Steadfast Love

Uh Psalms 57 is the text this morning.

I uh as we were planning this series, um, was very, very excited about Psalms.

Psalms has been uh a part of my daily uh rhythms, man.

I think as long as I can remember that I opened up God's word and and read it.

And so I think since I was sixth or seventh grade, I think I've taken uh each morning, not obviously not without failure uh and without busyness where I missed, but most mornings take up in the book of Psalms, read five Psalms uh every single morning, which helps me read it uh almost over and over and over again each month.

And so it's it's been an incredible uh source of energy and nourishment to my soul.

I'm I'm confident that you'll see Psalms 57 in that light this morning.

And so uh just let me encourage you if Psalms is not a part of your rhythms.

We were uh planning the series and somebody in the office was like, I hate the Psalms.

Like, no, you don't hate the Psalms, you just don't understand the Psalms.

And so uh take the time to get to know just the wealth and richness and beauty that is in so many of David and other authors' writings, and we'll dig into one of David's this morning.

To provide some context, just to kind of uh understand from where this psalm is written, David is uh and has been fleeing from Saul, who was the king of Israel long before David uh ever became the king.

He had uh King Saul had repeatedly tried to end David's life kind of with the third attempt and um some encouragement from his dear friend Jonathan, who was Saul's son, uh sent him out to uh kind of run in fear for his life.

And so uh in 1 Samuel chapter 22, we we kind of get uh the situation from which David finds himself kind of hanging out in this cave.

1 Samuel 22 · chapter mention

Originally at first fleeing for his life, and as message went out, we see in 1 Samuel chapter 22 that over time 400 people kind of trickled in to help in the protection of David.

1 Samuel 22 · chapter mention

And it's from this cave where he's hiding in fear for his life that he writes for us Psalms chapter number 57.

Psalms 57 is interesting.

Uh, most psalms have a kind of topic.

We have psalms of ascent, we have psalms of lament, we have psalms of confidence and encouragement, things like that.

The uniqueness of Psalms 57 this morning is that there's actually kind of two different types of psalms represented right here in this one uh portion of scripture.

We see two distinct parts.

First, we see that it's a psalm of lament.

We see that David, with very uh open and raw emotions, vulnerably expressing deep fear and anxiety at what other people outside of himself may do to him.

But it's also a psalm of confidence, where David's confidently expressing a deep trust in a powerful and sovereign God.

Psalms 57 really paints a beautiful picture of God's steadfast love and at the same time heavy expressions of extremely emotional uh fear and anxiety from a child of God who at the same time is experiencing such deep emotions has a deep confidence in God.

And that creates an interesting dynamic, doesn't it?

And I think it's a dynamic that uh we're we're either used to or we're afraid of, right?

That idea that uh uh you could be, or David could be so afraid of his enemy that he's overwhelmed with this fear of what they could do to him, what they could say to him, that it brings about such an anxiousness that he causes him to run and flee for his life.

And yet in the moments where he's hidden, in the moments where he's alone, we see him pour out his heart to God, expressing his feelings, expressing his fear, but also expressing a deep confidence in God.

It's a beautiful picture, and I wrestle with sometimes how could uh I be so afraid of the things that are surrounding me, and at the same time declare with such clearness dependence and confidence in God.

And as we see David do this, this leaves us with a few implications.

I won't highlight them all, but two of them that I'd like to draw our attention to is the reality that emotions are a gift of God's grace meant to draw our hearts and minds to Jesus.

Right?

And so in the room, we probably have a variety of spectrums of perspectives on emotions.

Some people who uh fear their emotions or hide their emotions or look at emotions are bad, some people that uh create such a tough exterior that uh they don't allow themselves to really be impacted or understand their emotions.

Some people in here, probably from other people's perspectives, might be hyper-emotional.

And they always seem wrecked by the silliest or the smallest little inconveniences in life.

And I want to declare and and from the very beginning kind of set course for what we'll discover in this text that emotions aren't bad.

Emotions aren't bad.

Even those emotions that we would uh put as as challenging and not encouraging or however we would label them are good things.

