EncouragHER
We are a God-given, purpose-driven ministry. At EncouragHER, our mission is simple, to spread encouragement to women. Join us every Monday as we encourage YOU. Our hope and prayer is that by encouraging you, you’ll be inspired to encouragHER today. We'd love to connect with you.
If you are local to South Jersey connect with us in person at Fellowship Comunity Church in Mt.Laurel, NJ
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EncouragHER
Ginny Owens: Hearing God Through the Noise
Reach out! I’d love to hear from you!
Talk from the women's conference at Fellowship Community Church on May 3rd, 2025.
Have you ever felt like God's voice is impossible to hear amid life's chaos? Drawing from her experience losing her sight as a child, Ginny Owens takes us on a powerful journey from middle school bullying to discovering divine friendship that transforms even our darkest moments.
When Ginny faced cruel treatment from the "mean girls" in the school cafeteria, her mother offered wisdom that would eventually reshape her understanding of faith: "Jesus is always your best friend, but there will be days when He is your only friend." Yet this truth felt distant and theoretical. After all, who cares if Jesus loves you when your circumstances feel overwhelming? If His love is real, how does it change your life?
This question forms the heart of Jenny's message as she explores how we've allowed career pressures, comparison, self-doubt, relationship struggles, and digital distraction to muffle God's voice of truth and love. Through a beautiful examination of Psalm 19, she reveals how King David discovered God speaking through the grandeur of creation and the intimate counsel of Scripture.
Ginny explains that the Bible isn't a rulebook but a living conversation with our closest friend who diagnoses our deepest struggles, speaks transformative truth, and offers unfailing love. She unpacks practical tools for hearing God's voice, including Tim Keller's approach to Scripture that asks: What truth can I claim? What command should I follow? What promise can I hold onto? How will my life change today?
Most profoundly, she reminds us that God has spoken His love to humanity since before time began. "God loved you enough to plan for your infinite future before you ever had a past." The same God who spoke creation into being wants an intimate friendship with you today.
Ready to hear God's voice above the noise? Join our community as we learn to quiet competing voices and experience the peace that comes through divine friendship. Connect with us for resources to deepen your relationship with God.
Learn more and connect with Ginny Owens at https://ginnyowens.com/
Now get out into the world and be a woman who intentionally encourages another!
#women #podcast
Well, hello, ladies. All right, let me just work on this microphone for a second. How are you? What are your names? So sweet? Well, I'm Jenny and it's super nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:And so yesterday we drove into town and, gosh, you guys are just the loveliest, nicest people here. So thank you for just being wonderful. Give yourselves a hug and a hand. We did wonder. When we were coming in yesterday, we saw some signs that said jumping deer everywhere. Do you guys know about that? Like, what are jumping deer everywhere? Do you guys know about that? Like, what are jumping deer? Are they different than other deer? I do think they could impede my driving, so I decided I better not drive. But we did go to Tommy's Tavern, which we were. Yes, so some of you guys yeah, everybody was there. It was like 5 pm and everyone was there and we had water to drink. I don't think anyone was very happy with us about that. Our waiter especially, like that is we. You know we can't charge a tip for water. But anyway, we had a great time and we're just so excited today and I am looking forward to meeting each of you in our few hours together.
Speaker 1:But since I have the microphone, maybe I'll start with my life story, at least the part of it that matters for today, and so picture this. The year is 1987. Back to the Future. And the Breakfast Club have been out for a few years, so has Thriller and woo. Yes, and I am in middle school. So for those of you who weren't born in 1987, I am so sorry. Like the 80s were the bombcom.
Speaker 2:Woo.
Speaker 1:I mean we keep borrowing from them. Now, right, like there's Stranger Things and there's all the musics which all come from the 80s. But for those of you who were, I'm sure you remember like all the great, fantastic stuff that we had back then, especially not only the music but the fashion, the hair. I loved big bangs. They were like so big I mean I can't. Now I'm just messing up my bangs. But tight roll jeans, tie dye, shoulder pads, shoulder pads they're kind of back. Yes, I can't wear them. My friends are all like, no, you will not. Nope, it doesn't work for you. So, but that's okay. I was also obsessed with every song by New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson and Whitney Houston. Yeah, some of you know totally. And if you don't, guys, if you're younger, tonight, spotify, there's some playlists for you that you need to check out.
