Our God Is Good

0:13
Well, if you would take your Bible and open up to Psalm chapter 119 and if you would stand for the reading of God's word,

0:29
Psalm, chapter 119, and then you want to turn about to the middle verse, 65 and we're going to start there the ninth stanza I'll be reading from the ESV, and it says, you have dealt well with your servant. O Lord, according to your word, teach me good judgment and knowledge. For I believe in your commandments. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes, the insolence, smear me with lies, but with my whole heart, I keep your precepts. Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It's good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes, the law of your mouth is better to me than 1000s of gold and silver pieces. Let's pray.

1:35
Father, you are good. Your Word is good. We pray, as we come before you today, that you would

1:48
take away the distractions of the world and this morning to center our thinking and our affections on you. Help us, Lord, to submit our thoughts and our feelings to you, to submit our lives to you that we would not just see but believe and feel and think and live in light of how good you are. We ask this Your Son's name. Amen, that's very kind. I'll take it.

2:41
Well, I want to say just at the outset, it is a absolute joy to be here today. I have a and my wife, Beth, who was here at first service, have a deep affection for faith, Bible, church. This is the place that she was saved. This is the place we were both baptized. This is where we met and were married, right on this stage right here. I was trained for ministry here, as Dan said, ordained, sent out from here, and have many long friends, some of who are still here, some have been who have been sent out from here, but I just, and I love Dan and Lynn, and just regularly try to keep updates of what's going on. There were two elders here when I was here, which is Walt Takasaki and Jim greenup. And I saw Jim, and he looks the same, which is terrifying to me, because I don't look the same, but he does, which is magical. The Gilchrist were here, the cops, Willie, there's so many familiar faces. It feels, in many way, like home, even though I know I don't know most of you, but you feel like family to me, and driving down grand this morning to get here from the South Hill, just felt familiar, and it's really nice to be back. I know from the things that I've heard that the church is healthy and y'all are being faithful in your witness and calling to live as bright, shining lights in Spokane for God and for the Glor His glory through the gospel. I know that life is not always easy here. It's not really anywhere, but the ministry has challenges. Life here has challenges. I think that's a part of living in this fallen world that we're in. If you could chart your own path, I'm confident to say it would not be necessarily the trail that you followed. I remember living here and when I was this is kind of a funny story, when I was sitting. Sitting right over there. I think it was or somewhere in here, at the time it wasn't, I was dating Beth, and it was announced that I was going to be trained and sent out, and well, that I was in training was going to be sent out that summer. And it was like, Yeah, I don't know, November. And so she leaned to me as we're dating, says, Do we have something to talk about? Because I hadn't yet, like, proposed, there was no engagement, no ring, and you're leaving town. How does this work? So I said, Ian to say, like at the time, while I knew I was being sent, I loved it here. I kind of wanted to stay. And yet now I look back, I think God was very good. He was very kind. I see his goodness in the path that he was led down. Though I don't love California, I know it's being recorded, and I'm okay owning that it's not my state, but he has had a good plan through it. And I know as you look at your life, you can sometimes feel like this is not the path I want to be on, this direction that things are headed I don't like I'm not comfortable with. We feel that challenge as Christians, that the way things go doesn't always feel best. Without going into too much detail, I can say that over the last 18 months at our church and as an eldership at our church, life has not been easy. We have had a lot of challenges, financial challenges. It just, I could give a lot of descriptions of this, but there's been verbal attacks, spiritual attacks, practical hardships, just wave after wave of trials, more adversity as a church than we faced in our 20 years, the most challenging time personally in ministry in 30 and that's part of life, right? Like we shouldn't be surprised by that, because first Peter or sorry, First Timothy, chapter three, verse 12 says all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus are going to be persecuted. First Peter. 412, Peter says that we shouldn't be surprised by the fiery ordeal we experience the testing now. He also says, First, Peter two, chapter four, that we also will suffer for our own sins, our own bad decisions. That happens, but often life just seems unnecessarily hard. You have friends who move away. You have people who you trusted who stabbed you in the back. You have your own children who say really hurtful mean things. You have people who you poured your life into treat you worse than they would a stranger. And to add on top of that, I live in California, all right. It's the land of fruits, nuts and flakes. It is not a good land. And life there is extra hard, both, just in every way, cost of living, layoffs that are happening, tariffs that hit soaring home costs all make it more expensive. You have a governor who seems committed to passing every law to make it harder to live there, whether to educate your kids or to drive more expensive to drive whatever it is. And then it turns out, aging is no joke. Like you get older and life gets harder, just physically, and I