They reveal our own insufficiencies and like words and like actions and like uh things that we think when they when they are submitted to and live in subjection to the authority of Jesus, they actually are means of God's grace to draw our hearts and draw our minds back to deeper, affectionate dependence on Him.

So emotions are a beautiful thing, even tough ones like fear and anxiety.

Other implication we see is that expressing our emotions doesn't necessarily conflict with having a strong faith in God, right?

So I want to encourage you today, because I think I think the type of faith that I grew up in in the church and the background that I have, uh, emotions were things that should be ignored, and if couldn't be ignored, they should be deeply suppressed.

Right?

And so they should they should be something that uh we probably uh wouldn't say to other people.

We would probably be encouraged to kind of stuff them down, and we certainly wouldn't see counselors, we certainly wouldn't come and talk to the pastor about it, we certainly wouldn't, in the context of community, bring these types of things up because from their perspective, expressing deep emotions was in conflict with faith in God.

And so uh I grew up believing that lie that we can't express doubts, we can't express fears, we can't express anxieties because those things are actually in opposition to our faith.

And we see in Psalms 57 that David paints a much different picture.

Read with me, Psalms chapter number 57.

The word of the Lord says, Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me.

For in you my soul takes refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge.

To the storms of destruction pass by.

I cry out to God most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

He will send from heaven and save me.

He will put to shame him who tramples on me.

God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

My soul is in the midst of lions.

I lie down amidst fiery beasts, the children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

Let your glory be over all the earth.

They set a net for my steps, my soul was bowed down.

They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.

My heart is steadfast, O God.

My heart is steadfast.

I will sing and make melody.

Awake, my glory, awake, O harp and learn I will awake the dawn.

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples.

I will sing praises to you among the nations, for your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

Let your glory be over all the earth.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

David begins this psalm like so many other psalms, by begging God for mercy, right?

He then goes on describing where his fear of what he is facing intersects with his confidence in God.

David explains the conflict warring up in his soul between what he sees going on around him, how that makes him feel, and what he knows to be true about God, and that conflict weighs heavy on his soul.

What David was experiencing physically as harm was threatened to his life, came with heavy emotional turmoil as well.

Right?

As we read through this psalm, we see in verse one, he says, In you, my soul takes refuge.

Right?

And then in verse four, he says, My soul is in the midst of lions.

Verse six, he says, My soul is bowed down, right?

So it's not just merely his body, it's his soul.

And so this teaches us that the relationship between the physical and the emotional is very strong, right?

We're embodied souls.

So what happens physically has strong influence on how we feel, but the inverse is always true.

On how we feel ultimately has strong influence on um our bodies, right?

So that's why stress and anxiety and fear all of a sudden has medical complications, all of a sudden has mental health uh cavities that uh can be navigated and worked through.

It's it's a it's a both and our bodies affect the way we feel, we how we feel affects the way our bodies work.

David goes on to explain some of the things that he is experiencing and gives us a little bit of insight to where this fear and this anxiety uh stems from.

In verse 2, he describes what he's experiencing as storms of destruction.

Storms of destruction.

Or destruction could also be translated as wickedness.

So storms of wickedness that are being heaped upon his soul.

Verse 3, he describes those enemies that are seeking to destroy him as those who trample on me.

Trample on me.

Verse 4, he describes the enemies as lions and fiery beasts.

He describes their teeth as if they have spears and arrows protruding for him, seeking to physically devour him.

Right?

And so I, as I'm reading this, and as I've read this, and as I've probably read this, uh, I don't think without exaggeration, several hundred times over the last 15 to 20 years, that Psalms has been a normal rhythm of my life.

I read through it uh each each and every month.

Uh, it always is difficult in that instance of explanation of what David's experiencing to really connect with what he has going on, right?

Because I think I think we read that and we look at and examine our lives, and to the best of my knowledge, I don't know that anybody here is running from the kig who's chasing them down.

Like that doesn't mean we don't have fears about different things.

It doesn't mean that anxiety doesn't well up in our hearts, but for the most part, the the pain and the difficulty that we will experience will not come from people trying to kill us.

Right?

We get that.

We live in America, we don't really wrestle with that.

But then David goes on.

And he says uh in verse 4 as well, he says that his enemies' tongues are as sharp as swords.

