Psalm 27 | My Father's House - Psalms: The Heartbeat of God

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Today be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So we've been in the Psalms this summer, and it's been fantastic.

It's been a wild summer.

We got Top Gun 2 came out.

It's been the great mullet comeback.

You guys haven't missed that, right?

It's out there.

You just gotta open them up and see them.

I don't know.

Uh it's bad.

But people are doing it.

And then Roe v.

Wade.

I mean, praise God for that.

You know, we just Yeah.

Amen.

We gotta keep celebrating the wins.

That's exciting.

As I was reflecting on the Psalms and kind of where we've been going and what they do and why they're written and what they do to our souls, I got this parody.

Um I grew up in the Midwest, and the summertime was always about cultivating your farmland, your gardens, weeding, taking care of things.

And a crucial part of that process is water.

You can't grow without water.

And I feel like the psalms have been water to our souls.

You water your garden to nourish, to grow.

And so too, we've been watering our souls with the soothing refreshment of this book, learning and hearing the heart cries, the earnest statements, the most candid conversations of David's heart and others in these psalms.

And we've been chasing after God, and what a wonderful time of encouragement and refreshment.

So we're excited.

I'm going to be teaching chapter 27 today.

And it's another psalm from David.

And in preparing for this, my prayers leading up to and have been that God would unlock something deeper in my own understanding about David as a man.

We have him in his full humanity, in his brokenness, in his pain.

He screws up as good as anybody can, but yet the Bible still refers to him as a man after God's own heart.

That's what God says when Saul calls him, when Samuel calls him and anoints him with oil.

As a kid, I grew up thinking about David as a boy.

So as a boy, like I think flannograms, and in my mind, David was comprised of a shepherd boy who would slay bears, kill lions, and obviously he slayed the giant, right?

But that was really the extent of it.

And he did it with a stone.

So that gave me a lot of encouragement because I wasn't allowed to handle sharp weapons as a boy.

My parents said, no, no, I'm kidding.

But as I've gotten older, the mysteries of David in his heart and the complexity of the human condition that's written in God's scripture, what we can learn from him, what we can take from him, and what does it mean is that even in his failures and his greatest faults, he never stopped chasing after God.

His greatest desire.

Perhaps the biggest mystery about David is this innate desire to chase after and understand God's heart.

Sometimes we're so consumed with what's in front of us in our world, the immediate things, you know, what's on the horizon, what's on the TV, what's on the news station, the things that are right in front of our world, and we get consumed and we get distracted.

David had a different set of circumstances.

Maybe he didn't have the same technologies that we all deal with, but he had a he had certainly permission to be distracted with what was going on at the borders of Israel with the Philistines.

Saul, who was doing a haphazard job as a king himself, and hearing the rumblings of his own internal family dynamics, but he never let that stop him from chasing after God's heart.

And that convicted me.

It convicted me because I don't aspire to make David's mistakes, obviously, but I do aspire to chase after God's heart the way that he does, and the way that he writes in honesty about the issues that he faces, but how he's always able to readjust his alignment, his internal compass, he can readjust that and focus back into God's kingdom and chase after God's heart.

He wants to know him so desperately.

And 27, even though there's only 14 verses here, there's a lot of power in this.

There's a lot of water for our souls in David's writings.

And the title of my message today is My Father's House, My Father's Son, and or My Father's Daughter, right?

Because there's sonship, there's inheritance here, and there's this thing that David walks in his life in tune, intact, knowing that he is God's son and he delights in him.

And that's not unique to him.

We all have that, but we allow ourselves to get distracted by things: pain, life, brokenness, all those things can cause issues and pull us away from chasing after God's heart.

And then there's the waiting on God in return.

So, core themes, real quick in this chapter, the things that have jumped out of me is first recognizing God as our light and salvation.

What do we have to fear?

God is our fortress from our enemy, seeking God's presence above all else, hearing God's voice, worship to conquer our fear, and having the courage to wait patiently on God.

Now I have to say this.

