Church 5/31/2026
Offertory scripture:
““The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. “The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you.”Deuteronomy 28:8-10 NKJV
Sermon message:
Thesis: Five life-changing biblical truths.
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,”II Peter 1:2 NKJV
Point 1: God cares about you.
The Gospel message: we were in sin and couldn’t save ourselves and we were headed for eternal damnation. But God sent His most valuable thing, His son Jesus Christ, to die on a cross for our sins.
“casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”I Peter 5:7 NKJV
(My addition below)
“Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.”Psalms 55:22 NKJV
Only one other time in the New Testament where the word “cast” is used.
“Then they brought him to Jesus. And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him.”Luke 19:35 NKJV
Cast your cares in the same way they threw their garments in the above verse.
Cares = anxieties, burdens, hardships, misfortunes, troubles, complicated circumstances
There’s nothing too big for God to handle. And there’s nothing that is too small for God to notice and care about.
God cares about you.
Point 2: God listens to you.
“In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry entered His ears.”II Samuel 22:7 NKJV
“But know that the Lord has set apart for Himself him who is godly; The Lord will hear when I call to Him.”Psalms 4:3 NKJV
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, And delivers them out of all their troubles.”Psalms 34:17 NKJV
“The Lord is far from the wicked, But He hears the prayer of the righteous.”Proverbs 15:29 NKJV
“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”I John 5:14 NKJV
Point 3: God is bigger than the problem you are facing.
“Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.””Genesis 18:14 NKJV
God is bigger than anything that is too big for you to handle.
““Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?”Jeremiah 32:27 NKJV
“For with God nothing will be impossible.””Luke 1:37 NKJV
“But He said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.””Luke 18:27 NKJV
You speak to a sycamore tree or a mountain and tell it to be removed and cast into the sea. God is bigger than these and than any problem that is keeping you from receiving your blessing(s). And God is bigger than any enemy.
“No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their righteousness is from Me,” Says the Lord.”Isaiah 54:17 NKJV
Point 4: God will respond to what you believe.
We need to grow in knowledge of God to grow in faith. We have to get into the Word, to learn about God. The devil will try to get you believe any lie that will keep you from God and from receiving His blessings.
God has promised:
He cares for us. Therefore We can cast our cares on him.
He will listen to us.
He is bigger than every obstacle.
It’s important that we believe these above things.
God had told the Israelites that He would take them out of Egypt and take them to the promised land.
However the Israelites did not believe. The incident with the twelve spies proved their lack of faith and they got what they deserved.
“Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.””Mark 9:23 NKJV
Point 5: God wants us to believe.
What does God want you believe?
That He cares for you. That He listens. That He is bigger than every problem you face. That He’ll respond to you if you believe Him. That He loves you. That He is not dead but alive.
Note after sharing the sermon: This message was timely, both yesterday when it was preached, and again today as I was going through it again to prepare it for today’s blog post. The reason it was timely yesterday was because I’ve been continuing to struggle with living in the Spirit as opposed to the flesh. Granted, I’ve also had a lot of temptation, and I recognize that temptation by itself isn’t sin. Tomorrow, I have a routine medical procedure, one that I’ve undergone a number of times already. I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary. But I’ve also been praying more earnestly for complete healing, more so than in previous years. There have been times where the condition I’ve had has gotten worse than usual, I go to church to ask for and receive healing prayer, and my body calms down either immediately or after that night’s sleep. So I have experienced the power of God at work. And yet, the further I go along, the more I desire complete restoration so that I can do “life things” again. What do I mean by that? Things such as being able to travel, being able to (if necessary) work at an in-person job (I am very grateful for the privilege of being able to work exclusively from home; I simply also understand that things in this life, even very good things, aren’t forever), being able to handle tasks that require physical exertion, things of that nature.