Speaker 1:Well, despite all of that great 80s pop culture, life in 1987 was very hard for me because, after all, I was in a middle school. Anyone remember middle school? Did you love it? No, okay, I did hear a yes somewhere in there. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was not really fun for most of us, and I did have the additional obstacle that I couldn't see. I had lost my eyesight early in life, as you heard, and I will tell you more about that later. But honestly that was really no big deal until I got to middle school and then I realized that my blindness was not nearly as difficult to navigate as other people's reaction to it.
Speaker 1:So I remember the hardest part of my day in middle school was lunchtime, and you know how the cafeteria was. You never quite knew who you'd have to sit with and a lot of times I had to sit with the popular girls who at my school were also the mean girls and they could just make or break your day. And they usually chose to break my day and they would do mean stuff, bully stuff, run-of-the-mill stuff like steal my lunch or hold their fingers up in front of my face and ask them you know how many, ask me how many and of course that was a little hard to discern and they did things like talk about cool parties that they went to at each other's houses that I wasn't invited to, you know, and maybe in a certain sense they were just bullying, as middle schoolers do. But when you're in middle school you don't know. You don't know how to handle that type pain, right?
Speaker 1:So one afternoon, after a very difficult day of lunch stealing and name calling, I went home totally just ready to give up on friendship and on school forever. I never wanted to go back and my mom asked how my day had been, because moms always have a sixth sense about these sort of things. But I did not tell her how my day had gone because I was in middle school and you don't tell your mom stuff when you are in middle school, right? And yet I will never forget what she said, even in my silence. She said, ginny, you know, jesus is always your best friend, but there will be days when he is your only friend and you can tell him everything and you can ask him for his help because, remember, he has walked through darkness too and he did that for you.
Speaker 1:Now her words were poignant and even as an 11-year-old I believed they were true, but I did not feel them to be true in that moment. I mean, I'd grown up in church. I had heard a million times that Jesus was my best friend, that Jesus was the one I needed to get me through life, that he could give me hope and peace. That passes all understanding. Have some of you heard that before, but let's be honest. Who cares if Jesus loves you when everyone in middle school is mean to you? And who cares if Jesus loves you or is your best friend when your circumstances just feel overwhelming and painful? And if his love is real, how does that actually change your life, my life right now? If you're honest with yourselves, ladies, I bet that you've either asked these questions or at least you have wondered if these questions are safe to ask.
Speaker 1:For many of us, especially when we've been around church for a while, a loving friendship with God is more of a great idea than a lived experience. It's something that we know about in our heads, but our hearts aren't as moved by it as we wish they were. Can anyone relate to that? Yeah, it's almost like the truth of who Jesus is. You know his life, his death, his resurrection. For us, the truth was compelling enough to bring us to Christianity, but he doesn't always capture our hearts now in everyday life the way that we wish he did, and so when hard things happen, our anxiety goes through the roof and it's hard to sense his peace.
Speaker 1:If you are not sure about Christianity yet, or if you're checking it out, or if you're not sure just how to think about these things. I pray that today will be a time when you will be able to have some of those questions answered, and I pray also it'll be a day when you have the courage to talk to Joanne or one of the other ladies here or me about your questions and your doubts, because we would love to share with you about Christianity. So, if you've been a Christian for a while, or even if you are exploring it, what do we do about this pain in our hearts? How does God's love become a real place to rest? And that's what I want us to talk about today.
Speaker 1:You know, I think we struggle to believe in or rest in God's friendship because we don't truly get that it's being offered to us, and so we've let the noise of our lives grow so loud that it drowns out his voice. And I mean ladies. There's a lot of noise, right? A lot of noise. There's the noise of career of comparison, lot of noise. There's the noise of career of comparison. There's the noise of self-doubt. There's the noise of singleness and busy family life. There's the noise of Instagram and TikTok and Netflix, the relentless scroll of distraction, and all of it converges and conspires to muffle the voice of truth and love that God wants to speak into our lives. So how do we hear him? How do we hear his voice above all of this noise? How can we be moved, maybe for the first time or maybe once again, by the truth that the God of the universe invites us into an intimate personal friendship, a friendship where he speaks and we listen, and we speak and he listens? Well, I'm so excited that we get to wrestle through this today. I need it. Anyone else need it? Yeah, okay, that was like 18 of you. That's good. We'll get the rest of you on board soon.
