God is Faithful - Pastor Susie Gamez | Midtown Church Sacramento

I'm Pastor Susie, and if I have not had the chance to meet some of you, hopefully we'll get a chance maybe after service in the lobby.

But I have a question for you.

Question, just curious.

Today particularly, are any of you here at an earlier time than usual?

Maybe a handful of you, a handful of you.

I wonder, are any of you here a little earlier than usual because you have plans to watch the World Cup later?

Why, you know, I looked at someone who's wearing a soccer jersey and he he he he made it seem like I was like saying he was in trouble.

No, you're in church right now.

It's all right.

Come to an earlier service.

Game doesn't start until 12.

It's all good.

Uh but we did wonder if 8:30 and 10:30 might be a little bit more crowded than usual.

Because there are some people who have been following the World Cup and care about the World Cup final that's been plagued.

No, most of you like some of you are like, no.

Um, but okay, so this is actually, I want to start with this because the fact that Canada, Mexico, and the US were the host countries this year was supposed to make a huge difference in the amount of attention that soccer was finally going to get here in North America.

Um, North America, okay, so I have friends who are living in Mexico and friends who visited Mexico this past month during the World Cup, and they can confirm that Mexico has been, is, and will probably always be a soccer country, okay?

Uh or a football country, right?

Uh they confirm that it seems like the whole country has been revolving its life around soccer this past month.

So on days when Mexico had a match, all across the country, some places canceled work.

My friend has has kids in preschool in kindergarten.

They canceled school so that families could watch the game together.

Everything stopped so that the whole country could get behind their team.

I see some Mexico jerseys here.

You know that that is the all-time best-selling jersey.

So Mexico broke some records this year.

And um, we just got back from the city that I grew up in, Vancouver, Canada.

And there too, there was lots of buzz around the World Cup because they were hosting some games as well.

And so all throughout the city, you saw World Cup decorations, there were big watch parties happening, and there was an entire downtown area where like blocks and blocks were uh blocked off so that people could go and celebrate if their team had won uh after the game.

So there was World Cup buzz all over the streets of Vancouver.

But here in the US, I've read that the expected economic boom and increased fanfare of the game has been a little bit underwhelming.

In case you didn't know, soccer, or like I said, football, as most of the rest of the world calls it, um, is definitively the most popular sport in the world.

There's an estimated 3.5 billion soccer fans across the globe.

So numerically, it is the most uh it is the world's favorite sport.

But I uh I'm gonna venture, I'm gonna guess here that um most people here in the US still prefer the other football.

Uh okay.

I don't have to guess with you.

You know, some people might even call it the real football, American football.

So, okay, to prove that point, earlier this year when the Super Bowl was held in the Bay, it was almost impossible to find a hotel room nearby.

And if you did, hotel rates were ten times their usual price.

That wasn't the case this summer, however, when the city hosted some World Cup matches as well.

Some hotels had up to 50% vacancies, and room rates were pretty much on par for regular summer months.

So it had me thinking maybe San Francisco, the Bay Area, really is a faithful football town.

An American football town that is.

Okay, some pop culture trivia here.

So uh the San Francisco 49ers launched it as a brand campaign to replace their older motto, which was faithful then, faithful now.

I guess they didn't feel like they had to stay faithful to that motto.

Um, but the team updated their phrase, their their catchphrase to Faithful to the Bay in 2020 to show their loyalty to the local area after their rivals, the Raiders, went from being, so I can tell who you're cheering for.

Okay.

Um they went from being the Oakland Raiders to the LA Raiders back to being the Oakland Raiders to now they're the Las Vegas Raiders, right?

So they kind of sound like, you know, a Hollywood marriage, on again, off again, full of divorce, drama, and heartbreak.

So the Oakland, LA, Oakland, Las Vegas Raiders, they're fickle.

They don't know who they are.

But the 49ers, they're faithful to the Bay.

That's what they were trying to say with that slogan.

I mean, it was kind of shots fired, but it was an effective slogan.

So they're saying we're faithful to the bay.

You know, the faithful has been a nickname for the fans of the 49ers since the 1950s.

The faithful have stayed faithful through the good times and the bad.

But here's the point: here's the segue, here's the parallel into our topic today.

A team can be faithful to its city.

And you as a fan can be faithful to the 49ers or the Raiders or the Bears or whoever your team is, but your city, your team, even your family, your friends, your spouse, your closest friends can and will fail you at some point in life.

Sometimes they will even betray, hurt, or even harm you.

But here's the thing: God can't.

