SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_01: When I was 21, I had been a Christian for a couple years at Georgia, University of Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: And I had an inner struggle, a big time inner struggle, because I had what dermatologists call chronic acne.
SPEAKER_01: So I was always breaking out, and I um went to some of the best dermatologists in the Atlanta area, and nothing changed.
SPEAKER_01: It continued.
SPEAKER_01: And the doctors told my parents, and they told me that there's really nothing they could do about it except maybe you grow out of it.
SPEAKER_01: And then one summer I was in Newport Beach, California, and I was with a man named Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Bill Bright, who was the founder and president of Campus Crusade at that time.
SPEAKER_01: He's since deceased.
SPEAKER_01: I'm now called Crew.
SPEAKER_01: And I asked him to pray for me for healing.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Do you believe in healing?
SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And so he prayed for me and it got worse.
SPEAKER_01: That's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: And so I wrote him a letter.
SPEAKER_01: And a long time ago, there was this art called letter writing.
SPEAKER_01: And for all of you that are 25 and below, it doesn't mean you write a letter.
SPEAKER_01: It actually, there's a piece of paper that you take out, and there's a stick or a pen thing, you know, and you write.
SPEAKER_01: You laugh, but I was with someone recently who works with athletes.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna say the university because it's my alma mater, but um works with athletes, and one of the athletes they worked with in their church is a pitcher who is now, I believe, in the Rockies organization in Double A, and she wrote him a letter and he could not read it because it was written cursively.
SPEAKER_01: So that's the reason I the caveat is I wrote a letter.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, um, Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Bright wrote me back.
SPEAKER_01: I've still got the letter on file, and he said something that's one of those lessons.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think all of us have maybe seven or eight lessons in our life that we never forget that sort of marks us, and this was one of those, and he said to me, he said, Why don't you thank him for it?
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you praise him for your acne and thank him that he makes no mistakes and that he's got a purpose for that in your life?
SPEAKER_01: And so I did.
SPEAKER_01: And it was Psalm 40 that God mightily used in my life during that time.
SPEAKER_01: So turn to Psalm 40, and I want to share what I learned back then, and then what has kind of marked my life from Psalm 40.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 40 is really about, we could have entitled it coming out of the pits, because he uses the word horrible pits in it.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really about struggles in our life.
SPEAKER_01: And every one of us are gonna go through struggles, every one of us have been in struggles, some of which create deep fear in our life, some of which causes consternation.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes our theology is kind of on the line.
SPEAKER_01: Because in some in some parts of Christianity, you know, you should always be healed.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're not healed, it's your fault.
SPEAKER_01: It's because of your lack of faith.
SPEAKER_01: In other parts of Christianity, God doesn't heal today, so why pray about it?
SPEAKER_01: I'm right there in that uncomfortable middle.
SPEAKER_01: I ride in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm one of those folks that has seen tremendous supernatural healings, and I've also seen God where He didn't come through the way I thought he should for healing, and then there was actually a greater good that we could look back in retrospect and see.
SPEAKER_01: So I don't fall into either camp, but I do believe this.
SPEAKER_01: God, when we pray for healing, God shows up a lot more than when we don't.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really smart, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I figured that one out.
SPEAKER_01: So you should always pray for healing.
SPEAKER_01: You should always ask God for healing.
SPEAKER_01: And it's very scriptural to do so.
SPEAKER_01: But remember, you're asking, and he's the one who does the healing.
SPEAKER_01: So is there faith involved?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: That's very clear in some things that Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: There is an element of faith in trusting Him.
SPEAKER_01: But does it all fall upon your responsibility to see the healing?
SPEAKER_01: I feel like that is a disservice to the power and the love and the mercy and the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: So, Psalm 40 is right there in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 40 is kind of writing that middle line of crying out to God, waiting on God, and then God does something in David.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see this, and I'm gonna start off with the first part and go line by line, and then I'll take some chunks of it.
SPEAKER_01: But Psalm 40 was key in my life that year when I was 21 to change my perspective about the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: I was just growing, I was just learning.
SPEAKER_01: So I didn't, and I was in a kind of a non-charismatic group that didn't even believe in healing.
SPEAKER_01: And then my dad was one of the charismatic leaders of the Lutheran church in the southeastern part of the country.
SPEAKER_01: So it was always funny to come home, and here's my Lutheran dad who doesn't have a view of the inerrancy of Scripture, and yet he's leading meetings where people are getting healed because he loves Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm around this other group that believes in the inerrancy of scripture, but they don't believe in healing.
