Singing when it all crashes down

[0:00] Those visiting, we are doing a series on the Psalms called the Soul Song, and we're looking at a selection of Psalms across the whole of the Psalter, Psalm 46 being the one designated for today, and the scriptures will be on the screen in just a moment.

[0:21] Hopefully. Okay? So this is for the director of music of the Sons of Korah, according to Alamoth, a song.

[0:35] God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

[0:56] There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her. She will not fail.

[1:08] God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar. Kingdoms fall. He lifts his voice. The earth melts.

[1:19] The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth.

[1:34] He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire. Be still, and know that I am God.

[1:46] I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.

[2:00] Amen, and the Lord will bless to us the reading of his holy word. I read a blog on Friday, which ran by the title, Ten Things to Do When It Feels Like Your World Is Crashing Down.

[2:17] Are you ready for this? This is going to be life-changing stuff, okay? And I'm reading this because the sermon is titled, Singing When Your World Crashes Down.

[2:30] So these are the ten things written by somebody who belongs to a company called Thought and Expression Company Incorporated. That sounds American, and it is.

[2:42] Rachel Rodriguez. So this is number one. Call a friend that makes you inexplicably happy. Quite good advice, that, I think. So if you're feeling miserable, call your friend.

[2:54] This one, some of you will like this. Google the Kardashians. Rachel Rodriguez, however, does explain, they just suck.

[3:09] You will always be better than the Kardashians. Buy one ticket to the movies, number three, and stay there all day.

[3:21] Wow. Go full out with the movie theater food and get yourself popcorn, candy, and a slushie. That'll cost you about a thousand pounds. And probably a hot dog.

[3:33] You can escape your own reality for a bit by immersing yourself in someone else's. Not so sure about that. Not good for the waistline. Number four, run. That sounds like good advice.

[3:45] Run, but blast some rap and get lost in your run. Or go sans music. I'm lost. Sometimes that's even better. Whatever you like running, whatever you like running, to get lost in it.

[4:01] Now, I got lost there. Number five, don't flee. Run, but don't flee. Even though it feels like everything is crashing down, disappearing isn't your solution.

[4:12] I am queen of the impulse weekend getaway. But things are always waiting for you on Monday morning. Deal with it now, and you'll thank yourself later. Good advice.

[4:24] Number six, this is really good advice. Leave your phone at home and go for a walk. Yeah. Number seven, pop some popcorn. She does like popcorn.

[4:35] Pop some popcorn and finish a bottle of wine. Not sure about the bottle of wine. But she says, don't stop at a glass. Get drunk alone and have a blast.

[4:46] Well, not good advice. If you get this out of context and quote the minister from Whidbey Christian Fellowship as advising his congregation to get drunk, please be kind.

[4:59] I didn't say that. Number eight, write yourself encouraging notes and stick them around your house. Okay? Except sticky back notes fall off the wall because Sophie did that when she was revising and we had sticky back notes everywhere.

[5:18] Number nine, find someone who has Mario Kart and play every cup. Whatever that means. And number ten, get up. You're a warrior. Whatever is going on, you've got this.

[5:30] Get out of bed, stand up, look in the mirror. You're a warrior. You'll figure it out. You'll make it tomorrow until your tomorrow becomes your new exciting future. So get out there, warrior, and live your future.

[5:41] Well, that's very optimistic. In contrast to that, the psalmist gives us some really good advice about what to do when your world crashes down.

[5:54] Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted on the earth.

[6:06] The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. And then it has the word selah, which means just take a pause and think about that.

[6:17] There's a difference there between self-help advice and God-help advice. God's solution to all of our problems is to acknowledge that we have problems and give them all to Him to carry.

[6:36] And the human solution is find some reserves within yourself to try and sort it out best you can. And if that doesn't work, get drunk. Yeah, and eat popcorn.

[6:47] Lots of popcorn. Now, it's easy to make light of the fact that world crashes down. Worlds do crash down, and sometimes they very seriously do.

[6:57] And some of you here today may well feel that your world is crashing down. So I don't want to be flippant about it. Circumstances drag us down.

[7:08] We might be unsettled. We might be worried. We might be anxious. And if we are, this psalm is designed to reassure us. When everything around us is chaotic and out of control and disordered, the Lord Almighty is with us.

