Speaker 1Mae'r gwneud gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio' Mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny. Mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae'r fwy hynny, mae I wonder, do we have a volunteer in the room? Right at the back? Yeah. Would you both say you can carve and you can go, what's your name? Tilly. Tilly. This is Tilly and what's your name? Miletchi. So why don't you both come up? It's going to run over the floors. So we are going to play hide and seek. And this is a duck. I've not named him. I want to call him George. So this is George. Now I would, he wants to be the hide and he wants to be the seeking of this. He wants to hide it and he wants to seek it. Do you want to hide? Do you want to hide this? Yeah. And would you like to seek and try and find it? So what's going to happen is Tilly is going to try and find where this duck has been hidden. Do you want to close your eyes? Turn your face this way? Yeah. And where do you want to hide it? In this face, not outside. Do you think she might see that? Do you think she might see it? We're going to try it. We're going to try it if you can find it. If she needs a bit of time to find it, we can say she's getting warmer or colder or hotter. So one, two, three. Open your eyes. Look around. You can walk around this face and find the little duck. [Music] So you may be wondering, why are we hiding? You may be wondering, why was we hiding this duck in a space? Why was we hiding this duck? And we're going to look this morning about how God is our ultimate refuge, how he is our pace of safety and how in God we can run and hide in his presence. Just like how that little teddy you could hide in the house of God, we can hide in the presence of God. And so before we start, I would just love if we could just pray together. Maybe you want to close your eyes. Open up your hands. Lord, I thank You that You say when two more gathered You are there. And Lord, I just pray that Your Word and Your truth would be like a light, Lord Jesus. And I pray, Father, that You remind us that You are our safety. You are our refuge. You are our strong talent fortress that we can run to. You are our help in our time of need and trouble. And I pray, Father, for each one of us that there will be something in this verse you would speak to our hearts about, Lord, that we could come home and come home and enjoy facing whatever we are facing in the weeks ahead with joy. Because you are our safety. You are our refuge. So speak to our hearts now, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. So we, the past few weeks, been looking at the names of God, the series of the names of God of who God is and how each name that God has describes a character of who He is to us today. And so we are looking at the God who keeps us safe, the God who keeps us safe. And the Hebrew for word that is Yahweh, misgabi, maybe you want to say that together, Yahweh, misgabi, Yahweh, misgabi. And so if you have your Bibles, we are turning to Psalm 18 verse 1 to 3. It's also on the board as well for you to read. I'll just give a moment for us to get our Bibles. It reads this, I love you, Lord. You are my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my Savior. My God is my rock in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety. I called on the Lord who is worthy of praise, and He saved me from my enemies. This passage is being spoken by a man named David. If he was here last week, Pete preached on David who was a shepherd's boy. He took on this massive giant called Goliath, and he preached about how he defeated Goliath was not by focusing on how big Goliath was. Not by focusing on how big the giant was, but by focusing on how big his God is. He did not allow the giant to tell him how big he is, but he allowed himself to tell the giant how big his God is. After this, there was a king named Saul. He was very jealous of David because he was a mighty warrior, and it was also prophesied that David was going to become king in place of Saul. The king Saul was very, very jealous of him, and so there was a long pursuit. It's sort of stated that it might have been between 7 to 13 years where king Saul was chasing after David trying to kill him. Imagine being chased between 7 to 13 years, your life being at risk. That was what David was going through all the time. He faced his safety always at risk. He was always in a constant mix of trouble. After those 7 to 13 years, king Saul was defeated. This song that we read where David is saying, "The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my savior, I called on the Lord, and he saved me. He's my place of safety." David was saying this after Saul was defeated because he was saying that God, the whole time, had been his place of safety. God had been his fortress. God had been the one that he could rely on, and you may not be today being chased by a king. Your life may not be at risk from a king trying to kill you, but we all face situations where we are overwhelmed. Maybe there's a crisis that happens and like the ground beneath you just crumbles. Maybe you find crises at work or finances and maybe things that threaten you every single day that cause