God Is With Us - Week 3 - In The Storm

Pastor James Safrit

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Summary

Pastor Safrit walks through Mark 4:35-41, emphasizing that God is with us in the storms of life. He highlights how storms can challenge our faith and calls us to evaluate where we place our trust during difficult times. The sermon encourages believers to recognize God's presence and power, reminding them that peace is found not in the absence of storms, but in the presence of God.

  1. Welcome and Church Information

    Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms.

    Amen. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Mark chapter 4 this morning. Mark chapter 4, verses 35 through 41.

    And if you have a child that wants to go to Children's Church, that will be dismissed at this time. And that will be available for you. It's always a blessing to be able to have that. Again, thank you for being here today, worshiping our Savior.

    As I began, as I said this last week, as I began planning and preparing for where the Lord wanted me to be at for Christmas time, I did not envision that I would be talking about unfortunate circumstances that we go through in life.

    But God's way is better than our ways and higher than our ways.

  2. And so we're going to continue to trust Him and know that He's in control. And we're looking at one phrase, God is with us, and what that looks like when God is intimately with us in our situations and in our circumstances of life.

    And we talked about two weeks ago, God is with us in the valley.

    And what it looks like when we are going through the valley and God meets us where we're at and helps us to go through the valley. And then last week we talked about God is with us in the wilderness. And how oftentimes we go through wilderness moments.

    And we don't understand why, but we experience God in those moments. And today we're going to be looking at God is with us in the storm. So I hope you had your time to turn there to Mark chapter 4. We'll stand and read out of reading of God's Word.

  3. So if you're willing and able to stand, I'm going to read Matthew 1 first, which is our text verse. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son. And they will name Him Emmanuel, which is translated God is with us.

    And then Mark chapter 4, just a couple of years after Jesus' birth. And He's making His way through the world. And He says this, And on the day when evening had come, He told them,

    Let us cross over to the other side of the sea. And so they left the crowd and took Him along since He was in the boat and the other boats were with Him. And a great windstorm arose and the waves were breaking over the boat so that the boat was already being swamped.

    He was in the stern sleeping on a cushion. So they woke Him and said, Teacher, do you not care that we are going to die?

  4. Jesus Calms the Storm

    And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Silence, peace be still. The wind ceased and was a great calm. And He said unto them, Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?

    And they were terrified and asked one another, Who then is this? Even that the winds and the seas obey Him. Lord, we love You. We thank You for what You've done. God, You are such a great God. You're so merciful and gracious to us.

    I pray that You would bless Your reading of Your Word today. Give me words and wisdom to say. In Your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

    As we think through life and storms that happen in our life and things that come, my mind began to race of different things that we could talk about. I was six months old and Hurricane Hugo had hit.

  5. I was about seven or eight months old maybe. So I don't remember Hugo. How many of you remember when Hurricane Hugo came through? Okay. Power went out. All of North Carolina was bombarded with this storm. And I was actually recollecting this past week about the great ice storm. When I was about 2001,

    Rowan County had a massive ice storm and took out power for three or four weeks.

    We were out of school for about that long, which was great for a kid to be out of school.

    And the parents were trying to figure out what they're going to do with these kids for three or four weeks. But I remember that storm and I remember how we had had power, but everyone around us just somehow they lost power.

    And we were trying to help people with generators and doing things for different people.

    And then my mind sort of came to what had recently happened here in North Carolina with a storm of a hurricane that had came through with Helene.

  6. And in November, I heard a story of a husband and wife who works with the Baptist on mission, who their job is to assess damage that happens.

    A storm comes in, they go in, they're the assessors. They take their notebook and they check off everything. But yet they lived in Nebo area and Morganton area, North Carolina.

    And I heard their story. They shared their story. And I thought, man, that's a powerful. So I began looking, tried to find this story. And I found their video of their story. And I want you to see sort of what happened when the storm came through in their life. So watch this.

    It's just a three minute video. We know the story of what happened and we see that. But oftentimes we forget these are real people that had real experiences that said,

    they made my faith stronger. It worked in a mighty way in my life to where I'm able to relate to people in a better way.

  7. God's Presence in Storms

    Oftentimes when storms come in our life, church, we feel like God sort of steps away from our life.

