Peter chapter 1, verse 19, we're
going to focus on that theme as we move into the last part
of this text. Last week, I talked about joy
and how it functions, how we rest in it,
how we cultivate it, rather. And today, I want to talk specifically
about faith. Therefore, let those who suffer
according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator
while doing good. When we suffer, when we experience
hardship, when we come to a place in life where things just don't
feel right, it's very easy to say, well,
God is testing me. God is trying to teach me something.
God is doing this so that X may be the result. And so we jump
into this thing, and I'm gonna call it a thing, that we're not
supposed to be in, and a mindset that we're not supposed to have,
and we begin to go, oh, now I've gotta figure this out. As if God is some magic shop
owner. He's got little gags all over
and you've got to figure out how he did it. What he's trying
to do. Or did he use some jester or I don't know some sick comedian. But there's nowhere in the Bible
that teaches us we have to figure out what God is trying to do.
Nor do we have to figure out what God is trying to teach us.
Nor do we have to discover the fact that we did X so God's doing
Y so that we'll get to Z. There is nowhere in the entire
New Testament that teaches us that lesson. But yet, it is probably
the very first, if not the second thing that most people say to
me when they're in a time of distress. Either, what have I
done? Or what is God trying to show
me? What is God trying to teach me?
Is God testing my patience? No. Find it. Is God testing my faithfulness? No. Look at all the tests of
faithfulness in the Old Testament. Who passed? No one. So now all of a sudden,
we, 2025, who don't even like to sit with manufactured fantasy,
feelings, much less the hardships of life, we now are going to
have to figure out how God is testing so we can pass the test. Now what I'm about to say will
fly onto the face of most who have a myopic and shotgun blast
approach to what the Bible is and how it's supposed to be understood.
But do not put the Lord God to the test. It's not what's happening
here today. But I'm gonna put God on trial. I'm going to put him on trial.
Because the scripture says, test me in this. Old Testament, right?
See if I will not, X. Let me show myself. God is all
about showing himself for who he is. You know what that's called?
Revelation. And you know what it is that
God shows us? His glory. In what way? Look at me. Look at what I can do. Look at
how I never fail. But yet, if James were that way,
he would be maybe narcissist, maybe just arrogant. Look at me! Look at what I can
do! Look at me! Because there's not much to behold. But if God is not right in saying,
look at me, then he is not the God, the highest of all things. He is not Elohim. So therefore, I can say what
calls a little riffle in the matrix, in the cosmos, back in
2009 when I said publicly in front of a large group, God loves
Himself more than He loves anything. He has to. For if he is not love
and he is not the absolute epitome of what is worthy to be loved,
then he cannot love us. And that is why we must learn
to love us in the view of what God reveals to us about himself
for us that we may love one another because we can't love anyone
any more than we love ourselves. But we're not worthy. Yes, we
are. The blood of Jesus made us so. Because our guilt is gone, even
though what was once guilt is still the experience. We mistake that the act of sin
brings wrath and justice, because justice is satisfied in the blood
of Christ. Oh, God, if I could just go back
20 years with this understanding. To live free is a superpower. So today, I'm going to put God
on trial. Because what does the Bible say?
What have we learned? 1 Peter and Colossians and Hebrews. We
see Timothy. What does Paul say to Timothy?
When you are faithless, he remains faithful because he cannot deny
who he is. That includes when we're faithless,
when we don't get it, when we're not walking like we should, when
we're not focusing, when we're not trusting, when we're not
resting, when we're not acting, when we're not thinking. Nothing's
going to change in the context of the outcome of God's goodness
for us Romans 8 nothing can separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord nothing God himself in all of his might
and all of his sovereignty and all of his omnipotence will not
and is it impossible for him to Separate you from his love.
