Rev. Nicole Unice: Those of you who are joining us online, we're glad to be together. And I know it's been a big Sunday already, lots of ups and downs of people and information. And I want you guys to know that in the early services I was listening to Kaz's video, I thought about this beautiful reality that's true for all of us. That God is really the author of our stories, and that He weaves together these experiences and relationships in ways that we ourselves could never have put in place, like we don't have the wisdom to be able to put that in place. And that it feels like a lot of our lives are about trusting that God is a good writer of our stories more and more.
I know that if I was writing my own story, maybe you guys feel the same, it would be far more comfortable with far more security than the way it actually happens, but it's the adventure that God invites us on. And this is a church that is going through change, and God is inviting us to the risks of new adventure while knowing that he is the one who's authoring this story, and it's a beautiful reality that we can trust him. And that's what we're gonna be talking about this morning as we look to the Psalms. We're in Psalm one thirty nine this morning, and we're talking about this idea of what does it mean to have a secure identity in Christ. Now that's something that we seem to talk about a lot in church, but even as I was preparing a message this week, I thought I I it's like I have to redefine what identity means because it's kind of a squishy thing to talk about identity.
You know, we talk about our ID, we pull out our license at the airport, we say, hey, this is me. But as humans, it feels like we're almost like like balls of Velcro that are just picking up identities everywhere we go. Some are being thrown upon us. Some are ones that we're looking for ourselves. Think about all the things that we identify with.
We identify with where we're from, with our last name, our heritage, our race, maybe our political affiliation. We identify with our gender, the bands we like to listen to, the sports teams that we're fans of. Maybe sometimes you don't identify with them depending on what kind of season they're having. We have this identity thing where it's like we're picking up all of these activities, and preferences, and opinions, and it's like as if that's what we are, who we are. That we're just an aggregate of all of those things.
And if you think to yourself, oh no, I'm a person who's, I'm securing Christ. Like, for sure, I I get that. I believe that too. But it is a very powerful reality that we are constantly being invited to redefine our identities. Take this for instance, very simple one.
Maybe you play golf. Maybe you're not good at golf, and someone says to you, are you a golfer? And you're like, no, no, I'm not a golfer. I just play bad golf. Maybe someone says, oh, you're a runner.
And you're like, no, I mean I can put my feet in front of me, but I'm not a runner. A lot of times when we think about these things, a golfer, a runner, we have this idea that I have to be good at it in order to call myself that. That that that our identity is actually about how good we are at that thing, and that's how you're allowed to identify with it. This idea of identity seems to be at the core of just our human need. In our liturgy this morning, when we first opened up, we talked about this idea that we are loved by God, that we are made for love.
Can you imagine if you believed that more and more? If through your life, that identity was so secure that no matter what life threw at you, no matter what storms you had, you were able to know that you had nothing to prove, nothing to earn, nothing to lose, that you were perfectly put together by a father who loves you. Can you imagine what it would be like if you believed that more and more? Identity is at the core of we humans and our questions about the world. A few summers ago, the the summer movie, the sort of blockbuster, maybe even surprise blockbuster of the summer was the Barbie movie.
And if you saw I know. If you saw the Barbie movie, you know that the Barbie movie was about a lot more than Barbie. It was actually very discussed because it was really about identity. And it was about living into stereotypes, and then what happens when you break those stereotypes or when you begin to deconstruct from those stereotypes. It all happened when Barbie's feet went from pointed to flat.
That was the beginning of her identity crisis. And in the movie, there was a song that was written for the movie. Billie Eilish wrote a song called What Was I Made For? That song went on to eclipse that movie completely. It won the Academy Award for best original song.
It won a Grammy for song of the year. A song written for a movie had not won a Grammy for song of the year since Titanic thirty years ago. This song has been streamed on Spotify 1,800,000,000 times. Billie Eilish herself says it was like she was sort of outside her body when she wrote this song. It was it was such a a cry of her heart, even as she was writing it for the Barbie movie.
This plenative, this melancholy song, what was I made for? Who am I really? And I think that song lands because it is the question of our hearts. And into this, we as Christians have a God who says, I want you to know what your identity is. And I wanna make it clear every which way but loose that you get to know that your identity is secure because of my love for you.
