Transcription downloaded from https://sermons.tristatechurch.com/sermons/79195/who-do-you-say-i-am/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] So, you may be feeling a disturbance in the force. What is John doing off the stage? Well, it's going to get worse. I want you to move closer until the front seats,! Until we're full from the front to the back! Instead of the back to the front.

[0:17] There's a reason. But feel free to move. Don't be afraid. Come on. I'm not going to, I'm just going to keep calling you just as you are until you move. And if you don't move quick enough, I'm going to start to sing.

[0:30] You guys in the back? No, you don't. Trust me. Come on up. Let's move up. There's a reason.

[0:42] I want everybody to come forward. This isn't an altar call, but it's close. So, now that those of you who are seated and you can't move, now that you're seated in the front row, I'm famous for stepping on toes.

[1:06] I'll try to stay back. So, and my wife disclosed one of my secrets. It's not true.

[1:16] I don't spit. So, why did I ask you to come together? Get to know one another.

[1:28] Yeah, that's part of it. So, you don't fall asleep. If I can reach you easier, that's part of it. You know, there's somebody I've talked to in the past that he knows if he falls asleep, I'm going to call him out.

[1:41] So, what's that? We're a family.

[1:54] We can laugh together. We can cry together. This has been a rough week. Those of you who are on the prayer chain know that. With that in mind, I thought it appropriate for us to gather closer together.

[2:12] Physical proximity allows us to connect more readily. family is family. And that's important. I'm going to talk a little bit to just kind of set the table about the posture of the preacher.

[2:25] So, sometimes, when I'm preparing for a sermon, it's really exciting. It's fun. I've gotten some new truth. Not new in the sense that I'm coming up with something novel and heretical, but new to me or something that's a new angle.

[2:41] You know, you look at a diamond and you see the different facets. that's like the gospel. And so, I'm excited about what God is doing. And I want to share that with you.

[2:51] I'm excited about that. Or sometimes, I felt convicted. Last week is a good example of this where the message was just what we needed to hear about not just what baptism is for those who are unbaptized, but the message of baptism is for all of us.

[3:07] And we need to look at that. And I'm excited to deliver that message and to see the good that will come out of that. But there's other times where I put in my time to prepare the message, I write an outline, I pray through it, I think about it, and I realize right passage, wrong message.

[3:33] And I have to go back to the drawing board and the Holy Spirit says, do it again. And this week, he said, do it again. And do it again. I have four outlines on my Google Drive for this message.

[3:45] All that are based on Mark chapter 8, but subtly different in significant ways. So he said, this has been a hard week.

[3:56] And as we unpack Jesus' question, who do the people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? It's the same question, really.

[4:08] But there's different answers. We're going to talk about those answers. And we're going to look at how glorious the message of the gospel is, how significant it is to us, and the hope that arises from it.

[4:24] But on the path to the message of hope are going to be answers that you don't want to hear because they're incomplete. We don't get all the answers.

[4:38] We have to face that. I'm going to talk about that as well. So open your Bibles to Mark chapter 8. We're going to start in verse 27 and go through 33.

[5:09] Jesus went out along with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he questioned his disciples saying to them, who do people say that I am?

[5:22] They told him saying, John the Baptist. And others say Elijah, but others just are the prophets. And he continued by questioning them, but who do you say that I am?

[5:34] Peter answered and said to him, you are the Christ. And he warned them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.

[5:53] And he was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning around and seeing his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but on man's.

[6:12] Such an easy thing to do. Let's pray. Father, we are weak. We're ignorant. We're simple. We just don't know the whole picture.

[6:26] Even the things that we think we know, if we look closely, we realize we really don't know what's going on. I can't imagine what it's like going through life without a relationship with you.

[6:39] We need you. We need the comfort of your presence in the hard times. We need to celebrate with you and feel your joy and our joy in the good times.

[6:58] Lord, I pray that we would recognize that this ache in our hearts or this awareness of a joy that's more than we can touch is our hearts calling out to you.

[7:15] As we recognize that in our hearts, that we would turn to you and find hope, find peace, even in the fog of not knowing.

[7:31] we do know that you are there, that you're a good father, that you love us. Help us to rest in that, Lord, and to find joy and hope and eagerness to share it with anybody who will listen because there just isn't any better news.

[7:47] God, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So, we have a saying in the Hopkins family, life is hard, bring a helmet. But, I thought my son, Micah, came up with that clever phrase.