That hits home a little bit more than fear for my life, doesn't it?

Right?

Because what people say, like we know, like we know the uh we know the uh little little cute saying that we learned at uh in preschool that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words may never hurt me.

But we all know too much the reality that that isn't true.

And oftentimes, even the words as a big, strong guy like myself, like the physical harm, that isn't that heals, right?

But the emotional damage that comes from the way that people use their words to attack, to tear down, those can be vastly more destructive than any physical harm that we experience.

And so now this is starting to hit home a little bit more.

We see and understand David's anguish uh uh way more than we could before we read that line.

You see, David's fear and anxiety wasn't isolated to only the harm that Saul and his army could cause his body, but also what they could say about him.

His fear of his enemies was rooted in the harm that they could do to him physically, but also emotionally and socially.

Right?

And so as if we examined the things that were fearful, more often than not, those fears are tied to other people.

Right?

We're fear of what they might think about us, we're fearful of what they could say about us, if they told us this, if they knew this, if I said this, it could impact our relationship.

Like what people say and how we interact with people becomes very much a source of a lot of our fear because of the emotional implications that it could cause, because of the social implications that it could cause.

Fear has a way of paralyzing us, doesn't it?

Right?

We live in a culture uh where we we don't want to say something because we fear what the people hearing may think of us.

Right?

I've I've been in those circumstances before where I'm sitting across the table explaining uh something that uh the Word of God says or something that the Spirit of God put in my spirit to communicate, and the way that that often sometimes gets received could fracture friendships.

Right?

And so just this week I spent uh two or three hours with one of my dear friends, one of my best friends who who had an opportunity to take a very lucrative and extremely good for his career promotion to move to St.

Louis with Procter and Gamble.

Right?

And so as we're wrestling through the rights and the wrongs of that conversation, I said, hey man, I I want to just be clear with you.

I I want to share truth with you that may uh hurt you a little bit.

And I'll do it lovingly and I'll do it gently, but I've been in similar situations like this before where I've had to say hard things that ruin relationships, and I don't want to see that happen to us.

And so once we navigated that, we were able to walk through that with love and gentleness.

Why was I doing that?

Because I was operating somewhat out of a fear and an anxiety that saying the truth and saying some hard things and asking some difficult questions could fracture our friendship, and I didn't want that to happen, right?

And so we've all been in circumstances like that.

We've all done certain things or not done certain things because we fear whether or not we'll still fit in with the circle that we fit in with, right?

We know all too well what it's like to keep up with the people around us for the sake of wanting to maintain their friendship, right?

We buy things we don't need, we buy things we don't want because that's what everybody else does.

Right?

We read these blogs on what a perfect mother looks like and what a perfect father looks like, and we start uh comparing ourselves and where we fit in, and we become fearful that the other moms that we go to church with might not approve of the decision that I made.

Or the other dads are way more invested, and they're just it comes naturally and it's not hard for them.

And so I've got to try to keep doing that.

Not motivated out of a fear of God and doing the right thing, motivated out of a fear of other people and what the effect of that could be.

It's easy to do that, isn't it?

Right?

We live in such a social media culture, right?

That we take the realities of our everyday life, which are often very ugly, which are often very challenging because we see the inwardness of our heart, we see the way that we react to our family, we see the the way that we respond when difficulty comes into our lives, and and we get to see the dirtiest of the dirty and the nastiest of the nastiest that sin and depravity has to offer inside of our own lives.

But we jump on Instagram or we jump on Facebook and scroll after scroll, we're we're highlighted with all the best of everybody's life, right?

And so that's a that's a challenge that generations before us didn't have to that degree.

They might have tried to keep up with their neighbors, they might have treated to keep up with some family members, but now we we're living in a world where I can in 30 seconds know what a pastor friend in Miami's doing, or know what a pastor or friend across the globe's doing, and and well up with fear that if I don't keep up with them, that that might not make us friends, right?

And so we see and we compare our worst to everybody's best, and so we see how that fear and that anxiety just continues to bubble up and well up in our soul.

And David uh is here, and that's a part of his fear.

Still in the middle of all this, we see two things to be true very early in our text.

In verse one, we see that in God's presence there is security.

In God's presence there is security.

