Thankfulness Amidst the Noise in Our Lives

Sometimes members will ask me, why isn't God performing any of these great miracles like He will read about in Scripture, or even will read about in the New Testament, some of those miracles that the apostles performed and were able to do? Why don't we see that today? And my response is always the same. He's doing miracles still today. They're just smaller, more personal miracles in all of our lives. If we will look for those miracles, we'll find them. But if we're only looking for those big, miraculous miracles, which occasionally He still performs, right? Saving us from an accident, a miraculous healing. But often He works in the small.

Those individual, those what I refer to as, and you know, often as fingerprints. His fingerprints on our lives. Those moments where you can see somebody else can see something happen, or you can even tell somebody that God did this, and they're like, uh, you sure that's not just time and chance?

Uh, I'm not sure that I would call that a God moment. But you know, without a shadow of doubt, that that was God. Because we've lived through life enough to see what our normal weeks look like.

We know what the contrast is between God's working in our lives and just time and chance. We've seen this time and time again in ways that most other people haven't, those who don't have a relationship with God. But because we have this, we can see those moments, and we can see that contrast, and nobody can argue with us that that was a God moment.

Those are miracles that he's performing every day in our life, but we have to look through them. And because of the noise, we can sometimes miss that opportunity to offer praise and thanksgiving to our God. So in the time we have together, I'd like us to consider the importance of thankfulness that admits the noise in our lives. In Matthew chapter 14, and you can open your Bibles there, we're going to spend the majority of our time here in this this one chapter.

But we find the disciples in Matthew chapter 14 dealing with situations in which the noise around them is absolutely deafening. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where the noise of life is almost as loud as somebody's speaker system set up, just blaring in your ears. You can't really even hear yourself think. You can't really process the thoughts in your head because the noise of life is blaring. It's almost like a physical sense that you feel. And here in Matthew 14, the disciples are dealing with a deafening situation, one right after the other as we read through this chapter.

I'm going to summarize it for you, but we're going to dive into a story here in a moment from this chapter. But Matthew chapter 14 opens up with the death of John the Baptist. Did John do anything wrong deserving of his death? He didn't. He spoke against the ruler of the area that he was in, saying he shouldn't be having the marriage that he was having with another woman. And because of that, the man didn't like him, so he put him in prison, but he didn't really plan to have him executed.

But his wife hated John the Baptist. Jesus knew he was in prison, right? Jesus knew he could have performed a miracle and saved John's wife, but Jesus knew that wasn't the plan. That wasn't what God had in store. And so John the Baptist was martyred. He was murdered. And when the news of this came forth and made it to the disciples, put yourself in their shoes.

How disturbing would this event be? Some of the disciples were actually first John's disciples. It says we read this earlier in the Gospel accounts, but when they met Jesus, they began to follow after him. So some of them had chosen John the Baptist to be their first rabbi, their first teacher. But then, so they knew him personally, and they knew of his diligence, the Scripture, and his love for God. They also knew that this was Jesus's cousin. So there was a familiar relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.

So put yourself in Christ's shoes for a moment. Even though he's the son of God, he just lost his cousin. And so this is the way that Matthew chapter 14 opens up. You want to talk about noise. You want to talk about wondering, is Jesus next? Will they throw Jesus in prison and kill Jesus? Maybe his disciples were even wondering if that would be next. And so this is how Matthew chapter 14 opens up.

Understandably, it seems that Jesus was trying to find some solitude and some quiet times, and he was going out with his disciples, but yet his reputation preceded himself. He had performed miracles. He had healed people up to this point already. And so the multitude, a great number, were seeking him out. They recognized him. They saw him. And in this moment of maybe Jesus wanted to find some quiet time, they surrounded him and they had their own needs that they wanted to have met.

They wanted, some wanted to be healed. Some wanted to hear a sermon. Some had their own personal hurt, their own brokenness that they hoped that he could help with. And so instead of taking time for himself in this moment, he pivots and he serves the multitude. This is the story of where he feeds the 5,000 with two fish and five loaves. He didn't have to do that, but he chose to do that because not only were they broken spiritually, they were hungry too.

His disciples tried to usher them back into town, go into town, find a place to stay, get a bite to eat. We don't have enough here. Jesus said, let's let God's glory be seen as he fed this multitude. Another moment of noise, another moment of interruption and distraction.

