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When Your Soul Feels Heavy | Blue Christmas

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Waiting can feel unbearable — especially when you’re already tired, hurting, or stuck in depression. 😔

In this message from our new series Blue Christmas, Pastor Mark Carter takes us into what he calls “The Land of Blue” — that season where life feels heavy, God feels quiet, and answers feel far away.

Drawing from Psalm 4 and 42, this sermon speaks directly to anyone who’s:
💙 Waiting on God to change something
💙 Stuck between suffering and hope
💙 Wrestling with depression, anxiety, or burnout
💙 Tired of replaying the same negative thoughts
💙 Wondering if God will ever come through

Instead of staying trapped in the spiral of what’s wrong, Scripture invites us to remember what God has already done. When you’re waiting and don’t know what to do next, you can still anchor yourself in God’s faithfulness, His Word, and His timing. 📖✨

In this sermon, you’ll discover:
🙏 How to wait on God without giving up
🧠 Why remembering God’s past help changes your mental health now
🕰️ What to do when answers don’t come quickly
💪 How to grow and prepare while you’re still waiting
🌱 Why God uses waiting seasons to strengthen us

If you’re in a season where you feel overlooked, behind, or emotionally exhausted — this message is for you. You’re not alone, and you’re not forgotten. 💙

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Who wants to talk about depression? Yeah, so we're we're we're starting a brand new series. In a sense, it's it's on depression, but I don't want you to hear in that that it's going to be a depressing series. It's not going to be depressing at all. What we're going to do is we're going to go on a little Bible tour of Bible characters and Bible events where people are dealing with everything from they are discouraged, they are anxious all the way to deeply depressed. And we're going to take a lot of hope from it. We're going to take a lot of encouragement for the season from it. And I'm so glad that we're going to be a part of it together. It's called the Land of Blue, and we're going to be walking through that land of blue. But first you should know 22% of Gen Z individuals report feeling depressed often or always. Often or always. 50% feel anxiety. 42%, these are Gen Z high schoolers, have experienced prolonged sadness or hopelessness. Guys, people are sad. People have anxiety. People carry around a lot of feelings and emotions that they don't know what to do with. So we're going to walk through the land of blue. Let me just tell you what's coming up. We're going to start today at the Gate of Honesty. We're going to make our way through the shadowy forest of feelings. How many know about feelings? Feelings are an entire religion themselves. We're going to travel through that. We're going to go through the valley of regret in the coming weeks because we've all got regrets. We're going to then take a visit to the besieged city. The besieged city is where you are when you feel like the haters are winning. Your personal haters are winning some kind of a battle. Then we'll walk through the wetlands of weariness, the bad lands of bondage, and finally we're going to make it to the highlands of confidence. And I know you're going to get to that highland of confidence. It's a pretty dope place to be. It's how God refines us throughout this entire process. That's what he's going to do. Now, here's the bad news. You're already in the in the land of blue. All these things are already happening to all of us. What we're going to do in this series is learn how to recognize that Jesus Christ is holding our hand and he can help us grow through it. He can help us connect with him through it. He can even make us better for others through it. But we've all got different kinds of depression. There's a spectrum here, man. It's not like there's just one version of depression. There's circumstantial. Maybe some events happened or are happening and it's bringing you really low. It might be there's a transitional depression that you're in. You there was a change of season for you, and maybe there's a change of season for everybody, but you're not dealing with it as well as it seems like everyone else is. Everyone else is moving on, but there's something about you that is very sad because you're not necessarily moving on. For some, there is a real pain, you could call it a depression, from just hard things that happened. Maybe you were rejected. Maybe you lost that job that you love. There's all kinds of just pains that cause us to get into a place of sadness. There's also a version of depression, we're not going to talk about it too much in this series. Um it's a more clinical version. There's really psychotic depression. This is where people are coming a little bit untethered from reality. That's a real thing. We're not going to spend a lot of time. I'd be happy to recommend some professional counselors for that, but we're not going to spend a lot of time there. Maybe one other to mention that you might not intuit. See, sometimes, sometimes men, when we hear things like depression, that sounds like a gooey word to some. That sounds like I'm, dude, I don't, I don't, how do I deal with depression? I don't think about it. That's how. I don't, I don't want to talk about depression. Isn't that like a lady thing? What is that? Guys, let me translate, okay? You may not have depression in the way that it manifests in some other people, but male depression is a real thing, and and often it manifests in different ways, like anger, like withdrawing, like feeling