Verse one uh tells us, he says, Do you he says, Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

And church, I just want to come this morning and challenge us and remind us that God is our strong tower.

God is our sure and steady refuge.

In him we are secure.

We can run to him, we can hide in him, we can rest in him, we can complain to him, we can be abundantly honest with him without fear or repercussion that he is going to love us any less because his love for us is not dependent on us, it's dependent on the finished work of Jesus.

David knew this deeply, church.

David knew this deeply because over and over and over again you've got him bearing his soul in raw and emotional ways, and yet seemingly seems unaffected by it, because in the same breath, he's talking about all these outside things that are vying to pull his heart away from God.

In the same breath, he's talking about deep confidence in God.

David knew that in God's presence there is safety, and so us, so must we, church.

From this confidence, we see him bearing his soul.

He's vulnerable, he's honest, he expresses his real and raw emotions.

And church, do we find that kind of security in our God?

Because so often God uh is is the one from which we we run from, we hide from, right?

Like we we we we know our natural impulses and everything about us tells us to run away from those that are trying to cause us harm.

Like that makes sense to us, but all too often we take that and our view of God is as one who's trying to harm us, not as one that's trying to protect us, not as one that's trying to love us.

And so God is often included in our running and our hiding.

Sometimes even this very place and this very people that have gathered in this room can become the cave from which we hide from God.

Right?

We come in here and and we can we can uh put on a front, we can uh ask the question, How are you doing?

We can say good, we can move on about our day, never having to be confronted with being exposed for our sinfulness, never having to be confronted with a God who knows me because I can't manipulate God, but I can manipulate God's people, and so we come in sometimes, and it's real easy.

To get in, get out, go home, and leave unaffected.

Carrying that vulnerability, carrying that fear with us.

As God's people become the place where you take refuge because you're too afraid to take refuge in God.

David took refuge in God.

But refuge in God can be intimidating, can't it?

It can be hugely intimidating.

God knows everything about us, every thought, every sin, every insecurity, every fear.

Again, we can be around God's people and deceive them, but we can't God.

And so sometimes it's easier to flee the presence of God than run to it.

Like we see biblical examples of that.

I jokingly said this morning, uh, just just jokingly, but everything that comes out of your mouth probably has meaning.

I said if if God ever uh worked in his providence to bring me above the 275 line to do work in ministry, I'd run just like Jonah, right?

I didn't mean that, but I probably meant it a little bit more than I would say that I meant it, right?

Because from the abundance of the mouth does the does the heart speak.

The Holy Spirit brings conviction.

And if we're honest, and if we really dug in deep, sometimes the condemnation of the enemy, because how how used to it we are, can be more comfortable than the Holy Spirit's conviction.

Right?

And as the as God convicts us of our sin, as we sit under the word of God being taught, as we're around God's people, living out life and community, people are gonna know us.

People are gonna know deep down secrets of our heart and our soul, and that's hugely intimidating and brings about fear.

Our emotions can be incredible tools in the security of God's presence for our good, but can be an incredible tool in the hands of the enemy who seeks to destroy us.

Church, where the Holy Spirit seeks to expose, Satan seeks to exploit.

And so he takes those fears and he takes those emotions and he whispers subtly lies into our hearts and into our minds and into our spirit that have us doing all kinds of crazy things chaotically to satisfy that part of our soul that always feels an anguish, right?

And what was meant to draw us into God, uh, Satan sometimes uses to encourage us to run from God.

And he uses all sorts of things.

I was uh talking, and I hope, I hope as we work through this, you don't hear from me or throughout the series that there's anything wrong with counseling or or anything like that.

If you need help, we want to help you get connected to people that can genuinely help you.

I I'm the first to admit, I see a counselor every six weeks.

Uh he recently, the last invoice I got from him, literally just said spiritual life coach.

I don't know what that is, but it's a subtle change that he just took.

And he, we were just dialoguing about uh some things, like some things in my heart.

Justin and I both kind of share some challenge in uh the amount of working and resting that we do.

Neither one of us are very good at that, right?

And so he's digging in and and and pulling out.

What are you afraid of like that that you have to work all these hours and every week?

What are you what are you afraid of that keeps you running to that instead of running to God?