John the Baptist is dead. The multitude of 5,000 is hungry and needing both physical and spiritual food. This would have been an extremely difficult environment to offer praise and give thanksgiving to God. He admits this noise and the difficulty around them. This brings us to more noise in verse 22 of Matthew chapter 14. This is where we'll start reading this story. It says immediately, notice, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and to go before him to the other side. Jesus didn't pause. He didn't take a lot of time. He made his disciples. This wasn't a request. You need to do it. Get in the boat, go to the other side. I'll come a little bit later. And it says, while he sent the multitudes away. So he sent them ahead on the Sea of Galilee. And it seemed like maybe Jesus needed a little bit of his own time to tend to his needs a bit, because in verse 23 it says, and when he had sent the multitude away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Now, when the evening came, he was alone there. Again, I think we've all been in those situations where the noise and the circumstances of life around us is deafening. It's all we can hear. It's all we can think about. It's all we can focus on. Where we feel we, again, can't even hear our own self-think. There's been times where it's just it's hard just to bring your thoughts into an arrangement in front of you and to think clearly because of everything going on. Maybe our anxiety is right on the edge of spilling over. Maybe our frustrations are getting the best of us, and we're not having a good day. Maybe it's just a lot of things are happening, all at the same exact time, all hitting at once, and we just feel like we're about to drop half of the balls that we're supposed to be keeping up in the air. Life is swirling, and the noise is relentless. In these moments, it is hard to tune in and to listen to God's wavelength, and it's even harder to find His touch, His fingerprints, His miracles, and it seems impossible to be able to find aspects to be thankful for or to offer praise.

I'm not saying that Jesus was experiencing this type of moment like this when He sent everyone away, but He does demonstrate to us and to those disciples the importance of priorities, the importance of recognizing, how do I arrange my life so that I can talk to God, so I can hear God, so I can see God? And in these moments when we do this, doors often open up where we can see God's hands, we can see His fingerprints and His blessings, can cut through the noise, and we can see that we're not alone. And that's an important aspect of this that we'll continue to explore as we go through this, that we're not alone going through our situations of noise.

It's really hard to offer thankfulness to God in the craziness of the noise, but in the solitude of time with God, thanksgiving and praise can be found. I think that's what Jesus was doing in part of that time He spent alone. He would have been praising God because we see that that's what He says we should do in the model prayer. That's what He would have done in His own personal time with the Father. There would have been moments where He was still offering praise in the midst of this noise. John the Baptist is no longer with Him. The multitude is never full. There's always more physical food that they're hungering for, and more importantly, more spiritual needs that will continue not to be met, but you'll never get to the end of it. But I don't want to forget about the boat with the disciples in it and where they were currently positioned on the Sea of Galilee. Fishing boats of this period were primarily used near the shore under good weather conditions. They would have been about 27 feet or so in length and about eight feet wide, so they would have been about the size of an Amazon truck or a UPS delivery truck that pulls up to your house to drop something off. So they weren't very large. They were usually made of cedar and put together with mortise and tenon joints.

It would have been a low draft boat, which means it wouldn't have sat very deep into the water.

Sorry, I don't know why it should be showing.

I had some illustrations to help a little bit with. And there we go. I don't know if that was up a moment ago, but this is one of the illustrations. But it would have been a low draft boat, meaning it would not have sat very deep into the water. Maybe only about four foot deep. It had a relatively flat bottom, which was good because there weren't a lot of ports or piers on the Sea of Galilee. So to load or unload your boat, you would have to pretty much bring it up to shore so you can't have a really deep boat. And then you would have to step out in about knee height or maybe waist-height water to weight up and then carry your goods up onto the shore or to take your goods from the shore and put into the boat. So they were tended to be used primarily close to shore in good weather.

To where someone could navigate easily with a flat bottom boat, for the most part. Kind of almost like a canoe. You know, canoes will skim over rocks and logs in the water. These boats were kind of that idea to sit higher in the water. But if you're ever in a boat, and I know some of you own boats, some of you have shared stories with, I want to own a boat, but that's not in the plans right now. But if you're going to have a boat and you're going to be on a large body of water, you don't want a flat bottom boat. You don't want a shallow draft boat. You want something with a deep V, because that will cut through the waves. That will cut through and provide more stability. So boats designed for rough water have this deep V, which is more stable and can handle choppy conditions. But if you're on a flat bottom boat like the disciples were in, and you're out in a bad weather, it's not a pleasant ride. It's a very unsettling. It's a very choppy. It's a very bumpy ride that can cause people to be easily tossed around.

But here they are in a fishing boat at night on the Sea of Galilee. Why did Jesus—and I'm sure this—because through this whole account, I keep trying to put myself in the disciples' shoes. Here you are. Jesus knows the type of boat you have. He knows what the weather's going to be.