[7:27] The God of Jacob is our fortress. And this psalm is perfectly suited for a world that crashes down. You only have to read the opening words to see that.

[7:39] Everything is given away all around the psalmist. And when it seems that everything is lost, he turns his focus upon God.

[7:50] And that's always the Bible way. So a little bit about the psalm, a little bit about its background and its structure. You can see that there are three cellars in there, and that means there are three places to pause.

[8:03] And that reminds us that the psalm is divided into three major parts at different lengths. So the end of the third verse and the end of the seventh verse indicate their breaks.

[8:16] Historically, it's probably the case that the psalm is written at the time when King Hezekiah of Judah was surrounded by the army of Sennacherib, of Assyria.

[8:29] And just to remind you of that, if you've heard of it, but if not, just to tell you a little bit about it, the Assyrians were the great superpower of the time, and they were raiding around the then Middle Eastern world.

[8:46] And next in line was Judah, the southern part of Israel. They had conquered most of the north. They had conquered the surrounding nations, and they decided they were going to conquer Judah as well.

[8:59] And 46 towns had been overtaken, and eventually they arrive at the capital, Jerusalem, and they're going to quickly besiege it and destroy it and take complete control.

[9:09] At least that's what they thought. The army is a huge army that camps outside of the city walls, and then they begin to trade insults and letters and all kinds of things with the king to say, he needs to give up.

[9:25] He needs to give up because every other nation has been conquered, every other nation's gods had been toppled, and so it was just next in line for Judah.

[9:36] But Judah was not like any other nation, and Hezekiah knew this. Hezekiah gets a message from a prophet we might have heard of. He's called Isaiah. And Isaiah sends a message to him and says, look, don't worry about this.

[9:51] God is going to sort it. So Hezekiah delays, and the king sends a message. King Sennacherib. Isaiah 36, 18-20 says, do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, the Lord will deliver us.

[10:07] Has the God of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharim?

[10:18] Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?

[10:33] Now, because they had conquered Samaria, it was just next door. It was like living in Newcastle and having your neighbors at Sunderland. You'd heard that they'd, you know, they'd been beaten again because they get beat a lot.

[10:45] You'd heard that. And so people knew all about the power of this army. There was no question that they did not have a human resource that could resist this great army.

[11:00] What then could they do? Well, Hezekiah did this. He prayed. He prayed to the Lord. O Lord, almighty God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone, our God, over all the kingdoms of the earth.

[11:16] You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.

[11:27] It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them. For they were not gods, but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands.

[11:41] Now, O Lord, our God, deliver us from His hand so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God. And then God acted.

[11:55] And before the people of Israel arose the next day, 185,000 soldiers had been mysteriously wiped out in the evening by a plague that ran through the camp.

[12:09] And the king got message of an attack on his own borders and out of alarm took the rest of his army away. And eventually, he was undermined back in his home country.

[12:24] And the scripture tells us that his own sons killed him, assassinated him. And Esa Harden became king. An unlikely turn of events, don't you think?

[12:35] Hezekiah's advisors, political advisors, probably wouldn't have advised him to pray, probably would have advised him to give in. But Hezekiah was not trusting in man.

[12:48] All of the chaos all around him did not make him lose sight of the power of Almighty God. How do we face chaotic situations?

[13:01] What do we do when our world crashes down? We can look at things as they seem and very easily be overwhelmed. Or we can look with the eyes of faith and believe that God has got this and will sort it out.

[13:15] It's all about perspective. Who's in control when the chips are down? Who really is Lord of my life when I am afraid? So Psalm 46 is written with this background in mind.

[13:31] It's very helpful for us to remember the background in order to understand the psalm. It's been a really important psalm through history. If you're a student of Reformation history, you will associate this psalm with Martin Luther.

[13:44] One of my favorite hymns, A Safe Stronghold, Our God is Still, a trusty shield and weapon. When Luther rebelled against the Catholic Church in Germany, people were against him.

[13:58] The whole political machinery was against him. Kings were against him. The whole of the nations were against him. And so Luther was advised to recant of his belief in what the Scriptures taught regarding justification by faith.

[14:15] And he was told that he was in great trouble. He was in a castle and he had to go and give a defense before cardinals and kings of his teachings that he'd nailed to the door in Wittenberg.