And what are you afraid of?

And he's just asking me all these questions.

And then he said that sin and the wounds of our heart have a have a way, Satan has a way to attach onto those things.

And he exploits them because he he he whispers even good things and and lies into our ear that what you're doing matters for eternity.

What you're doing makes a difference in life.

What you're doing is is changing your community.

And so just because what we run to are good things, sometimes those good things can be idolatrous things when we run to that instead of running to God.

Right?

And Satan knows that about us.

There's not a believer in here that's so weakened that they're gonna believe the crazy lies that unbelievers believe about themselves, right?

But there are people in here that will listen to whispers of good things that seem almost like God could be saying this.

And so I want us to remember that where the Holy Spirit seeks to expose, where conviction is really happening, Satan just as much seeks to exploit.

And that's where the trouble arrives.

And for some of us, the exposure is the problem, right?

Being exposed is our worst nightmare, because the sin that wrestles with inside my spirit, the secrets that nobody knows about me, if those got out, and how would that change the way people perceive me?

How would that change the opportunities that I have?

David has learned that the safest place, both spiritually and emotionally in all the world is under the shadow of God.

Right?

And church, that's where that's where we belong.

That's what Jesus has done to bring us in, to where we can find a sure, a steady, a faithful refuge in God.

David goes on to talk, says in verse 2 and 3, we see that in God's purposes there is stability.

In God's purposes, there is stability.

David prays with a deep confidence that God is who he says he is and will accomplish what he says he will accomplish.

God is faithful and able, not just generally, but very personally for David.

Right?

And so, and so that that that that we need we need that switch, we need that reminder, because God's greatness means that nothing can stop him from accomplishing what he has set out to do, first cosmically in the universe, but very personal in every single individual's life.

And David knew that.

He said, Your purpose is for me.

In in uh interpreter two, I cry out to God most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

See in this that David has a strong sense and belief in God's character, mainly that God is omnipotent.

Nothing can stand against him.

Everything in creation bows down to his sovereign power.

He will humiliate all the enemies of himself and his people.

God is ultimately controlled.

There's nothing more powerful, there's nothing more able, there's nothing more stronger.

God holds all the power in himself.

God is also omnipresent.

His steadfast love and his faithfulness is sent forth, uh sent forth to every corner of the earth and heavens to accomplish his purposes on behalf of his people.

And I think for us, or at least for me, it tends to be very easy for me to read things like Psalm 57, for me to hear good theological teaching about God's omnipotence, God's omnipresence, God's omniscience, and look around and say, yes, God is able, yes, God is powerful, yes, God is greater, and he can do anything that he wants to accomplish.

But it becomes much more difficult to believe that all those things are also true about his purposes for me.

Right?

We can declare it.

I can sit across the table from someone and say it with boldness and with clarity.

I could scream it from the pulpit, I could, I can say it at any opportunity.

Anyone gives me a microphone to say it and it becomes very, very easy.

But in moments of my life where I feel the weight of fear, where I feel the stress of anxiety, where I feel the pain caused by emotional challenges or physical challenges in my life, I have a very difficult time looking at my circumstances and believing that what is true of God cosmically is true of God personally.

And church, I want us to understand that.

Because David sees that and it brings about security and it brings about stability in his life.

In life full of so many unknowns, so many insecurities, we can have a confidence in God and his promises that in Jesus he has both begun a good work in us and will bring it to completion according to his promise in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6.

Philippians 1:6

And so we see that both the security that we find in God's presence and the stability that we find in God's purposes, David clearly and abundantly declares that those things are rooted in the reality that God loves his people with a steadfast love.

God loves his people with a steadfast love.

David's deep trust in God flows from deep affection for God, both coming as a result of God's steadfast love towards him.

So say, so what?

Why does all this matter?

What are you really getting to the heart of saying?

Here it is.

If God is who he says he is, and he loves you the way he says he loves you, then every emotion we experience, every enemy we encounter, every circumstance we endure is meant to reveal all the ways, every other thing we too we look to for significance, for satisfaction, for security will leave us empty and searching.

Right?

Only in Jesus will we find satisfaction.

Only in Jesus will we find our perfect security, only in Jesus will we find our eternal, eternal significance.

