Playlist For | Week 4

So I was sitting there this last week and I was both admiring and laughing, watching my my daughter, my oldest daughter in the process of raising her two sons, my two grandsons. They're actually David who was just out here, he's my son in law's. They're his his sons.

And as well, because she's been going through this this time and and it's funny. They're they're they're these two boys. Like, I I didn't have two I didn't have a brother growing up. I had a sister and then and then my kids were girl, boy, girl. And so it's it's been a marvel to watch two brothers,

because it's a unique combination of how they act. One's almost six, one's almost seven,

one's almost four. They're getting ready to to turn over. And I tell lots of stories, so I I asked my my daughter to give me a picture so you can see a picture of them. There they are. Super adorable. That's Phoenix on the left. That's Ollie on the right.

And you know, and this is a great adorable shot. Like, this is those moments you get and you're like, wow, I love my. You love your old kids. It's just great. But yeah, that's them, but this next picture is also them. And

matter of fact, we've put Phoenix in jujitsu so he could protect himself against his younger brother, I think. But no. He, they were playing here actually. That's the thing about boys.

They weren't actually in a fight. They were just playing and it it always ends up in something like that. And next thing you know, and so what she's been wrestling with, especially getting frustrated, she said she's looking for any tips you might have, is they're at this age and now they're at home for summer, it's even worse, is the constant tabbling on each other.

It's like so annoying. Any any moms or I think like it's just all day long. She's like sitting and every five minutes, almost constantly she goes, mom,

he's looking at me. Mom, he's copying me. And then you're, mommy's copying me. Shut up. Stop it, mom. You know, and then it's like, he's touching me. Mommy's licking me. And it's like, mom, he said he's a Seahawks fan. And that's when she loses it at that point.

No, it's just like she's like And she was telling us the story. She's like, it was just so annoying. I just don't know. So finally I just got him and I didn't know what else to do. Looked at both of and I like, that's it. Whoever tattles is getting a time out. Just work it out.

I don't get go into the Thunderdome and figure it out. It's like, I'm done. And so Ollie's like, runs away, the younger one. And then but Phoenix stands there, and he's like, remember, he's six. He's like, okay, mom, but if Ollie stabs me and I'm bleeding, can I tattle or will I get a time out? And she's like, what?

Of course, you would say something like that. And she realized he's so smart. He's already trying to figure out this rule, but but it

was hilarious because he's he's trying to do that. And then it's even funny, I was over there Friday night and and hanging out with him, I told him I was gonna tell the story. I always let them know, and and he was good with it. But then he looks at me, goes, but can you say poked instead of stabbed?

And I go, why? You said stabbed. Your mom said you said stabbed. That's what you said. Yeah. I go, well, that's the way because I don't want you to say poked. Stabbed is funnier and it's actually what you said. And I go, why do you want me to say poked? He goes, well, stab sounds so violent.

You're the one that said it. And you're the one that asked a question assuming your brother might stab you. I mean, like and and but the point was, on a deeper level, if you think about it, when he was asking that question, he was trying to deal with what was happening

and and what his mother, who he knows loves him, told him to do. And he couldn't understand the he was asking questions about he was questioning her goodness. Like, you really think that so you're telling me if I get stabbed, I can't tell you about it. And she was like, no, that's not what I meant.

And so we had to get clarity. And I think we often do that in our own lives. When God we look at what's and then things are happening to us. We get stabbed by life, and there's things and we're like, well, what am I supposed to do about that? And why did this happen? And is God good?

And what we're gonna see today in this playlist series where we're talking about worship and we're going through Psalms, because Psalms is wisdom literature that was actually they they Israel, they used that as their their their worship

hymn book, basically. That was their worship songs. They would sing the word truth of God's word, and it was a critical part of worship. It was one of the things they did. And and what and they're all split. They're split into five books. There's a 150 psalms. There are five different books. It's like they're five albums, and each album has a different vibe to it.

And the album three is what we're gonna look at today, starting it starts with Psalm 73, and and it's about the dark times. It's about what a when when life is hard, when was life confused, When does life seem unfair? When is life not good? And how do we actually approach the goodness of God when life isn't?