[8:00] He says I did, so I'm taking credit. But it's really true. Life is hard. Wear a helmet. We need to be ready for what's going to come down the pike and smack us on the head.

[8:12] We've got to be ready. And this morning, in these questions that Jesus asks, is him pointing us toward the answers. So, what does he say first? Who do the people say that I am?

[8:25] Who do the masses say is my identity? They name several people. John the Baptist. As you know, he had died. He went after Herod because Herod had married his sister-in-law.

[8:39] And John the Baptist called him out on it. And the consequence of that boldness was his beheading. So, John the Baptist, possibly, maybe he's come back from the dead.

[8:50] Or Elijah, quite possibly the greatest of the prophets. Do you remember the scene where the priests of Baal have taken over the religious life of the nation of Israel and King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had brought in this pagan worship and God sent Elijah up onto the mountain.

[9:12] And on the mountain, he called the people together and there was a showdown. And in that showdown, Elijah challenged the priests of Baal, let's see whose God actually answers prayer.

[9:25] And you know the story. One of the things, I'm a sarcastic guy and I love the sarcastic guys of the Bible. And Elijah was certainly that. Well, maybe your God's asleep.

[9:36] Talk louder. You know, he might be on vacation. And then he waits all the way to the end of the day and then the Lord says, you know what? This is too easy.

[9:48] Douse the wood in fire or in water. Douse it again. And we're not talking cups of water. We're talking 55-gallon drums of water. Pour it onto the sacrifice until it's overflowing with water to the point that they had to trench around it and the trench was full of water.

[10:05] And then Elijah prayed and God answered in dramatic fashion. So they think, well, maybe he's Elijah. And then they just say, or maybe he's one of the prophets.

[10:16] Here's a side note. This is just kind of an extra nugget. It's in one of the outlines that didn't make the cut. But this is something to think about. When we think of Jesus, don't we often think of kind of a meek, quiet guy who is not very assertive.

[10:35] He's not strong. I actually heard a guy who's a seminary professor and a Bible scholar say that when Jesus cleansed the temple, he didn't really make a whip.

[10:47] He didn't really overthrow tables. What he did is he took the tassels the Orthodox Jew has on the corner of his robe and he went around and just shook it in the face of the guys. Hey, hey, stop it. Stop it.

[10:57] Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. No, no. No, no. Think of the men that the masses associated with Jesus. John the Baptist was not a wilting flower.

[11:09] He was a man's man who confronted evil when he saw it. Elijah was a man's man. Those are the men that Jesus brought to mind.

[11:21] So if you think maybe you serve kind of a meek and quiet guy who just doesn't really rock the boat, look again. Sometimes it's important to see what other people think to see, to get a light on, a clear understanding of how we should be seeing things.

[11:39] So they weren't wrong, but they had reduced Jesus from who he was to just another one of the prophets. Now John the Baptist and Elijah were both precursors of the reigning Messiah.

[11:55] John the Baptist quoted Isaiah 40 and said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, making ready the path of the Lord. At the end of Malachi, Malachi chapter 4, it says that Elijah will come to let the people know you're in trouble now, the boss is coming, the king is on his way and he is going to reign with power and authority.

[12:20] So they thought that Jesus maybe was one of those guys, but they still didn't get who Jesus really was. What was at issue?

[12:37] And I want you to think about this because it's going to come a couple of times over the course of this message. There were two views of the role of the Messiah among the Jewish rabbinical class, the scholars of the Old Testament.

[12:52] And this had been back for hundreds of years because you see they had a problem. on the one hand, you have prophecies that are unequivocal. The Messiah is going to suffer.

[13:04] It starts with Genesis 3.15. God said that to the devil that from the seed of Mary will rise one who you will bruise his heel and he will bruise your head.

[13:19] There's suffering there. And then you look at Psalm 22. The most famous one, of course, is Isaiah 53. And there's others. I'm not going to give you an exhaustive look at the Messianic texts.

[13:30] But the point is that there is clearly a suffering element to the Messiah. But there's another Messiah that's the triumphant king. He's the son of David.

[13:43] He reigns with power and authority. They look back to the day of David, not Solomon, interestingly enough, but to David's reign as a picture of what the reign of God would look like when he came in all of his authority and power.

[13:56] And so you've got two views of the Messiah. The rabbis used two names to differentiate them. The one that was the suffering Messiah was called the son of Joseph.

[14:10] Not Joseph, Jesus' dad. That was a coincidence. But the son of Joseph from Genesis. The Joseph who went through suffering became king and delivered the people.