Um, if you guys haven't read it, Steve, Pastor Steve broke into a um this week was a different blog, but the prior three were, if you haven't read them and you're not getting the blog, I highly encourage you to go back and read his previous three.

They're all good, but these last three about stirring God's heart.

And the um he and I were talking on the phone a couple weeks ago, and it was when we were in Psalm 91, so I think it was like two weeks ago, and we were talking about that, and God put it on my heart.

He's like, What are you gonna teach on?

I go, I felt like God, and in your message on Psalm 91, God told me to go to 27.

Because there's something in there about the waiting on God and how that's just polar opposite to our human nature.

But in his last three blogs, we talk about this.

He titled them, you know, there's there's the stirring God's heart with your praise, stirring God's heart with your prayer, and stirring God's heart in the waiting.

And so it's excellent.

Um, I highly recommend that because he's he's teaching on what stirs God's spirit.

David practices, as a great example, these concepts with obedience and discipline throughout his entire life.

And the result is David experiencing the manifest presence of God.

It captivates him from his childhood to his very last breath.

And so too should it for us as well.

We want to continually seek and experience the manifest presence of God in our daily lives and existence.

And if I could, if I could distill 27, there's a lot of things in there, we're gonna get into all that.

I'm gonna break those points down in just a minute, kind of the core themes.

But if you were to break it down and to one distillable, like concentrated fact of it, the whole the whole chapter is about David chasing after God and seeking his face.

Enemies are at his gates, enemies are at his walls, they're chasing him, they're putting him in caves.

Whatever.

All he wants to do, the thing that matters most to him is staying in God's presence.

And so when we do these things, when we praise him, when we worship him, when we pray, when we wait on God, that stirs his heart that we would encounter him face to face.

So, I want to read this excerpt out of Steve's book.

We cover this in a lot more detail in our weekend events for our men, but this is out of uh Steve's book, Worshiper Warrior, specifically the worshipper chapter, the heart of worship.

And I think Steve writes this uh exquisitely here.

He goes, We have seen that through the depth of David's heart, he is a wholehearted, passionate seeker after God.

He has a heart that is in tune with God's heart that runs after God.

And it is at the heart level that we encounter God.

This can happen anytime, any place, with within any context.

God manifests his presence when our hearts are engaged with his being.

I talk to people a lot, and they're like, I don't hear from God, I've never experienced God.

I mean, when we were, my wife and I were running the youth group, we would hear students be like, you know, hey, what are you hearing?

Dreaming, what do you when you pray, when you worship, are you encountering God?

And oftentimes they would say, I've never had that experience, I've never experienced that connection, that closeness, that proximity with God.

It's it's foreign to me, I don't understand it, but yet that's the very core purpose for our creation, is what we were designed to do.

And yet it's foreign to us as we travel and walk through this life.

So it's it's a muscle that needs to be exercised.

And I would joke with them about how we exercise that muscle, and I would go back to the old S and L skits about Hans and Franz, you know, and pumping people up.

And I'm like, you guys gotta pump up your spirit, man, and exercise that muscle so that it grows and you strengthen that and it becomes a familiar, uh, a familiar space for you.

And they would experience that throughout the semesters, and then when it would hit, when they when they would encounter that, they would come up their eyes white, they're like, it happened during worship today, during prayer time, and they would be so jazzed because they got to experience what they were designed and created to experience.

And that is connection with our Father, connection with our Creator.

And that's all David wants.

So I'm gonna jump into our text and we'll get started here.

He opens much like he always does, right?

There's more declarative statements from David.

He is a guy of declaration in his mind, and I think that's why a lot of us can relate to that if you're used to that.

When you've been in hard spots and you have to pull yourself out of the muck, out of the mire, you've got to reset your brain, you've got to hit reset on the modem, and you've got to get a different train of thought, and you need Christ's mind in the moment of struggle, pain, and circumstance, you've got to do that.

And so this is what he does.

