Psalm 42- Pastor Kyle Weeks - September 6th, 2026

If you have a copy of God's word, go ahead and grab it.

Turn to Psalm 42.

Psalm 42 is where we are going to be this morning.

Psalm 42 is the first psalm and the second book within the book of Psalms.

The book is broken up into three.

And so it is the first book or first Psalm of the second book.

And so Psalm 42 is where we're going to be.

If you're able and willing, I ask that you stand with me in honor of reading God's word.

And we're going to look at Psalm 42 together.

We're going to read from verses 1 to 11.

This is the word of the Lord.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God?

These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go within the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude-keeping festival.

Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and from Hermon from Mount Mazar.

Deep calls the deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

By day the Lord commands a steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?

Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God?

Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

May God add his blessings to the reading of his word.

Let's pray.

Father, we come before you this morning, and God, we we ask that you would speak to our hearts this morning.

Because Father, whether we want to admit it or not, every single one of us in this room have walked through seasons, are currently walking through seasons, or are about to walk through seasons, feeling exactly like this.

And so, Father, would you speak to our hearts this morning?

Father, through the work of your Holy Spirit, Father, would you show us your goodness and your grace?

Would you remind us how you have been faithful and you will be faithful?

Would you remind us of all that we have in Christ Jesus?

And Father, would you speak to our souls if they are downcast, if they are distraught, if they are in turmoil?

Father, would you speak through me this morning?

Give me the words to say.

Let it be your words and not mine.

Speak to your church this morning, for we desperately need to hear from you.

We pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

When I was a campus pastor down in Lakeland, I would stand at the front of the church during services and welcome people as they came in.

And one man that I welcomed, his last name was Fair.

And every time I would ask him, How are you this morning, sir?

He would always say, What?

I'm fair.

Every single Sunday.

Every single Sunday, it didn't matter.

He'd always say, I'm fair.

Now he it was a joke to him, but to me, I I would always take it every single Sunday, him being, well, I'm fair.

Um, and I would go, Well, I wish I had that life.

Where I was fair every time someone would ask me that how I was doing, how are you?

How was your week?

It's fair, it was fair, I'm fair, all of these different things.

I don't know about you, but there's sometimes where I go through a week and I come to church on Sunday or I go to an event and someone comes up and says, How are you?

And I just want to be like, I'm tired.

Amen.

I'm stressed, I'm I'm anxious.

One thing that I always felt with that gentleman is I was like, man, he must be doing something different.

And his prayer life must be much better than mine because I don't know if every week I could come in and say that I'm I'm fair, I'm awesome, things are going great.

There's sometimes where you've had a stressful week.

Maybe you've had a stressful week at work, maybe it's been family issues, maybe it's a financial stress that you've had, maybe it's not stress, but it's just anxiety on top of stress.

You don't know what's going to happen and you're worried.

You're you're worried, you're anxious.

Maybe you you just uh feel down.

You don't know why, but but but you just you you're you're emotional.

You you you can't seem to find your equilibrium.

You're either uh really great or just down in the dumps.

Have you ever had those weeks where you you have that feeling and then it takes a snap reaction to your kids or it takes a quick reaction to somebody, uh maybe either whether you're driving or you're at work, and all of a sudden you just ask yourself this question what is wrong with me?

You ever ask yourself, well, what is wrong with me?

What why am I acting like this?

Why am I feeling this way?

Why am I struggling so much with this?

What is wrong with me?

And oftentimes when we have those thoughts, it's immediately met with condemnation because we should say, you know, there shouldn't be anything wrong with you.

As you see on bumper stickers all the time, you're too blessed to be stressed.

I don't know who came up with that slogan.

I'm not gonna say what I would like to do to that person, but that slogan has led so many of us to just even more despair rather than lifting us up out of the dumps because we would sit back and go, Well, I guess something must just really be wrong with me to be feeling this way.

And here's what I want you to be encouraged by this morning.

You need to look no further than the word of God to understand that that feeling is absolutely natural as a human being to have those seasons of lament, those seasons of stress, frustration, uh trial and suffering.

All of those things are normal to us as human beings, and and the writer of this psalm is no different than you and I.

The the Bible would say, and and we would see that this is a song or a psalm of the sons of Korah.