[14:28] That's one view. That's the suffering Messiah. The other one is the son of David. The one who comes with authority and power and fulfills the promises that were made to David that he would reign, that they would have a restoration of that kingdom.

[14:44] And Israel would finally have its place as the king of the nations. All other nations would be beneath Israel under the reign of that king. But the people didn't understand.

[14:55] They weren't even close to the mark. They thought Jesus was a harbinger of that rather than the Messiah himself. You with me so far? That's wonderful. And then the next one, Jesus asked the disciples, who do you say that I am?

[15:13] Because Peter's the one who speaks quickly. You are the Christ. Sounds like I'm cutting out and cutting in. You are the Christ. Now Mark, who is a man of few words, doesn't develop the conversation at all.

[15:28] But in Matthew, Jesus goes out and says, God, good job. And he said to him, this is the truth.

[15:38] Upon this rock I will build my church. And then it goes back to parallel Mark where there's the argument over Jesus claiming that he's going to die.

[15:50] But in Mark, it's very simple. Jesus, who do you say that I am? Peter answered and said to him, you're the Christ. Jesus said, don't tell anybody.

[16:04] Wait, what? Don't tell anybody? Why don't you tell anybody? Well, it's pretty simple. Because you don't understand. If you're going to deliver the wrong message.

[16:17] So just keep saying don't talk. You just switch to a handheld that can do that too. So, the disciples have been walking and walking with Jesus day in and day out.

[16:37] They don't get it. Just don't move. Please hold.

[16:56] What this really is is a plot to keep me from moving around so much.

[17:11] We're just going to tie that guy down. So, even the disciples didn't understand. You were the Christ. And how do we know that they didn't understand?

[17:22] Because Jesus, very matter-of-factly, I picture him just being kind of deadpan. Hey guys, here's what's going to happen. We're up, we're way north of the Sea of Galilee right now. We're going to, we're going to, in a few days, we're going to walk south.

[17:35] We're going to go back to Galilee, end up in Jerusalem. And when we get there, I am going to face the opposition from the Pharisees.

[17:47] It's going to reach its peak. They're going to attack me. I'm going to go through trial. I'm going to die. And I'm going to rise again. It's interesting that Peter misses that whole rise again thing.

[18:00] He warns them. And I think it's just that, that deadpan. It's like, look, this is how it is. As a matter of fact, brace yourselves, it's going to get ugly. And what does Peter do? Peter says, oh no, come here.

[18:12] Now, to Peter's credit, it's funny the things that we miss, even when we read the Bible regularly. What I've always missed, Peter actually did something right. I know, surprising. You know, some of the things I say about the disciples, I think they're going to ask me about when I get to heaven.

[18:27] Like, you know, I'm not, I wasn't that bad. But Peter did something right. He grabbed Jesus, he said, come here, let's talk. And one-on-one, he says, oh no, uh-uh, you're not going to die.

[18:42] I don't accept that. And Jesus looks over and sees the disciples, who are probably wondering what these guys are talking about. And he says, you get behind me, Satan. Now, whether he's talking about, the word Satan means adversary, so he could have been just simply saying, you're an adversary to me, or he was actually saying, Satan is involved in this conversation.

[19:04] I think both are, both are true. Get behind me, Satan. I think primarily what Jesus was dealing with right there was a very human temptation to dodge the cross, to let Peter be right.

[19:17] So let Peter be right in the sense of, we're just going to bypass that whole suffering thing and go right to the king thing. Get behind me, Satan.

[19:27] Get out of my sight. And he says to Peter, you do not have God's interests in mind. You have your interests in mind. You have man's interests in mind.

[19:40] You need to stop. I think we have a lot in common with Peter. We want, and this is where we're going to focus our time this morning, we want the king, right?

[19:59] Don't we want the king? We want the king who will make things right, who will heal our bodies. Who will heal our bodies.

[20:10] Some of us got horrible news this week. We want the king. Some of us lost loved ones this week.

[20:21] We want the king. We face hardship. We have broken families. We have things that just don't work the way they should.

[20:35] Even little things. I got in my car Thursday morning, started up, life is good, and it will not get out of park. It's a little maddening.

[20:46] Even those little things. We want the king. But we're not ready. We're not ready.

[21:00] What is God's interest in all this? I want you to think about this. Because it's very important to us in our development and being made ready. So what is God's interest?

[21:12] God's interest is that he wants to reign as king forever. That's his goal. He wants to be the king because that's his right. He should be the king.

