Morning everyone. I hope that got you excited.
If you want to turn to your Bibles for Psalm 27, I'm going
to read it through for our scripture reading this morning.
The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my
life. Whom should I dread?
When evil doers came against me to devour my flesh, my foes and
my enemies stumbled and fell. Though an army deploys against
me, my heart will not be afraid. Though a war breaks out against
me, I will still be confident. I have asked one thing from the
Lord. It is what I desire, to dwell in
the House of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the
beauty of the Lord and seeking Him in His temple.
For He will conceal me in His shelter.
In the day of adversity. He will hide me under the cover
of His tent. He will set me high on a rock.
Then my head will be high above my enemies.
Around me I will offer sacrifices in His tent.
With shouts of joy I will sing and make music to the Lord.
Lord, hear my voice when I call. Be gracious to me and answer me.
My heart says this about you. Seek his face.
Lord, I will seek your face. Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger.
You have been my helper. Do not leave me or abandoned me.
God of my salvation, even if my father and mother abandoned me,
the Lord cares for me because of my adversaries.
Show me your way, Lord, and lead me on a level path.
Do not give me over to the will of my foes, for false witnesses
rise up against me, breathing violence.
I am certain that I will see the Lord's goodness in the land of
the living. Wait for the Lord.
Be strong and let your heart be courageous.
Wait for the Lord. Thank you, Laura.
For those of you who don't know Laura, Laura is our camp
director for the summer. You can be praying for her and
for the team as we get ready for camps that are going to launch
just in a couple weeks. Here we have seven weeks of
camp, tons of kids. If you want to volunteer, I know
Laura would love to talk to you. We can always use more hands as
we have the opportunity to bless families and kids in our
neighborhood. In case you can't figure it out
from the title, we're going to talk about the goodness of God
this morning and next week and next week.
Pastor Kirk is going to lead us as we talk through giving thanks
to God and we're going to celebrate.
As we celebrate on Celebration Sunday, we have so much to give
thanks for. One of the first prayers that I
learned was the just filled with theological depth and richness.
God is good, God is great, and we thank Him for our food.
Amen. That was probably the most heard
prayer that I heard as a kid growing up.
And, and it's good to thank God and his goodness.
But as we come this week, I want to address what I think is the
elephant in the room when we come to a topic like the
goodness of God. And that is, how good is God
really? Like, is he, is he really good?
I mean, it's one thing for us to say, right?
Some of you, you grew up in church settings where it was a
common refrain to say God is good and the people would
respond with all the time. Then we would say all the time
God is good. But is that true?
Is he really good all the time, even in times like these, Even
in times where missiles are flying between countries and
places like Iran and and Israel, in places like Ukraine and
Russia? Even when in this moment right
now, 3 million people are on the brink of starvation in Sudan and
South Sudan with almost 35 million in desperate famine
mode? Is he good even in the spaces
and times that we live in on this globe where there seems to
be so much that isn't good? Is he good even in my life?
Even when my marriage is falling apart, even when my kid has
given in to the demons of addiction, even when my finances
are a disaster, even when I'm struggling to figure out how to
put food on the plate and a roof over my head?
Is he good in that? See, we end up in this space
where we say, if God is good, why doesn't he do something
about and you can fill in your blank this morning because I can
guarantee you in this room, we all have a blank to be filled in
there. There's all a spot where some of
us are struggling with believing the goodness of God because of a
circumstance that's going on around us or a circumstance that
is going on in our lives and in our heart right now.
We say, if God is good, why? And I just want to say I don't,
I don't know why you're facing what you're facing this morning.
I don't know why God has allowed this chapter to be part of your
story. I don't know why you are walking
through this moment. But there's two things I know
and I am certain of. First, saying God is good does
not mean saying that what you are walking through and going
through is good. Those are two different things.
So I don't want anyone here this morning who is struggling and
suffering and walking through deep waters to hear me say what
you are going through is good. I do want you to hear this.
God is good all the time. That's the other thing I know
even in the times where your heart is doubting, even in the
midst of the struggle that you are going through, even as your
heart cries out, why? Even in the moments where maybe
even right now you're tempted to just shake your fist at God and
say if you don't fix this, I'm done.
