Community of Truth: Faith- Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham looks at faith as the thing that we can be most trusting of, exploring Mark 4 and the dynamics of walking by faith not by sight. 

Transcript

Trust In A Post-Truth World

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning again. Transitioning from announcements to uh something I feel more comfortable doing. Uh my name is Ian. I'm the pastor I serve along. Some incredible people here. And it's a joy to be with you. If you're new here, we're so glad you're here. Uh if you're here every week, it's a joy to see you. Uh, I want to put up a picture for you. We do a little bit of Visio Divina uh here at church. And perhaps you've seen this photo. Looks good. That's our dearly departed Pope Francis. Uh we are not Catholic, but we we do honor those who share our faith. And uh if you've seen this photo, it looks good, he wears it well. Now, the only problem with this photo is what's what's the problem? It's it's fake. 2023. This is one of the early viral photos that kind of spread like wildfire. It was made by a construction worker in Chicago who put it on a meme page and then it just kept getting shared, and all of a sudden the patron Pope of the Poor was rocking a Balenciaga puffer jacket, and people were like, oh yeah, the Pope, right? Not a lot of integrity there. And I know, I know. I I sometimes get labeled a little bit of a Luddite because uh the technocracy is uh is my punching bag. Uh, this is AI generated, and you know, we're at this weird point in history where some of the AI deception technology has outpaced our ability to discern what's fake and what's real. Uh so we're at this interesting point in time. I am not a Luddite. I love, you know, I saw this article today about self-driving cars reducing collisions by about 96%. I like driving, but that sounds pretty good to me, reducing uh the amount of death and carnage that comes with our highway system. So I don't know. But we see that we live in a world where it's often not just hard to know what's true. It's it's hard to trust our eyes. You see this, and that looks, I mean, the shadows line up, everything looks like it's on the up and up, and you're looking at it, you're like, oh, that has to be real. There's the Pope in a designer Italian jacket, right? Ted Joya writes that trust is the scarcest thing in the world. And there have been countless sociological studies done about the erosion of trust in institutions, places like the Catholic Church or uh police departments, education system. And again, uh we're we're saying two things at once often, because oftentimes there's good reason for the erosion of that trust. There are things that have come to light that are then being brought to account, right? The abuses in places like the Catholic Church. Some of the things we see with our police departments. I don't know if you followed the story of Kyron Lacey, who was an LSU football player who was accused of murder and subsequently committed suicide. And it was thought that he couldn't bear the weight of what he did in this car accident, but he didn't do any of that. The whole story was made up, and the details had come to light subsequently. And the police department was implicit in implicating this young man. And so there are often two things that are being told. We need institutions, we need shared space to be a people who can trust one another and share space, but we also need to call those institutions to light. And we've seen this not only in institutional crisis, not only in the visuals that we come across. We see this in our interactions with one another. Ted Joya writes, we live in the aftermath of a trust crisis. And he outlines six things that I think are interesting, six outcomes of that trust crisis. First, skepticism. If events can't be validated, I can't give credence to anything. I don't know about you, but anytime I see anything now, like the photo of the Pope and the Balenciaga, my first thought is this definitely didn't happen. Right? Like I've become like a lunar landing skeptic. I'm just like, no, that can't be real. It's not real. And I don't know if you have that same reaction. Aloofness. If everything gets called into question, I have no basis for shared communal actions. So the erosion of trust erodes our commonality. Silence, what's the point in speaking if we can't even begin to articulate or agree on what's true? Indifference. As I lose connection with people and events, I lose interest in them. And there are plenty of technologies available to us to just constantly turn our eyes on ourselves and not have to look at the wider world. Distrust, obviously. In a world without shared reality, no expert or institution can earn my total trust. I'm standing up here as one speaking to you the words of God. And I hope there's some bit of healthy skepticism in here. Like, are we sure? Like, I actually welcome that. But we live in the aftermath of many of these institutional, long-standing, whether they be organizations or groups, kind of. We're sort of saying, okay, are we sure? And the last is hostility. As these traditional connections break down, it doesn't take much to set off conflicts and violence. And we see how often our culture is mired in this sort of talking past one another that often results in taking up arms. I want to ask you, what is something that you know for certain to be true? Beyond any shadow of a doubt. Like if I were to take this pick, this is McKenna's guitar pick, and I were to drop it, what happens? It falls, right? Like that's that's is that one that we can all agree on? I've never