All-Powerful to Save

Psalm 20, CEB

1 I pray that the Lord answers you whenever you are in trouble. Let the name of Jacob’s God protect you. 2 Let God send help to you from the sanctuary and support you from Zion. 3 Let God recall your many grain offerings; let him savor your entirely burned offerings. Selah 4 Let God grant what is in your heart and fulfill all your plans. 5 Then we will rejoice that you’ve been helped. We will fly our flags in the name of our God. Let the Lord fulfill all your requests! 6 Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed one; God answers his anointed one from his heavenly sanctuary, answering with mighty acts of salvation achieved by his strong hand. 7 Some people trust in chariots, others in horses; but we praise the Lord’s name. 8 They will collapse and fall, but we will stand up straight and strong. 9 Lord, save the king! Let him answer us when we cry out!

Intro

This week, we conclude our Ascribe to God sermon series, a journey of deepening our understanding of who God is and how God is at work in the world. Each week, we have explored different attributes and qualities that we ascribe or assign to God. We began by understanding God as an all-consuming presence. We were reminded that God is always with us, and when we allow God to truly consume us, we are perfected in love so that we might share God’s love with others. Then, we examined what it means to serve an all-knowing God. To be known by God is an act of love as God seeks to be in relationship with us. Our call is to move toward a place of accepting, of asking God to know us so that we might give ourselves over more fully to God’s ways. Last week we examined God as immutable in love. Even when we make mistakes, even when we fail God’s love is unchanging and faithful. By truly dwelling in God’s immutable love, we are made more perfect in love and are empowered to share that love with others. This week, we explore God who is all-powerful to save.

Our Psalm this morning is a royal Psalm. There are a variety of ways in which it was used, but the leading opinion is that it was a part of the feast for New Year’s. It would celebrate God’s kingship and was used alongside the enthronement of a new king in Jerusalem. Essentially, this was a "song led by the priest for the king to God.” In the Psalm, the king, and we, are reminded that God will “grant what is in your heart and fulfill all your plans” (Psalm 20:4).

Now this seems like a strange idea. Sure, in the Gospel Jesus says, “Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7, CEB). But do we really want the desires of our hearts? And before we can even answer that question, we must ask ourselves, what do our hearts really desire.

For so many, our hearts desire earthly things. We want to travel and see the country and the world. Maybe we desire a nicer house or a newer car. Maybe we desire health and longevity. Maybe we desire food and shelter. Maybe we desire a better job. Maybe on a broader level we want freedom or goodness. And if we are honest with ourselves, when our hearts desire the things we want, when our deepest desires are our plans and our ways, more often than not we find ourselves disappointed. We are disappointed because things don’t always work out. Sometimes we get turned down for the promotion. We can’t afford the nicer house or newer car. We don’t have the means or the ability to travel like we thought we had. Our disappointment can bring on a variety of feelings including anger with God.

We then must ask ourselves, why are these things our deepest desires? What, deep in our hearts, is the source of these desires? As one theologian reminds us, “Why do we love? Why do we want to lead meaningful lives? Why do we strive after things? Why do we believe in certain ideals? If we dig deep enough, we find that everything good and worthwhile stems from one source: God. No matter what we imagine we desire, what we truly long for is God—and God desires us.” You see, deep down in our hearts, we long for these earthly things, security for our family, a good job, health, experiences, because in some form or fashion each of these things bring us closer to God.

And while we search for this deep connection with God, if we are honest, we also fear it. We’ve talked about knowing that God is everywhere. We’ve talked about God knowing our hearts. We’ve even expressed a need to be open to God searching our hearts. Yet, the truth is, we resist that level of vulnerability. Because if we truly let God into our deepest longings, deep down into our hearts, we don’t really know what will happen. Maybe we think if we hide things deep enough God can’t see them. Or maybe we are worried that we will be changed in a radical way. I think the real fear comes from a worry of being disappointed. What if God doesn’t appear? What if we are rejected? What if the desires aren’t good enough.

