Learn to Fear God

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

For this past Thanksgiving, my family and I took a vacation together. It was me and my family, my brother and his family, and my mom. And we all went to the beach. It was good to get away. It was good to hit the reset button. It was really nice. The best part, one of the best parts about it for me was being able to go out in the morning and I could just kind of look out on the Gulf, right? And we were in Galveston and so I'm looking out on the Gulf and it was just really cool to look out and sometimes you could see, especially in the morning, you could see these little pockets of rain. You know what I'm talking about? It's just like, it's so strange to see it, right? Because you see this rain in the distance and it's like a framed picture, right? It's just a square of rain happening in the way, way distance. And it's just kind of odd to see rain that way.

It got me thinking a little bit about rains. That was another time I flew over rain. I was in an airplane. We flew over a rainstorm. That was very strange. All I could see was kind of gray clouds. And every once in a while, the clouds would kind of part and you could see some different things. The same thing is happening, right? The same thing is happening in the distance. I see the rain there, but it's also under the plane. And those two experiences are even more different than how I normally experience rain. I normally experience rain by being in it, right? Or being in my house, right? And I see rain falling either on me or on a window or in my car or something like that. I usually experience rain from a different perspective. perspective shapes everything.

The vantage point that you have as you are experiencing something, it shapes everything. It shapes how you describe something. It shapes how you experience it. It shapes even how you value something. Your perspective, the perception that you have of these things can change drastically. Let's change it from rain to a coworker, okay? the actions of a coworker. So you notice this coworker is giving you short answers. You notice this coworker is in their office a lot, and you notice that this coworker has made it very difficult to get a meeting with them, okay? And it's just hard. And from your perspective, from your perspective, that coworker is detached and uncaring, aloof, doesn't value you, doesn't value your relationship. But maybe from the perspective of their supervisor, that coworker is hardworking, focused, hard to knock off track. And maybe even from the coworker's perspective,

it's different. Maybe from the coworker's perspective, they are overworked, they are depressed, and they are surviving. Same action, same coworker, same series of events, three very different perspectives. And when that is your perspective, that changes how you respond to it. It changes how you value their actions. Everybody's actions, everybody's, even value is shaped by their perception of something. Much of the Bible is devoted to the shaping of perception. Much of the Bible is devoted to the shaping of perception, or perspective, excuse me, I'm going to confuse those words today. It's going to happen, mark it down. Okay, we'll try to go for it, try to go for perspective, okay. When you look in Jesus' teachings, for example, he's teaching parables and those parables are adjusting people's perspectives. You see it in the church letters, right, to the Ephesians, to the Romans, it's saying,

look, you're going through a trial, but your perspective, here's what it actually is. like something that's useless, but it's actually something that's useful. Well, what is that? But perspective, right? The Bible is shaping perspective. In the Old Testament, in narrative, so stories of David and Moses, we see it, we see the story as through their eyes, but then we also see it through God's eyes. And usually those are two drastically different perspectives. Sometimes we even get a third perspective in there. The book that does it the most is the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs almost exclusively is trying to shape our perspective on something. Take for example, you can turn into Proverbs chapter 16, and it'll also be up here. Proverbs 16, just the first two verses. Let's look at it. It says, it says, the plans of the heart belong to a man, but the answer of the tongue is from

the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the Spirit. Do you see the shaping of perspective there? We notice here, there's two different perspectives going on, and the perspective most people have is that they believe that they can determine their own destiny. We all operate this way. We all operate like our choices have consequences, they do. Jordan Peterson, you know prominent thinker, he describes it this way, describes it actually as taking responsibility. Here's an extended quote from him. It says, to stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. And I made it a little bit bold. You can see it deciding, it's deciding to voluntarily transform something. What is Jonah Peterson saying?

He's telling us implicitly that we have the ability to shape our own destiny. He's assuming that. Many others have said something a little bit more direct. There's a motivational speaker named Brian Tracy and he says, quote, he says, you are the architect of your own destiny. You are the master of your own fate. you are behind the steering wheel of your life. That is the dominant perspective in all of humanity and it always has been. This is not new what we're talking about here. It always has been. Look at a couple more Proverbs. I'm just gonna skip around a little bit. We're gonna try to stay in 16 but we're gonna be kind of fishing around a lot. Proverbs 19 21 it says many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Look at the difference in those perspectives, right? You're a guy, you've got things going on, you've you know you got plans, you got things

happening, but those things won't stand. It's the purposes of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 16 33, this is the best, I love this one, it says, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. Casting lots Lots is like rolling dice. So casting lots, the quick version is there'd be a bunch of sticks, they're called lots, they're different sizes. You put them in your hand to hide which one's the shortest one and everybody draws a lot and whoever has the short one, you ever heard of getting the short end of the stick? That's where that expression comes from. Drawing lots is like rolling dice. So it would be like saying, the dice is rolled on the table, but it's every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs takes the mentality that we are the ones in control and it takes it head on. It says that God's plan determines our destiny, that God is the one that's in control.