don't know how that works, but I'm finding out. And so you have health issues and aging, and you know, even if your brain stays sharp, it turns out, your body still declines. And so then you get the tension of what's wrong with me and the hardness of not knowing the diagnosis, and then the uncertainty of waiting for more information and the treatment plan and not knowing what tomorrow holds, life can just feel overwhelming. Can be really challenging, uncertain, even heartbreaking. It's easy to feel like life is not going the way you would choose. And so for that reason, I want to draw you to this passage that we started with reading a few minutes ago. It's a passage that's ministered to my own heart a lot. It's something that a friend of mine in the Midwest highlighted to me as I as we were, in the midst of our trials. It's been helpful to my own heart. And it's a passage that focuses on the character of God. God, particularly on the goodness of God. Now I know your Bibles are already open there, and if you have read the Psalms, you know that Psalm 119 is the big one. It's the really long one. It is Hebrew poetry, written as an acrostic, using each letter of the alphabet to highlight of the Hebrew alphabet to highlight the value and the merit of the Word of God. It's authors writing while he's suffering adversity, and these are his reflections. Spurgeon described this Psalm as the golden ABCs of the praise, love, power and use of the word of God. It's when he said that every Christian would be worth it for every Christian to memorize. It's 176 verses. We're not going to do it all. We're going to focus on this one stanza right in the middle, starting in verse 65 where its big idea is to show us that our God is good all of the time. Our God's good all of the time. I don't know if this is ever done here, so I'm gonna just take a risk and ask you to say that with me out loud. Will you do that? Okay? So we're gonna say it together. I'm gonna say it. Don't say it yet. Our God is good all the time. Got it Okay. Here we go. Our God is good all the time, great. All right, well done. I feel proud that happened first service. I just want to say it took a couple tries. You did much better. So don't tell them. All right. Now I know as you've been working through trusting God in the midst of adversity. In this summer series, we talk about you hear about God's sovereignty, defined by Jerry bridges. Well, when he says it's his constant care for and his absolute rule over all his creation for His own glory and the good of his people, we affirm that God's in control. He's ruling. He's working it out. He's good. We don't really think that much about his goodness. We think about his control. We don't think about his goodness until we question it. That is the time when God's goodness is most thought about is when we doubt it, when trials and adversity and temptation come.

12:30
Why is God doing this? Why is he permitting this to happen? How could a good God let a person I love suffer so much? It doesn't feel like God cares. I don't see how my pain, my heartache, my suffering, fits into his plan, and we question His goodness. And so today, in time that we have, I want you to see and to take comfort that our God is good all of the time he is good. It's the attribute of God that grounds you in trials, that our God is good, he is so let's see this unfold. And I'm gonna, with that thought in mind, read the psalm out loud one more time and just follow along in your Bible verse 65 you have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word, teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts. Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It's good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes, the law of your mouth is better to me than 1000s of gold and silver pieces. Well, the first thing we see in all of this, starting at the very beginning of the Psalm, is that our God is good in all that he does. He's good in all that he does. It's the very first thing acknowledged in the Psalm. In verse 65 in the stanza, he says, You have dealt well with your servant. Literally, that is, actually says good you have done to your servant, good you've done. At the very beginning of this whole meditation, the Psalmist says, God is good in all that he does, and that is the consistent testimony of all of Scripture. Right from the very beginning of creation in Genesis, chapter one, we see it said in verse 31 at the conclusion of the creation, He says, God saw. All that he'd made, and it was very good. He does good, right? Paul says it to the crowd in Athens much later, Acts 1417, he didn't leave himself without witness in that he did good and gave you rains and fruitful seasons. James takes that even further and says James 117, every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights with whom there's no variation or shifting shadow. And that passage is familiar to all of us. Romans 828, written to believers who are feeling their weakness, void of comfort in this world. Paul says, we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. So again and again, the testimony of Scripture is this one truth, God is good in all that he does. He's good in our passage. He says this up front. And then he next implies it. In verse 67 he says, there, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. In other words, the Psalmist says, If I rewind my life and think back I was going astray, I wasn't obeying your word. I was on a path to for destruction. But then I was afflicted. Now for like three, four of you in this room who really like grammar. Let me, let me tell you something kind of cool about this. Okay, I know most of know, most people tune out and go, like, into a fuzzy land when you talk about English grammar. But right here, what it says it's, in the passive, which means the action is being done to you. I was afflicted. Doesn't mean my circumstances created the affliction. It