Key points
- 1
1Feelings are guides, not goals — the mistake we make is treating good feelings as the destination and doing whatever it takes to escape bad ones.
“feelings are guides not goals”
- 2
2Clarify your sadness before God — peel back the layers to find what is really causing the anguish, because stopping at the surface level leads to bad decisions.
A story from life
Pastor Bill shares his wife's ongoing sadness over their youngest daughter's plan to attend university in London, and the layers of identity and fear they uncovered together
- 3
3It is safe and right to cry out to God with raw, honest emotion — Job, David, and even Jesus did exactly this.
“The best safest place to let your most raw emotions out is before the Lord”
- 4
4Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, showing He personally knows every sadness and abandonment we feel.
“Jesus knows how you feel”
- 5
5Cling to God's unfailing love through sadness — 'trust' here is an action word meaning to hold on, obey, and keep following God rather than running away.
- 6
6Worship is like paddling before the wave arrives — start praising God in the middle of sadness so you are ready to catch what He sends.
“Don't run away from God when you're sad. You should run into God's purpose in your life no matter what”
- 7
7When we cling to fear and frustration instead of God's love, we grab onto anything that numbs the sadness — and create far more sadness in the process.
“She was trying to fight through the waves, but at least she was wet. I was in denial. I was staying on the sand and I wouldn't even face it”
A story from life
Pastor Bill reveals his own hidden sadness and fear of failing as a provider if his daughter cannot attend her chosen school in England
A story from life
Pastor Bill recounts learning to surf as a youth pastor at a beach church, being pummeled by waves until an older man taught him the right technique
Application
Pastor Bill closes with a three-part invitation drawn straight from Psalm 13: clarify your sadness by peeling back the layers until you find what is truly hurting; cry out to God with complete honesty, because He is the safest place for your rawest emotions; and cling — as an act of will — to His never-ending love by choosing to worship and follow Him even before anything changes. He makes this personal, admitting he had been sitting on the sand coaching others while refusing to feel his own grief. The takeaway is simple and demanding at once: don't let 'sad is bad' keep you numb or running. Instead, bring your sadness to God, trust that Jesus has walked every version of it, and start paddling in worship — because that is how you catch the wave of what He is already doing.
