CBFC Worship Service 8/16/2026

Well, good morning, good morning, good morning.

My name is Jared Hanstein.

I'm one of the elders here at CBFC, and it is my honor to bring the word this morning.

We are gonna be in 1 Samuel chapter 27.

1 Samuel 27 · chapter mention

It is a shorter chapter.

It's not gonna be taking 10 minutes to read the whole thing.

It's short.

Before we dig into it, so if you want to open to 1 Samuel 27, that's great.

I want to kind of set the table here, catch us up.

Last week was the church picnic.

So I I like sermon titles.

So I've titled the sermon What to do when you're stuck in a slough.

S-L-O-U-G-H.

What to do?

Sounds like Dr.

Seuss.

It's not.

That is not Dr.

Seuss.

A lot of you know that is John Bunyan, not Paul Bunyan, John Bunyan.

Uh I also played with the idea of calling it a slew season, like flu season, slew season.

I don't know.

What to do when you're stuck in a slew.

So here's some questions for you.

Have you ever gone through a season of discouragement, a season of despair, disappointment, disillusionment, weariness, and despondency?

If you're a parent, you're saying yes, okay?

You're tired of fighting the good fight, you're exhausted from running the race, you're weary of doing well.

We're going to see how David handles that season in his life.

And before to like I really dug into this chapter, I would have not considered David to ever have gone through a season of the slough before digging into 1 Samuel 27.

So to bring everybody up to speed, David's been running from Saul for around 10 years, 7 to 13 years, 10 years.

He was anointed king and he's on the run.

I mean, he had some highs of David and Goliath and all that stuff, but he's now being hunted.

He's being hunted.

He started out bold.

Listen to what he said when he confronted Goliath.

Listen to the courage and the boldness.

You come to me with a sword and with a spear and a javelin.

I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.

And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, and that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

That is a that's a confident guy right there.

He just was anointed, he's ready to go.

But when we see him in 1 Samuel 27, it's not the same David.

He is worn down.

He twice has done the right thing.

He spared Saul's life.

He's like, I'm following God, and he still is being hunted.

He he's running through caves and the wilderness.

And then the thoughts of despair begin to creep in.

And David is gonna spend a year and four months in the season of the slough.

A year and four months in the season of the slough.

So if you have no idea about Pilgrim's progress, I'm gonna read the chapter on the Slough of Despond.

I'm going to use a British accent because that's authentic, all right?

It's really short, but it just gives context.

Like, have you ever been in this season in your life?

Soon they came to the great bulk that seemed to fill the whole plain before them.

It was called the Slough of Despond.

And it was so deep with Mile that no one had ever been able to build a road across it.

But it looked so much like the solid ground that the gra that Graceless and Pliable fell into it before they were aware, and they were soon waist deep in the mud.

Dear Pliable, I'm stinking deeper, still deeper, cried Graceless.

This burden is pressing me down.

That proves that all you have been telling me is a mistake, said Pliable.

If the road to the celestial city is like this, I want no more of it.

Then with the desperate struggle he managed to climb out of the bog at the place where he had fallen in.

He was covered with mire and very, very angry, and without trying to help his companion and stopping to tell him goodbye, he strode hastily back toward his home.

You see some anger there.

Graceless was left to struggle alone in the slew of despond, but he kept his face turned toward the distant hills, and even while floundering in the mire, he now and then caught glimpses of the shining light.

By and by he reached the farther side, but there are my there the mire was deep, and his burden was so heavy he could not climb out.

For a long time he struggled there, but scarcely was he able to keep himself from sinking entirely into the dreadful mire.

That is the the slew of the spond.

Uh that's not my wheelhouse.

I'm more like the Princess Bride.

You remember like the the pit of despair?

Right?

So I actually like Googled, I wanted to find the clip on the pit of despair.

I'm not gonna go into any more detail.

And while I was Googling the Pit of Despair, I found this weird scientist, Harry Harlow from the 70s.

He was actually researching what isolation does to people using monkeys.

He would not be allowed to do this experiment today.