He comes right out, and I don't know where he's coming from in this very moment, what's happening to him acutely when he's penning this, but he feels the need to open the chapter with some absolute facts and truths.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Why should I be afraid?

We know for him to write that, he is struggling with some fear, so now he's gonna overcome that.

Second part 1b, the Lord is my fortress protecting me from danger, so why should I tremble?

So, fear, I broken down in three categories, and I'm not going to go heavy into fear today because I feel like that could be a whole three-part series for a later day.

But I just want to say that we can, all of us in this room, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, can put ourselves into three categories about how fear and why it comes and when it comes on us.

Fear comes from conditioning, your circumstances, how you were raised.

Were you raised in a home that was fearful?

Were you told, were you taught a spirit of timidity?

Your conditions and circumstances around you can cause fear.

Concealing.

Fear of concealing.

We talk a lot of this about this at our men's events too.

Brene Brown's work on shame.

Shame connected with fear causes us to conceal, because if you knew this about me, my greatest fear is that you wouldn't want to know me or be my friend.

I've done things you can never imagine, right?

Paul writes on the chief among sinners, he puts it in the text.

Generations have read that.

Bold courage and humility to write that.

So he overcame his fear of shame to admit those resumes of sin.

Fear comes from controlling.

Our circumstances spin out, and so we're afraid that it's out of control.

We can't control our scenarios, so then fear sets in around our desire to control that.

Whatever is happening with David right now, he probably falls into one of those three categories.

Some of you today can connect in one of those categories today, in one of those three categories I just explained.

So then he's gonna go into the enemy and what happens, uh, and really what's really at his doorstep.

This doesn't stay negative, actually, the most of this chapter is highly positive, but he's gonna point out some obvious facts as well.

So he's just made the declarative statement about who God is, he's his light, his salvation, and his fortress.

If we, I dare say, if we could condition our minds and get into the habit and the obedience and the discipline of when hard times come, if we could just pause for a minute in our circumstances, pull back, separate ourselves from the event, and say, God is my light.

I'm gonna see in a different field now.

I don't have to stay in darkness.

God is my salvation, Jesus has done the work, and he lives in my life.

So now I know that I'm rescued.

And and and now he's my fortress.

So I have a place of refuge now.

And I'm gonna get into the Father's house in a minute, so we'll hold that thought for the refuge.

When evil people come to devour me, when my enemies and foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.

He already knows and he's predicting the outcome of the people that are against him, because he knows and he's standing in the truth about whose side he's on.

And he can pull from a vast array of experiences in his life of overcoming bears and lions and giants, that he knows he will be delivered.

So any attack against him, God's chosen one, is gonna be futile.

Though a mighty army surrounds me, my heart will not be afraid.

Even if I am attacked, I will remain confident.

I dare say that his grandson would probably remember, his great-grandson would remember this Jehoshaphat in times ahead when Israel was gonna be surrounded by a mighty army.

And he was gonna pull on his great-grandfather's words and be confident and remember what his grand his great-grandfather David did in times of struggle and the victories that he got.

This is it for me.

Um I've hung on verse four on this whole chapter, probably more than any other verse.

And David says this the one thing I ask of the Lord, the thing I seek most, is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord's perfections and meditating in his temple.

This is what he seeks most.

It's not fame, it's not riches, it's not even his own throne room, it's not even his own palace.

What he's seeking is to be in God's presence.

He wants to be in the house of the Lord.

He's not seeking more military victories, any more courageous accolades.

If we were to pause for a minute, and this would also be true of David, when we think about our homes that we grew up in, they have, for me, my home has both very fond, joyful, as well as painful memories in our home growing up.

Because it was a house of human humans living together in our own understanding of life and our brokenness and pain, etc.

And so that's also probably true for many of you.

And even as parents, we do our best to cultivate a home that our kids will feel safe, secure, it would be a refuge for them.

David's refuge was not in his father's house, not his earthly father's house.

He probably spent more nights in the open pastures and fields than he ever did in his own house.

