Summary
Pastor James Safrit walks through Psalm 113, emphasizing the call to praise God for His greatness and intimate involvement in our lives. He highlights that God, who is exalted above all, stoops down to lift the needy and marginalized, demonstrating His mercy and grace. The practical application encourages believers to worship God daily, recognizing His presence in every aspect of life, and to maintain a sense of wonder about His love and salvation.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Thank you guys. If you've got a child that's going to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available for you at this time. We're going to be in Psalms chapter 113 today, Psalms 113, in our summer of the Psalms. This is one of the verses for the week, is in Psalms 113, verse 3.
So I felt that it was fitting to preach through this chapter today in honor of Bible School. They actually entitled it, the theme of it is Wonder, and so I've entitled it that. And so Psalms 113, we'll read the entire chapter this morning.
If you found your place and want to stand with us, we'll read together out of honor of God's word this morning. The Bible says,
Hallelujah! Give praise, servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be blessed both now and forever. From the rising of the sun to its setting, let the name of the Lord be praised. The Lord is exalted above all nations.
His glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God? The one enthroned on high who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth.
He raised the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the trash heap in order to seat them with the nobles. With the nobles of his people, he gives the childless woman a household, making her a joyful mother of children. Hallelujah!
Lord, we love you. We thank you for the reading of your word. Be with me this morning as I preach your word. Help me to not say what I have, but have to say what you have for us this morning.
We love you. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated. As I think through this psalm specifically, as it talks about how we praise the Lord, it's a good evaluation for us.
We're halfway through the summer, over halfway through the year, and we are, before you know it,
2025 is going to be over, and we're going to be already starting in 2026. And for you, that may be crazy to think about, but time just continues to go forward, and we need to sometimes step back and just ask ourselves, how are we worshiping the Lord?
How are we admiring the beauty that he's given us, and how are we really, truly praising the Lord this morning? Are we in awe and wonder of what he's done?
Or are we just okay with going through the status quo, remembering the same things over and over again, or are they just a wonder to us in and of itself?
Story of Wonder in Nature
I came across the story of a lady that went to the Rocky Mountains. Her and her husband, they were a young couple.
They had not been married long, but they had saved up to go to a simple cabin nestled in the Rocky Mountains, in the valley below the towering peaks.
On their first morning, they woke up really early before dawn, and they bundled up because it was cold, and they wanted to go on this scenic hike to an overlook near their cabin. As they made their way there, the sun began to rise.
They found their place, and the shadows around the mountain began to disappear.
Slowly, the tips of the mountain lit up in brilliant orange. And then they turned to gold, and then white as the snow glistened as the new daylight came in. The woman sat there, quietly weeping. She wasn't weeping out of sadness.
She was weeping out of the wonder of what she was seeing in that moment. As she's telling the story, she described it like this. She said, She continued on by saying that this was something that deeply shifted something in her soul.
In the midst of the towering greatness of the mountains, there was a sense of nearness that she felt closer to something not distant from something. Something majestic and something merciful that we all can feel close to. Psalms 13, I believe, captures this same paradox.
It says here, A God who is infinitely exalted yet intimately involved in us.
Think about this. Someone that God who is far above the mountains, far above the creation that he created with us. But yet, through the divine nature that he was able to do, sent his son to be intimately involved with each and every one of us.
Sent his son to come into this world and live a life, to be born in a manger, to be able to walk among us as slowly people. One of his creation, one of the creation things that he made. And yet, God in his intimately involved with us, he was high and lifted up.
And one of these, this statement, and I'm going to get to it in a minute, but I just can't get away from it. It says that as he's high and lifted up, he stoops down low to see us.
It's this moment as you begin to look as almost a father sees his son hurting. He stoops down to the level of his son and brings himself to the level of where his son is at. And God, in a much more fathomal way that we can't even understand,
stoops down to see us, to know us, and to love us.
Living in Wonder
You see, we were made for wonder. We're not the fleeting kind that fades with fireworks or mountain glimpses, but the eternal kind that fills our soul with all. And the wonder begins when we begin to see God rightly.
When we begin to really begin to put God in the right proper perspective of life, and we begin to see him high above everything, yet reaching down to you and to me.
Reaching down and pulling us out of the pit, as the psalmist says, out of the mire that held us down and pulls us up out of that pit to be put on solid ground to live for him.
And so as we dissect this passage this morning, I broke it into basically two different sections. The first is the call to praise. The call to praise. He says here, exalting the excellent name of Christ.
