Songs of Summer: Psalm 27

My name is Russ. If we haven't met, I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm going to start with a confession. All right, so it sounds serious, right? For a pastor, it's serious. Here's my confession.

I am bad at praying. Now you're wondering why is he a pastor if he's bad at praying? And I don't mean like the public prayer thing. I've done a lot of that. I mean, the get off by myself, be alone, just me, just God, focused, time with him.

Lots of reasons why it's hard for me. One of them is my brain doesn't work for me and I'm cautious about this, but I'm assuming it's a safe room. So I'm gonna tell you what I mean by this. There was a day where I walked in, this is about 10 years ago, I walked into a big worship room like this, alone, and I had a chance to just pray. And it over the stage in this church was a giant, I mean, huge wooden cross hanging above where I'm standing right now.

It was hung by two cables holding the arms. And I sat down somewhere out there and I thought, well, I'm just going to sit here and God, I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to reflect with Jesus about his sacrifice on the cross for me, right? Good way to pray, right? I was going to sit and reflect on the cross and what he's doing.

And I do not know how long I was sitting there before I realized, here's what was going through my mind. If I was Batman, that's where it starts. If I was Batman, I'd have to throw two batarangs at exact precision to hit both those cables. So that cross would come down a perfect 90 degree angle and crushed the pulpit. And some of you are like, what is wrong with that guy?

Right? But there's like a couple of you who are like, I get this guy, right? So I'm here for you. I'm here for you, right? This is what I battle, right?

The kind of things that are at work when it comes to just being alone with God. Because the hard part is I'm not just alone with him, I'm alone with me, right? And this is what happens. So if you're like me, I have good news for you. Because while I'm not good at praying, really, in the last five years or so, it's been the recent part of my life, I've learned how to pray because it turns out prayer is a skill.

It's the kind of thing you can develop and get better at. It's not just a thing you have or don't have. Here's the thing, a few things that help. Three things. One, my friend Jan. My friend Jan is the kind of person for whom prayer comes way more naturally.

So I asked her, I said, can, can we just pray together regular basis? Because I just need to see what it looks like. So she became a model for me and it's been for the last since. Since 2019. She and I and a couple other friends will log on at 7am on Wednesdays and for 30 minutes.

I'm on zoom and I am praying with Jan and a couple of other friends. And I never thought I would say this like being in my. So if you're over 50, is it your sixth decade? I'm only asking for a friend, not me.

Being this old and coming to the place where I can say this and mean it. It is the fastest 30 minutes of. Of my week. It's praying. So one was Jan. Two was something I'd read by a guy named Dallas Willard.

He had suggested, hey, take a couple of passages of scripture that are just thick and let those be rails. Like, you know, a train goes on rails. Let those be rails that you're pray. You pray on. And so the Lord's prayer in Psalm 23 began to become rails for me for prayer.

And what happens is I can always find back on that rail now, right? So Jan, those rails. And the third thing was this. I started to spend a lot more time in the book of Psalms because while this is poetry, while this is music, it is prayer.

So much of the Psalms is actually someone like David or whoever's writing or on behalf of the people. They are words that are interacting with God. It's the beauty of the Psalms. It's not so much about God as it is inviting you into how we can experience God. And so these Psalms have become crucial for me.

And I know if you've been coming, you know, we've been hanging out in the book of Psalms over the past, past, I don't know, almost two months. Right. And what I hope has happened for you in that is that you can find in that an invitation into interacting with the God behind it. Right. And so maybe we can find that today in Psalm 27.

This is where we're spending our time. We're going to walk through it. I'm just going to make a couple of observations as we go through it, and they're going to come down to really one verse and one thing. And so the Psalm 27. Here we go.

The Lord. This is David writing, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, man. Stronghold of my life.

Of whom shall I be afraid? Of whom shall I be afraid? So David starts out here with, who? God is the stronghold of my life, right? Where are you safest inside your stronghold?

And then he sounds so confident, right? Who should I fear? It's like he's saying, there's nothing out there I need to fear. And if we ask that about ourselves today, can we so quickly say, who do I have to fear? What do I have to fear?

I came across a survey about just simply ask people, what are you afraid of? And there were lots of things on the list that aren't like. I mean, there were things like snakes and sharks. Some of you. I say sharks.

Third one, Clowns. Some of you were like, oh, yeah, clowns. I know one person that's specifically clown feet. I don't know why, but that's the thing. So.