like the world itself is against you. So, men, it's if if depression is a word that bothers you, just just think, oh, we're doing a series at my church on being angry and want to punch people in the face. That's what it's about. Yeah. That's the series. That's what we're in. And because all of us deal with this at some point or another, God has given us in his awesome word, laments. We're going to talk about laments. Specifically today, we're talking about laments. Laments are a space that God has given us in the Bible where he says, I want you to notice this, this pattern, especially in the book of Psalms. There are people that are going through difficult times. They're in a covenant relationship with God, and he's made certain promises to them, and they're going through life, and they're saying, These promises don't seem to be coming true, or people seem to be at odds with this, these promises, and I'm in pain because it because of it, or I feel abandoned because of it. Laments are people's permission to come to God and say, I don't like this very much. This is not going the way it's supposed to go. And I know you could do something about it, but I'm bringing my complaint. It's a complaint. Lament is the right kind of complaint. It's not complainting about God to somebody, it's going to God and complaining about how things are going. The God who wants to hear it. And the mistake we sometimes make is because everyone's going to deal with times they should probably lament. Everyone's going to deal with times they're sad or they're discouraged. And some of us were going to feel like it's not okay to bring that to God. Like that's not a thing you should do. God doesn't want to see that. He wants to see your smiling face, and that's it. And if you don't have one, fake it. Others of us, we maybe get stuck in lament. So we bring our discouragement, our disappointments to God, but we don't really know how to move on from that. We just get stuck kind of it on repeat. Here, God, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again. It's not necessarily that hope is entering. It's nice to be able to tell him, but we never really get past it. We're a little bit stuck in some ways. So the person that we're going to take a look at today is the writer of Psalm 42 and 43. Scholars believe, I think it's very clear in the text, this is really one psalm that got split into two. But this person who's writing this feels not only abandoned by God, but they're beginning to spiral now. Like life is hard and they are spiraling out, and they're like, God, I wish so bad that you would just get involved here. Can you please get involved? Psalm 42. If you have a Bible or somewhere on the uh the device you're using, you might notice at the beginning of this psalm it says, A mask of the sons of Korah. Now, this was just one of the lines of descendants of the Levites, but a maskile means this is a psalm with the purpose of imparting wisdom. So this is not just a record of this person's difficult time. It was placed in the Psalms so that we would all learn from it. It's saying, guys, pay attention to what this dude does because there's patterns in here. There's ways God is trying to instruct us. Why don't we just get into it? Should we just get into it? Let's do it. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night. Well, people say to me all day long, where's your God? Do you see what's going on with this person already? He's thirsting for the presence of God. And it's not like, like you might have experienced, some of you, you know what it's like to thirst for the presence of God. You're like, oh man, I just want more of Jesus. I just want to go, I want to go to fears all the time because I want more and more of Jesus. I want to pray more because I want more and more of Jesus. That's a great thing. That's not really what this dude is talking about, though. He's saying, I'm in the midst of this trial, of this feeling of abandonment, of where people are oppressing me and even mocking me. And I'm wondering, God, where are you? Some scholars believe it may be that he was taken captive. He was a prisoner of another nation. And he's saying, God, where are you? I'm with these foreigners. I'm away from the temple and the presence of God. Of course, even in this psalmist time, God was everywhere, but his his presence was uniquely and specifically and in a way that was more of a blessing in the temple of the time. And so he's he's wanting to be back home. He's wanting to be near the temple, near the presence of God. And he says, My tears have been my food day and night. He's thirsty for God, but what he's doing is he's just eating and drinking his tears. That's what it feels like. Anybody know what it feels like? You're just, dude, you're just feeding on tears. That's all you got. That's all you have. Verse 4, these things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I used to go to the house of God through the protection of the mighty one with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Obviously, he remembers times when the whole nation would come together and they have a celebration. And he remembers what it was like to feel like, oh, we're all here and it's all about God, and we're all worshiping, worshiping him together. I love to be around God's people. I love to be around God Himself. But you know, when you remember when you're sad, when you're in a low time and you remember a good time, that can be a double-edged sword a little bit because you remember the good time, and what you remember is, and that's not now. That's not where I get to be right now. I remember that, ah, too bad now sucks. Like