Why did Jesus, in his complete knowledge and wisdom, send the disciples off in a fishing boat, knowing a storm would be at hand? It doesn't seem like it's the best place for them to be at this point in their journey with Jesus. It's been a busy day. It's been a rough day. What were they to learn in this moment? Continue in verse 24. It says, But the boat was now in the middle of the sea. Tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary. John's account says the sea was tossed by a great wind blowing. So some of us have been in big storms. Some of us may have even been in storms on the water. It's unsettling to be in a thunderstorm or any type of storm like that on the water, because it's very flat. You know you're one of the higher points in this body of water. Water and electricity, they don't bode well together. Wind, we even know that many people still die from boating accidents today. Getting caught out on a body of water and a storm comes in, they can't get off. People still lose their lives today from these types of situations. So you want to talk about noise. You want to talk about the disciples' situation, what was going through their mind. I think at times, again, what were there? Were some of them on the boat saying we should head back for sure? And then others saying, no, Jesus said to go.

We're going to keep going. And then others were like, well, maybe we should skim the coast. That's better for us instead of being out here in the middle. But then others are like, no, the confusion, the differing of opinions. Somebody may even be praying. I mean, some were probably praying, right? God, get us out of here. Help us. Deliver us.

Talking about noise, talking about the situation and the throwing at night and the darkness.

Do we even see the shore? Are we even going in the right direction? You can have some of the disciples saying, we're wrong. We should be this way. And others saying, we should be going this way. Who's right? Who gets to win out? It's a difficult environment, again, to hear or to see God's hand, see his miracles, to see what he's going in. The confusion, the stress, the emotions, they would have all been peaking in this moment. It's late at night. It's been a bad day. They're tired. They're exhausted. And they're in the wrong boat. Going in verse 25, it says, now in the fourth watch of the night, so this would have been sometime probably around 3 to 6 a.m. So now night's long gone. I mean, it's you've been in the night for a long time. You've been on the water for a long time in a storm for a significant amount of time. And it said, in this fourth watch of everything coming apart in this chaos, this noise, Jesus went to them walking on the sea.

Mark's account says, then he saw them, speaking of Jesus, straining at rowing, for the wind was against them. So we don't know if it was Jesus in an elevated position. He could see the struggle that they were having. Did he see them from the shore? Because maybe they weren't that far out on the water. It doesn't say exactly, but Mark's account says that he saw them, straining at rowing.

But did the disciples see Jesus? The storm was too much. They didn't see him until he started to walk out to them. And we see that in verse 26. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, it is a ghost! And they cried out for fear. This is a fair, response, right? I mean, up to this point in the lives, the disciples have never seen somebody walking on the water. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't know if you've ever seen anybody walking on water. I haven't. So their response is kind of crazy here, right? What other explanation could it be other than a ghost? You add in, it's dark. The sea is contrary. The wind's blowing. They're probably having a hard time even keeping their eyes on the horizon as this boat that's not made for this type of weather is rocking. They're getting tossed back and forth. You've got Peter, or you got somebody else in your ear telling you you're going in the wrong direction. And then all of a sudden you see a figure out on the water walking.

I'm not saying I would do much better than them in this moment. But it says in verse 27, immediately, Jesus spoke to them, saying, Be of good cheer, it is I, do not be afraid.

Again, in the commotion here, I can only imagine the disciple in the back of the boat being like, Wait, what? What did he say? Is that Jesus? And then other people are trying to relay the message.

The storm was deafening. The confusion was at its peak. But yet we see in verse 28, it says, And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And so he said, Come. And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. When we get to the kingdom, we all have those list of questions that we think we'll ask. I don't know if I'll ask all mine. I think God will just answer them for me, or I won't even care anymore. But if Peter was present with us, if he was alive on this earth, and we had read this account, I think every one of us would want to go talk to Peter and say, What was that moment like? I know I would. And I think Peter would have a long line of people. Maybe he would do a synopsim where he could just talk to everybody at one time and tell the story so he wouldn't have to tell it a thousand times. Peter walked on the water to Jesus. What would that have been like? What would have been going through his head? Where was his focus?

But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, it says in verse 30, he was afraid.

So up to this point, Peter has been walking on the water. He's been faithful in walking out to Jesus. His vision, his eyesight would have been on Christ this whole time. But I can't help to think, though. In this moment, it says the wind was around him and he was afraid. But maybe a wave splashed up. Maybe a wave hit him as he's walking. And the mitts splashed him in the face. And suddenly he realized, I'm walking on water. It says the wind blew. It was blowing all around him. We've all been in those storms where the wind is blowing so hard it knocks us off a step to our left or to our right. Maybe this is what happened to Peter. And in this moment, his attention shifted from being solely on Jesus Christ to his surroundings. The noise, the wind, the water, the fact that he's actually walking on the water. The noise would have been deafening and his focus on Christ was lost. And it says, in beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me!