But I was entertained by other things on the list, like identical twins feet. Just feet, not clowns feet. And men with beards and so knees, carrots, potato salad, all on the list, right? So we might list these as irrational fears, right? You may be afraid of sharks, you may be afraid of sharks right now, but you're pretty safe at the moment, right?

But we do not need to come up with things to be afraid of, right? Like, because the truth is there are things in our lives that are scary, right? There are dangers in our life, whether we look around us and in the world we particularly live in, right? Whether it's global and the increase of war in the world to what's going on just in our country around us, to as we begin to look at institutions and leaders and see corruption to the economy. Like, there's lots of stuff.

But even if we narrow it down into our own lives, right? Even at the core of, what if something bad happened to somebody I love or to me, right? Or what happens if I run out of money? Like, I can just keep this list going. I don't want to, right?

Because you know what it is for you. But we are surrounded by real danger. So fear is a real thing. There are things in our lives to be afraid of. And that was true for David, too, as he's writing this Psalm, verse 2.

When the wicked advance against me to devour me, there are wicked people who want to devour him. It's my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall Though an army besiege me he's besieged, right? My heart will not fear the war break out against me. Even then I will be confident. David is not being dramatic when he writes this.

He's literally on the run. And we don't know when he wrote this, but it could have been in the season where King Saul was out to get him and there was an army posse out to kill him and he was on the run. Or it could be later in his life when his own son. His own son was threatening his life and chasing him around the countryside trying to kill him. He has real enemies, right?

There are real things. And it's good to notice that he's not writing this from the safety of the palace, because the next stanza, just the next verse, if you pull that out, it looks like, oh, my gosh, he's just sitting around, like, safe in his palace, his feet up, a little latte next to him, you know, journaling his prayer here. Because it's just this beautiful thing. But to recognize he's writing it. He's not writing it from the palace.

He's writing it from a cave on the run. Here's the verse. One thing I asked from the Lord, this only do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

You pull that out and you're like, gosh, it's so beautiful. But then you realize, no, he's writing this when his life is literally on the line, and he says one thing, just one thing that I long to do that I seek. One thing that I seek. Now, the word seek is like, it's more than just wanting a thing, right? Like, I might want to be yoked, right?

For some of you, that means buff, right? I might want to, like, muscle up, and yet I may want that. But am I seeking it? Am I doing the things to achieve that, right? That's the seek part.

Seek is no, I'm going to do the things to get there. I seek to be where God is, right? And notice, where is God? He says to be in his house. It's temple language.

There isn't a temple yet. His son Solomon will build a concrete temple at this point. It's a tent. It's a tent that is in and among the people. But it's his house in the neighborhood, right?

Like, hey, you live here. I live over here. And that's God's house over there, as they understood was where God was most present on earth, right? God is everywhere. He's present with everywhere.

But he was most present on earth right there in that place, in that tent, ultimately in that temple, right? And David says, I just want to go be where God is, and I want to gaze on his beauty. There's a key here that I think is helpful and we'll come back to. Because the core question we're asking today, because David has real fears around him, and yet he talks about having confidence. He talks about.

He talks from a place of feeling secure and safe. And that is the question for us. How can we cultivate and live out of a place of inner peace even when there are real things around us to fear, Right? David keeps writing. He says, for in the day of trouble, he will keep me safe in his dwelling.

He'll hide me in the shelter of a sacred tent, and he will set me high upon a rock where I'm safe. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me at his sacred tent. I will sacrifice with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the Lord. And then he makes a turn, does this often in the Book of Psalms, where he's no longer talking about God, he's talking to God.

What do we call that prayer? Right? He turns to prayer. Hear my voice when I call, Lord, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says, if you seek his face, your face, Lord, I will seek.

Do not hide your face from me. Hear how direct that is in prayer. Don't hide your face from me. Think about the Psalms. That.

That I find hopeful is that boy. We can pray with confidence and desire, and we don't have to. We have to always be polite in our prayers with God. David says, don't hide your face from me. Don't hide your face from me.

Don't turn your servant away in anger. You have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me. God my savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.

Teach me your way, Lord. Lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes and for false witnesses rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations. So where does David go when he's overwhelmed? He prays, right?

And in his prayer, if you hear it, it's as if he's reassuring himself what's true. The Lord is my stronghold, reassuring himself. It's preaching to ourselves, right? That God is as good as. As he has been already in our lives and that we believe he is, I remain confident.

