Well, good morning, everybody. It’s good to be here this morning, and thank you for letting me come again for Becky and I to come. We love Rudd Village Church. Always have. Gosh, when we started visiting you guys, you were in a gymnasium.
And right before church, all this. There was. You set up all these seats and. And got everything out, put the sound system up and the flags and everything like that. And then after it was all done, he tore everything down.
You remember that, Aaron missed those days? No, not really. It was fun, though, wasn’t it? It was fun. Psalms 121, if you want to go ahead and get there, is where we’re going to go.
But spend a little bit of time doing just a couple of things this morning before we do that. We do love you guys. A couple of things that we are thankful for. Becky and I are. Is we’re thankful that you are our family’s church.
So we pray for our family. We have two kids. We have Robert and then his sister Autumn, and they’re both connected to good, strong churches. And even though Madison is painfully long distance away from Springfield, Missouri, it is a long drive. No matter how we do it.
We’re glad that this is their church and that you watch over them, that this is part of their family and there are people that are connected and that. That. That watch over, that are patient, that put up with them, you know, that kind of stuff and all that. And that is something that we pray for. Becky and I have prayed for that since they were born.
Truthfully, for your pastor and Tia, for their family, we thank you for them, and we’re thankful to God for that. Because you want your kids to have a good pastor. A pastor, somebody with a deep understanding of the word of God and a call to the ministry and a pastoral spirit that prays for all their congregation, the young, the old, the in between, all those and. And really, truly cares. And I am.
I’m so grateful for you guys. I am so thankful. Again, I’m glad that over the years, when you start out ministry or start out life, you don’t understand exactly all the people that God will put in your path. So redneck. Growing up in northwest Missouri on a farm, or didn’t live on a farm, we had the farm.
And I would have never thought that that Aaron, who is not from Missouri at all, he’s totally Wisconsin. And that he and I would become not only friends, but that he would be our son’s pastor. And that’s pretty cool. And for all of you, for Mark and for Scott, and for all of you guys, I’m not going to start mentioning I’m going to miss a few, but I’m thankful for that. It’s good to know that our kids and our grandkids are in good hands.
So we pray for you. We pray for you often. We think of you. And even when you don’t know it, know that there’s a couple on Prairie Lane in southwest Missouri that lift you up consistently. I think for Mark Millman over here, who does what I do in a little bit larger area in the Southeastern Wisconsin Association.
Is that what you’d call it? Anyway, it’s a pretty large area, and when you have 40 or some churches that you kind of help, and they’re all so incredibly unique and diverse, it’s a fun job. It really is. It’s a fun call. And I’m praying for you as well.
So I’m very thankful for that. And Happy Father’s Day. How about that? Really? That’s pretty cool.
Really. Thank you, guys. I’m going to talk about journeys this morning, but a journey that began on September 7, 1989, for me, and that’s when our daughter was born. All right, so when I started the journey, I had no practice. There were no trial runs, no tests.
You couldn’t go online, and it’s like, okay, these are the things you need to know. There are a few books and stuff like that. But really, truly, as far as just being a dad, I had no practice. I had never changed a diaper, never bottle fed a baby, never did any of that stuff. I didn’t do that anyway.
But that’s. That’s. I don’t know why. I’m just bragging on that, Aaron. But I had no practice.
No practice at all. One of the most important journeys that I was ever going to take, and I’m in the middle of now, I just got thrown into it, sort of, I suppose. So we go to the hospital, and we’re driving a 1988 Ford Tempo, and there were two of us. When we dropped. I dropped Becky off, and I just dropped her off, like, here you go.
But we went to the hospital. I’ll see you in a couple days. We went to the hospital, and then, of course, Autumn was born, and I went to pick them up in that Tempo and we had that car seat. In the car seats. Honestly, you could fall out of a space shuttle and not be hurt in the car seats, right?
I mean, these things are solid. So you buckle. You get trained in all this stuff. This is how you buckle. The thing in.
And we pick up on them. And we were a family of three. We went in, family of two, and we left as a family of three. And I drove down Sunshine Avenue to our apartment and. And everybody was driving like a maniac.
They were driving like maniacs. And I was so careful and cautious. And Becky was back there with her. And a few Years later, on February 19, 1992, we started that day a family of three. By the end of it, we were a family of four.
And now we’re a family of 12. It’s a pretty amazing journey. It’s really a pretty amazing journey. So. Yeah.
