Experiencing God In The Midst Of Fear - Experiencing God In The Midst Of Fear

Hello everyone, I'm Dr.

Steve Holt.

I want to welcome you to the Road Church Podcast.

Each week we go into God's Word.

We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

And we are here to build the Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world.

So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life.

So I want to open this morning before we get into Psalm 27 and be really vulnerable with you guys.

I think you know, you that are part of the road on a regular basis, you know how much vulnerability means to me because it's saved my life.

It saved my soul 11 years ago when I went through a really dark time, and I've been through a dark time again.

And sometimes when I read David in the Psalms, I'm going, man, I wish I didn't relate to him so much.

I want to live in the resurrection, and it feels like I'm always getting crucified on the cross.

But in talking to the elders and the pastors this week, but also we've been together, even though I've been on this quote-unquote sabbatical, it's been the roughest, darkest time of my life because of my marriage.

And um Liz and I have been married will be 40 years in September.

And we've had seven kids, and we have seven grandchildren.

And there's I don't think there's any time in 40 years where I ever even slept in another bedroom.

So I mean it's just been a really awesome marriage.

But some things have happened spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, that I did not expect, and it's happened, and so we're dealing with it.

So we've been separated for a period of time, never been separated before, but I wanted you guys to know that because you you need to know.

I mean, this is my family with my children and my wife and my grandchildren is number one, but then you guys are number two.

I mean, you're my family, you're my spiritual family.

And I've tried to get out of it so many times in relation to maybe I should just resign and just, you know, get out of the ministry.

And God just, in when I'm fasting, when I'm praying, when I've done these, it's called a novena.

If any of you come out of a Catholic background, you may have heard of a novena, but just praying for nine days and having about 25, 30 other people pray with me, I always get stay the course, stay the course, stay the course.

Um I'm gonna I'm gonna move.

I'm gonna move in a in a revival way, I'm gonna move in a mighty way.

So I'm clinging to that, you guys, but I just need you to know that there's been no infidelity, there's been no moral failure.

It's it's more in the realm of the spiritual, the emotional, and and I haven't been the best husband, and I haven't been the best father.

And and I don't know what being the best is, but I think through this I see these areas of my life that because of just literally the focus of Liz and I, which has been as missionaries, you know, we met smuggling Bibles in China, having kids, going to graduate school, starting a Bible college, starting a Bible school, which I did.

I actually forgot that I'd done that.

And some guy came up and said he's getting his MDiv from the Bible college that I helped start back in in the 90s, and I was like, oh yeah, I did help.

I forgot about that.

You know, I don't, and Liz said she didn't even know I'd done that.

So it was like I forgot to tell anybody.

But so, and then we started, you know, churches and planted churches, not only the ones I've pastored, but I've probably helped about a dozen others.

So I love what I do, and I'm and I'm one who finds great satisfaction in bringing people together in love and unity and grace.

I like problem solving, I just dig that.

So, in the process of all that, I feel like that Liz and I, now that we're empty nesters, have sort of neglected our marriage.

And so we're working on it, we're in counsel, we're in counseling, and I feel very optimistic about what God's doing.

But I just wanted you guys to know.

And um, I don't want you to hear something.

That's it.

There's nothing more to share, except I guess lastly, I would say that we have um the elders and I've got overseers and pastors.

Everybody knows everything, okay?

So I'm under great wisdom and counsel.

I'm not out there on my own.

They're with me.

And um, so there you go.

Uh, I don't know what else to say other than that.

I'm trying to be as truthful and honest as I can be.

Super scary for me to get up and share this stuff.

And so, but I just know it's the right thing to do, and God's gonna, God's gonna move.

Reconciliation's gonna come, and we're gonna see God do something that we could never even ask or think, right?

Right?

So live free.

Live free.

Live free.

Amen.

And I'll be speaking, speaking of that, uh whole heart live free.

I'll be speaking and doing a series on Man on Fire.