Because in the gospel we see most beautifully and most clearly that Jesus is the steadfast love of God towards his people.

Every single enemy, every single fear has been swallowed up and overcame in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.

In his steadfast love, Christ came to earth, lived the perfect life that we couldn't, to die the death that he shouldn't, so that in him we could have eternal life and through the power of the Holy Spirit live a life of faithfulness and steadfast love, both back to God and to the people around us.

Church, we must anchor our lives.

We must anchor our thoughts.

We must anchor our emotions.

We must anchor our actions in the truths of this gospel.

Life often leaves us like we're on an emotional roller coaster, doesn't it?

So much changes from day to day, from minute to minute, from year to year.

Life changes and it happens at such a fast pace.

Church, we must anchor ourselves to Jesus who doesn't change.

He's the same yesterday, he's the same today, he's the same forever.

Jesus heals our past.

Jesus sustains our present.

Jesus secures our future.

Everything we have, everything we are, is because of Jesus.

Jesus is the embodiment of each and every promise that God has made to his people.

2 Corinthians 1 verse 20 tells us, for all the promises of God find their yes in him.

2 Corinthians 1:20

That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.

It's beautiful.

Beautiful all that we have in our union with Jesus.

And so as we understand that, as we see the truths of these realities played out in our life, what do we do with it?

So as we respond to God's word, as we respond to the truthfulness of who Jesus is and who we are in Jesus, we need to learn, as David has learned, to rest in God's steadfast love.

What we know to be true is often difficult to believe to be true, isn't it?

We know what to do, so often we don't do it.

We know what to say, but so often we don't say it.

We know how we should react, and we don't do it.

Anybody else find themselves there often, or is it just me?

Again, as I was processing through some things with my spiritual life coach or counselor, as I call, uh, is a man named Jim.

He's in his 70s, he's brilliant, brilliantly gifted, gets right to the heart of things.

He was he was explaining to me, because it was it was just that.

I was I was telling him and bearing the deep dark secrets of my soul, the fears and anxieties that I'm often too afraid to share with the other people around me.

And he just paused and he said, I said, man, and I said, here's the hard thing.

Like, I know exactly what you're gonna say.

And I've been on the other side of the table saying the exact same things to other people, experiencing the same things that I'm experiencing.

But it doesn't always connect.

And so then he spent, he spent the next 15 or 20 minutes or so explaining that uh so much of our life and learning comes kind of subconsciously or implicitly.

Right?

We we learn some things explicitly, meaning we take the time to seek them out, we open up God's word and we read it, we take courses, we have conversations, we do research, all that, and we do some learning that way.

But he says we also do a lot of learning that's very subconscious and implicit, right?

It's circumstances we've been around, it's people that have hurt us, it's uh challenges that we've we've endured, it's uh life circumstances.

We start learning implicitly from the very moment we're born, right?

And so we're taking in all this information and we're we're storing it oftentimes so deep down in our souls.

Then he said something really interesting that struck me.

He said, You learn uh all these things implicitly, you learn all these things explicitly, your behaviors, your emotions, your actions are about 90 to 95% affected by all that implicit learning.

And I was like, oh man, that that makes a lot of sense.

That's why I can know things with my head and not do them with my life.

I said, but now that leaves me in a bigger dilemma.

What do I do about that?

What do I do about that?

And like a 72 or 73-year-old man in just absolute simplicity with deep sincerity and a deep affection for me and my well-being, he says, you slow down, you find times where you can be in solitude with Jesus, you contemplate the truths of God's word, and you let the Holy Spirit well up from within your soul, within your mind, within your heart, all those things that are deep down in there that you don't let anybody else see.

And as you spend time with Jesus, you'll be more aware of what it is that continually trips you up.

You'll be more aware of what it is that you can begin doing about it so that you don't walk, so that you don't walk in condemnation of the enemy, but you can walk in the victory that's already been secured for us in Christ.

Church, solitude and contemplation is the ground by which God exposes our sin, heals our wounds, and strengthens our faith.

And I'm afraid in my life and in many of our lives, we've traded that for a prayer life that is a lot of us talking and very little of us listening.

Right?

We were at Soma School uh last November.