Over the last six months, God has given me a window of opportunity to re-process pains in my life and, with His help, make new discoveries about them that, for some reason, I couldn’t before; and not merely “new” discoveries or “new” angles, but also the type of discoveries that have allowed me to forgive and actually let go. With His help, I’ve covered a lot of major seasons from my life that were significant in terms of shaping me (or, in many cases, mis-shaping me to what I ended up as an adult). In the last month or so, I’ve gotten a sense of a gradual shift regarding the type of processing that He has been leading me to, and that’s probably a good thing. I still have many questions for God about several stones that still have yet to be turned over, but I look forward with anticipation to finding the answers. My prayers have also been shifting more toward the “now” as well as some anticipated future events, and how to get myself ready for those things. Chiefly, my desire to get completely healed so that I can be able to step up and take charge regarding things I need to do for my life, for my marriage, and for inevitable future events that will require my ability to handle them when they arise—this is of paramount importance because, without it being answered, my ability to step up would otherwise be limited at best, and questionable at worst. Only recently have I learned more deeply how so thoroughly I got used to being controlled, manipulated, and even more critically, dependent on those who were placed above me. I got used to that! I remember being terrified of every milestone that got me closer to independent adult life because not only did I not know how to handle it, but because the thought of not being able to be dependent on another person was unthinkable at the time (this was 20 years ago; now, I’m amazed that I was even able to live like that!).
The whole point of sharing the above is simply that I’m now experiencing the fruits of the sermon from further up in this post. Until the last six months, I couldn’t say that I had experienced what it was like to be heard by God to the point that I would no longer feel a need to be heard by other people. I do think that all humans have a need, nay, a craving, to be seen and heard. But we automatically are programmed to desire that from other people. It’s not necessarily bad in and of itself, because on the other hand, we are not meant to do life alone. But, we were created to be dependent on God alone. That includes being seen, being heard, being taken care of, being strengthened, belonging, and so on. I think I’m getting closer to that point now.
The sermon was timely again today because, as I was starting to go through my online Bible via my Bible-reading app to pull the verses for copy-and-paste in these sermon notes (I typically simply write the references during the sermon as I’m taking notes), I found myself reading through all of Deuteronomy 28 (I only needed verses 8 through 10 for my sermon notes). Months ago, a close friend of both my wife and I had sent us a Bible-reading assignment as part of our praying (and we both needed it a lot at the time). It was Deuteronomy 28, and it may also have included an adjacent chapter as well. This was right at the point where I had just gone through an intense period of job hunting (and failing to land another job) due to being informed that I was being laid off (God provided by giving me my job back, which I still have as of this post). Additionally, it had become clear that the latest on my health condition was not changing for the better like I had expected or hoped. Plus, I was getting beyond tired of being preached at from the pulpit about “sucking it up,” no matter what life throws at me. And to top it all off, for a solid year-and-a-half, I had been reading my Bible daily via a “read through the Bible in a year” program, along with having been doing daily devotional readings and prayers for almost two and a half years at that point. As far as I was concerned, I was doing everything right as much as I possibly could, and I was still seeing my life grow worse and worse. (OK, Jesus promised a life of suffering for every believer…) The worst part was, I didn’t have a clear picture of something I could hold onto that would give me strength to endure—there was no: “if I get through this, then I will receive…” or, “of I get through this, then I will experience…” Nothing like that. Additionally, because I was going through the Bible in a year, I was stuck in the part of Biblical history where both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were rebelling against God, with evil king after evil king. Yes, it was the kings and people of Israel and Judah that were bad, and not God, but given where I was in life, I needed something else that would minister to me. So I skipped over to the Gospel of John, hoping it would lift me up and then get me back to the book of 2nd Kings. Or 2nd Chronicles. The text in the Gospel of John did minister to me and lift me up. But I still couldn’t truck through the ugly parts of scripture.