SPEAKER_01: So it was weird, man.
SPEAKER_01: So I've had this weird eclectic background, and um, and that's why I love both sides of it, because God can be at work in both places.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse one.
SPEAKER_01: Verse one sets the pace for the entire Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me, and he heard my cry.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the Hebrew word for weight has the meaning of twisting ropes together to make them stronger.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of weird to me, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So waiting on God is the idea, same word is used for taking strands of rope, twisting, braiding them together to make them stronger.
SPEAKER_01: So why does David use this word?
SPEAKER_01: Because words matter in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Words may not matter with many politicians, but they actually matter in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined to me and he heard my cry.
SPEAKER_01: Remember when I talked about the secret places of God about three weeks ago?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I believe from my study of scripture, there's three secret places of God.
SPEAKER_01: And the way I define that is those places where God manifests his presence.
SPEAKER_01: Now, God is omnipresent, God is everywhere, but there are certain times, places, and even actions in your life that incline God to notice you.
SPEAKER_01: For example, the the eyes of the Lord run to and fro across the earth that he might strongly support those whose hearts are completely his.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a principle there of being wholehearted.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mentioned three, and what I said was praise, praise.
SPEAKER_01: God inhabits the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: God inhabits the praises of people, he's enthroned by praise.
SPEAKER_01: That's a secret place of God.
SPEAKER_01: Second is prayer.
SPEAKER_01: When we crowd to God and when we pray to him, it gets his attention.
SPEAKER_01: And he begins to hone in on a person who's asking him and calling out and crying out to him for stuff.
SPEAKER_01: But the third is waiting on God.
SPEAKER_01: So look what it says here.
SPEAKER_01: It says, I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me, and he heard my cry.
SPEAKER_01: So this waiting is not passive, it's active, it's a crying out to God that David is doing here.
SPEAKER_01: And he's crying out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to give you a little phrase.
SPEAKER_01: Um, waiting on God braids God into you.
SPEAKER_01: Waiting on God braids God into you.
SPEAKER_01: So there's something about waiting on God that braids God's will into your will and begins to make you stronger as you wait on him.
SPEAKER_01: And so there are mysteries, and these are real mysteries.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, I don't have an answer for this, and you don't either.
SPEAKER_01: And if you think you do, then talk to somebody else because I won't listen to you because I've already heard all the prepositions of this.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what I'm saying is there's mysteries of God that you cannot experience without going through things that you don't understand that cause you to wait on Him that change you in a way no other thing could change you like that.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, there are times in your life where there's something, it might be a death of a spouse, it might be cancer, it might be the death of a child, whatever, that you are obeying God, you're walking in God, you're you're following Him the best you know how, and something horrible happens, and you pray for healing, the healing doesn't come.
SPEAKER_01: And it's no lack of faith on your part.
SPEAKER_01: You haven't done anything wrong.
SPEAKER_01: You're you're trusting God with that thing.
SPEAKER_01: That causes you to have to come to an impasse or a decision.
SPEAKER_01: Is God Lord over?
SPEAKER_01: Is he sovereign over this or is he not?
SPEAKER_01: And then you have to wait on him in that mystery, and guess what's happening?
SPEAKER_01: He's braiding his heart into you.
SPEAKER_01: And you don't see it at first.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you experienced it.
SPEAKER_01: I know I didn't, and during that time in my life, I didn't see it at first, but as I I made a choice to wait on God, he was doing something in my heart that later I would see, wow, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't have been changed.
SPEAKER_01: So I remember we had a c-section in Japan.
SPEAKER_01: Our first child, Anna, was a c-section.
SPEAKER_01: And at first we were rejoicing that, oh, the doctor was there, and if he hadn't been there, you know, if this was 50 years ago, we'd have lost the baby, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And then we did some research.
SPEAKER_01: And the research we found was that the actual medical practice that they used was premature.
SPEAKER_01: And then we found out through some questions that the doctor had a golf tournament that he needed to play in in Hawaii, which was on our due date.
SPEAKER_01: So he induced Liz a week later, set in motion a set of events that caused us to have a c-section.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm I'm not against c-sections, don't hear me say that.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying is, is that we did our homework and we figured out what happened, and it changed the way we did birth from that point on for all of our other six children that we had.
SPEAKER_01: So, terrible situation, bad situation, some mistakes made not by us, but maybe by others.
