John Gunter: Well, good morning church family. Welcome to my office. I know this is a little bit different venue, but we're nothing if not flexible. Right? The elders decided to cancel services just in case that we did get the inclement weather that was planned, and we just pray that everyone is able to stay home and it is warm and safe this morning.
So you for being flexible with us. Thank you for tuning in and just kind of worshiping where you are, but still with us in a way. And so what I want to do this morning is to not push forward because I know we're kind of out of our routine. You're not in your normal seat at church or ready to take notes or anything like that. You're probably in comfy clothes, as we call them, just ready to hear and have a little bit of connection with the rest of the church.
And so that's what we hope you get this morning. But I didn't want to push forward with the series. I didn't want to push forward when we might miss some things and not really have as much time together. And so I wanted to go over kind of some of the things we've talked about to remind ourselves that even though our circumstances change, God's presence does not. And that's because God's promises do not change.
And so this morning, what we're gonna do is just kind of dig a little bit deeper into this idea of God's promise to us that that God will always be with us. And so this morning, let's start in John, chapter 14, and we're gonna read verses 16 through 18. And it goes like this, and I will ask the father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.
I will come to you. And I would imagine that like a lot of us, as we're maybe a little isolated today, we need reminders like this, that God is not ever going to leave us as orphans, to to leave us alone in a sense that sometimes we we may feel like we're alone, but God's promise is that he will always be with us. This is what Jesus is saying to his disciples as he's getting ready to leave. You're not going to be left as orphans, and they're trying to figure out how can I exist without Jesus physically where I can see him and and touch him and and grab onto him and walk around doing ministry? And Jesus' promise is, listen, you are gonna get this this spirit of truth that's going to be with you and in you, and God is promising there that he is not going to ever leave his people.
And so, hopefully, as you go about your day to day or your work week or wherever you may find yourself this week, you remember that that God is with me. And, hopefully, that reminder allows us to kind of have a sense of peace and and calm and and even power in a sense that we don't just walk around with our own abilities and our qualifications even, that there are things that I could I could want to do in this life and I could never be able to do them without the power of God. But I do have the power of God because he has promised to be with me. And so we are reminded from week one that that we will not be left as orphans. We are children of God, and so we are going to be with God all the time.
And from Psalm 46 and verse one, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. You may remember a couple of weeks ago again when we talked about Psalm 23, and I said and it begins, the Lord is my shepherd. And I said, remember, you you can't say that. You can't call God your shepherd if you don't allow him to lead. And I think the same goes for this verse here in Psalm 46 that God is our refuge and strength.
God can't be your refuge and strength if you don't lean on him, if you don't rely on him. And remember, God's promise is he's going to be with you. He's going to be there for you to rely on, but you have to do it. You have to decide that's what I'm going to do. And we talk about and we've talked about several times that a lot of us are fixers.
Our first instinct, our first intuition is just try to fix the situation. That's not a I don't think that's an unfaithful thought. I think we're all created differently to solve problems in different ways. But we do, for those of us who are wired like this, maybe we need to take a breath or a pause and go, okay. Am I relying on me, or am I relying on God for this?
Because those two things, I would venture to say, are going to produce a couple of different outcomes. What can I do versus what can I do with God's help? And so God is our refuge and strength if I allow myself, if I decide I'm going to lean on him and call upon him. Because I think we especially see this. It's really the feet hitting the road when something goes wrong in life.
When because things are going right, don't I don't know that that this really hits home until something happens you can't control, and you know you can't control it. Because when that happens, then you go, okay. I've got to do something else because I know in this moment I don't have the answer. And so God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And so I wanna lean on God.
I want to rely on him. And so we may be separated today, but we are certainly not abandoned in any form, that we are still together and God is there with us. The next thing I want to read to you is from Romans chapter eight and verse 14, and I may have even mentioned it just a few minutes ago, talking about being sons of God. But it says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And we talked about this in talking about being guided, that we are guided by God, that as we walk through life, God assures us that he goes with us.