Speaker 1:Some of you might be like I don't know, jenny, this just seems kind of basic, but you know, if you're walking through anxiety or depression or doubt or just a heaviness of heart, ladies, what you need most, what you and I need most, is to hear about God's deep, loving friendship and then to experience it, and I am praying today that you will begin to think differently about your relationship to Jesus because of our time together. So we're going to turn to scripture and we are going to ask how do we know God loves us? Because that's important to ask what does his love look like, and what does it mean to engage with that love, to truly have an intimate friendship with God? And then, later, when we come back together, we're going to explore the how, like, how to let his love become the driving force within us, how to make his voice the loudest, most constant voice in our lives. But it all begins here. The first step to combating the noise is believing that God wants to break through it, that he longs to have a genuine, purposeful, loving relationship with you.
Speaker 1:Now, ladies, I went to seminary a few years ago so fun, I loved it. And so we're going to do a little theology to start off. Anybody excited about a little theology? Woo, yes, yeah, you're like uh-oh, no, no, it's going to be good. It's stuff that we have to know, because here's the thing we all do theology all day long. So we might as well do some good theology together. So here we go.
Speaker 1:I want to start by thinking about what God thinks of us, and so, honestly, we could just kind of spend the rest of the day, the rest of our lives, trying to like, comprehend the grasp of the depth of God's love, and we would barely scratch the surface. And so, if his love is that vast and that powerful, then it is something that we need to build our lives on right. So think about for a minute how you trust the love of someone in your life that's close to you. I mean, it's not because of just what they say, right, it's because you see their love in action, proven time and time again. And so that's why we have to meditate on the story of God's love, not just talk about it for a few minutes today. We have to keep coming back to it again and again, and so I want to encourage you that this is kind of the start of that, but I want to encourage you to find ways to meditate on God's love beyond what we're going to talk about today. You need it, I need it, we need it. The more we do it, the more we're going to believe it, the more we're going to see it and know that it's real.
Speaker 1:So the Bible tells us that before time began, god that is, father, son and Holy Spirit existed in perfect love. That is, father, son and Holy Spirit existed in perfect love. In fact, john the disciple writes that God is love. So a loving God who created the world and then made us in his image, was welcoming us into his perfect love, into a world where he could love us. We could love him. And by the end of Genesis 1, by the end of the first chapter of the Bible, we learn that God's first loving act toward humanity was creating us in his image so that we could love like him Never as powerfully as him, but he has given us the ability to love. In other words, he built us, ladies, for love. That is what we were built for. Think of the deepest love that you've ever known of another person, the deepest love you've ever felt known, probably your child or your parents, or maybe someone else, your husband. That's what God built us for, with him, not only with each other, but with him. And so he wants us to begin to try to grasp the depth of his love so that our love for him can grow deeper.
Speaker 1:And the rest of scripture is the story of God revealing his love to the world over time. But wait, there's more. God didn't just build us for love. God's love for you and for me actually began before time. Paul celebrates this. The apostle Paul celebrates this in Ephesians 1, where he says blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
Speaker 1:So, ladies, god loved you enough to plan for your infinite future before you ever had a past. That's pretty cool. Yes, he thought of you before he created a single thing and he chose to create you and to break through your noise, to give you every good gift from now until you are with him face to face, and we can barely comprehend that. I mean, maybe the closest we can come to this idea is like when you, as a parent or as a friend, pray over a baby who isn't born yet. Right, you pray God's promises or all your expectations and hopes. Or maybe you, like, start setting aside. You're one of those wise, rare folks who, like, start setting aside money for your child's college. Wise, rare folks who like, start setting aside money for your child's college education before they're born. I mean, that's kind of we can't plan beyond that.