    We find as we look through scripture that a presence of a storm, we should never doubt the presence of God in our life. We are going to face all types of storms in our life. I wrote down just a couple of depression, addiction, cancer, death, divorce, suffering, all these things.

    You can say, I know someone or this has happened in my life where a storm has come in my life. And God says when storms come in, don't run to things that are going to be fleeting our way.

    But ultimately, as I put in your notes, we enjoy God on the mountaintops as we've talked through this. We get to know him intimately in the valleys. We experience God in the wilderness.

    But today we depend on the protection of God in the storms where our faith grows.

  8. Our faith begins to grow in the storms in a way that we didn't even see it was even possible. As we watched that video, Don and his wife said, we begin to see God work in a way we never even thought was possible.

    And it wouldn't have happened if the storm didn't come into their life. And so we begin to go through these things and we begin to ask ourselves one overarching question this morning that I want us to think about. When storms arise, where is your trust at?

    When things are out of your control, because ultimately that's a storm, right? A storm is something that you cannot control physically.

    And so when a storm comes, when things are out of your control, who or what are you trusting in?

    Who are you saying, I'm going to put my head on my pillow tonight, trusting in this individual, this person, this God, this thing in my life that I'm going to trust in and say, God, this is who I'm

  9. going to trust in. So let's dive through the scripture this morning and look at what happens in the disciples life when a storm comes. Ultimately, the first thing, storms can happen in the best or the worst circumstances. Storms can happen in the best or the worst circumstances.

    Put yourself in the picture here of what's going on. Jesus and his disciples were becoming what we would call superstars. They were becoming TikTok famous. They were becoming viral if they had internet, right? They were becoming this overwhelming, everyone's talking about them type of life.

    If you go back just a couple of chapters, Jesus drove out demons.

    Jesus began to heal the sick. Jesus cleansed the men who were leprosy men. And his fame began to spread all throughout this region that everyone wanted to be around this man named Jesus.

    The crowds were following them. We know just a couple of chapters later, Jesus feeds the 5,000 people, which we know based on historical records, that would have been closer to 20,000 to 25,000 people that were following Jesus at one time.

  10. There was no internet. There was no social media. This was all word of mouth.

    If Jesus would be living today right here in this world and would be doing these things,

    I would dare to say that there would be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, flying all over the world to be around this man named Jesus.

    To be close to him, to be around him, to find out what's going on, to see if he was real, and to see if he was authentic. Now imagine the disciples in this situation. Imagine where they're feeling. Man, we're pretty great.

    Look at all these people following us. Man, I'm a big deal. I'm pretty awesome right now. We chose the right teacher. Right? Jesus came to us. I'm sure there were other rabbis around. And man, we chose the right one. And in reality, they had nothing to do with being chose.

  11. God chose them. Jesus chose them. Imagine them in their minds' eyes saying,

    these things that we're seeing, we read about in the Old Testament. We heard about as our forefathers and our grandparents were telling us about stories, about coming out of Egypt and how God did miraculous things. These are things we dreamed about. And we're seeing it done in real life.

    I'm sure they started to even imagine, what's going to happen? Is Jesus going to supremely rule and take over Caesar and take over Rome and be this massive leader?

    And we're going to be his disciples. We're going to be part of his inner circle. We're going to be part of his cabinet. Like, we're going to rule. This is going to be awesome.

    Jesus had this planned for them, knowing what was going to happen, to go to the other side. Now, I think it's interesting when Jesus writes here and they're writing this down.

  12. It says, and on that day, the evening had come. He told them, let's go to the other side. One of the disciples said, Jesus, let's stay here. The crowd's here. Man, they love us. They're worshiping us.

    This is great. Let's just stay right here. All the disciples, this is what I said. They said, Jesus,

    you're in control. Let's go to the other side. Let's see who's over there that we can win. Let's see who's waiting over there that we can add to this following. Oh, they were excited.

    No doubt. They were ready to go. Their question was, how soon can we get to the other side? How soon can we add more people to what's going on? The circumstances were wonderful.

    Man, they were blessed. They were beginning to go through some amazing things. They began to ask themselves, what is Jesus going to do next that we're going to be a part of?

  13. They could have easily said, let's camp here. We'll go in the morning. The sea's going to be fine. I'm sure as fishermen, they probably saw the storm brewing.

