My Cup Runneth Over

This will be our last sermon looking at Psalm 23. And as promised I have committed it to memory. It has been a joy to get these words, given to David from God, deep down in my heart. In this time, I have had with them, they have been a reminder of what matters most. When all I wanted to do was complain, they have been a blinking warning light, alerting me when I was running low on spiritual fuel. They are the words I have used to express my gratitude for the way God has been with me through this valley. We never know what life has in store for us, so it is good to get some of God’s word in a place where it cannot be taken away. No matter what. So, let’s go through them one more time.

The Lord is my Shepherd

I shall not want

When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa, … and more. He went for three months to work at “the house of the dying” to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

            When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”

            “No,” Mother Teresa answered, “I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

This morning let us refuse to pray for clarity. We must let it go in exchange for trust. Have you learned yet that you have a Good Shepherd who is the only one truly worthy of your ultimate trust? That you have everything you need in Him?

He makes me lie down in green pastures

He leads me beside quiet waters

He restores my soul

Before we went into lock down, we had started a Lenten series on Idolatry. The premise of the series was to poll the congregation on what were the most significant idols our community struggled with. The top idol we identified, as a church, was the idol of comfort. Now, I know we cut that series short because; frankly it wasn’t the right time, while people were in shock, to hammer them regarding their idols. Perhaps with a little distance now, we can look back and say that this journey we are enduring is a direct assault on our number one idol…comfort.  

I can remember when I was a kid, medicine tasted terrible. Now days, praise God, they have figured out how to make medicine taste like candy, so my kids are all over it. Seriously, they request liquid Tylenol like it’s a cherry Slurpee (which I’m sure causes a whole new set of problems), but the medicine we were taking back in the 80’s tasted like liquefied chalk.

My mom loves to tell the stories of how she used to have to wrestle me to the ground, hold down all of my limbs, hold my nose so my mouth would stay open, while pouring the medicine straight down my throat. To the outside observer, this might have looked like a child being tortured. But in reality, it was a mother who would stop at nothing to give her child what he needed, even when he fought against it with every fiber of his being.

When our comfort is being attacked, we get anxious and we want to take control, it seems like we will do anything to get ourselves back to a place of comfort. So, don’t forget sheep, the Good Shepherd has been known to make His Sheep lie down. Sometimes what is best is to stop, to reflect, to lay down for a moment, and remember the Lord knows what you truly need.

So, we must ask again this morning…

Who is the one who can nourish us? Who can restore us?

Have you received it from the giver of life?  The restorer of life? Has he put you in headlock, wrestled you to the floor and forced you to rest yet?

Can we admit, that we live in the most powerful nation on earth and we have enjoyed the freedom it provides for so long, we may have fallen under the illusion that we were entitled to our comfort.

Over the last 8 weeks, we have, in so many humbling ways, been brought to our knees by an invisible enemy. It has revealed a truth that has been there all along, that truth is we are all vulnerable.

So, we must remember (as Psalm 23 reminds us), that our vulnerability is seen by a Good Shepherd who desires to bless, protect, sustain and guide us. 

The Bible has beautiful images of God holding back the waters of chaos that seek to overwhelm us.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
    and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
    and weighed the mountains in scales
    and the hills in a balance?

Isaiah 40:11

            For it is only because God restrains the forces of evil, that you and I are able to exist at all.

            We, like most precious things, the most beautiful things, are incredibly fragile. Scriptures reveal that God takes every precious one of us up into his loving arms. We exist because of those loving arms. When he holds us close and we hold Him back, we understand why we exist, and we are reminded that God doesn’t make mistakes, and we are precious in His sight.   

            He guides me down paths of righteousness for his name sake

Now at first we might think, he does all of these things for us. The thinking goes something like this, the Lord is my Shepherd and it is His job to take care of me, and give me green pastures and quiet waters and peace. Sure, things can get a little bumpy just to keep life interesting (but manageable), but ultimately God is there to take care of me.

Some of us are frankly, kind of like my friend Tyler’s cat. Tyler is a really rich, trust fund kid, who I grew up with. He lived in a multimillion dollar house in Calabasas, and half the reason I would go to his house was to use all of his cool stuff. To be honest, over time the emptiness and absurdity of his life really started to annoy me. Strangely, one of the ways it really got to me, was by watching his cat. His cat was the most obese animal you have ever seen. It did nothing but eat and lay around the house. They called him “Jabba the hut.”  I remember thinking this cat has a better, more pampered life, than most people could ever dream of.

Comfortable Christians can be like Tyler’s cat. They like to be fed, and they just keep eating, and eating, and eating, until it becomes hard to move.  But did you catch what comes after green pastures and quiet waters? God says here is a righteous path, time to get going.

This week our staff devotional was from Colossians 1:9-12.

            For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,  being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,  and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

One of Kayleigh’s reflections after reading this text, was that she was going to teach the kiddos something almost identical from another scripture this week during online Sunday school.  I just love how she put it, she said it’s “like endurance and joy like to share a sentence.” She is most certainly correct.

            Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4

            Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted  Hebrews 12:1-3

We all get to walk down this road called life and one of the questions we have to answer is why am I here?

            Why do I get to walk this road? The answer of Psalm 23 is that God put you here for His glory. He says if you will walk my righteous path, at the end you will know His Glory.

He gets you all rested and peaceful and fed so when you walk the righteous path, you are ready to endure all the tests of the enemy, which seek to derail you. If you can walk His path, and endure the challenges of living righteously; in an unrighteous world, the result is GLORY, and the byproduct of glory is JOY.

I have never felt I created my own joy, have you? Maybe a little temporary happiness... but joy? The only times I have ever felt joy was when I quieted myself just enough to stand in total awe of His goodness. I believe the maximum amount of joy is achieved when we are able to disappear into God’s goodness.

            Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death You are with me

            Your rod and your staff they comfort me

            You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies

In a sermon after the events of 911, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke these healing words.

            “On Many occasions at home back in South Africa when ghastly things were happening in our struggle against apartheid…Often the cry went out from our people, God where are you? God do you care? God do you see?

            We are reminded of that wonderful story in the book of Daniel, where God’s servants had been cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to the king. In response God didn’t stand at a safe distance, giving useful advice…no God entered the fiery furnace, to be in the heat of the flames with them.”  

            The most famous turn in Psalm 23 comes in verse four. It is ultimately a turn from the impersonal description of “The Lord is…” to the very present and personal “you are with me.”

            Friends, there is another in this fire with us. He is Immanuel “God with us.”

            You anoint my head with oil

            The point of anointing oil is consecration. It a symbol of being set apart for God’s purposes. Exodus 30:31 speaks to generations and generations of people that will be set apart for God’s purposes.

Say to the Israelites, 'This is to be my sacred anointing oil for the generations to come.            -Exodus 30:31

            A youthful Jeremiah is given these words when he learns of God’s calling on His life to be a prophet.

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,
and before you were born, I consecrated you. Jeremiah 1:5

            Ephesians 2:10 expands this calling to the entire New Testament Church.

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

            We have been set apart for this time. Before we were formed in our mother’s womb, God said, I have work that needs to be done, by my people. A people who will be set apart and anointed with the Holy Spirit. They will live in a time of pandemic, and they will be my hands and feet. God knew that we were going to live through this season Church, to get somethings done on earth, He set His people apart.  This all came as a great surprise to us, but maybe; He is saying to us, what He said to Ester, “I made you for such a time as this.”

            My cup overflows

            When we are doing the work that God created us to do, we discover that our cup runneth over.

            Let me share with you two stories of what God has been up to over the last couple of months.

Our Church has been praying for Morgan Ferrier for many years now, you know her as the talented young person who plays piano for the worship band, and has even played the organ for us in the past. Her story goes like this,

            “In 2019 I was hospitalized three times. My entire family was struggling with the fact that I was coughing constantly, (due to my cystic fibrosis). We had been praying for a cure for my cough for months, and the Lord delivered in a spectacular way.

            “Shortly before the quarantine started, I began taking a new protein-modulator drug called Trikafta. It has an 80% success rate, but I have a very rare mutation of cystic fibrosis (along with the more common mutation deltaF508 which is the one Trikafta targets), so we didn’t really know how I would respond. As of now, it’s been weeks since I’ve so much as coughed and... there simply isn’t anything stuck in my lungs anymore!

            “Not only do I rarely if ever cough now, but my digestive issues have greatly lessened, I can run faster and better than before, and I’m the healthiest that I’ve been in at least a year or two. Imagine if I was coughing all the time during this Coronavirus outbreak! I am so thankful to the researchers who created this drug and to God for guiding their hands and allowing this drug to work on my body.

            Also, I just did a lung function test and I got 102%, which is the highest I've ever been and has basically reversed like 15 years of lung damage!!” – Morgan

            Lilia Omura-Garcia is the homeless outreach coordinator for Redondo Beach. She works closely with Miriam and the FAITH St. Andrew’s team to help people get off the streets and into housing.

            Lilia wrote a few weeks back;

            “24 of my people are safely indoors today with another 5 scheduled for this coming week. This is my target number for an entire year & it was done in just 10 days because of the opening of our new Recreation Centers & Project Room Key. All barriers were removed so I was able to focus on our most vulnerable, seniors & clients with severe medical conditions. The impossible was done!”

            Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever.

            The goodness we experience here is only a foretaste of what is to come.

            Last Sunday I took a long drive with My 2-year-old baby girl Glory in the back seat. A quarter of the way into the drive she fell asleep, and so it was just me and some worship music. All of the beautiful promises and stories from the work of this church started to come into my mind. As I began to reflect on the last two months it was as if the love of God was following me, and frankly the tears began to flow in worship and gratitude. Because for all my exhaustion, frustration, and anxiety, the love Zamboni of Heaven was there to clean it up. 

            The truth is church, that this is not our home…we are just pilgrims here.  Just passing through, and the good news is we are headed for an avalanche of love. So, may we be; all were made to be, in this in-between.