Speaker 1:That's kind of the closest we can get to what God does here and what we hear is that he, before time, planned each of us, and when Paul shares this truth in Ephesians, time planned each of us. And when Paul shares this truth in Ephesians, he also says that his prayer is that God would open the eyes of our hearts so that we can grasp it, so that we can live with confidence and hope in a noisy, chaotic world. And that is the secret to peace in the noise a bigger, deeper sense of God's love for you. Because the more that our eyes are opened to see his love, the more that the eyes of our hearts are open to see his love, the more that we actually want to hear his voice, the more that we can't not listen. And that is kind of how human relationships are, too right. The more that someone shows you love, the more that, with times and with words and with acts, the more you actually trust them and the more influence their voice has in your life.
Speaker 1:My friend Rebecca, who is my assistant she came today and Rebecca and I have been getting to know each other over the last year. We go to church together and Rebecca is such a delightful human. I hope you guys will all get to meet her today. But you know, the more that I know Rebecca, the more that I trust Rebecca, the more that I ask her things like you know, poor Rebecca, now, when we go on the road, I'm like, hey, what do you think about this jewelry? Would this outfit be good for today? You know she gets all the questions. Now, you know, the more that we know each other, the more questions she gets. But that is, in a very small way, similar to how our relationship with God works the more that we actually trust his voice, the more we're going to ask, the more we're going to listen. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool, that was a few of you. That's good. Yeah, yeah, we're, we're uh, feel free to respond, just yell out, you know. No, no reason to be afraid here.
Speaker 1:So the reality is, friends, I think God's love doesn't always drown out the noise in our hearts, in our lives, not because he doesn't love us, but because we don't know how much he loves us and what that actually means. We don't see it with the eyes of our hearts, and so the things of the world just tend to carry more weight than his voice does. So one way we begin to trust in his love is by meditating on the staggering truth that God has loved us since before time began. I would encourage you to put that on a post-it somewhere, bring it to mind daily. You know you can face whatever is in front of you today if you believe that it is not a surprise to God and that before the dawn of time he knew what your day would look like. I mean, that just puts it all in a different perspective, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:But it gets even better because not only does the Bible tell us of God's love in general, it tells us of his desire for deep personal friendship with us, not like distant, grandfatherly sort of you know, presence in the sky kind of love, nope, friendship If you haven't met Psalm 25, 14 before I want to introduce you guys today. It says the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, that is, those who honor him, who revere him in their hearts, who are serious about him. So the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant. Other translations say the Lord confides in those who fear him. God confides in those who fear him. Or the secret counsel of the Lord is for those who fear him. The Hebrew word soath communicates intimate counsel, the telling of secrets.
Speaker 1:So yes, ladies, god desires friendship with you, a close, personal friendship, where he makes his deep truths known to you. He tells you his secrets Now, not some weird secrets, so don't anybody freak out on me. Not weird secrets, just hold on. But Jesus makes this even clearer in John 15, 15. He says I no longer call you servants. I have called you friends Because I have made known to you everything I heard from my father, Whoa. Jesus is saying I've shared the father's words with you because we're friends. I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's hard for me to take in. How about you? Partly it's because we can't see God right, so he's not like across the table giving us life advice over coffee, and partly because he's just so holy. I mean, how can these things be true? When I think of God's holiness, I just it feels impossible that he'd want to be friends with me because I am not generally very holy, ever really very holy. And you know, maybe that's how you feel, or maybe I mean, let's just be honest, sometimes it's because I'm not very holy and I know it, but sometimes it's because life is hard and when we've been praying our hearts out for something and it feels like we're getting silence, it's hard to imagine that intimate friendship with God is even on the table. Well, I think that we have some help here in learning a little bit more about God's friendship.
Speaker 1:So I want us to look at what King David has to say in Psalm 19. Because King David knew something about chaotic circumstances Talk about a noisy life and he knew about how friendship of God, with God, could help him find peace in the chaos. He knew how to hear God speak and he knew how to speak back to God. So we're going to spend the rest of our time in this first session together looking at Psalm 19, and we're going to think about how God speaks to us as our intimate friend, how God speaks to us as our intimate friend and how we can, like David did, listen and respond. So this should be on the screen, but you may want to look at Psalm 19 and you know a real Bible that's physical, just because we'll flip back to stuff.
Speaker 1:The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork, day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Isn't that a great description of the sun? I'm going to think of that on hot summer days when I'm like, please go away, son. Like. No, he's like bridegroom running his joyful race. All the metaphors mixed up. Okay, its rising, is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing. All the metaphors mixed up.