[14:29] And he was told that everybody would against him and he would lose his life. And he said, even if there were more devils on the roof than tiles on the roof, I would not recant.

[14:40] I cannot. I will not recant. So help me God. And then there were all kinds of pressures. And when he was facing his pressure, he would turn to his trusted ally, Philip Melanthon, and say, come Philip, let us sing the 46th Psalm.

[14:58] A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing, our helper he, amid the flood of mortal lives prevailing. Luther said, we shall sing this Psalm to the praise of God because God is with us and powerfully and miraculously preserves and defends his church and his word against all fanatical spirits, against the gates of hell, against the implacable hatred of the devil, and against all assaults of the world, the flesh and sin.

[15:30] That's a Salah moment. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The Scottish covenanters did the same when they were chased around Scotland by the dragoons, the English dragoons, regularly praying and singing the 46th Psalm.

[15:48] William Carey, Martin and Debbie will appreciate this. They use computers now, but Carey was a Bible translator and he used a paper, manuscripts, and 20 years of hard labor in India.

[16:02] After 20 years of hard labor, he walked to discover his printing press room on fire. And all of the manuscripts that he had worked so studiously on with his team were destroyed.

[16:19] And he wrote home to his pastor friend, Andrew Murray, who you may have heard of, the ground must be labored over again, but we are not discouraged.

[16:31] We have all been supported under the affliction and preserved from discouragement. To me, the consideration of the divine sovereignty and wisdom has been very supporting. Then he quoted Psalm 46, verse 10, be still and know that I am God.

[16:49] You see, when things seem so difficult, when things often seem so out of control, it's all about how you respond to the chaos.

[17:01] It can be, oh, this is terrible. How did this ever happen to me? Why did God ever let this happen to me? Or it can be, I will trust him. The God of Jacob is with us.

[17:15] The Lord of hosts is my refuge. I will be still. And I will know that he is God. So the psalm relates to anyone in times of trouble, anyone in times of trouble who faced trouble no matter the extremity.

[17:33] Let me give you a quote from Elizabeth Elliot, another famous missionary lady. She lost her first husband, Jim. He was murdered by the Auka Indians when he was trying to reach them with the gospel.

[17:47] And then she lost her second husband, Addison Leach, who died very slowly of cancer. It would have been easy, wouldn't it, for her to be discouraged with God.

[17:57] I read recently somebody who was asking God, why did God allow my wife to die? And the response was, you're asking the wrong question.

[18:10] The question should be, isn't God good, not really a question, a statement, isn't God good to have given me that woman for so many years of my life?

[18:20] It's all about perspective. Well, when Elizabeth Elliot talked about this, she said, everything that has seemed most dependable has given way.

[18:33] Mountains are falling, earth is reeling. In such a time, it is a profound comfort to know that although all things seem to be shaken, one thing is not.

[18:45] God is not shaken. God is not shaken. I hope that will do your heart good if things are going wrong in your life. I hope you know that God is not shaken by it.

[18:59] He's not even taken by surprise. He will take care of you. He will look after you. You will know His presence. Be still and know that He is God. So, let us quickly look at the psalm.

[19:13] Next slide, please. The first thing to learn from this psalm is that when it all crashes down in your life, God has not abandoned you. God is your refuge and your strength.

[19:26] Of course, that does not mean that you are immune to troubles and difficulties and problems. If only it were true that we were just meant to live healthy and wealthy and happy lives. But it is not so no matter what some American preachers might preach.

[19:41] I often notice that they're the ones that are healthy, wealthy and rich. Not necessarily their congregation, but that's another thought. We need to be clear, don't we, that troubles and problems and difficulties are part of our lives just as they are part of everybody's lives.

[19:59] Why should we be immune from such troubles? In this world, you will have tribulation, Paul said. So if you have trouble, it's not because God has abandoned you and it's not because you lack faith or you are being particularly disobedient and God has punished you.

[20:15] It's very tempting to fall into that. Why is this going wrong in my life? Oh, I must have done something wrong. And so you kind of go within and ruminate and kind of look for reasons to blame yourself. If only I'd done this, if only I'd done that, if only I'd done the other.