He cannot do it himself. He is unable to do it He is not
that powerful to be a liar you see But it hurts. It's like,
oh man, this makes me feel bad. God is, we can't talk about God
like that. I'm just repeating what he says
about himself. And I think the emphasis and
the, ah, and the expression is necessary sometimes to get us
off of our comfort zone of self-deprecation and silliness. It's what motivates me. And so what I'm going to do today
is I'm going to show that when God is testing our faith, which
is what? More precious than gold that
perishes when tested by fire, will result in what? The praise and the glory and
the honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So what does our
faith do? Does it give us the results of
what we're looking for? Does it help us escape persecution? Does it deal with lessening our
suffering? No. It looks to God. Faith sits still
and looks to God and says, I don't know. I can't do this. Got a
clue. The biggest pain of trying to
be faithful in an attempt to bring the outcome of God's purposes
in this life is that the harder we work, the worse it gets. And
in that work, whether it be with our hands or with our head, it's like walking in a circle
wondering why everything's on fire, and we look behind us and
we're pulling it. It's just a vicious loop of absolute
insanity, and we call it spiritual growth in our culture. But God,
our faith, when it is tested, is literally a testing of God's
faithfulness. And so how our faith grows in
it is that as long as we're moving the locomotion, as long as we're
going through the powerful things that we can be, as long as we're
becoming this real stoic or excited or passionate or zealous, whatever
we want to call, as long as we're doing it, then God's power, God's
faithfulness is not in view. So our faith is actually being
tested by ourselves. And the faith always comes up
wanting because our faith Faith doesn't look to us. Our faith
looks to what is faithful. Faith is only as strong as the
object to which it looks. And I have a lot of faith in
myself. Do you? I do. An uncanny amount. At certain
times and at certain things. Especially now without That subconscious,
unknown need of validation. Gosh. But there's a limit. There's a limit to what we can
place in ourselves. We've got to find it. For the
believer, we don't even have to look at it. Because God will
show it to us. Because He is faithful. So faith looks to something.
If you're looking to God, if you're looking to your Heavenly
Father, if you're looking to the faithfulness of Christ, then that's got nothing to do
with you. It's got nothing to do with how strong you are, how
much resolve you have, or how much resilience you embody, or
how much work you do, or how good you look to the community,
or how much ministry you do, or how kind you are, how compassionate
you are, or how strong you seem to be in the midst of this, or
how much encouragement you can give yourself and others. That's everything to do with
the object of our faith. And if our faith rested in our
ability to endure and to stand It's not going to stand. It's
going to fail. It's going to break. It's going
to be weak. It's going to collapse. But our faith does not rest on
us as believers. And we have some faith in ourselves.
We should. But that's not the ultimate.
And that's what I'm talking about today. The spiritual sense of
faith. Which is what? A gift. It's a gift. It rests on the faithfulness
of God. Like our joy rests on the faithfulness
of God and His promises and power, our faith is placed in His faithfulness,
not ours. Every single time. And anytime
we have a little dust particle of trying to look to ourselves
to rest in Him, we are going to feel it. The wonderful thing
is, is that even when we can't pray, God is faithful. I get that a lot. Well, I'm not
praying correctly. I don't think I'm praying enough. I don't think
I'm praying the right thing. I don't think I'm asking God
for the right thing. If I don't get this right, God is faithful. When you go,
amen, God is faithful. Uh-oh, I just spoke in tongues,
I think. Got some jokes. Jonathan, if
you see this, that's on you, baby. Yeah, the Spirit of God is faithful. We don't even like it. We don't like it, because it
runs against the grain of just our cognition, doesn't it? It
runs against the grain of how we think about how the world
is supposed to work, and how our faith is supposed to work,
and all the stuff that's related to life. It's just an amazing
thing. So when we have to decide if
what James is saying is true, then let's prove it with the
Bible. So let's do that this morning. So if God's faithfulness is the
foundation of every promise, then the Bible will prove it
to me. And if the Bible doesn't prove it, then I just need to
move along to the next verse. But I will say that God's faithfulness
is the foundation of His revelation through His word, not how we
get it and how resilient we are or how faithful we are. It's the assurance of every believer
in salvation. It's the hope and the joy. It's
the reason that suffering does not destroy us. Not because we're
so strong, but because we're so free. We're free from the
law. We're free from having to be
faithful. We're free to accept things as they are and let them
be. Because God has all of it. And here's the kicker. God is
not faithful because we believe hard enough. His faithfulness
does not depend on how much we believe, or how much we pray,
or how much we rest, or how much... So just on the other side of
it, the outcome is not dependent on how hard we work. His faithfulness
is not dependent on how hard we believe. That's why Jesus
uses the object lesson of the mustard seed, which is a teensy
little old seed. It can get stuck in your teeth. That's how tiny
it is. If you've got that much, that's
all that matters. If all you are and the fullness
of everything you own is just a mustard seed of resting in
me, you'll know why I'm asleep in the bottom of the boat when
the thing looks like it's about to be destroyed. Would you please
stop waking me up from my nap? This is not going to kill you.