SPEAKER_01: But we praise him now looking back.
SPEAKER_01: You hear what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01: We we we praise him, we thank him for that happening the way it did because it changed us.
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes, church, God takes you through things that you're just you're just being obedient, you're just being trusting, and then tough things happen, and God's braiding, God's working.
SPEAKER_01: And here, and here's the problem: look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the mirrory clay, and he set my feet upon a rock and he established my steps.
SPEAKER_01: So life is hard.
SPEAKER_01: Life is contentious.
SPEAKER_01: That's part of parenting, is you're preparing your kids to have a little bit of a leg up, a step up on life from the way they observe how we live, how we set them up, and I'm not talking about just like financially, I'm talking about character-wise, we're setting them up to be a few steps ahead of where we were when we came up.
SPEAKER_01: That's I think that's one of the biggest.
SPEAKER_01: If I was doing a parenting seminar, that'd be one of my points, is that your job as a parent is to prepare the character, lifestyle, and habits of your kids so that they're ahead of you when you came up.
SPEAKER_01: That's really important.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you come out of horrible backgrounds with really bad parents, and yet you've learned, you're here because you learn from it.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes your best lessons are because of horrible things that have happened to you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the best people in this church come out of the worst backgrounds, and they chose to look at something and go, I'm not doing it that way.
SPEAKER_01: And they trusted God in a new way, and because of that, you know, they're a joyful person today when they should be just, you know, in the pit, but they're not.
SPEAKER_01: But listen, guys, everybody goes through horrible pits.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody goes through Mori Clay.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard.
SPEAKER_01: Life is hard.
SPEAKER_01: And the tendency is to want to do shortcuts.
SPEAKER_01: I like this.
SPEAKER_01: This is one I grew up with as a kid.
SPEAKER_01: Shortcuts are the longest distance between two points.
SPEAKER_01: So the tendency when we're in the situation, it's a horrible pit, is to not wait on God.
SPEAKER_01: Not trust God, but but just go with what everybody tells you to do.
SPEAKER_01: Just do that.
SPEAKER_01: I've got a really close friend whose son went through some tough times in high school and he started stealing stuff and started doing drugs and everything.
SPEAKER_01: And he got caught with some stolen goods.
SPEAKER_01: And it was Christmas time.
SPEAKER_01: This was about a dozen years ago or so, and they put him in jail.
SPEAKER_01: Now, first-time offender, you know, small time crime, probably a thousand dollars or less.
SPEAKER_01: They put him in jails in Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: And so the bail, I think it was very insignificant.
SPEAKER_01: It was like$2,000 or$3,000, something like that.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't pay it.
SPEAKER_01: And they wouldn't let him pay it.
SPEAKER_01: It was their son.
SPEAKER_01: And he missed all of December, all of Christmas with the family, all New Year's, six weeks, baby, in the jail in this small town in Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: He never stole anything again.
SPEAKER_01: He's walking with God today.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So here's why I say that.
SPEAKER_01: So we go through horrible pits, and sometimes waiting on God and doing the right thing, not taking shortcuts, that we can learn all that God has for us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a new believer.
SPEAKER_01: I want to believe in healing.
SPEAKER_01: Man, I want Jesus to be my Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_01: I want every prayer that I pray to be answered.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be handsome, good looking, the best athlete George has ever had, and just live happily ever after.
SPEAKER_01: Some reason it wasn't going my way.
SPEAKER_01: And so God began to use Psalm 40 in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything about braiding God's will into me.
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't thought about that before at that time.
SPEAKER_01: But verse 3 jumped off the page in my life so many years ago.
SPEAKER_01: He has put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God.
SPEAKER_01: Many will see it in fear and will trust in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: When I got that letter back from Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Bright, and he said, Thank God for your acne.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God for your acne.
SPEAKER_01: I remember right there in that apartment, right off the campus, kneeling down, nobody was there.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, God, I just thank you for my acne.
SPEAKER_01: I praise you.
SPEAKER_01: And there were a few other things that were happening in my life with my ankles and my knees and stuff as a gymnast, and thanked him for that.
SPEAKER_01: And then I made a vow that I was not going to look in the mirror.
SPEAKER_01: And if I did look in the mirror, I set up this, guys, I'm I'm a little eccentric, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But I took a piece of paper that I had, you know, that it was like a gum-type sticky that you can put on things if you don't want to put a hole in the wall, you know, pretty firm.
