SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the City Covenant Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We are a warm, welcoming church located in downtown Spokane, dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus in the heart of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Please join us as we dive into the Word of God together.
SPEAKER_01: If we can take our seats, we're going to spend a few minutes today looking into God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know me, my name is Cade Christensen, and my wife, Sandy, and I have been coming to City Covenant for probably about two and a half years, and I've just really been blessed by being a part of this community.
SPEAKER_01: And I get the uh daunting task of sharing some words with you this morning on a day when our pastor is out of town and when an unprecedented disaster is affecting our city.
SPEAKER_01: So it's a pretty heavy thing.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that I want to pivot a little bit this morning and share some thoughts that are on my heart that I believe the Spirit's prompting me to share that really relate to what we're facing as a city.
SPEAKER_01: And just some hopefully some words of comfort and encouragement.
SPEAKER_01: They've been a comfort to me.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really found in Psalm 46.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to open a Bible to Psalm 46, you can do that.
SPEAKER_01: It is found on page 486 in the Pew Bible, if you're reading out of that.
SPEAKER_01: And Psalm 46 is just a fabulous Psalm of great comfort in trying times.
SPEAKER_01: And I think maybe we need to hear that right now.
SPEAKER_01: I know I do.
SPEAKER_01: So let's pray and then we'll read together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we come again to you this morning, uh acknowledging that you are overall, and that you are the one who is our rock and our steadfast fortress in the midst of uh just disaster and things that afflict us in our lives that we can't control.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, so at this time we come to you and we ask that you would speak to us from your word, you'd fix our eyes where they need to be fixed this morning, you'd encourage our hearts as only you can, and that you would show us how you would want us to live in response.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let me start by reading Psalm 46, and it says here that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: 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 surging.
SPEAKER_01: There is a river whose streams make glad the city of a God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
SPEAKER_01: God is within her, she will not fall.
SPEAKER_01: God will help her at break of day.
SPEAKER_01: Nations are in an uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, and the earth melts.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Almighty is with us.
SPEAKER_01: The God of Jacob is our fortress.
SPEAKER_01: Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he's brought on the earth.
SPEAKER_01: He makes war cease to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
SPEAKER_01: He burns the shields with fire.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Be still, or cease striving, and know that I am God.
SPEAKER_01: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
SPEAKER_01: O church, the Lord Almighty is with us.
SPEAKER_01: The God of Jacob is our fortress.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: What encourages me personally so much from the psalm, there are many things, but that phrase there at the beginning that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: The ESV translate that a very present help in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: That whenever there's trouble, whenever there's difficulty, whenever there's trials that we're going through in life, and we all go through those, that God is not absent, but he's present.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not just present half-heartedly or kind of one foot in and one foot out, he's fully present.
SPEAKER_01: He's very present.
SPEAKER_01: And he's ever present.
SPEAKER_01: And so what I want to share with you this morning is just some thoughts, some very short thoughts about presence in the midst of suffering and hardship.
SPEAKER_01: And how we have a God who is with us, even when it's all falling apart, and even when we don't understand why.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the image that's being created by the writing of the Psalm here, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have mountains falling into the heart of the sea, waters roaring and uh foaming, uh, mountains quaking and surging, earthquakes.
SPEAKER_01: You have things are falling apart in the writer's life.
SPEAKER_01: Things are falling apart in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And I think maybe in Spokane right now we feel a little bit like things are falling apart because of the devastation of these fires and how it's affecting our beloved community and people that we love in this community.
SPEAKER_01: There's some shaking going on.
SPEAKER_01: There's some roaring going on, there's some crumbling going on.
SPEAKER_01: And the temptation would be to say, where is God in all this?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't he over it all?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't he above it all?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: So where is God in all this?
SPEAKER_01: Why are people that we love that believe in him losing their homes?
SPEAKER_01: Why are people that have walked faithfully with the Lord for many, many years going through suffering and difficulty right now and in a time of great fear?
