Psalm 42

Well, good morning, and thank you for humoring me with that question.

I know I talk out loud to myself, but the getting caught part of it—it was actually just a couple of weeks ago. It was right before I got up to preach, and I wasn't doing it out loud with my voice, but I was doing it with my body, and I was kind of going over my notes, and I was looking at it.

At one point, I just made this big gesture, right? And the sound guy looked at me like, "What in the world?" And I was like, "Ah." I am in my head right now.

There are other people in the room with me.

Anyways, thanks for being here.

Those of you who don't know me, which is most of you, I've been at Hope for a long time going back to 2014, but we planted Hope Lowertown back in 2017. And this is my wife of— will be 16 years this week, actually. And then we've got a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 5-year-old.

6. And we are in St.

Paul.

And so similar to you, you guys will be moving over to St. Tim's, which I'm really excited for you guys to be able to do that. We also are moving into a building, a new building over kind of by Como Zoo.

And so I've been pastor slash contractor this summer, which is— it's a lot. So, but very, very glad to be there.

We've been in the book of Psalms. And so we're just going to keep doing that.

And so thank you for allowing me to be here.

Pastor Drew texted me a couple weeks ago and just said, hey, I know it's your week off. Do you want to preach again?

Sure, I can do that. No, it was— I'm happy to be here.

And so, yeah, we've been in the Psalms. This is week 5. And so, I'm not going to recap everything. If you kind of missed week 1, Pastor Drew kind of went back and just said, hey, this is what the Psalms are. And it's— this time was a lot of fun because—

I'm going to put this on the floor. Is that all right? Okay.

Because I think I just thought the Psalms were just 150 random things. And it's not that way. There's an order and there's a purpose. There's books and structure to the 150 and where it's placed and why it's placed. And Drew gets into that a little bit.

And so if you missed that, you can go back and listen to that.

But they're all different time periods of the history of Israel. It's not just King David. King David wrote about, what is it, 73 of the Psalms? But there's anonymous ones. They're all over the place.

We'll be looking at one this morning that's not written by David. And that's the whole point.

At Lowertown, we've been taking this theme of calling it the anatomy of the soul.

And it's based off of a quote from John Calvin, which I'll read here in just a second.

But if you remember going back to like biology class or something, you had to dissect a frog. We did pigs, little piglets, right? It's awful. I knew someone who did kittens. That's wild. That's a— whoa.

That's a lot.

bold take. But when you do that, right, when you're dissecting, it's just everything's on display. And that's what Calvin says. And so, we've been looking at kind of different emotions and feelings that rise up in the Psalms. And so, I've been reading this.

Let me just read this quote here from John Calvin in his commentary on the Psalms.

I've been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, an anatomy of all the parts of the soul. For there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life of all griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. The other parts of Scripture contain these commandments which God enjoined His servants to announce to us, but here, The prophets themselves, seeing they are exhibited to us as speaking to God and laying open all their innermost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw, each of us to the examination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject and of the many vices in which we abound may remain concealed. I love this because the Bible is this Beautiful book of God that He has given to us. This is God's word to us, but the Psalms are God's word to us that He's giving us permission to say back to Him. It's beautiful. What a God we serve who's like, "Hey, you lack language for how to yell at Me. Let me give it to you. Let me tell you how you can yell at Me. Let me tell you how to complain." It's beautiful.

That's what the Psalms are. So.

We are going to be looking specifically at this idea of longing or spiritual depression.

And there are beautiful, happy, blessed Psalms.

This is not one of them.

So I'm sorry if today might be a little bit of a downer. Hopefully it won't be. Hopefully it will be about Jesus and you will see him clearly. So, title of this is Soul at War.

We're going to be looking at Psalm 42 and 43, all of them. You'll see it's actually the same refrain that he uses in both.

So maybe should be one psalm, but so we're going to read it all as one. And just a simple outline here: thirst, depths, and dawn. So let me get into this.

Starting off in verse 1 of Psalm 42, it says this: As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear Before God. This is, if you grew up in the church, I don't know when it was written, maybe in the '90s or '80s, maybe. This old— not old, again, not that old— of this song that, as the deer panteth for the water, right? You guys, like, there's always someone sitting around a bonfire with, you know, an acoustic guitar. They're always the cool guy.