God does not, and God will not fail.

Our faithfulness is fickle, but God is not.

God is faithful.

That is the title and the topic of today's message.

As we continue, our God is serious.

Today we are looking at the faithfulness of God.

2 Timothy 2.13 tells us that even if we are faithless, God remains faithful.

Even if we are faithless, God remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

He cannot disown himself, meaning God cannot be untrue to his own nature because God is faithful.

God is faithful and we are fickle.

Even when we are faithless, let me put it this way: even when we are unfaithful to God, God remains faithful.

You know, this statement, even when we are faithless, he is faithful, it can be both convicting and comforting.

So even if we are without faith or unfaithful to God, God remains faithful to his own character.

Who he is doesn't change depending on how we act.

And God remains faithful to the sovereignty of his own plans and his own sovereign purposes.

But you know, it's convicting because this verse reminds us of how far we fall short of the glory and the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

And yet it's comforting because it's a reminder that no matter how far we fall short of the glory and the goodness and the faithfulness of God, God remains faithful.

His love is steadfast, his mercies never end.

He's forgiving, he's faithful, he's loving, and he's faithful even when we are faithless.

But here's a warning.

Let's be careful not to confuse a truth that is comforting for something that we become comfortable with.

Too comfortable.

So comfortable that we take God's love and faithfulness for granted.

When we do that, we can begin to act irresponsible, entitled, ungrateful, and unfaithful.

Because, well, we can have a tendency to think, we can mistakenly think that that, well, even if I'm unfaithful because God is faithful, he's always gonna forgive me.

He's always gonna be there.

So I can be unfaithful, I can act a fool, but God, God's gonna forgive me, God's always gonna be faithful.

And yeah, that might be true.

God remains faithful, but it doesn't sound like a healthy relationship, does it?

It's not.

And if it keeps going down that path, it's going to end badly.

Here's the thing: God is faithful even when we are not.

And he's not waiting for us to become faithful before he'll be faithful to us.

He was, will be, and is currently now faithful.

But it takes uh it takes two to make a thing go right.

God is faithful and God is patient, but if we choose to harden our hearts, plug our ears, or look away from his pursuit of us, if we choose rebellion, he may just allow our hearts to be hard and become unresponsive to him.

God's faithfulness, while way beyond our own capacity, is also meant to be our standard.

It's meant to be our goal.

He wants us to be faithful unto him as well.

You know, one of the Bible's most famous scriptures on faithfulness is actually found in the book of Lamentations.

Maybe a little unexpected, but in Lamentations chapter 3, verses 22 and 23, it says this the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

Lamentations 3:22

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is thy faithfulness.

Some of you have that committed to memory because, like me, you know that it's a famous hymn or a famous song.

And and it's a beautiful scripture because there's so much to learn about who God is in just these two verses.

God is steadfast, another word for faithful.

God is love and God is loving.

And that love is eternal because God is eternal, God is merciful, and just like his love, his mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is God's faithfulness.

Now, what does it mean to be faithful?

The Hebrew word for faithfulness is synonymous with steadfast, firm.

It's steadfast with fidelity.

Someone or something that is steady, loyal, unwavering, reliable.

There's a geyser in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming called Old Faithful.

Anyone ever been there?

Some people have gone there and people have gone there from all over the world.

And it's famous because it erupts hot water and steam every day, approximately every 90 minutes.

Every day, every 90 minutes.

It's reliable, it's consistent.

And there are few things in this world that feel as reliable and consistent.

That's why they call it old faithful, and people come from all over the world to go see this wonder.

You could say that there's a degree of predictability with faithfulness as well.

But faithfulness is also often paired with patience.

Think of the most patient person that you know.

That person is probably a faithful person as well.

There are times that I admit, and I admit this often, um, but there are times that I am not as patient as I could be, especially with my kids.

By the time number four is grown, I hope to have a PhD in patience.

Um, but I admit I'm still growing in that.

But there are also times that I feel like I need to let my kids know.

That I need to let them know that they don't even know how good they have it.

Like sometimes I tell them, you don't even know how patient I really am with you.

Like, I I know I'm probably not the only parent that lets their kids know.

Like, you you don't even know how good you got it compared to how we had it, right?

We're just letting them know, we're educating them.

Now, I'm not saying I'm a saint, but sometimes I feel like one.

However, just like we all fall short of the glory and the goodness and the faithfulness of God, we may think that we are patient, faithful, and long-suffering, but we all fall way short if we compare ourselves to God.