Justin, Casey, myself were able to go down to Nashville and spend four or five days in my one of my favorite cities outside of Cincinnati.

And uh it was always interesting.

The times of prayer uh were uncomfortable for me.

Um, they were uncomfortable for all of us.

And if I could be honest and confess, there was there were numerous times where they would say things that would would make me chuckle a bit, or even beyond that, kind of poke fun at them for that.

But they used language of father and dad and daddy and like, but they they would say some things and then they would just be silent.

And they called it listening prayer, and we we poked fun at it like, oh yeah, prayer is listening, but most of the time the prayer that we do is us sitting down, unloading everything, and then walking away from it.

And church, I want to call us to slowing down, spending time with Jesus, not just communicating from our heart, but allowing the Spirit to communicate with our heart, right?

To open up God's word and think deeply, unhurriedly about the truth contained within.

And so the question is: what stands in the way of you slowing down to spend time with Jesus?

Second thing we see is that we remember we should remember God's steadfast love.

David goes on uh and and just and just is just writes this beautiful um psalm of confidence in the last half of this chapter 57.

In verse 9, we see of him expressing thanksgiving.

And in in verse 7 through 11, we see him expressing praise.

And so we see that in expressing gratitude, I think the beauty of gratitude is that we get to relive the goodness of God over and over and over, right?

God does something amazing for us, it's captured in that moment.

Gratitude extends that moment, right?

As I as I lay down, as I say, God, thank you so much for the goodness that you've given to me and your son Jesus.

I'm reminded each and every time of the beauty that is what God has given to us in Jesus.

Right?

And so work in your life regular rhythms of gratitude to God and to other people, right?

Nobody nobody hates being around somebody that's abundantly grateful for them.

Right?

And so use that.

Be grateful to God, be grateful to God's people.

Gratefulness to Jesus builds confidence in Jesus because we're reliving his goodness to us time and time again.

And then we extend praise.

God's love for us in Jesus should drive us to an expressed confidence in God that is visibly and in and invisibly known in worship.

Should cause us to pray boldly, to sing loudly, right?

Speaking and singing praises to God, to declare his glory and goodness, bring healing to a broken heart, and water a dry and thirsty soul.

Right?

We know that.

And even culturally, we know that, right?

You go to a sporting event or you're participating in a sporting event yourself, right?

And you you win the tournament or you win the match or whatever it is you're into, and a song starts blaring.

Now we all know what the song is, right?

It's Queen.

So, Queen, we are the champions.

And we know that to be true, that that is a declaration of victory, right?

But so much the more as we sing these songs that are rich in the truths of the gospel.

What a declaration of victory and triumph each and every one of them are.

And we should sing them as if they are such, right?

With confidence, with encouragement, with boldness, loudly, uninhibited.

Praise to God for the triumph that He has secured for us in Jesus.

And then lastly, in closing, we reflect God's steadfast love.

See this, we see God's glory and steadfast character revealed through his word makes for his steadfast heart and those who love them.

What does that mean?

As we grow in our understanding of the goodness and character of Jesus, our affection for him will inevitably grow.

Be nourished in God's word towards a life of confidence in Christ and his love for you.

The way that I've done this throughout my life, it's five Psalms every single morning.

Right?

Because I'm reminded so much of God's beauty, so much of God's majesty, so much of God's glory in reading and contemplating the truths found within.

And so I encourage you to do that.

Encourage you to be unwavering in your love for Christ's people.

We've been united to Christ together, set apart from creation as Christ's people.

In that we have a responsibility to love one another as Christ has loved the church.

We do this in Christian community.

It's messy, it's challenging, it's exhausting.

Man, it's so worth it.

You get around God's people and they get to speak goodness and truth into your life.

Remind you of God's goodness in the desperate circumstances.

Retreat to Christian community, not from it.

Then we see that we should be unwavering in our love for people to know Jesus.

Let's declare and example God's love to the nations, so that those who are far from Jesus will come near to Jesus, and those who are lost in their sin will find the refuge in Christ that we have found.

God's steadfast love.

I pray that you would be encouraged by it.

I pray that you would be reminded of it.

I pray that you would be overwhelmed by it.

Before I