The title's Man on Fire, starting on Tuesday morning for wholehearted men.

Let's open in prayer and um and give God our lives afresh.

We're gonna look at Psalm 27, which is about discovering and experiencing God when you are in fearful situations.

And I've been in that for the last four months.

And some of you are in it right now, but you all have are you been in it or you're going into it because fear is a big, big reality.

Anxiety is a big, big reality, and Psalm 27 has been mightily used by God in my life, and I pray it'll be for you guys.

So, Jesus, thank you for this time together.

We commit it to you.

We ask Holy Spirit that you would come and show up in power, show up in kindness, show up in forgiveness, show up with hope.

Many of us in this room, myself included, we need hope.

Because when we don't have hope, we don't have anything.

When we have hope in the goodness of God showing up, we can also take almost anything.

So, God, we give you your word, your spirit.

We give our hearts to you this morning.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So I've entitled this Experiencing God in the Midst of Fear.

And I love this graphic that my daughter Anna put together for this.

If you look at it closely, you'll notice that there's a storm coming to this little tranquil boat.

Have you ever felt like that?

Like you're you things are going great, you feel like you're doing pretty good, and then, man, out of nowhere, something happens to you or to your family or to your marriage or to you that you did not see coming.

Well, guess what?

I think that's life.

You know, and I can't tell you how many times I've said to myself, oh, if I had only done this, that wouldn't have happened.

If I'd only done that, that wouldn't have happened.

Well, there's some truth in that.

I mean, some of us make bad decisions, and that that creates a scenario that we have to have the repercussions to deal with.

But the reality is that a lot of times you can be just moving along, you're right where God wants you to be.

And actually, God's allowing storms to come into your life because he's going to teach you some stuff you can learn no other way.

And so you guys know, probably from an agrarian perspective, that you can't grow much on the mountaintops.

There's very few cornfields on mountaintops.

Where the cornfields are are down in the valleys, right?

That's where the moisture is, that's where the fertile ground is.

And so we talk about going through the valleys of the shadow of death, but that's where you grow.

It's in the valleys that you grow, and we love the mountaintops.

Oh my goodness, I think mountaintops are so cool.

I'd like a few right now.

Um but but the reality is some of the deepest, most meaningful, most powerful, and most unique growth is going to happen in valleys of the shadow of death.

And let me just say this: you're passing through the valleys of the shadow of death.

You're walking through the valleys of the shadow of death.

You're not camping out there.

Okay?

Camp out on mountaintops occasionally, pass through valleys of the shadow of death.

Now, that may be it may be a prolonged, it may be months, in some cases it might be years, but you will pass through, you will get past this, you will eventually see victory if you'll abide in Christ through it all.

So Psalm 27 is to me one of the best Psalms by David dealing with fear.

Because it's one thing to say fear in the past tense, it's another thing to talk about experiencing God with fear in the present, where you're actually in it.

How do you do that?

Psalm 27 shows us how to do that.

And David's unique because in this Psalm, he goes past tense on fear, but then you're gonna see in the middle of the Psalm, he goes present tense with troubles and fear.

So it's very unique.

It's a very unique psalm, and all through these last, especially the last three months, and in particular the last two months, I just keep going to Psalm 27 again and again.

And it just has ministered to my soul, and I pray that it's gonna minister to yours.

So turn to Psalm 27 if you haven't already.

And again, I want to call it experiencing experiencing God in the midst of fear in our lives.

So look at verse 1.

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

When the wicked come against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.

Verse 3.

Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear, though war may rise up against me, in this I will be confident.

Now, this is really interesting because David's talking about, and I think it's I think he's middle-aged to maybe a little older.

He's looking back, he might have been talking about the Valley of Elah when he dealt with, he had to have dealt with some fear in his confrontation with Goliath.

Then we know he's in constant situations where he is asked by Saul to take on Philistine armies, so he does that.

He goes into, he gets, he gets rejected by Saul.