[21:24] He created all things. He made this universe. He wants to bring order. You see that in Genesis 1-1. The spirit of the Lord hovered over the waters, over chaos, and out of it he drew order.

[21:36] That's what God is doing. Still, he wants to reign. But it's not ego. When my kids were growing up, I wanted to reign because the doggone kids wouldn't listen, and I knew better than they did.

[21:50] And because I'm the dad and I have a right to reign. No, it's not that. God wants to reign because it's his rightful place. But he wants to reign over subjects who are like him in character.

[22:05] He wants subjects who are not following him out of fear, but because of experience, of knowing he deserves to reign, who serve him out of love.

[22:20] And I would submit to you that we're not there yet. There's something I realized this week about why the king could not come first.

[22:31] Period. The king could not come. And here's why. Any authority, even God's authority, when it's imposed upon us, inevitably, leads to one outcome.

[22:48] Inevitably. It's rebellion. People rebel against tyranny. I used to tell people, and I was wrong. For years, I said that God is a benevolent dictator.

[23:00] No, he's not. And praise God, he's not. Because in my heart, if he was a benevolent dictator, at some point, I would rebel. Even in heaven.

[23:12] How do we know that? Because a third of the angels fell. A benevolent dictator will inevitably lead to rebellion.

[23:22] And God knows that. He's pretty smart. And so what is he doing? He's preparing us. If you look through the pages of the Bible, I was telling Jim this morning, I saw a pattern in Mark 8 and 9 that reverberates from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

[23:42] Think about it. The rabbinical scholars called the Messiah, the suffering Messiah, the son of Joseph. What is the pattern? The pattern is the people go into slavery, right?

[23:57] They go to Egypt. They get delivered. But they end up in slavery. And then a deliverer comes in Moses. They cross the Jordan. And they end up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

[24:11] Why? Because they weren't ready to go into the promised land. They were afraid. And they rebelled. And then eventually, over the course of 40 years, God transformed the people from slaves to a nation of warriors that could conquer the land.

[24:33] And even that, they didn't do right. But it's a pattern. It's a picture. And then you look at Mark 8 and 9, and you see the same pattern. Lost people, a deliverer comes, we go through the wilderness, and where does it end up?

[24:48] In two weeks, Pastor Tim's going to talk about the transfiguration. It's the same pattern. But you can't get to the promised land without going through the wilderness.

[25:01] You can't. You can't. James chapter 1. Count it all joy as we go through these trials.

[25:18] Because they're doing a work in us. Romans chapter 5. Same pattern. But what do we find at the end? The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.

[25:31] We go through these trials. Because in the process of trial, we meet God. We discover that God wants to be with us through the hardship.

[25:45] And we're transformed from the inside out into people that are ready for his reign. But along the way, our hearts get broken.

[25:59] We're asked to carry burdens we don't think we can carry. Our bodies break down. Our families break down. We have trials in our marriages. Whatever the case may be, our car won't go on a drive.

[26:14] This is normal human experience. And what God is saying to you is I want you to be... I want you in relationship with me.

[26:27] And nothing, nothing, nothing is more important than that. I will squeeze you. Because even in your pain, even in that, relief from the pain is lesser than knowing God.

[26:46] So how do we get there? That's the question. How do we get there? It's easy to be told that. But how do we do it in the midst of trial? Of fear?

[26:59] Of being in the unknown? Well, there's an answer to that. First of all, I mentioned this weeks ago. Do you remember me talking about preaching the gospel to each other? That's why I drew you together.

[27:11] We need to be close to each other. We need to share the gospel with each other. Remind each other that God is good. God loves you.

[27:22] God loves you. And he is working. Even when you think he isn't. God is good. We need to remind each other of that.

[27:32] Because there's times when I am so focused on my pain, I can't remember. And I need somebody else to come alongside, not chiding me, but with his arm around me or her arm around me saying, God loves you.

[27:45] And I'm showing that to you because I'm loving you. Does that make sense? We are Jesus to each other, literally. I'm not saying that. Jesus did in Matthew 24, 25. If you do it unto the least of these, you're doing it unto me.

[28:00] Preach the gospel to each other. Everywhere you go, choose to trust God. Choose. It's not a feeling.

[28:12] It's a choice that drives feelings, but choose to trust God. That his goodness is real. That his love is real. And that even in pain, his promise is sure.

[28:25] We can rest on that. Choose to trust God, which comes out of preaching the gospel. Pray without ceasing.

[28:36] Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5. Easy for me to say. Pray without ceasing. A friend of mine wrote a song called Pray Like Breathing. Breathe in.