Now, now here's the thing.

There are some different schools of thought.

One school of thought is that David actually wrote this psalm, and the sons of Korah sang it in the temple.

There's other reason to believe that it's the sons of Korah that not only wrote this psalm, but sang this psalm because they were worship leaders within the temple.

And I'm gonna go with the second one.

This is written by the sons of Korah, they're worship leaders in the temple, and they are going through an incredibly difficult season in life.

Look at verse one, two, three.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God?

Verse 4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in the procession of the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude-keeping festival.

So here's what we also can see with this book.

The sons of Korah who lead worship within the temple, where the presence of God would be, are nowhere near the temple, and because they're nowhere near the temple, they cannot lead the throng of procession in in worship to the Lord, and they do not feel his presence, and they are incredibly distraught.

We don't know why they are so far away.

We don't know if it is a it is because of judgment that they are not able to go to the temple.

We don't know it is because of circumstances that they are not able to make their way to the temple, but either way, they are unable to go into the temple to lead worship and to be in the presence of God, and they feel like they are a deer that pants for water that cannot be satisfied with anything else.

This is a psalm of sadness, despair, and mourning because of the situation the psalmist finds themselves in.

And again, for us, that is a comfort because life isn't always lived on the mountaintops.

Sometimes life takes you to the deepest of valleys where you feel like any rain shower that comes sends all the water rushing in and drowning you out.

The psalmist is gonna walk us through this season that we are in, and what you and I are gonna see is that there is hope for us within these seasons.

And what you and I will see, what the psalmist would have loved to have seen, is that our hope is not merely in what we think and we ask God to do, our hope is also what we know God has done for us.

So the first thing that I want you to see within this psalm is that a heart that longs for God is distraught when it feels far from Him.

A heart that longs for God is distraught when it feels far from him.

Now, this is gonna go contrary with what maybe you have heard, which is if you feel far from God or if you have these feelings, then maybe you should wonder if you've even received any that salvation in the first place.

Maybe you should wonder if you really are a child of God, because a child of God should not feel far from God, and that is simply not true.

You and I, as much as we seek to be like Jesus, to get to know Jesus more, to read about him in his word, we'll find that through we will go through seasons of life that will ebb and flow when you feel spiritually saturated in God and seasons where you feel spiritually dry and feel far from God.

But it is a heart that longs for God, that is distraught when it feels far from him, and that is what the sons of Korah are expressing.

They feel far from him, they're not in the temple, so they're not close to his presence.

They're not able to do what they felt led to do, which is to lead worship within the temple.

And because of this, they they are emotionally, physically, spiritually distraught.

We would say they're dramatic unless you've been through seasons where, as they would say, my tears have been my food day and night.

I I'm just overwhelmed emotionally.

I can't figure this out.

While they say to me all the day long, now that they here would be others around them.

We'll address this later on in the psalm because he'll say it, they'll say it again.

But but not only do they feel far from God, but then they have others around them as they feel far from God going, Well, where is your God?

He's not here where you are, he's over there.

Why aren't you over there?

You should be over there.

Well, this must be a you problem.

And the sons of Korah are just distraught at what is happening.

As are you and I, as are those who's who longs for God, who finds satisfaction in God, your heart is distraught when it feels far from him.

It is safe to say that the psalmist feels spiritually dry.

And it is not the only time within the book of Psalms that we see this theme.

David would write in Psalm 43, verse 6, My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

And he he says, I long after you, but I don't feel you.

Asaph would say in Psalm 77, 7 and 9, the Lord will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable?

Do you ever feel like that?

God, will your favor ever come back to me?

Will will were your will your favor ever be in my life?

Will I ever be able to be blessed by you again?

Has the steadfast love of the Lord forever ceased?

Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger shut up his compassion?

Have you ever felt that way?

You've been in a season for for such a long time.

You've been in a storm that's been so catastrophic in your life that you just sit back and go, is this just kind of when God throws his hands up and is done with me?

Ironically, I just thought about this, but John came to my office this morning.

We were talking about college football, and he and he said, Um, did you hear what the Florida quarterback said last year after the LSU game?

If you don't remember, I hate to remind it to you.

