When was the last time you felt rested and content? What would it be like to live from a place of quiet confidence in the midst of a noisy and chaotic world? Maybe the biggest question is this: is that even possible??? Psalm 131 is a short song to sing that might take years to learn. But if we followed its lead, we just might find real rest and contentment in the embrace of God.

NOTES--

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 131

// BIG IDEA -- I can live with quiet confidence when I know who I am and whose I am.

// A TEXAN TRANSLATION OF VERSE 1 -- "I ain't too big for my britches And I'm going to stay in my lane."

// REFLECT --

What don't I know?

What can't I see up ahead?

What would it look like to release these uncertainties into God's hands?

How would my attitude and outlook change this week?

// QUOTE -- “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” (ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Confessions)

// QUOTE -- "Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. It is about an entry into the expansive. There is a vastness in knowing you’re a son/daughter worth having. We see our plenitude in God’s own expansive view of us, and we marinate in this.” (GREGORY BOYLE, Tattoos on the Heart)

Psalm 130 is an anguished prayer from someone buried in the deep waters or sin, shame, and struggle who encounters an even deeper grace. It's a song born of grace and rooted in hope.

NOTES --

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 130

// These 4 STANZAS give us 4 POSTURES TOWARD GOD that reveal 4 POSTURES GOD HAS toward us.

// Resolve to involve God early and often.

// 1. Cry out...because God is always within earshot and he's not indifferent to what you're saying.

// QUOTE -- "Love is how we are to think about God, talk about God, believe in God. Yet we are constantly tempted to retreat from believing in the full extent of God's love. To us who are so aware of our own sinfulness and selfishness, this divine love seems too good to be true...We are hesitant to believe that the deepest essence of God's being is co-suffering, self-giving, never-ending love. Yet this seemingly inconceivable truth about the love of God is the pinnacle of scriptural revelation." (BRIAN ZAHND, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, 200)

// 2. Taste Grace...because forgiveness is God's bread and butter (and wine).

// QUOTE -- "God's grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend him through love. He is incomprehensible to the intellect. Even angels know him by loving him. Nobody's mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love." (ANONYMOUS, The Cloud of Unknowing)

// 3. Invite Others...because God is reconciling the world to himself and too many people aren't awake yet.

// We WERE saved (Col. 2.13-15), we ARE BEING saved (1 Cor. 1.17-18), we WILL BE saved (1 Pet. 1.3-5)

// 4. Sit Still...because waiting on God's light to break through the darkness is not a matter of "if" but "when."

Show of hands for all of us who have been hurt, hung up, and beat up by life in the last year and half. Anyone? Here's a Psalm for us. This is a song about perseverance written by an imperfect pilgrim who has been pummeled along the way.

NOTES --

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 129

// SERIES -- The 15 Psalms of Ascent are songs sung by pilgrims like us on our journey toward God.

// Some reminders about the Psalms in general:

1. The Psalms cover the scope of human emotion and experience

2. The Psalms are timeless and universal

3. The Psalms give us permission to be real before God and others

// Perseverance is not about resignation ("It will be what it'll be") nor is it about perfection ("I will never be what I should be"). Perseverance is about progress in the face of obstacles.

// HEBREWS 12.1b-3 (NIV) -- Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

// BIG IDEA -- Our journey with Jesus will be like Jesus' journey - marked with obstacles, enemies, and hurt.

// " But the Lord is righteous..." (v. 4). Look back over the last bit of your journey: What did God bring (or is still bringing) you through?

// BIGGER IDEA -- Our journey with Jesus will be like Jesus' journey - marked with obstacles, enemies, and hurt. But also like Jesus, we walk each step trusting the Father and filled with the Spirit.

// In praying the Psalms, we may not always express what they feel, but if we're honest, we can feel what they express. (Paraphrase of BRIAN ZAHND)

// Sometimes Christians don't allow themselves to be human when even God allowed himself to become human.

// HEBREWS 2.14-15 (NIV) -- Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

// BIGGEST IDEA -- Our journey with Jesus will be like Jesus' journey - marked with obstacles, enemies, and hurt. But also like Jesus, we walk each step trusting the Father and filled with the Spirit. So keep walking because in the end, none of the struggles of earth can ultimately separate us from the life of heaven.

How should life be lived? What's your picture of the Good Life? Who or what gets you what you have? These are the questions orbiting around Psalm 128. If you look closely, you'll discover the wisdom of a life well lived.