Thank you. You understand that we’re just getting started, Scott. And the thing about that is.
You still don’t know what you’re doing. After, what, 35 years of being a father and 10 years of being a granddad, I still don’t know what I’m doing. I still am just sometimes flying by the seat of my fence, hanging onto this thread, thinking, lord, help me not to mess them up any more than I already have. Help them to be somewhat normal. So.
So I’m gonna speak to the fathers and the men out here, but this is what I would say. I would say that as you’re doing this, I’m proud. I am proud to be a dad. I have loved every minute of it and still do. I’m proud to be a granddad.
I love it. I don’t know what I’m doing, honestly. I just try to do the best I can. I didn’t hear as well as I used to, Mark. So anymore if I don’t know what I’m doing, somebody tells me I don’t know it.
Cause I can’t hear that right. There’s some benefits to that.
Don’t tell my wife that. All right? But what I would say to this, to every dad, and please listen to me, I don’t say this as an expert, just somebody else on the journey. Every granddad, every man, every boy. Let the word of God guide you.
Not the headlines, but the word of God. This is the thing that guides you. Let godly men be your model. Not perfect, but men who are just simply trying to live out their life under the lordship of Jesus. Not the celebrities and all the people that we see pop up and down on our news feeds.
But let those people in this community, in your family, be your support, be your mentor, be your example. And when they fail, and when we don’t do it quite right, let mercy and patience be your motto, because none of us do it Right. All the time. None of us are perfect. Some of us, we just.
Sometimes we just think, oh, I wish I could have that day over. Right? I wish I could have had that conversation again. Wish I could do that one more time. And.
And truthfully, hang in there. You got this, man. You got this. I know you don’t know what you’re doing. I know you think you do, and I say you do, but in your heart, you think I’m really trying, but I don’t know what I’m doing.
You got this. You really do. And know I’m praying for you. We’re in this together, as Red Green says, Right? We’re in this together.
So happy Father’s Day, men, granddads, dads, boys, I pray for you grow up to be godly men in the most biblical and merciful and Christlike sense. And we will do that. I want to pray real quickly, and then I’m going to get into the Word of God and we’re going to kind of move on. But thank you, Helene, for letting me do this for the sound people and everybody. Thank you so much.
I’m so honored to be here. I get to follow and Pastor Aaron, who’s truthfully. And I say this whether he’s in front of me or not, he’s an incredible pastor, an incredible preacher, an incredible teacher. So he’s so deep in the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the Word of God, and every time I come, I think I want to grow up to be more like that. And even though I’m older than him, it’s probably not going to happen.
Let me pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, we’ve come here with some stuff from the world, from the headlines, from all the stuff that goes on, and this is the place we can lay it down and leave it if it’s not bringing us closer to you. So help the word of God, as we read it and open it, change us and challenge us, help us cleanse us out of all that stuff. Help us to have the courage to leave the things here that don’t need to be taken out and to pick up some things that maybe can help us on our journey. Take the stuff in our mind that is clouding it and help us to focus on you.
And, Father, truthfully, in my anxiety and fear, help me to preach your word with confidence in the Holy Spirit that is with me, and we give this time to you in the name of Jesus, amen. So Psalms 1:21 really starts, is the second of a section of Psalms called The Psalms of Ascent, you’ll probably see that. And there’s some say it’s 120 through 134, some 136 really doesn’t matter. You can kind of put that where you want to. People have called this group of psalms different things, but it’s like a psalm of set steps.
And. And some say it’s people going up the steps, going into the temple as they worship, some as they are journeying to the festivals. Honestly, it reflects a group of people or somebody on a journey to a destination they are called to go, a journey and a life or a calling that God has placed them on. So as you read it, sometimes you see a common theme. Sometimes you might see them in groups of three, like Psalm 120, 121, and 122, where 120 says, these things are going wrong.
The author says, look at all what’s going on. And there’s this fear, there’s this trouble that we’ll read it. And then Psalms 21 says, well, here’s where I get the help. And in Psalm 122 says, here’s where I find the peace. So read it as you’re on a journey.
So that’s what I want you to look at and I want you to tune in your imagination with me. I’m going to send you on a trip across the West. All right? From here, if you’re going all the way over to the west coast. And about 150 years ago, when there was no roads and no maps and no Google maps, you couldn’t see what the hazard was in front of you, right?