I'm not gonna go into detail.

Many of you would be like revolting.

This guy was crazy.

He basically invented a machine called the Pit of Despair.

This was so this was before the Princess Bride, right?

So he probably coined this.

I don't know.

It is a stainless steel upside-down pyramid, and he took newborn monkeys, threw them into this thing, the pit of despair, and all he gave them was food and water.

For a year, sometimes three months, six months, the longest was a year to see what happened to these monkeys that just had lived in isolation.

He called it the pit of despair, okay?

These monkeys were totally destroyed for the rest of their lives.

They they they they he tried to acclimate them back into other monkeys.

They were totally isolated, they were angry, they were violent.

I mean, it was bad news.

So when we talk about the slew of despond and the pit of despair, if you've been there, it is not a fun place to be.

That is the context of what we're talking about here.

And let's go back to the Bible here.

So David also has kind of called it something himself in Psalm 40.

You don't have to turn there, but Psalm 40, David himself says he calls it the pit of destruction.

This is what he said.

I waited patiently for the Lord.

He inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and he set my feet upon the rock, making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth and a song of praise to our God.

Many will see see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

So David calls it the pit of destruction.

I'm calling it the slew of the spond, the pit of despair, whatever you want to call it.

When we start reading 1 Samuel 27, that's what you're going to see kind of unfold.

That's what I want you to read into it.

There's lots of Bible characters that have gone through the slew of despond.

Job, he jumps out, right?

Job is the go-to guy.

This guy has been made a life of despair.

Elijah went through that little bit after Mount Carmel of despair, right?

But Hannah, you start to think about it.

Joseph, Jeremiah.

I never would have put David on that list until I dug into 1 Samuel 27.

And I think David needs to go on that list.

So now as we go and dig in, I'm going to ask if you if you're able to stand as we read 1 Samuel 27.

We're going to read through God's word.

And uh, I want you to listen, thinking, there's something missing from this chapter that you don't hear, that you've heard through much of 1 Samuel.

So 1 Samuel 27 says, Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.

There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines.

And then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.

So David arose, he went over, he and six hundred men who were with him, to Akish the son of Maoch, the king of Gath.

And David lived with Akish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow.

And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

And then David said to Akish, If I have found favour in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there.

For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?

So that day Akish gave him Ziklag.

Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day.

And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

A year and four months.

Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Gesherites and the Gurazites and the Amalachites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from old, as far as Shur to the land of Egypt.

And David would strike the land, and he would leave neither man nor woman alive.

But he would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Akish.

And when Akish asked, Where have you made a raid today?

David would say, Against the Negab of Judah, or against the Negab of the Jer Jeremites, or against the Negab of the Kenites, and David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, Ha, lest they should tell about us and say, So David has done.

Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines.

And Akish trusted David, thinking, He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel.

Therefore he shall always be my servant.

This is God's word, you may be seated.

Father God, we come before you.

Your word is alive and sharper than a double-edged sword, and it's just been awesome to follow the life of David, to follow the life of Saul and Samuel, Lord, as they go through their faith journey, Lord.

And it's 2026, and we are on our own faith journey, Lord.

And you are sovereign God.

You're the covenant-keeping king who was alive back in 1 Samuel, and you are on the throne and alive today.

I pray that we would just be able to understand your word, that it would come alive.

Holy Spirit, that you would have your way and guide us into all truth, that my words would be yours.

And I pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen and amen.

So it may not seem like, well, where's the desperation?

It's there.

You gotta dig a little bit.

What's missing in that whole chapter?

You know who wasn't mentioned once?

God.

Not at all.

David didn't cry out to the Lord.

You don't hear one mention of David crying out to God.

Nothing.

So I want to unpack 1 Samuel 27, then I want to kind of give us hope.

Because right now, if you read 1 Samuel 27, there's not a lot of hope happening here.

David's kind of stuck in the season of the slough.

So I want to give us some hope.

But David did not, there's no mention of David crying out to the Lord.

