The Bible talks about, even way back in the beginning, how God desired to dwell with his people.
And through the ages, it came about in many different ways, right?
The tabernacle, the temple, God dwelled with his people in particular ways.
But then he came and dwelled with us as a person through Jesus.
And then now he dwells in us and among us by his spirit.
And that's real.
And so when we gather as a church and we worship him, we are experiencing the presence of God.
We're coming before him in humble faith and almost giddy trembling at the privilege of being able to approach the living God.
And now we get to hear from his word.
So if you will open your Bibles to Psalm 62.
We're going to take a little break, hang out in the Psalms for a couple weeks.
I'm going to be speaking to us from Psalm 62 this week and then next week, Psalm 63.
It's a pair of beautiful Psalms about us relying upon and enjoying our God.
So Psalm 62 is where we're going to be at.
Kids, I'm really glad you're here.
Here, if you happen to grab a coloring sheet that has an anchor on it, that is not just a random picture.
I'm going to be talking a lot about the word anchor.
So as soon as you hear me kind of hear that word anchor, I don't know, maybe if you can take a little tally mark and keep tally of how many times I say that.
Hopefully it's not 150.
So that will help you guys listen to what we're talking about today.
God is our anchor, our utterly dependable God.
Well, speaking of kids, when I was a kid, I had a mild form of a phobia that I just learned the name of.
It's bathophobia.
Now, it sounds like I was afraid of baths.
It's actually not what it means.
But bathophobia is the fear of depth, fear of deep water particularly.
And I had a fear of deep water when I was a kid.
And I'm pretty sure I know how that fear got developed.
It was when I was in my friend Eddie's pool in southwest Missouri.
And my brother and Eddie tried to drag me again and again and again to feed me to the drain monster, which was located at the deep end of Eddie's pool.
And a few nightmares later, my bathophobia was fully entrenched.
And I still, to this day, have to mentally coach myself to swim into the deep end of the pool.
And I try to swim as quick as I can out of it because I have this irrational fear of this drain monster.
If I don't have something stable under my feet, I get unnerved.
I feel scared.
Maybe you're not bathophobic like me.
Maybe there's a few of you out there.
But I'm pretty sure that we all crave something solid, something stable underneath our feet.
Whether it's our schedule, we long for stability in our schedule or in our relationships.
We long for stability, something stable under our feet or in our family, our finances.
We want stability with our finances or our health.
We all want and need stability.
We need to be able to anchor ourselves into something that is immovable and solid and stable underneath our feet.
Because life is not stable.
Life is unpredictable.
Life is shaky.
Our external circumstances shake us up.
Whether it's we read the news and something, we're like, oh my goodness, what's going on in this area of the world?
Or we, something more closer to home, we get an unexpected phone call.
Anybody get any unexpected phone calls this week?
We get called into our boss's office.
Something unexpected shakes us up.
A need gets pressed into our lap that we were not expecting to help with.
Or your toddler decides it's a good idea to treat your kitchen floor like a toilet.
We're doing some potty training at our house.
So that was fresh on my mind.
So, but not just our external circumstances is what shakes us up.
It's how we respond internally to that can also really shake us up.
We can get shaken up by fear.
What's going to happen now that this has happened?
Or bitterness?
Anger?
Guilt?
Or anxiety?
We're dealing with our own sinful habits.
We can't seem to beat them.
It's shaking us up.
We can't get that tense relationship out of our head and it's shaking us up.
Or that conversation, we're replaying it over and over and over again as we go to sleep at night.
And we're trying to figure out what did that person mean when they said that?
Or how did they understand me when I said this?
We are shaky people living in a shaky world.
So where can we go for something solid?
For something stable?
Psalm 62 is a great place to remind us about where we can find the stability that we all long for.
So I'll read it for us.
And as I read, keep your ears tuned for this idea of shakiness and stability.
Look for that as we read.
This is God's word.
To the choir master, according to Jeduthun, the Psalm of David.
For God alone, my soul waits in silence.
From him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation.
My fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken.
How long will all of you attack a man to batter him?
Like a leaning wall, a tottering fence.
They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.
They take pleasure in falsehood.
They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.
For my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation.
My fortress, I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory.
My mighty rock, my refuge is God.
Trust in him at all times, O people.
Pour out your heart before him.
God is a refuge for us.
Those of low estate are but a breath.
Those of high estate are a delusion.
In the balances, they go up.
They are together lighter than a breath.