    And they said, I'll be all right. We can handle this. But ultimately, number two, as we begin to process through this, storm calls us to evaluate our faith. Storms calls us to evaluate our faith. Verse 37 and 38, the windstorm arose, began to break over the boat.

    Jesus was asleep, and they began to say, teacher, do you not care that we're going to die? You see, I believe Jesus led them intentionally through this storm in order for them to learn what true faith was.

    The same thing can be said about us. Oftentimes, Jesus leads us intentionally through storms so that we can deeper, more fully trust in who he is to grow our faith. You see, sometimes we experience trials in our life of our own making.

  14. I've been there, right? I lied in school. I did something wrong. And the consequences was because I brought that consequence on myself.

    But there are times where trials happen that are out of our control, that are beyond what we have done, that is just simply there for God to say, I'm working this in and through your life. When things seem out of control, we must understand that God is still in control.

    And he is doing things in our life for our own benefit. James chapter 1, this is the half-brother of Jesus,

    opened up his passage of Scripture, opened up his book, the second verse in the book. He opens up with an introduction, and then the second verse, he says this,

    The purpose here was for them to go through this trial so that the Lord would get the glory. But I began to observe two things that the disciples did.

  15. Disciples' Responses to Storms

    The disciples responded in two ways to this storm that was happening in their life. And maybe you can relate to this. Maybe you've been through a storm and you've responded this way. The first one was this. They were clearly afraid. The great windstorm arose.

    It began to break over them. They were being swamped. The stern of the storm was there, and they woke up the Savior and said, We're going to die. What are you doing? You see, the circumstances around the boat were dictating how they were living their life. These were avid, trained fishermen.

    They lived on the sea. They had experienced everything that you can imagine. From the moment they were born, most likely up until the time they were weaned off their mom, their dad put them on the boat and began training them on how to run the sea and how to run all

  16. that was going on. When we were at the Sea of Galilee just a couple years ago, and I was there, and I got to ride on a boat, you could see the Sea of Galilee, the way it's positioned, random storms pop up all the time. We woke up, foggy, storms on the sea.

    I mean, moments later, it was completely clear and gone. And this is, they knew that these things would happen.

    And all of a sudden, the power of this storm, the power of this test began to question and shake them to their core.

    I imagine they were like the sailors of Jonah who began to process what was going on in their life. And they said, What are we going to do in order to allow this storm to stop? The sailors in Jonah, they threw everything over. They were lightening the load.

    They were trying to get away.

  17. And the disciples here became afraid and said, What are we going to do? But I think it's interesting that they also became accusatory. They began to accuse Jesus of not caring.

    The Savior of the world who we worship today, who we celebrate his birth as we think about how he left heaven and came to earth to be born in a manger, to leave all that God had for him. They said, Do you not even care that this is about to happen?

    Have you been there this morning? You may say, I would never, never would I accuse God of that.

    And then all of a sudden, something happens in our life like Mary and Martha, who were the closest friends that Jesus had in this world, who they grew up with him.

    And when Lazarus, their best friend, their brother had died, his best friend in this world, they looked at him and said, Do you not care that your best friend died?

  18. Jesus, I thought you loved us. And how often is that us?

    When things happen in our life and we look at God and say, Are you even around me, God? Are you even near me?

    We see the disciples here that say, Do you not care we're about to die? Do you not see what's going on? Do you even care about us? Remember, guys, just a few hours earlier, they were on cloud nine. The disciples were around them. The crowds were around them.

    Jesus is doing miracles. They're talking about how they're going to be on the cabinet of God's team, and they're going to be these awesome people. And just a couple of hours later, God, are you even around us? God, where are you at? What's going on?

    And all because of one storm hit, they began to lose all the faith that they had.

  19. Sometimes like these, many people have come to the question as the disciples and said, God, do you even care about me?

    God, do you even see what I'm dealing with? Do you not know the trials that I'm going through? Where are you at? And why are you not here doing something about it? I think those are valid questions. I'm not discounting those questions.

    I've been there personally, and I've been there as a young person, as a teenager, when my mom and dad were going through their divorce, and I began to question God. And I began to say, God, what are you doing in my life? Why are you doing these things?

    I'm not discounting those questions, but I think the deeper meaning is understand the truth that God does care.