that can be the attitude. But on the other hand, as we're gonna see, it also means if if we think about it rightly, yeah, but that means it didn't used to suck, it doesn't have to always suck. There could be another time, there could be a day that is very different than today. And I just want to pause for a second and encourage somebody, maybe who's listening, who's watching online, maybe someone who's right here in the room. It might be really, really hard today. That might be where you are. Can I encourage you? Not every day of your future has to be like this one. That's a lie. This day will end, this too shall pass, and you should keep going. And you should lament with us. You should cry out to God, which is what we're doing right now, and hang on. Why, my soul, verse five. Why are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God. Now let me tell on the NIV translators real quick. I want you to trust your Bible. Your Bible's correct, all right? They're translating the original languages correctly, but sometimes they have to choose one word and they choose one, and it doesn't entirely represent what this what the original language was actually saying. So it is put your hope in God, but more literal translations will say, wait for God. Wait for God. Now putting your hope, there's there there may be a waiting there, but not necessarily. Waiting for God, though, is I'm having a sustained hope, even though what I want has not taken place yet. It hasn't come to pass yet. Put your hope in God, wait for God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Now he he busts back into lament. My soul is downcast within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, from the heights of Hermon, Mount Mazar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me. You ever been to the ocean on a really like big wave day? If you haven't, I suggest you go sometimes. It's if you can get, if you can find a day when the waves are like up to your head, and then you walk in and it grabs you and pulls you out. I've literally been in a situation where it grab me, pull me out, and I'm just doing somersaults on the ocean floor down away and then back up again. That's how powerful the waves were. Our guy here is saying, I feel like there's nothing but chaos in my life. I feel distant from the land of God. I feel distant from the people of God. I feel like I don't know which way is up or down. Verse 8, even so, so he's he's lamenting, ah, this is hard. Verse 8, by day, though, the Lord directs his 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 must I go mourning, oppressed by the enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony, as my foes taught me, saying to me all day long, where is your God? Isn't he gonna show up by now? Why isn't he here yet? Have you ever felt, even if it wasn't someone else maybe making fun of you for your faith or making fun of you because of some attribute or thing that you have or do? Ever felt that you were being mocked? And it seemed almost like right. You even heard it in your own head. Like, are you really gonna keep believing God now? Are you really gonna go on with this charade? What are you doing? You know that this is all a sham. Your God is nothing. You ever heard those little whispers? That's your spiritual enemy talking, but sometimes it sounds a lot like us. You know what it's like to feel like maybe your voice in the conversation is irrelevant to the people who seem to be in power. You know what it's like to feel bullied, you know what it's like to feel dismissed, like everything you do is a stupid thing, and it deserves a harsh response. Here's some instruction from this masculine verse 11. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, wait for God. My Savior and my God. Now he busts into some pleas, okay? He's been lamenting. He's like, all right, God, here's what I want. Vindicate me, my God, and lead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are God, my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Send me your light, your faithful care. Let them lead me, let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you are. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and delight. I will praise you with the liar. Oh God, my God. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, wait for God. For I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My friends, welcome to the land of blue. We're about to enter through the honesty gate. We gotta start with honesty. We gotta start with saying, this is what's true, this is what really is. So to go through the gate of honesty, number one, we admit. We admit to approach the gate of honesty, we admit that we are in deep pain. My tears have become food day and night, my soul is in despair, I'm mourning, I'm oppressed by the enemy. It feels like you've forgotten me. Here's what people that lament know that it seems like other people don't. Instead of being thrown by the fact that there is despair, or that they have despair, or they try to hide their despair, they bring their despair to God. They say the best place for me to talk about my despair is actually with the God of heaven, with one who who could actually do something about it if it was time. They know that this pain is real. So I'm going to ask my God to get involved. They know that depression, despair, things like that are not the opposite of faith. See, the opposite of faith wouldn't even bother. The opposite of faith wouldn't even lament. They'd be like, well, there's no one there. I'm giving up on that. God's not going to do anything. Even if there is a God, I'm not going to do it. The faith filled, it's