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, all I can tell you is this in my life, I feel like the Lord has shown me over the years that sometimes it is not necessary to understand because it's beyond our understanding.
SPEAKER_01: But it is necessary to believe.
SPEAKER_01: Are you with me there?
SPEAKER_01: It's necessary to trust.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what the writer is calling us to here in this psalm: that even when things are falling apart, yes, God is over it.
SPEAKER_01: He's on his throne, but he's also right, smack, dab in the midst of this by being present.
SPEAKER_01: He's an ever-present, a very present, an up-close and present God in the midst of it all falling apart.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7 is the key.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Almighty is with us.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Almighty is with us.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Almighty is with you.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Almighty is with Eric and Ilsa right now in a very special and a very present way beyond our understanding.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that.
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't minimize the suffering, it doesn't mitigate the loss, but what it does is it focuses like a laser beam on the rock, solid foundation of what it's really all about in the end.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is with right in the midst of the hardship, right in the midst of the suffering.
SPEAKER_01: It says there in verse 8 or 7 that the Lord is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress.
SPEAKER_01: That phrase got my attention a few years ago, and I decided to think about that.
SPEAKER_01: The God of Jacob, the God of Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: And so I think of how has Jacob resonated or his life spoken about this idea of God being with us in the midst of suffering and difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: And I made my way back to the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was reading the story of Jacob, I think came across this in chapter 28.
SPEAKER_01: And we won't go into all the detail, but just very briefly, Jacob has not been the best uh individual.
SPEAKER_01: He's kind of uh connived his way into stealing the birthright from his brother, and now his brother Esau hates him and wants to kill him.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in a sense, he's on the run.
SPEAKER_01: And he's on the run to a far country to some distant relatives to hopefully find a wife.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's going to make everything better.
SPEAKER_01: But on during the journey, it says he left Beersheba, uh, verse 10 of chapter 28 of Genesis, and he stayed the night there, and he lay down and put his head down on a rock to sleep, and he dreamed.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, The dream was of this ladder coming from earth to heaven, and on the ladder were angels going back and forth from heaven down to earth and then back up to heaven again.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord spoke to him in that dream and said, I'm the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, the God of Isaac.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you to you and your offspring this land, and I'm going to be with you, and I'm going to keep you wherever you go.
SPEAKER_01: And it says there in verse 16, when Jacob awoke from sleep, this is what he said.
SPEAKER_01: And this is instructive.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.
SPEAKER_01: Now he takes that so literally, he actually sets up a little stone there on altar and calls the place Bethel, which means house of God.
SPEAKER_01: But that phrase is a powerful phrase, folks, because surely the Lord is in this place.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't realize it.
SPEAKER_01: Can I say this?
SPEAKER_01: Surely the Lord is in the midst of even our darkest valleys and our deepest suffering?
SPEAKER_01: He's not causing it, he's not rejoicing in it, but he's in the midst of it because he's with us.
SPEAKER_01: Even though I walk the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me.
SPEAKER_01: Your rod and your staff, they comfort me, David would say.
SPEAKER_01: Of the great shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: Last fall I spent a week in the hospital and my appendix ruptured.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've ever had appendicitis and had to get it removed, you know it's painful.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's even more painful if your appendix ruptures.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so I had spent a day uh with severe pains at home and another day with severe pains, thinking it was a stomach flu, it wasn't getting any better.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, Sunday morning, Sandy said, I'm taking you to the emergency room.
SPEAKER_01: She took me in and they took a cat skin and said, Yep, your appendix has ruptured.
SPEAKER_01: We need to get you into surgery, ASAP.
SPEAKER_01: They got me in.
SPEAKER_01: And uh removing the appendix was not the big deal.
SPEAKER_01: The big part was all the infection that had exploded and spread throughout my abdomen and my system.
SPEAKER_01: So I was literally hooked up for a week to an IV of antibiotics.
SPEAKER_01: And I was in a great deal of pain.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that week the Lord taught me so much about suffering and so much about his presence in suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the ways he taught me was through uh one of the doctors.