    That God does care by sending Jesus. And a life of a disciple is understanding and trusting the care of God, even when we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

  20. We know that God is there with us. You see, the Bible didn't say that when they came to Jesus, he had already magically left the boat and was walking on the water somewhere, getting away from the storm. It said they came to Jesus at the stern of the boat, sleeping on a cushion, like everything was going to be okay. Okay.

    Reminded oftentimes when we don't realize that God is right in the middle of the storm with us. He's just like he was in this storm. He's sitting right there in the middle, and he's just saying, just come to me. Because once the disciples came to him, they began to see God's power.

    Storms oftentimes in our life will show us God's power. One commentator that I read, he's an old, old commentator. I told a guy this week, I like my dead best friends. Okay.

  21. These are my commentators on my bookshelf that tell me a lot of great things that aren't alive anymore. And they're just, they're there. If I have a question, I can go to them and they're going to have an answer for me. They're great.

    Jerry Bridges wrote this about God that I don't think we should ever forget. God is perfect in his love. He wants what's best for us. God is infinite in his wisdom.

    He knows what's best for us. Oftentimes things happen and we're like, God, why is this going on? And this is not how I wrote my story, God. I had my perfect story written down.

    This is how I wanted it to go. I wanted to be married by this age. I wanted to have this many kids by this age. I wanted to have my house paid off. I wanted to go on these retirement vacations.

  22. God, this is my story. Why didn't you do it?

    But, and Jerry Bridges says, God is infinite in his wisdom. He knows what's best for us. God is also limitless in his power. He is able to bring about the best for us.

    See, often we say God doesn't care when in reality God cares for us and he has a purpose for our hardships.

    He has a purpose intimately for our lives of why we go through what we go through. We may not even know what that is even on this earth. But Peter says it like this in 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 6 and 7.

    Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in the proper time. You ready?

    Verse 7, a verse that we should highlight and we should go to almost every day of our life.

  23. Casting Cares on God

    Casting all of your cares on him. Why? Because he cares about you.

    You see, these storms that happen in our life, we understand that God is there with us. He's intimately trying to grow our faith, but he cares about us and we should be turning this back on him.

    Jesus could have stopped the storm while he was asleep. He could have never even opened an eye and stopped the storm. But instead, he stands up and he looks at them and he says this question, Why are you so afraid?

    How many times in verse 40 has Jesus looked at me and said, Why are you so afraid? Do you not look at what I've done for you?

    Do you not look at the things that you've done in your life that I've brought about that you didn't even see what was going on? You didn't see the 17 steps ahead in chess that I was working out in front of you so that your path could be straight.

  24. And one little hiccup happens and we say, God, are you even there? And God looks down at us and he says, Why are you so afraid? In their minds, this is what they thought. Jesus, look around us. Look at the storm around us. The boat is flooding.

    We're having to shovel water out. It's going under. We don't know what's going to happen. The storms are hitting us on this side. They're hitting us on this side. The boat's twisted around.

    Part of the boat's floating in the water. God, what do you mean we're so afraid? We don't even know what's going on right now.

    And he looks at them and he says, How is it that you have no faith? He didn't say some faith. He said, How is it that you have no faith?

    The way this is constructed is Jesus is saying, How is it that by this moment in your life, We're five chapters in Mark.

  25. How is it that you don't have any faith in me? How is it that you don't understand who I am? How is it that you've seen all that I've done?

    That you've been a part of these things, And yet you still don't know who I am. You've seen me heal people of their diseases. You've seen people heal me of their disabilities. You've seen me cast out demons.

    You've seen me teach authority to the scribes and the Pharisees, Where they said, Who is this man who teaches with all authority of God?

    Jesus looked at his disciples in this expectation That they would look past their scenario, And they would look to the Savior, And they would say, This is the man who has the faith that can heal these things. That can deal with all these storms.

    They have this Emmanuel that is with them, That is right there with them, And perhaps some of them should have called to mind A passage in Isaiah chapter 41.

  26. And Isaiah chapter 41 verse 10 says it like this, Do not fear, For I am with you.

    Do not be afraid, For I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand. See, the disciples would have known that verse.