In fact, Bible scholars will tell you they can't really find or pinpoint that he wrote any Psalms during this time, this year and three months, four months, and Ziklai.

Nothing.

I mean, he's just in this despair.

And if you go back just a few chapters, 1 Samuel 23, we're not going to go back and read it, but read it.

Countless times David is crying out to God.

Countless times David's seeking God's plan and advice.

He's going back and again and again and again.

And we hear nothing about that here.

So what what is the root of despair?

As I dug into this and thought about it in my own life and in the Bible, where's the despair, that's the season of the slew of despond?

Where's it coming from?

Well, I think number one, in my my life as a younger Christian, it comes from inaccurate and unrealized expectations.

I think I came to Christ in the beginning thinking my life's gonna be perfect, that God's gonna bless me abundantly, that life's gonna be smooth sailing, and it didn't happen.

And it kind of led to a season of despondency in my life.

All you gotta do is read John 16, 33.

Jesus himself said, In this world you will have troubles, but don't be fearful.

I've overcome the world.

So in inaccurate and unrealized expectations, you don't come to Christ for a perfect life.

That's not what it's about.

To look at what Christ did on the cross, we deserve hell.

We're not God.

That's the just of it.

I mean, God is there for us.

I think, I think despondency and despair comes from a prolonged season of suffering and waiting.

Job, you see it.

Hannah, we're gonna take a look at, Jeremiah, and I think David.

David's been on the run for 10 years.

He's tired.

It gets old.

You get exhausted no matter how strong you started when you run that race, it gets hard at the end.

And it also comes from an overwhelming sense of loss.

Look at the story of Job.

He lost so much.

Despair seeps in.

It also comes from impossible circumstances and fear.

We see that in all these Bible characters.

So let's unpack this a little bit.

Verse 1.

David said in his heart, it's that secret, silent thoughts.

How many times have you and I been going through something and we're overwhelmed?

And instead of really pouring out our heart to God, we're just overwhelmed with our thoughts, our anxieties, our fears.

We get caught in this cyclonic thinking where we feel like we're all alone and we're overwhelmed.

And this is just, so David said in his heart, I automatically thought of that verse.

The fool says in his heart, There is no God.

There's another reference to the whole saying in your heart.

And it's actually in the beginning of 1 Samuel with Hannah.

Everybody remembers the story of Hannah.

She wanted this baby.

She's crying out to God.

It's an awesome part.

So 1 Samuel verse 1 chapter 10, it says, Hannah was deeply distressed, and she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.

So that's the context, right?

So she's in this season of despair, the slew of despond.

And then when you go to verse 13, it says Hannah was speaking in her heart.

Almost exactly what David's doing here.

Hannah was speaking in her heart.

Only her lips moved and her voice was not heard.

Eli took her to be drunk.

And Eli said to her, How long will you go on being drunk?

Put your wine away from you.

But Hannah answered, No, my Lord, no.

I am a woman troubled in spirit.

I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.

There's a difference between getting in your own head and thinking those thoughts and pouring out your heart to the Lord.

We have to be directing those thoughts and insecurities to God.

God is big enough to take anything we throw at him, to cry, to weep.

If you've never fallen on your face before God and pounded your fist into the carpet and flooded it with your tears, that's what calling out to God is.

That's what crying.

What did David do?

David said in his heart, Now I shall perish.

What?

It's not even true.

That's not even true.

What David said in his heart wasn't true.

How many of you have heard the saying, Don't forget or don't doubt in the darkness what God has taught you in the light?

It's so powerful, isn't it?

I mean, I was raised in the church, came to Christ at 17.

But even now, when you go through tough times, there's those moments where you doubt and you forget what you've learned in those dark times of your life, in the seasons of despair.

David says, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.

There's nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines.

Saul was still then Saul was will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.

Samuel, Jonathan, Saul all had told David and reiterated that David was going to be king.

God proclaimed it.

Samuel anointed him.

David forgot that.

David doubted that.

Don't doubt in the darkness what God has taught you in the light.