And worship is about one of the ways what we're supposed to do, but we often because we're questioning when things are tough, sometimes we can question and we can wonder. And then we end up pulling away when the answer is to worship.

What we're gonna see actually in Psalm 73 is simply this big idea. Worship is not pretending life is good. Worship is declaring God is good when life isn't. And and that's what it's about. That's why we do. It's not just God's not an insecure God that has to constantly be reassured on how great he is.

Worship is an act of actually for us. It's it's an an ability to to worship. So if you think, hey, it's tough, it's hard, I'm not feeling it right now, we would naturally wanna say, I I I can't worship because maybe I'm even questioning if God is good. And the truth is, God is always good even when life isn't.

So what do we do with that? How do we have that conversation like my grandson had with his mom, and the conversation is called worship. It's

what we do. So like I said, we're gonna be in Psalm 73 and we're gonna unpackage this. And basically say, so based on what we're gonna read here and see is, what do you do when God is good but life doesn't look good? What do we do? And and so I just wanna start and read the first 12 verses here.

And this is written by guy named Asaph. He was a worship leader.

And he gets raw and real. That's what this whole section does. That's the amazing thing about Psalms and the fact that we use it for worship. And it's got this wisdom of God's truth, but it was written by God's people who inspired to write it, but it's through their voice. This is one of the few parts of scripture where it's like God's people talking

to God, but yet it's still God's word. And so we can learn from it, because it has all the feels, all the emotions, all the issues, and this whole section is, why is worship so incredibly important, when it's tough. Especially when it's tough. And here's how he starts. Truly God is good. That's the first four words.

Now here's what he does well here, is he's writing this and he's about to reveal his emotions and his struggles and all this pain, but he at least starts with the truth. A lot of us, what we do in our world is we think feelings are truth. Feelings are reality.

And what we do is we treat them as a destination. Get away from the bad feel, get to the good feel as quick as possible. That's the problem in our world. Feelings are not a destination. They're just a dashboard indicator light. They're revealing that something's going on

And you gotta look at them. As my wife likes to put it, feelings are real, but they're not often true. Meaning, they don't go where they feel like they wanna take you.

And so he starts, even though it's about to go, he's gonna about to reveal his heart. He at least opens up with God is good. And this is important because the Greek word I mean, the Hebrew word there for good. I said this a few weeks ago. We gotta get this understanding right because sometimes we're struggling and questioning the goodness of God because we don't even know what that means, goodness.

When we hear the word good in English, we usually think pleasant. Hey, that was good. That food was good. It means it tasted good. I liked it. It was pleasant. The Hebrew word here is tov. Well, Hebrew probably sounded more Klingon, tov or something, a little more phlegmy, I don't know. But good, it means It's

a long thing. It's hard to explain things, but you can boil it down to this. It means beautifully beneficial. It's like the goodness that if you're a good parent, what you bring to your children.

If you ask them, was that good? Made them brush their teeth. That wasn't good, that was terrible. Made them wash their hair, that wasn't didn't feel good. That was terrible. Because their idea of good is pleasant and nice for me. But we know on the other end, this is what you need. That's the goodness he's talking about.

You understand that God will always bring the beautiful benefit. He's always taking us to the most beautiful beneficial place. It's not about pleasantness. And that's sometimes we struggle with God's goodness because we have not defined goodness correctly. So he says, God God

truly God is good to Israel to those whose heart are pure. But as for me, he says, I am almost lost my footing. My feet were slipping. I was almost gone. And now he says, why? For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.

That word for envied and prosper, the word for envied there means he wanted what they had. He actually wanted what he saw them having, their prosperity. And that word for prosper is where we get the word Shalom,

which means a peace and it means a pleasure. It means all this stuff, but true Shalom means the true peace is in the context of a covenantal relationship with God. He's only seeing the pleasantness that they experience that he doesn't have. And he wants it.

So he says, envied him. He says, they seem to live such painless lives. Their bodies are so healthy and strong. They don't have troubles like other people. They're not plagued with the problems like everyone else. They wear pride like a jeweled necklace and clothe themselves with cruelty.

These fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for. Can you can you sense the emotion like he's yeah. I almost imagine him getting louder as he's as if he was saying this out loud. And he's like, they scoff and speak only evil. In their pride, they seek to crush others.