In everything that Peter is going through in this day and in this exact moment of crying out to Christ, I don't think Peter was going through the blessings and the fingerprints and the things that God was involved in and the things that was happening in his life. I don't think his focus was on how can I praise God or offer him thanksgiving in this moment.

Because I don't think I would have been doing that myself.

It's just such a difficult situation to be able to do that.

But this is what I love about this part of the story, and I think is an awesome part of the story Verse 31 says, and immediately, I love that use of that word immediately there, because it shows there's no hesitancy. There's no delay. There's no shortcoming of Christ to be able to say, Hang on a second. I'm not quite out to you yet. It says, Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hands and he caught him.

The best example I can put in my mind for living this story out, because we have a daughter, you've had children, or you've had maybe nieces and nephews in your life where you've helped and watched, maybe even raised. My nephew, my first nephew that was born in our family, I was eight, Troy was six, so they don't even call us uncle. They just call us Mike and Troy, because we're like siblings to them. But we got to help raise them in different ways. We got to play with them. We got to be there to look after them and protect them at times. And even with our own daughter, there's times where we see our children, or we see those here at church, and we see those in our life, our nieces, nephews. In a situation, it's not great. And we have a pretty good idea. They're going to fall. They're going to wreck themselves. They're going to hurt themselves. Maybe they're jumping up on the couch and you see them start to go backwards, and you know they're just going to go off the front of the couch, right? All these situations, running down the driveway, all these situations where we immediately start to go towards them and as fast as we can to try to save them, to try to catch them, to keep them from falling and getting hurt. But many times, with my nephews, with even Kelsey, I was two feet too far away. I just couldn't get there just before. I just didn't make it in time, even though I was trying, even though I was moving that direction, even though my eyes, I was aware I was just a tad too late.

But in these moments of life that Peter is in here, among the confusion and the noise, Jesus wasn't too far out of reach for Peter. If Jesus would have been too far away, he would have said, oh no, I can't make it to you, Peter. Or Peter would have sank down and then Jesus would have had to fish them out from underneath the waves and bring them back up.

And in this moment of Peter most likely taking his vision off Christ, Christ never took his vision off Peter. Because sometimes in those moments of trying to catch our own children, our own family members, and we missed them, it's because our vision might have been on something else until the last minute. We're like, oh no, they're starting to fall, but we didn't see it happening until it actually starts to happen. But in this moment, it says, immediately Jesus stretched out his hands and caught him. So Christ had to keep his vision on Peter, even if Peter's vision might not have been on Jesus in this moment. It says again, repeating verse 31, immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him and said to him, Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And notice in this moment they do offer him thanksgiving. They say in verse 33, then those who were in the boat came and worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the son of God. Sometimes in the moments of life when the noise is surrounding us, and literally it's feeling deafening to us, it's hard to see and to realize how close God is to us, how close our Lord and Savior is so very close to us. Again, it's one of these stories in the Bible that for me, it's not difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of the disciples here. Starting with this very bad day that's only getting worse, and it's not even over yet because now we're in the middle of the night on the sea in the wrong boat in the midst of a storm, and Jesus sent us here.

That's... I think we can all just recognize the gravity and the heaviness of this situation, but this is exactly what it is. In the midst of our noise that we encounter through life, God wants us to battle through the challenges that we encounter, but to still offer Him praise and thanksgiving. God knows the noise of life will always be with us. He knows at times the noise will be deafening, but He also knows that this is the reality of life. He knows that if we're going to continue to go forward, we're going to continue to stay the course, we're going to run our race to the end, that this is a lesson that we're going to have to learn how to manage in our life. That through the noise, through the distractions, through the storms, through the wrong boat, we got to keep looking for opportunities to recognize His fingerprints on our lives, and in doing so, offer Him praise and thanksgiving, because again, He's worthy of all praise, and we're never alone. What I find also interesting in this account in Matthew 14 is, even though John the Baptist was murdered, Jesus was still present with the disciples. He didn't just leave and pack town and say, I'll be back in two weeks. He remained and He walked with them. He remained close to them. They could talk with Him. They could see Him. He could see them.