you to be overwhelmed. Just like David is, and I want to ask you a question this morning, when you are overwhelmed, when you are afraid, where do you run to? Where do you go for refuge? Where do you go to recover? Where you're so weak and so tired? Where do you go for perspective and for wisdom? I want to tell you a story that happened to me. I was hit with my own overwhelming situation a few weeks ago. I was house sitting for a family. You may know Jerome, not Jerome in this room, but Jerome Daniels. I was house sitting for their family. And at 1.15 am, a massive spider. I mean the biggest thing I've ever seen in my life ran at me at 1.15 am on the bed. And I was going to show you a picture of this spider so you can believe how big it was. That was huge. It was like the size of my fist, but maybe a bit bigger. That ran at me at 1.15 am. My instinct to reaction was to jump on the bed like spider mumpos. And I grabbed my phone and I called my dad because I thought, well not called him, I texted him because I knew that he might be awake at this time. So I texted him and I said, dad, are you awake? Can I face home you? And he said yes. So he face home me and he had a massive smile on his face. And I flipped the camera around and I showed him this spider and he said, okay, Shalom, it's big. But we've got it. It's okay. I'm with you. And so he begins to encourage me for like the next 10 minutes because I needed encourage just to get off the bed, just to kind of get out the room. And then he says, okay, Shalom me, you've got a bowl in the house. So why don't you find a bowl? So I said, okay, I'm going to find a bowl. Find a big mixing bowl. You know there's big massive ones. Find one of those and you've got a towel. Find a towel that you've brought with you. And so I find these things and you're pleased in a half an hour later after encouragement and help this spider was trapped. It was taken care of. And when I went back to bed, I felt God say these words to me. In the same way, your instant reaction was to run to your earthly dad and call on him for help. It's the same way I want you to run to me as your safe place, your hiding place when life is overwhelming, when you are confused or hurt or insure of what to do, run to me. And what was significant and powerful for me in that moment is because for weeks I was overwhelmed. Like I was overwhelmed where I struggled to get out of bed. I started a new job which I love but was really hard. I faced multiple changes in my life that happened all of a sudden. I found myself each day overwhelmed, tired and even quite afraid. And so what I would do was I would run to films and shows for comfort to kind of distract myself from what was happening the next day. And for you, it may not be films or shows for others, it may be running to working harder. I just work harder. I'll be safe. I'll be okay. If I just earn more money, I'll be safe and I'll be okay or maybe we distract ourselves or hide away from things in life. Yn gyd yn ymwch, mae'n gyd yn ymwch, mae'n gyd yn ymwch, mae'n gyd yn ymwch. hiding away in these films and shows you can run to me. When a crisis happens at work and you're driving home, run to me in prayer. I can help you. I can equip you. I can strengthen you. The Bible verse says this, Proverbs 18 says, 18 verse 10 says, "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. The righteous run into it and are safe. The righteous, so people are not perfect people. They're not people who are perfect. There are people who are in relationship with Jesus. We belong to Him and we can run to Him confidently and boldly in our time of need. When I was reading about the life of David in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, I was wondering when he was writing the Psalms, like what did it look like for him to be safe when there was constant threat? And what it looked like was he would cry out to Lord and then he would run to these caves, these open caves in the mountains. There was constantly been mountains that was provided that he could run into and hide. And as I read this and I read back to that Psalm, he said, "The Lord is my refuge." He didn't say the cave was my refuge. He said, "The Lord is." And I felt God say to me this, that David's refuge was not a place. It was not a destination or a location. It was not his strength or his army, but it was the presence of God with him. Our ultimate refuge and safety is not found in a place or a strategy if I just think hard enough, if I just plan hard enough, if I just have an army of people around me, then I'll be safe. If I just earn enough money, then I'll be safe in this world and the economy. If I just do the right things, have the right grades, have the right job, then I'll be safe. He doesn't have to rely on our own wisdom. He says, "God is his safety. God is his safe refuge that he could run to." Safety is not an absence of trouble, but it is the presence of God in the very midst of the trials that we are facing. The tower that we run into does not remove the storm, but it preserves you and keeps you and strengthens you in it. Charles Spirgeon says this, "If the Lord does not change the place for the better, he will make us better in the