They boast against the very heavens and their words strut throughout the earth. And so people are dismayed and confused. They're drinking in all their words. What does God know they asked? Does the most high even know what's happening? Look at these wicked people, enjoying a life of ease while the riches multiply.

So he's being honest in this act of words and writing this song. It's like he's saying, hey, I almost lost it. Because I know God is good. But then I got told I can't tattle if I get stabbed. You know, he's like, he was wondering. He's like, what's going on? He's like, why do they have it so well and I don't?

You know what he's actually doing? He's comparing. That's the first problem. See, because here's what worship really is.

All the acts of word, we come in here in the word, we have our whole life is worship. But this corporate worship, this idea that what God's called us to do to come together and worship and hear the word, also the singing part, especially because I think a lot of us, we miss out on that. We think of that as optional. We think of that as extra. We think about that that's just the warm up act or the closing part.

And and and we don't take it serious and you're we're missing out because worship, this idea of God's words with a melody, God created us. He knows that that's where our heart and our head can meet. And what worship really is, especially the singing part, the praise and declaring, it's looking up to him.

It's looking up and seeing him clearly. And so what he's saying is, I stopped looking up and I started looking around. And I think we all get stuck doing that. We all do it. Can't even help it. I even do it and I'm better than you because I'm a pastor. No, see you laugh because you know how ridiculous that sounds.

I I do it. I'll I'll look around and compare. I'll even look at other churches. I'll get I'll get frustrated. Like, why did they already get that? We didn't even get that. Come on. You know, it's like, what's going on? And and and they they've done these upward comparison studies.

And it's even bigger now. It it was like because they really looked at like with social media and everything. Upward comparison is we tend to when we look on social media and stuff, we compare ourselves to people that we perceive to be better off than us.

There's a problem with that. It makes us discouraged. It makes us because if you look around instead of looking up, you'll end up looking down.

And and and that's the problem. And and and so then we struggle and and then sometimes we come into worship. Okay. Well, I'll tilt my head up, but I'll only tilt it up to eye level. So all I do is go from really discouraged to back to comparing again.

And and and I never get all the way to see where God is. And so I get stuck in this cycle and we do it. The Oprah compares, they said they do that. The problem is when you look at what people do with pictures, social media, stuff is curated. So we're comparing our entire messy lives that has everything behind the windows to everybody else's highlight reels.

That's what he's doing. It's what you and I do. I mean, I even did this like when I was a kid, man. I I I I remember I loved Christmas. I'm born July is my birthday. It's coming up soon, so send cash. But but I love being born in like in the middle of the year because I only had to go about six, seven months

and and and and I got resupplied with toys. I I feel sorry for y'all that were born in December. Man, you got one big massive haul and then you had to wait a year. And and and so I

and I love our Christmas. I grew up, you know, I'm I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona. Our house is nice. And we had this big room, not a huge house, but we had this big great room and we'd put the tree right in the middle of our big window.

And and and then it would be I loved how it decorating my parents and then we get presents and you'd see them slowly start coming and filling in and in and filling in. But by Christmas Eve, they they they went further out than just under the tree.

They they kind of broke the pair barrier and went wider into the room. So I thought it was awesome. Until I started paying attention to my neighbors across the street, the Griswolds or whatever. They had the exact same house. I go into his house, my friend's house to play and around Christmas time,

they had their tree in the same spot in that same room. And their presence filled the entire room.

And matter of fact, when we would after you know, if I don't know if you did this, but when was a kid, we opened in presence, you play for a while, you do the family time. Can I go play with my friends? And then what we really wanted to go out and show them our favorite things, but then we wanted to go see what everybody else got. Well, my friend across the street was always an hour and a half late to that, because it took them an hour and a half longer to open up all their presence.

And you know what happened? I loved My Life. I love My Life. I thought my parents were amazing until I saw that. And I said, what kind of a cheapskate is my dad? We live in the same neighborhood. He's gotta have a similar job. What's going on? Why am I getting ripped off here?

I wanna be in that. I wanna I wanna I wanna have that. I mean, think about it. We compare and it creates an issue. And it makes us doubt God's goodness. I mean, even the two pictures I just showed you. The cute picture,

that was at a family photo shoot. We probably took 14,000 pictures of those two guys. That was the only good one.