And then we sing this song, right? It's just this beautiful song of, as my soul just longs after God. And you get this picture of— Of Bambi, right? Taking this little sip of water by the stream. That's not what this psalm is. Not even close. And so when you look at the language, as a deer pants— first off, we're from Minnesota. We see deer all the time. When do you see a deer panting? Right? It's when it's running for its life. That's when deer pant. This is a deer running from a pack of dogs. It is Bambi, but it's Bambi and mom at the beginning of the movie. That's what it is, okay? It is running for your life. And I know that whoever wrote that song, the music just doesn't match the lyrics. And we know this because the psalmist or whoever wrote that didn't get— never got to verse 3, right? They never got to, my tears have been my food for day and night. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work with that. But that's what this is. There's some— let me reread this. This first—

these first 2 verses with that angst, with fear.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. I need you. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? There's no other direct object here. The tears here of the psalmist, your tears when you are in this season of maybe spiritual depression, that your tears are crying out to you, where is your God? They mock you as they stream down your face because in that moment you're at, where is he? I need God. I need you to show up. Where are you? My tears are mocking you right now. Then he says, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go to the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts of song and praise, a multitude keeping festival. Whoever this author of this used to lead, obviously, people into the house of God and is remembering the good old days. He's remembering the good old days when he was in the presence of God and God's people and would lead and worship. These kind of— these spiritual good old days, the spiritual longing of what once was. And maybe you've been there. Maybe you're there now. Maybe you can think back to when you first came to Christ and you were just— you just couldn't get enough. You're just in the Word and you're reading other books and you're talking to other people and you meet older Christians. You think they should know. They're They should know more. They should be more on fire for God.

And then you realize, oh, they're just kind of like, yeah, yeah, I'm a Christian.

And you just long for that. Maybe you had roommates that you were just close with. You had this accountability and you just would share things that were on your heart and you'd pray together and you were in the trenches just doing ministry together. And you just remember that. And you— man, I long for that. I long for that church family I used to have. And we miss that. And we say, where are you?

That's what the psalmist is saying here. And then he says this: Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Notice the voice of the psalmist here. This is really important because he doesn't say— it's not, why am I so cast down?

Why am I so depressed all the time? He doesn't do that.

He's talking to himself.

He's talking about his soul.

There's an old book written by a guy named Martyn Lloyd-Jones in '65, and he says, stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself. And specifically talking about this psalm, that we need to stop listening to ourselves and we got to talk to ourselves.

Maybe Language that I might use, we might use, more modern stuff. Stop listening to yourself and start preaching the gospel to yourself.

Now, before I move on, maybe in the text, I'd need to— I want to be very, very clear on something. Some of you hear this or read it and say, talk to yourself instead of listening to yourself, and you say, yeah, yeah, I've tried that. I've done that. It doesn't work. I've preached to my heart at three in the morning when tears are streaming down my face, and I'm and I'm crying out to God, and the darkness doesn't lift. I need I need you to hear this psalm that we're in is not telling you that depression is a willpower issue. It's not it's not what's happening here, and it's not what. Dr. Lloyd-Jones is saying here either.

There's a kind of darkness that is a spiritual depression. And there's a kind of darkness or depression that lives in the body, in brain chemistry, in trauma, in exhaustion. And the problem is they're often so intertwined and intertangled, you can't tell one from the other. And I think that the psalmist is going through the spiritual and maybe even physical depression because he He just doesn't have maybe the word for that the way we might in our vernacular. But he says, day and night, tears that won't stop, appetite gone, sleep broken. This psalm is depression that is both spiritual and physical. So let me say very clearly what the church has always believed for thousands of years. And that is Jesus Christ healed bodies. And so, after Jesus left and went back to heaven to be with the Father, and the apostles died, the followers of Jesus that were establishing churches said, hey, you know what else we need to do is we need to heal people. We need to start building hospitals. Hospitals are a Christian invention. You can talk to me all day long about that. And let me explain this. His people, the followers of Jesus, built the hospitals. built the clinics, built the wards for centuries, for millennia now. If you saw a hospital, you were looking at a Christian idea.

This is a book written by Gary Ferngren, Medicine and Healthcare in Early Christianity.