He's pushed out of the court of Saul, and he goes to the Cape of Abdullah.

He has those men that gather around him there.

And for the next 17 years, David's an outlaw.

So he understands fear.

And yet I want you to look at this.

Is my first point.

And this is really, really important.

It's probably the most, it may be the most important point of the whole psalm.

Is David declares truth to fear.

David declares truth to fear.

Men and women, you've got to do that.

Steve Holt has had to do that.

It has been the strength of my life to not wallow in fear and let my mind go to the things that I'm fearful of or what the conclusions of these particular circumstances might be.

Well, could it end up in this?

Could it end up that?

Rather, to stop that kind of thinking, to take your thoughts captive to obedience to Christ, and then to declare what you know to be true right now into that fear.

That is what David does.

So what does he say?

He says, first of all, that the Lord is his light in salvation.

I wish, I wish God were like a searchlight.

I wish God were like when we used to go frog gigging as a kid, we took a headlight, uh, uh, we took an auto headlight attached to a battery, and we'd shine it along the edges of these lakes, and then we'd see the eyes of the bullfrog, and we'd go in and we'd we'd take them out with a German Luger.

It's just boom, boom, boom.

Okay, I know that sounds gross to all the women in the room, but and actually it was kind of gross, I just will tell you that.

But we like the frog legs, whatever.

Okay, but the point is that's not the way it is.

That's not the way it is with God.

God is not a searchlight, God is a flashlight, and he only shows you a little bit.

My word is a is a lamp to my feet.

It's a lamp to my feet, it's a light to my path.

A lot of times for us, church, we only see the next thing.

You gotta be okay with that.

You gotta be okay with the fact that God is creating faith in your life by asking you to trust Him for the next step.

Man, I wish I could just see down, I could see all the way down and go, oh man, look what's gonna happen.

You have to believe that.

But it's not the light that's gonna show you that, it's the faith in your heart that believes that.

And so David is saying that.

He's saying, You are my light, and then he says, You are my salvation.

Now, I think there's two meanings to that.

One is that he's our eternal salvation, but isn't it exciting to realize he's also the salvation of your current situation?

That he's gonna save you out of this.

He knows what you can take, and he's gonna give you what you need at the time if you'll let him be your light.

So if you'll let him be your light for the next step, he'll be your salvation for future steps.

And so David declares that.

Is he seeing it?

I doubt he's seeing it right now.

He's making a decision, I'm not going to fear.

Whom shall I fear?

And he's talking about people here.

We fear people most of the time, not circumstances.

And so he fears a person.

He feels, he feels like he's under attack by people, and he says, God's gonna save me, God's gonna pull me out of this.

And then he says, The Lord is the strength of my life.

The best way for God to be the strength of our life is to stay humble.

I'm telling you, 1 Peter 5 is true, that if we humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God, it'll exalt us.

God resists the proud.

What does he say?

He gives grace to the humble.

Guess what grace means there?

Grace is not salvation, grace.

Grace there means present power for the moment.

That's literally what it means.

That God will give you present moment power because you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.

I hate that.

I mean I do.

I wanna I wanna know all the answers, I want to have it all figured out, but to realize that I have to be humble and I gotta be under God's mighty hand, even when I don't like the circumstances, is how He gives us present day strength for the moment called present time grace to get us through because the light's only showing us the next step.

So it's it's I've said it so many times to my kids when they've had questions about things with jobs and stuff like that, is just do the next right thing.

Just do the next right thing.

Don't worry about the future, don't worry about this or that.

Just do the next right thing.

And if God's showing you, he'll show you.

And if he's not showing you, then stay.

So God's orders are the same orders.

The old orders are the same orders until you get new orders.

So you may be uncomfortable and not like it, and believe me, that's the way I've felt at times.

Um, but the old orders are the same.

Stay the course, stay the course.

And so that's the first thing.

That's the first thing I want us to get this morning.