The rest was them rolling around or jumping over, like, we're down to this reserve where it's like, that's muddy gunk. What are getting in the mud? Stop. You know, they're like, then they're fighting and they're throwing stuff at each other. They're climbing on everything.

They're running away. It's like, it was like, it's it's like horrible. But yet everyone sees that, oh, what adorable children. Yeah, you should have saw all the work it took to get that picture.

That's the danger when we compare. And maybe your issue is in comparison. But there's something that you're looking away that you're not looking up and it's making you look down. And that's why a lot of us, we struggle with worship,

especially the just being real and present in God's because we're not talking about worship and the singing is a really revealed stuff to us because that's a responsive moment. It's this moment where you don't just sit. And we have to choose to respond.

Because just being in this room is not meaning you came to worship God. God is present. The question is, worship for us is, are we gonna be present and present ourselves before him and take what my real self and look up to his real self and declare the truth and watch what the Holy Spirit does through that in us.

So the point is when comparison makes life look unfair, worship until God's goodness gets bigger than what I see.

When life doesn't seem fair, that's the most critical time to worship, Not the time to pull away. Because look what happens next. Verse 13, it gets worse. Like, he's admits that. But he said, did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason? I get nothing but trouble all day long.

Every morning brings me pain. Have you ever noticed that when you get caught in that loop of when you get discouraged after comparing and looking around and you start to think it's bad, it gets worse and worse and worse. Like even when I was a kid, I was this is terrible. My parents don't love me. I know it's why are we so poor? Why can't we have this? I'm like, I lived in Scottsdale,

Arizona. I wasn't poor. I never missed a meal. My dad didn't like going on vacations, so we barely went anywhere. That's because he's been everywhere in the world. And he used to say almost every place I've been, everything was trying to kill me when I was there. He was a soldier.

And so he's like, I don't need to go anywhere anymore. But no, it's like, we get this way. And then he says, it's so bad. He says, if I had really spoken this way to others, I would have been a traitor to your people. And if I really said what I was thinking, I relate to that as a pastor.

If I really said what you think I say some stupid things out of my mouth, man. If you could have heard some of the things that bounce around in my head.

But look what he tries to do here. So I tried to understand why the wicked prosper. And that's what often we do. So he says his answer was, I gotta figure this out.

I gotta find them. I gotta figure it out. But then he says, but what a difficult task it is. What he's really saying is, it's impossible.

When I just sit alone instead of doing what I should do, I just sit there and say, I gotta figure this out. A lot of times when you're hurting, you're like, why? I can't be at worship. I'm not gonna I can't go to my small group again. We pull away because like, I'm just going through some things and I gotta figure them out.

That's what he was doing. And all it did was make it worse. Just made it worse. Because then there's verse 17. The most pivotal word happens twice. This is the first one,

then

something changes. And what changed? Then I went into your sanctuary, O God. The sanctuary was the place to gather to worship, be in the presence of God. So basically he went and worshiped. I went into your sanctuary, O God, and I finally understood the destiny of the wicked. You know what's ironic? He's a worship leader

and it took him a little while to figure out that worship was the answer. But I can't judge him, because I do this. I'm a preacher that sits there and goes, why am I doing the very stupid thing that I'm preaching about? Why? He goes, I finally understood the destiny of the wicked.

Truly you put them on a slippery path and send them on a sliding over a cliff to destruction. In an instant, they're destroyed, completely swept away by tears. When you arise, oh Lord, you will laugh at their silly ideas as a person laughs at dreams in the morning.

So he's realizes when he went in and worshiped, all of a sudden he looked up to God and he goes, alright, I stopped looking around and I looked up and now I got some clarity. He didn't go find more information, couldn't figure out on himself. He understood that like, why am I comparing myself to them?

I I know how that ends. I know where their story ends. They may have all this stuff and nice stuff. Their life might seem to be hunky dory. But in the end, they're they're far from God and it's not gonna end well for them.

So why am I envious and why am I so he it it it let him realize when he saw God, you know what it what it made him realize is he got some clarity. And and and and that the point is simply this, is when you when confusion clouds your view, you get into God's presence until you see clearly.

