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At Sandals Church, our vision is to be real with ourselves, God and others. This channel features sermons and teaching from Pastor Matt Brown and other members of the Sandals Church preaching team. You can find sermon notes, videos and more content at http://sandalschurch.com/watch
For whatever reason, I have always struggled to pray. And so as this new year begins and as many of you think about new routines that you wanna give yourself to, especially for those of you who follow Jesus, I wanna invite you to learn to pray the Psalms with us. It's a practice I picked up years ago that really saved, my ability to learn to pray, to speak to God honestly about how I was feeling and what I was thinking. And so every single day on sandalschurch.tv on YouTube, we're gonna be releasing, praying the Psalms, a Psalm a day. We started in January 1, and every day you're gonna get a new Psalm with the opportunity to read the Psalm with us, to reflect on a phrase, and then to respond to God in prayer, how to pray through the Psalms.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:This has been a gift to me in my own journey with Jesus. I pray that it's a gift to you, and so would you join us. Grace and peace. As we continue praying the Psalms, we come now to Psalm 43. It's really a continuation of Psalm 42.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Follow along. Declare me innocent, oh god. Defend me against these ungodly people. Rescue me from these unjust liars for you are god, my only safe haven. Why have you tossed me aside?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Why must I wander around in grief oppressed by enemies? Send out your light and your truth. Let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain to the place where you live. There I will go to the altar of God, to God the source of all my joy.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I will praise you with my harp, oh God, my God. But why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again, my savior and my God.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:By way of reflection, as I mentioned, this really is a continuation of Psalm 42. We we see the the similar kind of reprise here of why am I so discouraged, why is my heart so sad, and then yet this declaration of I will put my hope in God. And I think it's important for us as we go about our day today that we, take inventory as to where our hope is. Where have you placed your hope today? The prayer of Psalm 43 invites us to think about where our hope is located today.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Oftentimes, we would have hoped for this to have happened. We would have hoped for this person to call me back. I would have hoped to be, you you know, dealing with a less stressful week. Right? All of those things are natural places for us to place hope.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:However, ultimately, they will all fall apart if we rely on them too much. So Psalm 43 invites us to name, again, maybe what's got us a bit discouraged, but then to declare in faith that, god, my hope is in you today. So locate your hope. And if it's not in the Lord who hears your prayer, if it's not in the Lord who is your rock, and as David says, oh, God, my God. This is your God.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:The Lord possesses you and you possess him. There's an intimate relationship here. And so there's a freedom now, Lord, that we hear just to confess to you that we resist the temptation to place our hope into other things today. Not that our calendar will work out, not that all of our tasks will get done, not that all of our children will listen to us, and not that the day will be easy with, no pain and no difficulty. But, god, we place our hope firmly in you that you are the king of kings and you are in control of our day.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And so we offer it to you now in Jesus' name. Amen.