place. He will make us better in the trials, in the difficulties." And so I put this to practice, although I was overwhelmed, I put this to practice and in that room, I got on my knees and I prayed to God, and I said, "God, you are my shepherd. You are the one who gives wisdom. I cry out to you, I need you." And when I looked up, they had this mini frame that I didn't see before in a picture in it. And in it, it said, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. God was reminding me in that moment, run to me." And so what I did was every time I'd go out, I would practice running to God in prayer. I have this little journal, a little book, where you write your worries in, and every time something happened, I would write down three things that I was thankful for, because when we practice gratitude, it reminds us of God's goodness. It reminds us that he has been moving in our lives, even in that day, it shifts our focus to God. And then I'd write down the thing that was happening, that was overwhelming, and I would sit in his presence, just allow the knowing that God was with me to fill my heart and my mind. And when we run into God's presence, the Bible says it's like the strong tower. And I want to show you what this strong tower, biblically, it says, "Looks like this." That when you run to God in prayer, it looks like you're running to this strong tower. And in this tower, there is rest, a place where you can rest and sleep in this tower. There is food and provision, so you could have strength. God can strengthen us through his word. He can strengthen us through his spirit. In this place, you can gain perspective, that you can climb to the top and look down and see that the enemy is a lot smaller than you thought it was. He gives you perspective. There are times where I run to God. And he would show me that Shalom, the thing you're worried about, it's not as big as you think it is. Or he would show me that it's big, but God is bigger. He would show me that God has lifted up and we are lifted up with him. So that means that we can have a perspective of knowing that we are with him. So run to God and even this verse, I felt God gave me Psalm 18, 28 says, You light a lamp for me. The Lord of my God lights up my darkness. When you run to God, he brings his light. Sometimes when chaos happens, when trouble happens, it's easy to be filled with just darkness of hopelessness. I can't see a way, I can't think straight, but God brings his light to your darkness, to the situation. He shows you that there is hope. He shows you that he is there. He also gives you weapons and tools, just like my dad was like, what do you have? Do you have a bowl? And like, I have a bowl. He reminds us of what we have in him. There were times I'd run to God and God would say to me, "Shalom me." What are you grateful for? And I'd begin to list all the things that God has done in my life. And I would just feel myself being lifted up again. There were times where God would say, "Shalom me, praise me, just worship." Just worship and I would begin to praise it. In that moment, God gives us, He teaches us, He reminds us of what we have in him when we run to Him. Now, when we go to this refuge, sometimes you go to it limping, sometimes you go to it exhausted. And that's okay. God just says, "Run to Him." He knows what you need. When I've prayed, sometimes God has just sent a friend to encourage me. When I've cried out for help, sometimes God has just sent me sleep and rest because He knows that I needed it. Sometimes He has sent me a verse or a song. Sometimes God has not always given me what I wanted, but He has given me what I've needed each day, each day of my life. And I'm sure David, if we could speak to him now, he would say, "He wasn't rescued in that one moment. He wasn't rescued in the first cry out to help, but he was sustained. He was kept, he was strengthened. And God calls us not to run to Him once, but to run to Him continually." And I just want to name three things that David did that we could do. The first thing David did was, in the face of trouble, he fixed his eyes on Jesus. I often feel that the hardest thing when we're overwhelmed or does disaster comes is to fix our eyes on the storm, but actually instead of fixing our eyes on the storm, we need to fix our eyes on our Savior. Because it's in that moment, we are minded where our help comes from. Psalm 121 says, "I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of the heaven and earth, He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over you will neither slumber or sleep the Lord watches over you. He's your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day. Nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. The Lord will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and your going look to him. Sometimes the hardest thing is to fix our gaze on Jesus. That is what David continually did when the storm came, when the fear came, he looked to Jesus. It also says here that God will never sleep or slumber and I could imagine David looking to the Lord, but he would, when he looked to the Lord, I could imagine he would find that the Lord had already been staring at him the whole time. When we