Because looking up, you can now see clearly. It clears the confusion and he can see honestly. Because what he was doing and what I do and what we all do is, the reason he was confused is he was making judgments based from his middle of the story perspective. He's looking at the middle of their story,

comparing it to the middle of his story, and and feeling like this isn't good, this is bad. And and we do that all the time. At least I do. Have you ever walked into the middle of a story and then tried to do something about it in the middle of the story?

I mean, you'll understand. At least maybe you're like me. This is one of those things that I can't believe I keep doing. Just like he was a worship guy and figured out, oh, wait, I went and worshiped and found out the answer. It's like, I know I do this. I've done this to my family our whole life, is

I will walk into the middle of a conversation that my kids are having, my wife's having with them. They're in an argument. There's this disunity. My wife could be challenging them, and it could be one of them, two of them, it could be all of them. They can always sit there. I will walk in, and they've been having this long discussion,

and I see that there's an issue. And I I hear about what, five sentences? And then I come in and act like I'm gonna save the day and get this all fixed. And so I start talking. And you know what? I am really good at? 100% of the time, I bring unity in the art of war sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

They all go, I know we're fighting, but he's the real enemy. So let's unite and attack him. And the worst is I've walked in when my wife is so frustrated and had sat all three of our kids down back when they're in and is giving them, you know, like trying to say, here's what I need for you. And they're just being

and I walk in the middle of that, and I'm like, I think I'm being like the the the the the the I'm being the huddle. I'm the leader. I'm gonna go save the day and protect the house. And I go, hey, kids, you know what you need to do? And I just and you know the first one to start cracking on me is? My wife.

I don't like your tone. I'm like you did, you're not doing it right. You're And then they're like, yeah, like, you what talking about? And I'm like, man, this has hurt my feelings. I'm not trying to help you out doing the right thing and now you're all ganging up on me. And then I'm all mad.

You know why? Because I was dumb enough to walk into a middle of a conversation, a middle of a story, and I've already decided from my perspective what's really going on. That's what Asaph's doing. And I think that's what we do a lot with our everyday lives and when we look to God.

We are making judgments from our middle of the story point of view. And and and here's the thing. God always wants to change our sight before he changes our circumstances. There's other things he needs us to see and we miss it because our vision is fooled. We have like optical illusions happening to us.

You ever seen like Here, I got a picture. I wanna show you something here. How many you see a duck? Raise your hand. Want everyone to vote. Cool. How many see a rabbit? How many go, I still don't see a rabbit? Look from the right to the left instead of left to right.

Do you see it once you look right to left, you saw it? There you go. You know why? We're wired the way we read. So if like if if you're Chinese or something, you probably saw a rabbit. And and and but but we are wired to kinda look this way first.

And so you see that? That's alright. I'm done. I see what's there. And I say, no, don't see that. Well, look from the other point of view and all of sudden you see, does anybody still not see the rabbit? We have counseling for that. But we have to report you to the FBI because you have a problem and you might snap. No.

This is what I'm telling you. When God says worship, what it does is we see a duck and we go to worship, God's saying, there's something else there. There's something else there that you don't see. And so when we don't see that,

we get confused and then we start to doubt the goodness of God. Let me show you another one of these illusions. You see a and b squares?

And some of you are gonna fight me like someone did after the last service. Literally, he missed the whole point. But what if I told you A and B are the same exact color? Here's what we did to try to look at it because it says it is. We we digitally just all we did, we didn't change the picture. We just digitally removed

everything but a and b. And that's what you have. How many don't believe me? You still don't believe me. You can go back to the other one. And or there's yeah. There's a third one. But This one. Just this one. What happens is the science y part, MIT is the one that did this, is

our eyes wired to our brain are taught they know how to fill in and alter information. So when you see in a literally three d world and they're shading, our eyes and our brain talk what it sends the signal is, it adjusts for that. So you will see the right color when when it's shaded.

The difference is this isn't a three d picture. This is just a two d picture.

But it looks like it's three d, so it tricks our eyes. So our eyes tells our brain, it fills it in and it changes the shading to our eyes. Yeah. Literally on the paper. And this guy argued with me, he was so mad. I said, here's what you need to do.