Even through the noise of the multitude and their hunger for food and their needs to be healed and their attention that they were trying to, like their need for Jesus to recognize the situation they were in, Jesus still was with the disciples. He's the one that performed that miracle right before their eyes. They had a part to play. He said, go gather up the boy's fish and loaves, and then feed them and then collect the extra parts. The basket's full. He was with them. He was talking with them. And even when they felt alone on the Sea of Galilee, John's account says that Jesus was looking towards them. He was seeing them in their boat. Our Father is always with us. Our Father is with them in this boat. Jesus was seeing what was happening. And then in the most intimate and touching way, Jesus directly walks out on the water and ends up saving Peter from sinking below the waves. And again, in verse 33, it says, those who were in the boat came and they worshipped Him. They offered praise. They lifted His name and His goodness on high. In the midst of much noise and chaos at times, we must recognize the importance of who we are before God. Where do we stand? Who are we? Are we just some ragtag bunch of people? Well, that's true. We are.

But we are a bunch of people that God has chosen to place His name with and to put within us His own Spirit. We can never think that we're not precious to our Father. We can't think that Jesus giving His life, He was happy to do that for you and for me because He knew how that plays into the plan of God. We can never lose sight of who we actually are before God because life gets heavy, life gets burdensome, our own mistakes gets into our mind. Our adversary tries to fool us and trick us that we're unworthy to be in God's presence. We're unworthy to be His children. Again, appreciate the sermon, but the truth is what sets us free. The truth that God's love covers us, provides for us, it navigates our lives for us. So don't ever lose sight of who we are for God and that He loves us and is always with us. But we have to focus in tightly sometimes in order to block out the noise and to truly see God. But if we look for God, we will see Him and we will find Him because He is always very near to us. And His unending love and mercy that He has for us is without measure. He's always right there, just like He caught Peter in that moment. Peter's trying to grasp, figure out what's going on. Jesus never took His vision off. He never took His vision off the disciples all day on this very bad, horrible, terrible day.

He was always with them. He was always looking after them. He's always with them.

Turn with me to Acts 17 and verse 24. There's another really neat story here. This is when Paul is in Athens, Greece.

So this is where he's walking through the town and the philosophers of the time want to talk to him. But I want to back this story up a little bit because how did Paul end up in Greece? That wasn't his initial plan because he was in Turkey before this and he was planning to go into Asia, to go east. He thought that God was leading him on this journey to go another direction. And then in the night, God revealed to him through a dream, no, I want you to go to Macedonia. I want you to go west. And so Paul gets up and says, okay, we're going west, right? He thought they should go this way, but we're going to go west. And this starts leading into a cascading effect of being ran from town to town to town because they didn't like the message that he was bringing to them in these other cities that Paul was bringing.

They it was a competing idea. He was taken away from their attention, their ideas. And so the townspeople who some of them loved what he was sharing, but enough didn't that they ran them out of the first town. Think in that moment, Paul was like, hey, this is right where I should be. No, maybe he even thought back, I'm going to read between the lines. Maybe Paul didn't have any hesitation. But if Mike Phelps was in his shoes, I would have said, see, this is why he should have went east. Right. And yet you, God, have placed me here and I'm being ran out of town. And so they run to the next town and the townspeople from the last one, they weren't done. It was bad enough. They ran them out of one town. They followed them to the next and then ran them out of that town as well. I've never been persecuted to that degree. I've had people not happy with me, but to then chase after me and to make sure the next place I end up, I can't stay there either.

Again, I don't want to speak for Paul. But Mike Phelps would have really been doubting with God. Why have you? Why would you do this? This makes no sense. I don't understand it. I'm not seeing why, because I thought we should be over here. And yet, here we are where you've told me to go. This is not ideal. And so, to run away again and to find safety and things, and I think the others with them actually said, go on to Athens. We'll join you in a little bit. Go there. Get some rest. So, Paul shows up in Athens. He's walking through the town. He's looking at their different temples to different gods, because they had a lot of gods and a lot of temples. And he's holding meetings in certain places in the markets and sharing the gospel news, good news of Jesus Christ. And he's getting some people who are listening and some people who are talking about, hey, there's this guy. He's sharing some good things. And so, the philosophers, the big thinkers, because that's what was Athens. One of the things they were known for was people who just sit around thinking, coming up with ideas for the meaning of life and why we're here. And so, here's Paul talking about this god. Well, let's hear what he has to say. So, they bring him to the Areopagus with the other big thinkers of the time, and they say, expound. Tell us this thing about this god. Tell us who this god is. We're eager to hear. Which brings us to Acts 17 and verse 24, as Paul begins to talk about the god that we worship and the god we know is real. He says, God, who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. He might have even been pointing to the different temples right within eyesight. He says, Nor is he worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since notice he gives all life, breath, and all things.