Faith has to be based more than just feelings, it has to be based on the bedrock of who God is.

Some other crazy things to look at.

He was going to the Philistines, folks, to King Akish, King of Gath.

Do you get that?

Go back and read 1 Samuel.

Those are the enemies.

Goliath was from Gath.

He had already visited Akish, and he it was not going good, so he pretends to be crazy.

He lets spit come down in his beard to get out of there.

I mean, why is he going back there?

Because he's in a season of this a slew of despond.

A slew of the despond.

Verse 11.

Listen to what else it says.

Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines.

So he was going to raid all these enemies of Israel.

And he was wiping them out, killing everybody and taking all their stuff.

And coming back, and King Akish was saying, Hey, where'd you raid today?

And he would lie, and he'd say, Well, I'm raiding providences in Israel.

I'm raiding different parts of Israel.

And King Akish is like, Oh, well, okay, he's on my side.

David lied, and why did he kill all those people so they can't come back and catch him in a lie?

Doesn't that sound familiar?

What did David do later on in his life to cover up a lie?

He had Uriah killed.

The things you do in the slew will impact the rest of your life.

If I can make it rhyme, the things you do in a slew will impact you.

All right?

So what you're doing in that season of despondency and despair, it's gonna impact you later on.

And if you're not crying out to God and just lost in your thoughts, that's gonna impact you.

That's gonna impact you.

So where is the hope in this passage?

Where is it?

Well, we need to dig into scripture, specifically the Psalms, specifically the Psalms David wrote, and find what David had done during other times of trouble that he doesn't do here.

And it's gonna take him till chapter 30 to get it right.

And chapter 30, he finally, and it gets worse, folks, it gets a lot worse before David cries out to the Lord.

He finally cries out to the Lord.

So where is the hope?

Well, here's where the hope is.

When you read in this, then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day.

And after he gets done saying that in his heart, it says, David arose and went over.

He didn't even stop and wait and think and pray.

He just had this negative thought, this slew of despond, and he just goes over to the Philistines.

I think that if had David waited on the Lord, waited on the Lord, things would have been different.

In Psalm 27, David himself wrote, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear?

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

Wait for the Lord, be strong, let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord.

Folks, sometimes God has us go through a season of waiting in the slew of despond and the pit of despair.

We are so quick to pray for God to deliver us out of it.

God, rescue me out of this.

But sometimes his sovereign hand might want us to wait in the slew of despond.

And instead of saying, rescue me, why can't we pray, God, strengthen me?

God, your grace is sufficient.

Pour it out and strengthen me, help me through this.

Had David waited in that slew and cried out to God, things might have been different.

Waiting, so that's my acronym, wait, if you want to take notes.

W-A-I-T.

W-A-I-T.

This is really the heart of where I'm going.

Because God is a God of hope.

So rather than praying for God to rescue us out of a situation, why not pray for strength to endure it?

Now I'm not talking about passively sitting there in a pity party where you sleep all day and bathe in your bleakness.

We've all been there.

It's weird how it feels good to feel bad for yourself, to just sit there in your own filth and oh, what a pity.

And you just feel sorry for yourself.

That's not the waiting I'm talking about.

The waiting we're talking about scripturally is active.

It's not passive.

It's we're I'm talking about an active waiting that puts yourself in complete dependency on God.

It focuses your attention on Him, not what's going on around you.

And it strengthens your faith rather than weakens it.

So what does the W stand for?

The W stands for worship.

Waiting for God.

If you're gonna wait on the Lord, I am suggesting, and the Bible's suggesting, to bring worship into your life.

And I'm not saying just on Sunday.

I'm saying if you don't have an active worship life going on in your life, you got to think about bringing that in.

Worshiping God.

I mean, we could go to Paul and Silas, right?

They're in prison.

They've just been beaten.

It's midnight, and what do they do?

They throw a pity party.

Man, Silas, we messed up.

Look at this.

Can you believe this?

We're serving God, and look at this.

They have a reason to be in the season of the slew of the spot.

What do they do?