These fears and worries don’t stem from God. Rather, they stem from our human relationships. We have all known people who disappointed us. We have all had someone in our lives who wasn’t there when we really needed them to be. We’ve been let down by someone, in some way, at some time. Yet God is not like that. God is faithful, even when we are faithless. When we might be impatient, God is all-powerful to save us from ourselves.

You see God wants to work within us. As we allow the God who is all-consuming in God’s presence, who is our all-knowing creator, whose love is immutable, to work within us, God saves us from our earthly selves. God begins to perfect us and change us. And if we are truly open to this, if we truly allow God to begin to work within us, the deep desires of our heart begin to change. And if we can truly discern what our God-given deep desires are, God will meet us there. Because then our desires sync-up or line-up with God’s desires. Our ways begin to be God’s ways.

Over the last couple of months I have asked a group of leaders to enter into a process of discernment with me. We have been slowly discerning what the vision of Saint Luke's will be as we look to the future. We have much more work today as we have examined where Saint Luke's is,and what is going on around us in mission and ministry at the church, we beginning to realize the formation of a vision. And the truth is, as we conduct surveys with the church, and prayer walk our neighborhoods, the vision will change and be reshaped. Because what we are seeking is not our vision by God’s vision. We have to allow God to step in and save us from ourselves. We have allow God to work within us that our ideas might be transformed into God’s ideas. That the deep desire of our hearts are revealed to be God’s ways and God’s desires for Saint Luke's United Methodist Church. We still have work to do, but we give thanks that God meets us in the work. This is one of the reasons I hope you to join me in praying this month through the book Dynamite Prayer.

Dynamite Prayer is a daily prayer guide that will show you how to begin a practice of "breakthrough prayer," a way of praying where we ask God to open new doors and reveal new possibilities, fueled by the Spirit's power. We need God's Spirt to guide and direct us. Just as the Spirit guides and directs the palmist.

And this is why, in our text this morning, the king is blessed. The king is blessed with victory because the king’s desires for the nation are aligned with God’s desires. God has saved the people from themselves to give them the freedom and power to live into God’s ways. And they are victorious, not because of their mighty armies but because they trust in God. As one theologian reminds us, this has be true throughout history. It isn’t with military might or technology that Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the Red Sea. It was with God’s help. It wasn’t with armor or lethal weapons that David killed Goliath. It was with God’s help. In other words, God saves us and brings us victory because our desires are aligned with God and we trust in God to bring about the victory.

So how do we go about this work? How do we invite God deep into our hearts and desires? How do we move from putting our trust in the ways of this world and trust God? We do so by asking. All we need to do is ask God to meet us in those places. We serve a God who loves us enough to give us free will, but is powerful enough to save us from ourselves when we ask. Have you ever heard the song “Mighty to Save.” Part of this song goes, “So take me as You find me, all my fears and failures, and fill my life again. I give my life to follow everything I believe in, and now I surrender.” Once we surrender ourselves, when we walk humbly with God, we realize all the ways God has saved us throughout our lives. We remember all the times we surrendered to God’s ways and realized God’s ways were better than our ways.

You see when we are in this place in our relationship with God we begin to realize the bigger picture of, not just saving us from ourselves, but our salvation. We begin to realize God’s plans for us, what we are saved for. We begin to realize all the ways we are saved from sin and ourselves, from selfishness and fear, what we are saved from. For it is in this place, we begin to realize the God who consumes us with God’s presence, knows us as we are, loves us no matter what, has the power to save us.

The song continues, “Savior, he can move the mountains, our God is mighty to save, our God is mighty to save. Forever, author of salvation. He rose and conquered the grave. Jesus conquered the grave.” For when we truly live our lives in acknowledgment of this, we begin to allow God to work within us, perfecting us, that we may be God’s light, God’s hands and feet in the world that others may come to know this truth as well. For God knows you, welcomes you where you are, loves you, and wants to save you too. Our God is mighty to save.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.