Speaker 1:Okay, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous, altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold All together? Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, o Lord, my rock and my redeemer. This is the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's just imagine for a minute what King David might have been thinking as he wrote this psalm. David, as I said earlier, constantly navigated stressful situations, right, we're going to call them noisy. He was, you know, at some point caring for his family, sheep and fighting lions and stuff. And then there was Goliath. He was running from King Saul, he was fighting battles with the Philistines and other nations and then, you know, he was being king. There was that whole thing, but he always had a lot going on, kind of like you and I do, maybe a little more. We don't have to fight Philistines that's probably good or herd sheep that sounds smelly, but probably because of that.
Speaker 1:Here we find him contemplating, meditating on God's voice. He's thinking about God's word at work in the world and about God's word at work in his life personally. He's considering God's greatness and God's nearness all at the same time, and I think that would have been a tremendous comfort in the midst of all of his chaos. And so I want to say, real quick, when we think of confronting our chaos, it's really good to stop and bring to mind God's goodness in a way that we can chew on, like what we sang in goodness of God earlier. It's a good thing to do, to stop and think of his faithfulness and his goodness to us. So look again at verses one and two.
Speaker 1:It's very interesting what David doesn't say here. We don't hear about how beautiful creation is. It is assumed, of course, but David focuses on what creation does and he says it speaks. He says that creation points to who God is and what he has spoken. It says what the heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim his handiwork. So the heavens declare his majesty and his greatness, and the skies, they are pouring out all of their speech and knowledge. Why would David speak this way? Because he's remembering the power of God's all-powerful word. And when you feel like other forces might be more powerful than God, like I'm sure he did, thinking on God's powerful word is a very good and necessary path to go now.
Speaker 1:And so let's think about kind of how David is thinking this through. God's word is power right? God did not wave his arms to create the world. Remember Genesis 1, 3 says then God said let there be light. And what happened? There was light. Yeah, that's what we get. His word made it, so he said it and it came to be. And in fact Genesis 1 gives us 14 instances of God said God called, god blessed.
Speaker 1:God's words create. God's word changes things. God's word makes things as they were not before. God's word makes things happen and God's word reveals what's in his mind. God creates things with his word that reflect his goodness and draw the world back to him in love. And creation is so good that by its very existence, it speaks of God's greatness and reveals a glimpse of his heart. I mean, david said the skies, which are the sun, the moon, the stars. They proclaim, they shout that God exists, that he is great, that he is love. So, ladies, one key place that we hear God's voice of love and truth is in creation. Look around, listen, like David did. It's not just that God's creativity and beauty on display. It's God's voice of love. When your life is chaotic, just in case it ever is, I want to just encourage you to step outside, take a walk, notice the beauty, the color, the order, the wonder of God's creation, and then remember that the same God who loved you before time began, also the same God who spoke all the world and its beauty into being, wants to speak order into your chaos right now, today, because he can. That's how powerful his words are.
Speaker 1:Now, are you guys? Are you ladies? Ocean, ocean girls, mountain girls? What are you? Ocean, oh, I don't have too many mountains, okay, that's cool. Yeah, ocean isn't so far away from here, is it? No, you're like Jenny Duh. Well, I love both the ocean and the mountains. I'm kind of a both and person in general, which is exhausting for trying to decide where to eat. Let's eat here and there, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, no matter how stressed I am, the sound of the waves or the sound of the wind reminds me of God's greatness. It doesn't necessarily take away my stress, it just reminds me that someone else is in charge. Someone else holds the wind in his hand and allows it to blow and says when it should stop. Someone else has told the sun and the moon to have their gravitational pull and ordained the tides. That's really cool. And creation, I think, is a great reminder to our little hearts of God's powerful word at work in the world. That's a lot of W's. God's word is at work in the world, but that only scratches the surface, right? Creation doesn't tell us the whole thing, right, it doesn't tell us the whole thing, right, it doesn't tell us the whole story.
Speaker 1:And so david's meditation shifts in verse 7. The law of the lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the lord is pure enlight, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever, and the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. So let's unpack his words in verse 7 through 9 just a bit.