really is indicating that God brought affliction into his life to correct him. He doesn't attribute it to himself. He doesn't attribute it to his actions. It's not a consequence of his actions, but instead, he was afflicted. It was done to him, and there is intentionality in it. And if you think about the first part, you know this, right? You're familiar with this life. The psalmist says I was on a downward trajectory. I was moving towards, maybe in the gutter. Maybe you were pursuing any and every option to find joy apart from God, and like the psalmist, he brought affliction into your life, and it got harder and it got more painful. You felt more hopeless. That that is our experience before Christ. That's what happens, and it can sometimes describe also God's sanctifying work in the life of a believer, God consistently uses pain and hardship to help us see our need for a Savior to depend on him. In our church, we have a guy like Brian Sayers. We call him Nigel because that's his name. So Nigel Shaler, and he is our pastor who really does the bulk of our counseling, and his days are spent with people who have problems, not like small problems, but big problems, which transparently sounds exhausting to me, and Nigel loves it. He is strangely energized in a way that makes me concerned for him. And he keeps going because he will do like 567, meetings with people who all are filled with issues and they don't like change at the end of the meeting, but instead, they still have the issues, and he keeps going. And the more we've talked, the more we've worked together over the years. He's about 10 years at our church now, the more I've realized why he keeps going. And it's really funny, because I realized, I think, before he did, because he just owned it. Two weeks ago, he regularly meets with people whose marriages are on the rocks, men who are struggling with alcohol or drug habits, women who are racked with depression, people who are of attempted suicide, teens who are cutting themselves, just all kinds of crazy issues. And here's why he loves it. He meets with people who feel hopeless, who are at an end of themselves, who have really have no hope for the future. And he shares the gospel. He tells them about Jesus and the opportunity to be forgiven. It's. He tells people who've realized there's no joy in this world at all, about the only one who can bring them joy. And it's been this incredibly fruitful ministry. Our church has a bunch of people who've been saved through counseling, really, through Nigel and some of our other counselors, evangelism, they've been transformed by the gospel, and in each case, God used pain and hardship affliction in their life to save and transform them. And that's the conclusion of the psalmist here in our passage, in verse 71 that's what he says there. It is good for me, that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. That's verse 71 he says, the hardship and the difficulty that was poured into my life was God's goodness to me. Didn't feel that way in the time, but looking back, I see that that was God's design his good in what he does, even in the hurts he is good. It's the same truth we find as believers in Hebrews chapter 12, when it says, Those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines right? He disciplines us for our good so that we may share His holiness. It's another way of just saying God is good in all that he does all the time, even in times of affliction, in times of hardship, in times of challenge, in all that he does, in all that He permits. God is good, and that's the truth we have to preach to our own hearts. Over the last year, as I've said goodbye to friends, I've seen gossip impact families and split families. I've seen men's aspirations to ministry crumble and just fiery darts thrown to believers from the outside. I have to keep coming back to this truth. God is good in all that he does. He's good when something hard happens, there's a shooting or a flood, he's good.

22:07
He is good in what he does, even though we don't see it. When something hard hits our heart, a friend turns on you, a spouse cheats. Something hard hits your family, whether it's a recent diagnosis or a lost child, it's understandable that you wrestle and you weep and you ask, why and what did I do? But as the head clears and even as your heart aches, you have this choice, will I be sustained by a faith that our God is good in all that he does. Or will you stop believing? Will you question and doubt his wisdom and his goodness that the character of God that sustains you in affliction at the foundation is that he is good in all that he does. He is good and he does good. That's verse 68 he is good and does good. You are good and you do good. It's a verse I cling to. It's the root of our faith God is and does good. And that verse really encompasses the first and second big ideas of the sermon, when we say God is good all the time, we're saying, number one, he's good in all that he does. And second, he's good in all that he is. God's good in all that he is. The very reason why all that God does is good is that at the very core, our God is good in his very being. Few weeks ago, I don't know when this happens at this church, our kids promoted up a grade. You know what I mean? Like sixth graders moved seventh grade in all the classes, and I was in junior high listening to our junior high pastor preach. He'd been there about four months, and they had the new kids in there, and so one of the new sixth grade girls raises her hands while he's preaching, right? And I'm watching because I'm kind of curious what he's going to do, like, does he ignore and just let her eventually get tired and the hand drops? Does he tell her to put it down? Does he say no questions. But instead he stops, is this you have a question? And so she says, can someone I can't do a girl voice, I can't just, I won't do that. Could someone still go to