We're gonna be in Psalm one thirty nine this morning. Would you pray with me? Father, would you help us right now as you say in this Psalms, search us, oh, Lord. Test us. Know our anxious thoughts.
Lead us in your way everlasting. Help us, Lord, to receive the truth of what you say about us in your name. Amen. So the key component of this psalm, if we were gonna take one thing from today, it is this idea that you do not create an identity, you receive one. We don't create an identity.
We don't just glom on to all the activities in our lives and all the names and labels that we might find or names and labels that might be taken from us. That actually, God says, no, I'm gonna give you a completely different way to experience the world, and it is with an identity that I am going to give to you. And our goal and our job as Christians who believe what God says is two things, to accept what he says and to practice it. And so this morning, all we're gonna do is is try to accept what God has to say about you this morning and practice it. Psalm one thirty nine verse one, the very first verse in the Psalm says, oh Lord, you have searched me and know me.
You've searched me and known me. And then David goes on to say, you know everything I do. You know everything I think. You know everything I say. You knew everything I was going to do and everything I didn't do, and what happened in the past, and what's happening in the present, and what's happening in the future.
You know it all. This is how the psalm opens. And I would ask you right now, if you think to yourself, if someone knew everything about me and knew every thought I ever had, what do you think the next line would be? Because I literally don't know one human being who's like, man, if someone just knew everything I thought, and everything I've ever felt and everything I've experienced, gosh, they would just love me so much. I just wish someone was inside where they could hear all of my thoughts, and I just know that's the way I would feel loved.
No 0%, have I ever met that would tell me that that's how they feel about their inner life. In fact, I would ask you, if you imagine God saying, know everything about you, what's your immediate response to what you think would come next? I know for me in different seasons that inner voice would be, and I'm disappointed. Or maybe that inner voice would be, and you you really need to try harder. You know, most of us, that's the way it is.
Because we feel like if we're really known, we will find ourselves lacking. We will realize that we are inadequate, that we are not enough. And yet in this psalm, the psalm where David opens up saying, you know everything about me. You literally know everywhere I go, everything I do, everything I say, everything I'm going to do. And it says in verse five, and you place your hand of blessing on my head.
The response to knowing it all is not to say, I need you to try harder, or you're letting me down, or you're a disappointment. The actual response is, and so God lays a hand of blessing on my head. The use of laying on of hands is all through scripture. In the Old Testament, we see that laying on of hands is how children are blessed and how the the their future is prophesied. We know that laying on of hands passes one leader to the next.
Priests would lay hands on an animal to consecrate that animal for sacrifice, to make it holy. We know that this this idea of laying on of hands continues in the person of Jesus, God who made put on flesh and dwelt among us, showing us what it means to lay hands on. And Jesus himself seemed to make an effort to be clear that he had wanted to lay hands on people that no one else would lay hands on. He's constantly laying hands on people that would be considered unclean. Now we know that Jesus has all power and authority.
He doesn't have to lay hands on to do any of the work he did. There are places in the gospel where he heals, where he doesn't touch anyone. He just sends out with his word. And so it's on purpose that Jesus lays hands on a leper to heal him, the most unclean of the unclean. Jesus places a hand of blessing and healing upon.
We know that Jesus loved to bless children, and he would chastise his disciples for keeping children from them so he could lay hands on them and bless. Maybe you've experienced that human instinct when someone is in pain or hurting and you wanna touch their hand. Maybe you've experienced that human instinct when you hold a new baby and you wanna touch their head. There's this sense of connection and proximity and love that we confer through our hands. One of my favorite parts of officiating a wedding ceremony is at the end when the couple brings their hands together, and I put my hand upon their hands to say now whom God has brought together.
Let no circumstance or person put asunder. There's this sense that a blessing comes in that hand. And here we have a God who says, I know every single thing about you. I know everything you think and everywhere you've been, and I place my hand of blessing upon you. We touch someone's hand when we want to connect, and God lays his hand on us to say, I have direct involvement in your life.