faced trouble, we looked to God, but he's always had his eyes on us. There were times where David could sleep, even though he's been chased by an army because he knew God was watching over him. He could sleep because God was not sleeping. God was always watching him. The second thing we can do is we can run to God in prayer. The power of prayer isn't found in our eloquence or our ability to find the right words. Sometimes I just written on my notes that helped me Lord. And he heard that prayer and I've seen him move in miraculous ways. I've been stranded on a street by myself no way to contact home, get home. And God, I've written in my notes that and he rescued me. Very literally, he is a little like safety in that moment. I called on his name. It's not in your eloquence or your ability to find the right words. It's not even in having like a gigantic size of faith. The power of prayer is found in the one who we're calling upon who loves us. One phrase that's been coming to my head is your safe in the secret place. Recently, I have been just dwelling in him because in the secret place, in that place between me and God, my vision of him becomes bigger and bigger. In that place, he gives me wisdom and guidance. His very word is that protection, that lamp and our feet that guides us. His word is a refuge. The safest believer is not the one who just runs to God in emergencies, but the one who lives anchored daily in the presence of God. He dwells in that secret place. And it's the last things I think I'm about over time. But the last thing I want to say is David, he was still before God. There's a verse in Psalm 46, 10 that says, be still and know, be still and know that I am God. Charles Burgess says the character of God is the refuge of a Christian. In those moments I rang to him, I had to sit in a God's presence. And the longer I sat in God's presence, the more he would remind me of who he is of his character. It's like when you put a tea bag in a cup of hot water, the longer you sit in the presence of God, the stronger the faith gets. So sometimes I didn't just run to God and then run back, no, it's dwelling that place with him. Allow him to remind you of who he is. And I just want to sit and don this. I felt God say to me, it's not just that you're running to God. He was high and lifted up. You're running to a God who loves you. You're running to a God who loves you in the same way. I run to my dad because I knew who he was to me. It's the same way we run to God, not just because he is powerful, but because he loves you. And he knows what to give you in your moment of need. He knows how to take care of you when you're exhausted. He knows how to strengthen you and ready you so you can go back out and face the world. Run into his love for you. Romans 8.32 says, "He that spared not own his own son, but delivered him up for all of us. How shall he not also with him freely give us all things?" And I've, as I've read that, I felt God speak to my heart, "Shalom me, I died for you. If I died for you, will I not give you what you need? Not always what you want, but will I not give you my peace, will I not give you my guidance, will I not give you my wisdom, will I not give you my help, will I not strengthen you in my presence when you're overwhelmed? He who died for you loves you. And when you run to him, he will give you what you need." And so this morning, whatever you're facing, whatever you're holding, run to him. Sit with him, dwell on his love for you and make that a priority not just in this room, but when you're driving back from work, when you're facing a difficult family situation, run to him, sit in his goodness. And this might leak into ministry time, but if I could share one thing, last night, I had this image come to my head. I didn't know if it was before a particular person in this room. But I forgot to speak to my heart that him being a refuge means that we can take leaps of faith. We can follow his will and calling with confidence. David, he followed the Lord and obedience. And it didn't always mean that he was always necessary to save, but it meant that he had God with him the whole time. God led him and guided him. And I had this image of a frog that was leaping, just big massive leaps. But what I saw was a rope that was tied around it and a string attached to a person. And that frog could leap confidently because it knew it was attached to someone. Just like I'm an astronaut, can jump off a ship, and it has a rope that's attached to the ship. And I felt God speak to my heart that maybe there are some decisions to make or maybe you're scared of making decisions in life. Will I be okay? Will I be safe? But I felt God say to me, Shalom, you can leap with confidence because I'm with you. You are attached to me. That rope is behind you. You may not see it, but you belong to Jesus. He is with you. You cannot go anywhere where his presence is not found with you. So you can step out confidently whether you go halfway across the world, whether you take a new job and you're not sure about what's gonna happen, you're attached to him. You can take bold leaps of faith. You can be in the wilderness and in scary places and knowing that God is beside