I'm reading a book right now for school that's just called The First Thousand Years.

There's a couple of chapters in there on this by a guy named Wilkin.

And this quote, I want to read these couple of quotes just to prove the point that I'm trying to make here.

from Origen of Alexandria.

This is from 200 AD. This is what he says. God, creator of human bodies, knew that such was the fragility of the human body that it could be subject to different kinds of maladies and injuries. That is why, foreseeing the sufferings to come, he also created from the earth the means to heal, so that if the body is assailed by sickness, there would be cures. They wanted to explore medicine and build hospitals. Again, not that much later, at 358 AD, Basil, said this, just as we would have no need for the labor and toil of the farmer if we were living among the delights of paradise, so we would not require the art of medicine for healing if we were immune to disease. Meaning, we're not immune to disease. So, you know what we need? We need doctors. We need physicians. We need therapists. The work of the physician who heals bodies redounds to the glory of God no less than the work of one who cares This has been what the church has believed for thousands of years.

So, when you see the sick being cared for, again, it's a Christian idea. There's no questions asked. This was a conviction, again, that built the wards, the clinics, the hospitals, and it's still all over the signs.

Good Samaritan Hospitals, right? They're everywhere. So when you, or a Christian, seeks a doctor or a therapist for a broken mind, you're not abandoning the God of this song. You're actually seeking one of the oldest means of grace that God has provided for you in the church.

That's maybe exactly how God is sending out his light and his truth to lead you out of spiritual darkness.

Amen.

So, whether the darkness is spiritual or physical or both, the psalm puts words in our mouth for a fight, an ongoing fight. So, let's go back to that phrase. Stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself. Notice the difference. It's very subtle here.

But instead of, why am I such a failure? Why can't— why do I keep doing that?

Why? The phrase is, why, soul, do you accuse me of that? Why are you tormenting me in that way? You see the difference? Moving on here, the depths. Verses 6 through 11 says, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and Mount Hermon from Mount Mizar.

This is always my favorite part of every week is getting to show a map.

No, I'm joking. I'm not even going to do that.

The point here is that the author of this is about 100 miles away from Jerusalem. He's 100 miles away from the temple where he wants to be in the presence of God, worshiping God. He's 100 miles away, still in Israel, but he's feeling exiled. He's feeling as far away from God as he can be. He's feeling displaced. And for most of you, your exile That feeling of displacement might not be geographical like it was for this one. It might be. There might be some of you who recently have moved here. Maybe you moved away from friends and family or a church family. You say, man, I miss that. I miss being close to my family or my mom or whoever it may be. And you just, you feel like you're physically in exile. For other of us, most of us, it's situational.

It's relationships. It's a hospital room. It's frequent doctor visits. It's a long, strenuous season of caregiving for someone you love.

Maybe it's just something that you loved in the pandemic years and all of that. Just the thing that I used to do, we just don't do it anymore. It just kind of broke this thing and I long for that.

Exile from worship, like we see here, comes in many forms. And some of them Look like ordinary life, and it hits you like a ton of bricks on a Wednesday out of nowhere.

One of my favorite movies is called Stranger Than Fiction.

It's with Will Ferrell. Anyone familiar with this movie?

Not super popular, but it's one of my all-time favorites.

It's not a comedy.

Okay, you look at Will Ferrell and you're like, ah, Santa's coming. That's not this movie. Okay, this is not a let you will cry.

I've seen it a million times, and I've cried a million times. Love it.

In this movie though, he plays a character named Harold Crick and he's an actuary for the CIA or IRS, excuse me.

And he's a tax man.

And, and he, the whole point of it is he's a kind of a stereotypical CPA.

I'm married to a CPA, so I'm allowed to say this. My wife is not stereotypical CPA, I think. And no, she's not.