You couldn’t see the little guy digging with the shovel or the red lines on the road that you’re supposed to be on. There were no roads, no maps or anything. You just had this innate ability to. To go west. And you’re finding yourself right up against the Rocky Mountains, and you see it rise up out of the ground.
It’s almost as if it’s coming up out of the ground. The further west you go, the higher it gets. You’re in a covered wagon and you have all of these things ahead of you. You know, when you start out at St. Joseph, Missouri, where the Oregon Trail started, and you start going on further west that you’re into an unknown territory. It’s wild.
There are all types of dangers and all things ahead of you. And you see these mountains come up, and as a father or as a parent and you have this family and you see this obstacle what do you think? Well, you’re going to be pretty tough because you’re on this journey anyway, and you didn’t go into it without some knowledge. You did probably go into it with a little bit maybe of just this hope that it’s going to be different for this time. Maybe we’re going to survive.
We’re not going to be one of the victims. But you understand the danger and you know the stories of the people who didn’t make it. You understand the things that did happen. And yet you also know that at the other end, that’s where you feel like you need to go. In a sense, we’re on this journey that God is calling us.
So I’m going to put your imagination to work this morning because we’re on a journey, whether it’s fatherhood, Mother. Whether you’re a son or a daughter or an aunt and an uncle, whether it’s a career, whether it’s a choice of where you’re going to live, whatever it may be. There’s this thing ahead of you that God is calling you. And sometimes it feels like the mountains are starting to rise and all you have is a team of mules to pull you over. You have a little bit of stuff to protect you, and you have to do all of this on your own.
You don’t know what the weather’s going to do. You don’t know what the people in this land are going to do. You don’t know what the outlaws and the bad people are going to do. You don’t know what the wildlife is going to do. You don’t know what the elements will do to you.
You don’t have anything. All you know is you have to get over this obstacle to go where you’re going. That’s the journey. That’s the journey we’re on. And not to go is not an option because you’re convicted.
And sometimes you’re placed in it. Sometimes you understand that you went to the hospital as two, you came home as three, and all of a sudden this little girl, this little boy is in your charge, and here she is on this floor in your apartment, and you can’t even pray for her. You’re so overwhelmed with emotion that you can’t even pray for her because you’re so overwhelmed and you think, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into. That’s sometimes where we find ourselves.
Isn’t seems to be the theme of where this author is when he writes this. He says in chapter one, Psalms 120, verse one. Let me just read this. It says, in my trouble I cried to the Lord, and he answered me, Deliver my soul, O Lord, from my lying lips, from deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you?
Deceitful tongue. Sharp arrows of the warrior, with the burning coals of a broom tree. Woe is me, the psalmist says, for I sojourn or I journey to Mesic. For I dwell. By the way, those words in the Old Testament that I can’t pronounce very well, I go by quickly and kind of lowly, so I never know how to say them.
Aaron knows how to say them. I just kind of mumble over him. All right, so if he said. I don’t think he said that. Right.
You’re probably right. I’m okay with that. All right. For I dwell among the tents of Kedar, verse 6. Too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak, there for war. And sometimes we feel like that. That’s right before this psalm where he talks about, where will my help come from? This is what he’s thinking. This.
This is sick. I am on this journey and I want peace. I want peace for my family, I want peace for my journey. I want things to go well. I want to be prosperous, I want to be happy, I want to be content.
And all of a sudden, I find all these people at war. Sounds relevant, doesn’t it?
And then we get into our passage and it says this. And the psalmist says, and the title of it is the Lord, the Keeper of Israel, or My help comes from the Lord, depending on what version. A song of ascents, which means a song of steps, if you will, toward from a place where you are to a place that God is calling you. And he says, I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? And it almost sounds like you’re looking maybe magically at a mountain view, right?
But what he’s doing is he’s looking at this obstacle in front and knowing that he has to go through it, he has to go over it, that he or she or they have to go around it. They can’t go around it. They have to go right in the middle of it. And they go all the way through. This is part of their journey.
So as a parent of a newborn or a young one, you understand that your journey’s not done right, that you have to get them fed and you have to Keep them safe. And you have to take care of all these things. As a dad, you have to understand that you want this home to be solid. You want it to be safe. You want it to be a place where they love Jesus and they love their brothers and sisters and love the people around them, where they treat people with honor and dignity and respect, where they grow up to be honorable people, men and women who God has called them.