seen it not fall. And I could ask you, how do you know that? And you'd probably have the same answer. Well, that's just what happens. And there's a whole theory of gravity, you know. But from a strictly scientific perspective, we can't exactly observe gravity. You can't see the forces that are drawing these two masses together, right? And so the things that we know for certain oftentimes come with a lot of caveats. It happens that way because there is a well-founded theory of gravity, everyday experience. We have these things that we hold on to. I want to put forth a statement today that feels like a bit of a paradox, and I'll unpack what I mean by that. A paradox is two things that seem to be at odds with one another at opposite ends, that both somehow find a way to be true. And so just a thesis as a way of paradox. Faith is the truth that we live by, walk by, and see the world by. Now, if you are a Jesus-following person and you've been at this for a while, I don't, I doubt you have any issue with that statement, right? But you could, I think, surmise that somebody in your life would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you've merged two categories that are not soluble together. Faith and truth are not two things that merge well together. Think of a friend who may be an atheist or an agnostic. Maybe say, well, no, no, no. We we know, we trust what we can see, what we can measure, and you're saying your faith is the thing that is the truest thing, the thing that you trust most. And we have this instant sort of category collision, but I want to put this forward today. We've been talking throughout the fall that we are a community of truth. And we, making that ambitious claim, are saying that we together are a people that manifest as an embassy of the kingdom of God, the truth about God's love for the world, about his posture to it, about his mission to it. And especially a subject matter that is contested as truth is, as we're talking about a people that manifests God's truth, then often the question in our culture is, well, which truth? Which version of the truth? And so it's an ambitious claim, but trying to constantly point to Jesus as a way of not narrowing down the truth, but expanding it and showing its broadest horizons. That we are called to be a community of truth, to be a people who live in and live out of the truth. And today, I want to talk about faith as the truth, which, even as I say it, sort of feels like two separate things. But the faith is the truest thing about us. It is the story that we are called to live in and the story that we are called to live out. We're gonna be looking today at a story in Mark chapter 4, if you want to turn over there. Mark chapter 4, verse 35. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. The words will be on the screen behind me. Let's read together, beginning in verse 35. That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, Let us go over to the other side. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was in the boat. There were also other boats with him. Jesus in Mark 4 has been teaching all day long. And as evening draws near, Jesus directs his disciples, those who traveled with him, right, let's let's move from here, let's sail to the other side of the lake of Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee. I find it ever amusing. If you pay attention to Jesus' life, what we know about Jesus' father was that his father was some sort of carpenter. Now, what that trade entailed, we don't fully know, but working with timber, Jesus would have been consigned to some sort of shop or working outside on projects, and that would have been his lot in life. But at some point during Jesus' short time on earth, and again, I just want to put this equation before you, Jesus, scholars estimate, lived about 33 years. And if we really extrapolate the data that we have from the Gospels, most of it is consigned to about a three-year period, a few exceptions. But we have 33 years of Jesus' life. The Son of God is on earth for 33 years, and we have this little snapshot. But at some point, Jesus, and we see this clearly in Mark, begins his public ministry. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. But Jesus, when he gets the choice to choose his band of followers, he doesn't choose fellow carpenters, he doesn't choose the people who are most important in society, he chooses fishermen. And if you pay attention to the Gospels, I think what you can surmise from all of this is that Jesus just really loves the water. In Matthew's Gospel, Matthew, who is a friend of Jesus, Levi, renamed Matthew, just constantly notes that Jesus was walking along the edge of the shore, that he's teaching from a boat. The word for boat appears over 50 times in the gospel accounts. Jesus was a carpenter who just really loved the water. And I don't know about you, but that's the more that we can both humanize Jesus in his divinity, the more that we can make light of the story and use our imaginations to see that Jesus was not just this flat character that we have uttering divine robotic sayings. He's a person. He's funny. And here he is after a day of preaching, who says, Hey, you know what I'd like? Little evening sunset cruise. Let's go to the other side of the lake. Now, in the 20th century, which for some of you was a long time ago, they discovered, because scholars are constantly doing work of archaeology, a boat that was from this time period. I want to put up a picture of our. This is a first century Galilean fishing boat. And the trellis that it's on is that's that's modern, that's new. It's the wood