They worship God.

They worship God at midnight, and then the prison shakes with an earthquake, right?

But that's look at you can look at a ton of Psalms that David wrote that that he knew to worship God.

Psalm 34, Psalm 63, Psalm 145.

All talks about worshiping God.

But we're going to look at Psalm 30.

Psalm 30, David wrote this and said, I will bless the Lord at all times.

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord.

Let the humble hear and be glad.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me.

Let us exalt his name together.

You see, we see a pattern of worship in David's life that we don't see and say it.

1 Samuel 27.

We don't see him worshiping God at all.

He's quiet, he's silent.

He's in the season of the slew of despond, and he's not worshiping.

You might say, I don't feel like worshiping.

Who cares?

Who cares?

Let the words come out of your mouth and worship God.

I had this, I wanted to just get vulnerable and share a season of despond in my life.

Our oldest son is 23.

And uh when I was 19, the first church I was really involved in, I was running the kids' program.

And we did puppets, and I had a great mentor, and I decided I wanted to teach kids the old hymns.

And not just the old hymns, but the stories behind the hymns.

So I thought I'm gonna pick it as well with my soul.

Everybody knows it as well with my soul.

The story behind it, everybody knows.

And I was gonna dress up like Horatio Spafford, color my hair gray, put on glasses, all this stuff.

So I started researching about this hymn, and I found that there's a place in Israel called the Spafford Children's Hospital.

I'm like, what is this about?

So I I found this lady's email, I contact her and said, Hey, I I I work with kids at a church for kids' church.

I want to teach them the old hymn.

I want to dress up like Horatio Spafford.

I know the story.

What's the story about this hospital in Israel?

She emails me back and says, Oh, I'm Horatio Spafford's great-great-granddaughter.

And she sent me a copy, not the original, a copy of his handwritten hymn that he wrote.

And if you don't know the story, it's pretty awesome.

Horatio Spafford had four daughters.

He had a son, he lost his son to Scarlet Fever.

He had a bunch of property that he lost in the Chicago fire.

He lost it all.

All his property.

And he's like, man, this is a rough season.

And he thought, I'm gonna just go, I'm gonna go to England.

I think it was uh he was gonna partner with with Moody.

I think I could be wrong on that.

And he had to stay back to finish some paperwork on his real estate stuff.

So he said to his wife and four daughters, go over to England.

I'll follow you over.

It'll be we just need a time of rest because it's been rough.

On the ride over, the ship was hit with another ship.

It sank in 11 minutes.

The Ville du Harve is what hit them.

It sunk in 11 minutes.

All four of his daughters died.

His wife was saved alone.

She got to England.

She telegraphed the line, saved alone.

Spafford gets on a ship and rushes over, and when they get to the spot where the captain could basically, this is where it happened, he brings Spafford up and he said, Hey, this is as far as I can tell, this is where your daughters went down and drowned.

And Horatio Spafford went below and he grabbed, he grabbed them just some basic stationary, and he wrote the words when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrow like sea billows roll, whatever my lot that was taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

He didn't feel like praising God, but he did.

He did.

So I taught that hymn to the kids, and we did prayer partners with the doctors at the hospital, and it was like this amazing thing.

And that hymn became so special to me.

And then we had our first son, Noah.

Around he was born December 7th.

I know his birthday.

Okay.

He's don't ask me about all of the other ones, but I know Noah, right?

A week after he was born, he stopped breathing in my wife's wife's arm and turned blue.

She dialed 911, and the paramedics came in record time.

I got a phone call at school.

Um, your son stopped breathing.

He's in uh he's at Grandview, and then the NICU come immediately.

And I walk in, and there's my one-week, two-week old son hooked up to tubes, and the doctor's saying, We think he has a hole in his heart, but this is beyond us.

We're sending him to chop.

And I remember driving over thinking, I don't, I don't know what to pray.

I don't know what to pray.

I don't know what to pray.

And we got there, and it was just this season of despondency.

I couldn't, I'm telling you, I didn't have the words to pray.