I'm the master of this dag-blasted ocean. Can you say dag-blasted? Yosemite Sam. He is faithful because he cannot
deny himself. I quoted it already, 2 Timothy
somewhere in there, verse 13 of chapter 2. He cannot deny
himself. So if we are to live joyfully,
confidently, steadfastly in our identity, authentically in this
world as believers, we must understand that the anchor of our hearts
and the anchor of our lives as Christians rest in the faithfulness
of God, not in our faith. So what does it mean for God
to be faithful? So all of this is gonna be coming out of everything
we've learned already in the first Peter as a launching pad
into other places in the Bible. So get ready. Faithfulness is
not something God does. That's the first thing I want
you to understand. Faithfulness is not something
God does. Faithfulness is who He is. He cannot deny Himself.
It's not just an attribute of God. It's not just a characteristic
of God. It is essential to His nature.
Without faithfulness, He would not be God. He would not be Himself.
He would not exist. He would just be, I don't know
what he would be. He would not be. I mean, it's just weird. I don't want to go there because
I don't have time for that kind of weird thought anymore. But
I do enjoy it. So we cannot be unfaithful any
more than he could stop being himself. Even when God took on humanity,
Jesus Christ the Son, He didn't stop being God. There you go. It's as far as
you need to take that today. Deuteronomy 7, 9, Know therefore
that the Lord your God is God, the highest of all things is
the highest of all things, the faithful highest of all things,
God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him
and keep His commandments to a thousand generations. God is not man, Numbers 23, 19,
that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change
his mind. He has said, and will he not
do it? Or he has spoken, and will he
not fulfill it? He cannot deny himself. God's
faithfulness is not dependent upon us. He remains faithful
every time we fail. What about when he told these
people here that, you know what? There's a lesson for us in these
things. But we don't live our lives under the covenant of lesson
building. We live our lives under the covenant
of love. That Christ, the final true, showed what all those lessons
were pointing to. That God will provide for himself
a sacrifice for sins. That in the most absurd reality,
God will break down the walls of division between him and us
like the walls of Jericho by marching around in a complete
way and blowing a trumpet. That even though visions of leadership
and headship over his brothers Joseph would be sold into slavery
and be told his father would think he was dead and then he
would become the co-regent of the world and save the very ones
who threw him into death from perishing. That Jonah, bitter and frustrated, Don't know what the Ninevites
did to him, but he hated them. And God still showed mercy. The picture of all of those things
are the lessons of Christ. They're not models for our lives.
We do not model our lives after Joseph, Noah, Moses, David. These
are pictures. They are true things, but even
if they weren't, they're still pictures. But because they are,
we see God and His sovereignty. So God's faithfulness are as certain as His nature. God's faithfulness is unchanging
and eternal. This is what it means for God.
It's faithfulness because God does not change. We call that
immutable. He does not change. His faithfulness is a constant. It doesn't fluctuate. He's more
faithful here, less faithful here. That's what we are, right?
Well, I'm a faithful person. In what area? Well, I'm faithful
to my kids. I'm faithful to my spouse. I'm
faithful to my friends. I'm faithful to my church. I'm
faithful to my job. I'm faithful to, how about, to
your health? How about to the disciplines
that you know are good for you? How about to your attitude? How
about to, are you always faithful even if you want to be? What
if you've got the flu and you're supposed to go help someone move
and you've got the flu? Well, I can't help that. Yep,
you surely can't. But that's why faithfulness is
not a part of your nature because you failed. Faithfulness can be part of your
identity and I pray that it is. But the faithfulness of humanity,
the faithfulness of man and woman is not true faithfulness. God cannot fail. It's unchanging. It's forever. What God promised in the past
remains true today and will be true forever. The steadfast love
of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an
end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. By
the way, do you know where that's located in the Bible? Lamentations. There's a segment of that I hand
wrote on a little blue plaque that sits by my coffee machine.
It's been there probably nine years. You don't notice it anymore
because you just get blind to the things that are in your life.
But I find that odd that His mercies are new every day, great
is the faithfulness of the Lord, is slap dab in the middle of
a lament. Because we're trying to get out
of the lament, we're trying to get out of the suffering, trying to get
out of the depression. But we can't be faithful for that. As
believers, we know that God is right there, so His mercies are
new every day. That's why I read Psalm 30 this morning, because
David says the same thing. Psalm 119.90, your faithfulness
endures to all generations and you have established the earth
and it stands fast. Now I know we've got a lot of
scientific data that talks us about entropy and we learn about
the cosmos and the physics of everything and that stuff is
so fascinating I could literally starve myself to death just by
talking about it. And Trey might enjoy doing the math behind it,
not me, I just want to talk about it. I want to do the theory.