The point is, somewhere in there, I was given Deuteronomy 28 as a reading assignment. In sum, it’s a chapter that describes blessings for obedience (verses 1 through 14) and curses for disobedience (verses 15 through 68). In other words, almost 80% of the chapter focuses on the curses for disobedience, while barely over 20% talks about the blessings for obedience. The tilt on curses versus blessings angered me, as did (even more so) the fact that the list of all the different types of curses read like my life story, from conception til now. In other words, the reason my life has sucked is not because of anything others ever did to me (including those who still justify it), but because somehow I’ve been disobedient my entire life, dating back to well before the age of accountability, which I’m told occurs at roughly twelve years of age (and this is something I didn’t even hear about until I started dating my wife and attending her church (which is now our church)). Put yet another way, everything that ever went wrong in my life was somehow all my fault and that the full burden, no matter what, will (and must) fall on me. Recognizing that, I was like, “I’m not reading this!” and I put it away. It may also have been around the time that I finally broke regarding my desire to keep up the discipline of reading my Bible every day.
Anyway, that all started to come up again when I came across Deuteronomy 28 today. As such, going through the rest of the sermon was necessary to calm me down. I’ve heard this a number of times from my pastor, but I think it came across louder this time: my pastor’s desire to get people to understand that God’s default is not one of anger against you. He wants to forgive you, and if you truly receive Jesus Christ as your King and Savior, and you repent of your sins, then that forgiveness is automatic. It is freely available for all who do the above. The other point that goes along with this is that God truly cares for you. Firstly,
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
II Peter 3:9 NKJV
https://bible.com/bible/114/2pe.3.9.NKJV
Secondly,
“casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”
I Peter 5:7 NKJV
https://bible.com/bible/114/1pe.5.7.NKJV
Thirdly,
“Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.”
Psalms 55:22 NKJV
https://bible.com/bible/114/psa.55.22.NKJV
This last verse was not part of my pastor’s sermon. I included it because I had written a choral composition with it as part of the text, and I’ve found it to be a very powerful and uplifting verse.
The point is, being able to focus on the truth that God does want to hear from me (which nourishes my human need to be heard) has helped me to move away from the long list of curses. I am obviously very well aware that my life to date not only hasn’t measured up to others’ lives, but that it also hasn’t measured up to what others expected of me. I hope that I’m truly moving on from the temptation to compare myself to others; but that second one not only brings pain but also raises tough Biblical questions:
- What if it’s family that is disappointed in us relative to the expectations they had for us? The Bible says, after all, we are supposed to “honor our father and mother,” promising that if we do, “it will go well in the land for us.”
- What if certain family members are narcissistic and have completely unreasonable expectations of us?
- And what if they renege on their promise to bless us with something because something else happened that was outside our control that they didn’t like, and they think is our fault? What happens then to “it will go well in the land for us”?
OK. Those are “what if” questions, but I am confident that they’re not from a place of worry. Instead, they’re from a place of knowing, based on experience, that this is something that such persons would do if given the chance. The Bible is right: worrying doesn’t do anything good for the situation. But I repeat: this isn’t about worrying; rather it’s about realizing that I have to determine whether enduring something is “worth it” or not, the question of whether to still go through it or not. After a lifetime of being subject to multiple manipulative, controlling, gaslighting narcissists, I do not desire to ever again voluntarily put myself through that. I dared to stand up for myself; do I therefore deserve to be cursed because of it? What is “obedience” and what is “disobedience” when it comes to these types of situations? Is standing up for myself now a sin, somehow?
Once again, being reminded that God does cares for us, that He listens, that He is bigger than every problem we face, that He’ll respond to us if we believe Him, that He loves us, and that He is not dead but alive—this is the daily bread that I for sure need. I cannot and should not put my trust in people, ever. But in God, absolutely. In God—and specifically, in Jesus—I must trust. My salvation hinges on it. And so does yours.
“Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the Lord his God,”
Psalms 146:3-5 NKJV
https://bible.com/bible/114/psa.146.3-5.NKJV