Verse 13 of this I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, not the dead. The living wait for the Lord. He says that word wait is connected to hope. Hope for the Lord, wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. So where do we find that?

How do we find that in the real stuff around us, the turmoil that is often in our lives, either personally or just broadly and culturally? How do we find and cultivate a way of having an inner tranquility, a peace, a hope that can support us and sustain us no matter what is going on around us, that we too can be confident, like David is confident here? And again, I think it's going back to that passage. One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord. The word dwell, we'll see in a minute.

Jesus uses the word abide. It's the same thing connected to, with, right. To live with, to be with, to be connected to all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. It's good to know, is that that word temple, like there's a trajectory to it. In other words, I describe that as the temple was where God was most present on earth.

Here's what happens. That word temple or that idea of where God's most present on earth begins to change. So when Jesus shows up, at one point he says this thing, he's like, look, the temple will be torn down and I'll rebuild it in three days. He's not talking about the concrete temple, he's talking about him. And he's talking about crucifixion to resurrection.

He refers to himself as the temple. In other words, when Jesus shows up, he is where God is most present on earth, right? And you can have breakfast with him. Here's the next move. Because by the time you get into the next generation, this first generations of Jesus followers, and as it begins to move, the language of temple moves from Jesus to you.

Don't you know that you are the Lord's temple? In other words, the Holy Spirit now lives here, Christ in us. The hope of glory, right? That as the Holy Spirit can enter into us, as we enter into life with him, that we together as the church, and therefore each of us, we are where God is most present on earth. Earth.

So when David is on the run, hiding in a cave and going, man, I just wish I Could get to where God's most present and he settles. If I can't get there, I'll pray in the cave. We are where he's most present, right? That God has come to us. We don't have to go to a house, right?

That we are where he is most present at every and any given moment. It's beautiful.

So what David does is all the fear around him. And what he does is he says it's just getting to God, to seek him, to see him, to be with him. And what if that's possible for us too? Like, what if getting to God, being with God like that, if it resulted for him in the ability to say, I am confident I can wait on the Lord, right? I have an easy spirit, knowing that I can count on God.

What if that's possible for you?

What if that's possible for you? And in all the things going on in your life, what if it's possible that you can experience a little more peace in life? What if it's possible that you can be a little more relaxed in the face when stuff is a little crazy? What if it's possible to have less stress in your life not by removing it, but by not experiencing it in the same way? Right?

Because here's the thing. What. What David did, he's not the only one. Jesus did this. And as a people who want to follow Jesus, to allow him to train us to be like him and do what he does, we see what he does here.

There's Mark 1:35. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Luke 5:15. Yet the news about him, Jesus spread all the more so the crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus, how often?

Just often, right? He often. It was a routine for him. He often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Jesus did this.

Did Jesus have things to fear just like David, just like us? He had the bulk of his family who didn't support him. He had his closest friends turn on him. He had people who were literally scheming and plotting to kill him and succeeded briefly. The last word's important to note, right?

Did he have things to fear? Absolutely. And yet he was the kind person who could be taking a nap in the boat when there's a storm that's about to kill them because he's the most relaxed person around. And what is he doing over and over and over again? He's going off by himself to Go be with God.

And then he looks at us, his people. He's training to be like him. And he says, I am the vine, you are the branches connected, right? Remain. If you remain in me, that we remain.

It's also the word abide goes back to dwell. We're back at Psalm 27:4, right? If you abide in me, if you remain in me, if you get connected to me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

There's the invitation, right? If you want the kind of fruit to rise out of your life like a unnatural peace in the face of hard, hard things. Where do we go? Go to God, right? So how does that work?

Right? So if that's the case, like, how does that actually work?

I think it has everything to do with who God is. Where did David start? He said, the Lord is my stronghold, right? There is something about God that makes it possible to go. If I can trust him, then everything else is going to be okay.

So the psalms have these themes that they're just running over and over and over again, right? It's almost a little like, I don't know, DJs. Well, but it's almost like a DJ where you're putting different songs on and you're returning back and forth to similar beats. He's just kind of. The psalms are kind of playing over and over again these same themes.

One of them is life is hard. I mean, the thing with the psalms is that it is just honest, right? And so as you get into the psalms, you can see that enemies are real. Like here, heartache and grief is real, or regret and shame. Those things are real.

It doesn't pretend. But more than that thing in the midst of that thing, that life is hard. It's hitting these other notes way louder. And these notes are saying that God is good and God is able and he wants to help. Hear it.