DJ Lagway threw five interceptions against LSU last year, against in as Florida just got completely pummeled.

And his mom called him after the game and she said, Honey, I just want you to remember that God has a plan for you.

And Lagway said, at that moment in his life, he felt so so down.

He said, Mom, after tonight, I'm pretty sure God has forgotten who I am.

You ever been there?

At this particular time and season in my life, I maybe just God has forgotten that I'm I'm here.

All of us as humans have a tendency to fall into seasons of spiritual dryness and depression.

So before we go any further, I just want to encourage you with that.

Spiritual dryness does not mean spiritual deception.

It doesn't mean that you have been deceived into thinking that you have received salvation.

That's not true.

But in this moment of spiritual dryness, that there are a couple things that in this moment we can look at and go, what is the cause of this?

The sons of Korah knew what their cause was.

I don't get to go to the temple, I don't get to lead in worship, and so I feel spiritually dry.

That's one pastor would put one of the one of the main causes for spiritual dryness is simply being far from God.

Now we know those who are indwelt in the Holy Spirit, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, the presence of the Lord in the Old Testament is in the temple.

The presence of the Lord in your life is through who?

Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit and dwelling in you.

And so this is not talking about a physical far from God, but spiritually far.

If you feel spiritually far from God this morning, it is because rather than God leaving you and going somewhere else, you have left God and gone your own path.

And guess what?

As sheep, we tend to do dumb things from time to time.

As the sheep would leave the shepherd to go and follow whatever grass they they would see until they either fell off a cliff or fell into wolves or anything else.

You and I have tendencies to walk through life and to seek after our own things.

And it is not that God has left you and gone away.

It is that you have left God and gone your own direction.

Seasons of stress, suffering, and hardship can cause us to drift away from the Lord if we let them.

When we are only focused on our circumstances, we will not seek the Lord and we will not continue to be intentional to walk with the Lord.

But when seasons of hardness and stress come, that snooze button seems a lot easier to hit.

That show seems a lot more appealing than seeking after the things of God.

White knuckling our way through our situations, thinking that we can just figure this out all on our own doesn't lead us before the throne of the Lord asking for us help.

It leads us away from the throne of the Lord, going, Hey, watch what I can do.

And oftentimes when this happens, we find ourselves in seasons where you're like, I'm just tired, I'm trying to do this, and I'm trying to do this.

And I feel like God is nowhere.

No, no, no.

God is there.

You've chosen to not include him.

And because we choose not to include him, it creates this feeling in us that we are spiritually far from God.

Being far from God is one.

The second reason that we feel this spiritual dryness from time to time is we refuse to drink from the well of scripture.

Let me ask you this.

Do you feel far from God in here this moment?

You don't have to answer out loud.

Then let me ask you this.

Are you continuing to seek after to read his word?

Oftentimes, one of the biggest causes of spiritual dryness is no intake of the word of God.

No intake of the word of God, no, no, no reading of the word of God.

I'm just trying to do this on my own.

You rely on music that to just kind of lift your emotions as opposed to the word to redirect your thoughts.

Um, there's no diving into the the word of God.

So being far from God is one of the causes of spiritual dryness to just to just wander from him.

Um, not being engaged in the word uh is part of spiritual dryness and being far from him.

The third thing that I would say, and this is not gonna be fun to hear, just be inhuman.

Because here's here's the thing.

There have been moments and seasons of my life where I have felt spiritually dry, yet my word intake has not wavered.

So I sit back and I just go, What is God, what is wrong with me?

And those moments, then it just turns into, God, satisfy me with your word, satisfy me with this.

There are times where you can do everything right, and still you just feel far.

That's what happens, and our and our feelings take over, and then we get overwhelmed with what's gonna happen.

So here's here's the second thing that I that I point that I want you to know this morning.

In moments of spiritual dryness and depression, you need redirection more than affirmation.

In moments of spiritual dryness and depression, you need redirection more than affirmation.

Look at what the sons of Korah, how they respond in verse five to their spiritual dryness.

They don't wallow, they have a healthy, intentional dialogue within themselves.

Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you at turmoil?

Why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation.

Brothers and sisters, feelings are natural to have.

Nobody is saying that that there isn't some feelings of lament or frustration or depression.

