David // Rest in the Promises of God // Pastor Josh Evans

Okay, about 15 of you. Aren't you thankful for his mercy today? All right, there we go.

There we go. And no, I am so grateful for the mercy of God. And let me just remind you that there's not a person in this room who's not in need of the mercy and grace of our Lord and Savior.

Everybody is in need of it. And so no, regardless of how you came into this room, you can leave here covered by the mercy and grace of God here today. I'm thankful for that and excited about today. I wanted to celebrate one thing. We have something we've been talking about for a while. We have Starting Point is happening tonight. And I'm really looking forward to hosting families within our church.

And I believe we have nine families coming tonight to Starting Point. And I believe that's something we should celebrate as a church. And it's always exciting to see how God is bringing more people into our fellowship here at Union Grove.

And I'm really excited about that. Well, listen, believe it or not, last night, the Lord changed the direction of my message. And so we were supposed to conclude with David. But if you would take just a second, turn in your Bible to the Book of Revelation. We're going to talk about the end of the world. When Duke and Carolina play in a Final Four game and your pastor is a Duke fan and we lose, we are going to talk about hellfire and brimstone today. So I hope you are ready. The end of the world is near. Let me tell you, repent, change, judgment is coming. And and I want you to be on the right side. OK. And no, I am I am just just kidding. And I will say this.

I said this. I mean, I feel like, man, I don't know why God brought me back here is honestly what I've been asking over this last month. And I've literally prayed. I'm like, God, is this what you had in store for me?

This is not the biggest trial I've ever been through. And now I'm just playing. And so. But no, if you are new, new to our church today, I'm just going to tell you, I'm an NC State fan.

OK. And I'm just kidding. And I am a huge sports fan. And and I have learned with sports that I can I can take a loss.

And I and I it's painful sometimes, but I can I can definitely take a loss. And my family grew up there. I'm like the only one who pulls for Duke and my whole family and all of them grew up NC State fans. And so I don't know how I became a Duke fan, but I have. And and so so I understand.

So we've been a family who's experienced the valleys in our in our day. And I know I appreciate the fun that we can have about that. But if you seriously now, some of you are really in Revelation. All right.

And that's a joke. I'll ask for forgiveness for that later. And you can go to Second Samuel, chapter 22. And we are going to conclude our series on the life of David here today.

We've been in this series over the last several weeks. And and I don't know about you, but I have been blessed to study in his life. Every person in here can relate to the life of David to some degree. The highs, the lows. And he experienced them all.

And but yet even in the lowest of the lows, he still felt and was under the grace and mercy of God. And and I'm super grateful. And you can also be in that same boat. I want to tell you, though, kind of where we're going, just I want to encourage you to be back next week and to continue coming over the next several weeks. We are going to start a new series next week that I want you to be a part of called I am. And it's going to be on the I am statements of Jesus through the book of John. And and I'm really, really excited about what God's going to do through that.

One thing I will say this, because I know you guys are usually sitting in the seats. Now, if you if you teach a Bible fellowship class, you're going to understand what I'm about to say. But one thing that I love is being able to study and share what what God has given me. And so what's interesting is I get excited about every series that we do, because before I get to preach it to you, he's been able to preach it to me numerous times. And and so I'm just telling you over the next several weeks, I'm excited. He's already speaking to my heart about this series. And I want you to be here.

And it'll be a challenging series, but also a very uplifting series. And so be here next week. But Second Samuel, chapter number 22. As we conclude, as we conclude the series on the life of David, just to kind of fill you in, because I understand that if you didn't grow up in church, you might not know everything about David's life.

You might not know bits and pieces. And and so Saul was the king of Israel and he did evil in front of God. He disobeyed God. And so God rejected Saul. He went to the prophet Samuel, said, you've got to find another king. And so Samuel headed down to Bethlehem, in fact, and found in the house of Jesse, found young David, the shepherd boy, the boy who wasn't even invited to the party when the prophet showed up. The prophet shows up at Jesse's house. He brings all of his sons in. And and so they're all standing there. And and then he forgot about his youngest son out in the in the field.