actually a step of faith to bring God the truth. This is what I'm dealing with. Therapists have found out over the years that if we can take the bad things that happened to us, maybe it was a bad event, maybe it was a series event, maybe it's it's trauma. If we can take the bad things and we can talk about them and even write them out. Write out the story. What were the things that happened? Name them, get specific, go into the deals. How did it go? What was the chronology? What happened? And they say, if if you can get that down, you'll gain a little bit of power over it. You start to have agency over it, you start to see it as a separate thing from you. See, sometimes when we've been so hurt, we feel like we are the hurt. We are the chaos. Like we are the pain, and all my feelings are jumbled up. And if I can write them down and I could bring them to God and say, this is the story as I understand it, I then can stand back and say, that thing is not me though. That's just things that happened. God, would you get involved now with these things that happened? It's possible you want to encourage me about the things that happened. It's possible you want to even amend some of my perspective on the things that happened, but I want to get them over to you and say, God, I'm sad and hurt and angry and scared that these things happened. And I want to bring them to you. Probably most of us, there's just gonna be a spoiler here, so spoiler alert for Inside Out. Most of us have seen the Pixar movie Inside Out. If you know the movie, then you know that there's these little emotional people that live inside this little girl named Riley. So emotions are like personified. So joy, the the emotion of joy is joy. She's the yellow one. The emotion of sadness is sadness, she's the blue one. Well, Joy is spending a lot of her energy and time trying to keep sadness out of the human Riley's experience. So every time she might get sad because sadness would touch one of her memories and make it a little bit blue and make it a little bit sad joy. It's like, no, no, no, we can't do that. Let's give her joy all the time. That's her quest. She realizes, though, by the end of the movie, that's not really what's healthiest for Riley. It's not healthy to pretend, it's not healthy to try to make everything joy. Instead, what was actually more profitable for Riley was to allow that sadness to happen because when that sadness happens, then she is comforted. When we allow sadness to happen, do you know what happens? If we're lamenting before God, God can comfort us. But we've got to be real. We've got to bring it before Him. To go through the gate of honesty, we need to admit and then we need to think. Somebody say think. Think. We need to think. We need to think about who God has been, who he says he is. What did it say, verse 4? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. I'm pouring out my soul and I'm intentionally thinking. I'm remembering. I'm reviewing. Now wait a minute. Who is God say he is? What does God say he's true? Because if I only just stay in my agony and don't think very hard, dude, I'll just be roped by my emotions, by my spiritual enemy. I'll never get on to the truth because the pain just is so real. I can't think about anything else unless I think on purpose. This is real, but this is not the whole story. God has things to say about who He is in relation to this difficult thing. So when your mind is cloudy, When your emotions are screaming, we've got to remember, okay, I need to admit that things are wrong, but I've also got to ask the question, but what is true? I need to think about those things on purpose. So our our psalmist here, he's essentially trying to talk himself back into a positive state of mind. He's like, bro, it is hard, but remember who God is, remember where you've been. Remember, God, you will still praise him, like this isn't over. God is the kind of God that delivers you. He hasn't delivered you yet. But if you think back to previous times, there's been situation after situation after situation where God, God came. God got you out. God removed that obstacle. God softened you. God softened somebody else. If you will just think and maybe even write it down and review and say, I've been thinking now for 25 minutes about how I was wronged and about how bad this is. Let me do something else. Let me see if I can spend five minutes writing down all the ways God has been faithful to me. When we do that, we change our focus. We glorify God and we begin to think. Dude, if you haven't tried it, you should try it. You begin to think differently. Oh, yeah. God is like this, though. Oh, I I remember a situation. This situation is a little bit like this one over here. And I remember regretting that I didn't respond in this situation, the way I should probably respond now, to the one that is currently happening. There was a gal in our church years ago, and she really struggled with depression. And I asked her what were some things that helped, and she told me a story about how she went to her therapist, and her therapist put a lemon on the table. Just a normal lemon, just yellow lemon. And then he asked her to put on these blue tinted glasses. And he asked, What color is the lemon? Well, through the lenses, it looks green because yellow and blue make green. It appears when her when her vision is a little cloudy, when things are dimmed, this thing looks green. This is how it looks. This is what it I think it is. But we always have to ask ourselves a question. If we're gonna think clearly, my friends, we have to get it sounds silly, we have to get in the habit of asking ourselves, but what color