[20:28] Just sometimes bad things happen. They don't take God by surprise. But they do prove to be a real test of faith.

[20:40] And Peter says, sometimes troubles happen just to test your faith to see how genuine it is. It's like the burning of dross so the purity of gold will come out, says Peter.

[20:54] So don't be discouraged because this is a time of trouble. See it as an opportunity to grow. grow in your faith. To get to know God better. To get to trust in Him more.

[21:07] Because the Bible teaches us that God is our help, our, did you notice, ever-present help in time of trouble. Ever-present. It's not like, I'm going to come through in about six months from now.

[21:19] Would you wait patiently? He's there now in the immediacy of the challenge that you're facing. And the psalmist in verse 2 talks about global catastrophe.

[21:33] You know, what we might call natural disasters that take place all around you. Severe earthquakes and storms verses 2 and 3. Or devastating wars in verses 6 to 9.

[21:46] We haven't had devastating wars for some time in this country, but if you live in Israel or Gaza or the Ukraine or other parts of the world, you'll know what this is like. Everything is being shaken.

[21:57] Everything is being moved. But God is not. In the midst of it all, when you have no resource to rely on, God is there.

[22:09] Hebrews 11, 35 to 38, mentions all sorts of terrible trials which faithful believers have had to face. And to name a few of them, being homeless, without proper clothing and food, being mocked, being tortured, being beaten, being imprisoned, being cut into, sawn into.

[22:28] Can you imagine that? Various forms of cruel execution. This is what believers had to go to and go through. It's what believers had to suffer.

[22:42] That would have been a test of faith, no doubt. But they discovered in the midst of their trial that God was there. You see, God being our refuge and strength does not mean He will protect us from the pain.

[22:58] We make that mistake too. God should make the pain go away or make the suffering less. But He doesn't promise that either. He promises He will be with you in it.

[23:11] And if you think of the unimaginable pain of crucifixion, the unimaginable pain that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered, we know that He doesn't take away the pain.

[23:23] But He's with you in it. And He will not forsake you in the midst of your suffering. God does not protect Christian families from the ravages of unemployment or cost of living crisis or diseases or cancers or difficulties that everybody else experience in this world.

[23:48] He doesn't do that. He doesn't protect us from COVID. I discovered that the new variant of COVID is called flirt. I like that idea.

[23:59] It's been flirting with some of us in our community and making us feel unwell. Christians died during the COVID pandemic just like anybody else. No matter that some people try to give the impression that if you trusted God you would avoid it.

[24:16] Difficult to avoid COVID. It gets everywhere. See, it's a reality of life. And for you to be taught something different is to make you weaker and more vulnerable when trials come.

[24:28] For when trials come our faith is tested and we will say do we trust God even in this? Do we trust God even with this? That's the big challenge of Psalm 46.

[24:43] Can I trust God when I'm dying of cancer? Can I trust God when people betray me and hurt me? Can I trust God when I'm dirt poor and He doesn't seem to provide for me though He does for others?

[24:59] God has not abandoned you when your world crashes down. Next slide. When it all crashes down God will be your refuge. He will be your refuge.

[25:11] He will be your refuge against rage in nature verses 1 to 3. He will be your resource against the raging of nations verses 4 to 7. He will be your ruler over the rebels of the earth.

[25:26] So that's good isn't it? That's all the natural stuff that can just happen naturally and that's all of the kind of morally evil stuff that can happen because some people in the world are morally evil and there are people who are going to exploit you and take advantage of you and seek to do you harm and it's also God will be in control even when everybody else seems to be faithless and abandoning God but you stick with him because you know there's nowhere else to turn and to go to no one else.

[25:59] When the Son of Man comes will he find faith on the earth as Jesus? Sometimes you look around at dwindling churches and you look around at what's happening in the West and the abandonment of Christianity.