Let me say this. If you're the youngest in your family, how many of you have siblings that are all older than you? You're the youngest. OK, so this just put yourself in that that situation.

You've probably been left out at a time or two in your life. And that's how it was for David. He wasn't even invited. And Samuel goes through all of his sons and he's like, do you not have any more kids? Jesse's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about the youngest.

Can't be him. But he brings him. And sure enough, that's who God wanted to be, the next king of Israel. He gets anointed to be king.

Some time elapses. He defeats Goliath, which is what most people know King David for. And then Saul tries to kill him numerous times out of his pride and envy and jealousy. And and David escapes that are God delivers David through throughout his life.

You can see the hand of of God on David's life. And and then after David had become king and things are going well and and he could do pretty much whatever he wanted as king. He was in that position that he could do what he wanted. And he could tell everybody underneath him to do what he wanted them to do. He should have been at battle.

And we learned about this recently. Should have been at battle. And he ended up staying back and and just chilling. And he sinned with Bathsheba and they ended up sleeping together, had a had a child. And he ended up putting Bathsheba's husband Uriah at the front of the battle and ended up killing him. And so now you got David, who's this incredible warrior anointed by God. And he's going to do some incredible things for God. Now he's an adulterer. Now he's a murderer and he needs to fall onto the mercy and grace of God. And he finds that.

You see, David's life had a lot of ups and downs throughout it. And honestly, isn't that all of our lives? Let's just be let's just be honest. I think that's everybody in here.

If I was to go and we're not going to do it because I'll probably embarrass you. But if I was to go throughout here and we were to all listen to every detail of your life, the good, bad and the ugly. Let's just be honest. We all in here have some good moments.

We have some bad moments and we have some ugly moments, some moments that you wouldn't even want to share with anybody in this room. And that is exactly where David found himself. Here in Chapter 22, we find a psalm that David wrote. And it's actually very close to what is written in Psalms Chapter 18.

And I know Bob referenced that earlier. And these psalms really go hand in hand. But we find David writing as if he's at the end of his life. And he is sharing some wisdom and some gold, really, just on on life in general. And I want you to think because I think that this would help us understand as we read through this incredible passage here in Second Samuel, Chapter 22. I want you to think that, you know, we probably were to go around, there's probably somebody who has influenced your life to some degree that maybe has gone on to be with the Lord and you wish you could have like one more conversation with them. I want you to think about that, because that's kind of like what you get here from David in writing this passage, this psalm that he writes. He's literally sharing the wisdom that he has learned over this long journey of time. And so you've got to factor in as we read this moments where he was in caves just trying to survive his life. Moments where the king and everybody was out to get him. And moments that he felt alone is when he writes Psalm or Second Samuel Chapter Number 22.

And let's read that together. Verse one says this. And David spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord hath delivered him out of the hand of all of his enemies and out of the hand of Saul. And he said, The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. The God of my rock in him will I... What's the next word?

Trust. In him will I trust. Now, before we move forward, let me just say this, that I think it's important he says the Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. In other words, the Lord is the only thing that is sustaining him. The Lord is the only stable part of his life. Have you felt yourself to be in that?

It's like everything in your life seems to be like this. And the only constant that can be seen in your life is the Lord. That's how David felt. And he's writing this with wisdom that he has learned through many years of the ebbs and flows of life. And he's saying this, if he could go back and relive it, he would recognize that even in the worst of moments, even in the best of moments, the Lord was still his rock. The Lord is still my fortress.

The Lord is my deliverer. And because of those things, in him will I trust. When you see God for who he truly is, it helps us to trust him. If you look at your life and you see the hand of God in your life, and you look back, and I'm telling you, if you're young in here and you've got some older people in here, I mean we have people in our church who could stand up here and testify to this point today that even in the good and bad of their life, the Lord was sustaining them over the years.