It's just really important.

Declare truth to fear.

And so you gotta pull away, you gotta get away from all your problems, and you gotta get alone with God, and you gotta declare it.

You gotta declare it.

And before you go to bed, it's the worst time.

Demons come out at night.

Psalm 90.

There's demons, the terrors of night, they come.

At least they come to me then.

And I have a great day, and then I at night it's thing that's when things start buzzing around, man, and it gets weird.

And so that's where you gotta you gotta declare it at night.

You gotta declare it in your sleep.

You gotta declare it at 3 a.m.

I had to declare it at 3 a.m.

this morning.

Now look at verse 4.

He says, one thing I've desired of the Lord.

This is what I'm gonna seek.

I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret place of his tabernacle, he shall hide me, he shall set me high upon a rock.

Number two, we have to focus on one thing.

I say, why what's going on here?

I mean, David's a king, David's a warrior, David's a musician, David's an artist, David's a poet, but he says, this one thing, is this one thing that I'm gonna focus on?

You know why?

I know why.

I know why.

Because there were so many things in David's life he could not control.

There's no person in the Bible where we know more about the personal life of a character than David.

We know more about David than Jesus.

There's four gospels about Jesus, and largely they repeat themselves about his life and his lifestyle, but David has got at least four whole books that talk about him, and it's his personal life, it's his married life, it's his warrior life, it's his kingly life, it's his and all of the Psalms, I mean, half the Psalms are written by David or so?

Do you realize how much David could not control people?

How much David could not control armies, how much David could not even control the king who said he loved him and then he betrayed him?

Anyone feel like that?

That like there's so many things in your life you cannot control.

Raise your hand if that's true.

And the rest of you are liars because you know that it's true.

And if you think you're gonna control your life, man, I got news for you.

You're living in la la land.

Okay?

So you can't even control what you eat sometimes.

And that you would think that's under your control.

But when somebody says butter pecan ice cream to me, I'm out of control.

I'm already out of control.

Okay.

So, so the reason I think that David had learned to focus on one thing was that was the one thing he could control.

The one thing he could control is I'm going after God.

I am gonna seek first the kingdom.

I'm gonna dwell in the house of the Lord.

I'm gonna inquire in his temple.

I'm going to go to the secret place of the tabernacle and be with him because I can't control what Saul's gonna do.

And I can't control even what my 400 men.

Remember that in 1 Samuel 30?

Remember that with the Amalekites?

I mean, they're gonna stone him.

These are his best guys.

This is like his church, and now they want to stone him.

So David knew troubles.

They were right there in front of his face all the time.

He couldn't control his circumstances, but what he could control was what he did with the direction of his heart.

I can't control this, I can't control that, but God, this one thing I do.

This one thing I can focus on.

And for the last four months, this one thing I've been focusing on, men and women, is abiding in Christ.

And sometimes it really, really stinks.

It's really a terrible time, and it's like, this is like the worst.

I'm praising God, and yet I'm still worried.

I'm still, right?

Right?

So you're you're a saint and a sinner, right?

And so, but but this is the one thing David understood that he could focus on because of all of his troubles, and so that's what he did.

He chose to dwell in the house of the Lord.

Now remember, this is Old Testament stuff.

So at this point, the Holy Spirit's not perpetually upon the believer.

It kind of dances around with prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament.

So what David had experienced was in the tabernacle, remember, there's no temple yet, in the tent of meeting or the tabernacle, God's presence, he could see.

The fire by night.

Remember?

So he wants to be there.

He wants to go to church all the time.

He wants to come into the sanctuary and spend time with God.

He wants the presence of God because it appears from what we know of the Old Testament that the presence of God wasn't always there.

Now you have that, you're a temple.

You're a temple of the Holy Spirit.

You have the presence of God wherever you go now, but not at the time of David.

So that's why David would cry out, Lord, don't take your Holy Spirit from me.