And this really gives us perspective on Proverbs as a whole. really on what the book of Proverbs is about and look without without exhausting it I want to tell you three very important things about Proverbs that's gonna help you read all of Proverbs okay anytime you read Proverbs these three things are true it's gonna be helpful so think about it first and we've kind of we've kind of touched on this already that Proverbs gives God's perspective Proverbs gives God's give yeah Proverbs gives God's perspective that's a lot of S's in a row. Okay, a proverb in the Bible is actually, it's the same, it's the same word as a parable or riddle or comparison. Okay, so like Jesus's parables, proverbs, these things in here, they use comparison to instruct us. And God's perspective is wisdom. That's actually a really good definition of what wisdom is. is it's God's perspective on things, right?

So wisdom then is kind of the accurate assessment of how God created life to work. And that's why some Proverbs are saying, look, consider the ant, look at the ant, watch the ant work and you're like, what are you talking about? Why are we looking at an insect move a leaf? How are we finding meaning in a beetle pushing around a ball? How are we figuring this out? What he's saying is, what Proverbs is telling us, there is a way that God has designed life to work and we can assess that, we can draw understanding from that. And so the book of Proverbs then is a collection, it's an anthology of those kinds of comparisons and it's to teach us how to assess our lives accurately.

The second thing you need to know is that Proverbs provides guidance, not formulas. This is really important, okay? This gets confusing because sometimes people love to quote Proverbs 22:6. And I don't mind somebody quoting scripture, okay? But it's the way it's quoted. Proverbs 22:6 says, raise up a child in the way that he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Okay. I'll tell you what that is not, and then I'll tell you what that is. That is not a promise that if you raise your child in church, they'll become a Christian and if they aren't, it's your fault. That's not what that means. That's not. It's not a formula. What it is, is guidance. It's guidance on how children develop, right? When you start them, what you start them on is where their leanings are going to be eventually. I see this a lot with teenagers in particular where the parents have not trained their

kid to attend a worship service regularly, where parents have not prayed together as a family, where parents have not taught them the wisdom of the Bible. And what Proverbs is telling you is that those kids are probably, likely, they're not going to want those things when they get older. They're not going to somehow naturally snap into it when they become adults, that they're going to become like church-going, God-fearing people if you aren't training them up in that way. So there is a correlation right and Proverbs is talking about that it's saying look look there's some real consequences here But it's not meant to be taken as a formula that if you do x y and z then this will definitely happen because there are Exceptions on both sides you have great parents with rotten kids. I've met them not here

At least not that I would say I'm just kidding you also have trash parents Who with with terrific children like mine? Well, they have one trash-breaker. In both cases, in both cases, in all those exceptions, you simply have sinners choosing sin over the Lord. It happens. We have the ability to choose that. But if you're thinking that Proverbs 22:6 is a promise that you get to claim that you're like, no, no, I have I've drug my kid to church. They should be doing whatever I'm telling them to do, and then you start getting mad at God because he's not hold it up his end of the bargain that you're not reading Proverbs not really you're you're making that into some kind of promise formula and it's not that it's guidance Proverbs gives God's perspective Proverbs provides guidance not formulas and last thing Proverbs are intended for meditation they're intended for meditation okay this is actually much of the Old Testament much

of the Old Testament the reason it is it is three times as long as the New Testament. Okay, so your Bible right here, okay, this thing, three quarters of it is Old Testament. One quarter of it is New Testament. Part of the reason that that's true is because the way the Old Testament was written, it is ancient near-eastern meditative literature, okay, that's a long way to say that it's supposed to wash over you as you continue to read it again and again and again, as you keep thinking about it as you turn it over in your mind as you reread and re-listen to Noah in the Ark, David in Goliath, as you listen to Moses on Mount Sinai, as you listen to all these stories that you've heard Abraham sacrificing Isaac, all these things, all these stories, as you keep repeating them it's going to make sense differently in your mind over time. They wash over you, they erode