And if you're young, I want you to lean in because you have a lot of life ahead of you, and you'll save yourself from a lot of heartache. If you recognize that even in the good, even in the bad, the Lord is still your rock, your fortress, and your deliverer, you need to trust in him. David goes on, he is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my high tower and my refuge, my savior. Thou savest me from violence. I will call on the Lord who is worthy to be praised.

So shall I be saved from mine enemies. Then look at the analogy, he says, when the waves, verse 5, when the waves of death compassed me. Ever been to the ocean where the waves just keep smashing against rocks? And you see it's just constant, it just does not stop.

Day, night, the waves just continue to come. That's how David's life felt as he hid for his life in caves. As the waves came upon him, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. In other words, danger surrounded David. The sorrows of hell compassed me about. Everywhere I turned, in other words, there was danger and waves and floods.

The snares of death prevented me. In my distress, I called upon the Lord and cried to my God. And listen to this, if you mark in your Bible, you need to mark this, he did hear my voice. Let me say this, that wherever you're at today, no matter how far you are away from God, if you say, man, God doesn't, he is so far from me today. Let me tell you this, he will hear your cry today.

He'll hear it. He heard David's voice in the middle of his distress, in the middle of his pain. He heard David and my cry did enter into his ears. Aren't you thankful that when life gets tough, that we can cry to him knowing that he hears us?

We're not just, it's just not words. No, our words are going into the ears of Almighty God. That's why it's important to pray to him.

Drop down to verse 17, it says this, he sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy and from them that hated me, for they were too strong for me. By the way, the battle that you're fighting is too strong for you. You know, some of us try to do it on your own, don't we? On our own. We try to fight on our own, we try to handle all of our situations on our own, all of our enemies on our own, all of our trials on our own, all of our giants in life.

We try to handle it all on our own and it's too much for us. Even David, the greatest king that Israel had ever seen says that his enemies and what he was facing, they were too strong for him. In verse 19, they prevented me in the day of calamity, but the Lord was my stay, he was my support. In other words, he sustained David here in this moment. And this psalm was written really as David got out of the hand and God delivered him out of the hands of Saul.

This psalm has a reflection about David's entire life. Through the ups and downs, David recognized that God's promises to him never, ever changed. And today, in the few moments that we have, I want to talk from this passage about the promises of God that never, ever, ever change in our life. You say, there's nothing that I can do to make these promises not happen.

That's exactly what I'm saying. There's some promises that God has made to us that cannot be changed. You can take them to the bank, you can trust in them, you can rest in them, you can relax in them knowing that the promises do not change. In fact, the promises of God are what can provide the rest that your soul is looking for.

You say, what are those promises? I want to look at three of them from this passage today and what we can do with each one of them first. And if you take notes in church, let me encourage you to maybe write these down here today.

Number one is this. We need to recognize the presence of God. We need to recognize the presence of God. The first promise is His presence will go before us. Aren't you thankful that we serve a God who says that He will never leave us and He will never forsake us?

He's always with you. Look at verse seven. David in the midst of this psalm says, In my distress I called upon the Lord, I cried out to Him and He heard my voice.

The word distress carries on the idea of extreme sorrow or pain. In other words, David is referring more than likely in this verse specifically about his challenges and run-ins with King Saul. Now, if you remember, we looked at this that King Saul, he hated David. David really didn't do anything wrong to receive the hate.

It's not hate that David, you know, he wasn't running around like a little arrogant kid. You know, he wasn't running around like, man, I'm the future king of Israel. I'm God's chosen one.

I'm the anointed one. He wasn't cocky, wasn't arrogant or anything. He was just trying to stay obedient to what God had for him. And in the midst of that, through Goliath and him defeating the giant that nobody in the camp of Israel wanted to even fight, David defeated him and then Saul's jealousy began to get real. We learned recently that Saul started looking at David and he heard, remember all the women, they had the number one hit in Israel that was talking about David and how Saul slain the thousands but David the tens of thousands.