But what does he do? He kind of, he's counting. He counts the tiles in the bathroom floor when he walks in. He counts his brushstrokes, you know, up and down and left to right. He's, He's just numbers. Everything is numbers. Pretty, a pretty mundane, boring life. The whole point of the story is that there's this narrator, this British voice he starts hearing that's narrating his pretty mundane life. And he hears the voice. This is why I had you ask the question, do you talk to yourself? He's hearing this voice out loud, or he can hear it, but nobody else can hear it. And there's one day it's throwing him off, right? You can imagine having this voice that's not your inner voice, this other voice talking to you. But you're the only one who can hear it. And he's standing at a bus stop and the voice comes and says to him, and Harold just thought it was a Wednesday. And he gets mad and he starts yelling out, what do you mean it's just a Wednesday? And there's this kind of Eastern European woman standing there and she goes, don't worry, Harold, it is a Wednesday. Right? And he's like, no, no, no, you didn't—

ah, never mind. Right? You don't get it.

Right? He's talking to himself out loud. But I think there's— this is what happens. We start shouting and screaming out to God, what in the world is going on? And it's just a Wednesday. I'm screaming into the void of, what in the world, God, are You doing? My tears are crying out to me and they're mocking me as I'm folding my laundry. How long?

Well, we get language then from this passage. Again? Not again. The psalmist says, deep calls to deep, the roar of Your waterfalls, all of Your breakers and Your waves have gone over me. Mount Hermon, where he's at in the north of Jerusalem, about 100 miles.

There's snowmelt there, glacial— glaciers that would crack and melt, and these waves, the floodwaters, would come rushing down. And he's seeing that, he's hearing that, he's saying, this is what it feels like. The roar of the waterfalls, it becomes a picture of his innermost being of wave after wave. Okay, I feel a little reprieve, and then wave slams into him.

I love that the language is here, though, that there's not— he doesn't ever doubt the existence of God.

Because you can see it in the language, your waterfalls, your breakers. This isn't someone who just says, oh, that's karma or chance, or maybe this is that ladder I walked under a couple of weeks ago and it's finally catching up to me. That's not what's happening. No, God, you did this. These are your waves. These are your breakers. You did this. You can fix it. Day by day the Lord commands His steadfast love; at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

Day by day the Lord—

in your English translations, when you're reading your Bible, especially in the Old Testament, you see LORD in all caps. It is for the covenant name of Yahweh. Okay? So he's invoking here. He's not— he used to— he was just saying God. General God being, but here he invokes his name. He gets very specific. This is your covenant name. By the by day, Yahweh commands his steadfast love. This is a word; it's called hised. It's just his covenantal, never-ending, never-fading, never-failing, eternal love. Yahweh by name. This is who you are. This is Your love for me. Day and night. The same language that he used about his tears mocking him, he's now saying that about the love, the steadfast, never-ending, never-diminishing love that is present from God.

And then the author keeps going, which is beautiful.

I say to God, my Rock, why have You forgotten me? Why do I go on mourning because of the opposition of my enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God?

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

He's going to say this again. It's the same refrain that he used in verse 5.

He's going to use again here in verse 11. Why are you cast down, O my soul?

Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Notice that this, again, the feeling of, God, you've abandoned me, comes after verse 8. This beauty of saying, you are Yahweh, you are God, and you love me with its covenantal love. And then another wave comes and just hammers him. And he's right back into spiritual depression. It's beautiful that it's here, right? If I was a scribe from a couple thousand years ago and I came across this psalm, I might have just torn off that page. Why doesn't he end on, yes, let's look to God? And his love that's everlasting for me. Because that's not real life. God gives us these words. He says, this is what I do. This is what happens. This is, this is real life. In the second refrain, again, we read the identical words. And yet the author is demonstrably not better yet.

Stop listening to yourself. Start preaching to your soul about who God is.

When you do that, it's not some magic pill that just cures your depression or the season of difficulty. It doesn't do that. And this psalm proves that.

This is what God is telling us to tell him when wave after wave hits us square.

In the mouth.

One of my favorite games when I was growing up was a game called Mortal Kombat. They're still around, but in this game, you can imagine, it's combat to mortality. Okay? You figured that out? With a K. Kombat with a K.

It's cool. And I was always this guy, Sub-Zero. And you would do these combos. And I was always him because I knew one combo, left, right, A, and you'd shoot a little ice ball.

Left, right, A. Left, right, A. That's all I could do.

And you'd fight and you'd do all this thing. And at the end of it, when you would get all their life power down, they would kind of stand there dazed and this voice would come over and it would say, finish him.

And then you'd have to enter some crazy code and it would finish him, as you can imagine.