I'm out of I'm out of here. In fact, I know listening here,
watching later, there are people in this space or who will hear
this message where you've got 1 foot out the door already
because you are struggling to believe in the goodness of God.
But I can say that God is good all the time because God's
goodness is not rooted in your or my circumstances.
God's goodness is rooted in his character.
That's what we mean when we say God is good.
This is the reminder that the Psalm, Psalm 27 that Laura just
read for us. It's a reminder of God's
goodness, not because of what David was going through.
In fact, Dave went through some terrible stuff.
We don't actually know where this is falling in David's life
because it could have fallen in so many places.
David was mistreated. He had horrible things happen
his life. He was the cause of some
terrible things that happened in his life.
He lost children. You think your family is a mess?
David's family was a train wreck.
David had 1/2 son who raped his half daughter.
He had another son who caused a armed uprising, split the the
Kingdom and tried to take him out.
He is his family was a mess. David knew what it was like to
live in not good circumstances and yet here he calls out about
the goodness of God. We see it in the words, right?
He's talking about the fact an army deploys against me.
Some of you feel like that's your life right now.
There's an army deployed against you're just up against it.
War breaks out against me. Some of you are in the thick of
conflict right now. He cries out, don't leave me or
abandoned me. Why does he cry out don't leave
me or abandoned me? Because he feels like he's been
left in abandoned. He feels lonely.
He feels in this all alone and isolated.
But despite his circumstances, David can cry out these things.
He's my light and my salvation. He he's my stronghold and
shelter. While the war is raging, well,
the armies are coming. He's my stronghold and my
shelter. Well, well, I'm I'm feeling
isolated, alone. What does what does David say?
I know the one who cares about me more than my own father or
mother, who will never abandoned me.
Knowing that the goodness is not about our circumstances, but
it's about the character of God himself.
It moves the if. Here's what I mean by that.
See, our natural tendency is to ask this question.
If God is good, then why? That's a natural question to
ask, but David's knowledge of God's character moves the if for
him. It moves it to here God is good
even if and moving that if makes all the difference.
And so my prayer for you this morning, whether you're here in
person watching online, you listen to this later, is that as
you have your eyes open to the goodness of God, as David had
his eyes open to God's goodness, that your if would move, even if
your circumstances don't change. The God would move in your heart
and give you the confidence and certainty of his goodness the
way he did. David, even when you're in the
midst of the storm, that you would know that despite the
clouds of the sun still shining, just struggling to see it.
And and here's why I want you to know this because some really
powerful things happen in our life when we have the certainty
of God's goodness. First is this when you know that
God is good all the time can make your fear take flight.
That's that's the the cry here of David in the 1st 4 verses.
Listen to these words again. He says the Lord is my light and
my salvation. Whom should I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life.
Whom should I dread when evil doers came against me to devour
my flesh, my foes and my enemies stumbled and fell.
Though an army deploys against me, my heart will not be afraid.
Though a war breaks out against me, I will still be confident.
If your person who is overcome with worry and anxiety this
morning, I just want to let you know you've got a big blinking
red alarm going off in your heart that is warning you that
you're struggling to know and see and believe in the goodness
of God. And I don't, I don't say that at
all as a judgment. We all go through that.
I'm, I'm saying this to you so you have some understanding of
where worry and fear and anxiety come from.
They come from a struggle to believe that God is as good as
God actually is, to be confident in that.
Sometimes the biggest enemy that we face isn't the enemy that's
out there, it's the enemy that's in here.
It's the fear that wants to overtake us when we struggle to
believe in God's goodness, right?
And and fear is not usually something that is a big struggle
for me to a fault. My wife will tell you there have
been a number of times where I should have a lot greater level
of fear so that I don't injure myself, hurt myself, do stupid
things to myself. It's not usually my issue, but
let me share a time when fear started to grab a hold of my
heart. Some of you may not know that we
were down in Florida when they began to shut the world down for
COVID and everybody was trying to figure this stuff out and,
and we were just about to enter into a leadership transition
here at the church. And so Pastor Kirk and I had
been talking and meeting the board of a meeting and the board
was just ready to tell the staff the plan to have Pastor Kirk and
I start into this new role and new position.