Imagine being the king of Israel and everyone liking somebody that is not the king of Israel. You know, as a youth pastor, when I was a youth pastor, I was a youth pastor for several years. I was a youth pastor here from 2010 to 2014.

And I can remember. And by the way, if you're new to our church, I kind of just am an open book. So I like to just share exactly what I struggle with sometimes. I can remember there were times when when in my life and in youth ministry, you kind of always want.

It's like the pinnacle. If the teenagers come to you, you feel like, man, I've arrived. You know, they they they come to you with their problems, the good, the bad.

You kind of have arrived. I can remember as we our youth ministry started growing, that there were some times when the teenagers would go to like their small group leaders with their problems. And then their small group leaders would come to me and say, man, you really need to pray for so and so. They're really struggling with this.

And and, you know, I was prideful as any other leader, probably at times. And and I'm sitting there and I'm like, why did they not come to me? You ever been there?

Please help me out, please. Somebody in here has been there. OK. And I remember I literally I mean, we should be praying for him and I'm sitting over there. And there were times even in my sin where I would sometimes act like I knew more than I really did, because I wanted the smarter leader to think, you know, like they came to me.

I mean, I heard about this deep down. I'm like, tell me more, you know, because, see, I just I had I had pride. That's what Saul was experiencing. Saul was the king of Israel. And everybody loved and was singing about David. And so it provided envy and jealousy so much to the point of David had to hide and run from his life. And in the midst of that, as he's running for his life and and nobody knew where he was at times, and he was by himself with a small army hiding out because Saul was trying to kill David. He cries out in the middle of his distress, in the middle of his looking, just trying to save his life. And guess what?

The God of the universe heard his voice. Listen, I'll just be honest with you. I want you to think about your life right now in this moment. I don't know what you have going on in your life.

I don't know what kind of trial you have. I don't know what kind of storm that you're facing. Let me just tell you this. Cry out to God today and I guarantee you he will hear your voice. Aren't you thankful for that? Church, listen, we serve a God who hears us, a God who listens to us, a God that every prayer that you ever uttered, the quiet ones in the car when you're driving.

Guess what? Every prayer that we utter goes into the ear of Almighty God. Aren't you thankful for that? Listen, we got to recognize the presence of God. I'm sorry to tell you that you have a pastor that sometimes tries to take life into his own hands and try to run things and we make God sometimes our last resort when he should be our first response. Sometimes that's true of us, isn't it? It's like we try to do everything on our own and when we go through plan A and that doesn't work, we go to our plan B and when that doesn't work, we go to plan C and when that doesn't work, it's like, well, I guess I'll have to pray now. You see, that's so twisted.

It's so backwards. What if every time we're faced with a decision, what if every time you're faced with a problem at work, what if every time you're faced with a problem in your family, what if every time you walked into a doctor's office and somebody gives you some results that you just didn't want, what if instead of just thinking about everything that we can do, what if our first response was to go to the Lord and take it to Him in prayer, knowing that He hears us? Let me say this about the presence of God. God is always available. God is always available. He's always available. Listen, you might in the middle of the night need God.

Guess what? He's there. He's ready to hear you. I don't know if you're married to someone who has a cell phone, but does not pick up their cell phone. Anybody married to somebody like that, that when you call them, they don't, or you have somebody in your life, somebody in your contacts who never picks up the phone? Well, my wife, and listen, she knows this.

She's just notorious. You look at my wife's number or look at her phone, she probably has like hundreds of unread text messages. That would drive me crazy. I'm the type that on my phone, there's no notifications on anything, okay? My email, there's no notifications ever. My text, I have to open everything because I cannot handle not responding. If you text me or call me, I will try my best. Now, if it's in the middle of a game, I'm not responding to you, no matter what, but I try to respond, but there's a lot of times when I need Abby, and sometimes she just doesn't pick up her phone, and sometimes I have to call her over and over again, and sometimes if I know she's with somebody, I don't even call her to begin with.