Speaker 1:Law, first of all, doesn't just mean God's rules. Nope, in fact, god's rules aren't just his rules, they are his loving heart toward his people. Law refers to God's entire revealed will, his entire revealed I can't say that revealed will His wisdom, his correction, his promises, his commands, all wraps up into one. That's what we could think of his law as. And God has a long track record of using his voice to speak his revealed will directly to his people. And guess what? It's always perfect, it's always true. It's always perfect, it's always true and it always stirs it. Often, not always, because people reject it, but it brings life to people's souls and of course that's because it's true.
Speaker 1:David writes the testimony of the Lord is sure, and one commentator said about this, that God's testimony equals truth. That has been tested by God himself. So let's just take a minute to think about how God has used his words to reveal his will. I really love to go through the whole Bible and do this, but we won't do that today because that would take a long time. But it's so fun to just see how he does it. It's amazing. But no doubt this is kind of what David is doing, as he's thinking about how perfect God's law is. He's thinking back over it. He's meditating on God's revealed will and what that has meant.
Speaker 1:So back to Genesis. God spoke very personally to Adam and Eve in the garden right when the world was perfect. So right after he created them, he gave them purpose. He gave them authority to fill the earth and care for it, and God comes back, by the way, to that purpose again and again throughout scripture. It's part of his revealed will, and so that means if you in this day, ladies, are wondering what is God's will for me, well, you can start here, because the voice of love has called us to love the world. He has placed us in it to care for it and to love the people in our space and to help them flourish. That's what he called Adam and Eve too. That is what he calls us too.
Speaker 1:But what happened? Adam and Eve chose to listen to another voice, right, a lying voice. They disobeyed God and they believed the lie that they were capable of being their own gods. And how did that work out for them? Not so good. Not so good. That's the end of the story. When they believed the voice of the liar, it made it harder for them to hear what's actually true. It made it harder for them to discern this perfect law of the Lord. And God told them that was because of their choice, that because of the choice they've made to listen to the liar, it would become more difficult for them and for all of us to hear and understand God's voice. It's hard to hear God's voice, ladies, because sin clouds our hearing, and it has ever. Since that moment, all people have struggled to hear God above the noise of the liar. But the good news is what God did not leave them in silence. Genesis 3, 15 tells us that he promised a rescuer. A rescuer would come, someone who would crush the lying voice and the liar himself and would undo the curse of sin and make it possible for us to hear more clearly until we hear perfectly. That's cool. So from that moment on, the rest of the Bible is God fulfilling that promise and telling us how he does it.
Speaker 1:So, friends, you may have thought that the Old Testament was full of stories about God, but it's actually full of God speaking his love and his truth to his people, including us. That's what those stories are. It is God telling us why we need saving and how salvation will come, and then how it did come. So David writes here that God's radiant word gives joy to the heart and light to the eyes. That's why God speaks. It's why he kept speaking to Israel to help them, to rescue them from the voice of the liar, and it's the same for us, ladies. God's words are always meant to give light to our eyes and make us more radiant, make us full of hope, to help us see him more clearly, so that we can know and worship him and that our lives will radiate his love. They make us look more like Jesus. Right, god's words change us, they pierce us. They make us different people than we were yesterday. They make us look more like Jesus. And of course, this is before Jesus. And yet David always is pointing to Jesus coming, always in his psalm singing, which I love. And Psalm 19 says, you know, it's celebrating the beauty and wonder of God's word. But then the gospel of John tells us what that the word became flesh and made its dwelling among us. So Jesus is God's word in human flesh, god's voice up close and personal.
Speaker 1:Think about all the things that Jesus spoke ladies, healing. What did he say? Get up and walk. You can see again Little girl arise, be still to the waves, go to his disciples. And he also spoke truth, right. He called out the Pharisees for listening to the voices of the liar in the forms of moralism, self-promotion, instead of listening to the voices of the liar in the forms of moralism, self-promotion instead of listening to the voice of God. And he spoke very tenderly to people all the time, like think about Mary and Martha when Lazarus was in the tomb. You know, jesus gave different words to each sister because he knew their hearts and he knew they needed to hear different things.