So when he's out in the wilderness, right, he's encountering the father's house.

And I have this memory as a boy, and I don't, I'm trying to place my age in this, but I remember we kind of grew up in the rural farmlands.

We were in neighborhoods, it wasn't like complete like destitute, like out in the middle of nowhere.

But there were long country roads, and there were bullies in neighborhoods.

You can't escape that fact in life.

There were bullies in David's life, his brothers, etc., and older kids.

And older kids were messing with us, me and a couple of my buddies, and so we thought it was wise to maybe one time find out where they were going to be at, sneak up, hide ourselves in the bushes, and maybe pepper them with some BB guns.

That was that was not the brightest idea.

And I've heard it explained that a boy by himself has a whole brain, and two boys together have half a brain.

We were absolutely operating on half a brain status at this point.

And of course, they knew and uh they they just quickly discovered where we were hidden, and we thought we were so camouflaged.

And I remember running for my life, literally for my life, and all I could see and imagine in my mind, my heart's pounding, blood's pumping, and I'm tasting battery acid in my lungs as fast as I could.

All I could imagine is getting to my house and in my door so I could lock my door.

Right?

Because I knew that on the other side of that door was a refuge.

If I could just get to my door, I might live to see another day.

I wasn't gonna think about the other day because I'm sure those guys were gonna remember and I would get it back later.

But I ran, and safe to say, I like, uh you know the saying you're you're swimming, you're scuba diving, you're snorkeling, it's like the shark eats the slowest one.

This was also true of my friends.

All I knew is I had to be faster than my slowest friend in my house.

And so, um, and they were all running to their houses.

But but I think that's what it is.

That's the refuge.

That's what David is seeking in this moment.

He's seeking refuge in God's home, and he finds this concept of God's kingdom, this encounter.

He's encountering him as a boy, as a shepherd in these fields, and he's in his father's house in the middle of in the wilderness.

He's with sheep.

But it's what he wants the most, and I think it's where he goes in his adult life.

After a resume of brokenness, failures, and mistakes, he thinks back and he's always remembering those times, that sweetness, that encounter with the father in the hills and the rolling pastures, of being with his father in his father's house.

Because he goes on to say, in five, why do I want to be there?

For he will conceal me when their trouble comes.

He will hide me in his sanctuary, and he will place me out of reach on a high rock.

The payout in the Father's presence is protection over his life.

Some of us are seeking sanctuary today.

We desperately want his protection in our life.

I don't care.

You wake up this side of eternity, if it's not today, it's tomorrow, whatever.

This isn't like a doom and gloom, it's just fact, right?

I mean, you wake up and you go to bed at night and you're thinking today was a pretty good day.

I didn't have big problems.

Usually the storm's coming.

We always joke at my house, we're like, storm's coming.

That's kind of like dark, but the kids laugh about it.

And then they remind me that I said it when I'm having a bad day.

They're like, I told you, Dad, the storm was coming.

So it's like, all right.

So it's true.

The storm comes for all of us at some point in our journey, and we're just in between storms.

Don't hate the weather, man.

Look for look for refuge.

Six.

Then I will hold my head high above my enemies who surround me.

At his sanctuary I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy, singing and praising the Lord with music.

There's another key right here hidden in the scriptures.

This is a passage.

This is this is crucial for David's life.

Because David knows the antidote to fear is faith.

And the soundtrack of faith is worship.

I'm gonna say that again.

The antidote to fear is faith.

And the soundtrack to faith is worship.

Worship is the posture of our hearts, it's not necessarily the vocal singing over our out of our mouths for some of you that feel only comfortable doing that in the shower, and if you're you know in a commute solo in your car, that works too.

God encounters us in those special places, absolutely.

But David knows this and exercises this crucially throughout his time, throughout his life.

I mean, I dare say that worship is the one thing that carries him through all of the victories that he's got and the defeats.

In verse 7, we're gonna hear a shepherd's heart.

We're gonna hear what the shepherd has to say to the Lord, and he says, Hear me as I pray, O Lord.