As we look and we begin to exalt his name, I really want us to ask ourselves, how are we exalting the name of Christ?
In our words, in our deeds, in our actions, in everything that we're doing, are we exalting the name of the Lord? The psalmist, as he's writing this passage in Psalms 113, he begins and ends with the same word.
And that's very ironic as we look at the way Hebrew writes, the way that the Jewish people would write, because this is a bookend almost of starting and beginning with the same word.
And this is what it should remind us, that we're made to worship a something and someone, and that someone or something is God. We are created to worship. We are created as worshipful beings to look to him and say,
God, I know you're bigger than me. I know you're better than me. I know that you're above all my ways or thoughts or heights that I could ever imagine. And so the only thing I can do is praise you for who you are.
And so this call to praise comes out. This call to worship him comes out in just that very first word, hallelujah.
Hallelujah to the King of kings and the Lord of lords. As we begin to meditate and think on that, we begin to say, God, you are great. You are worthy of praise. And as he says in those next two words, hallelujah, give praise.
We are servants of the Lord. We should stand up and we should praise him for who he is and what he's done. So the first thing as we look, as we continue on is the who. Who should we praise?
It says, praise, O servants of the Lord. God's people should be praising a worthy God, a God who is above all things and greater than all things that made us who we are and allowed us to come into this place today.
Expectation to Praise
You see, God's people are expected to praise the Lord because they have been given the gift of God.
I don't expect a lost person to come in here and praise the Lord as we're worshiping these songs and to lift hands. They don't know why they're singing these songs. They don't know why as we sing wonderful, merciful Savior, they've never experienced the wonderful Savior.
They've never experienced the merciful Savior as we worship this morning, that song. And we begin to break this down. We begin to think, God, you are wonderful. You are a merciful Savior. You're a counselor. You're an almighty God. You're an everlasting father.
Even when my father forsakes me, even when my father passes away, even when I don't have someone to go to as an earthly father, I still have you to go to as a heavenly father. And this is the who that is saying here.
It's saying that we are called to be praise givers, not praise receivers, but someone who
unadulterated just lifts our voices in praise, lifts our motions in praise, lifts our actions in praise to the Lord for who he is.
I want to illustrate it like this. If I were to have a candle up here right now and I were to put the candle on a candlestick and I were to say, hey, candle, go ahead and light. The candle in and of itself cannot light itself.
Someone has to come over with a match, with a lighter and light that candle in order for that candle to be given off light. And we are that candle.
And God is the one who gives us this light through the Holy Spirit to shine about. And the Bible says, as Jesus has given an illustration of a candlestick, he says, who lights a candle and then puts a bushel over top of it?
No one would do that. No one would light a candle and then hide the light.
He says, as we light the candle, as the Holy Spirit indwells us and lights us, we must be people who are walking out and who are telling others about this light that we have been given. And so we should be the ones who are praising the Lord.
Well, then we continue on and we begin to see the wind. Then, Pastor James, how often should I praise the Lord?
How often should I begin to tell other people about the Lord? I'm glad you asked. That's a great question. Praise is not seasonal and it's not situational. The praise that we have is from sunrise to sunset to sunrise to sunset. Every moment expressing who the Lord is.
This is when you're everywhere you go. When you are laying down in bed, when you are rising up, everything you do should be for the Lord.
One thing that I have tried over the many years of my life is to take a moment when you wake up, instead of reaching over and grabbing your phone, instead of reaching over and grabbing a book or a
magazine, is to simply sit on the edge of my bed and just thank the Lord for another night's rest and another day of me waking up.
But before we go to bed, before we go to sleep, after we put our phones on the charger and we put everything away, I go to my kids' rooms and I pray with each and every one of them.
Hopefully the last words they hear me say before they go to bed is me praying with them.
It's not me yelling at them to go to sleep and to listen to Dad, but it's me praying with them. The last thing that me and my wife do before we go to sleep is we have a little game.
We have to, we go and one of us has to, we'll say for the other person, hey, tonight it's your night to pray. And whoever says that first, it's their night to pray.
And every night before we go to bed, it's almost like a challenge. It's like, who can say it first? Who can say, hey, by the way, you're praying tonight. Oh man, I gotta pray.
Anyway, it's sort of a fun game that we have that we go back and forth, but it's a mental expression for me that the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before
I go to bed, before I close my eyes and put my CPAP machine on is I'm gonna pray and praise the Lord for what he's done.