Everything starts to shut down. On top of that, Amanda is
immunocompromised and we didn't know what's going on with this
virus. And it seemed pretty clear that
any time that a virus comes out, she's at greater risk than
anybody else. We got all this stuff going on
and I'm starting to look and then I start to get bombarded
with emails and phone calls of people who are fearful on all
sides. And I just got to say everyone
was scared. They just showed it in different
ways. Some people got panicked, some
people got angry, but all of it came out of fear.
And as that's happened and IBM bombarded with this stuff, I
thought, Lord, what is going to happen?
What are we going to do? How do we move through this?
What do you do? What do you do when everything
seems to be swirling and it just seems to be going out of
control? You do what David does first.
You remind yourself of how God is good.
You tell yourself He's my light and my salvation.
But whenever you struggle to believe in the goodness of God,
you know what you do. Look at the cross.
You wonder how good God is. He's so good he bled and died
for you. You know where God is in your
suffering, running into it to rescue you and save you on the
cross. He's the stronghold of your
life. It's amazing how you don't have
to control everything when you have a firm confidence that you
know the one who's in control of everything.
Mind yourself. No, no, he's the sovereign Lord.
He's God. He speaks the universe into
existence, held in place by His power.
Every atom in the universe sticks together because of God.
If you're in Christ, even in your current circumstances, you
can know that nothing is out of control because God's in
control. Well, this God is my light,
right? There was two things as a kid
that would set me at ease when I was a kid, scared of the dark.
And that was one other time where I was often scared.
When I was a kid, I was scared of the dark all the time.
So if I woke up and I had a nightmare, I need one or two
things. First, turn that light on. 2nd,
if the light was going to be off, then I wanted my dad there.
I wanted my dad there because there's something about having a
dad who you know and trust and who's just bigger than
everything else, right? When you're a kid, man, there's
nobody bigger and badder than your dad.
And that's actually true for us as Christians.
On Father's Day, we got the greatest father of all, and
there's nobody bigger or badder than him.
Dad. I just want to say this to the
dad's side note. That's be the type of dad that
builds faith and confidence in your kids and their heavenly
Father. Be that type of dad.
You won't be it perfectly, none of us are, but be the type of
dad who can be counted on, who keeps his word, who protects his
family and his kids. So you got to remind yourself of
how God is good, but you also have to remind yourself of how
God has been good. David actually goes back to
another time in his life where he was up against it.
He said I had this time where my enemies, they were going to
devour my flesh, but God showed up.
In your own life, you need to be able to think back to the times
where it's been dark before, but God shows up.
He answers prayers. Remind yourself that the same
God who was good to me in the past is good today and will be
good in my future. I can think about this again
from my life. One of the things that I did
when I was in that space of fear, I was like, listen, we've
done the job transfer. I mean, one at one point Amanda
and I lived in like 4 cities in five years.
He got us through. We've done the job transition
thing. I, I know how to do this.
He's always been so good and gracious to us, and the entire
time that Amanda and I have been together, she's never been
hospitalized despite all the stuff as we should never had to
stay in the hospital. Brace God.
And I just, no, God's got this. He cares for her more than I do.
You need to remind yourself of God's goodness in your past, and
you need to remind yourself of God's goodness in the lives of
others because sometimes our stories feel like they're not
enough. And that's why a story like this
in the Bible, you can look at a guy like David.
You can see how God showed up in David's life and protected him
and got him through and say that God is my God.
He'll get me through. That's why it's so good to be in
community because we need people who will speak into our lives
and share with us and tell us about how we're not in this on
our own. They're praying for us.
God has shown up in their life. He's going to show up in our
life. He's the same God.
Next thing I want you to see, not only does it make fear take
flight, but knowing that God is good will change the way we
pray. I don't know about you, but my
first prayer when I'm up against it, when things are going rough,
is usually this. Lord, Get Me Out of this.
Lord, fix this, God. God cure this disease.