Be merciful and answer me.

My heart has heard you say, Come and talk with me.

And my heart responds, Lord, I am coming.

And so in John 10, Jesus is talking says that his sheep know his voice and they follow him.

David is responding in the same way.

He's responding to his shepherd.

He knows his father's voice, the one that leads him through the valley in the shadow of death, and leads him to still, restorative waters for his soul.

And he's calling on that.

He's saying, Come and talk with me, walk with me in the cool of the day.

It's an invitation.

How many times do we extend that invitation in our own minds?

We're having maybe the worst day we've ever had, we've gotten the worst news we've ever gotten, and we pause and we say, God, you have said, Come and talk with me.

Lord, I am coming.

Because this is more than I can bear right now, and I need refuge.

I need that rock.

I need to be in your sanctuary, I need to be in your temple, meditating on your ways, your ways that rescue, the ways that refresh and restore.

Verse 9 says, Do not turn your back on me.

Do not reject your servant in anger.

You have always been my helper.

Don't leave me now, don't abandon me.

Oh God of my salvation.

Midway through, a little more than midway through, he's then calling out again.

You are the God of my salvation, you are the God of my rescue, you are the God of my refuge, you are the God of my refreshment.

And I need a reset right here.

That's another declaration for David's heart.

And it releases the enemy's lies because the enemy is going to tell you that God doesn't want to have anything to do with you.

And I can't be the only one in the room who've heard that before.

Quick show of hands.

The little messaging in the mind, like, okay, there's this beautiful fatherly figure who loves me unconditionally.

Many of us don't even know what the unconditional love thing feels like.

We might have felt glimpses of it for a brief season, but this concept and the de the devil, the enemy, overplays his hand time and time again with this messaging of he doesn't really want to meet with you.

He's actually a little, he's pretty ashamed he even created you and humanity.

He doesn't want anything to do with you.

He certainly doesn't want to talk to you, and he definitely doesn't want to hear from you.

But this is where David's rejecting that in his mind.

Again, he's doing another reset halfway through, and he's like, No, wait a minute, I know, I know the truth.

I know because he's walked with me in the wilderness and he talks to me and he loves me and he seeks after me, and I chase after his heart, and I've experienced his house.

And this is interesting because after that declaration, he goes into verse 10.

So clearly the enemy's playing on another wound in David's mind and heart.

We already know that his own father forgot that he had another son in the field watching his sheep, by the way.

That's kind of hard to imagine.

Like, who's with my cattle?

Oh, I have another one out there.

So you gotta understand that we feel rejection and pain.

David understands that.

He's like, where I've been rejected and abandoned, you, Lord, have never done that to me.

And oh, by the way, regardless of what my human relationships will do and how I encounter that, I know that I can always depend on God the Father, God of my creation, God of my joy.

And from that place, I'm going to give joy and shouts.

And I'm going to have a whole heart.

Many of us in this room today can completely and honestly connect to David's heart in this statement.

We felt abandoned at times by those who were meant to protect and help us when we needed it most.

And David knows who is always protecting and leading him with a rod and staff to comfort him.

When you read this, you have to understand that there's this deep connection that they've already established.

He's talking to him as a father figure.

Before Paul gives us the permission to call God Abba, David is already talking that way.

And this is what he says.

He invites the Lord in verse 11 teach me how to live, O Lord.

Lead me along the right path, for my enemies are waiting for me.

He doesn't want to falter, he doesn't want to misstep, he doesn't want to get off because he knows that death, if he doesn't stay on God's path, death is around the corner.

These are violent times.

If it's not the Philistines, it's his own king Saul, who he's on the run from.

So he needs God's wisdom.

He needs him to light that path.

He needs him to uncloud the darkness.

And he's talking him for that.

It's permission.

There's this shepherd boy who can handle the wilderness, the nastiest things that the wilderness can throw at him.

Savage bears and ravaged lions and a bloodthirsty giant.