I'm sitting there, I'm like, I don't know what to pray.

And the craziness, and I'll I'll continue the story.

I had to, I was a teacher, so I had to do subplans.

So I would actually drive back home.

They let us stay at the hospital at Chop.

I would drive back home at two in the morning, and I taught in a portable at the time so that I could get into the portable.

I would go to school at like three in the morning to do my subplans.

So I'm back and forth, and I can I can still see it at our old house.

Our tree was set up, our Christmas tree was set up, and I sat at the stoop and I didn't have the words to pray.

So I sat I literally sat there and I sang that hymn again and again and again.

I sang that hymn for hours, just worshiping God.

At that time, my dad was actually in the hospital with a major heart problem, a virus that attacked his heart.

And it was a season of despondency that I would not wish on anybody.

But I looking back on it, I would not take that away because of the closeness that brought me to God through that, to see his hand at work.

I didn't feel like worshiping God, but but just singing that song, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrow like sea bill is a row, whatever my lot, whatever you want to send to me, God, it is well with my soul.

Whatever you're struggling with, physically or emotionally, whatever your kids might not follow Christ, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

Worship in the season of despondency is powerful.

That's the W worship.

The A.

Adjust your focus.

Adjust your focus.

I've said it before.

Peter, when he went to walk on the water in the storms, when he was looking at Jesus, he was fine.

When he started to look at the waves, what happened?

He sunk.

Adjust your focus.

Everybody should know Corey Ten Boon, the hiding place.

She was hiding Christians, or she was hiding Jewish families during the Holocaust.

They found the Nazis, found her.

They sent her whole family to, I think it's Auschwitz.

I could be wrong.

Somebody historians out there can back me up and fix that later.

But she had a powerful quote.

Corey Ten Boon said, if you look around, you'll be distressed.

If you look within, you'll be depressed.

But if you look up, you'll be at rest.

That's powerful, isn't it?

If we look within during the slew of despond, we're gonna be depressed.

We might actually be angry at God.

I've had that emotion before.

God, I don't, you I'm following you.

I deserve to have a perfect life.

No, you don't.

You deserve hell.

You deserve death.

I deserve hell.

I deserve death.

Don't look within.

All these feelings of anxiety and apathy.

How common is it for people to think nobody cares when you're in that season?

You come to church and put a smile on your face, and if people were to know, you feel isolated and alone.

Don't we all feel like that in the season of the spawn?

That we're all alone and nobody cares.

One of the best stories I have from teaching.

Um I've taught many kids with special needs over the year, the years, and I've had a handful of kids with Down syndrome, and I love them because they have no filter.

They will tell you anything that goes in their head.

Okay?

Older people do the same thing, toddlers do the same thing.

I love the no filter.

And there was a kid, he wasn't in my class, but everybody knew him.

His name is Connor.

And uh he had a full-time wraparound aid, and I already shared this story at the men's group, so some people know this, but it's too good not to share.

He had a wraparound aid, she was sick, so they filled in a they set a sub.

And believe it or not, this was like a building sub who ended up becoming my team team member, so I know this story to be true.

And she was just coming off of like a stay-at-home mom, and she's had that motherly instinct, and and you know, she's getting his juice box out for him and unwrapping his snack, and the whole time Connor's just like, no one cares, no one cares.

And she's just like, Oh, I gotta love on this kid, I gotta love on this kid, and she's like doing everything for him, and throughout the day, he kept saying, No one cares.

And finally she's like, Oh, Connor, and she rubs his back, which you're not supposed to do now in 2026.

She rubs his back and says, Connor, I care.

He goes, No, no one cares about you, lady.

Leave me alone.

I love it because we're all there.

We've all been, no one cares.

No one cares, but you know what?

If you adjust your focus, if you're not looking around you or looking within you, you don't have the strength within you to stand up under any situation.

You don't have the strength within you to get through the season of the slew of the spawn.

There is only one place you can go that can get you through it, and it's God Almighty.

It's sovereign God.

And here's the coolest part.