I just call them. Just because sometimes she struggles picking up her phone. I could probably cancel Abby's phone line, and I don't know if she'd know for several days. But listen, when you call the Father, and when we go to Him, and you need Him on the spot, listen, and by the way, I know I'm harping on Abby.

There's been times she's tried to get a hold of me, and I leave my phone somewhere, and things like that. Listen, aren't you thankful that whenever you need the Heavenly Father, He's always there? There's never a time that you're going to call Him, or reach out to Him, and you're going to get the busy signal. There's never a time that, is the busy signal hardly a thing anymore?

I don't even know. For some of you still have landlines, I guess it's a thing, right? And so, but there's going to be sometimes, listen, with our Heavenly Father, He's always available. He's always there. Listen, if you don't know the Lord, man, you need to get to know Him, because in the midst of your trouble, in the midst of your trial, He's always there. You need Him in your life. You can't survive your life without Him. God's always available, but God listens to us.

He listens to us. I have two children, and I have a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old, and last night, during, there was a game on, I referenced it earlier, for some of you North Carolinians have been living under a rock, right? There was a big game on last night, and I get pretty intense during games. And so, there was a game on before it, between Kansas and Villanova, and there was about three minutes left, and I'm kind of gearing up for this big game, and I'm notorious for, and I've turned down invites, I'm notorious for liking to watch big games by myself. I just watch them in my living room.

Nobody is hardly around. My wife kind of tiptoes through the living room, you know, at times, and I just watch them by myself. And there was about three minutes left of this Kansas-Villanova game, and all of a sudden, like, my dog starts barking. I have this big guard dog at my house. Okay, that's a joke. My dog weighs, like, six pounds.

And so, if that, on a good day, when he's ate too much, I guess. So, my dog started barking, and I'm like, what in the world, and I heard this honk. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, somebody's here to mess with me before the game. You know, it's like, welcome back to North Carolina. I'm like, God, are you there, right? And, like, these guys, these senior boys from our youth group and our school kind of were here, and they came in to watch the game.

And so, now I'm like, I'm literally like, man, I mean, I think the Lord was worried about my testimony, and he's like, I'm going to put a ton of witnesses in front of you. And so, I'm sitting there, and I'm watching it, and I'm pretty quiet. I don't talk a whole lot during the game. And I can remember at the end of the game, there was about 30 seconds left. We knew that we were going to lose. And so, my son, he comes up to me, and he says, now, first of all, it's way past his bedtime, right? And so, it's always cool as a dad for your kids to stay up late and watch really good games when you win.

But when you lose, it's like, man, we made a terrible decision leaving him up this late. And so, he comes up to me, and he says, dad, is now a good time for you to fix my Fortnite account? So, I go in there and patiently, okay, no, I didn't.

I was trying to make myself look really good. I said to my son, I said, now is not a good time. Listen, my son, I was not in the mood to listen to him with what he had, his challenges with his Fortnite account.

I was not in the mood. But let me say this about our Heavenly Father. He always listens to us. It doesn't matter how small your problems are. He's listening.

It doesn't matter how big your problem is. He's listening. He's there. You can take his presence to the bank. And listen, we need to recognize his presence.

David recognized it. Matthew 123, behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth the son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. You know, that means God with us.

Let me say this. We need to trust in the protection of God. So we see the presence of God and we see we need to trust in the protection of God.

2 through 4 says this. And he said, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, the God of my rock and him will I trust. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my high tower and my refuge, my savior. Thou savest me from violence. I will call on the Lord who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from mine enemies. Aren't you thankful that we have the protection of God in our life? Listen, you can take it to the bank. You are protected by God.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, man, with what I've been through in the last few months, what I'm going through right now, it doesn't feel very much like I'm protected. But the beauty of God's protection and I've said this before, the beauty of God's protection is that it's not always from everything, is it? Sometimes the best protection you can ever experience is directly through the storm that you are facing. You know what David realized at the end of his life is he's like, man, God protected me. He didn't keep me from everything, but he protected me through everything. You see, that's the protection of God and we can trust in it.