Everything that's good in life, everything that we have, everything that everybody else has, everybody in the town of Athens, he's saying, God is supporting you. God's propping you up. God's making sure that you remain alive. God gives to all life, not just us here, not just those in his family, not just those with his spirit. He says, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things, food, jobs, health, to not think that God is involved in all the details of everything going on in everybody's life in this entire world is coming up short. He's God. He gets to decide how he's going to be in everybody's lives and how he's going to be involved. But Paul, this truth of Scripture is secure. He gives life since he gives to all life, breath, and all things. And notice he says, and he is made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling. He's saying, God is involved in all the lives and affairs of mankind.

And it says, why? So that they should seek the Lord. That's what God ultimately wants, right? That's why Jesus came and gave his life so that all of humanity could have an opportunity at eternal life. God wants mankind to seek him. God wants mankind to draw near. And as it says here in a moment, that they would grope for him, that they would claw their way to him. Now, of course, we know he's calling some people today, and he's going to open up this opportunity for the rest of the world later on. But this is his plan. This is what he wants. And if mankind would just submit, if all of mankind would just give up fighting against God, he would receive them.

So that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him.

And notice, this is the key aspect, though he is not far from each one of us. Now, did Paul think this when he's being ran out from town to town? God's not far from me? I don't know. Mike Phelps wouldn't have. Mike Phelps would have said, I should have been over in Turkey. I should have been going east.

I don't know if he felt close to God in this moment. I hope he did, but I think in our own lives, we would have recognized maybe we felt far from God in these moments. But yet, when he's in Athens being ran from town to town, he says he's not far from each one of us.

He's right there with us in these moments, in the noise, in the persecution, in the health trials, in the struggles. And knowing that even in these moments of knowing that God is right with us, knowing that we're in a difficult situation and that we cry out to him and ask him for his intervention, ask him for the big miracle to occur, it's his choice to decide how he will relieve us. And we may not be fully saved in that moment, not immediately, like Peter was on the water when he was saved. God doesn't always free us immediately. He does this, and he allows it to test our resolve, to see what we're made of at times, to see if we'll continue to keep our vision on him. These moments, it tests our faith, and it tests our trust in God, and it tests us to see if we will seek him in the midst of our own storms. God wants to know if with every step we take, we will keep our vision focused on him.

Sometimes these words are easier to write in notes than it is to say and think through.

Because so many times as we go through life, we're like Peter on the water, the waves splash us, the wind knocks us a step to our left. We're not happy. This is not where I want to be.

And God says, with every step that you take, will you keep your vision focused on me?

I want to turn to Psalm. Please turn with me to Psalm 100.

Psalm 100 and verse 1. This is a Psalm, most likely, that David wrote. It's a Psalm of thanksgiving, as it may say at the beginning of your Bible or the beginning of your chapter here.

And I put myself in David's shoes if this is his writing, if he's the one that wrote Psalm 100.

Think back to David's life. Did he always have an easy breezy life to offer praise and thanksgiving to God? He didn't. Some of it was his own doing. We make our own mistakes. We have to handle the consequences. Some of it wasn't. He was promised by God to be the next king, yet he didn't wake up the next day and begin reigning as the king of Israel. He got ran out of town by the current king. He got tried to be killed by the current king. He had to flee out to the wilderness until God's time, worked it all out. Then he becomes king. Then his own son tries to grab hold of the throne. Actually does for a time. He has to leave and run out of town again. There's some hard aspects to David's life that wasn't easy breezy. Yet at some point it seems like he was able to capture this, this psalm. In the other psalms that we see, often he will talk about the hardships. He'll talk about the war that's raging around me. I'm overwhelmed. I'm tired. I'm beaten down. But then almost every single psalm he'll twist it and change it to where he says, but I praise you because I see your hand.

You are my fortress. You are the foundation. It's by you that I'm able to get back up. We see this this contrast where David seems to try to balance this recognition that this isn't a, I'm not happy where where I'm at right now. This is not fun. This is not, there's a lot of noise.