is the lemon? But wait a minute, wait a minute. I know it looked green, but what color is the lemon? What color I know, but see, you're you're depressed, you're discouraged, you're anxious right now. You're not necessarily seeing things the way they are, you're dimmed. What color is the lemon though? What color is the lemon? It's yellow. What is true about God despite how you feel? What is true? You might say, well, the lemon feels like it's green and everybody hates me. Okay, but is that is that really true though? Does everybody hate you? Okay, there might let's let's admit there might even be some people that don't like you, but then again, the lemon is yellow, and God is for you and not against you, and he's got the most power, and his opinion matters the most, and he can revolutionize and rock your life, and he doesn't care what anybody else thinks. So uh back to the lemon. It's really yellow, it's not green. It feels like I had this one failure, and it feels like that is coloring my entire life. And we say, but what color is the lemon? Well, what color lemon really is, is this is just one snapshot in my life. It's one moment, it's not my life. And I'm gonna go on, and God has proven to me that he is a redeemer and he can take even my mess ups and work them together for good and even because he's so doggone awesome, he can use them to help others. That's what color the lemon really is. But see, I've got this situation where I'm just anxious because I feel like there's this big, big need, and I don't think God is gonna provide for it. That's the green lemon. But then we ask ourselves, but what color is the lemon really? Really, it's yellow. And what's really true is Jesus even commands me, you should pray for your daily bread because God plans on providing it for you. You don't need to figure out every detail of your life in one night. You can just go daily praying, God, please give this, please give this, please give this. And whatever you need, he's gonna make sure you get because he's a good father and he takes care of you better than he takes care of the grass of the field or the sparrows of the sky. Come on, somebody. Hey, let me just encourage it's it's for everybody, but the younger you get, maybe the more it's for you. Because we're so inundated with everything online. What is online often, if you just if you just listen with spiritual ears, is the religion of feelings. The origin religion of uh religion of feelings will just tell you your feelings are always right, just listen to your feelings, do what your feelings say, and that means always obey green lemons. Instead, call it a false religion. That's really what it is. It wants the feelings to be your God. No, no, no. God is God. And parents, even though they they sometimes might not totally understand why we're trying to do this, we've got to keep communicating to our kids, your feelings are important, but they are not God. You need a foundation of life that is deeper than feelings. You need something that's going to last. You need something that's going to remind you that the lemon is really yellow. So we admit, we think, and then we plead. We plead. We plead with God to bring about or cause or change whatever it is, whatever you want, whatever you need. What did he pray for? Give me justice. God, I want you to stand up for me. I want you to protect me. I want you to, this is super cool. I want you to send your light and your truth and let them lead me. He says, God, I need some words from God. What do I want? Well, I want this and I want that. But God, most importantly, I need your words to lead and guide me. Give me words that are straight from God's word to me. Here's what, here's my deal with you, God. I'm gonna spend time in God's word every day, and I'm asking you to speak to me and lead to me, lead me. That's how God leads us anyway. So, God, I'm gonna show up. Now, if you don't show up, I don't know, baby, like, don't blame God, because God's there. Show up, show up to the scriptures. God, I need a word from God. Please direct me with your light. Your word is light. When we decide to pray, we decide I'm not just gonna sit here and suffer quietly, though. I'm not gonna give the devil that break. I'm gonna suffer, but while I do it, dude, I'm going to work. I'm gonna get some stuff from God. I'm gonna put this thing into action. I'm not just gonna sit here and take it. I'm gonna say, this is what I want. I'm gonna demonstrate active faith. God, it does, it does hurt right now, but what do you want? Well, it's time of year, you're gonna see a little bit more of George Bailey. And um for everything else that he does, George Bailey gives a great model of pleading to the Lord. Many of you are familiar with the scene. And what's what's wonderful about this particular scene is he's praying and he's stumbling. He's not, he's clearly not not, doesn't pray normally a lot. And he he doesn't really have anything profound to say. He's essentially just saying, Father, I need you to help me. Like I just don't know what to do. I just need you to get involved here. And it's cool wherever you are to say, God, I just I don't know. I don't know what I need. I just need you to do something. Then near the end of the movie, he's very specific. I want to live again. He has a very specific prayer, and we can ask very specifically, okay, dude, you're in this trial. It may be that you're in this trial briefly. That might be super awesome. But remember King David, King David was told when he was about 15 or 17, you're gonna be king. And then it was another 15 years before that actually happened. And David's only job really was well, don't let