So he's learning, he's growing about the presence of God, but he knows that perpetually the presence of God's in the tent of meeting.

He wants to dwell there.

And church, wherever you are, if you're camping this summer, or you're at work all summer, or you're at home for parts of your day, you can meet with God wherever you are.

You can make him your one thing.

And I would challenge you to always take time every day to spend time with God.

Whether it's the morning or the evening or the afternoon, that you would spend time with the Lord.

I would call it, do this, do this before the summer's out.

Have a one thing day.

Why not have a one thing day?

You're out, you know, it's your day off, you're off work, or you take a day off, and all you do is spend that time in God's word, worshiping, praising him, and say, God, speak to me.

What do you have for me?

That's dwelling in the house of the Lord.

That's inquiring in his temple.

That's what David's talking about, this one thing.

And I've done that.

And even as I come back to the road, it's kind of a staggered approach.

We're calling it kind of a staggered approach to my coming back to the road because I still have so many things going on that are so valuable and important that I want these one thing days where I'm just, I'm not going to do work as far as the church.

I'm not going to do work as it relates to family or marriage or anything like that.

I'm going to, my work is going to be this one thing: spending time with God.

Spending time with Him.

And I'll tell you some fun places I've gone is I've gone to 11 Mile Canyon where I fly fish a lot, but I don't fly fish.

I'll just go there.

I'll take a camping chair and I'll just get by the stream.

And I'll just spend time with God.

I like to go down to the Broadmoor sometimes and just go in the lobby and uh and look at all the weird people that go to the Broadmoor.

No, I try not to do that, but it's it's very tempting.

Everybody's I'm at the Broadmoor.

Yeah.

But um but to be in that, that's that's a cool place, and there's a fire pit or a fireplace outside out there.

There's just just anyway, places like that where you just get away from your surroundings and spend time with God can be valuable.

Look at verse 6.

And now my head shall be lifted above, my enemies around me, therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in his tabernacle.

I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

Now, this is really important, number three.

The vantage point of praise.

The vantage point of praise.

Praise, I believe, is what lifts you up.

Praise is what lifts God up in your life that releases his power to be poured into your heart and life.

Enter his courts with thanksgiving.

Enter his courts with thanksgiving, but enter into his tabernacle, enter in his temple with praise.

So thanksgiving opens the doors, but praise moves you in.

And so that praise in our lives, where we worship God with praise, takes our mind off our circumstances, takes our mind off all the stuff that we're worried about and all the fears in our life, it lifts up Christ.

Someone has said, I think it was Derek Prince, who once said, that thanksgiving is focusing on the goodness of God, but praise is focusing on the greatness of God.

So that's what you had in that first song.

Men and women, that's what you had in that first song that Josh chose.

That was exalting the greatness of God with a praise that I was watching, almost all of you in this room, you were engaged.

You came in and you were engaged to praise the Lord.

Well, you have to do that every day.

And when we praise him, it lifts us up out of the surroundings, verse 6, of our enemies.

We offer sacrifices of joy.

Because I don't like to praise God.

I just don't like it.

I'd rather think about University of Georgia football or something like that, you know, or going hunting or fishing or whatever.

But I don't necessarily like to praise God.

It's not something that I naturally have a bent toward.

But when I get into it and I begin to praise him and I take the focus of all these other things in my life, then the joy comes.

You want joy.

Who wants joy?

That comes through praise, men and women.

Praising Him in the midst of sucky circumstances, to use a theological term, is the way to be lifted up.

It's a sacrifice of joy.

You're sacrificing your time and energy to choose praise.

Feelings only come after faith.

Faith is a choice, and then the results often are the joy and the feelings that follow.

But you can't get to the feelings of joy if you won't take the act of faith and praise him.

Okay, now there's a big shift in Psalm 27.

Huge shift.

From 7 through 12, it's like, I'm going to call it the dark night of the soul, to quote St.

John of the Cross.

Dark night of the soul.