It's deafening right now. But I'm going to praise you. I'm going to recognize that you're still God, you're still on your throne, you're still guiding my steps. And we see the psalm of thanksgiving here in Psalm 100 verse 1. It says, make a joyful shout to the Lord all you land. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. I love the action words in verse 3. Know that the Lord, he is God. Know it. Don't just read it. Don't just say it to, because it's the right thing to say. Know that the Lord, he is God. That it is he who has made us and not we ourselves. And notice, we are his people. Don't ever forget that. Don't ever lose sight that we are his people and we're the sheep of his pasture. It says, enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name. For the Lord is good. You could put always good in that, if you wanted to add that in. His mercy is everlasting. It's always everlasting. And his truth endures. It always endures to all generations. Now, it's one thing to read this. It's another thing to do it. And I'll be again, the first one to admit when the noise of life is deafening. Everything's going on. The chaos is assuming around us. My first thoughts aren't, let's open up the Bible to Psalm 100 and begin to praise God. All right, because often it's that's not even really in my thoughts. I'm trying to work that way. Laura and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. I hope I'm better than I was in the past at trying to have this type of a mindset, kind of like David did many times. But sometimes it's still in life. Everything going on. It's not in my thoughts.

But I have found that as I continue trying to practice this, the easier it is to see his fingerprints. That when we go into a situation that may not be ideal, but we start looking for those ways that God is with us. Maybe it's through a nurse that is just being kind.

Maybe it's, I could share stories of even Laura's most recent surgery and things where we saw him provide. Maybe it was after an anointing. It was after other events. But we were able to see him because we were at times we were looking for them. And I have found that as I try to reset my focus through these difficult, noisy, stressful situations, I've been able to see his fingerprints, which then encourages me because I'm not alone. If God is here doing this, this, and this, and I saw him touch this and fix that and intervene here, then when we end up like Paul in Athens being chased from town to town, we don't go back and question God and say, this isn't the plan. This isn't where you wanted me to be. But instead, we say, I know you're right here with me. You did all these things along the way. You didn't just suddenly leave. You didn't suddenly go on vacation and forget that I was in this moment. And so it helps reset our minds because we're looking for those fingerprints. We're seeing them. We're recognizing that this doesn't just happen. This is a gift and part of God's grace in our lives. This is his favor going before us. So if you've done these things, God, in this situation where it's pivoted to, I'm not happy about, but I'm going to continue to praise you because you're still with me. And I know that. There's not a doubt in my mind. As we practice this, as we go into situations looking for his fingerprints, we'll see them and we'll find them. And when we do that, that offers so much encouragement, so much support, so much comfort that it allows the volume level of the noise to just settle down. It's almost, I don't know if you've ever seen those videos on your phone, on those reels, or different clips where somebody is really so upset about a situation, something happened to them. So they're like, I'm going to record my rant. I'm going to hit record, and I'm just going to speak into the phone and just unload. And they're yelling, they're upset, the passion, the energy, that emotion is just raw. And it's not pleasant to listen to that noise, that emotion. But it would be like for our own life, when we look to see God, and we look to offer Him praise, and we look for His fingerprints, it's like taking the volume button and just turning it down on that rant. And eventually, it goes silent. You can watch a video, and you can still see the emotions and the yellowing and everything, but you can't hear it anymore. Because you've turned the volume down. You've allowed God's peace and His quietness, His stillness to enter in. And in that moment, we can offer Him praise. And in that moment, we can offer Him thanksgiving.

It doesn't mean that the problems in life that the person on the video is still ranting and raving, they're not happy. Our life still has noise, our life still has its struggles.

But it provides a chance for us to refocus on the big picture and to look for the little things that God is doing that can only be done by His hand. And it provides us an opportunity for us to be able to offer praise and thanksgiving to our great God for the way that He looks over and the way that He guides our lives daily. I'd like to conclude with just the last couple of thoughts. A couple weeks ago, Laura shared with me an affirmation. I don't know if affirmation is the best word. We've talked about it a little bit. I think it is. It's words of encouragement. It's words of reality about how lovingly and powerfully God works in our lives. And He does, as we know, so much in our life. But He does ask us to do a little bit, right? Paul uses an analogy of running our race constantly. There's work that we have to do. There's an effort we have to put in. There's a focus we have to maintain. And God expects that of us. He expects us to take on some of the work, some of the responsibility. But for our little piece that we do, God does so much more. We know that. We can never lose sight that we think we've got this ourselves. We can never lose sight that we think by our own grit, by our own determination, by our own will, by our own fortitude, our own strength. We're going to overcome the noise and the challenges that come up in life. We're not doing that mighty work. God's doing the mighty work. This is what she shared, and I thought would work well and be encouraging to you. Its subheading was, it wasn't the grind, it was God's grace. No matter how hard we worked, no matter how much effort we put in, it was still God who allowed it to happen. The opportunities, the breakthroughs, the strength to keep going, it was never just our own doing. Yes, we showed up. Yes, we pushed through. We pushed forward. But it was His favor that made the difference. His grace that opened doors that effort never could. His mercy that sustained us when we were running on empty. There's just so much truth in this phrase, in this affirmation, and these words of encouragement. Because God is always with us. He's always for us. His favor and His grace is ever with us.

