[SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Amen Well the morning friends happy 4th July happy 250th That's a pretty awesome thing Our the Lord has given us a beautiful country full of beautiful people and we should be grateful
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Jeff Saladin.
[SPEAKER_01]: I serve as a lay elder here at Citizens Church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I know many of you, but I don't get on the stage very often.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I am on the stage, it's typically at one of our monthly nights of worship, or maybe at a member meeting, but I don't get up here a whole lot of the Sunday mornings, but it's a joy to be with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, to a little bit of a little bit of housekeeping here, our church is an elder-led church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Under our bylaws, it says that a majority of our elders, we have staff elders and we have lay elders.
[SPEAKER_01]: A majority of our elders are lay elders like me, which means I just have a regular job.
[SPEAKER_01]: live here in Plano, work in Dallas, I run an investment fund, that's what I do during the day, and I'm kind of the old guy here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been in the saddle in this role longer than any of our other elders.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been serving here in this role for for 12 years, almost 12 years, and it's been just a joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been one of the greatest joys of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: to serve with you, to live in community with you all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our gathering here today, you should know, is an answer to prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only mine and my wife Allison, but so many people, we're gonna be in Psalm 107 today, but before we get there, I wanna just set the table a little bit on kind of my story because I just wanna make a couple of points before we get going.
[SPEAKER_01]: 2007, August of 2007, I've gone to work for a publicly traded investment bank that I really loved and we were living out in Orange County, California, which is where we're from and we like to say that we moved to Texas before moving to Texas was cool by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we were out there, it was August and my company comes to me and they said, hey, we got a great offer for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: January of 2008, once you moved to Dallas and we'll let you manage all of our businesses in the central time zone, and I went home, told my wife, we talked about for about five minutes, no joke, and we said let's do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem was, we didn't know anything about the state of Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know anything about Dallas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew about a TV show,
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know the Fort Worth was wide over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd never heard of Highland Park.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know of any of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: All I knew is I was telling Jam in this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: All I knew is that the football team wasn't that good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all I knew.
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
[SPEAKER_01]: True, true, true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know a soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know a soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: We moved out here, intimidated by the Bible bells.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know what was going on, but we knew the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: We felt like the Lord was in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moved out here in January of 2008.
[SPEAKER_01]: Didn't know where we were going to go to church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our first visit actually was to Christ church across the street.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were just moved here to play, no, we didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my brother had podcasted this guy named Matt Chandler one time and he was like, hey, I think this guy's in Dallas or somewhere nearby, you should go check it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in February of 2008, we've been here a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: We show up to the village church.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've all the way up to Highland Park, Highland Park, Highland Village, Highland Village.
[SPEAKER_01]: See?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've all the way up to Highland Village from Plano and from the very beginning we were like, we're home.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're home.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we show up in February at the village, and we show up to our home group in Jennifer March, and I start attending
[SPEAKER_01]: elder lead prayer meetings that we would have once a month on Wednesdays I would drive up there Allison was at home with the kiddos or little kiddos they're bigger now but I would drive up there because I just love being with the Lord I love praying and we would you know we'd worship together and then we'd pray and we'd pray for our missionaries and we'd pray for our youth group and we'd pray for all the things to pray for but in my heart my mind kept on going back to Plano we're driving all the way you know 30 whatever minutes up there
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could not get Plano out of my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I and several others started asking the Lord, what if we were able to put a village church campus here and Plano?
[SPEAKER_01]: What would that look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just kept on praying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we prayed that for a year and a half, and the Lord's answer was, we'll give you campus in Dallas.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the church opened up the Dallas Northway campus and it was a five minute closer drive for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we started attending the Dallas campus in September of 2009.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would go down there, I worked nearby, and I would go down there for their little prayer meetings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my mind kept on going back to playing a Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us a campus in Plano, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see what you want to do here where we live.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Lord was very gracious.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we prayed those prayers for four more years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Until about Q1, you can tell me a corporate guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Q1, Q2 of 2014, one of the pastors down there approached me said, hey, guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: We think we've got a location in Plano.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would love for you to join us on the Elder Board.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's how it happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I ended up on the Elder Board.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we launched this campus in 2014, and it's been an utter joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to make two points of that story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to know that your presence here no matter how you came in here, whether you're a member, whether you're a visitor, whether you're just bored and you pulled into a parking lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you got here, it's not an accident, it is not an accident, there have been people who have gone before the Lord to ask him and I'm not putting myself up on the pestle because somebody prayed for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: to be at Highland Village and somebody from Highland Village, someone from, you know, Baptist Church is going back hundreds of years prayed for the next one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the fact that you're here is nothing short of a powerful expression of the sovereign love of our Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you should know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, number two, I just want our story to just be a very simple case study of the Lord guiding ordinary people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just a dude working in a job, trying to walk with Jesus, trying to be a decent husband, trying to be a good father, right, and the Lord laid these opportunities before him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I often say that if you had to told me, growing up in Orange County, California, that someday I'd live in Dallas, work in finance, and attend the Baptist Church.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd say you're crazy, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I am grateful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So today we're going to be in Psalm 107 and what Psalm 107 really is is four case studies, four stories of how God's love works in the lives of human beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you're going to see here, I hope and I pray that you will see great, amazing counter cultural and challenging stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: that encourage you and me towards a powerful encounter with the Lord this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm gonna make four observations and we'll make our way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Observation number one, God's love rescues the wanderer
[SPEAKER_01]: God's love, rescues the wanderer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about love for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love is a tricky concept for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody loves to talk about love, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The Beal said that all we need is love, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We love to talk about love.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love to talk about how God is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is every single one of us has problems with love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every single one of us have been betrayed by someone we loved, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: How many of us were told by a friend or a lover or a parent that they loved us?
