Into the Hands of God

It is hard to believe that we are nearing the end of the season of Lent. We have been on this journey that has allowed the Psalms to speak to us and to help us grow closer to God or reconnect with God.

We have seen that we have a God that shelters us, has his light shine upon us. He is a forgiving God who created us with emotions and that we should thirst for his truth. You can find each one of these sermons on our YouTube channel and Facebook page.

This week we ask for God to place us “Into his Hands” and we look at what that means for us. Our scripture comes from Psalm 31:9-16.

9 Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. 10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. 11 Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends— those who see me on the street flee from me. 12 I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. 13 For I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!” They conspire against me and plot to take my life. 14 But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. 16 Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.

Please pray with me…

Today is Palm Sunday. We will often find ourselves focusing on celebrating as we are looking at what is often called the triumphal entry. A time within the scriptures that we have the crowd, those early followers of Jesus, crying out to the Heavens proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah.

The Psalm for this Sunday takes us in a different direction. It is not a Psalm of celebration. It is a Psalm of hope. A Psalm written by a person who is facing the struggles of life and is making sure that God knows he is still relying on him and his “unfailing love.” He is a man of hope.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where those around you are celebrating and you are struggling? Have you ever gotten angry at those around you because they believe that life is good while you are about to give up.

That is the dichotomy that we find ourselves in today’s scripture. On the one hand we want to celebrate after all “this is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.” On the other hand, we know that there are people in our neighborhoods that are struggling. They are trying to decipher their next move.

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Scripture seems to lead us towards a God of compassion more often than a God of celebration. Jesus most of the time seemed to be focused on righting the relationship between God and his chosen people. He didn’t seek the recognition that he deserved as God coming down to earth.

We find this lived out most clearly in our first reading. Jesus is aware of the plan. Jesus has told his disciples what is to happen. He is at the place where the arrest will occur. But before it does, he steps aside in prayer and asks his father to find another way.

He ends the prayer with these words “yet not my will, but yours be done.” What he is saying through those words is the same thing that the Psalmist is saying in our text “My times are in your hands.” What happens to me is up to you.

Paul says it this way in Philippians chapter 1, “21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”

He is saying that if it is up to him, he would prefer to “depart and be with Christ,” he would be gone, but he knows it’s not his will that matters. It is God’s will that will have what happens to him occur. He sees himself living in the hands of God.

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What about you? How do you view your relationship with God. Do you feel that you do a good job of trusting him and putting yourself in the hands of God? This would mean that you are living by faith. Your focus is not on yourself but on what God desires for you and from you.

The world is attempting to have us move away from living our lives in the hands of God. The world desires for us to desire to live as the world lives. A focus on ourselves and how we can become richer, how we can become more powerful.

Putting ourselves in the hands of God is defined through opposite thoughts and ideas. We live our lives with a focus on God and those around us. We await not the riches of the world but the riches of Heaven. We know there is only one who is all powerful, large and in charge, and that is God.

This is by far the more difficult way for us to choose to live our lives here on earth. We are saying that those around me will not hurt me because my focus is on the one who will always love me. We are deciding that the ways of the world will be in our rear-view mirror and our focus will be to look forward to what God plans for our future.

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This is not only true for us individually, but it also should be our desire for The Church of the Good Shepherd. We need to not make our focus on what the world expects from us. We are to look forward and figure out what God desires for us and from us.

Our mission statement was our first step in fulfilling God’s purpose as a church. We have a focus given to us by God of reaching out to those around us, loving all people no matter the circumstances, and growing in faith together which means staying connected and working with each other.

We ought to be asking God constantly to help us become the church that he desires for us to be. That is a scary ask, because what God desires might not match with what we desire. We may have to put his will before our own.

We as followers of Jesus may have to put down those things in life that are holding us back and follow him. We need to rally together and become the followers of Jesus that God needs us to be at this time and in this place.

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The Psalmist lays out for us what it means for us to place ourselves into the hands of God. We need to be willing to speak to God and trust God. We have to believe that God listens and that he will help us through the troubles of life.

It is true that God can fulfill our asks without our assistance. God can do for us what we ask or what we need without any insights or help from us. What seems to be the case is that quite often in scripture God does wait for his people to ask.

The Psalmist asks God for four things. They are for God to show mercy, for God to deliver him from his hardships, that God will shine his face upon him, and that God will save him. But saying the words is not enough, we have to trust that God will fulfill them.

We have to believe that God will do what is best for us, for him, and for those around us. Meaning what we ask may not happen the way that we desire for it to happen because God is focusing on the big picture while we are only focusing on our little segment of society.

That is when faith and trust become tough. We know what we want, and we are unable to understand how what we want isn’t what is for the best. We struggle with what to do with the answer that we receive.

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The Psalmist doesn’t make small asks, he first asks for God to be merciful. This is basically what Jesus is saying in our first reading. He is asking for God’s mercy. He is saying to his father, “I don’t want to be treated and to die this way, please find another way.”

Jesus asks and we find that mercy does not occur how he desired. He still faced the hardships. He still went through the pain and humiliation. The “ask” itself might become the easy part, God defining for us what we can handle may be what is difficult.