Put no trust in extortion.
Set no vain hopes on robbery.
If riches increase, set not your heart on them.
Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this.
That power belongs to God.
And that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.
For you will render to a man according to his work.
Thanks be to God for his word.
Well, even just kind of reading this through once,
it's pretty easy to kind of catch that David's kind of preoccupied with one thing.
And it's this.
This is our big idea of this psalm.
God is worthy of our quiet confidence when we are shaken.
He is our only dependable anchor in the storms of life.
That's the big idea of this psalm.
That's what God wants you walking out of this building with this morning.
That he is utterly worthy of your steadfast confidence.
Regardless of how shaky life gets.
David unpacks God's dependability in three stages in this psalm.
First, he's going to show that our anchor is proven.
In the first seven verses, our anchor is proven.
Next, our anchor is shared.
In verses 8 to 10.
And then our anchor is revealed.
Verses 11 and 12.
So our anchor is proven.
Our anchor is shared.
Our anchor is revealed.
So let's jump into the first part here.
Our anchor is proven.
Verses 1 to 7.
If you look at the first six verses of this psalm with me, these verses actually form a bit of a sandwich.
And then verses 1 and 2 and verses 5 and 6 are the slices of bread.
And then verses 3 and 4 are the stuff in the middle.
So that's the first six verses.
That's kind of how they're organized.
And then verse 7 is this exclamation point that he slams us with in the middle of this psalm.
So let's look at the sandwich first, then verse 7.
Let's look at the slices of bread for a second.
Verses 1 and 2.
Verses 5 and 6.
Just give it a glance in your Bible.
You'll first notice that they're pretty similar.
They're almost identical.
There's just a couple of small differences, but they're actually really important, which we'll bring out in just a minute.
So first, let's look at a couple of details.
Did you see those words, alone and only?
For God alone, my soul waits in silence.
He alone is my rock and my salvation.
Verse 5.
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.
Verse 6.
He only is my rock and my salvation.
So once per verse, David is driving home a point.
God is my only source of stability.
He is my soul confidence.
S-O-L-E.
And he is undistracted.
He has zeroed in on God.
He's putting all of his eggs in one basket.
It's God.
But why?
Well, look at the way that David describes God over and over again in these verses.
Let's cast a look at verses 1 and 2, verses 5 and 6.
You're going to see the word my pop up quite a bit.
My soul waits in silence.
From him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.
Verse 5.
My hope is from him.
Verse 6.
He is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.
So let's just unpack these terms for a second.
God is David's salvation.
He's the only one who is ultimately able to deliver David from evil.
God is David's rock.
He is the only unshakable stable ground underneath David's feet.
And God is his refuge, his fortress.
He is the only protection that David can rely on.
And so if God is his only deliverer, his only stable ground, and his only protection,
then it's no surprise that David says in verse 5, my hope is completely from him.
I know that everything is going to be okay for the future expectation that my well-being is going to be okay and secured
because God is at the center.
He is my deliverer, my stable ground, and he is my protection.
And he knows this not just from theoretical knowledge about God, and that's good.
We need to know these things about God.
It's good to have these theological truths in our heads, but he's got a personal history with God
where this has been proved over and over and over again.
Think back to, just for example, the battle with Goliath in 1 Samuel 17.
He's a young kid.
He's 18, 17 years old.
And David tells Saul, I don't need your armor.
This is why.
The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear,
he's going to deliver me from the hand of this uncircumcised Philistine.
Even from a young age, David has known and he's seen, he's experienced a personal history
that God is fully dependable if he counts on God.
So what does David do now?
So if he knows this, what does he do?
Look at verse 1 and verse 5.
David waits in silence for God to act on his behalf.
David, there's another place where he expresses this in Psalm 131, this quiet confidence,
this waiting in silence on God.
He says, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
If you've had a baby or seen a baby nursing, you know that nursing children are not very calm.
They're looking around, where's mom?
Where's mom?
I need her.
There's this anxiety, this restlessness, this fussiness until that instant gratification is given.
But a weaned child, he is able to simply enjoy his mother's presence without fussiness,
without craving, without demanding, without restlessness.
A weaned child is mature enough to trust his mother that she will take good care of him
without fussily demanding that instant gratification.
So before we get to the middle part of this sandwich, I want to just ask you a quick question.
Is the state of your soul right now characterized by quiet confidence in God?
Is the state of your soul fussy, unsettled, restless?