[SPEAKER_01]: only to betray us or drop the ball or sell us down the river or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have hurt because of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We put love on this pedestal, it hurts now what?
[SPEAKER_01]: When we hear that God is love, we just begin to project our experience of love on to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we might say that love means never having to say you're sorry, or love means follow your heart or whatever it is, but we just end up projecting our hurt on to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do that so often.
[SPEAKER_01]: But friends, here's the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's love is not like our love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our experience shapes our view of love, but God's love is perfect and steadfast and holy-look at verses four to nine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some wandered in desert wastes.
[SPEAKER_01]: finding no way to a city to dwell in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.
[SPEAKER_01]: been they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love for his wondrous works to the children of man.
[SPEAKER_01]: For he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul, he fills with good things.
[SPEAKER_01]: This first story describes wanderers, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So my first question to you today is have you ever been a wanderer?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever wondered through a season of life?
[SPEAKER_01]: I certainly have.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I dreamed of being a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I dreamed of being a prosecutor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to put the bad guys in jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: I go to college in LA, met my wife, get married, we go to the Northeast, I go to law school.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get accepted into the special program.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before I'd even graduated from law school, I tried over 50 cases for a prosecutor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I put, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of criminals in jail for a while, it was great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved every minute of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a competitive guy, it was intellectual.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a former football player, and I loved the combat, so to speak, that we experienced in court.
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: By graduating 2002, I went to work for a large West Coast city prosecutor's office, and I failed the bar exam.
[SPEAKER_01]: not necessarily the end of the world, it happens a lot, but then I failed it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then guess what, this is right from 9-11, a recession hits and all new hires are let go, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I never entered a courtroom ever again.
[SPEAKER_01]: From 2002 to 2006, I was a wanderer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ended up passing the bar exam and I ended up practicing law, but I was miserable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I elevated my career to this level that it just couldn't deliver what I was asking you to deliver.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had, although I'd love Jesus since I was a little guy, I had somehow boom, put this career,
[SPEAKER_01]: over in my affections, more than my Savior, it's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt apart, right, was I worth anything without this career?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, God loved me enough to give me what I thought I was best at, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So here I am, all self-condemnitory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on top of that, I'm looking at our culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our culture doesn't deal well with wanders.
[SPEAKER_01]: You never get a chance to like, figure out what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're like, a 17-years-old, they're like, oh, I guess it'll be an engineer, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody knows when you're 17-years-old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but we do that all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: How many of us have had a relative, or someone in our community who's bounced around a while, those people don't get the interviews, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: We could talk about being desensitized to the wanderings of others, whether it's someone getting out of the military, or maybe someone who's been recently divorced, or maybe someone who's recently retired, or maybe whatever, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being a wanderer is hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what can we do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse six, the wanderer.
[SPEAKER_01]: They cried to the Lord and their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, when we find ourselves wandering like this, what do we do?
[SPEAKER_01]: We cry out to the Lord, and what does he do?
[SPEAKER_01]: He delivers us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He delivers his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what God's love is like.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows what we're going through, and he's attentive to our needs, and he responds and we cry out to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: After all, Jesus' family wandered to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They escaped Egypt to avoid a genocide for crying out loud.
[SPEAKER_01]: And later, Jesus said, he goes, I've got no place even to lay my head.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a wanderer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was homeless.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows what it's like.
[SPEAKER_01]: So friends, if you find yourself wandering today, do what verse six demonstrates, cry out to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Write in the midst of your distress, and let God guide you in deliverance.