And we can never lose sight of that. Yeah, we have a grit. I love that about Michiganders. I think it's a great aspect to about. It's a great way to describe a lot of you and those in this state. I think it's a Midwestern trait, too. Maybe it's the winters we have to work through that we just have that grit to get to spring. But there's a level of grit that I see in so many lives that I'm not going to quit. I'm going to continue the race. I'm going to continue the journey because God has set this before me. And there is a recognition that we can take that, yes, I'm continuing on this journey with God, but He does so much, so much for us. Paul talks about this again. If you'll turn to 2 Corinthians as we begin to close. 2 Corinthians 12 and verse 9.

This is one of those passages, again, where Paul's just being open about his struggles, his challenges in life, his journey. And in this passage, he shares that he had some sort of physical ailment, some sort of health issue that he had asked God to remove from him multiple times. It says three times. And I don't think this is just a random prayer where he's just randomly going through things, praying for this person that, oh, and can you heal me of my whatever challenge that he had? He may have fasted. He may have really poured a whole bunch of energy. Because he didn't do anything with a half heart. We know that from Paul's writings.

He took it to God and he says, and he may have even pleaded with God in the way that, God, if you remove this from me, think of what I could do being free of this health issue.

Again, I'm reading between the lines. That's what I would have probably in my own mind, right? God, if you give me this ability to take it away, imagine, let's say it was his eyesight, if I could see better, imagine the work I could do for you better.

I don't know. Again, that's maybe my thought playing in here a little bit.

But it says he pleaded with him three times in verse nine. It says, and he said to me, and this is God saying to him, either in audible or in some sort of way that he knew, God said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. This is one of those conundrums of the Scripture. How can something be strong and weak at the same time? Because in life, most things are either strong or they're weak. They're not both.

So what does this mean? How does this make sense that God is saying, for my strength is made perfect in weakness? Paul goes on to say, therefore, most gladly, I would rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may lay on lay upon me. He says, therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and in reproach and needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. You know all that stuff I was saying about Paul when he's second guessing God, it doesn't sound like I know what I'm talking about here, right? Because Paul's saying when I was in distress, when I was struggling, when I was in my infirmity, all these things, I took pleasure in those moments because he says, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

It doesn't add up in human terms. You're either strong or you're weak. You can't really be both. But he's saying it's not on my strength. It's on God's strength that I am strong because in my weakness, in this moment that I'm sinking in the water, this moment that the noise is deafening, and I just physically am not thinking about offering you praise, when he cuts through that noise, when he gives us the strength to refocus and reorient and say, who do you think just did that over there? And we're like, oh no, or oh yeah, that was God.

I need to praise him for that moment. I need to glorify him for that moment. And if he did that, oh look, there's another one. He did two things within a matter of an hour that was praiseworthy. All of a sudden, our mind shifts. And now we're looking for more of those things. It doesn't mean suddenly we're happy with the situation and that we're not and that we're out of it. It doesn't mean that the storm that the disciples were caught in when Christ calms it and it goes away. It doesn't mean like that's how our life always works. But God is the one who gives us the strength and the ability to cut through the noise and the storm to be able to see these moments of his fingerprints and his small miracles that he's still performing today. Robert Louis Stevenson is noted as saying, the person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life. It's a little bit a lot of truth in that the person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life, meaning you're not awake and aware of everything that God is still doing, because if you were awake and you were seeing it, you would be offering him praise and thanksgiving.

My hope is that at this time of the year and continually through the ups and downs of life, we can drown out the noise by looking and seeing the fingerprints of God in our lives. They're there. They are actually all over the place if we'll look for them. Because God is so rich in mercy and love, and that he continually goes before us and intercedes and open doors that we simply cannot open. One of the most powerful prayers you can pray is for his favor to go before you to do things that we physically cannot do and could never ever do. It's amazing how many times we talk and share those stories with one another about his favor going before us. Because we've tried it our way. We've knocked on doors and got no answer. We picked up the phone and talked to a person who was not helpful at all. We know what that feels like. And so when it goes the other way, that's his favor. That's him intervening. When he gives us someone that'll listen, someone who's kind, someone who puts themselves in our shoes, that doesn't happen every day.

That's his favor going before us. Opening doors, we simply cannot. So we have so much to be thankful for during this time of the year, and as always, because we have a God that so carefully looks after our lives. May we continue to offer him all of our thanksgiving and praise.

Thank you.