And we fall short if we compare ourselves to someone else in the Bible, someone who might be seen as the epitome of faithfulness, even faithful to a fault.

Have you heard ever heard of someone named Hosea in the Bible?

Well, who is Hosea?

Hosea chapter 1, verse 2 sums up the crazy that I'm talking about.

Hosea 1:2

Okay, so Hosea 1, 2, God goes to Hosea and says, Go and marry a woman of promiscuity.

A woman of promiscuity.

Here we thought that God would have wanted Hosea to marry someone like a Proverbs 31 woman.

But a woman of promiscuity, what in the plot twist is happening here, God?

Hosea was a man of God, a prophet, and a faithful husband to a man who uh to a woman, he was a faithful husband to a woman who ironically fit the description of someone who sounds a lot like the first syllable of her husband's name.

I didn't say it, I just alluded to it, right?

I know that sounds scandalous too, but some translations of the Bible use words way I use the PG translation.

Um anyway, she was a woman of promiscuity, and not just a woman who made uh one or two bad decisions in her life, she was chronically unfaithful, frequently abandoning Hosea for other men, eventually leaving him completely, and then her wayward heart and her bad decisions finally catch up to her, and she falls into deep poverty and she is sold into slavery.

So if what God told Hosea in chapter 1, verse 2 was not crazy enough, go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and he married her knowing that she was unfaithful and was going to be unfaithful.

He even said, Go and have kids with this woman.

And after she had committed all of these sins against her husband, God tells Hosea to go seek Gomer out.

Yes, her name was Gomer.

Um, this is probably why you haven't met many people named Gomer.

Um but God says, go and pay the price to get her back and redeem her, meaning not just go back and rescue her from her situation, but take her back as your wife and love her.

What?

Now, if Hosea was your son, your brother, your friend, or even your friend's second cousin's neighbor, you would probably tell him, No, let me let me tell you, Jose, this is crazy.

And even if he shot back and said, No, no, no, God told me to do this, you'd probably say to him, I don't think he did.

Because who does that?

Not only does this not make sense, it doesn't seem humanly possible to be this loving, this forgiving, this faithful, and it does not seem humanly possible to be reconciled in this situation.

It's not in our human nature to be this faithful and forgiving.

In fact, the point of the book of Hosea is to demonstrate how lavish the love of God is.

Hosea represents God's faithfulness, while Gomer was the embodiment of Israel's unfaithfulness to God.

Gomer's actions mirrored how the Israelites continually turned away from God and they worshipped false idols.

They were unfaithful, they were fickle, they were foolish from our vantage point, and they were not deserving of forgiveness again from our vantage point.

But Hosea's actions demonstrates to us the overwhelming, never-ending, faithful, and steadfast love of God.

It puts into action the words even when we are faithless, God remains faithful.

He is faithful, extravagantly and unreasonably faithful.

In fact, the words of Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations might feel more true to what you might expect Hosea to be feeling than what Hosea actually did in obedience to God.

So Jeremiah, a prophet, the one known as the weeping prophet, while he was not personally responsible for the rebellion and all of the ruin that he saw around him, he felt responsible.

He felt the weight of responsibility.

And at the same time, it sounds a little weird to say to say it like this, but Jeremiah, he empathized with God.

His lamentation for his people was a reflection of his brokenheartedness alongside God's.

Lamentations is raw and it's real and it's honest and it expresses feelings of despair and lament.

So obviously, the book of Lamentations is not a book about celebration and joy, it's a book of lament.

Jeremiah again had the reputation of being the prophet who wept.

Jeremiah had a lot to weep about.

He wrote Lamentations in the midst of Jerusalem's destruction.

He was writing from the rubble and the ashes.

The city was in ruins, and the people that God loved and called his own rejected him over and over again.

Even though God had repeatedly sought to love them and bless them.

Jeremiah was brokenhearted because he knew the selfishness and the stubbornness and the sinfulness of the people would lead to more suffering and prolonged exile.

Jeremiah wept because his heart was broken over the things that broke God's heart, and God's heart was grieved over the disobedience and the unfaithfulness of the Israelites.

He was grieved over the consequences of their sin and the separation that it caused between them.

Last week I got a I got a knock on our door, and it was uh the mother of one of my kids' friends.

She looked distraught, and I could hear it in her voice immediately when she asked, Hey, I'm just wondering, have you seen my son?

She hadn't seen him or heard from him, and um she explained that after they had had a big argument that morning, her son abruptly left the house.

And and at first she wasn't too worried.