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 128

// 1. The Headline (v. 1), 2. The Outcome (v. 2), 3. The Picture (vv. 3-4), 4. The Benediction (vv. 5-6)

// BIG IDEA -- To live God's way is to go with the flow of life as it's meant to be lived. To reject God's way is to go against the flow of love and life itself.

// QUOTE -- "If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters." (H. H. FARMER)

// We don't walk God's way to earn blessing, we embrace God's way and find that blessing is the water we're swimming in.

// What's your picture of the good life? Do you believe in a Father who can paint a picture that's even better than good?

// From the garden in Genesis 1 ("He blessed them," 1.28) to the heavenly city of Revelation 22 ("Blessed are those...," 22.14), the Bible is a story of the Blesser blessing His creation even in spite of our attempts to reject, dismantle, or dismiss who He is and what He gives.

// QUOTE --“Everyone wants to be happy, to be blessed. Too many people are willfully refusing to pay attention to the One who wills our happiness and ignorantly supposing that the Christian way is a harder way to get what they want than doing it on their own. They are wrong. God's ways and God's presence are where we experience the happiness that lasts. Do it the easy way: 'All you who fear GOD, how blessed you are! How happily you walk on his smooth straight road!” (EUGENE PETERSON, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction)

Our work and our family--what's more everyday life than what we do and who we live with? Yet the mystery and wisdom Psalm 127 points to is this: our everyday life was designed to be lived in participation with the eternal God. The everyday and the eternal overlap. So how might this reality infuse our week with a greater sense of purpose, presence, and power? In this message we ask 2 honest questions to get our attention and we explore 2 practices to get our intention aligned with God.

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 127

// The 15 Psalms of Ascent are songs sung by pilgrims like us on our journey toward God.

// BIG IDEA -- This is the mystery and wisdom Psalm 127 points to: Our everyday life was designed to be lived in participation with the eternal God.

// QUOTE -- “Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.” (PARKER PALMER, Let Your Life Speak)

// OUR CULTURE is discipling us in the ways of Shallowness, Busyness, Greediness, Self-Centeredness. JESUS is discipling us in the ways of Depth, Presence, Generosity, Other-Focus.

A look at the overlap of joy and sorrow; how the stories of our past and faith in God fulfilling His promises in the future can fuel us to do the work of joy now, even in the midst of our sorrow.

There's a popular worship song that has this lyric as its refrain, "It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by you." This is the powerful message of Psalm 125. God's people can be shaken, stirred, and stiff-necked -- but they are still solidly, securely, and beloved-ly God's people who are surrounded by his unfailing love. Whatever you're facing this week, can you see God's presence in the midst of your everyday life? In this message you'll hear 3 stabilizing footholds for your journey.

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 125

// SERIES -- The 15 Psalms of Ascent are songs sung by pilgrims like us on our journey toward God.

// The object of your trust matters (where's my security coming from?).

// QUOTE -- "In the beginning YHWH, the God of Israel, says, 'Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves' (Genesis 1:26). The use of the plural pronoun here seems to be an amazing, deep time intuition of what some would later call the Trinity—the revelation of the nature of God as community, as relationship itself, a Mystery of perfect giving and perfect receiving, both within God and outside of God. 'Reality as communion' became the template and pattern for our entire universe, from atoms to galaxies...Physicists, molecular biologists, astronomers, and other scientists are often more attuned to this universal pattern than many Christian believers. Paleontologist and Jesuit mystic, Teilhard de Chardin, said it well: 'The physical structure of the universe is love.'" // RICHARD ROHR (https://cac.org/the-shape-of-the-universe-is-love-2016-02-29/)

// BIG IDEA -- This is the eternal reality undergirding your everyday circumstance: God the Creator who is Love surrounds you.

// The invitation, then, is to dig and dive deep (excavate!) into this eternal reality every day. To ground yourself in it. To sit until you see clearly.

You might have felt discouraged or disoriented this week with everything going on. That's why we come together in the face of difficulty to seek God and ask for help. Psalm 124 is our song that doesn't argue, apologize, or explain why hazards come. Instead, this Psalm bears witness to the truth that we never face hazards without God's help. In this message we're reminded of the importance of looking back and we explore some practical invitations for moving forward on the journey.

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 124

// SERIES -- The 15 Psalms of Ascent are songs sung by pilgrims like us on our journey toward God.

// Psalm 124 is a song of help in a hazardous situation. Hazard may be the setting, but help is the subject.

// REFLECT -- What verse would you add to our people's song of God's help? What is the "Ebenezer" you can build here and now?

// On our journey together, as God's people we can walk forward while looking backward at the fingerprints of God along our path thus far.