He doesn't even, he doesn't even give that second pause because he knows that God is walking with him.

But he allows him to chasten him.

This is the permission in this verse.

See, we are designed by God to seek his leading and teaching if we are to see the other side of the valley and experience his fatherhood with us.

David screwed up as good as anybody can, but he allowed God to chasten him and teach him, and in doing so, he experienced pure sonship.

Right after one of his biggest mistakes with Bathsheba, he repents, he falls in line, and he is obedient and hum and with humility comes before the Lord and allows God to chasten him.

What does Paul tell us in Hebrews 6?

6 through 11, or 12, sorry, chapter 12, verse 6 through 11.

These aren't in your notes.

For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children.

Whoever heard of a child who was never disciplined by its father?

If God doesn't discipline you as he does all his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all.

That's not good.

I mean, none of us ever looked forward to those words, wait till your father gets home.

Right?

That sucks.

And you wait.

We'll get into the waiting part in this in a minute, because David had to wait.

But sometimes we have to wait for that and we have to be open to it.

But in his biggest screw-ups, it created a desperation in David's heart.

That created a humility, and God saw that and he loved it, and it stirred God's spirit because I can continue to work with this guy.

He's fully human, he's messed up, he's broken, he's breaking the rules big time.

But I love this guy because all he wants is my heart.

He wants to see my face.

So what does he say?

This is a Hebrews 10, uh 12, 10.

But God discipline, God's discipline is always, always, if you're in that chapter, highlight always good for us.

This isn't abuse.

There's a difference.

In our own humanity and parents, sadly, many of us have experienced abuse from our parents.

That's not what's happening here.

God never abuses us.

And sometimes our lines of discipline get distorted with abuse.

But God doesn't do that.

His discipline is always good.

And why?

So that we might share in his holiness.

No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening.

Fact.

It's painful.

Paul's words.

But afterward, there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

I will tell you that I have pushed back and up against discipline in my life countless times.

Afraid of it, fearful of it, like it terrifies me.

It terrified me, I should say.

But I've come into a deeper understanding that when God is disciplining me, I will be patient.

I will ask him for the courage and endurance to endure what he's taking me through because on the other side will be a sweet, peaceful harvest.

Verse 12, Jesus goes, or David goes back into a little bit about the enemy that's outside his doorstep.

And he's asking for protection here.

He's very specific.

Do not let me fall into their hands, for they accuse me of things I've never done.

With every breath, they threaten me with violence.

I'm sure none of you people, I'm sure none of us here today, not you people, none of us here today have ever been accused of something we didn't do.

We've been accused of, you know, we've been innocent in some ways, in other ways we haven't been.

But in this way, he uh he has accusers on his doorstep, and with every breath they threaten him with violence and accuse him.

So this is tearing his heart down.

Yet I am confident I will see the Lord's goodness while I am here in the land of the living.

And he culminates with verse 14.

So for me, it's four and fourteen in this in this passage.

There's so much else in here as well.

But fourteen, this is the charge to himself.

Wait patiently for the Lord.

Be brave and courageous.

Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

He repeats it twice.

And he throws something in there from Joshua that we've heard before in first Joshua 1.

We see David reciting words for Joshua on the eve of battle.

David is in the middle of a battle, not getting ready to start one.

And he is stealing his mind with this truth that God will come through, as he always does.

David had courage and waited patiently for the throne of Israel.

From the time that he was anointed to the time he actually got to the throne of Judah was 15 years.

So he was 30.

He would wait another seven years before he was king over all of Israel.

So roughly over two decades, he's waiting.

He knows a little bit about waiting, waiting in caves, waiting in fields, running.

David was taught patience in the wilderness.

And then again, when trying to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem, we remember that story.

It's not that his heart was wrong, his heart was in the right place.

He wanted the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem so that he could be and live in the presence of God.

The Ark of the Covenant was the presence of God, and all he wanted to do was bring it home, but he did it too fast and he didn't do it in God's way.

So he was stalled yet another three months when Uzzah touched it.