SPEAKER_01: And I had this kind of piece of cardboard about that big with the little gum thing on the back.
SPEAKER_01: And in the morning, because I did need to comb my hair, I would just stick that on the mirror so I couldn't see my face, and then I would just comb my hair so I wouldn't be thinking about my acne.
SPEAKER_01: Week after week, month after month, thanking him, praising him, thanking him for my acting.
SPEAKER_01: God, I just praise you.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I bless you.
SPEAKER_01: I know you're working out something in my life that I don't understand, but I'm gonna thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be the most joyful guy at the University of Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be joyful, I'm not gonna let this pull me down.
SPEAKER_01: And one day I was coming from chemistry class, I can show you the tree at Georgia, if it's still there, where I was, and this gal came up to me, let one of the uh staff with with crew with campus crusade came up to me and said, Steve, what's happening with you?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, nothing, why?
SPEAKER_01: She goes, You are comp you're all your acne's gone.
SPEAKER_01: And she was a good friend of mine.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you don't walk up to people that have acne and say, hey man, all your acne's gone.
SPEAKER_01: But but she was a friend of mine and a really good friend, and um and I was like, Really?
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: And I ran home and uh and sure enough, God had completely healed me and it never came back.
SPEAKER_01: So all I can say, does it always work that way?
SPEAKER_01: Of course not.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm willing to say this from lots of other experiences I could give you that are in finances, parents, I mean all kinds of stuff that you should always pray for healing.
SPEAKER_01: You should always pray to be delivered out of these horrible situations, a horrible pit.
SPEAKER_01: Don't hear me say anything otherwise.
SPEAKER_01: You should.
SPEAKER_01: But simultaneously, and this is the part that's really hard, thanking him and not letting your circumstances enslave you to him having to answer the way you want him to answer.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, your heart is settled that God's got this, even if it doesn't work out the way you want it to, but you still ask him for what you want him to do.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying I get this, okay?
SPEAKER_01: This is really weird.
SPEAKER_01: But I think God braids his will into you as you wait patiently for him, but you still believe him for miracles.
SPEAKER_01: So I think, both theologically and scripturally and experientially, that's the fastest way to a miracle.
SPEAKER_01: But people quit.
SPEAKER_01: When it doesn't go their way, they book it.
SPEAKER_01: When it doesn't go exactly the way they want, or she left, or he died, or whatever, they give up on God.
SPEAKER_01: They start blaming God.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody's done that a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying that's not kind of normal, but I'm trying to equip you as a church to be supranormal, to be naturally supernatural.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a key to that.
SPEAKER_01: That you believe God for something, but you don't have to, you don't have to name it and claim it and fall into a camp where it's all about health and wealth and everything has to go your way, but yet you still believe God for that, and yet if it doesn't come, you're still gonna be full of joy.
SPEAKER_01: So, to me, happiness is about circumstances kind of going your way.
SPEAKER_01: That's a happy person usually.
SPEAKER_01: But a joyful person is when circumstances don't go your way, but God has braided his heart.
SPEAKER_01: Heart and his will into you, and you can live above your circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: That's joy.
SPEAKER_01: That's the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what the world is looking for.
SPEAKER_01: So we don't know what's happening in David's life.
SPEAKER_01: He gets pulled out of this horrible pit.
SPEAKER_01: A new song of praise is on his mouth.
SPEAKER_01: It's not over with yet.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see that as we move along.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside the lies.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I feel like that the joy that David has discovered in his life is something that is happening within him, and he's being blessed by that, and God's being blessed by that.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think it's, I don't think we can miss something that's being said in 4B, where he says, does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside the lies.
SPEAKER_01: So I think the reason that's such a difficult struggle for us is because sometimes when we're in the horrible pit, when we're not seeing God answer the prayers with the way we want them answered, we see these non-believers, we see these other people that are just messing around and doing dumb stuff, getting blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a tendency and a temptation to envy them.
SPEAKER_01: And to begin to think, man, I signed up for the wrong team.
SPEAKER_01: You know, these guys don't give a rip about anybody, and look how good it's going for them.
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to trust God and it's not going so well for me.
SPEAKER_01: We're all going to go through that.
SPEAKER_01: And so this new song, it's a new song.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says in verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: It's a new song.
SPEAKER_01: So it seems like David didn't have this song until he went through the horrible pit.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes when you go through the horrible pit, you need a new song.