// SOME PRACTICAL INVITATIONS --

1. We turn our eyes to him when fear narrows our focus (v. 8)

2. We turn worrying into praying when anxiety sends us spiraling

3. We strive for consistency in our dependency as a church who takes prayer seriously.

// CALL TO PRAYER -- 5 minutes of stillness + 5 minutes of prayer + 5 timely needs = 15 days

// QUOTE -- "What is hazardous in my life is my work as a Christian. Every day I put faith on the line. I have never seen God. In a world where nearly everything can be weighed, explained, quantified, subjected to psychological analysis and scientific control, I persist in making the center of my life a God whom no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, whose will no one can probe. That's a risk. Every day I put hope on the line. I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love. Every day I put love on the line. There is nothing I am less good at than love. I am far better in competition than in love. I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark than I am at figuring out how to love another. I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way. And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily—open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride." // EUGENE PETERSON, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (2000), pp. 76-77

// REFLECT -- Are we going to risk faith, hope, and love in a world steeped in distrust, despair, and division? Are we going turn our eyes to the Helper and encourage one another toward consistency in our dependency?

(NOTE: Due to technical issues, the sermon from July 31 did not record)

Where do we look for help? The simple, short, yet profound Psalm teaches us something remarkably urgent and necessary for this moment in time. Listen and reflect on how this message intersects with your life this week.

SLIDES/RESOURCES:

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS -- Psalm 123

// 15 Songs of Ascent ( topographically and spiritually) sung by pilgrims like us on our journey toward God.

// Psalm 123 is a prayer of deliverance from hate and hurt. It is also a song of hope that starts as a solo and ends with a choir (so maybe it's for us, too).

// BIG IDEA 1 -- LOOK beyond yourself

// REFLECT -- Where have you been looking again...and again...and again...?

// REFLECT -- How can you create space to "lift up your eyes" -- to really look to God this week?

// BIG IDEA 2 -- ASK not because you deserve mercy but because God is infinitely merciful.

// TNC MANTRA -- We pray believing that God can, asking that God will, and trusting that God loves us no matter what.

// QUOTE -- "If God is God at all, he must know more about our needs than we do; if God is God at all, he must be more in touch with the reality of our thoughts, our emotions, our bodies than we are; if God is God at all, he must have a more comprehensive grasp of the interrelations in our families and communities and nations than we do." (EUGENE PETERSON, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction)

// BIG IDEA 3 -- WAIT knowing that God is at work and he's not done yet.

// REFLECT -- When things don't go our way, can we make peace with mystery and hope nonetheless?

// REFLECT -- Can we know the Truth without knowing all the facts?

There is much to learn from Peter through his failures as a disciple. Just like us, he tried so hard to "get it right," but found himself lacking in so many ways. He was the disciple who cut the ear off of the guard trying to arrest Jesus. He was the disciple who denied knowing Jesus three times when he was asked. Upon hearing the rooster crow three times, he was reminded of his actions and was full of remorse and shame. Jesus, full of mercy and grace, was there to invite Peter back into worship, work, and again to follow him. Although he made mistakes, Peter never lost his status as Jesus' disciple. Echoes of our own mistakes can be heard through our study of John 21.15-19.

// PARAPHRASE OF 1 THESSALONIANS 1: May God's delightful grace and peace rest upon you. For we remember before our God and Father how TNC put your faith into practice, how your love motivates you to serve others, and how unrelenting is your hope-filled patience in our Lord Jesus Christ. Dear Brothers and Sisters sitting here tonight, you are dearly loved by God and we know that he has chosen TNC to be his very own. For our gospel came to you not merely in the form of words, but in mighty power infused with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. And you see, this is how The Neighborhood Church functions: this infusion of the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. So, keep doing what you are doing in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

// SCRIPTURE FOCUS: John 21.15-19

// In this passage, we find hope for failures. Jesus welcomes back failed disciples, and he welcomes them back to worshiping work. He is welcoming them back to "Follow Me."

// Jesus knew what he was doing. He was inviting Peter to reconciliation. He invited him back to:

1. Worship

2. Work

3. And to follow him again

// Peter is the failed disciple, but he never lost his status as a disciple of Jesus.

// The hero of every story in the Bible is God. Everything in this story and ever other story focuses back to God's Love, His Mercy, and His Grace.

// 1 JOHN 1.8-9 (THE PASSION TRANSLATION): If we boast that we have no sin, we're only fooling ourselves and are strangers to the truth. But if we freely admit our sins when his light uncovers them, he will be faithful to forgive us every times. God is just to forgive us our sins because of Christ, and he will continue to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.