I'm gonna thank him for the moments that I was able to go through and the moments that I saw him work in that specific day or that specific week and just the God working in my kid's life and
my family and just thanking him from the first words to the last words of my day, just simply giving him praise.
What does that look like in your life? Are we praising the Lord in the mornings, in the evenings, not just at the mealtimes, but when we are going through our days? And then the where.
The where. Where should we praise the Lord? It says the name of the Lord is to be praised. So where is this at? God's name is worthy of praise everywhere, not just in the sanctuary.
Oftentimes, and as a young person, this is what I thought, honest to God, I thought that we worshiped God when we came into church and when we left church and we got in the car, that God was still in this building right here.
And then we went home and then on Wednesday or Sunday night we would come back and we would come back and we'd experience God again.
And then Monday and Tuesday and all day Wednesday God was still in this building and then I would go and do my stuff. And then Wednesday night we'd come back to church and oh, we're coming back to church. We're coming back to the presence of God.
And we'd walk back into church on Wednesday and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we did our own thing. We did whatever we wanted to do. And then Sunday and Wednesday night were the times we experienced God. I can't find that in scripture anywhere.
I've looked, I've continued to look and I've continued to say, God, where is this?
What I have found out is God, he writes over and over and over again that everywhere we go, everything we do should be saturated with his praise. As Jesus walked with his disciples, he's constantly telling them how to live their life.
He's constantly telling them what they should do, how they should persevere, how they should go through hard times, how they're going to go through hard times, not just in this moment of the sanctuary.
And one of my favorite verses to teach is I teach through, especially the parents and parents, if you've got young kids or teenagers, write these verses down, Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 7.
This is what a Jewish person, and I'm going to read them here in a moment. This is what a Jewish family would recite every morning when they would wake up.
They would wake up before they would go to bed. They would recite the first two verses, 4 and 5, and then 6 through 9 would be sort of their command as they went through life. They would stand up and they would say,
hear, O Israel, or listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
And then we know this verse, love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And that's where they would end. They would give these verses right here, with all your strength, all your heart. And this would be their call in the morning.
But then it continues on in verses 6, and it says this.
These words am I giving you today to be in your heart. Repeat them, verse 7, to your children.
Talk about them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on your doorpost of your house and on the city gates.
Moses is saying here as he's telling the children of Israel how you should raise your kids, how you should do some things to encourage your children to follow the Lord, is when you sit in your house to have
dinner, you talk about the Lord. When you're sitting in your car as you're going down the road, again, they're saying as you walk along the road, they didn't have vehicles.
They couldn't ride in a vehicle where it would say when you ride in your vehicle. He's saying when you walk along the road, when you're sitting in the vehicle with your children, begin to tell them about the Lord. Begin to tell them about the Lord's doing in your life. Ask them questions.
Hey, what do you think about this? How is the Lord working in your life? What are some things you're doing? How can you begin to do this in your life? It says when you lie down.
When you begin to lay down and you begin to go to sleep, are you talking about the Lord with your children? When you get up in the morning,
are you allowing them to know about the Lord? Bind them as a sign in your hand and a symbol in your forehead. Write them on the doorpost in your house.
Just simply make a marker as you go through life, putting scripture on your walls, putting scripture in your house to remind them of what the Lord has done in their life.
There should be no place where we go where we don't talk, we don't think, and we don't tell others about the goodness of the Lord.
Whether we go to the gas station, whether we go to school, whether we go to church, whether we go to a concert, wherever we're going, we're telling people about the goodness of the Lord. It's not a defined place. It's everywhere.
Number two, the reason for praise. The last part of this passage, the reason we praise the Lord. It says here, the high king with a humble heart.
God's Grace and Humility
Oh man, this king of glory, this king of heaven, this king that made everything looks down with a humble heart and says, I'm going to give you something that you don't even deserve. I'm going to give you grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy, and glory upon glory that we don't deserve.
We're not good enough to accept the Lord. We're not fancy enough to accept the Lord. We're not holy enough to accept the Lord. But yet through his sovereignty, through his goodness, he gives us his son.
The wonder of this psalm is the paradox that I mentioned earlier. God is high above all, yet he stoops down to us.
This past week, as I've been studying this passage, Jade actually asked me on the way home from camp, Dad, do you even have a message to preach this Sunday? You've been preaching all week at camp.