Do you know that I think so much of our work of faith is not about getting it together, not about behaving well. It's about believing more and more what God says is true about us. Can you imagine if this week you lived your life feeling that you had nothing to prove and nothing to hide and nothing to gain, that you already had it all because your identity, this thing that no one can take away, this thing, this inner inner this inner reality, this inner truth that God loves us, no one can take from you. No circumstance can change that. Maybe that's why God is so serious about us believing this more and more.
Because our human Velcro ball that's taking on all these identities, any of those can go away. All of those, at some point, will go away. And then maybe like Billie Eilish, we ask the question, well, what was I made for? Who am I then? Accepting what God says about us is the work of our faith.
If we were gonna break it down into just three things, Psalm one thirty nine six, this is what we're doing. We first are willing to receive what God says. Then we decide we are who God says we are. We're created in love. We're created for love.
We're created to be loved. And we decide God is who he says he is, the one who creates us, the one who treasures us, the one who encourages us. Doesn't it sound so easy? And yet, it's so hard for many, many people, including myself, to really believe that in the deepest place, that God says that you are already cherished, that you are already beloved, that you have nothing to prove, and that your identity is safe with him. It's hard to believe it.
Acceptance, I believe, is a journey that we are on in our lives. And so the second part of our message this morning about what we learn in Psalm one thirty nine is that our role is to practice. That our job as followers of Jesus is to be practicing believing this more and more. Jesus talks about what this looks like in practice in Matthew chapter seven in a story that's very familiar to many of us. And Jesus is talking to people who are already following him.
So I said, let's make it clear who the audience is. The audience is hearing what Jesus says. And Jesus says to this audience, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. Now a note about bible study, when we hear the same thing repeated, we're supposed to pay attention. And Jesus makes a very clear analogy where he literally says the same words, but only one thing is different. Both the wise man and foolish man heard the words of Jesus.
Both of them also built houses. Both of them also faced storms. The only difference between the house that crashed and the house that stood was the people who were putting the words into practice. Jesus doesn't say, the ones who hear my words and put them into perfection. The one who hears my words and keeps getting better at it every single day.
Literally, the only thing that Jesus says makes a disciple is a person who's practicing being a disciple. You don't even have to be good at it. You're like, I'm not I'm not even good at this, but I'm practicing. I'm willing to practice. The thing that makes us a disciple is choosing to be an apprentice to Jesus.
A few weeks ago, I had a chance to go on a writing retreat. It was in a monastic community in Northern Minnesota. And in this monastic community, there is this this beautiful pottery studio. And really a world renowned potter who makes his makes his, like, art in this place. This place has the biggest kiln in North America.
They fire 10,000 pieces of pottery in this kiln. It takes two weeks of firing and 40 volunteers to keep this fire going in this wood fired kiln. Really cool place. And like people like this are just they're different. You know what I'm saying?
They're different than us. And and whenever you're with somebody who's real different, you should really listen because they have things to teach you. And so there's this apprentice potter who's in this studio, and we have a chance to go to this studio, and I'm like, tell me all about your work and your art. And so he begins to teach about what it's like to be an apprentice. And he tells us that when you are an apprentice to a master potter, they are going to have maybe 10 to 13 forms, meaning works of art.
A cup, a bowl, a pitcher. And as an apprentice, your job is to recreate exactly what they've made. And I said, how many times did you do that? He said, 300 at least. Meaning like this little teeny cup that to you and I looks exactly the same at number one to number 300, he's gonna make 300 times.
He's gonna break that clay down. It's never gonna get fired. He's gonna remake it again. And he said, you'd be amazed because you thought you were good around number 100, but then if you compare number 100 to 300, they are so different. And I said, I'll believe you, sir.
I don't. Can't see it, but I believe it. But I was just blown away. I thought, oh my goodness, this person is an apprentice for four years, and you can't move on to the next one until you've done that one at least 300 times. Until the master potter says that you have actually achieved that form, you can't move on to the next form.
And I'm thinking, friends, if we understood this about our faith, that our God says, I'm not asking you to to perfect it. I'm asking you to practice it. He's like, girl, I've given you 4,000 tries with patience, and I really believe at 4,001, you're gonna get that one. We're called to practice. And I think for many of us, when we think about practicing or maybe being a good Christian, if we were gonna say that, we think about being a good Christian as getting better in our behavior.