And so you are adopted. You are sons and daughters. You are a part of this group now. And so God goes with you, and you are led by the spirit of God, I hope. I hope that's what's leading you in your life.
And so we want to remember this as we go. We are being guided by God, or we should be. Again, Psalm 23, Lord is my shepherd. Let him lead. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
You're gonna have problems. Life is going to give you things that you don't like, you don't want, and you would not call a great situation. But because God is there, he can handle it. I will fear no evil. Why?
For you are with me. And I understand that, and I I hope you understand that. And so God leads us. He leads his people when circumstances aren't comfortable or even good. God continues to lead.
I think often our temptation is to think about a bad situation as if God has left, and I think you can see that in the Psalms. Actually, there are Psalms that say very clearly that, God, you are far from me. I don't know where you are, God. I don't know how you're here. You can't be here because I don't feel you.
But, again, God's promise is he's going to be there with you even when those circumstances are bad. Would you rather go through those circumstances alone or with God by your side? So I think that's that's one way to look at that, that, if we allow our faith to kind of trust in God even when you don't know the outcome, You don't know how things are going to actually turn out for the good. But I can lean on God and I can have faith in him. Not that I have faith in it's only gonna work out in a certain way or I'm not happy, but to have faith that no matter how it works out, maybe not good at all the way it works out in your first thought or your opinion.
But we've lived enough life, a lot of us, to know that even when it happens and things work out in a way we wouldn't have asked for, later on down the road, we see some things that came from that, and that's the way I believe God works. That no matter what happens in life, God can bring good from it. Something bad happens in your life and you think, I don't know how God would ever be in this moment. I don't think God necessarily created this moment for you. But I think from this moment, God can create something beautiful for you.
And so let's remember that God is with us even when these circumstances aren't exactly as we have them to be. And so from Psalm 32 and verse eight, it says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. God is going to be with us. He's going to teach us those lessons in life, those circumstances that we make it through, those valleys of the shadow of death.
God is going to be with us. He's going to have his eye upon us. He's going to have his rod, as it says. He's going to have his he's gonna have our back, as it says in Isaiah. God is going to be with us.
Your rod and your shield, they comfort me. And so Psalm thirty two eight, I will instruct you, teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. God is going to be with us. He's going to teach us.
He's going to continue to guide us. In Romans eight twenty six, it says, likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. We talked about this last week. We talked about how or I I think I mentioned that this reassures me because I don't know what to pray for all the time.
I pray quite a bit, to be honest with you. I feel like I pray a lot during the day. And often I feel like, well, am I just repeating the same thing? Am I saying the things I want to say? Am I really conveying the importance even?
And scriptures like this help me because I can see, okay, I don't have to have all the answers. I'd love to have all the answers, I think. I don't know if that's true or not. But I don't have to have all the answers because it says, likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness. Now what it doesn't say is some people are don't need any help from the spirit.
I think what what Paul is saying here is that we are all weak and that we are made from flesh. We're not we're not gonna know the things of God. And so the spirit has to do this. The spirit has to help us in our weakness. It says, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.
He he says we. Right? All of us. We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And it goes on to talk about how the spirit can kinda search the things of God and and kinda speak the language of God.
Right? To be able to read our hearts in a way that we can't even express with our words. Have you ever heard someone who just seemed to give give you the words that you wish you could have said, oh, I wish I would have said it like that. Some people just seem to have a knack for that. Yeah.
Me too. I wish I wish I was more like some other communicators. Right? But, okay, we're we're not all like that. And we're even the best communicators aren't gonna know the things of God like the very spirit of God.
And so I think what we can learn from this is that God just wants to hear from you. God just wants to hear from his children, to hear from his his people, to to feel that love that we can connect in this way. The spirit's gonna handle all of the the communication in that way where we're we're talking on the same level. We just need to talk. We just need to be with God, to sit with God, and let the spirit work in our weakness, understanding we are weak.
And so may that do that for us. May the spirit do that for us. In Isaiah 41 in verse 10, it says, fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you.