that's original. This is the kind of boat, it's about 27 feet long. Probably the kind of boat that the disciples and Jesus set sail in on this fateful day. And there were places for about four oars for people to row. We found this in the 1970s, and it just further rounds out our picture that's presented in the Gospels. There are constant, there are scholars in this room who are doing work of archaeology, comparing the story that we are telling with the story that history is telling. And often we get a more fully rounded out picture of that. They just started excavating Colossae in Turkey, and we have a letter to the Colossians, we have uh mention of that place throughout the New Testament. And it's amazing to think of what we will learn about the people and what that says about the story of the gospel. I think that's fascinating. But two brothers found this, two amateur archaeologists, and then turned it over to the authorities. But they got in a boat like this one to set sail across. And I imagine when they set out, it was a nice day. You know, not unlike this one. Sunny, bright. But then we see things change rapidly. Verse 37. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. And Jesus was in the stern. And what's he doing? He's just sleeping. The disciples woke him and said to him, Teacher, don't you care if we drown? I was once on the little bighorn lake in Montana, and we had spent all day on a pontoon boat driving around, cliff diving, just having a great day. It was beautiful and sunny. At one point while we were docked, we started talking to these guys who had a wake surfing boat. And I'd never been wake surfing. So we were just chatting with them, and then at some point during the conversation, they just said, Do you guys want to come along? These are strangers in Montana. And I don't know if the injunctions against getting in strangers' vehicles apply to boats, but I was with three other pastor friends, we're like, absolutely, we want to come and we want to wake surf. And so we get we get on this boat and we go wake surfing, and these guys are characters, like they're teaching you how to do it, and then they put you out in the boat. Wake surfing is like it recreates the idea of a wave behind a boat, and so you're surfing, and they would turn up this music really loud, and they're just like, Yeah! And you're like, Yeah, guys, this is awesome. It was amazing. I've never wake surfed since, so I look at it as an opportunity that we seized upon, and thankfully they did return us to our original party, which I stand before you today as not being kidnapped, which I'm also grateful for. But as we rejoined our original party towards the end of the day, we could see some clouds moving in over the cliffs. This lake is set down amongst these kind of higher horizons. And we saw that the people that lived there were like, okay, it's time to go. And we're like, oh, it's you know, it seems like it's kind of far off. And they're like, no, start securing stuff. We get everything tied down. You know, pontoon boats have those coverings that you can sit under, and they're like, tie that down, that's gonna blow away. So we get everything secure and we start hauling across this giant lake, and we're going so fast, and all of a sudden, the rain, the lightning, the thunder hits, and our brave captain is just wearing all of it. He's got sunglasses on, he's trying to just keep the boat pointed in a general direction. The rest of us are just covering our faces and our eyes, and we were just getting pelted with like shrapnel like rain. And I'm like, man, this this is I'm I'm not gonna make it. This is crazy. We had a motor. I mean, these disciples are in the middle of this lake with no power but their own. And they, these are fishermen. This is not a new thing for them, but it seems like this storm has has set them on edge, right? These are not fishermen who have never seen a storm materialize out of nothing on the wide expanse of the lake. But here they are, and they are freaking out. And as they're freaking out, what is Jesus doing? It's hilarious. I mean, just picture this. This boat is getting tossed to and fro. I mean, preaching is tiring. It's not this tiring. Jesus has been teaching all day, and he's just taking a happy little nap, undisturbed by the water that is coming over the stern of the boat, undeterred by any of it, just snoring away. These fishermen, in the midst of everything that is going on, are freaking out. Our son Silas is um, he's not the most adept sleeper, and that's that's kind of been a story. He's getting better, but he will often manifest demands at three in the morning that he needs a glass of water, a stuffy. He needs to make sure that somebody hears him, and he will just start yelling. And Courtney or I will get up and go attend to his needs. And I have to remind myself often, my favorite Tim Keller quote is a beautiful one. He says, The only person bold enough to wake the king in the middle of the night for a drink of water is a child. And as I get up at three in the morning, I'm like, I'm not a king, but this is my child, and I love him. And the thing I would love for most for him right now is for him to go back to sleep, so I maybe can go back to sleep. But he demands and he yells, and he's he's super loud. And our other son, Sullivan, literally shares the same room with him, bunk bed right next to him, like adjacent inches away, has never once been disturbed by Silas's ranting and raving in the middle of the night. And sometimes I just walk in there as I'm attending to whatever Silas, and I look at Sullivan, I'm just like, I'm impressed. Like, heaven