[26:13] I remember when I became a Christian in 1984 sorry 1981 was it? 1981 yeah it was 1981 when I became a Christian in 1981 86% of the UK public said they believed in God and were Christian now it's less than 50% so you know it's getting worse but does that mean we leave and give up because we stand out and are different or will we say like the apostles to whom else shall we turn you have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God see there can be all kinds of things that go wrong in this world all kinds of rebellions against God all kinds of things that make life difficult for us as Christians to live and stand out in the crowds but the one thing that never changes is that God remains a place of refuge for us in this world now when you think of refuge perhaps it's best to think about the cities of refuge in the

[27:17] Old Testament there were six such cities that were set up and were run by the Levites all across the land and the cities of refuge were designed to be a place where a person who has killed someone accidentally may flee from the avenger of blood so let's say you were kind of chopping some wood and your axe head came off and hit somebody down the way and killed him then his relatives could kill you unless you got to the city of refuge first now you would say well it's only an accident didn't mean to do it well that's okay but you were still under threat so you had to rush off flee off to get to the city of refuge if you got to the city of refuge then they closed the door behind you you would be safe until you stood trial and if you were found innocent you were free to live in the city of refuge until there was a change of high priest or until you died so it wasn't exactly the same as it was before but nonetheless you at least had your life a city of refuge was literally a place where your life could be saved from the avenger of blood

[28:27] God is our refuge and strength God is the one who saves us God is the one who protects us God is the one who takes care of us as long as we remain in him he is our place of refuge so when trials and difficulties and troubles come and we turn to the Lord we will feel safe and secure as long as we remain steadfastly in faith in him but if we lose our faith if we lose sight of God in the midst of our struggles we will feel all over the place and very vulnerable that doesn't mean to say of course if we lose sight of God we lose our salvation it just means we lose our confidence so we're in this place where when trouble comes we can trust in God or we can look to the self-help books take lots of popcorn drink lots of wine it's about perspective

[29:30] God will be a refuge for you when you are in trouble he will be there for you in the midst of your suffering next slide please so God will be a place of refuge for you in your trouble and when you do discover God to be a place of refuge move on one slide please God will also be sufficient for you can I trust God with this will he prove to be able to meet my needs that's often the question we have well the scripture says that God is sufficient to meet all of our needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus you think of the apostle Paul he had this thorn in the flesh he doesn't tell us what it is and I'm grateful that he didn't maybe it was a problem with his eyesight some people say maybe he'd had malaria and had constant fever as a result that kept coming back and forward perhaps there was some disability of some kind but he doesn't tell us what that thorn in the flesh is thank God he just says that when he asked

[30:37] God to take it away God said no you've got to live with this Paul and you've got to live with this in order to discover that my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness now I love stories of healing when people say I had this terrible cancer and then we prayed to God and wonderful I've been healed and it's no longer a problem or I had this problem in my joints I prayed to God and he removed it and wonderful well that's great but that doesn't happen to the majority of Christians on a normal basis when it does we remember that God is able but when God says no no I'm not going to miraculously heal your cancer I'm going to show you how to trust me as you go through the treatment and live with it well I'm not going to remove from you that problem with your hip I'm going to help you to live patiently with it until maybe the doctors can do something for you in the hospital that's when you discover his grace is sufficient for you that's when you discover his power is made perfect in your weakness when nothing on the outside seems to change but you just know that God is good and remains good even though you are struggling and you are suffering he is sufficient for you as your place of refuge he has all of the resources he needs to help you through you discover that God is able even when you feel in yourself you have no strength you discover dependency you see it's when you think about your life when are you most grateful for your health when you feel great or when you feel wretched it's often when you feel wretched if only you'd taken notice if only you'd been more grateful when are you most grateful for the people you loved when they're around you or when they're no longer there it's tragedy isn't it we often only appreciate what we have when it's gone we can't depend on anything or anyone in this world to meet to totally and completely meet our needs you see that's why sometimes relationships go wrong because we think the other person is going to make me happy all of the time well I don't know about you but I'm sure that

[33:14] I don't make Lisa happy all of the time or she might tell you differently would you no no maybe not our children well they're never going to let us down never going to disappoint us keep us happy all of the time not likely our jobs going to keep us satisfied all of the time our pay packets going to keep us all happy all of the time our bosses going to appreciate us all of the time I can see I can see you're looking at each other it's never going to happen there is no ultimate satisfaction in life outside of God the world has been subject to futility says Paul so that God may create within us a dissatisfaction that will find satisfaction only in him God is our only sufficiency see and we need to get to know him better in order to get to like our lives a little better our lives will be happier as we find our refuge and our resource in our heavenly father we call him