Listen, God, you've got to remember these things about his protection. God knows everything. God, he's all knowing.

He knows it all. For you and I, we only know what's happening right now, don't we? We don't know what's coming. We don't know what's going to happen next week. We don't know what's in the future. In fact, I mean, Pastor Bailey's going to mention this at the end of the service.

Last week, one of our church members, Kelly Green, here Sunday morning, today he's worshipping in the presence of Jesus. Listen, that's things we had no idea what the week would unfold for the Green family. And listen, you don't know what the rest of your week looks like. But let me say this, God knows. God knows it all. He sees there, he sees the entire picture of your life, past, present, future.

He knows what's around the corner. And let me say this, I'm going to trust in the one who knows all things. I'm not going to trust in me who only sees the here and now. I'm going to trust in the one who knows all. He knows everything.

But then also remember this about the protection of God. God reveals everything that we need to know when we need to know it. And I'll ask a lot of questions, but I have to remind myself, God has given me everything he wants me to know today. Listen, stop asking questions and stop worrying about the answers to your questions and start trusting in the one who knows the answer to all things in your life. He knows everything. He reveals everything you need to know.

And then this one's a good one. God is working in secret even when we don't see it. You see, David, he recognized that his life, as he's now been delivered out of the hand of Saul, he recognized that unseen hand of God.

Guess what? I bet if David had wrote something in the middle of the cave experience, he probably wouldn't have recognized it like he does in 2 Samuel 22. But David recognized at the end of his life that God's hand was at play throughout his life. I love that old song, I'm trusting to the unseen hand. You see, there's an unseen hand at play that you and I cannot see. I can see today at age 36 some things that God saved me from, some things that God has protected me over the years. And if you were to look back at your life, you would recognize the goodness of God and the unseen hand that has been at play throughout your entire life. You see, David realized that at the end of his life that there was an unseen hand. David understood that God's protection, it's not always from storms, but sometimes God's protection is through storms.

And listen, that's not easy to swallow, that's not an easy thing to take. In fact, if you're not a Christian, I know that that could scare you. But let me say this, we are way better off in the midst of a storm on his side than you are in the midst of a storm on the other side. And you need to understand that if you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, if you want a sustaining presence, a God who knows all things, a God that can give you joy in the midst of adversity, that is only found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. You see, we can trust in the protection of God, we can recognize the presence of God, but thirdly, we need to rely on the provision of God. We need to rely on the provision of God. Later in this passage, look at verse 31, he says this, As for God, His way is perfect.

Aren't you thankful for that? The word of the Lord is tried, He is a buckler to all them that trust in Him. Drop down to verse 33, God is my strength, my power, He maketh my way perfect. Isaiah 55, 8, His ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts. Listen, if I was to draw up my life, I'd probably make it a little bit different.

But guess what? The way that I draw it up is imperfect. The way that He draws it up is perfect. Aren't you thankful His ways are better than your ways? And I'm telling you, it'll take a lot of the pressure off of your life if you would recognize that whatever God wills with your life, His way is better than your way. His way is higher than your thought. So often we ask why to our problems, don't we? And God is answering, don't ask why, just trust in who I am.

Trust in who He is. Stop asking questions and start answering every question with who God is. Don't tell your giants, or don't tell your giants, just tell them how big God is. Don't tell God how big your problems are. Because God is bigger than the giants of your life. Let me remind you this, God is the designer of your life. He's the one who put it all together.

He's the one who knows all things. I think of it like a DVR. When I go home and I watch a game on the DVR, if you don't know what a DVR is, that's just basically something that records things.

Or better yet, when I was growing up, we used to record them on big old cassette VHS tapes. You remember that? That was interesting, right? And then when you would get home, because you had to leave so early, there's like three hours worth of unnecessary content before the big game, because mine couldn't be scheduled.