If you don't believe me, you can go find this picture. It's right. Optical illusions. It's a very popular one. Print it. Take a white piece of paper or anything, cardboard, cut out the size of one of those squares, hold it over a, and then hold it over b, and then after your brain explodes,

you'll know that you've been tricked. My point is that if you go back to the original, the the the full picture, this is what happens. A and B is the goodness of God. When we get in the shadow, we think it's changed.

We think it's changed when we're looking from the shadow perspective. God's goodness didn't change at all. God's good no matter if life isn't, But we need to see clearly. And you know how you get past these tricks?

Is by looking at God, lifting your eyes in worship. In worship. And I didn't know that would be such a fighty thing. If you wanna fight me in the parking lot afterwards you can. And then you won't be able to see anymore.

Because I taught Ollie how to punch.

And when you do this, you start to see even more clear. Because watch what happens next. He was comparing, but he was worshiped and so he realized God is bigger. He goes, God stop worrying about these people mocking him. That's bigger. His goodness is bigger than what I'm seeing right now.

And then his confusion was cleared up and he realized, I don't need to compare to them because I know the end of the story. Worship helps us not just see the middle, and we see the beginning. We see the duck and we see the rabbit. That's what it does. And what happens then is he's not confused

And when we honestly come in the presence, we can get to this other layer. There's another then. There's another then that worship gets us to that if we avoid it, we'll miss it. And that's his third one. Look at here in verse 21. He says, then,

then again, I realized that my heart was bitter and I was all torn up inside. I was so foolish and ignorant, I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.

He stopped talking about the problem of his envy and the problem was out there. And it finally sunk in that, oh, I had an issue in my heart all along. That's the real problem. You know, they call that deflection in psychology. We do it all the time. Something will

happen in a relationship with someone out there, something happened, could be this thing happened to me or these people over there. And you might not be wrong. Those people were wicked. That was a problem. But what was really eating them up was not so much what they were doing.

But it was easier to focus on them and feel this is unfair than to actually look inside. This happens all the time in marriages. Most of the time like when you get in a fight, you know, when when you wanna get fight and you deflect, what we do is instead of getting hysterical, we get historical.

And and what happens is, hey, your spouse comes like, I got a real issue with you on this. And our first reaction is say, well, remember three years ago, you did this or you did that, you did that. And it has nothing to do with your entire it's not even the same dynamic. It's something completely different.

What does me being a jerk to my wife and and talking, coming into the middle of a situation, how is that at any way connected to the fact that, well, you know, you were kinda mean to me last week. That might might need to be a conversation that needs to happen. But that is irrelevant to this. That's deflection.

It's a self protection thing. I don't wanna go there.

So I would rather make it about out there instead of anything in here. Worship if you honestly were especially when you sing, if you just disconnect, you look at God's truth, you embrace it, and you sing it out, and you start looking at God's word, and you get real. You bring that confusion.

You bring that bitter, that envy, and you own up to that, he will peel the onion back. And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, me. I got a problem here too. But we won't get there. Some of us we stop at only the part was, man, I'm an idiot. Like what he said. I must look like a stupid animal to you, God.

And that's what pushes away from worship. He like, every time you just go back and I'm such a stupid animal, I'm so dumb and I can't and and and it gets discouraging. It becomes Groundhog Day, doesn't it? Before

I preach a message, I let it preach to me. I was praying through I had a devotion. I wrote the I I went through Psalm 73 all week. And yesterday, it's my pre preaching time. And I was praying through it,

and and and I was just thinking about it, and I was thinking about this topic. And all of a sudden, realized I was sitting there and I just got really frustrated because I realized,

man, I've had one of those loops I've got into. It's called since since bad, but it was like it was just the way I was thinking about something, and it was developing an attitude. And I was just so frustrated with it. I got to that point that I admitted. I go, God, I can't believe I'm doing this again.

You ever get there? Or yeah, I'm gonna have this time with God. I'm gonna do what I'm supposed to do. I'm doing the right thing, but somehow my head and my heart, they just they did they feel like they're conflicting. I feel fake when I'm doing it because I'm like, you ever sat there and prayed, well, God, yep, here I am again.