false perspectives and they give you God's perspective. It's to give you wisdom. That's what those things should do. It's how it was written. And so sometimes you might be reading Proverbs and it's in many of the book, many verses in the book are just they're detached from the other two verses that are right next to it. You just read it and it talks about all these different things and sometimes you can find a corollary and sometimes you can't. But what it's meant to do is it's meant to stick with you, stick to your ribs. This is what the New Testament is talking about in 2nd Corinthians 10 4 and 5 where it talks about destroying arguments and taking every thought captive. This is what Colossians 2 8 in the New Testament is talking about when it says don't fall for empty human philosophies. What it's telling you is that your mind is something that can be changed over time. Things can be

washed away, things can be built up, things can be brought in, things can be taken out over time. And so Proverbs then is like the tides of wisdom. Proverbs is like the tides. Tides come in, tides come out with stunning regularity. It is impossible to distort the tides. You can't hurry and bring the tide in. You can't make it come in faster. You can't take a broom and sweep it out faster. The tide is going to come in. It's going to come out. There's no shortcuts. There is just a wisdom to it, a regular, a rhythm to it that is undeniable, that teaches you. You can only work with it or against it. You can only work with it or against it. Over the next four weeks, here's my challenge, and we're going to get into this a little bit more, but my challenge is for you to meditate on the Proverbs. We're going to be preaching. On Sundays, we're going to be talking about Proverbs this week and the next three weeks, and we're talking about

four Proverbs for 2024. Now, they're not actual, it's not just one Proverb, but It's more like a repeated theme in Proverbs. But I would encourage you, there's 31 days in January. January starts tomorrow. 31 days in January, there's 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs. And so take a chapter a day. I want to give you two things to kind of help you through that. First, we have a church center app. On our church center app, there's actually a part of it that's Bible reading, you can find out more about that church center app in your worship guide. There's a little place where you can figure out what it is. But also with YouVersion, so if you use YouVersion Bible on your phone, you can set your church to South Burleson, and as you do that, it'll have a featured reading plan. That featured reading plan is going to be called, what did I call it? Oh, yeah, Wisdom from the Proverbs. I didn't

call it that. It's just wisdom from the Proverbs. Literally it is a chapter of Proverbs a day for 31 days. And if you are really, you know, like phone savvy, you do a lot of these things on your phone, well then start it up. You can get on YouVersion, you can find it there. It's called the Wisdom from the Proverbs. And like I said, you can find that on either one, but it's just a way to help you do that. I know a lot of you, like me, if you're like me at all, it helps you when your phone tells you to do something, okay? Just every day. It's just good reminder, okay? And so, as a church, we want to take advantage of that and that's a way we're gonna do it. So, like I said, these are big repeated themes in Proverbs that we're gonna meditate on. And today, we're just gonna take a little bit of time. We're gonna look at the first proverb for 2024 that we're gonna look at. And it is probably one of the more

foundational proverbs or themes in Proverbs and that is that we should learn the fear of God. We should learn to fear God. I understand whenever I say that phrase fear God, that's not like that doesn't bring up warm fuzzies. For some of you it might actually bring up some pretty painful memories or ideas that gets misused a lot. But in Proverbs it gets used 13 times. It gets used often in the book of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord. And it talks about it, every time it talks about it in a beneficial way, the fear of the Lord is a beneficial thing.

Proverbs 3, 7, it says, be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Proverbs 1:7, so basically the verse that sets up the rest of Proverbs, it says, "'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. "'Fools despise wisdom and instruction.'" Now, I don't, we could talk about the fear of God for hours, at least I could. It is a complex thing. It applies in a lot of different ways. What I wanna just help you kind of focus in on morning is that fearing God doesn't mean cowering away from God, right? Typically, when you're afraid of something, you avoid it, okay? You're like, hey, I'm afraid, you know, I have a good friend that I'm related to who's also my mother-in-law who is deathly afraid of snakes, okay? Deathly afraid of snakes. She's even afraid of me saying the word, okay? So it's just a real fear. Look, I don't love snakes either, so I'm just saying, if you threw a snake at