Saul kill you. And don't kill Saul. Don't get dead and don't do anything that's going to hurt your future kingship. But David didn't make himself king, he waited on the Lord. And guys, we've got to wait on the Lord, we've got to wait patiently. And while we're doing that, we can be pleading, God, would you do this? God, my heart is frozen. Would you thaw it out again? God, I feel like all I have around me are just you you wouldn't say this out loud, but maybe you sometimes think it, God, all I have around me are dumb people. Would you send me wisdom? These these Yahoos, I know what their advice is, and it's dumb. Would you please, God, instead send me vision? God, I need more money, but actually, I need you to get us out of debt so that I'm not always needing the money money the way that I need it right now. God, I need vision. And then I need we already talked about it a little bit. Number four, to wait on God. I need to admit, think, plead, and wait. Wait on God to get you out when the time is right. My soul thirsts. This is so deep if you can get it. I hope you can get it. Lord, help us get it. My soul thirsts. How does he start? My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Verse 5 and 11, and then five again, all in the same way. Put your hope in God. Wait for God. He longs for God. He knows this is what the psalmist is saying. God, I do want to get out of this trial. I want you to stand up for me. I want you to stand up to my enemies. I want you to deliver me. I want you to be bring me back to the temple. But what I want first and foremost is I want your presence in the midst of all that. I need you. If I if you just deliver me, but don't give me more of you, that's not what I need most. See, my friends, you and I don't just need to be delivered. We need in the midst of not yet being delivered, we need more of Jesus. We need more of his spirit. We need the comfort of the Holy Spirit. We need him to draw near. And we wait on God. This is I try to come up with like a compound idea of what waiting on God really is. This is what I came up with. It's not just sitting there like, da-da-da, okay. It is humble surrender plus patient worship. Waiting on God is humble surrender plus patient worship. It's humble, it means God, I'm not trying to control this anymore. I'm waiting on God, I'm not trying to control it. I surrender the timetable, I surrender what happens, I surrender the ending to you. It's humble surrender plus patient worship. I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait well. That's what patience is. Patience is waiting well. I'm going to wait well and I'm going to worship you while we're doing all this. God, even though you haven't come through yet, you should be worshiped. You are awesome. You are wonderful. If you're not delivering me yet, it's because your plan is more loving and wiser than my plan. And so I'm asking you, God, to fill me with your Holy Spirit so I can worship you more and more and more. Waiting on God is recognizing I am not the source of my life or my blessing. Waiting on God says, I give up being the source. How many wrestle with trying to be the source? You're the solution to all your problems. That's what it means when you're the source. When you're waiting on God, you say, Clearly, I'm not the solution to all my problems. Clearly, unless God gives this, I'm not getting it. So I choose to patiently worship and humbly surrender to God. And I just found out, dude, while you're waiting for God, do you know that you can get a lot done? Like if you'll just decide, okay, maybe I have a David situation, maybe this is gonna be 12 to 15 years before I'm even out of this. I was kind of hoping that it would be by next Saturday, but it might be a few years from now. So what can I do in the meantime? I can keep humbly surrendering, I can keep patiently worshiping, but while I do, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get good at some things. I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna improve, I'm gonna focus when we're focused only on God. I'm waiting, I'm waiting. Okay, come on, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. If you just focus on that, baby, that waiting is gonna be a whole lot harder. If you just say, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna frustrate the devil and improve my life while I wait. I'm gonna get good at boundaries. I'm gonna read a couple books on that. I'm gonna make all my relationships better for the rest of my life because I'm gonna study that thing for a little while. I'm gonna get good at community. I'm gonna get good or lit more frequent. I'm gonna learn some stuff about prayer. I'm gonna read every book I can on parenting or watch every video or have AI summarize every video. I'm gonna learn how to cook. I'm gonna do something that improves my situation if God doesn't move at all. How can I just take I'm here, the time's gonna pass anyway. How can I just make profitable use instead of just ringing my hands? When's God gonna come through? When's God gonna come through? Has it occurred to us that God might want us to grow in some other areas than just the deliverance? There's a lot we can do, depending on how long that thing is. And then number five, here we here we go. Number five, pronounce. Pronounce that God has great things ahead. Then I will go to your altar to God. He's he's not there yet, but he's he's prophesying essentially. He's telling himself, he's stirring himself up, then I will go to the altar of God, my joy and my delight, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God. He's just talking to himself about what can be, what God could do. I