Speaker 1:And Jesus still does that, right. He speaks to your heart by his spirit, the things that you need to hear. And that is why a passage can leap off the page for you today in a way that it didn't last year, and that's why a passage might speak differently to you than it does to your friend sitting next to you right now. And that's why we love to study scripture and community, because we learn how God's speaking to each other and we learn from what God is speaking to each of us. But God's words are always meant to revive our souls, to captivate us and to help us see things as they actually are, regardless of our circumstances. And we know that one of the things Jesus said is I am the way and the truth and the light. And those words and more. And those words and more. His claim to be the Messiah sent him to the cross. But those are also the words that now give life to you and me when we put our trust in him.
Speaker 1:Because, friends, we live by words, and God has always used his words to speak love and truth to his people, and so this Bible that we're talking about and reading from today is his living love letter to us. He wants us to read it, to know it, to meditate on it, like David does here. I mean, why else would he preserve it for multiple millennia? Why does it still move people today, the way it did in Jesus' day. Martin Luther, who lived, you know, back in 1500, said the Bible is alive, it speaks to me, it has feet, it runs after me.
Speaker 1:God's words are alive for you. They are there to speak to you, to give light to your eyes, to revive your soul, they make you wise. And this Bible is where we encounter this God who speaks and who is our closest friend. I promise you, despite what you have thought in the past, the Bible isn't a rule book. It's a place where you encounter your dearest and closest friend. It is a place where he diagnoses your hardest problems and speaks hard truth to you and gives you his love and encouragement. And so it is meant to be read through and prayed on, and chewed on and pondered until it changes us. This is how our friendship with God grows, and we see David doing this very beautifully at the end of Psalm 19.
Speaker 1:After reflecting on all the benefits of God's word, he says your words are more precious than gold, sweeter than honey. Right, he's so overjoyed. And then he says but they also warn me and they reward me and they convict me. And then he's like oh, oh gosh, oh Lord, keep your servant from willful sins. Let my words and my heart be pleasing to you. Can you feel the shift in that it's like the more that David thinks about God's word, the more he's full of joy and awe and so excited about what God's word can do. But then then he's undone. He talks to God about it. He says keep me from turning away, don't let sin have power over me. Let me be pleasing to you. In other words, let my life be worthy of the words you've spoken to me.
Speaker 1:So David is meditating on God, and as he does, god is what God is speaking to him. God, and as he does, god is what God is speaking to him. There is a dialogue happening. David is getting to know his closest friend even better as he meditates on all the amazing stuff that he knows about God. So as David ponders God's voice in creation and his voice in the world and his voice in his own heart, he's being transformed. And guess what? That's how it works for us too. The more that we think on God's words, the more it's going to change us. Now I bet some of us in the room and I won't ask you to confess to this publicly, but I bet some of us are like.
Speaker 1:The Bible is hard, it is mysterious and, honestly, it feels kind of boring, especially Deuteronomy, what Well? I hear you and I want to offer some help on that because, yeah, there are. I mean, it's so different than the culture we live in today, it's true. But here's a thing I want you to think about before I give you a few tools. If it is true that the same God who spoke creation into being loved you enough to come to earth in human form and die so that you could have his voice forever in your life, why would he stop speaking to you now? He wouldn't, and that's why he gave you and me the Bible. He didn't come just to like save you for heaven and he's like up there until then. Nope, he came to change you for today. He didn't come to just like fix you. He came to like be your friend and walk alongside you every day, and he wants this ongoing, living, loving conversation with you. He wants to speak his joy into your heart and his peace into your pain, and for that to happen, his words have to become more real and more beautiful to us, more than they were yesterday. So if you want God's voice to be the loudest one you hear. I want you to accept his invitation to friendship, believe that that friendship is meant for you, and I want you to go to his word, expecting him to speak, and so, on that topic, I just want to offer a couple of super practical tools.
Speaker 1:I studied in seminary under the late Dr Tim Keller, which, yeah, it was real great Not going to brag, but it was really great. It's the best thing ever. So good, but he had this wonderful model for approaching scripture that I think is fantastic and I want to share it with you. Super practical. What truth can I claim? What command should I follow? What promise can I hold on to? What example can I claim? What command should I follow? What promise can I hold on to? What example can I imitate? And if I do these things, how is my life going to change today, isn't that good? So I think that is super helpful for any passage you read. You won't obviously check all of those boxes, but it just helps you think about what God's saying to you and then the Spirit will do his work. He will work from there.