    They would have been able to quote that verse Without even having to turn to it like I just did. And Jesus said, In the middle of your storm, In the middle of what you're going through,

    Understand that my power is greater than anything That you've ever seen or heard or witnessed in your life, And I'm going to be able to control these storms In a perfect timing.

    And all of a sudden in our lives, We get this moment in our frail humanity, We can associate with the disciples, We can say, I've been there, Jesus.

  27. Growth of Faith Through Storms

    I've doubted you. I haven't trusted you the way I should have. Which ultimately leads us to the very last point. Storms grow our faith in the Lord.

    Storms grow our faith in the Lord. They went from fear of the sea, To all of a sudden, The fear of what the power that Jesus Christ had. And really, who can blame them? Right? You're trusting this man.

    The storm is overwhelming. You know what storms can do. You've seen storms overtake other boats.

    You've seen storms overtake probably your own boat While you were out with your dad fishing. You've seen the power of what can happen As we saw the video of those boulders coming down the riverbed there And the sound that they make. You've seen what power the storms have.

    And from that fear of these storms, Now this man who you're following, Who's done some pretty cool things so far, Stands up and says,

  28. Peace be still. And the winds and the waves and the storm ceases to exist. Who can blame them for fearing what was going on? And they were terrified,

    And they began to reason with one another. For someone to stand up and to speak a word, And the storm to stop and to see, To become perfectly calm, That is real power.

    That is where we begin to get in awe of who this man is, Where even the wind and the seas obey him. If you have the King James, That's what I was raised on. This is how I memorize this verse. What manner of man is this?

    What manner of man is this? What is this guy doing? He can calm the storm, He can calm the sea to a perfect calmness.

    And they begin to say, Who is this man? What kind of person are we dealing with in our midst?

  29. Their faith began to grow so much, That they forgot about even the storms that were going on. Because God's power worked in their life. And I wonder, Just wonder if, Psalms 107 came to their mind. Psalms 107 says it like this, Others went into the sea with ships.

    They conducted trade on the vast water. They saw the Lord's work and His wonderful works in the deep. He spoke and raised a stormy wind and stirred the waves of the sea. Rising up to the sea, Sinking down to the depths, Their courage melted away with anguish. They reeled and they staggered like a drunkard.

    And all of their skill was useless. Think about this with the disciples. All of their skill was useless. They couldn't overcome the waves.

    They couldn't overcome the storms. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble. And He brought them out of their distress.

  30. Verse 29, He stilled the storm to a whisper. And the waves of the sea were hushed. They rejoiced when the waves grew quiet.

    And then He guided them to the harbor that they longed for. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His faithful love and wondrous works for all humanity.

    And then let them exalt Him in the assembly of the people and praise Him in the council of the elders. You see, this passage was fulfilled in Jesus' ministry.

    And they were commanded in this passage that when the storms and the waves were stilled, they should give thanks and they should exalt Him among all the people. And what did they do?

    They feared and trembled and said to one another, Who is this that even the winds and seas obey Him? Like, who in the world is this guy? He claims he's God's son, but now he's doing these things that only the psalmist wrote about.

  31. They should have been reminded that we must be at the place where we humbly bow ourselves and worship this man who has done so much for us.

    In church this morning, then we must get to a place where we humble ourselves and say, God, even in the storms, even when I don't know what's going on, I'm going to trust in You. I'm going to depend on You no matter what happens in my life.

    As Terry comes and begins to play our song of invitation, peace is not the absence of a storm. Oftentimes we say, God, give me peace and take away the things that are in my life. It can happen, but it doesn't happen all the time in Scripture.

    Sometimes people have to continue to deal with what they're going through because peace is found in the presence of God.

    When we begin to get close to God and draw near to God, and He draws near to us, the storms and the things that are around us begin to fade away because we just see God lifted high through

  32. Helping Others Through Trials

    Jesus. God will use what you learn in the storms to help someone else through theirs.

    We begin to go through different situations and trials in our life, and we understand that God is with us. We understand that He is intimately with us and He wants to have this relationship with us. Then we begin to turn and help other people. Maybe you're here this morning and you've survived cancer,

    and you see someone who is going through that fight. Now you get to step alongside of them, and you get to encourage them to fight that fight. Maybe you've overcome some unfaithfulness in your marriage this morning. Now you get to help other people through that forgiveness.