I'd still squeal. Okay, but when you say, okay, if I'm saying, you know, to my mother-in-law, if I'm saying, hey, fear snakes, she's like, got it, okay, I'm gonna fear, and the way she's gonna fear snakes is to avoid them at all possible costs. I mean, just if there's any snake, if there's a snake on TV, she's changing the channel. No snakes. Okay, all right. And so when we fear something, we avoid something. That is a very kind of hard association in our mind, right? I'm afraid so I avoid. Afraid, avoid, afraid, avoid. However, in Proverbs it doesn't mean to avoid God. It actually carries the idea of approaching God in reverence. Think about it this way. Think about you have a friend who is going to have surgery. Okay? And that friend says, hey, listen, I'm really nervous. I need you to be in the operating room with me. Okay? Now you're a good friend in this scenario. You might not be a good friend,

but in this example you are. Okay? You go into the operating room to be in the same place with this person who's having surgery and they're very nervous. Okay? So what do you do whenever you enter the operating room to observe the surgery? Well, you sterilize every inch of your body that is not covered by clothing, right? Or by protective gear. You sterilize everything. You wear, you put on anything they tell you to put on. I mean, they tell you to put on a clown, so you put it on, okay? You put on anything they tell you to put on. Because you are afraid. It doesn't mean you're avoiding the room, but you are approaching it in fear. Do you see the difference? You will obey the rules of approaching into that room because the stakes are high. If you go into that room and you've got some kind of contagious cough or something like that and you're not wearing protective gear, if you haven't sterilized, if you haven't

obey all the rules, then you might infect that patient, your friend. In fact, you think about that. Even as you're entering the room, you run that nightmare scenario in your mind like, man, I really hope that nothing, nothing comes from me that will get into that person. I really don't want to mess this up because the stakes are high. fear causing complications. You probably, if you're like me, you will fear bumping into the surgeon, okay? Like because I'm so, I'm usually so big and a little clumsy that if I'm in that surgery and there's not a lot of room for me to kind of be over here I'm gonna worry about bumping into something, you know? And so what I want you to do is I want you to think about it that way. You still enter the room but it requires your detailed attention. You don't want to mess that up. How does this look in the book of Proverbs? How do we fear the Lord? We got

to return to our verses that we were looking at before in Proverbs 16. I'm gonna read one and two again but I want to read the third verse with it. It says it says, the plans of the Lord excuse me the plans of the heart belong to man but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the Spirit. Verse three, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. Look a couple of verses further down in Proverbs 16:9, it says, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. Every, every picture that we get of the Lord God in heaven He is robed in majesty and splendor. He is worthy of our worship, even his messengers, even the angels. Do you know what people say whenever they, well you know what angels say whenever they meet somebody almost every time in the Bible? They say, fear not.

You're not going to die. Do you have any idea? I mean look, angels don't waste their breath. Do you have any idea of the personal interaction that's going on for you to approach somebody and they think they're going to die because you're getting near them? We don't understand that. That's not even, we can't even fathom that. The brilliance, the radiance, the beauty, the majesty, the absolute weight of something that holy, someone who is that pure, that radiant. It just, it just, it just undoes us And we just fall down every picture we get.

Jesus, whenever he's teaching his disciples to pray, what does he say? How does he start? He says, our Father, who's in heaven, and he didn't say give us this day our daily bread. He doesn't hurry up and get there. What does he say? He says, hallowed be thy name. You know what hallowed means? He's make holy, make holy. And so what Jesus says, he's teaching his disciples how to pray. He knows this is gonna get passed on. And what does he say? He says, you greet your father who is in heaven, which is a very endearing kind of term like father. It's not king, it's not judge, God is all those things, but Jesus opens with father. But then what does he say? Very soon after that, Hollywood be your name. God, your name is holy. Your name, the very mention of your name is holy. Make your name holy. When we fear God, we approach him correctly.

When we fear God, it's not that we hope that we don't mess it up, that he's going to kick us out, it's that we understand who we are approaching. We understand the identity of the person that we are approaching. Those things that, you know, if you were to meet your celebrity crush or the President of the United States or man, even a senator, like you're gonna like check the mirror. You know what I mean? You're gonna make sure your eyebrows are like, you know, okay and that your hair's okay and that you don't have anything in your teeth. You're gonna make sure that you are presentable in a basic capacity to approach someone like that.