[SPEAKER_01]: So point number one, God's love rescuers, rescues the wanderers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Observation number two, God's love redeems the sinful.
[SPEAKER_01]: We say we love redemption stories, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm a child of the 80s.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember Michael Jordan.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was the greatest, probably, you know, in terms of the public consciousness, probably the biggest athletes in Spadebrew, his father's tragically killed, murdered, and then Jordan's like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so for several years, you know, I don't think like a bull's fan or anything, but for several years, you're like, man, basketball world's not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: George is not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, it's not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually he comes back and we celebrate these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do document, we have documentaries on this type of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We celebrate this redemptive moment, but then there's other parts of our culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hates redemption, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever your kind of social enemy might be, what's that category of person that just drives you crazy?
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be someone on the political spectrum?
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be you don't like younger generation or you don't like the older generation of I've got a friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't like doctors doctors He goes doctors mess everything up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to go see a doctor, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my time But it's but right who who is your who's your kind of social enemy?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that person were to be redeemed from something right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you even celebrate it?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know Well, let me tell you this
[SPEAKER_01]: God views redemption very, very differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: God loves to redeem the guilty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Severs is 10 to 16.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death, prisoners in the fliction and in irons.
[SPEAKER_01]: For they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the most high.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we bowed their hearts down with hard labor.
[SPEAKER_01]: They fell down with none to help.
[SPEAKER_01]: They made cry to the Lord and their trouble and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, for he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts into the bars of iron.
[SPEAKER_01]: These people were guilty.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had rebelled against God and their rebellion had landed them in jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever been guilty?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever found yourself bound because of your own sinful behavior?
[SPEAKER_01]: I have.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse 13, they cried to the Lord and their trouble and he delivered them from their distress friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what God is like.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves and redeems even the guilty.
[SPEAKER_01]: All those people I put in jail back in law school, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The drug dealer, the drug and bar fighter, the addict, the pimp, the thief, God loves them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves them all, and all those times your sin has bound you in addiction or sexual deviance or your own lies, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: God loves you.
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter what the condemnation that we feel from ourselves or from the world, because of what we've done, God redeems us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He puts our hearts back where they should be, which is right next to his.
[SPEAKER_01]: He makes the wrong things right, he puts a new song in our mouth, and we get to sing beautiful verses to his character in glory, praise the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, if you find yourself bound by your own sin, do what verse 13 demonstrates, crowd to the Lord right now, right in the midst of your bondage, and let the Lord redeem you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So observation number one, God's love rescues the wanderer, observation number two, God's love redeems the sinful,
[SPEAKER_01]: God saves the fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you may remember our sermon series on Proverbs from a couple years ago, and in that series, we identified three kinds of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: You remember where they were?
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one was the fool, which is someone who trusts only in themselves and rejects wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two was the simple, someone who lacks experience and maybe is negligent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number three, the third person that we talked about was the wise, and that's the person who fears the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here in verse 17 through 22,
[SPEAKER_01]: for 17, some are fools in their sinful ways, and because of their nicotine suffered affliction, they loved any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death, then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let them faint the Lord for a steadfast love for as wondrous works to the children of man and let them offer sacrifices of Thanksgiving until of his deeds and songs of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord saves the fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I once knew someone whose family battled chronic illness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that illness was made worse because the terrible diet that this person consumed, and he literally said, even if it kills me, I'm going to eat what I want.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's willing to give up on his life because of what he wants on his plate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this in pastoral care situations where a husband
[SPEAKER_01]: might say that he's willing to give up on his marriage so that he can be with his mistress, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And while it's true, these people are fools.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been there too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasted so much time money and energy chasing all types of things through college and through those law school years, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's been so many times I'm like, Lord, you don't really know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, and I'm gonna go over here.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a fool I have been to spend my affections on anything else, but Jesus, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: My career was important, but it's like number five on the list.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe 10, I don't know, not number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what hope is there for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: What hope is there for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're walking foolishly, Severs 19, they cry out to the Lord and their trouble and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what God's love is like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite our best efforts, he doesn't give us the cold shoulder.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves us even when we've done the most foolish things.
[SPEAKER_01]: He saves us even when we've done the most foolish things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So friends, if you're living foolishly, do adverse 19 demonstrates crowd to the Lord right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Write in the midst of your trouble and let him save you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So point number one was God's love rescues the wanderer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, was his lover deems the sinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number three, his love saves the fool.