forbid we actually have an emergency, we'd not be able to rouse him. But this is this is Jesus sleeping in the stern of the boat, and he is just out. And they ask him, as he's sleeping, the most pressing question. And it's an important thing for us to actually imagine the way in which they ask it. Don't you care? Don't you care if we drown? And do they politely sidle up to Jesus and say, um, teacher, I don't know if this has escaped your attention and your notice because you were you were dozing, and that's fine. You're tired, we understand. But it it appears that God is recreating the flood that that happened in Noah's times, and um seems like you should be able to do something about that. Would you, would you please? Would you mind? They also don't come up to Jesus, and you know, we're early on in Mark's gospel. They don't they don't fully know who this Jesus is. We'll see that in just a minute. But they don't, you know, wake up Jesus. Hey, if it be your will, would you please, would you please uh stop the storm? No, there's no calmness in their approach to Jesus. They are freaking out. Don't you care if we drown? Wake up. Their question has so many ramifications for us. Don't you care? It's a question about the heart of Jesus, it's a question about his power. How many of us have asked the question in moments of anguish? Or in the prolonged seasons of our lives where it seems like Jesus is just sleeping through all of it? That there is no care and certainly no change in all that threatens us. Don't you care that I'm sick? Don't you care that my marriage is falling apart? Don't you care that I've been unemployed or underemployed for so, so long? Don't you care that I've been waiting to meet someone, that I could serve you and your kingdom alongside, that I want to be married, and yet that person has not shown up. Don't you care that I'm lonely? We could put so many objects to the end of that question. Don't you care? The question itself is an imposition. It can be asked from a place of doubt, but it also can be asked from a place of you should care. If anybody in all of creation or outside of creation should care, it should be you. And yet everything in my experience tells me that you don't care. The disciple's question is an urgent last-ditch clinging to life question. And it's an invitation for us into the heart of God. Go on to verse 39. He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, Be quiet. Be still. Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Ecclesia. He does, in fact, care. Very much so. He cares about the disciples' situation here in Mark 4, and he cares about those aching questions that you've brought to Jesus. In the throes of the night, in the places where it seems like there is no way, I can tell you the gospel truth that he absolutely does care. His care is not just compassionate, it is not just empathetic, it is authoritative and commanding concern. Not only does he care, but he can do something about it. I want to read to you the words from the psalmist in Psalm 46, these words of poetry. I'm going to read an extended section for you. And often poetry puts us in a different cadence. I just want to allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you through these words. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging, there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at day at the break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. He says, Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress, the word of the Lord, Psalm 46. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. Be still and know that I am God. Jesus then asked his own question. He said to his disciples, Why? Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? Throughout Mark's gospel and throughout the Gospels themselves, we see how much Jesus prizes faith. When we started Ecclesia, one of our founding values was doubters welcome. Because we wanted to have the posture of people that were coming out of either toxic spaces of faith or people that had no faith and a lot of questions for them to feel like there was a place for them. It was important for us to have that posture. But as I kept reading the Gospels, what I kept seeing was that Jesus has all the space in the world for doubt. He will harbor our doubts. He will walk alongside them. Read Luke 24. It's an amazing exposition of Jesus' approach to doubt. These disciples are walking away from the crucifixion of Jesus, thinking all is lost. And how does Jesus approach them? Even though he knows the whole truth, he doesn't say, hey, let me blow your minds here. What things are you sad about? Why are you walking away? Jesus takes the posture of a fellow pilgrim. And we want this to be our posture, but Jesus' harboring of doubt is towards the end and the goal of faith. Jesus prizes faith. That which he is trying to extract from our lives and bring about and to transfigure in us is faith. And so we changed it. Because we want to be a people that honor the kind of life that Jesus is trying to engender and cultivate among us. We can easily be disturbed by Jesus' responses, especially to a lack of faith. Have you ever read the Bible and seen Jesus' response? Like, think of Jesus' response right here. The disciples are freaking out because there's a storm about to end their lives. Jesus casually, peace, be still. Why are you so afraid? Like, really? Well, we're not afraid now, but we were a couple seconds ago. Yes, yes, actually we were. Jesus' responses can seem harsh or short-sighted. And often we're operating from our theological priors when we apply these different postures to