It is possible that God has more faith in you than you have in yourself. God may believe that you can handle more than what you believe is possible. He may be pushing us out of our comfort zone and attempting to lead us towards a better version of ourselves.

I had this question asked recently, why do I have to suffer when I prefer to go to Heaven? I gave the best answer I know, “I don’t know.” But what we need to do no matter what are situation and circumstances is assume that God is still using us in some way to benefit him and those around us.

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We may be going through struggles in order to allow ourselves to become an example to those around us. We are able to keep the faith through our struggles which may at some point allow someone else to also be able to keep the faith.

Our struggles may allow us to have greater compassion to those around us. Compassion in a specific area many times will expand through experience. It is through us going through something that opens our eyes to what those around us are going through.

This can help us to discover ways to help those around us that others may not be aware of. I have spoken of this before, because I was a sibling of a terminally ill child, I am able to understand what other siblings in similar circumstances may be facing. I can pray and be there for them in a different way than someone who has not faced the same situation.

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We can ask for mercy, but we might not always receive it in the time frame or the way that we desire. This may lead us to choose the Psalmist’s second ask from God, “deliver me.” This would be us saying I trust your plan God, but I am reaching my limit to what I believe I can handle.

We are admitting to God that we can’t handle what is happening on our own. Sometimes we can find ourselves crying out “deliver me” to God based off bad decisions that we have made. We find this with the Israelites in Egypt.

God sent Moses because he had heard their cries. They understood their need for God to intervene. They had outlived their welcome, but they were comfortable and chose to hang around until it was to late and God was needed to get them out of their situation.

We can find ourselves attempting to make it on our own. We have decided that we either don’t need God or don’t trust God enough to believe that he can help us. Eventually things get bad enough and we cry out to God asking for him to deliver us from the turmoil we are facing.

Other times we may ask for deliverance as a preemptive action. What do we say each week during the Lord’s prayer? We ask the Lord to “deliver us from evil.” We are asking God for his protection.

We are admitting that God knows more than we know. We are saying that we believe that God can overcome what we believe to be evil. That he can prevent us from falling into the devil’s trap. He can help us stay away from temptation.

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We follow this up with the Psalmist asking for God to shine his face upon him. He says OK God if you aren’t going to show me mercy. If you aren’t going to deliver me, at least, please shine your face upon me.

This would be us telling God that I am turning my life over to you. I am asking for you to let your will become my will, your desires to become my desires. I want what you want to be what I am going to do.

The Psalmist has reached a point in his life where his life is not going to be about him. It is going to be about what God wants to do through him. He wants God to direct him in the direction that God desires for him to go.

It may be-that God didn’t show mercy or deliver him-in order to lead him-to this place of surrender. This desire for the Psalmist to be who God desires for him to be. He is going to do what God wants for him to do.

Each one of us should desire to reach this place in our own lives. A willingness to put God first and to choose to live our lives as God desires instead of focusing on our own desires. We may need to ask for God to “shine his face upon us.”

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We are able to live this out by a willingness to be in connection with God on a regular basis. We do this through what I call spiritual exercises. A willingness to focus regularly on our spiritual well being and to listen to what God says to us.

We can go back to our first reading with Jesus choosing to go to his father in prayer. We find little snippets throughout scripture that can lead us to believe that this was a normal practice for Jesus. He wants to make sure that he was connected to his father during his time on earth.

We find one of these places in Luke chapter 6 where it tells us that Jesus prayed and then he named his twelve disciples. It would lead us to believe that it was through prayer and listening that the Father told Jesus who he should choose to pour himself into during his time on earth.

We should also desire to discover the best way or ways for us to hear from God and choose to listen to what God is trying to say to us. God wants to converse with you so that his face can shine upon you in all that you say and do.

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The Psalmist speaks of being willing to follow the will of God and then ends the Psalm by asking God to save him. We will often view “deliver me” and “save me” as similar within scripture, but I believe we have a distinct difference between the two in today’s text.

The Psalmist has reached a place in his life where he wants God to impact his life more than the world. But he also knows that only God can help him become this person. Only God can help him keep his focus on what God desires.

He wants God to help him to remove the obstacles that will cause him to stumble on the journey. He is saying I know that I will face situations that can distract me and lead me away from you. Save me from allowing these distractions to prevent your will to be done in my life.

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This Psalm can be each of our journeys. It would be nice if we didn’t need to rely on God’s mercy and have him deliver us from what is happening around us but let’s admit it, we often need God’s help to keep the world from invading our mind and body.

God maybe showing us mercy by having us be on a journey that leads us to a place of asking for God to shine his face upon us and to save us. It may be that through us allowing God to be in control that God is truly showing us mercy.

This can be hard for us to believe when the journey is hard. Let us attempt to always give God the benefit of the doubt. Let us choose to celebrate the greatness of our God and the love and grace he has shown and shows to each one of us.

Let us also be willing as a church and as individuals to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus to those around us. Let us decide if we have not already today and every day that we are going to put our lives into the hands of God.

Please pray with me…