This psalm is not a finishing move. This psalm is a fighting stance. We are commanded all over Scripture to fight. Fight, keep fighting, fight the good fight. Hold fast all throughout Hebrews. Hold fast. Don't let go. This psalm is saying the same thing. Hold fast to Christ. Don't let go.

Keep fighting the fight. And so let's get to the dawn in the remainder of our time.

Vindicate me, O God. This is now Psalm 43.

You'll see why it probably should be one psalm. Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against ungodly people. From the deceitful and unjust man deliver me, for you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

The author here now takes those thoughts. He's been talking to himself. He's been preaching to himself. But now he says, now, God, let me turn to you and let me Let me pray to you. Let me petition to you. He turns his thoughts upward. He's now starting to ask for something. He's not just spiraling or catastrophizing something. I think we all do that. Something bad happens. I've done this where I got this car. My wife and I just got it. And I mean, we had— we just got it, like weeks. And I backed into another car, right? What? I'd never even gotten close to an accident. Hit a parked car in a lot. How does that happen? And what do I do? I mean, oh man, my insurance rates are going to go up. My wife's going to hate me. What is that? I just we can't afford all the things, right? Then Steve Trechter, my boss, I was I was venting to him, and then Paul Stiver, you know, maybe over at North Lakes. Paul just said he's spiraling, and Shrike goes he's spiraling, right? Because I do. I tend to do that. And what the psalmist is saying is. Not just— he's not spiraling. He's saying, yeah, I do this. I'm going to preach to myself. I'm going to preach the gospel to myself. And then I'm going to talk to God. And I'm going to go back to God with my questions. He still has questions, but they're brought to God in prayer rather than just internal thoughts.

He preaches them to himself and then goes to God.

He says, Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill.

Enter your dwelling, and then I will go to the altar of God, to my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, my God, O God, my God. What I love about this is that the psalmist doesn't ask for the sadness to go away. That's not how I pray. When I'm going through a season of difficulty or depression or sadness, it is, God, fix it.

God, heal my kid. God, remove this thing from me. I can't handle it anymore. And the psalmist here says, I can't handle it, but God, what I desire most is to be in your presence again.

I will go to the altar of God, to God of my exceeding joy. And I will praise you with the lyre, my God, my God. The sadness doesn't go away. At least not that we're told in this passage. It's still there. It's still present.

But what he does ask is that he would be in the presence of God to worship. He goes from this hill to the house of God, to the altar, and then in the presence of God. He isn't homesick in exile because he's geographically removed. He's in exile and homesick because he's not in the presence and in the house of God. And the light and truth that we read here in verse 3 can find us through many applications. It can be found through an open Bible, a praying friend, or it can be a counselor's office on a Wednesday or in church on Sunday.

And then for the third time, we're going to get the same exact refrain. That's why I love poetry, because the first two times he says it's a little distraught.

Feels empty. But here, even though it's the exact same words, you can hear a little bit of hope. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Nothing has changed here other than his perspective. He's still far from home. Sadness hasn't been removed. But his soul is drawing closer to God. Another quote from Lloyd-Jones here.

He says, instead of muttering in this depression, in this depressed, unhappy way, remind yourself of God, right? Don't spiral. Don't just internalize it. Preach to yourself. Man, why, why do I struggle with this? No, no, no. Hey, soul, knock it off. Remind yourself of God, who God is, and what God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. So how do we do this? Well, let me give you 5 steps on how to cure depression.

No. All right. You guys have been around Hope long enough to know, nah, it doesn't work that way.

You know what I will do, though, is I'm going to quote your pastor to you. This is him from last week. The Bible isn't just a book about the steps. On how to clean yourself up from the muck and the mire, or in this case, from depression. It's actually a book about the person who comes and puts us out and pulls us out from the muck, who saved me and put a song in my mouth.

Sometimes the sadness doesn't go away, but God is there. Jesus is there. He shows up. We see this.

In John chapter 8, where Jesus says, I am the light of the world, and whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have light and life. I am the way. In John chapter 14, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, then you would have known my Father also.

John 8 · chapter mention John 14 · chapter mention

From now on, you do know him and have seen him. When we're in the dark, We want the light. Jesus is the light.

When we're lost and we want to find the true way, Jesus is the true way.