The what if, let's pause it, let's measure, let's contemplate.
It's exciting. Why? Because it's immutable and
it's powerful to me. But that in itself speaks to
the faithfulness of God. Who the scripture says He's revealed
Himself in His glory that He just sort of stuck it out there.
There it is! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
today, and forever, Hebrews 13.8. So what God has been, he will
always be. His faithfulness does not fade
with our time and circumstances. We don't have to get it right
so that he can be faithful. He does not change. So we see
what his faithfulness is in the context or what it means for
God to be faithful, but hmm. It just doesn't feel the same.
It just doesn't feel powerful enough for us sometimes. Why? Because our faith isn't faithful. Yet the faith we have is guaranteed
because God is faithful. That even when we are faithless,
even when we don't trust, even when we have given up, even when
we curse Him to His face, even when we decide for a season of
our life, I'm not sure that all of this is real or true. God is faithful. How do we know that? Well, the
Bible, again, here we are. Several ways, there's probably
dozens and dozens of specific areas, but let's talk about three
of them. The first one I've already broached, the faithfulness of
God in creation. I wrote last week, or I think
it was last week, not this week before. I love sunrises. I love sunsets. I love to see
the sky. I took some pictures of the sky yesterday. I just
love it. It's always there. But it's never
the same. So every moment of watching what
the sky does is one of a kind. And I used to, when I was a teenager,
I would lay in a hammock when I'd have the opportunity and
the grass was cut. And I would just look at the sky. And I would
just lay there for hours and watch and watch and watch. contemplate the vastness of what
was there and the beauty and the imagery of what was unfolding
before us. Have you ever watched an entire
cloud system move for an hour? It's fantastic. One of the most
horrific but also one of the most incredible opportunities
I had is when we were coming home in 2011, I had to do a wedding
up in Virginia. We're driving from San Francisco
to Virginia, and there was this huge, huge thunderstorm system
ahead of us. And I'm like, this is good. I can watch it. And I got to
watch that thing for 12 to 15 hours, day after day after day. And then we get to Tennessee,
and we have a conundrum. I'm looking at the sky. I'm also
a little bit fearful, because this is a bad storm, y'all. I'm
like, do we go south to Alabama? Do we do this? Do we do that?
No, let's just keep it. As long as I can see that thing and follow
it, I'm OK. And good thing we didn't, because
Alabama got wrecked that day with like a T-9000 or whatever
model tornado they got out now. It was like a mile and a half
wide, and it just wrecked Montgomery. I mean, this Walmart was everywhere. Wrecked it. And I'll never forget
that night about 11 o'clock. It's dark, and there's nothing.
And traffic has stopped. And we know it's weather-related.
And I pull out the little emergency CB, put the little thing on mine. And I'm listening to the truckers,
because they know more than God sometimes about traffic, right?
And everybody's just jawing and talking. This big truck stop
was just not there. We just, power was out. All of
a sudden, there's another twister. Get out. So I like jump. The
ditch. And I was like, where are you
going? I said, I don't care, but I'm not going to sit here. And I'm flying back down
the other way. Why? Because the storm was that
way. I'm going this way. It was an incredible experience.
What's the point? You'll never have that but once. But you can promise yourself
that the sky will be there tomorrow. So while our experiences of God's
thankfulness may not all be the same and it may feel like it's
different, it doesn't mean that it's lesser. You can look in
the morning, you can see the sunrise. That's where I was going
with this. And you know that it's going to be there, no matter
what it looks like, no matter how it makes you feel, no matter
even if you miss it or not, it's there. I posited a few weeks ago, what
if the sunrise waited for me to get up? You can read that. But every sunrise is a reminder
of the presence and the constance and the consistency of God. The universe is upheld by his
sustaining word in Colossians chapter 1. He says, and he upholds
the cosmos by the word of his power. I mean, are you really
worried about the Earth shifting off its axis and flying into
the sun? Some people are. That's OK. This flat Earth will just ping
the sun right off, like a ping pong ball. I'm joking. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and
heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis
8, 22. I knew it was there somewhere.
It's not going to stop. See, that may seem like a lie,
right? Because sometimes we got nine months of summer here. But
the leaves still fall. We're going to have 17 degrees
in January and February, at least one week. And then it's like hot, but still
seasoned. The creation testifies to his
reliability. The heavens declare the handiwork
of God. God's faithfulness in creation
is steadfast. God's faithfulness in covenant
promises is steadfast. To Abraham, he fulfilled his
promise to bless all nations through his offspring. ultimately
Jesus Christ. To Israel, despite their rebellion,
even though He let them suffer the consequences of their choices,
He would then act, not because of their choices and because
of their faithfulness, but what would He say throughout Scripture?