heaven if they were actually good? That's what she asked, but in a much higher squeaker voice. And Johnny, our junior high pastor, he'd been preaching on God's perfection and our sin, showing how we stand, what our relationship is to a perfect and holy God. And she's listening, she's dialed in, and she's thinking about what he's saying. So she asked, like, well, what if we were really good? Could we go to heaven? Then. And the thing that's unclear in her head, but it's at the core of the question is, what does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be good? For us? To be good is it simply mean, well, I'm sinless, right? If being good means you're sinless, well then of course, God is good, he's not sinning. In fact, sin is a failure to meet God's standards. So if I was saying God is good, that just means he meets his own standards, which is true, but if I say that God is good and all that he is that just means he meets his own standards, it feels kind of like it's not a great answer. So let's talk about what it means to say God is good, and let me start first by saying what it doesn't mean. Okay, the very first thing you just got to be clear on altogether is that when we say God is good, we are not saying that he does whatever you want or what I want. Sometimes we equate the two because they feel like they should be together, but they're not. Your desires don't define what's good. There's times when it feels that way, right? That as you approach a round of company layoffs, you may believe it would be good, even best, for you not to lose your job. That doesn't mean that that's actually what is good in God's eyes. Right when your son is playing in the championship game and you're praying for him to win, that feels like that would be good unless you're sick of travel ball, in which case you're praying for him to lose. And that would also be good depending on perspective, as you look at a loved one laying in ICU and you're praying for their recovery, it feels like that would be good, but when we say that God is good, It doesn't mean that he does what you want. In the same way. When we say God is good, it doesn't mean that he does what makes sense to you. Logic and Reason don't define what's good. You don't have to approve of or have it make sense to you that what happens in order for it to be good, and we can do figure this out just by looking through the pages of the Old and New Testament, right? Would it seem good to you to take a guy and his family, move them to a land, let's say Egypt, and then have all of the children enslaved for generations? Does that feel like a good plan, right? What if I took a good king and had him commit adultery or he saw him choose to what if your prophet Jonah, who's cast into the water with no visible way or sign of rescue, doesn't seem good. What if I have a young, faithful, godly Daniel, let's have him enslaved and taken into captivity to the Capitol, away from his family and parents. None of those things make any sense from a logical, rational this is the path I would choose. Type perspective, our desires don't define what's good. Our thinking, our reason don't define what's good. God's ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. What we think is good often isn't good. God defines what's good. Now, when we say that he acts in a way that's consistent with who he is to be good means he is inherently just perfect, wise, loving, transcendent, immutable. One theologian said this way, the goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good, and all that God is and does is worthy of approval. So whatever and all that God does is good because he's good, he's acting in a way consistent with his nature. Really. That means to be good means he plans all of time to magnify His glory. He does what's consistent with his character and being, and he works all things out in a way that's approved by all who love him. He alone is good. Now we know from Psalm 14 Romans, chapter three, there's no man that's good, right? Psalm 14 one, there's no one who does good. In fact, Scripture testifies that God alone is good. That's Jesus' words in Luke 1819, he says, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. It's a consistent testimony of Scripture. He is good in all that he is. It's a means of praise through the Old Testament. Chronicles, 1634, give thanks to the Lord for He is good. Psalm, 34 eight, taste and see that the Lord is good. What would make God truly terrible is if you take away his goodness so that he is not good. His goodness is a central core element of who he is. Most theologians suggest that many of his other attributes are rooted in and flow out of his goodness. So then God's mercy is described as his goodness towards those in distress. His grace is His goodness towards those who deserve punishment. His patience is His goodness to those who sin over a period of time, so on. With His holiness, His righteousness, his faithfulness, his love, each of them has a connection at the core to the love to the goodness of God. Charles Spurgeon says, in every attribute of his nature, he is good in the fullest sense of the term. So I just want you to know whether you see storm clouds on the horizon or feel beaten down on or maybe you're just exiting that storm. This truth that God is good is one that will ground you,

31:32