Jesus. If Jesus is inclusive and compassionate, then we diminish any of his rebukes or stern warnings or set them as always against some other group of which we are not a part, thankfully. And if Jesus is rigid and unrelenting, then his compassion always comes with an edge. And this often breeds a certain kind of leadership in the church. But we don't have to subscribe to these reductive binaries. We see that Jesus' rebukes are insight into the sort of life that Jesus wants for us. Jesus gets routinely agitated when we don't have faith because it undermines the very heart of the kind of life that Jesus is inviting us into. Faith is the oxygen that we breathe in the kingdom of God, and it expresses the ever-presence of our loving Father. His power, his care, his compassion to provide for us, his joyful heart that wants good things for his children. Do you know, Ecclesia, that God likes you? He absolutely loves you. But do you know that he likes you? He delights in you. He wove you together in your mother's womb. He set you forth for this specific time, for this specific place. He likes the things that excite you. You can share them with him. You're gonna have lunch in a while. You can thank him for those flavors. It is a gift, and Jesus invented them and gives them to you as just a small glimpse of the kind of kingdom that is coming to bear and will be in eternity. He likes you. And the absolute truth is, Ecclesia, the truth that we live by, the truth of our faith, that in his hands, which we can look at and see the scars in his hands, that scars that he bore for the sake of the world, we are eternally secure. We are eternally cared for. We are eternally seen. P.T. Forsyth says this. He says, faith is the very highest form of our dependence upon God. We never outgrow it. Whatever other fruits of the Spirit we show, they grow upon faith, and faith, which is in its nature, repentance. Every Christian experience is an experience of faith. That is, it is an experience of what we have not. We are not saved by the love we exercise, but by the love that we trust. And when we respond with faith, we are invited to a life with God that exceeds our simple desires for comfort and for things to work out. God doesn't diminish them, he doesn't patronize them. But he takes our desires earnestly entrusted to him, and he shows them, he leads them to their source. And he leads us to reveal a God that is so far beyond the designs of our own limited imaginations. Seeing the care and powerful response of Jesus, the disciples ask the open-ended question of Revelation: Who is this man? And we see that they ask this in fear and in trembling. Even the wind and the waves obey this man. Who is this man? A couple of responses that this passage dictates for us, Ecclesia. First of all, we've talked about desire. What's one thing in your life that if you could, you would pull a lever and would change right now, immediately? You probably don't have to think about it for very long. It probably has already visited you with its haunting this morning. What's one thing in your life? Maybe it's circumstantial? Maybe it's relational, maybe it's financial, maybe it's your your physical health. What's the place where you are asking God? Don't you care? We're inviting the church to what we're calling 21 days of consecration, which is just a fancy way of saying 21 days of paying attention. A way of simplifying our lives, removing some things from the midst of their busyness, a pause from social media, invitation to abiding in the word, call to journaling, praying, and to joy. And we'll have some simple prompts on a website that we'll uh send out tomorrow via our email. But what if we simply took that thing that feels like the thorn in our flesh, the thing that we would change instantly, and looked at it through the eyes of faith? How would that change or reframe things? That phrase thorn in the flesh comes from Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. I want to read you just a little section that he writes about his own thorn in the flesh. He says in verse 7 of 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was giving a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness, therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest. On me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, and persecutions, in difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong. Notice the dynamics that have probably played out over the course of many years that Paul is elaborating in a few sentences. There is something in my life that is tormenting me. Paul has made conclusions about that, I presume, from revelation from the Holy Spirit, that this is a messenger of Satan. But we also see that Paul, throughout his life with Jesus, has pleaded with God on three separate occasions. Take this away. Paul is asking, asking, asking. The disciples' question, don't you care? And Paul's pleading with the Lord to take it away are our invitations here. In the story in Mark 4, Jesus acts immediately and fixes the situation. And how much would we like it if everything that we brought before the Lord he fixed instantly? Would you like that? I would very much like that. I would believe more. I would have more faith. And I've tried to tell Jesus this. Like if you would just do something immediately, I would believe in you even more. But that's not always how it works out. We have a certain measure of theological envy here, watching the disciples get to behold this great wonder in this great work. In Paul's situation, though, the circumstances themselves are not remedied. In the way that Paul would want, certainly. But