And you know that they’re all different. All of our children are turned just a little bit different. So we have to do that. We have to understand and study them and say, what can I do as a dad to make and help them be the person that God has created, Created them. That’s a daunting task.
It really is. But it’s a journey worth taking. So he says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come from? And it’s a great question.
Lord, I’m in and over my head, what am I going to do now? I can remember time and time, my dad’s been gone 20 years now. And in these last 20 years, when life happens, and I want to talk to him and just say, dad, I’m in over my head again. Or Becky’s father as well. I don’t do that.
I do do it. I do say, dad, I’d like to talk to you because, you know, I’m in over my head again. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea, dad, what I’m doing. I’m going to this meeting.
I’m doing this. Our family’s in this. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just trying to hang on. Where does my help come from?
And in verse two, he answers it, my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Isn’t that it? Now, that’s the head knowledge, all right. That’s the part that’s up here. But life has a way of testing the head knowledge in practical ways, doesn’t it?
The most famous statement I heard on parenting is that some parents, I think if somebody. One of our friends said this or somebody conference we went to, the speaker said, before I had children, I had five principles for raising kids. After I had five kids, I had no principles, right? Maybe six, I don’t know. Right before we start the journey, this is what it’s going to be.
We read the book what to expect the first 12 months. So we know. And all of our children follow the book, right? They don’t. No, they don’t.
Do they all. They’re all supposed to follow the rules. They’re all supposed to do exactly what they’re supposed to do, like we did when we were little, right? That’s exactly what happens. So the head knowledge is one thing, but the practical application is the tough part.
That’s the challenging in life. The theories that we have are test.
So the things that don’t work are revealed, and the things that do work are revealed. And it’s only through the testing that that really comes out. We can have all the theories that we want, but when we put it into practice, that’s when we know if it’s going to work or not work. Now, the trick is to not be doing the same thing that doesn’t work. And that’s my problem, truthfully, because I think it ought to work.
I think this ought to work as a dad or granddad, because the book said it would. Not the Bible, but this book, right? Because somebody said, oh, you know, this looks like a good idea, and even a good idea if it doesn’t work, isn’t that great? All right, so that’s what we want to understand. And this is where he is.
He says, all right, I know where the help comes from. It comes from God. That’s up here in the knowledge. But what do we do? How do we practice it?
So this passage this year is a little different than the one I preached last year here and I preached out of James 5 about the evils of money and all that stuff. And that was a fun one. So it turned out well, nobody stoned me or threw their wallets at me or anything.
But this one is a little easier. So it’s not going to be a terribly long message. I don’t apologize for that, But I just want you to know that when I looked at this, I thought, you know, this one is. This one works. It’s fairly short, and it doesn’t take a lot to really dig it out.
It’s so plain.
So God, or the psalmist, when he looks at this, he moves on to verse three. And he says, he will not let your foot be moved.
He who keeps you will not slumber. I don’t know if you’ve ever been tired on a journey or not. I have. Whether it’s a journey of a job or a profession or some kind of a calling, a vocation. Maybe it’s a journey in a relationship.
Maybe it’s a journey as a parent or a grandparent or son or daughter or a brother or sister or aunt or uncle. Maybe something like that maybe you’re an employer or, or an employee. Maybe there’s a journey for something you’re trying to learn or something you’re trying to gain or something that God is calling you to do or move to, and you’re trying to get there. You have to get there. So from here to Tennessee, it’s a good day’s drive.
It’s a pretty long drive. So from here to there, you’re going to get tired, you’re going to have to refresh, you’re going to have to step out, you’re going to have to relax a little bit, right? And God says in that journey, when we’re going forward to the place God is calling us to go, to the person God is calling us to be, to take care of the ones that God is calling us to look over. When you get tired, know this. And when you feel like your feet are starting to shift, that he is going to keep you there.
And he does not sleep. That’s good to know, isn’t it? It’s good to know that when we nod off, he doesn’t mark. It’s good to know that whenever we sometimes drift, he’s solid, he’s focused. When we lose our concentration, he hasn’t.
When we, as a dad, say, okay, I’m not really sure what I’m doing now, and I’m getting over here, over there, and I’ve gotten too much energy in this and I’ve lost track of what’s important and all this other stuff. Let me tell you this, God doesn’t move. He doesn’t. And then he goes on to say, behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber or sleep. So he keeps on that same thought in verse four, the Lord is your keeper.