Nobody's saying that those feelings are not valid or should not happen in your life.

If you are breathing this morning and you are a Homo sapien, then you are a human being, and human beings have feelings.

We are created in the image of God, given a mind and emotions, all of these things.

But what we see here, and what I am not saying, is that those feelings then dictate your actions.

Rather than affirmation of those feelings, more than affirmation of those feelings, you need redirection.

You need to redirect your thoughts, you need to, as The word says to take every thought captive.

Feelings cannot take control over you.

Is that not what we are logically saying?

Those that are watching this Lindsay Clancy trial and getting so frustrated with our culture around us.

That though she felt this way, you cannot be allowed your feelings to then overwhelm and control your actions.

In that moment of spiritual depression that all of us find ourselves in, what you need in that moment is not a bunch of people to come around you and say, you know what, you're right to feel this way.

You're right to just stay right where you are.

You are right to have those feelings, and you know what?

Don't let anybody tell you that those feelings are wrong or that or try to really get you out of it if you just would rather sit there for a moment.

Is it wrong to have those feelings?

Absolutely not.

All of us have those feelings.

Is it wrong to just find ourselves with those feelings of frustration and depression and have a hard time fighting against them?

No.

But the point is, you have to fight to redirect your thoughts back toward the things of God as opposed to staying where you have found yourself at.

The sons of Korah look at themselves and they ask themselves this question.

We ask, why am I acting this way?

The sons of Korah said, Why are you depressed?

Why are you downcast?

Why are you in turmoil within me?

You don't have to stay there.

You don't have to live in that place.

You don't have to accept that place.

Hope in God.

Look to the Lord.

Redirect your mind back to him.

Focus on him.

Look to him because you will again praise him.

Your salvation.

This is one of the hardest parts in seasons of spiritual depression.

So that's why we pray during these seasons to ask the Lord to work in our hearts, to change our hearts.

It's why that you need people around you that are more worried about your spiritual needs than your emotional needs to say.

Hey, listen, I know you feel this way, and I'm sorry.

I know it's tough, but we got to look to the Lord.

We got to look to Jesus who has fought these battles for us.

We got to look to Jesus who gives us grace and mercy.

We got to look to Jesus who tells us that even in our sin, he still died for us.

That though we fight with these feelings all the time, that he has overcome this battle that you and I are waging spiritually, we don't have to give in to, but we can fight against through the victory that we have in the Lord Jesus.

Did you know that?

We don't battle against flesh and blood.

This isn't a battle of your thoughts or mind.

We battle against the prince of the power of the air and the sons of darkness.

John Calvin put it this way.

He said, The soul of a man serves the purpose, as it were, of a workshop to Satan in which to forge a thousand methods of despair.

Let me read that to you again.

The soul of a man serves the purpose, as it were, of a workshop to Satan in which to forge a thousand methods of despair.

That is what the enemy seeks to bring you to a place of emotional and spiritual despair to go.

I have no hope.

I have nothing good.

There is nothing that can help me in this moment.

And that is biblically not true.

Because in Christ Jesus we hold the victory.

In Christ Jesus, he fights on our behalf.

In Christ Jesus, we are no longer captives to sin, but we walk in freedom because of the cross of Christ.

That's why he says, Hope in God.

If we can put this in a New Testament sense, that this would be the same cry of the father, of the boy with the unclean spirit that says, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

God, I believe, I trust in you.

Help me in the areas that I am struggling to trust you.

Work in my heart.

When we control our thoughts and we seek to take everyone captive, pointing them to Christ, we have to remind ourselves of what is certain and continue to pursue after the Lord.

The third thing that I want you to see is this when the trials of life overwhelm you to the point of despair, you have to, number one, remind yourself of what is certain.

But look at what he says in verse 7.

Deep calls to deep over the roar of your waterfalls.

All of your breakers and waves have gone over me.

From one edge of my life to the other are the roars of these waters that's now overwhelming me.

So here, uh the the the Psalter feels like they've gone through a place of spiritual drought to spiritually drowning in the trials of this life that they are facing.

By then look at verse eight.

By day the Lord commands a steadfast love, and at night his song is with me as a prayer to the God of my life.

He does it again.

Do you catch that?