SPEAKER_01: My surgeon, bless her heart, wonderful surgeon, but maybe not the greatest bedside manner, uh, would come in and check on me every day for five minutes, and she usually had four or five medical interns with clipboards taking notes and learning, and she'd poke me and prod me and ask how I was doing, and then she'd leave.
SPEAKER_01: But there was this one attending physician, a middle-aged gentleman named Eve, who would linger.
SPEAKER_01: And Eve would ask me how I'm doing, but he would more than that, he would encourage me, and he'd just sit with me.
SPEAKER_01: He'd just sit with me, sometimes for 20, 30 minutes, and just tell me, Kate, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna get through this.
SPEAKER_01: Well, as the week wore on, Eves would make these daily visits to me.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what he would he would do.
SPEAKER_01: He'd just sit there with me and encourage me, listen to me, and be with me.
SPEAKER_01: He was a presence, a faithful presence.
SPEAKER_01: And so near the end of the week, I knew I was gonna be discharged the next day, and when he visited, I said, Eves, I just want to thank you.
SPEAKER_01: You have been like an angel.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've been a godsend.
SPEAKER_01: Just being here with me and and listening and encouraging me the way you have, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what he told me, and I'll never forget it.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, you see, I understand a little bit about what you're going through because I was when I was a little bit younger, I had to have a bone marrow transplant and it went wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And I lived at the hospital for three years.
SPEAKER_01: And my jaw dropped.
SPEAKER_01: I said, You lived at the hospital.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, I didn't leave for three years.
SPEAKER_01: And here he was sometime later, back at the hospital, giving in a way that only he could, because he himself had walked that road and suffered.
SPEAKER_01: And he was able to encourage me in ways that were beyond the way anybody else could, by his presence.
SPEAKER_01: Folks, we have a savior, we have a savior Jesus, who is the ultimate, ultimate embodiment of God with us.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's one of the titles that's given to him at his birth, right?
SPEAKER_01: He is Emmanuel, which means God with us.
SPEAKER_01: He is the God who is so with us, so for us, that he is with us in every aspect of our humanity, all except sin.
SPEAKER_01: Experiencing everything we would ever experience as human beings, from birth and the trauma of birth to growing up as an infant and having to go through those adolescent teen years and go through adulthood and even to death, and not just any death, but death on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: Death in the most horrific way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has lived the full spectrum of the human experience.
SPEAKER_01: And as the scriptures would say of him in Isaiah, he's familiar with suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And as the Hebrew writer would say, because he himself suffered, he's able to help those who are doing so themselves.
SPEAKER_01: There's no presence like the presence of Jesus in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: There's no one who will ever come closer, and there's no one who will ever always be in that place.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Jacob in his dream again learned that the Lord was in Bethel.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to apply that, that applies to everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just he was in Bethel, he's in this place.
SPEAKER_01: He's in that place.
SPEAKER_01: He's right back dab in that place that seems totally irredeemable, totally unsalvageable, totally nonsensical, totally filled with pain and trauma and difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: He's there.
SPEAKER_01: He's present.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he loves.
SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't leave us to go through these things alone.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're not promised trouble-free lies following Christ, are we?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just if we could go around and share, which we're not going to do, every one of us would say, no, that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: Uh life hasn't always worked out for me the way I thought it was.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't expect to be living where I'm living.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't expect to be doing what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't expect to suffer from what I'm suffering with in my own life, maybe a mental condition, or something's gone wrong with my plan for my life.
SPEAKER_01: Life is filled with trials and tribulations.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus himself said to his disciples in the Gospel of John, in this world you will have trouble.
SPEAKER_01: That's just reality.
SPEAKER_01: The world's a broken place, filled with broken people.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of heartache.
SPEAKER_01: But he goes on to say this, but take heart.
SPEAKER_01: I've overcome the world.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the heart of the gospel for us.
SPEAKER_01: That the God who loves us so much has come to be near with us, to walk with us, even to die for us, so that He could live, and He could live with us and in us now and be ever present in everything we will ever face and be our ultimate guide and our ultimate comfort and our ultimate insurance that we will get through it.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob learned that the Lord is in this place and he wasn't aware of it.