that will be as a shield and a comfort, as something that stabilizes you in the storm. God is good and all that he is and all that he does more simply, just as the psalmist says in verse 68 you are good and do good. It's a passage worth memorizing. It's something that you can remind yourself of in the ICU waiting room, right? You are good and do good. God. You can tell it to yourself as you're waiting to start a job interview, you are good and you do good. You can choke it out through tears, you are good and you do good. Why would He forgive me of my sins? You are good and you do good. How would our perfect creator send His Son to die for our sins? Why would Jesus bear the full weight of God's wrath for all of your sins? Why would our Creator want to reconcile us while we were haters of him, he is good all of the time. He is good. It's the attribute of God that grounds your soul and your pain. He is good, and he does good. He's good in all that he is, and he's good in all that he does. Therefore, the natural consequence, therefore, in light of His goodness, therefore His Word is good. And this is the third thing we see in this stanza, that if our God is good in all that he is and all that he does, of course, his word is good. Of course, the word we have is good. This is the undercurrent that runs through the whole passage and through the Psalm as a whole. God is good, therefore God's word is good. What we have in God's word is good. And you just see it here, over and over in this little bit of the Psalm. It's through the whole Psalm. But look, look at it in verse 65 good you've done to your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Verse 66 he says, I believe in your commandments. 67 now I you know, Before I was afflicted, I went astray. Now I keep your word. And then 68 you are good and do good. Teach me Your statutes. He connects them intimately there. 69 with my whole heart, I keep your precepts. 70 I delight in your law. 71 right? It's good for me. I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. 72 the law of your mouth is better to me than 1000s of gold and silver pieces again and again. The psalmist is just confessing your word. God is good. It's good. Now I know that's something we say, right? It's almost like required as a Christian to say that God's word is good. The Bible is God's word. It's a personal communication from our Creator to us, describing his redemptive plan and His rule throughout all of time, and it's fulfillment in Jesus. Probably shouldn't go that fast. Let's Be really clear on what the Bible is. The Bible is God's communication to us of Himself and His will, His redemption and his rule, his and the fulfillment of all things. In Christ, we know that it's true. John, 1717, your. Word is true, right? We know that. We hear it over and over. We say the Bible is sufficient, it's authoritative, it's inerrant, it's true, it's good. And yet sometimes the nasty, dirty secret is we sometimes neglect it in our daily lives. Why? Because other things seem good, right? They seem more good. They seem more interesting, more helpful, more useful than the Bible feels to us. Sometimes. Robert Chapman, old long, dead saint said, the great cause of neglecting the scriptures is not want of time, but want of heart, some idol taking the place of Christ. And for many of us, I think that's right on the money, it's not that we lack the time, it's that we value something else higher. And that's the real challenge with us together. Saying God's word is good, right? I think every Christian believes that the same way I do, but many Christians, at least down in California where I live, I'm sure that's not true here, but many Christians live like there's something better to focus their lives on, whether it's Apple news or Instagram reels or a messaging app, something in life is more captivating than this word that we say that's good now, a feature of my iPhone, which probably half of you have and also don't Know how to turn off, the same as me, is this weekly report that just pops up unannounced that tells me how I've used my phone. And I finally figured out where it goes. It's in settings under screen time, and I started looking to see, how am I using my phone? What am I pulling up? And here was my report as I studied for the sermon on just one of the days I was studying, I drove so I used maps for over an hour. I was in messages for 25 minutes, notes for 23 calorie tracking app for 16 minutes, trying to lose a little Instagram, chat GP Instagram for 12, chat GPT for 10, and email for 10. And that day, I think I spent about 20 minutes reading the Bible, which I felt okay about, until I realized it's about the same amount of time as I was tracking calories, which isn't going that well. Now, as you look at how you spend your time and what you're reading and consuming. There's sometimes when it's just not a fair comparison. There's the people who sit at work and they have Outlook open all day long, screen time is going to lie to them, right? Like we know outlook is not your priority, but my hunch is, for many of us, there would be a game or a social app that will greatly surpass your time reading and meditating on God's word. And so while we all believe and affirm God's word is good, it does beg the question of, how good is it? How good or is it right? What is it better than in your life, in marriage, do you go to it, or maybe to podcasts? In parenting, do you look to it or your friends right? In relationships, do you study it or find relevant articles on the web? In the last year, let's go bigger picture. Have you spent more time reading yet, or book club books? More time reading it, or watching your favorite YouTuber or show or whatever? The big question is, where do you go? An easy evaluation. Where do you go when you need help making a decision? Friends, family, chat, GPT, Bible. Where does it fall in that all of these questions you're just trying to get at one thing, which is, how good is God's word to you? If our God is good, it is very being, and all that he does is good. And therefore his word, which is a revelation of Himself and His plans, is incredibly good, right? What we see here better to me than 1000s of gold and silver pieces. How good is it? Does your heart resonate with that in the same way, when we read Psalm 19, at the end there verses nine and 10, he says, the judgments of the Lord are true. They're righteous. Altogether, they're more desirable than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Does your heart say? Yes? Yes, or see the young ones no phone yet. Or is there something else that feels better? Gooder to you, more valuable. The ultimate conclusion of the psalmist as he exits his adversity is to affirm and rejoice in how good our God is. He realizes how good God is, because God is good and he does good, then his word is good for me. So what do you do if your hunger for God's word isn't what it should be? The typical thing we say is maybe make a plan. But let me suggest you go work that backwards just a little bit more, and maybe go to see if there's a root that leads you to not see the goodness of God. Go back to your own view of God. Are there ways in which you've doubted God's goodness in your life? Are there ways in which you believe he has failed you? Are you suspicious that His ways are actually not best all the time. Have you quietly rejected