[28:49] I gestured the wrong way. Breathe in. Breathe out. Take in God's promises. Breathe out your questions, your uncertainty, your fears. Pray, pray, pray, pray for each other. We should be a praying people.

[29:04] For each other, for our own trials, tribulations, hurts. We should be a praying people because it's a dialogue. God answers. Here's one that you won't hear very often.

[29:16] You need to wrestle with God. I'm going to say it again. You need to wrestle with God. Now, what do I mean by that? I'm going to go back to the wrong answer that the people gave about Jesus.

[29:29] And they said, well, he's a prophet. He might be Isaiah. It might, or excuse me, it might be John the Baptist or Elijah. It might be one of those great prophets. And they misunderstood. We have a movement in American Christianity today called deconstructionism.

[29:45] It's the idea that I can take this whole book and throw it out and I can decide what's right and wrong. It's a variation or an old theme.

[29:58] Thomas Jefferson went through his Bible with a knife and cut out everything he didn't like. I'm not sure what was left, but it wasn't a God who was worth anything that could help him at all. I'm not talking about that when I talk about wrestling with God.

[30:12] Wrestling with God means you go back to the scriptures. You go back to his claims. You go back to the promises and say to him, humbly, but sometimes angrily, God's okay with us being mad.

[30:26] Why? Help me to understand. What are you doing? What's the message here? What do you want me to do? You know, it's interesting.

[30:39] God promises that when we seek him with our whole heart, he will be found. I've found that when I'm angry, I'm pretty wholehearted. I prefer to have, not have to be provoked to that point to seek God wholeheartedly, but God says, well, if that's what it takes, okay, dummy.

[30:58] I've had people say, God wouldn't call you a dummy. It's like, I don't know about you guys, but he calls me that frequently. It's kind of an endearment. But wrestle with God.

[31:11] Jacob wrestled with God, trying to understand, and he wouldn't let go until God blessed him. You know what the blessing is? Something of an answer.

[31:24] Now, probably won't be a complete answer. Our brains have limited capacity. We don't understand the big picture. We can't grasp it. But it's more of God. It's a reminder of God's love and faithfulness and goodness to us.

[31:36] It's being reminded of a promise. But we've got to cling to God and we've got to wrestle with him. And it's okay. Wrestle, again, this is why I brought us together, wrestle together with other brothers and sisters.

[31:56] Wrestle together. And in part of that wrestling, I'm going to give you an image I read in an article this week about pastoral care for people in need.

[32:08] I love this image. It's so good that we need to master this skill. It's called a kvetching circle. I don't know what kvetching means because I don't speak Yiddish.

[32:20] Does anybody speak Yiddish? No. Didn't think so. Kvetching, from what I understand, is complaining. It's communicating. A kvetching circle is a series of concentric circles.

[32:31] You got that pictured in your mind? Series of, like, a target? The middle of the target is a person who's going through a trial. The next circle is probably their immediate family.

[32:43] The people who are their blood relations. The next circle is us. And then so it goes. Now, here's the rules. This is brilliant.

[32:56] The rules are, and you see this in Job, by the way, because Job's comforters didn't get this at all. The person in the circle can say anything they want. Anything.

[33:08] Do not correct them. Do not give them better theology. Don't. Don't. Just don't. Job's comforters were at their best when they were silent.

[33:21] But let them complain. And your job towards the person at the center of the circle is to love them, to be available, to touch them, to pray silently.

[33:38] But with each circle, the same rule applies. You can complain to the circle bigger than you, but all you deliver downward towards a target is a message of hope.

[33:49] And your presence that conveys God's presence. Does that make sense? If we would master that, it would lighten the load for the pastoral team. Because we would all be on that team.

[34:02] Which, by the way, is where we're going to get you there. Because we have to care for each other. But wrestle with God is my point. And wrestle together. So we want to be people who preach the gospel to each other.

[34:14] We want to trust the wisdom and goodness of God, even in trial, especially in trial. We have to be people who pray. We have to be people who wrestle with God.

[34:28] And then finally, we need to embrace the path of following Jesus. And that's what I'm going to talk about next week. But I realized in preparing this message that my understanding of discipleship has been wrong for pretty close to 45 years.

[34:46] I started organizing my books in the office. Not there yet, but the section on discipleship, on what it means to follow Jesus, is probably a set of books that's one of those sections.

[34:59] They're probably eight feet long or whatever those are. Five feet long. That's a lot of books. They're all wrong. All of them. Or I just missed something, which is probably more likely.