SPEAKER_01: I learned a little bit about the Lord being in a place that I was not aware of when I was in the hospital through the example of Eve's.
SPEAKER_01: But it makes me think of some other folks that have experienced this as well.
SPEAKER_01: In the book of Daniel, there's some guys that went through a fire.
SPEAKER_01: Their names are Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.
SPEAKER_01: And you guys know the story.
SPEAKER_01: But in Daniel 3, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon builds this enormous gold statue and commands everyone to bow down and worship it when these bells ring.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't, he's going to cast you into this furnace of fire.
SPEAKER_01: Well, these three devout Jewish believers refuse to bow down.
SPEAKER_01: Or gets to Nebuchadnezzar, next thing you know, he's got Meshach Shabbar in a bedigo rounded up, and he gets the fire heated up and he says, Meshach, Shadrach in Abedigo, pay homage to me.
SPEAKER_01: Fall down and worship me.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't, I'm gonna throw you in the fire.
SPEAKER_01: And the response, of course, is a classic.
SPEAKER_01: They say, Oh, king, uh you know, you have no power over us ultimately.
SPEAKER_01: Our fate is in the hands of God.
SPEAKER_01: And he's able to deliver us from the fire.
SPEAKER_01: But even if he doesn't, we're still not gonna bow down and worship you.
SPEAKER_01: And Nebuchadnezzar is enraged, and so he has them bound and he has the furnace heated multiple times hotter than it usually is, and he he throws them in.
SPEAKER_01: And you know the story.
SPEAKER_01: After a few minutes, he peers in and he says, Didn't we throw three guys in there?
SPEAKER_01: I see a fourth walking around with them, and he looks like a son of the gods.
SPEAKER_01: And so he shouts, Meshach, Shadrach, and Bedigo, come out! And they come out, and this says that not a hair of their heads was singed, even their clothes did not even smell like smoke.
SPEAKER_01: And Nebuchadnezzar bowed down and worshiped the God of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, who was it that was walking in the fire and through the fire with those three guys?
SPEAKER_01: It was Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was Christ, the God who was present even in the midst of the fire.
SPEAKER_01: And the God who will carry us through the fire and make sure that what is of true and lasting value will never be taken away.
SPEAKER_01: And so presence.
SPEAKER_01: Presence, I think, is a word that I need to hear right now.
SPEAKER_01: That God is present.
SPEAKER_01: He's present in this.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't cause it, he's above it, yes, but he's present right in the midst of it for everybody that's going through it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm praying for his presence in a very near way.
SPEAKER_01: That everybody in this community would experience the presence of the living God and the comfort that only he can bring in a time like this where it's all falling apart seemingly.
SPEAKER_01: And there are so many questions that we don't have answers to.
SPEAKER_01: But but they know it, may they know his presence, our community.
SPEAKER_01: May people sense the presence of the divine, even if they don't fully understand it.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's God, what God is able to do is be up close and personal and real and near in that kind of a way.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage you, whether it's the fire affecting you or whether it's something else in your life, a different kind of a fire, a different kind of a trial, a different kind of situation where it's all falling apart in your life.
SPEAKER_01: I want to encourage you just to remember that he is with you as well.
SPEAKER_01: And he's with you in that place.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that place.
SPEAKER_01: And you may say, How could he be with me there?
SPEAKER_01: He is.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord God, we worship you this morning as the God who is with us, with us in a way beyond our comprehension, beyond our understanding, but a way that makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord, would you help us to recognize your presence in whatever difficulty we find ourselves in life right now?
SPEAKER_01: Would you and especially would you help all those that are suffering in our community from this fire experience your very near, helping presence and love in their lives as only you can provide.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we don't understand everything, but we believe.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_00: Please join us in person for community worship, the breaking of bread, and prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We are located at 512 South Bernard Street, Spokane, Washington, 99204.