Let's just same second verse, same as the first, a little bit longer, a little bit worse. I'm back at the same thing. When you keep having that same struggle over and over, and I was sitting there go, why can't why is this dumb little thing just keeps

coming back? Why why do I do this? I'm so stupid. I'm a dumbass. Was like, and God, I don't even know how I'm supposed to talk to you about it. Because I know the head the heart the head thing says the Bible says, I'll just confess and it'll be great and it'll be fine, but I know that's the right net thing, but why does my heart still feel like, why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep failing? Why am I so stupid? And why am I back here? This seems so repetitive and

so useless that I don't even know what to do. And I start well, I do know this. I know that I start promoting. I'm saying the right things. Then I go, now I think I'm just having a game with God. I'm like, am I just playing a game here? What's said, finally, God, don't know what else to say. I'm talking and I talk too much. That's one of my things I'll do. I'll just talk around a thing forever. And then I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do the one thing I do know in scripture I should do right now. Be still and know that you're God. So I'm gonna shut up God. I was literally in my pool by myself talking out loud. The neighbors probably heard me. They're like, stay kids, don't go near that house.

But I was like talking and I said, just gonna shut up. And I flopped onto one of those blow up things in the pool, just was staring at the sky. And you know what happened? Less than a minute later, just thinking, just saying, God, you're good. That's all I know and I don't know what to do. And all of sudden he goes,

how does he did you actually read verse 23 to the end of the passage? I I felt like he was not me. Was like, I I do. I know I read it because that's why it came to mind, but God, the holy spirit just pulled it up. And I'm like, wait, what? And I felt like go back and read 23

through the end of the passage again. You stopped it, you're a stupid animal. Like well once again God, I just proved it. And I go back and I read it and I started bawling. Yeah, it's repetitive. Yeah, here we go again. Yeah, but this is the point that God wanted to get Asaph to. He says, yet I still belong to you.

You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel leading me to a glorious destiny. Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart. He is mine forever. He says, those who desert him will perish,

for you destroy those who abandon you. But as for me, how good it is to be near God. I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do. He goes, get to the end of the passage. I know you're gonna do this. I know you're gonna have problems and issues

and I want you to bring it to me. I can't heal what you hide or avoid. I can't help you get through it. I can't help you give you hope. I can't help you in all that, and you're gonna mess up it. He realized, but yet I still belong to you and the wicked that I started off envying, they don't have you.

You know what he's really saying is? God, I finally realized.

Two things, when I get to the end of myself, I finally found the beginning of you. And then secondly, what God's perspective is when we go through stuff that's tough or unfair or hard, even if we cause it ourselves, we can come to realize that when Jesus is all we have, here's the gift. Here's the gift.

You finally find out he's all you need. Anything short of that, sometimes some of us, we're just that way. We will not learn to embrace that until he is all we have. And when you get there, the glory found on his side is like, why do I envy that? I don't need any of that stuff now. I realize I've had you the whole time.

You let me come back even when I mess up. You don't treat me like a stupid animal. You take my hand. That's what worship is. We're going back and remembering and we take it. God will put us there if we surrender,

if we're honest. He started to be honest and he brought his envy before the Lord in worship. And then he realized out of envy, he's like, oh, I was confused. And he brought the confusion before the Lord. Then he got clarity and saw the story. And at that moment, boom.

The doors opened, he realized this was something this was about something inside of me the whole time. The whole time. That's what worship does.

More basically, it's kinda like what this reveals. Every time we go through something tough and life bumps into us and and we struggle, it goes deeper. It's like if I'm walking along here and one of you guys comes up, hey, pastor Bill, and hits me.

I finally figured out how to avoid it. All the others that end up a wet t shirt contest in here. And then it spills. Now what's happening? The blame, I could really be kind of frustrated. I could be like, oh, what did look, look, look what you did. But what actually spilled was simply what was already in there.

That's what worship does. When life bumps us, what spills out of us reveals to us what was in us in the first place.

And that's what he learned. He had been leading worship, he'd been close to God, but in his heart what he really had done was distant from God. He had turned his relationship with God back into this contractual thing. When he says why was it even worth it, What does he mean? So all of your leading worship, all of your coming to Lord was all about you getting stuff.

The only reason you're envious in comparing is because you've already decided that's what you think. The deeper problem was he had the wrong view of what a relationship with God was. And that's why we need to worship, especially the singing part.

