In Acts 1:9-11, we read about Christ being taken up into the clouds just after speaking words of comfort to His followers. Although He is not here in bodily form, we can rest assured that we have not been left as orphans but we have received the Holy Spirit. Jesus continues to take care of His people even as He ascends to His Father in Heaven. What does this mean for us as believers? Join us this week as we unpack this miraculous event in the history of the world.

Bad things happen in this life. Awful, heartwrenching, unbelievably painful things. Who do we turn to when we're caught up in a dark season? Where does our help come from? We turn to the One who calls us to Himself. Our help comes from the Maker of heaven and earth. Our Sovereign God bends His ear to us and calls us to take refuge in Him. We only need to be still and wait and watch in confidence that God will work it out. It is natural to wrestle with the problem of evil during times of trouble, but we can rest in God's goodness and trust Him in His sovereignty and love for us.

Charles Spurgeon called Psalm 131 a "short ladder that neertheless rises to a great height, moving from deep humility to fixed confidence." It's a psalm that's easy to remember but harder to put into practice which makes it all the more important to do so.

When we settle into our positions as God's created beings, we begin to relax and trust our Creator. Our confidence in Him grows over time and our faith deepens as we wait in confidence for Him to unwind the tangled messes we so often find ourselves in.

Psalm 126 teaches us that in times of trouble, it is good to remind ourselves of God's faithfulness to us in the past. In 126:1-2, we see the Israelites practicing faithful rememberance. This life giving spiritual practice is what sustains them through their dangerous journey of ascent. God is steadfast and His loving care never changes.

The same faithful God that walked alongside the Israelites thousands of years ago still walks with us on our own journeys. His love for His children has not faded. We too can have faith that God will take our tears and turn them into joy, not only as He did for the ancient Israelites but also for His own Son, Jesus. Jesus wept tears of anguish on a dark night in the Garden of Gesthamane before He was to be hung on a cross. But God took those tears and turned them to joy as He was raised to life and the atonement for our sins was complete. When we weep, we can be assured that in His timing, God will take our tears and turn them into everlasting joy. He always has and He always will.

As we begin our new series "Songs For The Road", we take a look at Psalm 24. This short psalm reminds us that as we journey through life's difficulties, we can find comfort and confidence in God's Word. The fundamental truth that God created all things and that everything belongs to Him is the answer to our deepest need.

We belong to our Creator. We are accepted and loved.

He cares for us and we are in the hands of the One who created order out of chaos. We can trust that our steadfast God knows what He is doing.

He has made a way for us to be fully in His presence, fully loved and fully accepted, forever. Despite the weakness and the sin that separates us from Him, He calls us to Himself.

He is Holy. And we are made Holy in Him. Our souls can rest in that eternal truth.

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it.

Amen.

Has God intruded in your life? In this part of Jacobs life, we see God intrude on Jacob's life in a very physical way. It's a bit of a strange story, as many stories in the Bible often are, but it is a story where God literally grabs hold of Jacob and forces him to pay attention.

If you're wondering whether or not God is grabbing a hold of you, pay attention to your own thought patterns. Check yourself and see if you're suddenly not as interested in others opinions of you. See if you have become more generous with your money and less fearful. See if you've begun to lose even a tiny bit of interest in an addiction that was once so consuming. Those are signs you've met God. Those are signs that He is "messing you up" in the best possible way and is calling you to Himself. You don't have to clean yourself up to meet with God, you just have to be willing.

After the disasterous consequences of Jacob's disobedience to God, we read on to find that Jacob does not hear God's voice of judgement or condemnation. Instead, he hears an invitation to come home to Bethel. We see yet another example of how God's grace and His commitment to His promises will be the deciding factor in the next chapters of Jacob's life. Not Jacob's acts of repentence, not his attempts to "clean himself up". But simply and unbelievably, God's grace.

Most of us will not commit sins so grievous that it causes the murder of an entire village. But all of us commit sins that, without God's grace, will block us from ever being to stand before a Holy God and be called righteous. Despite Jacob's sins, despite ours, we are forgiven in Christ by our ever loving and trustworthy Father in Heaven.

Despite Jacob's profound encounters with the Living God, he continued to fall into deep and destructive patterns of sin. His inability to face his problems head on, combined with his compulsion to manipulate and lie, left it's mark on a whole new generation of children. Because of Jacob's inability to act on behalf of his violated and abused daughter, his enemy was forced to make a hasty peace treaty which did not stand up to the fury of his deceptive and violent sons.

The warning in this story is clear. When we do not honestly and earnestly deal with our own sin patterns - be it those of deception, those of apathy, those of gossip or those of jealousy - it will always affect the ones we love. We must always be taking our weaknesses to God and laying them at His feet, asking for the help of the Holy Spirit to equip us to do better. As He did with Jacob, God uses our lives as an example to others. The question is whether our lives point people toward faithful obedience or serve as a warning of the damage that unchecked sin can do.

What's actually happening when we go to church? Are we all just following tradition? Being compelled to do it by guilt or obligation? Or is there something more at work? God brings us into corporate worship for a reason. It's to give us a taste of home - not our earthly home, but the one He's created for us to be in. This week we explore Psalm 84 and what it means to worship as a church family and why God calls us to gather together.

It's tempting to believe that if God appeared physically in front of us right now, our belief and faith in Him would be forever solidified. In Genesis 32, we see angels literally appear in front of Jacob's very eyes (32:1) and yet just a few verses later we see him hedging his bets. He attempts to re-arrange a stressful situation "just in case" God doesn't show up. God's angels appeared physically in front of him and he still didn't believe, at least not for very long. Even though Jacob could see countless ways that God had showed up for him in the past and he'd heard Gods promise to him (Gen 32:9), Jacobs fear overtook his faith and he tried to take control.

This is an all too familiar scene for most of us no matter how long we have been believers for. It is a relief to know that our neither our fearful ways or wavering faith will deter God from fulfilling His promise that He would be with us to the very end (Mat 28:20). It is in His grace that we rest and it is in His grace that we can face any troubles that may arise, no matter what.