God, fix my finances. God, heal this relationship.
Get Me Out. And I want to say those are all
valid prayers. Call out to God, Bring him your
struggles. Cast all your cares upon him
because He cares for you. But listen to how David prays.
I've asked one thing from the Lord.
It's what I desire. Not to get out, but to get in,
to dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord, seeking him in his temple.
See, David realizes that the most important prayer is not
God, Get Me Out, It's God, let me in.
By the way, it's also a prayer that God answers yes to every
time, right? This is, this is our story.
This is the gospel story. Jesus came to us in our
distress, in our trouble, knowing that we could not make
it to God on our own. God comes to us so that we can
come into his presence through Jesus Christ, so that we can be
made right and made clean. We could never our work our way
to God. So God came down and did all the
work in the person of Jesus to save us.
Again, I say to you, we so often ask where God is in our pain.
The answer is He came down into it.
He's right here with us. He's doing the only thing that
can rescue us from it. When we accept what Jesus did
and choose to follow Him, the promise is His presence now
forever. His presence comes in the person
of the Holy Spirit. If you have called out and
accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit has come
down and is dwelling with you, and you are now the temple of
the Lord, and we collectively together function as His temple.
He takes up residence. His presence is there and so
foretaste of what it's going to be like forever when we get to
enjoy God's presence, the new heaven and new earth for all
eternity, just like it was back as God originally created it to
be with Adam and Eve in the garden.
And then this, He will conceal me in His shelter in the day of
adversity. Why do I want God?
Because when I'm with God, here's what I know.
He'll conceal me in His shelter in the day of adversity.
He'll hide me under the cover of His tent.
He'll set me high on a rock, then my head will be high above
my enemies around. When you are in it, you just
feel like you're drowning, right?
You just struggling to stay above water.
That's where some of you are, that you're just struggling.
And there's this picture of God just lifting David up and his
head is up high and he's he's floating.
So you aren't in this alone, and you will overcome, because if
you are in Christ, Christ is in you first, John 54 says.
Everyone who has been born of God, everybody who knows Jesus,
has trusted him as Lord and Savior, has been redeemed,
overcomes the world. If you're with Jesus and the
Holy Spirit is in you, the question isn't whether you're
going to get through this. The question is when are you
going to get through it? Because you will get through it.
You have overcome the world through Christ Jesus.
And what does this truth do for David?
It drives him to worship. Knowing that God is good all the
time will drive us to worship. He says I'll, I'll offer
sacrifices in his tent with shouts of joy.
I will sing and make music to the Lord.
What drives our worship as followers of Jesus is not that.
Maybe if we sing to the Lord, he'll help us.
Maybe if we sacrifice to the Lord, he'll hear us.
Maybe if we worship to Him, He'll answer us No, No, no, no,
no, no, no. We don't praise God so that He
will be good to us. We praise God because we know He
is good and because He is good, He will do good.
That changes our worship because all of a sudden we sing to
remind ourselves to be stirred up in our hearts about His
goodness. I want to encourage some of you
who who come in late all the time and kind of miss the
singing. Sometimes your heart needs a
song more than it needs a sermon.
Because sometimes what we need is in our heart, not just in our
heads. We'll we'll sacrifice because in
his loving kindness, in his goodness, we know that he has
sacrificed for us through Christ Jesus.
We'll worship Him with our whole lives.
No, not so that He would do something for us, but because we
know He's worthy of our worship. Now here's the thing.
No matter how deeply we know this in our head, in our hearts,
doubt creeps in for all of us. Doubt creeps in about the
goodness of God. You hear it here in David's
voice. Lord, Lord, hear my voice when I
call. Be gracious to me.
Answer me. My heart says this about you.
Seek his face. Lord I I will seek your face.
Don't hide your face from me. Don't turn your servant away in
anger. You've been my helper.
Don't leave me or abandoned me. God of my salvation, even if my
father and mother abandoned me, the Lord cares for me because of
my adversaries show me your way, Lord, lead me on a level path
don't give me over to the will of my foes for false witnesses
rise up against me breathing violence.