God is good. God is able, and he wants to help. If you think about every Sunday we have sat in a psalm, is that we can count on him, we can depend on him, that he is our shepherd, because God is good, he is able, and he wants to help. This is happening over and over and over again. And if God is like that, I can go to that God and that'll give me more and more confidence that whatever's going on in my life, I'm going to be okay because he's got me.

So a metaphor that really helps me think about this comes from a guy named Henri now. And he's a Spiritual writer, writes on spiritual life. And late in his life he had this unusual friendship he made with a troop of trapeze artists. This is not them. This is a different troop going back to like 1907.

That's how old this picture is. But the image itself helps me. Right, so you've got two different kinds of artists here. One is the Flyer. Any guesses which one that is?

Easy, right? The other one's called a catcher. Right?

And everything is about the catcher here. So what's interesting is Nouwen makes this friendship with this troupe and he gets talking to them about what it's like to be a trapeze artist. And the leader of the troupe was the Flyer. His name was Rod or Rodleigh. And so Rodleigh starts to talk about what it means to be the Flyer.

Here's the stuff he says. He says, as a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher.

The public might think I'm the great star of the trapeze. But the real star is Joe. That was his catcher. He has to be there for me with split second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in a long jump. The secret is that the Flyer does nothing and the Catcher does everything.

When I fly to Joe, I simply. I have to simply stretch out my arms and my hands and wait for him to catch me. Wait on the Lord, hope on the Lord. Do you hear this? He says the worst thing the Flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher.

He says I'm not supposed to catch Joe. It's Joe's task to catch me. If I grab Joe's wrist, I might break them or he, he might break mine. And that would be the end for both of us. He says, I love this.

A flyer must fly and a catcher must catch. A flyer must trust with outstretched arms that his catcher will be there for him.

How does it work? It's all about the catcher, right? Like you want a catcher who is good and able and wants to catch you, right? So if instead of that man, that was a five year old kid, arms stretched out, five year old really wants to catch the Flyer. Are you letting go?

You will not because you're too smart, right? Because you know, doesn't matter how much that 5 year old wants to catch me, he doesn't have the strength to catch me. You're not letting go. He's good, but he's not able. If that catcher is John Cena, muscles to spare.

But he's on his phone. Are you letting go? No. Why? Because he may be able to catch you, but is he good?

No. Right?

You need a catcher who is good and able and who wants to help you, right? Over and over and over again, the psalms are going, just try him out.

Just try them out. Because he is the kind of Lord who is the stronghold of my life, right? It is all about the catcher. How did Rodleigh learn to trust Joe? He got to know him, right?

If you're a flyer, do you want to know what the catcher's like? Do you want to know their character? Do you want to know who they are? Absolutely. Because I'm going to trust my life to you.

I'm counting on you to catch me. I need to know you. How do you know somebody? You spend time with them. Jesus goes off by himself, alone.

What's he doing? It's not because he has to go do that. It is that time with God, where he is, where God is the source for him, right? Connecting and pouring into him, raising, strengthening, affirming who he is, giving him strength, encouraging him so that he can step back out into the world with confidence and trust and peace. This is where it comes from.

So I'm bearing witness in this. As I mentioned earlier, that window of time where I started to learn how to pray, I. It was also the season where I lost my job. Probably it may have happened to some of you, but it was one of those things where. Where I worked couldn't afford all of us.

And so I was one of the. One of the people who wound up being out of a job. And so being early 50s and kind of going, what do I do with my life right now? Was absolutely one of the most disorienting times in my life trying to figure things out. What's next, where's next, what things gonna happen and how am I gonna pay my bills?

From that came a window of time in my life where I lived like a missionary. And what I mean by that is I raised my own salary. And I started to do that in February 2020.

Think about it. What happened in March?

Everybody is disoriented. I'm not just disoriented. Everybody's disoriented, right? Everything got weird and confusing, and I did not do a great job at raising my funds for my salary. Here's the thing.

God paid my bills for the next two and a half years. This is not the fruit. I'll tell you about that in a moment. But this is what he did in that window. Like, more than that, I saved more money in those two and a half Years than I had in the two decades prior.

But I will tell you this, man. There were days, sometimes a week here and there where I felt real panic not knowing how I was going to pay for things, right? But what God was doing in that window, as I lived in that space and I was slowly raising the time and quality of just being with God in my life, he began to expand my capacity to trust him in the midst of that.