[35:09] And what we miss in the talk about following Jesus is the why. Because in following Jesus, in walking the perilous path, in His footsteps, we get to the end.

[35:28] We go where Jesus wants us to go. We experience what He wants us to experience. And we have His presence as we're following that path. I don't want to give you my whole sermon for next week today because that's what next week is for.

[35:41] But we have to choose to follow Jesus. And this is important. It is an important reminder. Do you remember last week when I spoke on baptism? I said that one of the mistakes that we make in baptism, which is a reflection of a mistake we make about what it means to follow Jesus, is that we separate the idea of trusting Jesus as Savior and deciding to follow Him as an apprentice.

[36:05] The American church has split those two. That's just not in the Bible. They are one and the same. And the reason they're one and the same is because we can only achieve what God wants us to achieve.

[36:22] We can only become the people who are ready for His reign as the King as we follow Him. We have to do that.

[36:35] So, it's 1030. This is part of me apologizing for going for 51 minutes last week.

[36:47] But I'm not dismissing you. I'm not inviting Harold up. We're going to pray. We're going to pray. We're going to pray. This morning when I went downstairs to pray with the people who meet together at nine to pray, I had this thought because I'm a little bit of a snarky, sarcastic guy.

[37:14] I thought, you know what? We can't get you all to come down to the prayer meeting. It's okay. I'm not condemning. I'm just observing. We can't get you to come down to the prayer meeting. Well, doggone it, I'm bringing the prayer meeting to you.

[37:26] Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? So here's what we're going to do. We're in proximity to each other. Gather with people near you and pray.

[37:41] In a group of four, five, six people, one of you has a bulletin. Pray for the people in the bulletin. Ask God to tell you what they need. We're not going to share prayer requests.

[37:55] We're going to ask the Holy Spirit to give us the prayer requests because he will. And we're going to pray for the people in the bulletin who've had really, really hard weeks.

[38:06] We're going to pray for the people that are connected to us right there in that circle. But in the midst of crying out with our needs, there's things to celebrate too.

[38:18] We had a baby born in our midst a week and a half ago. That's cause for celebration. Many of you prayed for my grandson who spent four days in the hospital after a seizure. That obnoxious little guy is doing great.

[38:31] I got a picture of him. He's butt naked or I'd show it to you. But he's covered in Nutella and smiling from ear to ear. He's fine. So we've got those types of celebrations as well.

[38:43] But we want to come before the Lord. We want to pray and pray for each other. I have said many times to individuals, I believe that God is working in our midst.

[39:02] What he's waiting for is not me. What he's waiting for is us to pray, to seek him, to learn, to walk with him in that hard, perilous path that ends in glory.

[39:19] So I'm going to pray now and then you guys follow my instructions and in a few minutes I'll pray again and Harold, you guys can come up when I pray the second time. All right?

[39:29] Let's pray. Lord, I've been thinking all morning of Psalm 131.

[39:45] At least I think that's where it is. That as a weaned child, God quiets him or herself with her mother so we quiet our souls before you.

[39:59] God, a weaned child doesn't quiet his soul because of what he can get from his mom. He quiets his soul because he's with his mom and she gives him comfort and peace.

[40:11] Lord, help us to do that this morning to quiet our souls, to come into your presence, to ask you for the things that we're afraid to ask because we're afraid you'll say no.

[40:26] Change our hearts to trust you, to remind each other that you love us and we only have to look to the cross to be reminded how deep that love is for us.

[40:43] God, move us to pray. Move us to pray continually and pray that your spirit would come upon us with power and authority so that not only are we praying for each other and seeing you move but also seeing people discover that we serve a great God.

[41:01] Lord, we want to see people saved and enter into this relationship with you that we have. God, I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So gather around and pray and then I'll call us back together here in a few minutes.

[41:15] Paul's words in 2 Timothy 1 come to mind as we're praying together. Paul's writing to Timothy, for this reason I also suffer these things but I'm not ashamed.

[41:28] Here's the words. Here's the money. For I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day, the day of his return.

[41:48] For this reason I also suffer these things but I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.

[42:02] That's the God that we serve. I need to hear an amen. God, thank you so much that we can trust you that you are a faithful God that even when we don't understand which is truthfully pretty much all the time that we can trust you.

[42:24] We can rely on you. Remember when my kids and now grandkids were little and they just trusted me and things turned out okay.

[42:35]  Let us trust you in that same way that you are a good God and you love us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.