[SPEAKER_01]: The final observation is a God's love rescues those who are trapped in hard circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever found yourself in hard circumstances despite the fact that you did nothing wrong?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you did everything to stay healthy, but the disease can't got you any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, maybe you started a business.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because of nothing you did wrong because the economy shifted or there's a regulatory change or whatever it is, unexpected turn your business fell apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have experienced both things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think chaos looked thing about it this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think cancer said every generation of my family going back three or four generations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not like we're smokers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it just happens, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I too have experienced business filter, a failure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come from a family of entrepreneurs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And several years ago, I helped a friend get a business off the ground and lasted for a few years, but it ultimately crumbled under things that were outside of my control.
[SPEAKER_01]: This stinks.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really stinks.
[SPEAKER_01]: It stinks to have all your ducks in a row and things fall apart anyway, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's weird is that we think, you know, it always surprises us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think we can get all of our ducks in a row and that somehow we're gonna hit cruise control, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to think this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it explains why we spend so much money on our kids' sports and how our kids apply to 20 colleges.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll be trying to get everything just right thinking that circumstances will fall our way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is some truth to that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I praise the Lord that my parents started to business in 1987 and is still going strong today, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're always one phone call away from seeming destruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: But look at Versus 23 to 32, someone down to the sea and ships, doing business on the Great Waters.
[SPEAKER_01]: They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works and the deep, for he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.
[SPEAKER_01]: They mounted up to heaven, then they went down to the depths, their courage melted away in their evil plight.
[SPEAKER_01]: They reeled and staggered like drunken men, and were at their wits end.
[SPEAKER_01]: You ever felt that way, I have, then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them back to their desired haven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love.
[SPEAKER_01]: For his wondrous works to the children of man, let them extol him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, this passage is very comforting to me because these people did nothing wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one verse says, their evil plight, but that just means they're in a tough spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: These people, in this example, this case study, they were skilled business people.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were applying their trade, making the earth productive as God to design them, and yet even they felt victim to a broken world.
[SPEAKER_01]: They did nothing wrong, but they found themselves in brokenness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what did they do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
[SPEAKER_01]: They cried out to God, they didn't have to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They could have continued to try and sail that ship to the storm, but how do we think that would have played out?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They recognized the power of the storm, and their weakness, and they called out to God for help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, God knows about your circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows about your health issues.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows your bank balance.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows that your boss is abusive.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows that you're struggling to stay in that program at school.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of these things are lost on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So cry out to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do what these sailors did and cry out to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He rescued these sailors and he will rescue you as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So four stories, four observations,
[SPEAKER_01]: God rescues the wander, redeems the sinful, saves the fool, rescues those trapped in hard circumstances.
[SPEAKER_01]: What commonality do we find across all four of these stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: Two things, there's probably a lot, but two things stand out to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, humble people call out to God, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two, God responds with love and power, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, so where are we in these stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you in these stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll be honest with you, Jeff Saladin is everywhere in these stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still wander at times.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is sin that I still struggle with, even after decades of walking with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am so foolish at times.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't control the weight of a broken world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm when you're elders, guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully, this is the reality, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Weekly at times daily, I cry out to God to rescue me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get irritated at times with my own wanderings.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get irritated with my own judgment with spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: If only I were going to agree with me within the world be so much better, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's just not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: A better path is delayed before the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know this also.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has rescued me again and again.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I can brag on our steps program for a minute, our 12 steps program, I've been through it twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went through back in 2012 and had a lot of stuff to go through.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went through it again in 2021, a lot of stuff to go through.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll tell you this.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2021, I look back on my journal from 2012.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord had dealt with so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a miracle.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't over all the anger from my childhood, but it was nowhere the beast that had been.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord rescues his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord has rescued me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, the most valuable expression of all of these things is Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because Jesus wandered,
[SPEAKER_01]: We get directions from his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because he was willing to play the fool on the cross, we get the wisdom of his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because circumstances turned against him, we get the favor of his father.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Jesus, we find all of these attributes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, friends, where are you in these stories?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you battling?
[SPEAKER_01]: I encourage you, cry out to your loving father.
[SPEAKER_01]: cry out to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows he loves you.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sent his son for you, his son endured the shame and the pain and the humiliation of the cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet he rose from the grave.
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows cry out to him, friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cry out to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna wrap up here in a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll have people up front to pray with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that doesn't work for you, show up your home group and confess to them and pray with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have time for that, show up to steps on Wednesday night.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a lot of avenues for us all on these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the Lord keep His promises to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, Lord, I thank you for what you have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're so generous to us, Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: May we be faithful in what you've given us.
[SPEAKER_01]: a man if you.