SPEAKER_01: The old songs don't work.
SPEAKER_01: We do a lot of new songs around here.
SPEAKER_01: And it's because I want creativity in this church.
SPEAKER_01: I want people to think creatively.
SPEAKER_01: I want new songs.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're hard to sing, they're not always easy to sing, and we're kind of experimenting with, you know, the new songs.
SPEAKER_01: But you remember, like if you take an old hymn, I say a John Wesley hymn.
SPEAKER_01: John Wesley wrote that hymn.
SPEAKER_01: Luther did not write that hymn.
SPEAKER_01: Luther wrote his hymns.
SPEAKER_01: When Luther wrote a mighty fortress is our God, it was because God was his mighty fortress.
SPEAKER_01: And his head was going to be lopped off by either the emperor or the pope any minute, and he found his trust in God in a horrible pit and he waited on God, and God braided his heart and his power into him, and he wrote that song.
SPEAKER_01: Well, then Wesley, who's running from the Anglican church all over England preaching to coal miners and bringing a great revival, the greatest revival that England has ever seen, he wrote his songs because he had a whole nother endeavor.
SPEAKER_01: He had a whole nother adventure before him.
SPEAKER_01: Well, those are great.
SPEAKER_01: I love those hymns.
SPEAKER_01: Well, God wants to write you to write songs.
SPEAKER_01: Not literally, but figuratively in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: He's writing a new song in you.
SPEAKER_01: And it's unique to you, and it's beautiful to you.
SPEAKER_01: Let him.
SPEAKER_01: Let him do it.
SPEAKER_01: While you're in the horrible pit, while it's hard, say, God, write your poetry in me.
SPEAKER_01: You're a poem.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Ephesians says.
SPEAKER_01: You're a poema.
SPEAKER_01: He's writing a poem through your life.
SPEAKER_01: Let him do it.
SPEAKER_01: Quit quitting.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, quitting is highly overrated.
SPEAKER_01: Many, O Lord, my God, are your wonderful works, verse 5, which you have done.
SPEAKER_01: And your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to you in order.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a really important phrase.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to come up in a different form later in the Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: If I would declare and speak of them, they're more than can be numbered.
SPEAKER_01: 10 to the 26th power.
SPEAKER_01: If I could, I don't know where my old college Bible is, but I remember in some Bibles and in some references scriptures, it outnumbers the sands of the sea.
SPEAKER_01: 10 to the 26th power.
SPEAKER_01: That's God's thoughts toward you.
SPEAKER_01: When nobody else is thinking about you, which is most of the time, by the way, another reason you don't need to compare yourself to anyone else because they're not thinking about you anyway.
SPEAKER_01: So quit thinking about them, thinking about you, because they're not.
SPEAKER_01: And when they are thinking about you, it's usually negative, so don't worry about them.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so listen, listen.
SPEAKER_01: God always is thinking about you.
SPEAKER_01: I don't get that, but he loves you that much.
SPEAKER_01: And you're so beloved to him.
SPEAKER_01: That when nobody else cares about you, maybe even your own family, maybe you've done something really dumb, and you've hurt a lot of people, and you feel really bad about it, but you don't, you know, have you ever been in a situation where you've you've really said something dumb?
SPEAKER_01: And I've done this, what does it say here?
SPEAKER_01: More than can be numbered.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: And um, and then you apologize and you can tell they don't forgive you.
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I forgive you.
SPEAKER_01: And you go away and you go, I can't believe I said that.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's nothing you can do about it.
SPEAKER_01: It's out, man.
SPEAKER_01: It is out there, and you cannot reel that baby back in.
SPEAKER_01: It has already happened.
SPEAKER_01: I've ruined so many dates with my wife.
SPEAKER_01: We're sitting there, it's a great meal, we're really relaxed, and then I get too loose.
SPEAKER_01: And I just say something, and oh man, it's so wrong in her eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, we're ruined, and I cannot, I can't reel that baby back in.
SPEAKER_01: It's gone, it's out there.
SPEAKER_01: But God, He forgives you when nobody else does.
SPEAKER_01: He loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's interesting in verse 6, David, even as a Jew at that time, has an understanding of the heart of God and the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: And he sees that it's it's deeper, it's more, there's more to just the religious practice of the temple sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, sacrifice and offering, it wasn't a temple yet, you know, the sacrifice that time, his son would build the temple.
SPEAKER_01: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, my ears you have opened, burnt offering and sin offering you did not require.