How I like to make things applicable.

How do you look up to God?

How do you look up to God?

What does that look like?

I have found the best way, the best way, I have to find it because it's too good and I prepped this out.

The best way to look up at God is to look down at his word.

The best way to look up at God is to look down at this word.

If you are in the season of despond, of the pit of despair, live in his word.

Live in it.

Meditated on it day and night.

Psalm 1.

We don't know if David wrote Psalm 1, but it's a good, it's a it's it's good.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates on it day and night.

I love that word meditate.

It's not like you're just reading scripture, you're thinking about it when you're going to bed.

You're thinking about it in the morning, you're chewing on it constantly.

What do you want to tell me in this?

You're mining this for gold.

You're digging deep.

Adjust your focus on him.

Bring worship into your life.

Adjust your focus on the God by looking down at his word.

And then I means include others.

Include others.

That fits the whole no one cares thing.

No, you have to be careful.

I'm gonna start with that.

You have to be careful who you include.

Think of Job.

He did not include some really good people with it in his life.

Some of the wrong people are gonna take you the wrong way.

So make sure you're relying on Bible-believing Christians.

We have a church family that is amazing.

And I am convinced that we don't rely on each other half as what God wants us to.

Include others.

David, if you go back in 1 Samuel, he was relying on Jonathan.

He relied on Ahimelech.

He even relied on King Moab.

He asked other people for help.

And in 1 Samuel 27, David didn't go to anybody.

He had 600 people with him, just the men.

He had two wives.

We won't get into that, but he had two wives.

He didn't go to any of them.

He was alone in his thoughts, going through the season of despond, and he didn't include anybody.

I'll say this: God puts believers in your life to help us through the seasons of the slough.

We're here.

And not only that, if God has brought you through a season of the season of the slew, he wants you to use that to help others in the same thing.

If God's brought you through that season, he doesn't want you to just say, Praise God.

He wants you to now go and help other people.

So worship.

Start putting worship willfully in your life.

Adjust your focus to look at God through his word, include others, and then the T is talk to God.

Talk to God.

God is big enough for us to unload our cares.

He can take it, he can call out to him and cry out to him.

1 Peter 5, 6 and 7 says, Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

You could go back and read Psalm 22 and Psalm 86, but Psalm 57 says it so well.

And David wrote it, so he knows this.

David wrote this.

He said, Be for be merciful to me, O God.

Be merciful to me, for in my for in you my soul takes refuge.

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

Here it is.

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

He will send from heaven and save me.

He will put to shame him who tramples on me.

Selah.

That's stop and think about that.

That Selah, that pause.

Think about that.

God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

My soul is in the midst of lions.

I lie down amid 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.

He's pouring out his heart.

God is big enough for us to do that.

To cry out to him.

Hannah did it.

But David's not doing that in 1 Samuel 27.

He's not worshiping, he's not adjusting his focus on God.

He's not including others.

And he's not talking to God.

Thank you.

That's good.

That's good.

He's not talking to God.

There's one more piece of that story with Noah that highlights the including others and talking to God.

In that season of despondency, I'm telling you, I didn't know what to pray.

I didn't know what to pray.

I could just cry and I could worship.

And um, I'll never forget, we were at CHOP, and the nurse goes, Hey, did you try a snow cone yet?

I'm like, No, I could use a snow cone.

She goes, You gotta go to the second floor.

Second floor, I don't want there's snow cones here.

She said there's snow cones on every floor, but the second floor has the best ones.

So I go to the second floor snow cone machine.

Now, my first year teaching, I taught at Grace Christian School, and I had a student, Marvin Kamani, and he his family, his dad is a pastor, and he they were missionaries to the United States.

Let that sink in.

They were missionaries from Africa to the United States.

Folks, we need the gospel here, I'm telling you, right?

And I'm gonna tell you right now, God is sovereign, and if he sent that Khamani family just for me, then so be it, Lord.

So I had we had no when I was teaching at Jamison.

So I hadn't seen the Kemani family for at least a year.