Can't tell you how good it is to come through things like that. And it wasn't even coming through it. It's just continued to be in this place of, okay, I'm going to trust you to take care of things, right? Because I got to know the catcher. And the more that I got to know the catcher, the more I was like, okay, I can't.

I can. I can trust you with this. And to be able to go to bed at night not knowing how you're going to pay your bills the next day, but able to go to bed at night and sleep. And sleep well, this is the thing. Like, I started saying I'm bad at prayer because I recognize that I'm not alone.

And that for some of us, prayer results in us just feeling guilty because we don't do it enough, right? Can we just take that and move it off to the side?

Because the invitation from God is this. It's not, man, you should feel guilty for not hanging out with me. It's. It's what we're missing out on when we aren't with him. Mostly today, man, I'm just giving testimony to.

And it's not new testimony is David's testimony from thousands and thousands of years ago that God is good, God is able. He wants to help you, and you can relax because he's there. And in that window of time, I learned to pray, I learned to trust, I learned to fly. Here's the thing. I didn't know how much I was missing out on by just continuing to hold on, right?

You don't know how good it is until you trust him. You can't know how good it is until you let go and how you can be in midair. And part of you thinks I should be a little concerned right now. And yet your eyes are on him and you know you're okay, right? And he's got you.

He is able. He is good. He wants to help. So everything I'm saying is just simply this. Go get alone with God.

Go be with him. Like, whatever the obstacle is for you, get it out of the way. Like, he doesn't care. He just wants to be with you. Like he has moved through history to you being the place where he's most present.

Eugene Peterson wrote a book on prayer. The two word title is worth the price of the book, Answering God. That's it. What's prayer? It's answering God.

He started the conversation, right. I just joined in. He's coming to you, so get with him. So I also recognize that in large part I mentioned earlier, large part reason prayer was hard for me is I didn't really know how to do it well. Right.

And so that's where Jan came in. Hang in with her. And so I am bringing to you, maybe it was handed out to you out there like this. My friend Jim was ushering over here and he was calling a coupon to God. And so it's not that though.

I really admired it and it was really well done. On one side are some extra prayer resources. You can find some simple things to help you pray, from websites to, to the YouVersion app, to a book that I like a lot. But it's this side, praying at the end of the day. And so I just want to invite you to actually put into practice something.

Here's the thing. We want to be people who Jesus says at the end of the sermon on the mount, he says, you want a life that's solid and found it like a man who builds his house on a rock. What do you do? Hear these words of mine and do them. So we've had a great chance to hear and to listen, just inviting you in to respond.

So I did this this week, just a five minute pause. the end of the day, I set a reminder on my phone that literally says, remember you want to pray. Because I don't always remember what I want to do, especially at 9 o' clock at night. Right. Some of you are like, man, my day just starts at 9 o' clock at night.

I get it. Whatever time for you works, right? But at 9 o' clock at night, over this past week, when that thing has popped up, I've just taken a pause from whatever I'm doing and I've simply said, okay, God, what? When today did I feel close to you? When today did I feel far from you?

When today did I feel joy? When today did I feel pain and hurt? And that gives me time to go, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm so sorry and I need your help. And then I would flip open my calendar for the next day and look what it's had.

And I would Just go, God, I need your help. I need, need your grace going into this day. And grace is just all the stuff that God does for us that we can't do for ourselves, right? And that's it. It's been good.

It's been simple. And I said I was gonna do it this week, and I did it five out of six days. You want to. You don't want to know who I was on the sixth day, right? Because I didn't nail every day.

And again, if that's an obstacle, relax, right? And so I invite you. This is right in front of you. You can set it up. You can put a reminder in your phone like I do on mine, so I have to think about it.

And there it is. Get with God. That's it. Get with him. Because here's the thing, what he wants to do in the quiet.

It's beautiful to come together like this. But in the quiet is where he affirms who you are. You are his beloved son, his beloved daughter, in whom he's well pleased. He wants to strengthen you. He wants to encourage you.

He wants to give you everything you need to step back out into the world. And the fruit that can come out of this isn't the money you save in the bank account. It is love, joy, peace, right?

And it's all because he is good and he is able. And we, David, didn't have this. We do. On this side of the cross, we have the clearest example of who God is. Is God good?

He is good enough to sacrifice Himself for us? Is he able to, through that sacrifice, to take the worst thing we ever did, kill God, and to make it the best thing possible for all of us? Right?