    Maybe you've climbed out of debt. Maybe you were in debt up to your eyeballs. You didn't know what you were going to do. You didn't know how you were going to pay the bill tomorrow.

  33. And through God's mercy and grace, He allowed you to get financially free, and now you're able to help other people do that.

    Maybe you're here this morning and you're sober from drugs or alcohol, and you've went through a life, and maybe you're three or six or eight months sober or a year or two years, and now you're able to go

    to someone and say, I'm here not because I followed some plan, but because Christ redeemed my situation. He took me in the storm of life.

    He pulled me out, and He set my feet on solid ground, and He's helped me. You see, faith is not what we see. Faith is what God says.

    And as God says to us, do not fear, for I am with you, we understand that He is truly with us. Psalms 46 says it like this, God is our refuge and strength, a helper who is always found in times of trouble.

  34. Therefore, we will not be afraid, though the earth trembles and the mountains topple into the depths of the sea, though its waters roar and it foams and the mountains quake with its turmoil.

    No matter what is going on in this world, no matter what is going on in our relationships, no matter what is going on in our job, God says, I am your strength, I am your refuge, and I am your helper, and I am here when times get tough. He is all we need.

    As the old psalmist says, as the old hymn writer says, He's all I need. He's all I need. What more can I want?

    He's our refuge. He's our strength. He's our helper. He's our source. He's our redeemer. He's our sustainer. He's our provider. He is our salvation this morning, church. He came to be born in a manger, ultimately, so that His life would end on a cross, to die for your and my sins.

  35. We will never, ever know the pain that Jesus went through in the garden. All of His friends betrayed Him. The storm was overwhelming.

    As I'm sweating this morning up here, He was sweating so hard that His sweat was turning to blood drops because He was overwhelmed with the storm that He was about to go through. He looked to the cross.

    One of the things that I'll never forget when I was in Israel is I stood there in the garden of Gethsemane. I stepped over behind an olive tree and I looked up and you can see Jerusalem. It's just not far away. And there's a tower,

    which is Pilate's Tower, where He was about to go to get judged. And as Jesus was standing in that garden and looked up, He saw where He was going.

    He saw what He was about to experience, the pain of the beating, the pain of the persecution, the pain of the crucifixion that He was about to go through.

  36. And He looked up at it and He said, Lord, I'm going there.

    God, it's not going to be tough. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be tough and I need You in my life.

    Church, as we look into the storms that are going to eventually come in our way, I hope our prayer is, God, can You be with me?

    I'm not going to be able to survive it on my own. I'm not going to be able to survive it with my family. Some of my family may even leave me. But God, I know You're there with me. Never let the presence of a storm cause you to doubt the presence of God.

    Because the presence of God is always there with us if we believe in Him. Peace is, I'm going to repeat this again, peace isn't found in the absence of a storm,

  37. Finding Peace in God's Presence

    but peace is found in the presence of a good God this morning.

    Whatever your situation may be this morning, maybe there's a circumstance that no one in this room knows about. Maybe it's just between you and God or you and your spouse and you're just saying, God, just teach you to be with me today.

    Maybe you're going to go and you're going to spend time with family and your own family doesn't know what you're going through. But God does.

    And God says, I'm going to be there with you and if you draw near to me, I promise you I'll draw near to you as long as we draw closer to Him.

    But let it not be said of us this morning, church, that we were one of the disciples when God looked at them and said, do you have no faith? I pray this morning that that's not us.

  38. I pray that we have a faith that is so big that God says, take a leap of faith and you do it to the glory of God so that God gets the glory. I pray that that's our stuff this morning. Whatever it may be this morning,

    I don't know why God led me to preach these couple of messages, but I just trust that someone here is struggling with something.

    You respond as you see fit, whether it be in your pew, whether you come down front, however it may be, you respond. Let us pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.

    God, help us this morning as we take this small moment of time to reflect on your scripture, to reflect on the words that have been given. Lord, pierce our hearts. Help us to draw closer to you more today than we ever have.

  39. Help this Christmas season be a Christmas season that is like none other, that we are closer to you and our family looks at us and they say, why are you so different this year?

    And we get to look at them and say, God's just been working. God's been so good. I just can't overflow what God has done in my life.

    Help us this morning to trust in you more fully. In your name we pray. Amen.

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