41:27
the confidence that he is in control of all things? Does your daily life look fairly independent of a God who is there because you see when you see God for less than what he truly is. Your hunger for his word, it makes sense that it's going to be smaller. When you don't feel like he is truly good, then naturally you're going to turn to other sources where you believe that they have better wisdom. They're going to provide more help, and you listen to them, to those other things more than to him, right? Because if he's just there to satisfy your wishes, you don't really need to pay attention to him in the same way. You just need to call out and hope he provides. If he's he's bound to act like you. If he's bound to act like you think he should, you don't need this, because he's going to do what you think is right, rather than the way that he says right. But we know his thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways, and we forget this. All that to say is, if you're thinking about who God is and how he acts, is not in line with God's word. If it's not in line with who he really is, the consequence of it is you ignore the Word of God and you turn your attention to other things that you find more interesting, more helpful, and it's a really sad place to be found. When adversity hits, you're left without much hope. There is a old story about a in the Age of Exploration and sailing ships, and you remember, you don't remember, I don't remember the days without motors. That would be a bad statement. You remember when boats had no motors? Nope, but we've read about the that age. And in the that age, there was a boat sent from Spain to America, and they hit the doldrums, which is a band around the equator, where the winds from the north come down, the winds from the south come up, they hit each other and go up. And this is like literal still exists as part of our world, a National Geographic here, and so there's not a lot of wind. You got a boat with only sails, no oars, you get in, into an area with no wind, and you're just kind of stuck. And this was a rough, deadly, sometimes deadly area for ships, and it was areas they avoided. But in this in this time, ship got stuck there and floated around, Days turned into weeks. They spent almost a month just being pushed around by the currents in the ocean. As they begin to run low on food and on water. The Wind finally picks up and they begin to move. They don't really know, but they head in a general direction, and by God's grace, they come across another boat, and they call to them, and as that other boat approaches, they can see these guys look a little haggard. They're they need help. And they say, What do you need? Say, We need water, to which they respond, lower your buckets, right, like you're in the water. And no, no, no, no, because salt Mar dehydrates. We need fresh water. And again, they called out, low. Lower your buckets, because that ship, for the last week of their journey, had been sailing through 1000 mile stretch near South America where the Amazon flows out into the ocean, and Amazon produces 20% of all the fresh water that goes into the ocean. It's amazing, and it just pours out. It's like 22 Olympic sized swimming pools a second go into the ocean. So you have this big swath of ocean that we all think of as salty that actually is fresh, and they had been floating on what would have sustained them, completely ignorant of what was there. And we, in the same way, often go through this life ignorant of the great resources that surround us. We don't look to God's word for all that it can provide to refresh us, to sustain us, to keep us and so when life feels overwhelming, I just want you to basically drop your bucket into this to remember that God is good, and that he does good, and His Word is good, and he wants the very best for his glory and your good, there is incredible power that comes from faith and a good God. It's who we have. We have a good God, and I pray that you trust him more today, in the days ahead, for every trial, for every temptation, for every bit of adversity and challenge that hits you, that you anchor your heart in this truth that our God is good in all that he does and all that he is. Let's pray, Father, thank You for this brief moment of time to remember this central truth that you are good and you do good, we confess how easily distracted we are by lesser things, how easy it is to be sucked in by entertainment, by the nihilism of our own hearts that despairs and sees no hope in the future. We sometimes have far too great expectations for ourself and far too low expectations for you, and the way you work all things out for your glory and our good, or we sing about your glory and our good, and yet our hearts wrestle and struggle to own that truth. So, Lord, I pray that as we go into our week and the days ahead, we know with confidence that they won't all be easy. We also know that you are there, that you're a very present help and that you are good. Help us to trust and believe that today and every day going forward. Amen.