Do you have a personal history of experiencing God's kind faithfulness that puts that restlessness
that maybe you're feeling right now into a perspective of,
God knows me, God cares for me, God can take care of me.
Wait in silence.
He's my rock.
He's my fortress.
He's my salvation.
Let's set that in the back of our minds and let God work on that
as we dive into David's personal shaky situation that's tempting him to be restless in verses 3 and 4.
In my neighborhood, there's a fence that is vertically challenged.
It's a few degrees short of 90.
It's about like this.
Anybody know of any fences like that?
There's a couple of heavy metal stakes propped up on the other side of this fence
that is about all that's keeping this fence from fully giving in to the pull of gravity.
That is how David feels right now.
David feels like a leaning wall, a tottering fence.
Look at verse 3.
How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
So David is feeling pretty bad.
But it's not because he's old and decrepit.
It's because he's being battered.
And we're not exactly sure who David's referring to here,
but a good guess would be it might be written during the time when Absalom, his son,
was seeking to overthrow David's kingdom and usurp David's throne.
But at the very least, whether it's that situation or not, David's in the middle of conspiracy.
Something is happening and people are trying to bring him down.
Check out verse 4.
They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.
They take pleasure in falsehood.
They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.
So whoever's battering David knows that he's in a high position.
He is in favor with God and with men.
And they are jealous.
And they are seeking to remove him from his high position.
They're pulling out some ugly sledgehammers of deceit and flattery.
And there's some double-tongued-ness going on where they're saying one thing to David's face,
but then trying to ruin him with backroom conspiracies.
There is intrigue afoot to bring King David down.
So David is being shaken by malice and murderous motives.
But what's really interesting is that he moves through verses 3 and 4 and then arrives back at verses 5 and 6.
And it appears that his confidence, after dwelling on his shaky situation, his confidence is not less.
It's growing.
Look at verse 5.
This is where these differences between our two slices of bread come out.
In verse 1,
For God alone, my soul waits in silence.
It's kind of a bare statement of faith.
But look at verse 5.
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.
It's a confident command.
But there's something even better.
Check out this.
Look at verse 2 and verse 6, how they compare.
In verse 2, he says,
I shall not be greatly shaken.
He's like, okay, this trouble's coming.
I'm getting shaken.
I won't be greatly shaken, though.
God's going to uphold me.
I'll be okay.
I'll survive this.
But then look at verse 6.
What's missing?
I shall not be shaken.
Period.
So David's confidence has grown as he's progressing through this psalm,
as he's meditating on who God is and how reliable God is.
And he's also honestly looking at his shaky situation.
He comes to the point of saying, but God versus my shaky situation, no comparison.
I won't be shaken, period, because my God is that dependable, that reliable.
So in verses 1 and 2, he's hanging on to the rock by his fingernails.
He's hanging on, but just barely.
His faith is there, but it's weak, and he's feeling shaky.
But man, by the time we get to verse 5 and 6, and especially verse 7 in just a second,
he is standing with two feet on top of the rock.
And he's like, God's got this.
I don't have to worry.
He has grown in his confidence and his trust.
His grip on God has strengthened by realizing that God's grip on him has never faltered.
There's one more thing I want us to notice.
Verses 3 and 4 are the shaky situation, the middle of the sandwich.
And they are surrounded by confidence in God.
David's statements of faith, of his commanding grip on God, is sandwiching.
It's enclosing, even compressing his shaky situation.
He's forming a faith sandwich out of his shaky situation.
So he's honestly voicing his complaint to God about his enemies.
He's processing it out.
He's like, God, this is really hard.
But he reminds himself, here and here, God's got this.
And interestingly enough, it takes a shaky situation to get David's grip on God more secure.
And then we get to verse 7.
Verse 7 is the exclamation point of this psalm.
And it's right on the heels of David's growing confidence that God has got him.
And it's this climax moment of joyful trust.
On God rests my salvation and my glory.
My mighty rock, my refuge is God.
You see how it's kind of a God sandwich?
He begins and ends the verse with God.
And then in between is this fourfold, this is who God is.
My salvation rests on him.
My glory, my reputation even rests on him.
Because he's my mighty rock, my refuge.
David's world begins and ends with a God who made him, who knows him, who upholds him, who delivers him, and who grounds him.
So are you feeling at all like a leaning wall or a tottering fence this morning?
If not this morning, I'm sure you have.
And I'm sure that at some point, maybe even later today, you will.