So David now goes to present tense.

He said, declare truth.

He declares truth and fear.

He's focusing on one thing.

He's choosing the vantage point of praise.

But look what happens next.

And this is the humanness of our dilemma.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice, have mercy also upon me and answer me.

When you said, Seek my face, my heart said to you, Your face, O Lord, I will seek.

Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger.

You have been my help.

Do not leave me, nor forsake me.

O God of my salvation, when my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take care of me.

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me in the smooth paths because of my enemies.

Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries.

For false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence.

I mean, this guy, he feels like that God might be gonna forsake him.

Maybe God's gonna leave him.

He feels like his family has forsaken him.

He feels like God's gonna hide his face from him.

He feels like God's angry with him.

You ever feel like that?

That sometimes it's we get so low, we get so down that we feel that way.

Let me give you a definition for the dark night of the soul.

And I don't know if any of you have ever been through that.

But if you've been through a divorce or you've been through a loss of a child, or the loss of a job, I think you might have experienced this, but I thought this was a pretty good definition.

I kind of worked it from some different things I looked at.

The dark night of the soul is when the meaning that you have given your life to, what you thought you could count on, what you've built your life around, collapses.

That you thought you could count on that person, you thought you could count on that job, you thought that this was gonna happen or that was gonna happen, and it collapses.

And the very fabric of what you believed in is falling in all around you.

That's the dark night of the soul.

You're gonna go through it, church.

You will go through times of a dark night of the soul.

And David is experiencing it here, but he doesn't camp out here.

He doesn't stay here.

Look what he does in verse 13.

I would have lost heart.

That means I would have lost all hope unless I believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Number four is the goodness of God.

Believing that you will see what Paul wrote, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

It's a belief, and this is interesting.

The word belief here is the word amon.

And amon is like a foster parent.

It's the word for a foster parent.

So it's letting faith foster you, almost like you have an orphan spirit, to foster your faith to believe in the goodness of God.

So courage comes from faith, and faith is being fostered by making a choice, as he says, to believe.

I had to believe that I would see, I would experience the goodness of God.

I don't think he feels it.

I don't think he's currently experiencing it, but he is believing it.

And in believing that, sometimes all you've got is that little thread of faith, that little thread of belief to get you through, to get you through again that God in his goodness is going to work it out.

God's working even this to the goodness of God.

And then lastly, in verse 14, he sums it up this way wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart.

I say, wait on the Lord.

Okay, if you're if you're one who's taking notes, I want you to circle weight in your Bible, circle weight, and then I want you to write next to it write weave.

Write weave where there's weight.

That's literally what it means.

Literally, this word wait means weave.

It means to braid.

It's the same word for braid.

And so it's God coming.

When you're waiting on God, he's weaving something into your heart.

He's weaving faith, hope, and love into your heart.

He's weaving these three strands of the power and the love and the peace of God into you while you wait on him because you don't see anything happening yet.

You don't see anything happening right now.

But you say, God, I'm gonna wait on you, I'm gonna trust you.

Guys, this is not passive.

It's not passive, it's actually bold.

It's bold to wait on God, it's bold to say I'm gonna trust God, it's bold to say I'm gonna believe in the goodness of God, it's bold to say I'm gonna praise God and go to the higher place.

It's bold to say I can't control what this person does or that person does, but I can control me, and I'm gonna spend time with God, and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna worship him.

I'm gonna go down to the Broadmoor, I'm gonna go out to the uh campground, or I'm gonna go out in my backyard at the fire pit, whatever it is, and I'm going to wait on God there because it's one thing I can do.

There's one thing I can do, and I'm gonna do that.

And guess what's happening is that God's weaving, God's braiding his work into your life.

And you don't feel it, you don't see it, but folks, it happens, it's working, it's working in my life, it'll work in your life.

Thank you for listening to the Road Church Podcast.

We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

For more information about the Road Church and to find more content like this, go to theroad.org.

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