SPEAKER_01: Then I said, Behold, I come, and the scroll of the book is written to me.
SPEAKER_01: I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just externals of the religious sin offerings to God and the sacrifices of lambs, it was that it was inscripted actually upon his heart.
SPEAKER_01: I've proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, I do not restrain my lips.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, you yourself know, have not hidden your righteousness within my heart, and I've declared your faithfulness and your salvation.
SPEAKER_01: So when we do the men's whole heart advance, we're always talking about the heart.
SPEAKER_01: When we do wholehearted men for 400 men on Tuesday morning, we're always talking about the heart.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason we do that is because it is the main theme of the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It is the theme of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Of all the verses in the Bible, the one theme, the one word, the one idea that pervades all the New Testament is the heart.
SPEAKER_01: God's fascinated with your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And what we tend to do is we're fascinated with religion.
SPEAKER_01: We're fascinated with outward behavior, and we judge people on their outward behavior.
SPEAKER_01: Now, James is a great book in the New Testament, tells us that's important.
SPEAKER_01: Your outward behavior is important, for sure.
SPEAKER_01: But outward behavior is a reflection of an inward heart change.
SPEAKER_01: And David is saying that what his delight, in other words, is he getting pulled out of this horrible pit, and God's put a new song in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is in the new song.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 8's the new song.
SPEAKER_01: The new song is, I delight to do your will, O my God, your laws within my heart.
SPEAKER_01: So the culture, even Christian culture, kind of trains us to focus on the outward, but biblical culture is to focus on the inward.
SPEAKER_01: It's your heart that matters.
SPEAKER_01: We love God with all of our heart.
SPEAKER_01: The eyes of the Lord look to and fro across the earth for that man or woman whose heart is completely his, that he might come along and support them.
SPEAKER_01: It's the heart that God focuses in on.
SPEAKER_01: So the idea of waiting on God is a heart issue.
SPEAKER_01: Do you get that?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, outwardly nothing may change, but inwardly you can be transformed.
SPEAKER_01: That's the braiding of God's heart into your heart.
SPEAKER_01: That God's heart is not giving us everything we want, it's becoming the person that you are destined to be.
SPEAKER_01: And that comes through hard times, folks.
SPEAKER_01: That comes through difficult.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it could be said.
SPEAKER_01: It could be argued from 1 Peter and 1 John that it is the hardest of times that God does his deepest of works in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: It is in unanswered prayer that God sometimes braids the deeper understanding and convictions of his character into our life than answered prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's hard sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10 I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation.
SPEAKER_01: I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly.
SPEAKER_01: So I get the picture when I read verses like this that David was the preacher, and that he, in certain assemblies or areas where he was before the people, he boasted about God.
SPEAKER_01: He boasted about what God has done.
SPEAKER_01: He boasted about the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_01: He boasted about the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: He boasted about the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: And he got his first lesson, I think, in the Valley of Elah.
SPEAKER_01: So it was in that valley of Elah, Goliath comes forth and he taunts the armies.
SPEAKER_01: And David says, Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should taunt the armies of the living God?
SPEAKER_01: You see, God's glory and his holiness are one and the same.
SPEAKER_01: You know what, you know what I think when I think of the glory of God?
SPEAKER_01: The glory of God is God's holiness manifest in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the glory of God is.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, quite frankly, you guys, it's through difficult times.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Do not withhold your tender mercies from me, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Let your loving kindness and your truth continually preserve me.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: This is really interesting.
SPEAKER_01: For innumerable evils have surrounded me.
SPEAKER_01: My iniquities have overtaken me.
SPEAKER_01: So that I'm not able even to look up.
SPEAKER_01: They're more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart fails me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, verse 12 strangely seems familiar to verse 5, where he says, the thoughts of the Lord cannot be numbered.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's saying here that they, that his iniquities outnumber the hairs of his head.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for some of you that are a little bit older, that's actually not very hard.
SPEAKER_01: You probably can count the hairs on your head.
SPEAKER_01: But for others of us, it's different.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: I think in verse 2 and 3, he's speaking of a horrible pit that God has taken him out of, Mari Clay.
SPEAKER_01: He's put a new song in his mouth, but it doesn't mean that the circumstances changed.
SPEAKER_01: David changed.
SPEAKER_01: His circumstances didn't change.
SPEAKER_01: And he's still crying out to God here.