Knowing that God is a good God will comfort us in our doubts
when those doubts come. One of the reasons that creating
space in our lives to spend time with God on a daily basis to
create regular rhythms of spending time together with God
in community is so important is because we need to be reminded
our hearts and our heads right His, his heart says to him, His
heart says to him, seek his face and then he has to tell himself
I will seek his face. It is heart and will, and
sometimes it's the will to just show up at your discipleship
group, to show up at church, to sit down and open the Word of
God regularly on a Sunday or on a on a weekday morning and come
to Him in prayer. It's the will to do that that
creates the space for God's goodness to begin to work its
way out into your heart. Do you know that some of you are
here today because God is good? Because even though you didn't
want to come today, God drew you in because He knew you needed
this this morning, even when you doubted it.
You needed to know you are loved.
You needed to know you are not abandoned.
You needed to hear from the Holy Father.
He's faithful. You needed to know those things
and God in His goodness knew you needed them.
So He brought you here, and I'm not saying that that'll get you
through all the way to the other end, but it'll help you take
another step forward. If there's any part of you that
doubts God's love and God's care, I want you to hear that
God loves you. He cares for you.
Some of you, you struggle with believing the goodness of God
because like David says, even if my father and mother abandoned
me, so you have deep, deep father and mother wounds in your
life. And so every time something goes
wrong, every time things get iffy, every time it gets
chaotic, you had moms and dads who just frankly weren't good.
They weren't good moms that I'm so thankful.
We got so many good dads here. And I pray that God will
continue to raise up good dads here at Forward Church to be
great ambassadors for the Heavenly Father.
But some of you need to know that despite the fact that you
had a mom or dad that abandoned you, that wasn't good to you,
God's good. He cares, He loves you.
And even though you're in this right now, he's not done with
you yet. He's not going to give up on you
and He's not going to run away from you.
Even though my father and mother abandoned me, the Lord cares for
me. Do you know the best thing that
you can do when you're doubting God's goodness?
Two things. First, be honest.
That's sometimes a revelation of in churches, which is just the
dumbest thing. I can't say this enough.
This is the space and place that you can be real.
This is the number one space where we should be able to be
authentic about what's going on in our lives.
Be honest with God. That's what David is.
He's honest, man, lonely. I don't know if you care.
I'm down here, I'm struggling. What are you doing?
God? Be honest.
But then the second thing, lean in rather than run away.
So that's what that's what David does.
He leans in, he doesn't run away.
He comes in closer. And some of you are so close to
giving up on God today. God's not giving up on you.
Just keep crying out to him. Keep searching for him.
Keep showing up. Don't run away.
Let this be your cry like David's was.
My heart says this about you. Seek his face and then, Lord, I
will seek your face. Would this be the day where some
of you would plant a flag who are close to letting your feet
go out the door in a relationship with God and say,
no, I'm going to plant a flag. I will seek his face because
he's good. And then listen how this ends.
I'm certain that I will see the Lord's goodness in the land of
the living. We'll see where his doubts went.
I'm certain I will see the Lord's goodness in the land of
living. Wait for the Lord.
He's got to preach to himself again.
We got to preach to ourselves. You can't just have Pastor Kirk
or Pastor be preaching. You got to preach to yourself.
Wait for the Lord. Be strong.
Let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord.
I want to share with you, as we come to a close here, the story
of someone in our congregation who's been walking through what
it's like to find the goodness of God in the midst of
circumstances that aren't all settled.
And so this is Laura's story. You don't know you were on a
mountaintop until you're staring up at it from the valley.
I remember Christmas 2023. It was a normal Christmas.
I remember being at home Christmas morning.
My kids were spending some time playing with their toys and my
husband and I were enjoying the first Christmas where we could
have time to open our presents in peace.
I remember my dad texting me saying are you going to be the
last ones to arrive when you live the closest to us?
During a present exchange that year, I remember my
sister-in-law gave my mom a devotional titled The Lives We
Actually Have. It was 100 Blessings for
Imperfect Days. Little did I know how important
that devotional would be because 2024 was coming.