And I was I was down.

I didn't I couldn't pray, I didn't have the words, I was exhausted.

I I I didn't even know what to say to talk to God.

And I walked to get a snow cone.

And guess who's standing by the snow cone machine?

Marvin Kamani's dad.

His his brother had fallen on the playground, got a concussion, they sent him the chop, and I go, Miss Pastor Kamani?

And he's like, Yeah, he prayed for me.

He didn't just say that.

I don't know what he said.

That was that was not that was not an accident, whatever.

You get the point, all right.

He put his hand on my shoulder, and I just broke.

And he prayed over me.

God is so good.

Life isn't, but he is.

We need to wait on the Lord.

We need to wait on the Lord.

I end with this.

Lamentations 3.

When I was a teen in church, we used to sing a chorus that I'm not gonna sing.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning, new every morning.

Great is his faithfulness.

Anybody know that chorus?

I never knew the context of that chorus.

Literally, until I started studying for the sermon.

It's out of lamentations.

Lamentations.

Do you know the background of lamentations?

The prophet Jeremiah is at the lowest point in his life.

He's in the midst of the slew of despond, the pit of despair.

His personal condition parallels that of the nation of Judah.

As he witnesses the destruction of Jerusalem, he simultaneously suffers through an excruciatingly painful ordeal.

Yet amid his sorrow and pain, Jeremiah finds hope.

And this is what I ended, I want to end with.

I want to read Lamentations 3.

If you want to turn there, you can.

It is so powerful.

It describes the slew of despond.

It describes the pit of despair.

It makes me think of those monkeys in that stainless steel case of just hopelessness.

Here we go, Lamentations 3.

Just listen how visual this is.

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.

He has driven and brought me into the darkness without any light.

Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away.

He has broken my bones.

He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.

He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape.

He has made my chains heavy.

Though I call and I cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.

Have you ever felt like the heavens were brass?

He has blocked my ways with blocks of stone.

He has made my paths crooked.

He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding.

He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces.

He has made me desolate.

He bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow.

He drove it into my kidney, the arrows of his quiver.

I become the laughing stock of all my people, the object of their taunts all day long.

He has filled me with bitterness.

He has sated me with wormwood.

He has made my teeth grind on gravel.

That verse is power.

Can you He has made my teeth grind on gravel?

He is calling out to God, and God's big enough.

So I say, my endurance has perished, my hope from the Lord.

So is my hope from the Lord.

Listen to let that sink in.

So has my hope from the Lord.

God is the God of all hope.

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

Here it is.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Brand new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul.

Therefore I will hope in him.

We have a Savior named Jesus who came down and died on the cross to take our sin and our death and paid the price for us and conquered everything we're going through.

Our hope is in him.

David's gonna find it out in chapter 30, but I didn't want to just go through and leave us hopeless because there's always hope with the Lord.

I don't know who's here today, and I don't know what you're going through.

We all go through seasons of the slew of the spawn and the pit of despair.

All of us.

I encourage you to worship God.

Worship Him.

Adjust your focus, involve others.

We'd love to pray with you.

Talk to God.

If you're going through something, we're gonna end.

I'm gonna stay up here.

And if if you want prayer, there's plenty of people who want to pray with you and walk through what you're going through.

You should never be without hope because we serve a God who's able to do abundantly more than you could ask hope or think.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father God, I thank you, Lord, that you are God and we are not.

I thank you, Lord, that we go through seasons of the slew of the spawn.

We go through the pit of despair, not for for nothing, Lord God, but you have a sovereign plan in all of it, and that our hope is in you, and that Jesus died on the cross, but he rose again, giving us hope, Lord God.

We don't deserve it.

We deserve hell and we deserve death.

But Lord, you have given us life.

Father, I just pray.

I pray that if there's somebody here going through that season of the slew of the spond, that they would they would dig into your word, that they would find hope in adjusting their focus and worshiping you and involving others and talking to God because you are incredible.

Lord, we don't pray this in our own strength, we pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

And amen.