Actually, yes, I plan ahead. I try to figure out what the Lord wants me to preach yet. But this passage, this verse, God who's high above all yet stoops down to us, has sort of just wrecked my world this week.
Because oftentimes we think of like going on a mission trip or going on a mission field and how we're stepping into the dirtiest of the dirty, the most poverty of all poverty.
But when we really step back and we think this is God who created the world, who stepped into the existence of what he created, our mind can't imagine it. Our mind can't think of it.
And I'm going to try to do the best of my ability in the next couple of minutes, sort of give us some tools to help us. The first thing we look at is how he is exalted above all.
Let's look at the first part. How he is exalted above all. The majesty above the masses. This is the idea that he's higher than we can ever think or imagine. It's like the simple question that often gets asked to me as a dad, as a pastor, is who is God's father? Right?
When did God begin? Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever tried to imagine that or answer that question to a kid? And you're like, well, I know I have a dad.
I know you have a dad because I'm your dad. And you begin to go through this process and you say, well, God's always been there. And I can remember this as a kid, as a five-year-old boy riding down the road. I can remember we were in a blue minivan.
It was a Chevy Astro. Did anyone ever own a Chevy Astro?
I think it was like a rite of passage for most people during the 90s. You had to have a Chevy Astro. And we're driving down the road and I said, Dad, who made God? And my dad, in the best of his ability, is like, well, no one. He's just always been there.
Yeah, well, who made him then? If he's just always been there, there has to be some. Our mind can't imagine this thing that's always been there, this God who's always been there, the creator of everything who did not have a creator who created everything out of him. And we can't imagine it because everything we know has a beginning.
And everything we know has an end. And so this is outside of our human capability of imagining it. And so we must understand and we must sort of bring this into some type of way to exalt him.
The first one is in verse 4, his position. It says that he is high above all nations. No ruler, no king, no power rivals his reign. He is above all things and before all things.
His position is so high. His position is so great that we can't even put a president, a king, a ruler,
an emperor, whoever we want to put. Nothing that we can put gives an even equivalent of who he is. Even Napoleon, who at the time ruled over half the world, who had conquered most of the world, the known world at the time. He, as the ruler of the known world,
doesn't compare to what God is and who he is in his position. Number five talks about his purity. Who is like the Lord? He is so pure. He is peerless and matchless in his holiness.
Good way that I want to, I sort of illustrate this as I'm talking to children is this.
Think about Mount Everest. It's the highest point on earth that we know. One day there may be something higher. Who knows?
Right now at the moment of humanity, it's the highest point that we know. People go their entire lives training to get to the top of Mount Everest.
There's a whole book you can read of people who tried to get to the top and failed and died on the way up to the top of Mount Everest. Mount Everest is a feat where you have to take oxygen with you.
And you have to, I mean, the amount of effort it takes to get to the top, I think Logan could probably run up it in one breath. But the way to get to the top of this is excruciatingly painful to get there.
And I want you to imagine standing at the top of it and at the bottom of it and saying, you know what?
I'm going to touch the top of it by just reaching up and touching it. You couldn't do it. As Bernie laughed here, he's like, that doesn't make sense at all. This would be the way where we would try to understand God's transcendedness in our life.
For like just to sit at the bottom and try to touch the top of a mountain. It's not going to happen. We can't understand it. His purity is beyond all purification. His pureness is unlike anything else. And his holiness is unlike anything else. And number three here, verse six, his perception.
Look at his perception. It says he looks far down, even the highest of heavens are beneath him.
This is our perception of who God is. This is the sense of how God is so far above us, how God is so much greater than we can ever think. But yet he looks down with mercy and grace and says, I see you, James.
I see your problems. I see your mistakes. I see your failures.
I'm human just like you. I have failures. I'm not going to, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to be a perfect pastor. I see the things that you've done wrong. And yet I love you enough to forgive you. I see your kids.
I see they're imperfect as well. One crazy one runs up on stage while we're worshiping. Who would do that? Whose kid would do that? How are you a great pastor? Or you're allowing your kids to run around. This is my thoughts.
I'm thinking to the Lord, God, help me here. And he says, I see you. I forgive you. I love you. I care about you. I know you're not perfect. He looks down at us. He perceives us and he loves us even as his own son. So much that he gave his own son.
Reverence for God
Have we lost our sense of reverence for who God is?
Have we lost our sense of reverence for what God has done for us? And have we lost our all in what God has done for us? Not only does this God that we look at exalts above all, but also he stoops down to lift us up.