And we are talking about the creator of heaven and earth. Fearing God sobers us into wise, living, fearing God sobers us into wise living. And this is why it says the heart of man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps. It's saying, it's saying, look, you want some wisdom? You want to understand God's perspective on this? Then don't just run off, make a plan, and then say a three-second prayer like, Lord bless it, and then just keep going. No. Take a second. Maybe more. Seek his face, sober up to his plan. Not your fanciful idea, not what you really want to do, not just what's convenient for you, sober up to his plan and let God establish it. There's a lot of wisdom out there that is a bit rogue about making plans. Louis Pasteur says, chance favors the prepared mind. Thomas Edison says, good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning. From God's perspective, prepare and plan all

you want. I must establish what happens. Right? Your plans are cute, but my plan is what's gonna happen, God says to us. And this is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, it's the beginning of wisdom. It's why, because when we understand, when we get that variable down, when we understand that it's his power, that his sovereignty, that his glory, his majesty, his purposes are always a factor. They're always there. They're always needed to be included in any kind of perspective on anything. We remember the Lord's plans are established. It's not to be afraid and run away, you see. It's to approach appropriately. And unless we think this is just God getting his way, this is just God being the big kid on the block. Because sometimes that gets passed around, right? That saying, well, you know, like God's really mean because he just wants his way.

Let me just say, even as we look at the Proverbs, It's here that God is not just, it's not just him getting his way, it's God giving us himself. Let me say that again. This is not just God getting his way. It's not just God saying, look, you plan all you want, it's my plan that works. I'm the big dog. I'm up here, you're down there. What I say goes, what you say, stupid. That's how we think sometimes. That's how we think of it that God's treating us. Like we think, oh, okay, I mean, he doesn't really care about whatever our plans are. He doesn't really, no. He's not just getting his way, he's giving up himself, giving us, excuse me, giving us himself. I wanna look at three more Proverbs. Proverbs 16 six. So we're a lot in Proverbs 16, if you wanna just kind of review Proverbs 16, this is gonna be, it's just a good way to kind of help remember what we looked at today.

Proverbs 16 six says, by steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for. And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil. Look at verse 17, says the highway of the upright turns aside from evil. Whoever guards his way preserves his life. Proverbs 8 13. So we're jumping around a little bit. Says the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil are perverted and perverted speech. I hate, God saying he hates that. God establishes his plan with our protection in mind.

God establishes his plans with our protection in mind because you could ask and then you'd be right to do so. You could ask why does God care about our sin at all? Just bother him? Just thwart his plan? Isn't what he said going to happen still going to happen no matter how I respond to it? Why make a big deal out of my sin? Why atone for it? Why even encourage us to turn away from it? It's not as though whatever we're doing has any bearing on reality, any bearing on God's plan. Why? And the only explanation is because He cares for us. It's because the way of evil is death, pride, perverted speech, rebellion. It erodes us. It erodes our ability to love. It erodes our relationships, our ability to experience grace. It perverts our mind. It even perverts our self-perception. Sin ruins us quickly or slowly, but it never does you any favors. The reason that the Lord God in heaven is passing these provers, passing this wisdom onto us

is not just to tell him, or excuse me, for him to just tell us a to-do list. He's giving us his heart. The Lord is protecting us. And when we learn to fear God, it cultivates a heart like his, a heart for God. We are given Proverbs to cooperate with the tides of wisdom. And in that process, we discover God's heart. Fearing God and learning to do so is a bit like LASIK surgery. Okay? If you think about it this way. No one is signing up for how LASIK feels. Okay? Nobody's signing up for that. Nobody wants a laser pointed at their eye. Okay? Like it's not, I've heard it's not fun. I don't know if I'll ever do it. I think glasses are a great alternative to getting surgery in my eye, but whatever, it's fine. I know enough to know it's not fun, that it hurts, that recovery is slow and painful, but at the end, your vision is corrected. At the end, it is something where you are able to perceive things more clearly.

Things are less confusing for you. Reading the Proverbs is like a lassic. hurts. It really does. But in the end, in the end, you don't just see what's good or bad. You don't just see what's black and white. You don't just see what's lazy or not. You also, in addition to all that, you see God's heart in it. I want to give you three ways. I want to leave you with three ways to accomplish that. To accomplish meditating on the Proverbs, discovering God's heart. I just want to I'll give you a little bit to do that. The first, I just want to encourage you strongly, commit to reading the Proverbs in January. Commit to it. It's December 31st, okay? So you have all day to decide and make plans, okay? Got a whole, I don't know what's left of the day, like, you know, 18 hours. So take a sec, just in your heart, decide. Decide to read the Proverbs in January. one chapter per day. So we're talking 10 minutes tops. Okay, I'm a slow reader, 15