he comes in the midst of those circumstances, even in the midst of this thorn in the flesh, to understand a deeper truth. That in the midst of his weakness, in the midst of his longing, that God's grace is sufficient. And this isn't just like, oh yeah, God's grace is going to get me through. This is abundance in the face of scarcity. This is a life with God that he would not have known outside the suffering. It doesn't mean that God has brought the suffering to him. But what it does mean is that even in the midst of things that don't change as we would design them or as we would draw them out, God is showing himself faithful and present. But we don't have to make those conclusions for God. The heart of this, don't you care, the heart of Paul pleading, take it away, is asking. And I talk to you about this a lot because it is so important. God is not beating you down because you are asking. I assure you, He can be trusted with your desires. You may find in the course of entrusting God with your desires that you find that you are desiring the wrong thing. But guess what? That's only a revelation that can happen in communion. And so so often we answer for God. We say, Oh, I know that's never going to change. I know, I know that's never going to work out. And we don't receive the very persistent invitation of the New Testament that Jesus Himself gives. Ask, ask, ask, keep asking. Ask like a widow who keeps showing up to an unjust judge that she asks so persistently that he finally relents because he's so tired of listening to her. Ask like that, the kingdom of God is like that. Ask like a friend who shows up at the exact wrong hour in the middle of the night and says, I need to borrow something. Ask like that. The kingdom of God is like that. Ask like a child. No, so often we answer for God, we conclude for God, we don't bear our desires in the course of a relationship with God, and we suffer. And suffering outside of communion with God, Ecclesia, is just suffering. But what we see in Paul's testimony is that suffering in the hands of Jesus, even if the thing itself is not to be remedied on this side of eternity, can be transfigured into a testimony that declares abundantly, my grace is sufficient for you. And so the call I am making to you over these 21 days is to ask, is to entrust God with your desires. And this, what it does, is it opens up our life to God. You find that he actually is interested in the things you're interested in, that he did have a hand in designing you and kind of knows how you tick, the things that bring you joy. And he will course correct the desires that are impoverished or misplaced. He will reorient you. Because yes, everything we want is not something of the Lord or of his goodness. That's a fact. But we won't know that until we put ourselves as a mirror up to his desire for us. So I'm commending you to ask. Teresa Vavila says this you pay God a compliment by asking great things of him. So let's try it. Direction. I find it so funny. I don't know what you think about Jesus' uh omniscience as he exercised it during the incarnation. I don't think Jesus was like Alexa. Like, Jesus, what's the weather gonna be today? I was a little worried about saying Alexa, like somebody's phone, and be like, yes, hello. Like, I don't think Jesus was like, you know, about seven o'clock tonight, there's gonna be quite the storm. And uh yeah, or that he's playing a bit, like, okay, I'm gonna send the disciples across the lake, then, you know, insert scene here, special effects, operate, huge squall storm, that'll really blow their minds. I don't think Jesus is doing any of that. But he does set the course that we should go across the lake and go to the other side. And so often, our lack of trust is because we think we have to steer the direction of our life, and we don't acknowledge that we are held in the hands of one who loves us more than we can love ourselves. And better, his concern is thorough, it is compassionate, and it is sovereign. He can make a way where there is no way. Thomas Merton says, My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going. Can you relate? I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think that I'm following your will does not mean that I'm actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I'm doing. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me alone to face my perils. He is directing your paths. He is the good shepherd that will walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death to pastures of green, still waters. Last thing is Jesus' intention for faith does not mean that he has no room for doubt or disappointment or disillusionment. He invites you to a relationship in full. Often that fullness is found when we acknowledge that God sees every inch of us. Every depraved thought, everything we'd like to keep hidden in the dark corners of our heart. Jesus sees it. And you know what he says to that? Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Eternally yes. And he will, by his glory and sanctifying power, transform that darkness that is in us into a light that we cannot conceive. But he says yes to you. And when we acknowledge that, we also acknowledge that within our life with God, there's a lot that we're not sure of. Jesus, why are you so angry with the disciples for not exercising faith in the face of a world-ending storm? I don't know. Do you read the scriptures and sometimes think like, really? He's mad about that? Or do you read the scriptures sometimes and you're like, really? God's that's that's how we're doing God is love. Doesn't feel like it right there, does it? Is that just me? Have you ever yelled at God? I have. You feel a little bit unhinged. I'll be honest. Like full throated, like the primal scream folks are onto something. But if he's real and he's he's here, and if there's a depth of life that he's called us to, then maybe yelling at God is the most faithful thing you can do today. I've gotten in my car and screamed at the top of my lungs, and that gotta be honest, felt a little weird. But it also felt pretty healing and felt like I was heard. When we open up to God about our doubts, our disillusionments, our disappointments, we begin to live a life of faith. Eugene Peterson says this it's easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs. It is somewhat more difficult to be honest in our hurts. It is nearly impossible to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate. We must pray who we actually are, not who we think we should be. In prayer, all is not sweetness and light. The way of prayer is not to cover our unlovely emotions, so they'll appear more respectable, but expose them so that they can be enlisted in the work of the kingdom. He then quotes the Old Testament scholar Walter Brugeman saying, It is an act of profound faith to trust one's most precious hatreds to God, knowing that they will be taken seriously. I'm going to invite our worship team forward as we transition a time of response and worship to the Lord. Ecosia, I know that talking about faith and trust in God is a tender topic. I wish I were a health and wealth teacher right now. And I could just stand before you and say, if you just have enough faith and you'd pray for the thing over and over again, then it would be yours. All the life of comfort, European travel that you have designed for yourself, that aesthetically beautiful life that you want, all yours. And you can still be faithful to the king. I don't, I don't know that. But what I do know is that Jesus has invited you into a full and vibrant life with him, that faith is the truest thing about us, the truth that we are called to live in and to live out. That we walk by faith and not by sight. And that often is so, so hard. Because I know so often we would rather just have a rule, a map, something that is sure and secure that we could point to. And so often Jesus is saying, Come with me, follow me, come get away with me, find rest for your souls. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus is inviting us to a life of faith, borne out by the presence of his spirit among us. And that that that spirit is present right now, it's been present all along. Those moments where you were bored and wondering when it's gonna be over, making a list in your head, it was present, guiding you. Those moments where you're like, oh, that's that that's something I went through this week. There. The moments where just the words of the scriptures have a special power to them. You speak them and it's like you watch it, it's amazing. The Holy Spirit's been here. And he's inviting you to a life of faith. Jesus has been faithful to you. His life, his death, his resurrection, declaring how God feels about you, declaring that he will not leave this world abandoned, he will not leave you alone. He is the resurrected and reigning King who is drawing all things to himself and will restore and make all things new. Jesus is inviting us to see that he has never slept through the storms in our life, that he's been present through every one of them, that he does very much, in fact, care. And he's drawing you to himself. The power of his blood and the glory of his resurrection, we stand in the presence of God. Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, we welcome your presence here. God, I want to pray first for those who have never responded to an invitation from you for faith, God. That faith could be the truest thing about them, that faith could be the thing that they were most certain of, the thing that they trust most, because faith is about you. It's about you and what you've done, God. And what you've done expresses who we are, the direction of our life, Lord Jesus. The fact that we will never, ever, not for one moment, be alone. God, I pray for those for whom you are just prompting and beckoning, Lord Jesus, that they would heed your call here this morning. In just a moment, we'll we'll give an invitation for those to receive prayer who maybe are saying yes to Jesus for the first time. And we pray with them, Lord. Pray you'll give them just the courage it takes to respond to your grace, God. The courage to heed that prompting, Lord. God, I want to pray for those who have felt long disappointed, long left and abandoned, Lord, like they've been in the storm for a long time, just yelling, do you care? Do you care? Do you care? God, that you would rekindle first love in this place, Lord Jesus. That you would invite us to ask anew, Lord, to trust anew, to be persistent anew, Jesus. God, we ask that you, through these time of just focused attention, Lord, would work on our hearts. Would show us where we just need to keep asking, would show us where your grace is sufficient, Lord Jesus. Would you just be near? God, and I pray that we as a people would be a people marked by faith, Lord Jesus. God, that your presence, Lord, would give us courage to know that you're doing more than we can see, God, more than we can account for by the power of your story and the goodness of who you are, Jesus. God, we pray and we declare this gospel truth in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Echo, see, as we shift postures, I'm gonna invite you to stand and just with that level of attention.