I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. And so I think we should remember from this is that God does not leave us in weakness. Yeah. And the spirit in our weakness takes care of us.
He allows us to talk to God in a way we can't even verbalize because God understands us. Right? He sent his son to live on earth in the form of man to experience life just as we experience it. Right? So God is not going to leave us in weakness.
God is there for us for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Right? The strength is not coming from me or you.
It is coming from God. I will strengthen you. He understands we are weak. He understands we have fault. He understands what we need.
I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. God has you. You say amen to that church.
I can't hear you today, but say amen to that. God has you. He can take care of you. In Hebrews 10 and verse 23, the Hebrew writer says this. He says, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
God's promises are true. What we've talked about so far is is the promised spirit, that God promises his spirit to us, that that spirit doesn't just come to us for nothing, that God empowers us with his spirit, that he walks with us, he guides us, he leads us, he strengthens us. And these are all promises of God. Alright? Without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
You may be in a point right now in your life where you're wondering, is God faithful? Well, what I would just encourage you to do is look at all the evidence. Look at all the times. It it may look dark right now. It may look impossible, but God is there with you.
The last time you were in an impossible situation, you came through it, and here you are. God loves you. He is faithful. He's going to be with you. In Lamentations, three and verse 22, we read this.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Somebody ought to write a song with those words.
Right? They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. God works, and he continues to work. He continues to walk with us.
Sometimes it sometimes it looks like nothing is changing. Right? Because faithfulness can be steadiness. Here we are today. We're still walking.
We're still upright. We've come through the things of this week, this past week, maybe maybe even this winter storm that we've been preparing for. But God is with us. He's there. He's empowering us.
He's walking with us. He's lifting us up, moving us forward. And for that, we should be thankful that I can even just hold steady and be thankful today for all of those things. If you've got a warm house or a warm place, be thankful. If you had warm water this morning, be thankful.
If you had cold water this morning, be thankful. It wasn't that long ago we didn't have water just running through our houses like that. Right? We we need to remind ourselves how God has continued to bless us. Not because we have done anything to deserve it.
Right? But because he is faithful and he is who he is. And so I wanna just encourage you, God is with you. God is with you this morning as you're in your own home or wherever you find yourself. God is with you during the week.
Maybe you feel isolated in your job and you're trying to be a good example, but it doesn't always work out the way you want. Maybe you feel like you're surrounded by bad influences that just kinda keep creeping in. God is with you. Maybe you feel like you're in a good situation during the week. God is with you to empower you, to strengthen you.
God is with you. And so, church, I can't wait to be back in the same room together. We can sing. You know, that's my my spiritual love language is is singing together. Can't wait to hear your voices again, but until then, know God is with you.
And everywhere that you go, you're an agent of his. You're a disciple of his. You are a son. You are a daughter of his. And so let's not just say those words.
Let's make them mean something. Let's take those things out into everywhere we go, influencing the world, bringing souls to Jesus Christ. One last verse I'm gonna leave you with from Matthew 28 and starting in verse 19. We know this is the great commission. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So Jesus gives his commission to his disciples to go into all the earth trying to impact the world, making disciples, baptizing them, and his promise there through all of that is behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. He will never leave us. He will never forsake us. Thank you, God.
God, I wanna thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for your blessings. We thank you for your grace and mercy. Thank you for allowing us to have avenues like this to still, feel a a little connected this morning, Lord, when we're all, isolated. God, I pray that your your message, your words do not go away void.
Lord, that even in an unconventional sermon or time like this, Lord, I pray that we have come with open hearts ready to receive what you have told us. God, continue to go with us. Those moments where we feel weak and we feel like we don't know where you are, Lord, help us to see, help us to feel, Help us to continue walking forward and Lord as we go help us to encourage others. Lord help us to do so without judgment and without any kind of hostility towards one another. Lord help us to to be understanding And Lord, in everything that we do draw us close to you.
It's in the precious name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. God bless you, church. We will see you soon.