tops for me. Okay, and if you need a way to do that, there's the, we have the wisdom from the Proverbs plan. You can get on the church center app, or you can get on YouVersion and set South Burleson Baptist Church as your church. My encouragement, like we were talking about before, you want to let those tides of wisdom just wash over you, just on repeat, just ready to go. In fact, it might even be helpful for you to read it yourself and then even as you're going to work, you know, on YouVersion and there's lots of other apps that can do it, it'll read the Bible to you, just all out loud and everything. And so you can do that, you can just download the book of Proverbs in particular and you can just listen to a chapter of Proverbs on your way to work. If you have a 15 minute commute, it's great. It's even less, even less time than that. And usually it's a

British guy that sounds pretty great, right? I don't know who that guy is, but he's awesome. I want him to read anything to me. And so that's my encouragement. Let the tides of wisdom wash over you, right? Do that in January, okay? And look, I'm not promising magic here, okay? I'm not saying all your problems go away, but I am saying you will feel, you will feel your perspectives beginning to change. You will feel false narratives beginning to erode. You will begin to wake up in new ways. This is what the Lord does through His Word. So commit to reading Proverbs in January, a chapter a day. And if you forget what chapter you're on, just think of what day it is in January, and that's the chapter you read. Okay, application number two. Lay your life against the proverbs. As you read proverbs, lay your life against them. The word parable in Greek paraballo, it means to throw beside. Okay, so a parable, it's

something thrown beside something else to teach for a comparison, right? And so proverbs are the same thing. They're a parable, a riddle, a comparison, something for you to learn from. And so my encouragement as you're reading the Proverbs, begin to lay your life against them and begin to ask questions of yourself. Am I acting the fool? Am I acting like the wise man? Am I acting like a sluggard? How wise am I living right now? What rhythms am I walking in? Right? What What am I leading my family in? What am I doing at work? What are the rhythms there? It's humbling. It's painful. It's like a lasek. It's not fun. That's not a fun chore. That's not a to do that you couple with other really difficult to do's. Do that with some fun ones. But it is 100% worth it. Sobering, sobering to fear the Lord. The third and last thing, as you read Proverbs, pray to see God's heart in the Proverbs.

Pray to see God's heart. It might not have occurred to you until now, but tides are not, they're not a rescue. Tides, the tide, the actual tide, the tide that rolls in and out, the tide that we see right there going in and out. There's actually some pretty terrible stories about being taken away by the tide, right? And so when I talk about the tides of wisdom, look, I don't mean it as fuzzy or fun or nice. These tides are tough. They can be a whip.

In fact, if you read Proverbs and you read about the tides and you aren't cooperating with the tides, Proverbs tells you what awaits you. injury, failure, death, loss, needless suffering. The tides aren't this place of grace. They are, in fact, a bit merciless. But if you let them humble you, if you lay your life against them, then you begin to find there There is deep comfort in the fact that God owns time, space, your career, your family, and your weekend plans. There is deep comfort in that. That we should fear God, but we should not avoid Him. That we should understand that He's in control of those things, but that He has a plan that's good in them. Not just something to be run from or something to hide from. Because his perspective is unlike ours, his perspective is complete, total, holistic, nothing is missed by him. He holds it all and his heart is good. Do you hear me? It's probably no surprise

to you that God is in control of everything or that he owns time and space and your career and your weekend plans, but it might be a surprise, even if you kind of knew it intellectually, it might be a surprise to help you understand God's heart is good, that he plans good things for you to enjoy, he plans good works for you to do. His heart is good and he works it as a blessing.

I pray, and I'm gonna call the band back up, I pray that as you read Proverbs, As you let those tides of wisdom kind of wash over you and change your perspective, I pray that you would begin to fear Him and to trust His heart at the exact same time. I pray that you would learn to fear Him, kind of respect Him for who He is, but also trust His heart. I pray that you would do those things at the exact same time. And as we enter into a time of response, I just want to encourage you, Just how is the Lord calling you right now to put your future in his hands?

Spoiler alert, it's there anyway, okay? It's there anyway, but the Lord in his kindness, he says to us, look, all those plans that you have, all those things, all those big decisions that you're kind of mulling over, all these, you know, like do we have another kid? Do I need to move? Do I need to retire? Do I need to, how do I need to approach this situation? How do I confront this person? All these things, all these big decisions the Lord is calling us both to fear him and trust him at the exact same time. That he wants to use all of that in your life.