affect us, let us change us a little bit, let us be more conscious of his presence and his intention to keep us steady and ready for him in the moments where we really, really need him, especially.

And it's this big engine operating for us to do that.

And it's so big and so huge and so grand and so amazing, and yet here we are in this little speck, you know, and here we are, and we're the beneficiaries of this mighty work of power and glory.

And we get to participate in that.

And we fret about where our next meal is coming from.

So that's the sort of that's sort of the macro idea of providence, right?

The creation in and of itself is providential.

It gives us life, it gives us the ground to walk on.

My wife is a big, big, big, big proponent of walking barefoot on the ground because she says that the ground beneath her gives life, has life-giving properties that are healthy for us.

There's science in that.

It's not just mumbo jumbo, it's real.

And she likes to catch the early morning UV rays when the sun's coming up because there's life-giving properties in it that are that help regulate our circadian rhythms.

Okay?

So you know, it's just surrounding us.

We're breathing in air, right?

We're breathing in air right now.

That's providential.

It gives us life.

It gives us the ability to breathe, to live, to think, to cry, to laugh, to sing, you know, all these things.

You know, and so that's inspire, inspire, bringing in, bringing in air.

Inspiration is bringing in air.

Bringing in air, ruach, Holy Spirit.

Same thing, right?

Holy Spirit is an inspirational element that God has given us to breathe in and to let it affect us and give us counsel and give us presence and give us the understanding that God is with us and he's talking to us and he's counseling us, he's giving us wisdom, but we inspire the Holy Spirit.

We bring it in like we breathe in the air that he provides for us.

It's multi-layers of provision that are going on constantly.

And so I want to talk just a little bit about the pocket.

Uh, I love this idea because I sort of get to experience it, but uh Ralph, our bass player, and Gabriel Barajas, our drummer, and myself are the sort of the rhythm section of the worship team.

And it's kind of our job.

Lisa, our Lord, uh tells us, tells us this is the rhythm we need for this song.

Okay?

So this is the beat.

This is where we, you know, we're gonna come from this place.

You know, so this is this is how I want you to lay it down.

And so our job is to provide, to get into the pocket.

It's a musical term, it's the pocket.

And the pocket, you know, is this sort of time to the is timing, it's rhythm.

And so we lay down the beat, you know, and it's you know, it's it's sort of, you know, critical, but it's not the most beautiful.

Okay?

And so the most beautiful part is when Manuel fills in with his acoustic guitar and plays the little lead riff in there, and it brings the music to it.

And Lisa gets to play, you know, a piano riff and sings a song and wink, you know, harmonizes.

But we gotta provide the pocket.

We gotta be in the pocket so that they can do their thing, right?

So God has given us this pocket.

He's provided this pocket for us, this rhythm, this rhythm of life, this planet, this star, this engine, you know, and he gives us this word that says, here's the rhythm of life.

It's full of provision.

Trust it, and it'll bring you joy.

Okay?

Lisa trusts us to provide the rhythm.

But she can sing out.

And it says, Y'all can worship, we can give you that gift, we can provide that gift to you.

And you sing back, and we're praising God, and we're lifting him up because we're in the pocket.

We're all in it together.

And when I I love looking out and we're kind of jamming and we're going, and I see y'all moving and grooving, and it's happening, you know, and you're praising and we're singing and we're feeling it.

We're in the pocket together.

And that's what he wants the most.

He wants us to be in community, in community, you know, in provision, in a provisional community that provides for each other with worship and with care and concern and resources so that our life can have meaning and balance and that we can get through the hard times and we can celebrate together the good times.

That's the pocket.

That's the pocket we want to be in, you know, and I praise God, praise God for that gift, that gift of providence, that gift that we can trust it, like Paul says, I can trust this because I'm given strength by the one who fills me up.

And I can do all things.

We can do all things.

We can suffer, we can rejoice, we can do everything in between, but we have this opportunity to be in the pocket so that we can praise Him and we can live together in harmony.

And we can live together in the mercy and the grace and the forgiveness and the perseverance and the all the fruits of the Spirit that provide for us this way to go about things.

Provision.

Trust it and find joy in it.

Know the joy.

Joy is joy is like provision in that it doesn't run out.

Happy is a moment.

Happy's a time, happy is a when you get to that moment, and we're like, that was awesome.

You know, into the national championship in Texas and USC.

I was there at the Rose Bowl, and it was ecstatic.

You know, sorry, my Aggie brothers, but uh, but you know, I had that moment, you know, and it was a great moment.

And I, you know, we sweep my buddy Big Dave Meaden and I sat there and we waited and stayed after the game for as long as we could.

We wanted to take every bit of it in because it was just we knew it was going to be fleeting, you know.

But it was a really great moment, and we stayed at it for as long as we could, but then we had to go back to Las Vegas, is where it was the only place we could get in and out of.

And we didn't get there until 5 o'clock in the morning.

So, long about you know, 4 o'clock in the morning, our joy was kind of, I mean, our happiness was sort of kind of starting to wane.

We're getting a little tired.

And so the happiness and the ecstasy of that moment was already to start starting to wear off.

Joy doesn't do that, joy prevails, joy stays with us, joy sustains us, joy is our expression of a trust in the providence of God.

And that is what we can rely on, and that's what we can believe in.

So let me pray.

Gracious Lord, we are so honored and grateful to you that you provide.

You provide everything, you provide all that we have and all that we need, and all that we will ever need, and forever and ever.

And we provide, and you provided your son, a savior who has given us life eternal.

What greater provision is that?

The sun lasts eight billion years, salvation lasts for an eternity.

So, in that moment, so in this moment, let us stop and recognize your provision and give thanks.

And let's express our thanks by trusting in it and then rejoicing in it.

And it is your son's name we pray.

Amen.