But I really believe that this first form that God's saying, I gotta have you work on this one, is believing in what he says about us. That the very first form is actually believing what God says about us. That in Psalm one thirty nine, I know where you sit. I know where you lay down. I know when you try to go to darkness.
I know when you're in light. I know what you do. I know what you say, and I've placed my hand of blessing upon you. That if and so we gotta keep practicing that form. Because these more complicated forms of holiness, we might think, oh, if I can do that, then my identity will feel secure.
And Jesus says, no. It's not that way. Those who hear my words and put them into practice are the wise ones. Those who live in the house that is built on a foundation of rock, those are the wise ones. Our hearts have to relocate to an address, and that address is a secure identity in God.
And that takes practice. We have to practice believing that. Now many of you may be thinking, how do I do that? What if that is really hard for me? And and I I understand that, and I know that.
And I know that there are times there's things in our lives that can make it very hard, but I still believe it's the practice that God is saying, let's practice this every day. Here's something that maybe you can think about when God says his works are wonderful, his ways are higher than our ways. If we're gonna believe he is who he says he is, then maybe we can believe in even more that we are who he says we are. And so in the passage today that we looked at in Psalm one thirty nine, we we read that beautiful poetry. You created my inmost being.
You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And if that's hard for you to believe, I want you to know that you yourself sitting here are a living miracle. It is it is literally a miracle how humans are formed. Do you know that in 2026, doctors, geneticists, researchers, there's a million things they cannot explain about the way a human is formed.
Here's just a few of them. Do you know that doctors, geneticists do not understand how cells come together to make organs? They have no idea how they organize themselves into a three d functional liver. Do you know that doctors, geneticists, nobody understands why a baby's heart actually starts beating? How and when and why it knows it is now time to beat.
Do you know that we don't understand how billions of neurons in the brain know where to go and what to do? We know there's all those neurons in there. We have no idea how they're making themselves into a brain. Do you know the scientists just have no idea why in the world a body knows to put the spleen on the left and the gallbladder on the right. We might look kind of symmetrical on the outside, but we're completely asymmetrical on the inside.
No idea. So if we have a God who says that my knowledge is as vast, you would never be able to to even understand and comprehend my knowledge that's as vast as the sand on the shore. If we have a God who has knit you together so intricately in ways that nobody can explain, Is it possible that you could trust him a little more that when he says he loves you, he means it? When he says he accepts you, he means it. When he says that he lays his hand of blessing upon you, he actually means it.
Our job is to accept, to receive an identity that has been given to us. And our job is to practice receiving that more and more each day. As we close, I wanna offer you just a practice that can help with this receiving, this believing, this practicing, this identity. This was actually studied by a psychologist who was leading an experiment on how people can influence their inner voice. That little voice that says that you're not enough or inadequate or that God couldn't possibly love you just as you are.
And what they found was that when people refer to themselves in the third person, they begin to be kinder to themselves. So I took the liberty of writing three prayers for you from scripture. If you wanna snap a picture of this, if it would help you. And what you wanna do is put your name in those blanks, as awkward as it might feel. Even more so, you wanna practice?
Say it out loud. See what happens in your life when you do that. Let me read these over you, and you imagine your own name in this passage. See what great love the father has lavished on you, that you are called a child of God. Say your name in those blanks.
The Lord takes delight in you. He crowns you with victory. The Lord set his affection on you and loved you. You see, Jesus said that those who build, those who hear and learn and practice and give their lives to hearing and learning and practicing, They will have a life that's built on the rock. Jesus said, he guarantees that there will be storms.
The wind will come, the rain will fall, the earth will quake, and yet those who have built their lives on the rock will persevere to the end. We can experience flourishing life no matter what storms blow in. What would it be like to practice a little bit more to experience an identity growing more and more strong in exactly who God says you are. Let's pray. Father, we pray in the words of Psalm one thirty nine.
Search me and know me, oh God. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out any way in me that offends you. In spirit, this morning, I believe that you are helping us to see that when we think about you pointing out what offends you, you are pointing out that you love us so deeply that you are asking us to believe that, that our role is to accept the identity that you've given. Father, point us in the way of life everlasting.
In Jesus' name. Amen.