Is it your soul restless or anxious or fussy in response to how life is shaking you right now?
I have good news from Psalm 62 to share with you.
There is a proven anchor for your soul.
He is utterly dependable.
Remember, David started out this psalm just barely hanging on to the rock by your fingernails.
Maybe that's where you are this morning.
And you're like, I've got more question marks than I have exclamation points.
But remind yourself that who God is, he is the only one who is able to deliver you.
He is the only stable ground underneath your feet.
He is your only protection and shelter from the storm.
Remind yourself of his proven dependability in the past in your life.
It only takes a couple of moments of self-reflection for me of thinking, okay, I'm feeling overwhelmed.
But, man, I remember when I was in a really rough spot, much worse than this, and God saw me through.
And sandwich your shaky situation with, God's got this.
He's got this.
Surround your shaking situation with, my God is my confidence.
He never falters in his grip on me.
And, by the way, God is the one who has sovereignly brought this shaky situation into your life, just like he did with David.
And he is the one who has done it in order, at least for one reason, in order that your confidence in him might grow more secure.
In order that you might find him more sufficient than ever before.
More briefly, let's move to the second section of this psalm.
Verses 8 to 10, our anchor is shared.
You'll notice right away in verse 8, David's tone changes.
So, instead of talking to himself or to God or to his enemies,
he now switches to addressing the gathered people of God who are gathered in the temple for worship.
Remember, this is a psalm.
It was written for corporate worship to be sung back to God.
And so, he's taking his bolstered confidence in God.
He's saying, trust in him at all times, oh people.
Pour out your heart before him.
God is a refuge for us.
So, God is not merely to be clung to personally, you and I, but he's also meant to be shared.
He's saying, listen, wherever you are, gathered people of God.
God is proving himself to be a dependable anchor for me.
He is a dependable anchor for you too.
I really enjoy watching the World Cup every four years.
It's going on right now.
And my poor wife has to put up with me quite a bit because I constantly am showing her, look at this goal, check this out.
And I'm wanting to share with her the little highlights of the goals and the cool awesome plays that happen in this display of athleticism every four years.
We love to do this.
Our joy gets doubled.
Our joy in something gets doubled when we share it.
Things that grip us, things that bring us joy, things that we find trustworthy and true.
We want to share it because we want to experience the joy of others benefiting from it as well.
And that's what's going on here.
And that's what David wants us to do.
That's what God desires for us to do as a church.
Church, we are to be sharing our anchor as well as sharing our shakiness with each other.
Some of the best conversations I've had in this room have been with people who are sharing their shaky situations with me.
Or I've been sharing my shaky situations with them.
And that is what the church is for.
We are to be hanging on to our anchor together.
And you don't have to have like brilliant Bible answers.
But you just have to have confidence in Jesus.
If someone's sharing their shaky situation with you.
And just say, man, that sounds rough.
Let's pray.
Let's run to our anchor together.
And if we want to grow in our unity and as our love as a church,
we need to be willing to say in answer to someone's, hey, how are you?
You say, you know what?
Things are rough right now.
Well, this is tough.
Now, sometimes you've got to exercise wisdom, right?
To say, okay, this is the person I need to share this with.
Maybe it's not this person.
But we need to be willing to share about how life is shaking us up
so that our brothers and sisters can remind us of how solid and stable our anchor is.
Just like David is saying to the people of God, he is so dependable, so stable.
Look at that little phrase in verse 8.
At all times.
Trust in him at all times.
God alone is our hope when life is 75 degrees and sunny and when it's a howling, miserable mess.
Trust in him at all times.
And we are meant to say in the midst of all that with each other, God alone is the one who's worthy of my trust.
And notice how he encourages us to do that.
He says, pour out your heart before him.
David has just poured out his heart before God in verses 3 and 4 about how he's being shaken.
And he's saying, God's able to handle that for you too.
I don't know about you, but most of the time, my heart feels like a spiritual bowl of spaghetti.
It's confused and conflicted and compromised.
And I can't find one end to make a straight line out of anything.
But we have a God who is able to untangle our spiritually spaghetti hearts and get our confidence more fully aimed at him.
And he's able to use the people of God to do that as well.
So David's sharing his proven anchor.
He's commending God to us by putting forth his experience of finding stability in the immovable rock of ages.
But his next move in verses 9 and 10 is a little different.
So he's commanding us where to put our confidence in God.
Trust in him, O people.