He would say, because I keep my promises, and because of my
steadfast love, I'm going to act. And He remained faithful to His
promise. And to the church, In Ephesians chapter 1, we see this promise. If I get to the right page, what does he say? He has sealed us. with a promise of His Spirit. For this reason, because I heard
of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love for all
the saints, I do not cease to give. No, it's before that. Where
is it? Here it is. In Him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works
all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we were
first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.
In Him also When you heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation, and believed in Him, that's what I was looking
for, we're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee
of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise
of His glory. And I want you to know, and Trey has done a good job
of unpacking these things, I want you to understand the simplicity
of that. God has put His Spirit in us. And he's not going to
abandon himself in redemption. He's not going to take it away.
That's why when you go and you decide you're going to help somebody
out who needs a cosigner on a mortgage or something, and you sign it,
the bank knows that if Bobby doesn't pay, you're going to
pay. And if you take a whole bunch of land and you put it
up as collateral, The debt is paid. God has given us His Spirit
that we are guaranteed His faithful redemption. The promise. And that's the third
way that we see it revealed in Scripture that's most important
to us right now. God's faithfulness in redemption.
He sent Christ at the exact time He promised. Galatians 4. He
was faithful to judge sin while providing salvation. Romans 3. He promises eternal security
for his people, John 10. No one can pluck them out of
my hand. You know what that means? You can't pluck yourself out
of the hand of God. You can't jump out of his hand.
You can jump up and down in it, but you can't jump out of it.
You can kick a fit and pitch a fit and punch the ground, but
you can't escape his love. You can curse him and say, I
don't believe in you anymore. And run around and pout. But
you cannot escape. Well now, preacher. And I hate that title, by the
way. It's not a title. It's a word that doesn't make
sense. But that's what people like to call you, right? Preacher.
Now, if you ain't living right and you ain't growing, you probably
ain't saved. So Jesus didn't die. And he wasn't
raised from the dead. Are you putting your faith and
your growth, your attitude, your mindset, a transformative ideology
that somebody else has given you through the history of the
church? Or are you resting in the faithfulness of Christ, who
is alive today, in the flesh, glorified? See, because Jesus
Christ, fourth thing, if you take notes and know that I actually
don't have points, but there they are. Christ is the ultimate
proof of God's faithfulness. Jesus is the fulfillment of every
promise. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse
20 says, For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. Everything, everything is fulfilled
in Jesus Christ. The entire point of humanity
and the existence of matter find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
In Luke's gospel, Jesus says that everything written about
me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must
be fulfilled. And I love it, I've got a poster.
It's a digital poster, I don't know where the print poster is,
but it was too small for me to read. But it had all the promises
made in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah and their fulfillment. It was this big chart. It looked
like somebody just like chucked some spaghetti on there and shrunk
it really small for people with glasses not be able to see. There
were so many connections. And you might say, well, it doesn't
matter. Well, no, you're right. It doesn't matter. You know what
isn't on the paper? What's not on that poster is
the oops, that one didn't work out. There's no contradictions. There's no failed promises. There's
no failed fulfillments. Well, if I wrote a book, I wouldn't
mess the story up either. That's the problem. This is bound,
but this isn't a book. It's not a book. Not in a sense
like you think a book. These are dozens of individual
letters, stories, poems, all put together. over time by many
different authors over millennia. It doesn't matter though how
amazing the record is, the record isn't what gives you faith. God
himself gives you faith. Jesus is the proof that God never
fails. If God was faithful to send Jesus
Christ to kill him and to raise him from the dead, don't you
think he'll be faithful to finish the work he started in us? And
I'm sure of this, Paul says at the church of Philippi, that
he who begin a good work in you will bring it to completion at
the day of Christ. You can rest in that. Wait a
minute, I thought we were talking about trusting God in problems.
Well, until we see Jesus face to face, we gonna have problems.