The last part of this passage, verses 7 through 9, talks about the mercy for the marginalized. The mercy for those who don't deserve mercy. Number one, right here, it's me. The mercy that God gives us day after day, minute after minute,
second after second, where he continues to give us mercy upon mercy upon mercy.
It reminds me as I read this passage, he raises the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the trash feed. There's no status in life that the Lord doesn't care about.
He doesn't care if you're the poorest of the poor, the richest of the rich, the most royalty of all the royalty in the world. He doesn't care.
He has no in between. He just simply cares for us so much that he sent his son to die for us. He stoops down and he lifts us up. Verse 7 says he raises the poor. God delights in the downtrodden.
He delights in those who have been laid down low because he can come and he can say, I love you so much that even the ones that are in the gutter, even the ones that are in the deepest and darkest streets, I care about them. Think of Joseph.
Joseph was pulled from the pit. His brothers had dug a pit for him, threw him in there and said, we're going to kill him later and then we're going to sell him into slavery.
And God said, I cares for him. And he took him from the pit all the way to the palace. Think of the prodigal son. He was in the best house. He had everything you could ever imagine.
And he said, give me my inheritance and let me go live my life. And he goes off into the wilderness and he goes off into the high city and he spends everything that he's got. And now he's dirty and despaired and he has nothing to give.
And he just says, the servants that my father has are eating better than I eat.
I must go back to my dad's house. I must go back to where I'm at. But he's not going to accept me. He doesn't care about me now. I've already taken everything he's given me.
And it says that the father is waiting on the front porch, just like our heavenly father is waiting there for us.
And as he's running back, the father jumps up and runs to his son and grabs him. And his son falls down and tries to apologize. And he says, no, son, welcome back. Bring the fatted calf. Bring the robe. Bring the ring. Let's elevate this man to the highest position possible.
Why is that? Because he restores us fully because he cares for us.
He welcomes us into his family. The number, the verse number eight here, number two here, he, he seats the needy. He seats the needy. He doesn't just lift us up.
He doesn't just say, hey, I'm going to pull you out of the pit. But he gives us a solid seat to sit on. And he says, I'm going to give you the name above all other names.
I'm going to give you dignity that you've never even had or experienced because you are now part of my family.
Adoption into God's Family
You're a part of a new family. I was talking to a young lady just a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about being adopted into God's family. And I said, one of the beautiful pictures of adoption, and you may not know this, but when you adopt someone in your family, if Jade were to do something wrong,
she never does anything wrong. She's my perfect angel. If Jade were somehow to do something wrong and hurt me and Allison,
when we die, we could actually give her nothing in our will. We could give Brody everything and Hudson everything.
And when it came to Jade's name, it would just say nothing because you made us mad. But if one of your kids were to be abandoned and I were to adopt them into my family, it doesn't matter how wrong they've done to me, how bad they've done to me.
According to the law, I cannot write them out of my will. They have to get something, whether it's a hairbrush, whether it's a piece of paper. They have to get something from me because they've been adopted in my family.
And this picture of adoption for Jesus, he adopts us into his family, and therefore we can't be written out of his will when he has adopted us into his family. He gives us a seat that is not a halfway redemption, but a fully restored redemption, a seat for the needy.
In verse 9, he gives us this beautiful picture of a barren woman. And he says he blesses the barren.
In the Bible, oftentimes, someone who was barren, who could not have children, they were looked at as halfway citizens.
They were not full people. They were not full of joy. They were forgotten. And in the Bible, you've got multiple people, Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, who were barren for their entire life.
And the Lord showed favor on them and gave them an inheritance, a miraculous favor. What this does is it simply points us to the one who brings us from lifelessness to life. He blesses us.
Once we were barren and we were on the pit of destruction, we were on a pathway of destruction, and yet he reaches down and he says, will you accept me? Will you turn to me?
Will you come to me for forgiveness? And when we accept that forgiveness, he puts us on a path that is paved for his glory and for his honor. You see, as Jesus came into this story, as Jesus steps in and pays our ultimate price,
it is Jesus is the one in this example here where he stoops down for us. Jesus stoops down and humbles himself.
In Philippians chapter 2, verse 6 and 8, it says that he humbled himself to the point of the cross, even unto death for you and me.
He humbled himself to pay our penalty for our sin.