I love there. 5 and the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
So when it gets tough and you’re looking at this mountain and your imagination is still engaged, you’re still on the wagon, you’re still in that trail. My granddad, by the way, in 1883, he was eight years old. You can do the math. You can use your calculator if you want to and pretend like you’re on your phone. It won’t matter.
But he was born 1875. My granddad was. When he was 8 years old, his dad, my great granddad, took his family out west of Kansas and they parked outside of Dodge City. Sounds like a Western, doesn’t it? But he wouldn’t let his family go into the city because it was a little bit wild.
It was a Little bit wild. And I’m sure on that day and that time and during that journey, my great granddad looked over his family and said, I got to keep them safe and I got to keep them sheltered. Got to watch out for them. And during that time in Gap part of Kansas, and it was tough and it was hot, and sometimes it just got overbearing. And it was good to know that there was a place of safety and shelter.
And sometimes we are on that train, we are on that trail, and we can’t see anything except the heat. We can’t feel anything except the pressure. And all of a sudden there’s shade. All of a sudden there’s relief. All of a sudden there’s God.
Let me go ahead and finish here on this one. In verse six, it says, the sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. And the Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. He will keep your life.
And then he goes on. Let me finish up reading this, and we’ll get into some applications. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. And that’s chapter 121, chapter 122. This talks about the peace of God.
Now we’re gonna. I’ll just mention it just a little bit. But he goes on from his fear, from the trial, from the danger, to the questions like, where do I get help? And God answers from him. Then he says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.
And then he goes on and finds the peace that he was looking for. That doesn’t mean the circumstances changed. All right, so often we think that we only find peace when we can change circumstances. We think, well, our church will be more content when we can change the circumstances, when we can change the culture. The gospel was born in a culture much worse than ours really was.
We might think that. But the gospel is built for this day and time. It really is. So our church isn’t okay. It’s okay.
God is all right. He’s bigger than what’s going on. Wherever you may are, be. All right, so we go back in here in verse 1:20 or chapter 122, says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. That’s where the peace comes from.
All right, so here, let me give you a couple of thoughts just to think about, because you’re on this journey and I don’t know the journey that you’re on we’re going to get into that just a little bit. But every journey has a risk. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just a risk free journey? Becky and I will travel about 600 miles tomorrow. We don’t know what the road conditions will be like.
We’re fairly certain it’s not going to snow and blizzard in Illinois, but I’m not going to lay any money on it because it always does something in Illinois. And if you’re from Illinois. I love Illinois. I grew up with corn and soybeans, so I can drive through that all day long, not a problem. And the three or four trees you have in that part of the state are perfect.
I love those trees. Right. Every journey has a risk. Every journey has a risk. So we pray that our car goes straight and we pray that there’s no accidents.
And we pray that if there is something happening that everybody’s safe and it’s on the other side. Right. Don’t tell me you haven’t prayed that before. All right. Boy, that’s packed up on that side.
I’m sure glad I’m not over there, you know. And you pray for them.
But the journey that’s worth taking will take risk. As a father, let me just speak to that. I can do that.
We raise our kids and I’m proud of ours. I’m proud of Rob and Rachel and the home that they have. I’m proud of Autumn and Austin at the home they have. And Becky and I so often pray and we thank God that our grandkids go to bed in a safe home where their parents love them and take care of them and teach them the word of God. We’re glad that we’re still part of the journey.
We’re still glad we’re in the conversation. We’re glad they have good places to go and going to have the most opportunities they can have. We’re thankful for that. But I will tell you that sometimes it’s risky because we’re trying to make decisions. Think, well, wouldn’t God just tell us all the things that we’re going to do?
Yeah, he does. But we’re human and sometimes we just don’t know, do we? There’s risk.
My statement is don’t stop the journey just because of the risk. It’s risky. Relationships are risky. They grow up and go to college and they start dating somebody who thinks this is a good idea. Aaron, I don’t know.
We do. We understand that. We raise them to be independent, then they become independent. Then we think, why’d we do that? Right?
But the risk is part of the journey. It doesn’t matter. Obviously, when you’re on an Oregon trail back in the 19th century, and you were watching the Rocky Mountains rise up from the dust, you understood the risk when you started. But I can tell you, you don’t really, truly understand the risk. When you.
When you bring a child home from a hospital, when you start a church, when you start a job, when you start a career, when you start a procedure, you may know the risk, you may know there are risks, but everything can change.
But on this journey full of risk, we are never without God’s presence. He says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I’m going to keep your feet planted. I’m going to be with you.