When we feel like life is over, look to Jesus who is the author and finisher, the beginner and ender of our faith, and he will set you free. The psalmist wanted to be in the presence of God.

He wanted to go to his altar, right? The house, the hill, The altar and presence. I love this because Jesus does this. He fulfills all of this. Jesus goes to the hill. He goes to Golgotha and He sacrifices Himself on our behalf. He then says, it's not just about this physical temple. He says, I am the temple. I am where God is. I am the presence of God in this altar. I am the altar. I am Emmanuel, God with you. But He doesn't just stop there from the house to the hill, to the house, to the altar of the presence. He says, I am actually going to be the sacrifice on the altar. The psalmist here prays for reprieve from the waves and God sends His Son. So now we get the opportunity. We get the opportunity to approach the altar, which Jesus has brought near to us. He allows us to approach it.

Amen.

So if you're a follower of Jesus this morning, don't come this way. You're going to go out that way to approach the altar. But we get to do this. And so this morning, if you feel far from God, if you feel, man, I just, I just don't feel his presence anymore. Jesus is saying, come, come here. I'm right here. Here's my, my body and my blood. This wafer that represents my body that was broken for you. This juice which represents my, my blood. That was shed for you to forgive you of your sins. Come, welcome. I want to be in your presence. We get to do that.

And we get to go from the hill to the house to the altar to the presence through the sacrifice of Christ. And so just in gospel application, same refrain that we've seen 3 times, hope in God. And praise him, our God, our salvation and our God. Even, even when you're in the valley, even when you're getting hit, smacked in the face with the wave. Again, this is a fighting stance. It's not a finishing move. How do I know that? Because Jesus already finished it.

That's why on the cross, when he's nailed to the cross and he cries out, it is finished! It is finished! He finished it. So then we keep fighting. We keep fighting the good fight. And the beauty of the church is we don't have to do it alone. We get to band arm in arm. We get to share our struggles and our depression with other people that care and love.

Pastor Drew loves you guys. I mean, really, you can hear it, right? I went back and listened to the sermons to catch up on the Psalms. He loves you. People meet me and sometimes I can— they're like, I don't know about that guy. No one's ever said that about Drew, right?

No one's ever met Drew and been like, I don't know.

Kind of rubs me the wrong way. No one's ever said that. He's a great guy. He loves you, really loves you. He's here for you. He wants to talk to you.

He wants to fight alongside with you.

He wants to encourage you to hold fast and help him do the same. We're going to sing a song. I don't remember the name of it, but there's a phrase in there that says, my highest joy and my deepest need. That's the song. My deepest need, I just, I don't feel it, but you are my highest joy. So as we respond, if you're a follower of Jesus, would love for you to take those elements, come to the altar. You can respond through that.

You can respond through singing worship songs.

The worship team is going to come on up. You guys come on up if you want, and they're going to play 3 songs.

And as they're playing, you can respond in prayer. Maybe just need to get a good cry out.

I'm sorry. Maybe you need to talk to yourself out loud and talk to God.

You can respond through giving. There'll be a—

there's a box in the back, I believe, and you can do that. Just pray, sing, worship, and taste, viscerally taste what Jesus did for you. How beautiful. Come, come all who are weary and heavy laden, and he will give you rest for your soul. I'm going to pray, and then the worship team will sing as we worship together through song and communion and prayer and giving. Let me, let me pray. Father, thank you.

You are so good. I said, God, I thank you that in the midst of whatever the thing is that I'm struggling with, that I ask you to remove that thing, you don't. Genuinely. Because it draws me closer to you. It forces me.

Amen.

To enter into your gates with praise and thanksgiving and weariness, even as we see here.

I thank you that you're not just a genie in a bottle that just fixes my every wish and desire, but you took on flesh.

You know what it's like to be betrayed. You know what it's like to be beaten. You know what it's like to be left behind, just how we feel it. You know what it's like to be human. And then in your sovereignty and your beauty, you give us these words to complain back to you in an act of faith.

God, I pray for those who are just going through it, who are just feeling the sadness, feeling that weight.

God, we do pray that you would remove it.

And yet at the same time, I pray that it would just draw them closer to you to enter into your presence through the blood of Jesus.

We love you.

And it's in the name of Christ I pray. Amen. Amen.