you. He will give you what you need. So I didn't know if that was for someone who is making some important decisions or is afraid of next steps, but you are attached to Christ, he is with you. And so you do not need to be afraid in that. But yeah, I'm just gonna pass on to one, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2Next, Shalomie, why don't you stay up, honestly. Hey, man, why don't you get, why don't you, honestly? What, what an amazing word. What an amazing word. We really got just a couple of minutes left. So what we're gonna do, just wherever you are right now, just with your heads bowed and your eyes closed. If this message is really resonator with you, you spoke to me, Shalomie. So I just really want to encourage you that you've, you've actually spoken to me quite strongly this morning. So that message is resonator with me personally. But I just want to say, if there's anyone in this room who is actually feeling quite overwhelmed and really needed to hear this truth about running to God and actually your safety being in God. Or even just anything else that Shalomie has mentioned, I'm just gonna ask Shalomie to just say a prayer for us and we'll sing a song. And that'll be the end of our gathering this morning. But I just really don't wanna rush through this moment because this is such a powerful word for us. And I know what she means, especially like in our generation when we're overwhelmed with things, a lot of us run to social media. We're on our phones, we're scrolling all day. We find different things to kind of calm our nervous system before we actually go to the true King, our savior. And yeah, what a brilliant word. So really, if that's really spoken to you this morning, just wanna encourage you to just lift up your hand so that we can see that that message is really resonator with you and then Shalomie will just pray, pray over you this morning. Just give you a few more seconds for anyone else. I can see those hands. We can see those hands that are going up. He is our refuge. He is the person for us to run to whenever we're overwhelmed. Shalomie, why don't you pray for us?
Speaker 1As I pray, I'm just gonna read a liturgy. It's a liturgy prayer. And I'll add my prayers on the end of that. It's a liturgy for those who feel like something bad is about to happen. When a man in war dread creeps into our bones and appending doom, looms larger in our minds, teachers shepherd of the soul to run to you. Our refuge and strength are very present, helping trouble. We confess that we have lost sight of the true you and have been led astray by the phantom of our fears. Expecting the worst we have forgotten that you are our protector. Change our expectations so that we may look for your goodness instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Would you radically transform us from people of fear to people of courage brimming over with your freely given spirit? Would you fill us with an ever rising hope until the other others begin to inquire about our source of peace? The way out of fear is through perfect love. So enlarge our hearts, oh God, to fully more comprehend just how deeply you love us. Fill us with earnest, grown devotion until we are fearless in the fear of you. Turn our worry into wonder as we seek out your scriptures for truth. Blow on the embers of our faith until it burns away the husks of our fearful selves, igniting the spirit of power, love, and self-control within us. So Heavenly Father, we just pray over every single person in this room and ourselves included, Lord, we ask that our eyes will be fixed to you again. Help us in our every single day to fix our eyes on you. And when we are tempted to stare at the storm, we are just tempted to stare at social media and what is happening. Help us to fix our gaze on you, just like Peter did. He fixed his eyes on you. When he fixed your eyes on you, he did not sink or drown, but he was able to stand. Help us to do that, Lord. Help us to praise you. Help us to lift our gaze to you. Help us to run to you, Lord. Father, I thank you that you love us and that when we run into your arms, we don't just run into a God. He was powerful and high and lifted up, but we run into a God who is near and loves us. Father, I pray that we would have a deeper revelation of your love, so that when we face things, we don't run to other things, but we run to the very place we know will keep us and hold us and sustain us through. Father, help us to live lives of faith instead of fear. Help us not to be afraid to take bold steps for you, Lord Jesus, trusting that you never sleep or slumber, that you always have your eyes on us, Jesus. And when we're weary, when we're wounded, when we're hurt, I pray, in your presence, we would find shelter and refuge, that we would find you nurse us back to health, that you would encourage us by your word, that you would strengthen us, that you would give us your tools and weapons by your spirit, and that you would send us back out again. It's the father we run to you. We fix our eyes on you again. and we thank you that in your presence we find all that we need to face today, in Jesus name we pray, amen.
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