But then in verses 9 and 10, he's sharing with us where not to put our confidence.
Namely, verse 9, other people.
And verse 10, riches.
Check them out.
Those of low estate are but a breath.
Those of high estate are a delusion.
In the balances, they go up.
They are together lighter than a breath.
Put no trust in extortion.
Set no vain hopes on robbery.
If riches increase, set not your heart on them.
So if God's the solid substance that is worthy of our total confidence, then these things are shifting shadows.
That constantly disappoint us if we bank on them.
So first, let's look at the other people.
He's saying those of low estate, those of high estate.
That's just a poetic way of saying all kinds of people.
All kinds of people are lighter than a breath.
He's pointing out that we're all mortal.
We're all limited.
And simply because we are all mortal and we are limited, no human being can fully rest his or her hope on another human being.
Now, we are meant to trust each other.
I just said that we should be doing that as a church and trusting our lives to each other.
So he's not saying don't trust anybody.
He's saying don't make one person your sole ground of confidence.
That word vapor or breath can be also translated smoke.
Smoke can look solid.
It can look like it has a shape, but you put your hand through it and you grasp it in nothing.
And that's what he's saying.
People are not able to hold your full weight in the way that God is.
So employees, if you're looking for your boss's approval, it's not worthy of your total confidence.
Even if in our most trusted relationships, especially if you're married, the love of your significant other is not able to save you.
Parents, your children's affection or success is not your eternal joy.
Young people, friends are a delightful gift from God, but they can't support your full weight.
They're not utterly dependable like God is.
And living for the approval of your friends is like grasping the wind.
So cling to the proven anchor of your soul.
Look at riches, verse 10.
Put no trust in extortion.
Set no vain hopes on robbery.
If riches increase, set not your heart on them.
The time of year when, for most of us, or many of us, when riches increase is the tax season, tax return.
Hopefully it shows up and you're like, oh, this is exciting.
All right.
When I saw a tax return show up, I thought, yes.
And then my mind goes places.
How secure I feel.
How much I can buy with that.
How much I can stow away into retirement and feel more secure.
It's our first instinct to think that way about money.
But David is sharing with us a proven anchor.
And money, all the stuff that money buys, it's not a stable ground to stand on.
It's something to be grateful for.
It's something to be stewarded well.
But riches are a poor anchor for your soul.
If we take our ultimate hope, our ultimate confidence, and we set it on other people fully,
we set it on riches fully, or anything else, anything other than our only anchor,
then it's like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.
We're trusting our very lives to empty, thin air.
Only one is able to fully hold us and secure our well-being.
So the question, I think, for us is this.
Are you functionally resting on God as your ultimate confidence?
Just take a second and think about that personally.
Am I resting on God as my ultimate confidence?
Is he my capital H hope right now?
There are other lowercase h hopes that are good and they're fine.
Probably thinking about lunch right now.
It's a bit of a lowercase hope right now.
But what's your functional resting place, your solid ground?
Relationships, performance, success, comforts, entertainment.
What do you wake up in the morning thinking about?
How would you fill in the blank of this statement?
If only blank, I would be happy.
Kind of exposes a bit of where we can tend to trust in other things.
But David's saying, trust in him at all times.
I want to share this anchor with you.
He is the only one who is able to sustain your total confidence.
That's the anchor that David's sharing with us.
Verses 11 and 12, our last point.
Our anchor is revealed.
If you're a fan of detective shows, I like detective shows.
Then you know that there has to be a big reveal at the end of each episode.
So whoever your favorite detective is, Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, Monk, Poirot, whoever it might be.
There's got to be a big reveal.
Who done it and how they done it.
Well, there's a big reveal at the end of this psalm.
For many of us, especially if you've been raised in the church, you're nodding your head.
You're like, yeah, God's my anchor.
I understand that.
God's my solid ground.
That's not rocket science theologically.
But maybe there's been this question in the back of your mind like, okay, that's good.
That's good.
Yep, I believe that.
I can nod my head to that.
I can check that box.
But what is it?
What is it about God that makes him so dependable?
What am I really putting my trust in?
Who is this anchor?
Can I just drag the anchor up from the seabed for a minute and just examine it and help me to see what's keeping me stable?
What's keeping me on solid ground?
And David does that at the end of this psalm.
Let's look at verses 11 and 12.
That whole once, twice thing, it's a poetic way of expressing absolute clarity, certainty.
David is saying, God has revealed this about himself and I have no doubt that it's true.