am here, this is a hard day, but it doesn't have to be the rest of my days. Some of you have heard about the Stockdale principle. This is a principle that was essentially articulated by Admiral James Stockdale. He was a POW in Vietnam. He was there for seven years, and he began to notice there's a difference between the guys who survived and the guys who ultimately just gave up and died. He said, The guys who gave up and died, they were always saying, We're gonna be out by Christmas. But then Christmas would come and they weren't out, and they were deflated even more, and they were discouraged. Then they say, We're gonna be out by Easter, though, and then they weren't out, and they were even more discouraged. They said, This is to put it in spiritual terms, they said, This is God's timeline, I'm sure. This is what's going to happen, but then every time it didn't happen, they were discouraged. He said, So, on one level, for the Stockdale principle, you have to say, I can endure as long as it takes. I don't need a timeline of when this is going to be end. I don't know when it's going to end. I'm not going to say it's going to be out by Christmas. This could be a long period of time. And yet the other side of that coin is, but I'll never give up. I know we will win. I know we will get past this. I know my God is faithful. I know there's good on the other side of this. So I'm not making myself any promises about when this will change, but I am saying, as hard as it is, it will not end this way. It will end for good. We will get out of here. There's a day coming, and it's a sure thing, baby. I'm not going to try to speed God up by deciding he's going to do things by a certain time. I'm just going to try to stay filled with faith, which is what Kenzie and I did. We were so poor. Some of you heard about the tumble-down shack that we lived in. Guys, it was bad. It was bad. We had a tree growing through a window and we just didn't even know what to do about it. Like the whole place was a wreck. And we would, what we would do to keep our faith intact is we would go into at that point what we thought of as rich neighborhoods. They weren't, I wouldn't call it that now, but we went in these neighborhoods and we just drive around. We're like, God, I want a house like that. I like that, Lord. Can you give me that, please? I want that house. And we were, it might even sound a little bit silly, but what it was doing was we were telling ourselves, today is not the final day. Our situation is not the final situation. God is a God that could do all of that easily, and we're going to, the time might pass anyway, so we're just going to believe him that someday we're going to live in a much grander place. And I can say in humility, by the grace of God, he did the whole dang thing. Like he worked. But I'm so glad that he taught us the principle back then. No, you need to believe when you're down. You need to trust when you're down, that God can restore what you cannot. You want to do something cool with the Psalms? Imagine Jesus praying each one. When someone is going through difficulty and lament. Imagine what Jesus' life was like. When he was having his beard pulled out, when he was falsely accused, when he was being whipped with a cat of nine tails and his back was being ripped open, when he felt alienated by the very people he came to save. Tell me, it's not that God necessarily wants to get you out of lament, he wants you to pass through it trustingly, waiting on God. Because it changes how you relate to God. If we want to use the Riley example again. See, Riley, she had some sad memories that were then comforted, and she was surrounded by her family, and she learned, what did she learn? My family is with me. If she would have just stayed joyful all the time, quote unquote joyful, she might not have been comforted. But she learns because her family comes around her and they say, I got you, I got you, Riley. You see, Carl, well, I didn't have a family like that. Yeah, but you have a heavenly father like that. If we will go through lament, we will experience, if we go through with him, we'll experience the comfort of God, and he'll come around us and we'll have a core memory every time it happens. God is faithful. God comes and gets me, God comforts me. Yes, God lets me pass through lament, but God is there to redeem, God is there to restore, God is there just to doggone, be with me. That's the benefit that you can't get if you're just always joyous. You don't know how real he is in trouble until you're in trouble and he's all you have. Guys, we've got a choice. We can pretend everything is good, we can get stuck in just feeling sad and bad, or we can decide. I'm gonna admit what's true and I'm gonna think about what God's truth is. And I'm going to wait on God, and I'm going to believe that He's gonna use this sad memory right now to bring about a greater revelation of who he is. Let's pray. God, I want to pray for everybody who is in a blue moment right now, or maybe even about to go into one. God, I'm just so thankful that you're in it with us. We invite you deeper in, deeper in, Lord. We want to be so close to you. And so, if this trial is gonna happen anyway, would you use it in such a way that we are closer and closer to the heart of God where we realize you are all that and more? You're a perfect, comforting Heavenly Father, and you're gonna worker for good. And God, we're asking, give us, impart faith now to agree with your word and believe that this is not the last day. There are other days where we see the goodness of God in the land of the living. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.