Welcome to humanity. Welcome to Christian living. But the problem is often not
the problem. The problem is often we're trying
to avoid the problem that we can't avoid. I'm just tired of
breathing. It just takes so much time. Well,
go ahead. Hold your breath. Eventually
your mind will pass out so that your body will breathe and survive. So look at problems in life like
breath. They're necessary for life. They're
inevitable. The faithfulness of God as our
foundation is really what we're holding on to, not our faith. And Jesus secures this future
through God's faithfulness. For I am certain, Romans 8, 38,
and 39. I am convinced. I am sure. that neither life, nor death,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor the things present, nor things to
come, nor what? Powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all of creation shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And
so I love the depth of that. When I was 13, I probably quoted
that scripture to somebody twice a day for probably two years. And somewhere along the line,
I never forgot the verse, but I forgot about it. You ever been
there? Yeah, yada, yada, yada, and Jesus,
okay, whatever. Because we get so busy working
things out. that we forget that they're already
finished. Folks, that's freedom. That is
really living autonomously from this world in the flesh. You
don't have to find nirvana to sniff yourself out to get there. There are six practical outcomes. There's a lot of practical outcomes.
For today, I'm going to mention six. Well, all right, you taught
me something. Thanks. I appreciate it. I'll
take it. Put it in my little Rolodex of not going to ever
remember again. And we're going to move right
along. Well, here's some practical outcomes of trusting in God's
faithfulness. We can live without fear. 687 days. No fear. I've almost forgotten what it
felt like. Think about it. What's causing
you to fear right now? You've got something to fear,
right? Oh, man, is my bowl of fear cereal ready to be poured
in some milk or the other way around? There's plenty. But what is fear? but an invitation
to rest. I'm not talking about, what was
that? Oh, the house is on fire. Hey, the weather's pretty bad.
I'm not talking about surviving something that's necessary, but
dwelling. Reacting. Ruminating. Anxiety doesn't exist
when you're present. In the now. It doesn't exist. It cannot exist. It will not
exist. It was the fuel of my life. It's
what made me so passionate about mastery. It's what gave me the
drive to create and accomplish everything I did. It's what made
me able to speak the way I do. To write the way I do. Anxiety. Well, that sounds like I want
some of that. No, you don't. Because the drive can be there
without the wrong fuel. Fear is not the right fuel. Guilt
is not the right fuel. Shame is not the right fuel.
Other people's opinions is not the right fuel. Worry is not
the right fuel. It is damnation. Not in a spiritual
sense, but in every other sense because the energy that comes
with that is an energy of desperation. And a desperate person is dangerous
because they'll never accomplish an authentic thing in their entire
lives, and they'll never have a real relationship, and they'll
never rest in the promises of God until they move beyond it. Fear. We will never be abandoned,
beloved. We don't have to worry about
rejection. We don't have to worry about the outcome because God
is faithful. He will never leave you nor forsake
you. We can trust him in uncertainty. Because the future is in his
hands. I mean, we teach that, I know it's like 1970s type music
or something, or 80s, I don't know, but you know, you hear
the kids and he's got the whole world in his hands. They don't even
know how to sing songs like that anymore. And then you go down the whole
list of what's in the world. Me and you and brother in His
hands. We should do that more than a
swing style. I mean it would be good. I digress. But we sing that. And then somewhere along the
way we lose that. Why? Because we lose the ability to just rest
in the reality of stuff and we start questioning everything
because other people make us feel insecure about it. Because the world makes us feel
insecure about it. Because the world tells us that if it's going
to be, it's up to me. Just do it. We can trust Him. We can pray
with confidence. Whether it's blah blah blah or
whatever. Whether it's I don't know what to pray. Whether it's
God you make me sick and I'm ready to go someplace else. Whether
it's I don't know what's going on here. I'm sick and tired of
being in this place and being in this way. Or whether we just
scream or whether we get down and just talk. We don't have
to posture before God in some sense of eloquence, in some sense
of spirituality that the world is defined. We can pray while
we're talking to someone else in the subconscious or the conscious
space of our mind. You ever been standing in a circle
with people? Especially you married folks and you're standing around
and you know, you and your spouse are there and there's other people
there and you're like after service. Somebody walks up, oh, and you're
having a conversation. You're in this conversation,
all of a sudden somebody walks up and says, hey, James, you got
a second? Oh, yeah, oh, let me give that for you. Here you go.
And you right back to that. You can pray just like that.
And it doesn't have to be all attention on God, and then we
give attention. It can be, I need to pray right now. I need to
put my mind willfully and intentionally, my energy into that. Oh, Father,
help that. Oh, Lord, you've got to take
that. That's what it means to pray. It's the mindset of prayer. Pray without ceasing. What does
that look like? Well, some people think it means
to move out into the wilderness and never get up off your face. That
is a wasted life. But if you find yourself in a
wilderness, chained to the ground on your face, then make good
use of it. We can pray with confidence.