My dad's unexplained leg pain started to worsen in the new
year until I went over one Saturday in February and
recognized we were not dealing with just like pain.
He was facing the reality of cancer.
My dad went into the hospital around the first week of March
and would die at the beginning of May.
To explain my experience, imagine that there's a treadmill
that was going at top speed. When he was diagnosed, my whole
family jumped on that treadmill and started running.
At first we were keeping up, then we started to gradually
fall behind. With each stride I could see
that we were moments away from slipping off the back of that
treadmill and then the treadmill just stopped and my family,
minus my dad, were projected forward, falling into a big pile
on the ground. As a primary care practitioner,
I remember thinking, what is the point of doing what I do?
My dad was my number one patient and I could not keep up with it
all to save him. After my dad's death, my family
started to pick themselves individually up out of that
mess. We all suffered in different
ways and there was a lot of hurt and discord.
A family that the hospital was in awe of her being so United
was falling apart. By the end of 2024, my marriage
got its turn. My husband and I were at odds
with each other. I remember thinking, what did I
do to deserve all this coming at me from all directions?
My child, who I had had a traumatic birth with, started to
have lymph node swelling, which was the source of my dad's
cancer. I started to worry and become
anxious. I was experiencing trauma
stacked onto trauma. Then to add to even more
challenges in my life, at the beginning of 2025, my husband
lost his job. But in the words of my disciple
ship group, family but God. But God used my dad's situation
to shine a light into that hospital to minister to the
healthcare providers who were caring for him.
But God spoke to my dad early one Monday morning to tell him
to prepare to go to glory, and to allow him the ability to tell
us it was time for him to go see Jesus.
But God surrounded my dad and family with Christians from that
moment on to usher him into glory.
But God dissolved my fears about being a primary care
practitioner through a miraculous dream where doubt and
indifference were put in their place.
And His truth and His light shone through that darkness.
But God walked with me through those terrible days of family
discord by providing me with the fruits of the Spirit.
But God provided me with a Christian magazine article about
how dancing saved my marriage, prompting my husband and I to
dance ourselves back into the marriage God had planned for us.
But God walked with us through multiple medical appointments.
But God will provide an opportunity for my husband's
employment. But God sent me this passage on
my daily devotions one year after my dad's death.
Isaiah 4318 to 19. Do not remember the past events.
Pay no attention to things of old.
Look, I am about to do something new.
Even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the
desert. See, you can easily look at my
story and question why God didn't show up in a big way or
why does God not lift me out of this wilderness experience.
My dad still died, my family is still figuring things out
without him, my child's lymph nodes are still big, and my
husband is still job searching. But through it all I have come
to know that the question is not when will He Get Me Out of this
fire, but rather it is am I going to trust the One who's in
the fire with me? When I start to focus on how He
is showing up His daily mercies, I start to realize that all is
well if I just have Him by my side.
As the song Highland says. No less God within the shadows,
no less faithful when the night leads me astray.
You're the heaven where my heart is in the Highlands, and the
heartache all the same. Blessed is the one who trusts
the Lord. Jeremiah 17, seven to 8.
By the way, two days after, yeah, you and Claire, two days
after Laura filmed that her husband Matt got a job.
See how God moves your if when you see His goodness, remind
yourself today of who He is. Call out to Him to let you in,
even if He's not going to take you out of all the things that
you're going through. Don't fold, don't run away.
Plant your flag. Seek His face, and I am certain
that you and I will see the Lord's goodness in the land of
the living. Wait for the Lord.
Be strong, let your heart be courageous.
Forward Church, wait for the Lord.
Let's pray, Father, you are good, you are great, and we do
thank you for your food. We thank you for everything.
It's so easy for us, God. It's scared, simple people who
struggle to see the whole picture, who don't know the wise
to get frightened and to want to run off and run away.
God, would you convince us in our hearts today that.
The best place that we can be is in your presence, God.
Would you steady hearts that are shaking today?
Would you put your arms around those whose hearts are crying
out on this Father's Day? For those who have maybe lost a
father, would you let them know that they have not been
abandoned? You're there with them.
God help us to know your goodness even when what we're
going through isn't good. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.