She said, I'm I'm just gonna give him some time to cool off.

But then hours had passed, and she realized he didn't have and when she realized that his friends had not heard from him and he wasn't at his friends' homes, um, she started to panic a little.

She she got anxious and worried, and so she did everything she could.

She was knocking on doors, she was asking people um to call other people, and and some of us joined in on the search.

And um, just so you know, he he was found later.

Um but but the but the point that I want to make from that is that no matter how mad his mom might have been, there is no world in which she would want her son out on the streets overnight rather than safe at home with her.

As for him, one night out on the mean streets of Elk Grove, and he would have found out pretty quick that there's no place like home.

You know, for the children of Israel, however, it seems that their chronic waywardness had caught up with them.

How many times had God been patient with them?

How many times had God provided for them?

How many times had God called them back, received them back, loved them back, only for them to run away again and make bad choices?

And God, and while God was faithful and patient towards them, there were consequences for their decisions.

The city was now in ruins.

The people were suffering because though God is faithful, there were consequences for their sins.

And judgment was being carried out against them.

The people were afflicted and things were far from good for them.

Last week, when my kids saw how distraught this friend's mother was, I think what registered for them was that it's obvious that this kid's mother loved him and wanted nothing more for him to come home.

But I think they knew that he was probably going to face some consequences when he got home.

Because they said to me, Hey mommy, if I ever did something like that, I'd probably be in a lot of trouble, huh?

And I said, Oh, a hundred percent.

Because while there is no place on earth that I wouldn't go to to go look for my kid if they were missing, when they were finally safe back at home, I would also need to let them know that their mother is no punk.

I would need them to know that if they sent me on a wild goose chase looking for their wayward behinds all over the city, almost to the ER because of all the stress, I would need them to know that this would be a bad decision and they would never want to do it again.

I would need To educate them.

But here's the thing.

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that my kids are not going to make some bad decisions.

I can't guarantee that they won't be the victims of other people's bad decisions.

I can't guarantee that they won't be faced with difficult circumstances and difficult seasons in life because in this world there will be trouble.

In this world, there will be hardship.

In this life, there will be suffering and struggle and the residual effects of a sinful and broken world that sometimes feels so great that it becomes hard to see and believe that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Sometimes suffering and struggle does make it hard for us to feel like this too shall pass.

Because sometimes it feels like this too shall last.

And at times it can be hard to hold on to the belief that God is faithful.

Sometimes our seasons of hardship and grief can last a lot longer than we'd like.

At times our suffering feels like too much for us to bear.

Sorrow can feel so heavy that it's hard to move, hard to breathe.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by it.

It can all feel like too much.

But you know, the weirdly beautiful thing about the Book of Lamentations is that it gives us permission to grieve.

It validates the very human part of who we are, and it gives us space to feel our feelings.

How many of you are like me and you like sad movies?

Like I like movies that make me cry.

I actually think a movie is better if it can make me cry.

I like I like sad songs.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm a sucker for these things.

Um a friend told me that I they think it's because I'm Korean and Koreans resonate with tragedy.

It's like in our blood.

If you watch a couple of Korean dramas, you'll probably verify that.

But for me, like a movie or a song or a play or a book, whatever, if it can move me enough to make me cry, I feel like I appreciate it more deeply.

Because that's what movies and books and songs and poems and art, that's what it's supposed to do.

It's supposed to make you feel something, move you in some way.

And Lamentations is a book of poetry.

It's written as a series of poems.

And actually, if you read it in the Hebrew, uh you'll see that Lamentations 3 is actually written in the form of an acrostic.

Do y'all remember what an acrostic is?

I think we have an example of what a cross an acrostic is.

Like there's a visual.

Okay, so like it's one of those poems that you take the word and the poem starts with each letter of the first word of the poem.

Like on Mother's Day or Father's Day, you probably get a poem that, like, mother, marvelous.

Oh, outstanding.

You know, anyways, you get it, right?

So that's what an acrostic is.

And so Lamentations 3 is actually written as an acrostic.

I mean, that's cool and all, but why?

So Sun Chan Ra, who's a professor at Fuller, he he in his book called Prophetic Lament, explains that Lamentations is presented as an acrostic that uses the full spectrum of the Hebrew alphabet.

So in the Hebrew version of A to Z, Alef Tata, it uses that as an acrostic.

And why is this significant?

Because why it while it might feel like the things, the list of things to grieve and lament, while it feels like those things are endless, using the acrostic provides a sense of order to chaos.