I will be with you always. That’s the greatest promise, guys. So when you know that you’re doing the thing that you’re supposed to be doing and yet you feel like you’re the only one doing it, nobody else gets it. God does.
So when you think that you have no answers for the questions in front of you and the mountain is too high and nobody else understands what’s happening, God does. He really does. You are not alone. Even though you’re in the midst of a group of people or an ocean of people or a city full of people, sometimes feeling alone and being alone are overwhelming. And there are people who are alone among us, people who feel like they are isolated.
And that’s what we do as a church. We try to bring them in and give them a community.
But that’s an only place to be, and it’s a hard place to be. And God says, I gotcha. I’m here. But we also have his resources. You ever just not know what to do?
I mean, just literally, you know, dads, we’re supposed to know a lot of things, right? We’re supposed to be able to fix things. And I can fix a few things. I’m okay with it. Have a weed eater?
No, A leaf blower. What is it? It’s a blower, isn’t it? That doesn’t work now. I haven’t maintained it in 15 years, but I bought it new, so it should last forever, right?
It’s a good theory. I think so. You know, and I tried it so long that Becky came out and looked at me just to make sure I didn’t have a heart attack, I think. I didn’t throw it or anything like that. I did that to the weed eater a few years ago, and that didn’t work either.
But sometimes we just don’t know what to do. Sometimes we have this job in front of us and we don’t know what to do. We don’t have the skill set. We don’t have the knowledge. We don’t have the tools.
We don’t have the ability. We’re just not the person up for the job. We don’t know what to do. We. We just don’t have all the resources.
And God somehow provides that. So how do we raise a little baby to become a toddler, to become whatever’s next after that, a preschooler? And then the rest of them? All right, what do we do? How do we do that?
Well, we ask God, who created this little one to help us on the journey. Who knows better that child than the one who knit them together? Who knows better the journey that this little boy or girl is going to take than the one who says, I know the days even before you were born. That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? So when we take this journey, we have his presence.
I got to keep moving here. The church I preached at last Sunday had the timer, Aaron. And it went down from 30 minutes down to zero. And then after zero, it went negative numbers.
I preached two sermons there that morning. I went to negative numbers both times.
So I don’t know when the negative starts, but I’m going to get going here. We have his resources. We also understand that he has his grace and his mercy is sufficient. And this is so important. Men, hear me out.
Sometimes we just don’t hit the mark. Sometimes we just don’t get it right. Women. Sometimes we just don’t do it right. People.
Sometimes we just don’t do it right. Sometimes the people around us who should and should do better and know to do better, they don’t do it exactly like we should do it, or we think they should do it. Sorry. And that’s when mercy and grace come into play. See, if we were perfect, we wouldn’t need God’s grace and mercy.
If we had all the answers, we wouldn’t need it, would we? If we knew how to be a perfect parent, perfect father, a perfect grandfather, a perfect pastor, a perfect member, a perfect employee, employer, a perfect brother, sister, whatever it may be, then we wouldn’t need the grace and mercy of God because everybody would be perfect, right? It’d be a boring place to live, I’m telling you that. But it would be perfect. It’d just be perfect.
But the truth is that the church is made of imperfect People.
So we need grace and we need mercy. And it’s deep enough and it’s sufficient enough to handle us. And that’s good to know as a parent, Becky and I as parents, we prayed often after some days thinking, lord, help them not to remember this day. Okay, this wasn’t one of our better times. I should have done better at this one.
I could have done better at that one. I should have said this. I should have not said that. You know what? That’s where we are.
But the fish, the grace and the mercy of God is sufficient and that’s what we need to remember. And the foundation is secure. So first of all, let me go through these real quickly and I’m going to wrap it up. Every journey is a risk, folks. I don’t know the journey you’re on, but every journey is a risk.
They have benefits and we know God is calling us.
But there’s risk involved, isn’t there, Mark? When you start a church, there’s risk involved. Or as you start a job or if you quit a job and go to retirement, there’s risk involved. God’s presence never leaves us. His resources are always available to us.
His grace is sufficient. His mercy is deep and his foundation is secure. So just a couple of things as I close up. We are not promised an easy or risk free journey. But we are promised to never be alone.
Let me say it again. We are not promised a risk free journey. I’m a parent. I’m a godly parent. I’m trying to do the right thing.