So what is David so certain about?
What is he so positive about?
It's this.
God is utterly able and God is utterly committed.
Power belongs to you.
He is able.
And to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.
He is committed to his people.
So the holding power of our anchor is God's infinite ability and his infinite commitment.
If power did not belong to God, then he would not be able to pursue our good, no matter how much he might be committed to it.
If God were not infinitely committed and steadfast love did not belong to God, then whether he might be able to pursue our good is one thing, but he might not be committed to us to do it.
But both are true.
He is infinitely able and infinitely committed to bring about our good as his people.
And this rings true all through scripture.
No matter where you're at in the Bible, you're going to find God's infinite ability and infinite commitment to pursue the good of his people.
Whether that's Adam and Eve in the very beginning, to Abraham, to Moses.
Think about the golden calf episode.
The time of the judges.
God's people have been faithless.
His people have been faithless.
Miserable failures.
Blasphemous.
Turning away from God with rebel hearts.
And he still pursues their good.
But the greatest of all exhibitions of God's infinite ability and his infinite commitment to pursue the good of his people is in a man whose confidence in God was not faltering.
But was full.
He was not faithless.
He was flawlessly dependent on God.
In fact, his confidence in God was so supreme that he willingly stepped down from his high position into the shakiest of all situations at the father's request to be battered and to be toppled.
He exposed himself to the grossest falsehood and malice from evil men.
His soul quietly waited for God in the midst of the greatest storm imaginable.
Experiencing the father's wrath on our sin.
God the son.
Jesus Christ.
Was shaken to the utmost in weakness.
And he remained utterly confident in his father.
And by doing this, he displayed God's ultimate ability and his ultimate commitment to pursue the good of his faithful people.
Because Christ was willing to endure the weakness and the shakiness of the cross.
So in other words, Jesus was greatly shaken in the greatest of all storms so that you and I could claim the promise of Psalm 62 in the middle of our storms.
Apart from the person in the work of Jesus, Psalm 62 is null and void for us.
We might as well not read it.
But in Christ, only in Christ, we are able to confidently claim God to be our anchor.
And in Christ, God joyfully claims us as his own to protect and shelter and rescue as we patiently endure the shakiness that he brings us.
And by the way, every grace that you need to patiently endure has already been bought for you by the blood of Jesus.
And it was secured by his mighty resurrection.
So go to him in utter confidence as you face the shakiness of life.
David wraps this psalm up with a final sober encouragement that gets our eyes on eternity and off of our shakiness.
For you will render to a man according to his work.
God is our just, faithful judge at the end of all things.
And if our lives are increasingly characterized by growing quietness of our soul,
resting on our great anchor in the storm, not perfectly, but truly,
then God is our righteous judge.
And he is able and willing to reward us with eternal joy in his presence forever.
Where we will experience all rest and no shakiness.
In contrast, this is where the soberness comes in.
If our lives are increasingly characterized by restlessness,
by a restless pursuit of false hopes in other people, in riches, in success, in performance,
or wherever else it might be that you're tempted to put your ultimate trust in,
then God will render a fair judgment as well.
And we are, it's this sober reminder of,
God knows what I need to be able to trust him,
and it is my responsibility to go to him and to rest in him
when life sends me shaky storms,
rather than when God sends those shaky storms in life.
So no matter where you find yourself,
lean in to your anchor.
God is your only anchor in the storms,
and I encourage you to particularly do this in prayer.
Pour out your heart before him.
God is able to untangle your spaghetti-like heart.
Take your shakiness and sandwich it with rock-solid confidence in God.
Share this anchor with your fellow believers,
and share your shakiness with fellow believers,
that they might be able to strengthen your faith in him.
And let's call to mind who this anchor is.
He's the one who is utterly able and utterly committed to doing good to us
because he gave his son for us,
even in the storms.
Let's pray.
Father,
you are able to keep in perfect peace
those who trust in you.
So Father,
I pray that you would deal with restless hearts this morning.
Pray that you would
keep our gaze
on our solid rock.
Help us to stand on your infinite ability
and your infinite commitment to us
because of Jesus
and in Jesus.
We are so thankful, Father,
that you gave him for us
to demonstrate
the fullness of your love
for rebel hearts.
You didn't have to.
Out of your steadfast love,
you chose to.
Help us
as a body,
as a people
to know that you are a proven anchor
and to share you with others
as we seek to hold on to you together.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.