SPEAKER_01: And he can say, well, that's not very good news because, you know, your acne got healed.
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
SPEAKER_01: But my cancer hasn't been healed.
SPEAKER_01: You can't bring back that dead child.
SPEAKER_01: You can't bring back that dead spouse.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what, men and women?
SPEAKER_01: That may be true, but you gotta remember that God is braiding God into you and his glory into you.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to understand that sometimes there's mysteries out there we don't get.
SPEAKER_01: But God's doing something deeper in us because look what he goes on to say.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me.
SPEAKER_01: So He's still crying out for deliverance.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, make haste to help me.
SPEAKER_01: Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion, who seek to destroy my life.
SPEAKER_01: Let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor, who wish me evil.
SPEAKER_01: Let them be confounded because of their shame, who say to me, Aha, aha.
SPEAKER_01: Let all those who seek you, though, rejoice and be glad in you.
SPEAKER_01: Let such as love your salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified.
SPEAKER_01: Exclamation point.
SPEAKER_01: But I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me.
SPEAKER_01: You are my help and my deliverer.
SPEAKER_01: Do not delay.
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
SPEAKER_01: Where are you going to go?
SPEAKER_01: What's better than God?
SPEAKER_01: What's the other team you want to be on?
SPEAKER_01: This is the team.
SPEAKER_01: This is the winning team.
SPEAKER_01: And if you need happiness, then somehow you've got to control your circumstances, and you can't.
SPEAKER_01: But you can control the joy.
SPEAKER_01: That's your choice.
SPEAKER_01: It's the choice to rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: And people who live in circumstantial happiness are some of the most unhappy people in all the world.
SPEAKER_01: And people who walk in eternity overcomes and surpasses circumstances are some of the most beautiful people you'll ever meet in the whole world.
SPEAKER_01: They're just thankful.
SPEAKER_01: They've got an attitude of gratitude and they made a choice to rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: They have an attitude of gratitude, they made a choice to rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: So when I was in URA on an elk hunt years ago, we were in rainy season.
SPEAKER_01: It was in September.
SPEAKER_01: I was on a muzzle load hunt, and this road that we would, you know how when you when you engineer a road, you make the crest the middle so that the water rolls off.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reason my dirt road to my house in Black Forest is horrible because nobody ever engineered it.
SPEAKER_01: And I've asked my neighbors if they want to engineer it with me, and nobody wants to, so it's still horrible.
SPEAKER_01: But this road had been engineered correctly, but it was it was miry clay.
SPEAKER_01: So what that means is when it gets wet, it's super duper slippery, even with good tires.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you could just slide off so easily.
SPEAKER_01: And what in one particular instant we did.
SPEAKER_01: We slid off and we could not get it out of there.
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, we got a guy with a tractor, he pulled us out, and we were more careful the next time.
SPEAKER_01: But that's what Maury clay is.
SPEAKER_01: It's slick, it's slippery.
SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna go through, we're gonna go through life that's Maury Clay and horrible pits, and you've got to stay focused.
SPEAKER_01: You take your focus off the road, you take focus off your direction, and you're gonna is so easy to slide off.
SPEAKER_01: So as we're traveling this road, the only thing we have that keeps us on the rock is our relationship, a heart relationship with God and his word.
SPEAKER_01: Delighting in his will, delighting in his word.
SPEAKER_01: To show you how messed up our culture is.
SPEAKER_01: Everything's about safe sex, right?
SPEAKER_01: Safe sex, man.
SPEAKER_01: It's really done well for us for the last 35 years, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: But I like the phrase.
SPEAKER_01: Safe sex.
SPEAKER_01: So what's the question then becomes what's the safest sex?
SPEAKER_01: How about no sex before marriage?
SPEAKER_01: How about no sex outside of marriage?
SPEAKER_01: Guess what that would do?
SPEAKER_01: It would, if you think about any major issue related to our culture, that one thing, that one thing would solve it.
SPEAKER_01: That's coming up out of the horrible pit and putting your foot, laying your body, giving your life to the rock that cannot be shaken, to a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
SPEAKER_01: It can become the cornerstone of your life.
SPEAKER_01: If you're single, if you're in this room right now, or if you're messing around in your marriage, repent, man.
SPEAKER_01: Get out of the horrible pit.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna slide off the road at some point and put your feet.
SPEAKER_01: Lay your heart in God and in his word and watch the firmness, stability, and strength that'll come into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.