God hears and answers in perfect faithfulness to our prayers.
Anything you ask in my name will be given to you. Anything Really anything how do you spell
Lamborghini? I mean come on guys That's really not an answer to
anything is it Maybe we'll talk about prayer
in a couple of weeks The fourth practical outcome of trusting
in God's faithfulness, resting, is that we can endure trials
with peace. I talked about peace three or four weeks ago. Peace.
We can have joy. We can have peace. It's there.
It's not something that should, peace is not shakable. It may
be hard to find, it may be hard to express, but it's not shakable.
It doesn't come and go. The definition of peace, you
either have it or you don't. That's like you're either free
or you're not. You're either alive or you're not. What does
half dead even mean? You ever heard of somebody? Oh,
he was half dead. OK? I mean, by what scale? Was his
heart rate at like 40% or 50% of what it should be? And what
if he was excited watching a ball game? What if the lion was chasing
him? I mean, what should half of that be? You have peace or you don't.
His faithfulness sustains us and sustains that peace. And
then we can be faithful to others. Remember, we talk about this.
The amplification of our life, the exposure of life, the expression
of our life authentically in Christ Jesus requires us to be
in the world, not be isolated with people who are like-minded. To be in the world so that we
reflect His character, that we begin to Show who we are, not
tell. We begin to live, not labor on
eloquently as we wax poetic so that we can tell everybody what
we are and what we've done and what we think and what we believe.
Who cares? I don't. Just be you. Let's see. Let's
walk. Let's resonate together as people
in this world, as believers in this world. The good, bad, and
the ugly. And that song, when was that
song? We want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Is
that Coca-Cola? I think it was. Yeah, I want
to buy the world a Coke. Oh gosh, isn't that funny? Marketing
agencies. I saw a granola commercial the
other day with this granola. And there's four or five people
laying in the woods looking up at the canopy. I saw like the Ben Gay commercial.
This dude's rubbing it on his knees. And it used to be like,
so you could ball, baby. And he's pushing his elderly
father up a hill in a forest. I'm going, oh man, they get to
the point, right? Whatever sells. We don't need the marketing trends
to actually find purpose. We just need to be ourselves
with great confidence in the sanity that comes with understanding
God's faithfulness. And then we can rest. We can
rest in the grace of the Lord and not in our performance. I
want you to understand, and this is big for me, so it might not
be big for you, but I'm willing to bet, I'd bet my left pinky
toe on the fact that everybody in the world has some type of
identity anxiety in the context of how they're doing in life. Because they think that that's
who they are. And they think that's where the value of their
worth comes from. And that's a lie. It's a lie. We can rest. His faithfulness upholds our
salvation. His faithfulness upholds us. Now to Him who is able to keep
you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence
of His glory with great joy, to the one and only God, our
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty,
dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. So it is. That's the last sentence
of Jude. So now the question is, how do
I do it? How do I do it? Well, I started
it out with this, and you know the answer, right? I don't beat
it as much as I used to. But it's still true. His word. Being in the Bible, meditating
on His promises, making a habit of reading and recalling God's
faithfulness in Scripture. Friends, just like journaling.
When you write it down, it's codified. It's actually real.
When you read it, it's real. When you read it, you hear it.
When you hear it, your brain knows it. God created your brain
to work this way. Hear it. Well, I just can't hardly
read the Bible because it doesn't have power to you because you're
not eating enough of it. I love it for people who have
anxiety and I talk about certain breath work that I can take them
from a place of panic to a place of thinking they could be a surgeon
in five minutes. That doesn't work for me. I'd love to put a plastic bag
over their head just long enough to get them breathing right.
Then they'll be calm. It works. God created our bodies
to work the way they do biologically and physiologically. The energy,
the electricity, the systems. It's an incredible machine. And
it works. But we all say, well, it just
doesn't work. I don't get nothing out of it. Of course you don't. But when we finally get to that
spark, when we get to that place where something changes, we go,
you know what, I'm just going to give it a shot. Give the Word of God
a shot. Yes, I want you to be passionate
about it. Yes, I want you to go, man, I just can't get up.
I can't wait to get up every day so I can read the Bible and
meditate and be thankful. I just can't wait. I wish everybody
would just like get sick and go in the hospital for a couple
of days so I could be alone with the Bible. Yeah, I would love
for that to be yours. See, a lot of us just smile and
say, that sounds pretty good. I would love for you to have that zeal,
but if you don't, it's okay. Do it anyway. Have a little discipline. It's like the end of the Zithromax.