And that's why men have the biggest problem with it. Man, you don't not like music. I listen to your the first thing every car some of you are still like teenagers. Your radio is louder than the engine. You like music. What you don't like

is what the true presence of God is kneeling before, opening up and bringing your real self into the presence of God and seeing it in light of who God is and declaring the truth back to him. So you can go back to holding his hand

because we get stuck thinking, I have to fix this before I come. Because that's what we do guys. We like to walk into the middle of our story and say, I can fix this and then God will be happy. No. No. We need him.

That's all we need. And if you don't believe me especially about this worship part, I want you to listen to this story from a guy named Rob. And he had tough, life was hard. And then he had a realization. And if you listen in the middle of this story, he has a then moment. And that then moment was when he came in to worship.

Just watch this.

My name is Rob Fyle. Growing up, I wouldn't say that I we weren't spiritual. As I got older, I was basically just figuring things out for myself, and I kind of went on my own path. Fast forward to 2021, my wife and I, we were just we were fighting about everything. One night, things kind of really came to a head where

my wife and I were just screaming at each other and I was just over it. I couldn't stop thinking about how I just didn't wanna be I didn't wanna be here anymore. There was a handgun.

There was a handgun in the closet with me, so it it would have been very easy to just pull it out of the holster rack the slide and and just end it all right then and there.

Knock on the door. There's a Pinal County Sheriff's Office deputy there, ready to take me to community Bridges over in Mesa for suicidal ideations. But I think that there was there was something inside of me that said, no. There's this is this isn't the right way to do things. This isn't what this isn't your purpose.

You're hurting right now, but you're you're gonna get through this. I called Teresa to come pick me up. We talked about it on the ride home, and then we decided, you know, hey. We're gonna go we're gonna go into the 3PM service at here at Rock Point. And I'll I'll never forget when

when the lights went down, you know, the worship team was out there, and they started playing the opening notes to raise a hallelujah. And it was kind of right then and there when when I knew we were home.

Since surrendering my heart to Jesus, I think the one word that I can think of as far as how different life is is that it's a profound sense of peace. It's no longer on my shoulders. So once we realized that Rock Point was kind of our our spiritual home, along with serving in safety and security,

we got involved with small groups. We're currently in in home group right now. In addition to being involved in a home group, I'm also currently involved when I can be with Celebrate Recovery. I've been watching watching the change in my wife as she is

she's been involved with Celebrate Recovery and being involved in a step study and working the steps. I'm just watching the how much she's changed. It's it's just amazing to watch God work when you willingly surrender to him.

Man, wasn't that amazing? Oh my goodness. Yes. Praise God. Wait. One of the things he said when he was at one of his lowest moments and he came into church, Rob said they were playing a song, raise a hall gonna be that.

To so we're we're

able facing today, church, worship is our weapon to because when we worship, we take our eyes off our circumstance and onto Jesus. So let's do what Rob did and let's raise a hallelujah and praise real loud. Amen? Let's do it.

That's right. Beautiful. And in Psalm 73, there's a verse that sticks out to me, and it says, how good is it to be near God, for the Lord most high is my shelter. And when we gather, when we join in and worship, we are near to the presence of God. You know God says that he delights in dwelling with his people.

And so let's be reminded that the Lord is our shelter, that worship is our weapon. Whether we're in a breakthrough or a battle, God is worthy. So let's sing.

We

faces day and night and they're singing, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and who is and who is to come. And in this bridge we get to echo similar words so we get to join in with heaven declaring

that God is holy, holy, holy. So church, lift your hands, sing this in surrender, join in with heaven as we sing.

You

can have it all, God. You can have it all.

Thank you so much for joining us. So as you go into your week be reminded that even if this week faces challenges and even if this week may not be good, remember God is good and he is always worthy of our praise and he is always worthy of our worship. Amen? Amen.

Hey, we have a prayer room. If you guys need prayer or of any kind, we have leaders to my right, your left there. They would love to get a chance to pray with you if you should need that. But with that, enjoy the rest of your day. We hope to see you next weekend. We love you. Be safe. We'll see you next time.

Thank you so much for joining us for church online this weekend. Make sure to stay up to date with everything happening here at Rock Point on our social media or by visiting rockpoint.io.