We go to church, so everything should work out right? Right? Everything should be good. There should be no glitches in our journey. We’re taking a trip and we’ve got the map planned out and we’ve got the car ready and we’ve kicked the tires.
Becky always wonders why I do that. You kick the tires to see what the pressure is. You can just tell with a good pair of boots you can tell what the tire is. Thank you, by the way, for the cowboy theme this morning. My boots feel at home.
I appreciate that we are not promised an easy or risk free journey, but we are promised to never be alone. Every journey or goal or calling requires faith. And we will most certainly experience fear. We’ll say, wait a second, if I’m afraid, then I don’t have faith. No, not really.
You see, fear and faith are pretty close because neither one of them or both of them are expecting something in the future to happen. If I’m afraid to move forward or I have faith to move forward. Then somehow or another we think that something in front of us is going to be different than what we expect. Right? So what we do is either we’ll pause or we’ll jump in.
But every journey and every goal and every call is going to require faith. And you are going to experience. Experience fear. And when you do, don’t think, well, I’m not a good Christian, has nothing to do with it. Take your fear to God and move forward.
He’ll see you through it. He will see you through it. And if God has placed you, is calling you, and he has placed you, then he will sustain you. Well, I’m not sure about that. Be sure.
How’s he going to do that? Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Just a couple more slides. I promise one.
The last one only says let’s pray. So I really have one more slide. Here’s what I’m going to close with. I don’t know what your journey is. I know a few of you have known some of you for a while, and I’m so thankful for the friendship that we’ve had over the years and that you allow me to show up once in a while and.
And it’s very humbling and very honoring. I’m very grateful. I don’t know your fears. I don’t know what causes you anxiety.
But I’m confident that everybody in here has something in their life that really keeps them uncomfortable, that wakes them up in the middle of the night, that keeps them from going to sleep, or that just is heavy on their head sometimes. I don’t know that. I don’t. But I do know this.
When you look ahead, sometimes we just see an unknown land. We don’t understand exactly where our children will be another 10 years. We don’t know if they’re going to have kids or not. We don’t know what kind of jobs they may do. We see this unknown land that we’ve never been a part of.
We’re placed on a journey. We’re going through a territory that we’ve never been to, that we’ve never seen, that we’ve never experienced. But, you know, the good thing is that God has already seen it. He says, I am the beginning and the end and what, the middle and revelation. So we’re serving this God who already knows this path, even though we don’t.
So trust him with it. Trust him with it. Let him guide you through this. Because the world that we don’t know he has created, he’s seen what your kids are going to do. How’s that work, Pastor?
I don’t know. Ask him. When you get to heaven. I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, I trust him.
I don’t know the answer to that. So as a father, as a grandfather, it’s the good news. By the way, I’m folding this up.
Know this. You’re not alone. Men. You’re not alone. When you mess up, it’s okay.
Don’t act like you didn’t get it right. Be humble.
Take your job serious. Enjoy the process. Take time to enjoy the moments. For many years, I took Fridays off. Hardly ever.
I said I was going to, but I didn’t. That’s my bad. I would go back and do that better. I can’t undo that. Got a little granddaughter who’s our oldest grandchild, an only girl.
And for somehow or another, my motivation increased. So now, if you follow me on Facebook, we have fancy coffee Fridays and things like that. And the reason that I do that is because those staff meetings that move from Thursday to Friday, who in the world thought that was a good idea? I’ve met some of them, and Zoom works once in a while. But you know what?
Enjoy the moments. I can tell you this, that I’ve enjoyed every moment of being a father. From the time we brought Autumn home to the time we brought Rob home. Robert, what we called him Rob home. To all of our grandkids, to every season from the time that they were learning and growing and going to preschool and grade school and high school, middle school, whatever, case being college, when we did the weddings, when we watched them become parents.
I’ve loved every minute.
So, guys, you got this, ladies. You got this. Whatever the journey you’re on, trust, Lord, with it. From where does my help come? It comes from God, Father, in the name of Jesus, as we close this part of the service and move to the next, thank you for the assurance of the word of God, for the journeys that you’ve placed us on.
And I don’t know, Lord, what’s going on in the heart and mind and the soul and the journey of each person here, but I’m confident there’s some of us that just need to say, God, I’m scared and I need your help. It’s okay to be there. So, Lord, let the word of God change us and convict us. And, Father, in this church, may your Holy Spirit continue to do great and mighty things. Amen, Pastor.
Thank you.