You guys remember that?

He touched the cart to keep the ark from falling?

Also seemed like a good deed.

Wrong, cost him his life.

That makes David angry.

He's wrestling with God in that moment, and we see another aspect of David's humanity in this desire to be in God's presence.

He wants to see the face of God.

He wants the ark in Jerusalem, but he's not doing it in God's ways.

And so God's going to use this as another way to understand and unlock the mystery of God's heart.

It's going to cost him three months and Uzzah's life, and David's going to be angry in that moment.

So there's something there for us too, because we have permission.

If David is chasing after God's heart and he's acknowledged as that in the Bible, and he's angry with the way God handled that situation, there's permission for us to not always like the way things are handled in our lives.

But there's something on the other side of that.

God works through David, works on his heart.

David realigns his heart with God and says, You're right, I didn't do that right.

I need to consult the Levites.

There's a way, there's a process, there's an order to your kingdom, and I let myself get in the way.

How many times have we let ourselves get in the way of God's kingdom and his processes for our own life that are all for our own good?

David just wants to be in his father's presence.

But he's delayed three months with getting the ark back to Israel.

It takes bravery and courage to wait for God in your battles.

Here's something to take heart in, and this is a common fact.

Some of you probably, I'm sure most of you probably know this, but fear not, the term fear not is written 366 times in the Bible throughout the whole scripture.

So that's one for each day of the year.

So tell yourself, fear not today.

And they threw an extra one in there for leap year, so you're covered.

366 days.

Okay?

God's got you covered.

He's thought this through.

So if you just wake up and just steal your mind to say, I will fear not today, because I am with God and he is with me.

That's where it starts.

That starts stirring God's heart.

He's like, Yeah, I'm with him.

I'm with her.

Heck yeah, let's do this.

Let's run.

There's this waiting, this waiting thing.

And when Pastor Brian's talked about it, Steve's blogged, and then he also spoke about it.

This waiting that is just unnerving for our humanity.

But Jesus, Son of God, takes on full humanity and in his humanity demonstrates what waiting looks like.

The Son of God doesn't receive the Holy Spirit until he's 30 years old.

When a dove comes down, that's when things start to unlock for him.

He's connected with the Father absolutely and he's walking in that process.

But the majesty of his life and his life's work doesn't really start until 30.

So he himself, the son of God, waits 30 years.

So when we get impatient and we're like, man, I'm waiting on that answer.

This should have happened a while ago.

If the Son of God can wait 30 years, we might stretch our patience a little bit.

Then he goes into the wilderness right after that.

He's waited 30 years for the dove and he goes 40 years and he goes 40 days into the desert and gets tempted and tested and tried.

For some of us, it's felt like four or five years.

For some of us, maybe you're halfway into 40 days of something right now.

I don't know what it is.

It's something different for all of us, and our time frames are different, but there's a process and there's a timeline.

And even Jesus, the Son of God, had to wait 40 days and be pestered and hammered and tempted by the enemy for 40 days in the wilderness before God the Father sent angels to minister to him.

And then the absolute culmination of his work, we see Jesus die on the cross and he's dead three days.

He's waiting three days.

He's doing work, of course, right?

But three days he's in the grave before the Father restores and calls him back to life.

We all get a share in this glory of this final resurrection and restoration.

So what we endure, what we are asked to wait on, the patience, the courage, the bravery that it takes to wait on God's goodness in our life is worth it.

I have rushed the outcome so many times in my life.

I probably will write a book on not waiting.

It probably will just say not, what it looks like not to wait.

And then you can like learn what not to do and what all that looks like.

So just a few chapters later, Psalm 31.24, David quotes another scripture from Joshua.

At the end of 31.24, he says, So be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord.

There's something there too.

If you don't put your hope in the Lord, there's nothing to be strong and courageous about.

He's speaking to all those who are sons and daughters of the King.

If you are that, then put your hope in the Lord and be strong and courageous, and he will see you through.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

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

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.