Imagine a king who lives in a high palace, who lives in the most beautiful place with all the servants he could ask for, all the food that he could ask for, and he says, I'm going to leave this
because I want to go rescue the broken and the ones that are in the pit.
I want to go rescue the ones that are in the gutter. I want to go spend my time and spend all of my days in the homeless camps, reaching the homeless people.
This is the picture of Christ coming into our world and becoming one of us to give us life, to restore us to this picture of humanity of being in fellowship with God every day of our life.
Not just in the morning, not just in the evening, but every single place we walk, every single place we step, are we praising the Lord for what he's done?
Living for Our Savior
How do we live our life in light of knowing there's a Savior in heaven that came and lived among us to die for us so that we could live for him and one day live with him in eternity? How is that changing our life?
As Terry comes and plays as we begin to close down, I want to ask us how your response should be. What is your response when we hear this message?
Some of you, you've been hearing this message for your entire life, especially Bible school's coming up. Maybe you heard the gospel at Bible school. Maybe you've sat in church your entire life and you've lived your life for the gospel. But have you lived your life as a praiseworthy life, not just on Sunday?
Again, as I said, I was guilty of this many, many years as a kid and as a teenager.
I'm coming to church on Sunday. I'm coming to church on Wednesday. That's where Jesus is at. I don't really need Jesus in the other part of my life. It was two separate moments in life.
Is God in our life from morning to night, from house to house, from work to home, from wherever we go in between, God is in our life and we're giving him praise. Have we lost the wonder of God?
Is God just this man upstairs who has no wonder to us, who's just there, who is existing for my benefit?
Or is it like A.W. Tozer says, the most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think about God.
The most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think about God. Have you grown too familiar with God?
When I think of God, when I think of the glory of God, when I think of the presence of God, many people will ask me, how do you know what God looks like?
And I love the picture that one of our young people at youth camp this last year said. He said, when I think of what God looks like, I don't even see a face. All I see is feet.
Because as I'm on the ground worshiping him, I can only lift my head to see the feet of Jesus. The feet of God.
I can't even lift my head enough to see his face. Is that the wonder of who God is? Is he so majestic in our life that it's just an awe to even think about who he is? Or is it just a casual walking around?
Okay, God's good. God's great. Lord, give me my food today. Thank you. Or is it, God, I'm so thankful for what you've done. I can't even go another moment without just praising you for what you've done. And have we embraced the God who sees and stoops down?
He cares about us. He cares about the forgotten, about the broken, about the barren. He cares about us intimately. And he doesn't just leave us there. He reaches down.
He stoops down to our level and then lifts us up and sets our feet on solid ground. And I'm often reminded as a dad, this happened as, I think Jade was like four or five years old.
She had just gotten to learn how to ride a bike. And at the place we lived, there was a massive hill that went down to the bottom. And Brody was going down the hill.
He was a couple years older. And as Jade got on there, she got enough courage and enough umption to be able to go down this hill. And she forgot halfway down the hill how to put on brakes. She got to the bottom of the hill and the bike started swerving.
And the bike flipped over and she landed on her head. She skinned up her legs. She skinned up her arm. And she comes running up. And I hear her screaming. I step out the side door. And I look and Jade's screaming, blood coming down her face. And she's wanting dad.
I just didn't kick her and say, ah, you'll be all right. No, I got down to her level. I picked her up.
I said, it's going to be okay. We'll clean up your bruises. We'll clean up all your boo-boos. We'll put Band-Aids on it. It's going to be okay. I lifted her up.
I comforted her. I gave her the assurance that a father would give her. And that's what God does for us. He reaches down from heaven and lifts us up so that we can be forgiven and mended and made whole for him.
Has that happened to us? Has that ever happened in our life? And have we forgotten the all of when that happened? The wonder of when that happened. How many ever years ago it was? 31 years ago for me.
When God reached down and saved my soul out of the pit of hell. When have we lost the wonder?
And how do we bring this back to say, God, I want to honor you and worship you with my life. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Lord, give us grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy.
And help us to never lose the awe and the wonder of what you've done. Lord, help us to never get familiar with grace. But help us every time we experience grace. It's an overwhelming experience of thankfulness. An overwhelming experience of gratefulness that mercy was shown again.
God, help us to wonder and awe so much more about who you are until we see the day coming.
Closing Prayer and Thanks
Amen. Thank you, Lord, for what you've done for us. Help us to worship you. Help us to respond as you see fit today. In your name we pray. Amen.
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