Well, there's two pills left, but I feel pretty good. Three
weeks later, you're back in. Finish it. Let it go. Walk through the process. Meditate
on the word of God. I will remember the deeds of
the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders
of old. I will ponder all your work.
I will meditate on your mighty deeds. That's what David says
in Psalm 77. to renew my strength, to have
the transformation of my life by the renewal of my mind as
I think about these things. And then whether or not you know
how or whether or not you feel confident, pray, pray, pray,
pray with confidence. Yeah, that's a new word, confident
fullness, confidence. There you go, pray with confidence.
T-shirt's coming. Confidence in what? In his faithfulness.
Don't pray hoping, oh Lord please, don't have to ask God please.
You don't have to ask God to be faithful. Do you know that?
You don't have to remind him of his faithfulness. It's good
that you do because what does that do? Remind you of his faithfulness.
But you don't have to remind him of his faithfulness. Pray
knowing that he's faithful, knowing that he will always be faithful.
The Lord is good. Three, remind yourself that his
faithfulness is not dependent upon you. When you fail, He will
not. So remember, I told you we're
gonna put God on trial here, so it's not about your faith
when it's tested. It's about testing God's faithfulness,
even when you fail. And God will pass the test. For
He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
Go read Psalm 103. but don't embody that as an identity. Please. Because I'll get a pressure
washer and dust you off. Don't embody that. And then we're
back to where we always come, encourage others in the faithfulness
of God, with the faithfulness of God. Share testimonies of
God's faithfulness. You thought, well, I just can't
think of any, because you're not resting in it. You're still
trying. I don't know what I was going
to do, man. The building fell on top of me,
and everything fell on top of me, and a satellite fell on top
of me, and the moon fell on top of me, and I was just trying
to dig my way out, and all I had was a toothpick and a screwdriver.
And I tried for years, and I just kept thinking I could see some
light, and all of a sudden I just said, I quit, I'm done, and the
whole thing just fell over. And I was free. That's literally
the reality of God's faithfulness. As long as we're Picking at it
with an ice pick. It's always going to be there.
Sometimes I think we're digging through a wall and we don't realize
that the entire other wall that surrounded us in a cage has been
knocked down long ago. We're just looking in the wrong
direction. I've been free all this time. No, you've been a
slave to your own myopic mindset. You've been a slave to your faithfulness,
to your performance, to your endurance, to your resilience,
instead of being a free person in God's faithfulness. So we
encourage others. Let us hold fast the confession
of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And then, because of this, the
very next breath in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 23 to 24, let us consider
how to stir one another up toward love and good deeds. How many
times have you ever heard that preached or taught? You better
get in there and everybody needs love and good deeds. And I swear
to God, you miss church, I swear. Piece of trash, heathen. Not
necessarily with the same words and verbiage, but the sentiment
is there. How dare you? How do you know that? Because I've been taught that. When God's faithfulness is paramount
in our life, it's the anchor of our lives. Now don't get into
this because I love anchors, but what they used to symbolize
and what they are now, it's a steady presence. It's
a bedrock. And that bedrock is not movable. The faithfulness of God secures
our salvation, sustains us in trials, it gives us everlasting,
immovable peace, and assures us that every promise that He
has made will come to pass, because God cannot deny Himself. His
faithfulness is not dependent upon us, but it is only dependent
upon His unchanging nature. And this truth allows us to live
boldly, live purely, live fully, and rest deeply without fear. Because we know the one who is
faithful, and he cannot deny himself. Let's pray. We thank
you, Lord, for the faithfulness. We thank you, Lord, for you.
For you are faithful. Father, while we do a lot of
work, while we work in so many ways, and while we need to grow
and we need to mature, and we will,
sometimes we put so much emphasis on these things that we forget
that we can rest. And so as we do work in this
world, as we do labor, as we do have things to accomplish,
let us do them as if we're not. knowing that the ultimate outcome
of every effort we employ is your power and promise. And Lord, it takes us all the
way there. We can get to a place of resilience. We can get to
a place of resolve. We can get to a place of absolute
just almost empowerment. But Lord, we will fail eventually. But you can't. And you didn't
when Jesus came. And he lived and he died and
he rose again to prove that who he was and what he accomplished
was faithful. So I thank you for that. And
I pray that you would empower us to rest in these things, to
see them every single day, and to not give up. But in the same
breath, to lay down. and rest in You. In Jesus' name,
Amen.