[34:25] Abba father he will never leave us or forsake us he will never let us down he will always be available to us help in time of trouble he is our place of trust and safety and refuge and there is no one and nothing like him so next slide please we can know God and depend upon God as our refuge we can know him as God almighty the one mighty to save we can know him as the God of Jacob and just a word there why the God of Jacob why not the God of Abraham you would the psalmist to write Abraham but I love the fact that he wrote Jacob because Jacob is my favourite Old Testament character I've probably said that about loads of Old Testament characters but Jacob particularly I love him because he was such a cat do you know the word cat yeah I mean he was so goodness me he'd be a funny bloke to sit around but you wouldn't want to play cards with him yeah he's spent all of his life kind of trying to get one over on other people he even tried to get one over on

[35:41] God and then one day God confronted him as he was coming back into the land and he had a wrestling match with him great wrestling match I would love to see it and and Jacob being a robust and strong kind of wrestled right until dawn just as dawn was breaking he go and Jacob said I will not let you go unless you bless me and what did God do God leaned him he put his hip out of joint imagine what that was like and poor Jacob is like doing this holding on not realizing that now he has the strength to hold on to God because God is holding him up and Jacob discovers that this is Bethel this is the place where God is he's been there before he's had an encounter and and

[36:42] God is here and suddenly this wild place becomes a house of God and a gateway to heaven for him and he discovers wonderfully that when he is weak then he is at his strongest sometimes it takes God to lame us to take away from us the thing that we aren't you glad that God is the God of Jacob not the God of the righteous the really good people but also those people that we would never trust those people we would call out as being bad folk God has mercy even on Jacob to show how wonderful his grace is to us no matter how bad we have been we can know him as the God of Jacob we can know him among his people because this psalm is calling people to come and see the works of the

[37:47] Lord it's calling people to come together to discover God together we are never meant to live isolated Christian lives on our own we are always meant to be among God's people we discover him best as we discover him together and then God can not only be known among his people we must submit to him as our ruler every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father so in conclusion a crisis does not make a person a crisis reveals a person I'll say it again a crisis does not make a person a crisis reveals a person in a time of trial we discover how much we trust in a time of trial we discover how much we trust so maybe your world has come crashing down what have you discovered about yourself what have you discovered about your

[39:08] God are you holding on or have you given up an alcoholic will turn to a bottle in a crisis an addict will turn to drugs a worldly person will turn to worldly wisdom a Christian will turn to God when troubles strike we discover he is sufficient and we can say among the people of God the Lord of hosts is with us the God of Jacob is our fortress come and see the works of the Lord the psalmist says come and see the works of the Lord look through history at all that God has done through Abraham Jacob Isaac and all of those through David through to our Lord Jesus Christ through to his people see how wonderful God has worked in this world and continues to work we can trust him he will do great things among us as he always has and we can thank

[40:10] God for him see we've taken on an evening we're not doing this evening we've taken on an evening service to just have times of testimony we record them and we put them out on social media and I'm just thinking I here and John is long buried somewhere or cremated probably no room for burial but you know what I mean when my mortal body has gone there will be a whole record of the works that God has done you know and Val and Karen and all of these people sharing their testimonies just a record that people can listen to and thank God for his wonderful!

[40:54] works he still works in the hearts of men come and see his works and be still and know that I am God you know what that means it means stop striving stop fighting God stop thinking you know best stop saying God please will you do this for me and then try to solve it yourself have done that God I really need you help me and right right Google Google Google be still means just surrender just let God take control let him be God and submit yourself to his will and his ways in your life last slide John Wesley was a great and wonderful evangelistic preacher throughout our country and lived well into his nineties rode on round England on his horse imagine that to preach the gospel came to

[41:55] Whitby nine times set up congregations including really being responsible for this one the first minister was a convert of John Wesley in Whitby during his the end of his days as he was dying his voice had almost gone he was struggling to breathe he gasped something out the best of all God is with us and people couldn't quite hear what he said so they asked him to speak a little louder and he raised his feeble hand and he said the best of all God is with us what a way to die when your days are over and when nothing else counts when all that matters is God you can say and best of all

[42:59] God is with us God is my refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble is he your refuge and strength is he your very present help in time of trouble let us pray have