Using the structure gives the overwhelming feelings of lament, both the sense of boundaries and completion all at once.

Ra says that by expressing the fullness of grief from A to Z, the author of Lamentations seeks that the people might experience an emotional catharsis.

He wanted to bring about a complete cleansing of the conscience through a total confession of sin.

The acrostic guarantees that in some form the full account of their suffering will be expressed.

Using what seems like an almost elementary literary device brings about some order.

And especially in the midst of chaos, people want a sense of order.

This acrostic poem provides that kind of order.

You know, it's it's kind of like when you do the work to talk through something, process through something with your therapist.

Let me urge you, if you feel like or if you think you might need a therapist, get a therapist.

It might be really healthy for you because amongst other things, a therapist may be able to help you put a name to some of the things that you've been feeling.

They might say, what you're describing sounds like intergenerational trauma.

Intergenerational trauma.

I've never heard of that term before, but it makes sense as you explain what that is.

Oh, there's some order coming out of the chaos of what I feel.

They might help you understand that what you know what you're feeling, what you're describing sounds like what might be uh what we call the imposter syndrome.

Um they might tell you, hey, the things that you've experienced with this person, it sounds like you were dealing with somebody who had uh a narcissistic personality disorder.

So naming these things don't necessarily solve the problem, but it can help bring a sense of order out of the chaos of what you've been navigating through.

So, yes, there's permission to lament throughout the book of Lamentations, but lament itself is not the final destination.

It's an outlet, but it's not the final destination.

Let me read to you again from Lamentations 3.

In the middle of this book, which is full of lament and grief, there's a sudden shift that becomes one of Scripture's most powerful declarations of God's faithfulness.

I'll read it to you again, but this time I want to start at the end of verse 20 in chapter 3.

At the end of verse 20, after Jeremiah had been uh lamenting and grieving for three chapters already, it says, My soul is downcast within me.

My soul is downcast within me.

And then all of a sudden it turns a corner in verse 21 because here he says, Yet, this I call to mind.

Yet, this will I remember, yet this I will focus my attention on, and therefore I have hope.

All this weeping, all this sadness, all this reason to lament, and though the circumstances have not changed, things have not miraculously gotten better overnight or in the snap of a finger, revival is not suddenly broken out, and Jeremiah is still in the midst of rebels, ruins, and rubble.

While none of this has shifted, something in Jeremiah's heart and his mind has shifted.

A shift has happened and therefore he has hope.

And he goes on to recall because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.

We could have been consumed by judgment prior to this, but because of God's great love for us, we are not consumed.

For his compassions never fail.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

They are new every morning.

They are new every morning.

Great is his faithfulness, and he declares, Great is thy faithfulness.

He pivots, he shifts his eyes from all the things around him that he has reason to lament about.

And he pivots and he shifts his eyes.

He fixes his eyes on God, the author and perfecter of his faith, and he says, His mercies are new every morning.

Great is thy faithfulness.

He says, The Lord is my portion.

Therefore, I will wait for him.

I'm not sitting in the middle of the fulfillment of his promise right now, but therefore, because I can recall who God is, the unchanging, faithful nature of who God is, I have reason for hope.

And therefore I will wait for him.

Jeremiah was able to pivot from lament and despair to hope and trust by remembering who God is.

Jeremiah couldn't do anything in the moment to change the situation, but he was able to pivot in his spirit and in and in his mindset, and he actively chose to remember who God is.

He remembered who God was, who God is, and he put his hope and trust in who God always will be.

And he started to praise.

I say this often, but I do believe it that sometimes the most powerful praise comes out of the deepest depths of doubt.

Powerful praise comes when it emerges out of the sanctifying fires of suffering.

And sometimes the most powerful praise rises up out of the ashes of grief and lament.

Praise can be most powerful when it's hardest to praise.

Praise can be most powerful when it's hardest to praise.

I know a pastor who lost his teenage son to suicide last year.

And he and his family have gone through a season of immense suffering.

Yet because they have made it a habit to call to mind God's faithfulness, they have hope.

A few months ago, in a post dedicated to his wife on their 25th wedding anniversary, he took the time to name and acknowledge the grief and the heaviness that they were feeling.

It was quite a long post, and he wrote quite a bit.

But towards the end of the post, he says this.

So today we celebrate.

Not because life is easy, but because God has been faithful.

We celebrate a marriage that has known laughter and now knows the lament.

A love that death could wound but not destroy.

This anniversary is not what we imagined, but even now there is so much redemption.

Because sorrow does not cancel joy, it deepens it.