Verse 8, similar to verse 5 and 6, he does it again.

Though I feel overwhelmed, though the trials of this life or the the waves of judgment or the waves of just suffering are gone over me, by day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

So while all these things are happening, the Lord still gives me his steadfast love in the morning and by night his song is with me.

He encourages me, he strengthens me.

While all these things are happening, getting out of spiritual dryness does not mean that the storm automatically stops or that the suffering automatically ceases.

But when we find ourselves in these circumstances and we redirect our thoughts and we seek to remind ourselves of what is certain, it gives us hope as we continue to walk through those.

Life does not get easy for the psalmist here.

Look at verse 9.

I say to God, My rock, why have you forgotten me?

Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say all the day long, where is your God?

Has life gotten easier for him as he's reminding himself of what is true?

No, but life has become more stable as he has thrust himself against the rock of his salvation.

What did Spurgeon say?

He said, I have learned to kiss the waves that plunge me against the rock of ages.

When I find myself in these seasons, I don't allow despair to take over and my feelings to just go unchecked.

But what I what I, through self-control and the Holy Spirit, seek to do is redirect my thoughts to focus on what is certain.

Hope in God, he says in verse 11 again.

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love.

Look at the word Lord there.

That's the covenant name of the Lord.

That's Yahweh.

He who is commands his steadfast love.

And at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

He says, Hope in God.

Remind yourself of what is certain, and he is always faithful.

He will always be faithful.

Now, what the psalmist is ultimately wanting here is the presence of God with him, to know that God is for him, not against him, and to know that God will continue to be there with him.

What we know this side of the cross is what he longs for, is a mediator like Christ Jesus.

What the psalmist doesn't have, that you have, is a salvation purchased for you, not on your own merit.

A mediator in Christ Jesus who went through a more perfect tent, who stood before the Lord in heaven and provided a atonement that was sufficient to pay for your sins, to give you a salvation that takes you from a son of disobedience to a child of God that gives you access to God, and on top of that, being filled with the Holy Spirit, where his presence is with you always, indwelling in you, what the psalmist wants is what you and I have, and that is Jesus.

What is certain in this passage as it pertains to our life is that because of Jesus, you and I can walk through seasons like the psalmist is in with hope.

Tim Keller would put it this way if Jesus is alive, which he is, and sitting on the throne, which he is, then I can walk through life knowing that everything will be okay.

There is hope within depression and despair, and we know that we are not alone because we know that he is with us.

We know that he fights for us, we know that we have victory by his blood, we know that he's the one that handcuffed the principalities, and he's the one that holds victory over sin and death.

And because of that, I can rest in him, because of that, I can run to him, because of that, I know that though I walk through these seasons where I feel frustrated and depressed and anxious and not knowing what to do, that he is constant, he is stable, and he is my rock, and I shall not be moved.

What does the song say?

Because he lives, because he lives, you're gonna make it.

You're gonna get through.

He is working, he is moving.

Because he lives, your suffering has an expiration date.

The storm will pass.

His steadfast love and his mercy will not end.

And and he will not, as we saw last week, he will not always chide.

His anger is but for a moment.

So we he we know that that that he will not always discipline, but that that the the clouds will lift and the sun will come out again.

Because he lives, your dry season will not last forever.

You can face tomorrow, all fear is gone.

He holds the future, and life is worth the living because he lives no matter where you find yourself in life.

The second thing that I want you to see in this is not only to remind yourself of what is certain, but but to continue to pursue after him.

Remind yourself of what is certain.

God, I know there's victory in you.

I know that you alone hold my life in your hands.

You are with me always.

And so I'm gonna continue to pursue after you.

I'm gonna continue to put my trust in you, just like the last verse.

And really, these two, these two psalms are put together.

You can see he continues to go on, and he'll say in verse or chapter 43, Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people from the deceitful and unjust man, deliver me, and he'll continue to go on.

And actually, he'll end chapter 43, the same way he ends chapter 42, which is, Why are you downcast, O my soul?

And why are you at turmoil within me?

Hope in God.

We had said before, I had said before, oftentimes when we feel far from God, it's because we've strayed.

And because we've strayed, um, we go and do our own things, and then we turn around metaphorically in life, and we just feel like God's nowhere to be found.