Speaker 1:I'd also say this friends, if you are new to scripture, even if you're not, find someone to study it with. Talk with Joanne and her team about resources that they have. You don't have to do this alone, nor should you. I can also give you some resources for later that could be helpful and definitely don't just go randomly search on YouTube. I feel like that can be a little scary, but you're in this wonderful church and so reach out. If you're studying alone, if you have questions, seek answers to your questions. That's what they are here for, am I right? Joanne? Wherever you are, okay, good, yay. And then friends, I want to just say maybe some of you are like, okay, but still there's so much noise in my mind, jenny, there's so much. We'll talk a little bit more about how we overcome the noise in the next talk, but I want to say take the noise in your mind and heart, whatever is swirling, whatever is plaguing you, and pray it out.
Speaker 1:You know we see David doing that a whole bunch in the Psalms. In this one, he just starts by praising God, but sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he's like God. Why is this happening to me? This is terrible. Will you do something terrible to all these people? And he has to come around to praising God again. But so, whatever you are wrestling with friends. Wrestle with it before God. Be honest with him. It before God. Be honest with him. Leave it with your loving father, who is also your dearest friend. Ask him what to do with it and, I'd even say, write it out so you can track what he does do with it.
Speaker 1:A favorite book of mine is by a guy who lives, I think, pretty close to here. Have you guys read A Praying Life by Paul Miller? No, okay, read it. It's really great and it's really great for practical praying. So you just learn how to have better intentional conversations with God, and you know that's what we do with our friends and our kids and our parents and our husbands. I guess, right, I don't have one, but I'm assuming that's what you do. You try to have intentional conversations with them.
Speaker 1:Well, of course, you want to do that with the God of the universe, because he's listening and he is speaking and he is waiting for you to join the conversation. So, as we close, I want to have a time of reflection. I'm going to play a song and while I do, I want you to write out a prayer to God. I want you to ask him to help. You Desire to have friendship with him, the friendship that he desires with you. I want you to invite him and ask him, beg him, to give you a sense of that friendship. I want you to ask him to speak to you through his word and through prayer, today and every day, and I want you to ask him to teach you how to be a great listener to him. So will you do that now? As you do that, I will play a song.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I know the fight I'm facing Is no surprise to you. This time's not lost or wasted, but I forget. Underwater, like I'm drowning, can't seem to catch my breath. I know this fear that found me Is powerless. Sometimes I just don't remember. Oh, when I forget, remind me, you never abandon. You find me, no matter what happens. You're holding, holding my heart in your hands. Your hands, oh, you're moving when I can't see what you're doing. Your scars have already proven your love cannot be denied and my life wants to remind me the thought of you can be astounding, marvelous and humbling that the God who holds creation is holding me. Sometimes I just don't remember when I forget. Remind me, you'll never abandon. You'll find me, no matter what happens. You're holding, holding my heart in your hands. Your hands You're moving when I can't see what you're doing, your skies. You've already proven your love cannot be denied.
Speaker 2:My life won't you remind me, because you promised to never leave you're always here with me, so I'll give my all to you, the one thing I'll never lose. You promised to never leave, so I'll give my all to you, the one thing I'll never lose. Sometimes, I just don't remember. Oh, when I forget, remind me you never have. You'll find me, no matter what happens. You're holding, you're holding my heart in your hands, your hands, oh, you're moving. Well, I can't see what you're doing. Your scars have already proven your love cannot be denied my life. Won't you remind me? Won't you remind me? Won't you remind me?
Speaker 1:won't you remind me as we close this first session, I just want to pray for us, lord. If we've heard your truth all our lives, I pray that you would remind us that it is real, that you are good and that your word has power, not only to make a world, but change each of us. Lord, I pray that you will deeply move each heart in here, whether they've believed that for five minutes or a million years. Lord, I pray that you will move, change each of their hearts and draw each of us closer to you, so that, lord, beyond this day, we will seek to hear your voice above the noise of our lives, and we ask all of this in your name. Amen, amen. Thank you, ladies, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