So I just had to fast forward and get to the part that I wanted. But if you remember, it's like a lot of times you go back and watch something you've already seen before, or you watch a good movie that you've already seen the end of it. Isn't that a different feeling than when you're watching it in the moment, and you're like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? What's going to happen?

You never know. Like for me, my favorite show of all time is an old show called 24. And if you've heard the name Jack Bauer, that's from that show. I encourage you to watch it.

I don't endorse everything in it, but I love the show. Jack always finds himself in problems that in the moment, I can remember when Abby and I binge watched it years ago, you watch something like that and you're like, man, how is he going to get out of this one? And then you realize that there's another season with his face on it, on the screen.

And you're like, there's got to be a way, right? Listen, I want you to know that there is a God in heaven who is sovereign, who's the designer of the entire world, who's the creator of all things, including you. And he's looking at your life.

And remember, you can only see this little part of your life. And he's looking at the entire big picture of your life. He knows what's coming. I mean, he knows all things we can trust in him. God has a specific plan for your life. We need to rely on his provision.

We need to rely on his provision. Some statements I want you to leave with today as we think about the life of David are these. I want you to remember this about David's life.

Someone who experienced ups and downs, just like every person in here. God's ways are better than your ways. If you can remember anything about David's life and anything about your life, remember this. God's ways are better than your ways. They're higher than your ways. Number two, I want you to remember this. God's plan is greater than any plan that I could ever draw up on my own.

That's hard to swallow, right? Because if I was drawing up my life, I would erase a few moments. I'd grab the whiteout and I'd say, no, we're not doing this.

We're not doing this. But I have to remember that God is sovereign. In the most difficult moments of my life, I have to trust that his plan is still better and still greater than any plan that I could have ever drawn up. Number three, God wants to teach you something in every season of your life. God wants to teach you something in every season of your life.

It doesn't matter if you're in a cave or if it doesn't matter if you're walking off the battlefield with a sword carrying a giant's head in your arms. God wants to teach you something. In the success and the valley, he wants to teach you something about him and something about you. And then lastly, and I think this is true of David's life, God is always with us. God's always with us. You can never escape the presence of God. You can never outrun the protection of God. And you always have the provision of God that you need.

He's promised to give you everything that you need. Would you bow your heads with me? Let's do this.

Let's all stand. Heads bowed, hearts lifted in prayer. I want you to think about your life for just a moment. This is the part where we can respond to what God has spoken directly to us. Think about your life.

What giant are you facing? What trial or storm are you going through? God's ways are better than your ways. His plan is higher than your plans. God wants to teach you something, and he is always with you. I'm going to pray, and then I'm going to give you a chance to respond.

Let's pray. Father, we love you. Bless in this response. God, give courage to those who need to make a decision for you today. Father, for anybody in here that does not have a relationship with you, God, I pray, Lord, in this moment that they would recognize their need for a Savior, their need for a Deliverer, their need for you in their life, and that we would be able to share from your Word how they can know you as Savior. Bless in this response, for it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Hey, listen, I want you to, right now, nobody looking around, I want you to think about your life. Are you in a storm? Maybe you're a Christian in here, and you need to just come down front and thank God for his presence, or thank God for his protection. Maybe some of you have been through a really bad trial in your life, and you need to come because you're now on the other side of it, and you need to come and say, God, I now see your unseen hand. I'm trusting to the unseen hand. Listen, don't trust in yourself, trust in Him. If you're in here today and you say, Pastor Josh, I don't know Jesus as my Savior, I would love, after the service, I don't want to embarrass you, but I would love for you to come down front, I'll be down here, and I'd love for you to just say, hey, Pastor Josh, I don't know Jesus as my Savior, and I would love to take just a moment to share from God's word how you can have a relationship with a God who's created you, a God who's orchestrated the world together, a God who has a plan for your life, and a God that you can serve.