Do you know what the psalmist does?

You know what David does?

Oftentimes when we, and we'll look at these in the other Psalms of Lament, David will remind himself of where God has been faithful.

And what he does in that reminder is this.

I want you to think of it this way.

It's like God's blessing, God's presence to David is like a water faucet.

And when David feels like God has not poured out his presence or he hasn't felt God recently, here's what David will do: he'll grab a chair, he'll go sit himself under the spigot and say, I'm gonna sit here until he does it.

Do you know what that is?

Pursuit.

That is that that is continuing to seek after God.

And David goes to where he last felt his presence and said, if it's here, then I'm gonna sit here and wait for God to to to pour it out again.

I'm not gonna seek anything else, I'm not gonna uh go any other direction.

I am going to allow him to remind me of his faithfulness and goodness and where I have experienced it.

And I'm just gonna take myself there and I'm gonna continue to pursue after him.

And I know the longer I do that, he will not always keep it off, and one day he's gonna open it up, and his presence will be poured out on me, and I will feel him again.

So, what about you and I?

How do we metaphorically sit ourselves underneath the faucet, waiting for the Lord to just stir our affections for him again?

The first place that we go to is his word.

Alan's sitting over here, I'm gonna say it with him in the room.

Love Alan to death.

Songs are great, and Alan would tell you this.

Songs are great, and they do a lot for us whenever it comes to moments.

But what you need in those moments of spiritual dryness is not the newest worship song.

You need to worship in the word.

You need the word, you need to read the word, you need to be reminded of his faithfulness.

As we said last week, you need to be reminded of his goodness.

A song, yes, they'll fix those feelings for a moment, but what you need is an anchor for the soul.

And Christ, the Bible tells us in Hebrews that Christ Jesus is that anchor for the soul, and he anchors our soul in him.

And so when we read his word that tells us about him, we are allowing ourselves and that anchor to dig deeper into our souls to stabilize us.

You need the word.

That's why I told you about discipleship groups this morning and why joining a D group to join other people reading the Word is so important.

You need the Word so that as you go through these seasons of life, you do not go through it based on worldly wisdom like Job would, but but you go through it based on the wisdom that you gain from Scripture.

To continue to pursue after him is a reading of the word, and then we seek him in prayer.

Maybe you're reading the word, and for those first few times you're like, God, I'm just not getting anything.

Then then then we petition him, just like the sons of Korh did.

We we petition the Lord, we ask him, Lord, speak to me.

God, I want to hear from you.

Would you speak to me?

Would you work in my heart through your word?

God, would you show me how good you are?

God, would you show me how splendid and marvelous you are?

Would you speak to me?

Would you stir my affections again?

Would you satisfy my heart again?

Because I need you to work and move in my life.

I feel far.

I don't want to be far.

I want to be close.

God, would you keep me close?

Maybe you're in here this morning, you're like, I'm not, I don't, you know, Kyle, I don't really feel spiritually far.

You know what?

Do these things anyway.

Continue to read his word to remind you, but your prayer be God, keep me close because I know I'm prone to wander.

Keep me close because I don't want to drift away.

Keep me close because I don't want to go through these different things in life that I will face without you.

God, work in my heart.

One more song.

Oh soul, are you wearied and troubled?

No light in the darkness to see.

There's light for a look at the Savior and life more abundant and free.

What's the verse?

Or what's the chorus?

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face.

And what happens?

The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

If you are in here this morning and you are spiritually dry, seek after him.

Run to him.

There'll be pastors up front as we respond to the word that would love to pray for you.

Seek after him.

If you're in here this morning and you have no relationship in Jesus Christ, then I can promise you these storms that you feel like you're facing in life will only get worse and you will continue to grow hopeless in them because there is nothing that anchors your soul.

Would you trust in Christ Jesus for salvation?

Would you turn from your sin and allow him to be the Lord of your life?

Would you repent and believe?

And I promise you that this salvation that you receive will satisfy you like nothing else can.

His peace will overwhelm you like nothing else can, and your life will be hidden in Christ Jesus.

That though you face these different trials and storms in life, you do not face them alone and you do not face them without victory.

As you respond to the word of God, let's pray.