And grief does not end love, it proves it.

So there is room for lament in our lives.

It's okay to feel the ache of sorrow.

And it's okay to feel what some of us have come to know as the dark night of the soul.

A period of time where it feels like you can't see or feel or hear God even.

Where it's hard to hold on to the hope that you're going to see his mercies that are new every morning.

You might start to wonder if you'll see daylight again in the midst of what feels like a never-ending darkness.

But what we can learn from Jeremiah is that we don't have to stay in the pit of despair.

We can learn from Jeremiah that there is room to lament, but there is also a powerful way to pivot.

Pivot the posture of your heart so you don't get crushed by it.

In verse 21, Jeremiah made a deliberate choice to stop looking down at the rubble and the ruins of Jerusalem, and he forces himself to look upon the face of God.

He forces him to remember and declare with his mouth that God is good, that he is loving, that he is faithful, and he is trustworthy.

And here's the advantage that we have over Jeremiah and the people of his day.

You know, Jeremiah was declaring the coming promise of salvation, the coming promise of God's goodness, the fulfillment of his promise.

He was saying that in faith.

They hadn't yet seen it.

Jesus hadn't yet come.

It would be years and years before Jesus would come, but now we know how the story ends.

Jesus came, Jesus conquered, Jesus went to the cross.

He took our sins, he went and conquered death and fear and shame.

And he gave us redemption.

He gave us a promise of new life.

He resurrected from the grave.

And on that good Friday when he went to the went to the cross, it looked like in that moment, it looked like total defeat.

On that Saturday, when they couldn't make sense of what happened, it probably felt like a dark night of the soul.

It felt like defeat.

But early Sunday morning was the fulfillment of God's promises that are new every morning and has been since that day when Jesus resurrected and has been from the beginning of time because God always had a plan.

He always has purpose.

And so for us, we can hold on to that hope and we can fix our eyes on Jesus because He has given us reason to have hope.

I'm pretty sure that there are people here today who need to hold fast to the promise of God's faithfulness.

I'm gonna guess that there are some people here today who have felt like they've been sitting in a pile of rubble and ruins for some time as well.

There are people who resonate with Jeremiah's downcast soul.

But because you're here, you probably have at least a little bit of hope.

You're probably here because you want to recall the faithfulness of God.

You want to be able to declare in faith the goodness of God.

And so today I'm giving you that invitation to pivot.

If you've been in that place for a while and you know that in your heart of hearts you need to make a pivot, well, the altar is open.

You can come, you can come here and you can make a declaration, maybe with your mouth.

You don't even have to say it out loud, but but maybe you just can't you can come and you can pray.

You can say, God, I've been in a place where it's been hard for me to praise you, but I am in faith gonna just start to praise you.

If you wanna come and do that, you can do that here, and then people will pray with you afterwards.

And I also want to give an invitation to anybody who has felt maybe a little convicted because as we talk about God's faithfulness, there are some people who may realize God has been so faithful to me, but I've been walking in some areas of my of my life with a lack of faith.

Maybe I've even been unfaithful to God and God is calling me home.

So for anyone who wants to make a pivot and make a declaration, start doing that now.

Make it a habit to praise God.

And praise God, you might not be in the midst of rubble and ruins right now, but you just want to lean into the practice of praise.

You want to make it a habit because when that time comes, it'll be easy for you to keep making those declarations.

That God, you are faithful.

God, you are steadfast.

God, I thank you for your mercies that are new every morning.

God, I want to live a life that does not hold back in my praise unto you, Lord.

God, I want to hold on to faith more than I hold on to doubt.

God, I want to shout down fear and anxiety and worry with shouts of praise.

And God, I want to know that it's true that you don't give us a spirit of fear, you don't give us a spirit of anxiety, you don't give us a spirit of timidity.

God, you want to give us a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind.

So, God, equip us with praise.

God, convince us of your faithfulness, God, because we have joined in our praise unto you.

We have declared it with our mouth.

We are believing in our hearts, and we're gonna walk in faith that you are trustworthy and we can put our hope and our trust in you.

So thank you, Lord, for the people that you are delivering out of the pit of despair.

Thank you, Lord, that you are putting a firm foundation under our feet.

And God, thank you for a new day where we can we can walk in the promises of your love that will never fail us, your presence that will always be with us to the very end of the age.

God, we thank you.

You are a faithful God.

Faithful you were, faithful you are, faithful you always will be.

Unto you is all the glory.

Praise this in Jesus' name.

Amen.