God is Rock Solid

Grab your message notes this morning as we continue our series God is, and this morning is our penultimate message. It is our final message in this series before celebration weekend that is next weekend, and I want you to write the sermon for next weekend. Here's my email address. It's René at TLC org, re and e, not two e's that would make it a girl's name. It's re and e at TLC org, and I'd love for you to send me emails or letters about how you changed during the series, how you got touched, what you learned. Send me pictures of your group or of yourself or pictures of what God showed you. I've gotten a lot of great pictures about just beauty all around the county that people saw because they were seeing it through the lens of God as creator. And then next weekend on celebration weekend, I want to share some of those pictures. But this morning, let's talk about how God is rock solid.

I want to introduce this with a true but strange story. Twenty years ago, this Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalan was trapped in space. He had gone up to the Mir space station on May 19th, 1991, and he did some experiments there and was supposed to leave just two months later. But you could say he had a case of epically bad timing because he was in orbit when the communist government of the USSR collapsed, and the control center basically had to tell him, "Surgeon, hang on, we'll get back to you because it's chaos down here." And so they canceled his flight home. You thought it was bad when your flight out of San Jose got canceled? His flight to Earth got canceled. He was supposed to come back in July of '91. You know when he finally got back to Earth? The end of March 1992. The good news is he still holds the record for the longest time ever spent by a human being in space, so he's in the Guinness book, but he finally did get back to Earth. However, he never got back to his country.

Because like an astronaut in a sci-fi movie, Sergey Krikalan came back to a totally different world. His country was gone, his president gone, his government gone, his flag changed, national anthem changed, map changed. He left Leningrad and came back to St. Petersburg. He left the USSR and came back to Russia. Statues of Stalin were out. In fact, one in Moscow was actually replaced with a statue of George Washington. Talk about the stress of a fast-changing world. But when I think about it, it occurs to me that Sergey Krikalan's experience may not be all that unusual because do you ever feel like that cosmonaut? Do you ever drive around and notice how much things have changed and think the world is changing just a little too fast for me?

In fact, think of how fast the world has changed in just 10 years. At the beginning of 2001, there was no iPod, no iPhone, no iPad, no iTunes, no Harry Potter movies, no Lord of the Rings movies, no Lost TV series, no American Idol, no widescreen TVs, no Blu-rays, no Facebook, no Google, no Twitter. Just in 10 years, how did we survive 10 years ago, right? Ten years ago, November 2001, the price of gas in Santa Cruz was a dollar fifty-two cents a gallon, and we were outraged. Do you remember? Because that was up 13% in just a year. Now go back just a little bit further. I was born 50 years ago in San Jose in 1961, and I found a home movie that somebody posted on YouTube of somebody's visit to San Jose from about that time, and it's all about the blossoming orchards in the Santa Clara Valley. Apparently, tourists came to the Santa Clara Valley to view this beauty every spring. In fact, the tourist brochures had a name for it: they called it the Valley of the Heart's Delight.

And I am so glad I found this movie because honestly, I was starting to think I was making it all up. When we drive over there, and I tell my kids, "Kids, it was nothing like this when I was your age. There were orchards everywhere, and Blossom Hill was actually full of blossoms, and orchard supply stores were for orchard supplies." This movie confirms my memory. Look at this view of the Santa Clara Valley. This is from Blossom Hill Road. This is just on the other side of our mountains—orchards everywhere. This is my childhood, folks. How many of you remember San Jose when it looked like this? It was spectacular. Now a little further back, I found another home movie of a trip to Santa Cruz in 1938. Now this is 1938, so of course, in those pre-freeway days, you had no choice; you had to drive on surface streets at about 10 or 15 miles an hour, whereas nowadays on the freeway at rush hour, you can drive the same route at 10 or 15 miles an hour.

But I'm not sure what route these guys were taking, but they are very eager to get there, as you can see. They first drive through the little town of Aptos, and look how there's nothing on Soquel Drive except for that railway bridge, which looks exactly like it does today. But they go to Santa Cruz, they eventually go down to the beach, they see the wharf, and they go to the boardwalk. The Giant Dipper is there, though the building is a little different. My favorite thing, though, is the Giant Dipper's old cars that have that iron pipe right at nose level, so you get a good souvenir broken nose every time you ride, right? But if you've been in Santa Cruz any length of time, you've seen a lot of change. Here's an aerial view of 41st Avenue in the 1970s. It's almost all fields, cow pastures. All the white buildings there, that's not them all. What is that? That's right, that's the flower ranch. That's the bulb ranch there. It was all flower fields commercially. Things changed so fast.

How many of you remember 41st when it looked like that? I kind of see a show of hands. A lot of you here. When we moved here just 18 years ago, we were making a list at dinner this week. Here's a partial list: there was not a single Starbucks in Santa Cruz County when we moved here just 18 years ago. There was no Target, there was no Toys R Us, there was no Costco, no Staples, no Office Depot, no Home Depot, no Cinema 9 downtown, no Green Valley cinemas. I mean, things change rapidly even in a slow-growth county like ours. Not only are things around you changing, though, things about you are changing. Even as we speak, from the number of hairs on your head to the number of wrinkles on your face to the ages of your kids, it's changing all the time. And all this change creates stress. Psychologists say that so much is changing so fast in our society that we are constantly in a state of low-level grief because, unbeknownst to us, we are grieving all of these things we were familiar with that we have lost.

And so the question really becomes, where can I find stability in an ever-changing world? Is there anything that's permanent, anything that's reliable, anything that never changes? Well, the answer is in the book of James in the Bible, chapter 1, verse 17. And I want you to read this verse out loud with me because this is a key verse for the rest of the message this morning. Let me hear you: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." Now take your pencil or your pen because you're going to need this to fill in the blanks in your notes anyway, and I want you to circle three words that are a theme of everything I'm going to say for the rest of my talk: the phrase "does not change." The theologians put it this way: God is immutable, which simply means God is unchanging. God does not change. Isn't that a comfort to you?

The Bible refers to God with words like anchor, fortress, firm foundation, solid rock. Getting back to James 1:17, I love the Phillips translation of the final phrase in that verse. It talks about God with whom there is never the slightest variation or shadow of inconsistency. I like that— not the slightest variation. Now, this doesn't mean God is unchanging in the sense that he's unresponsive, of course not, but it means he's unchanging in his character. In other words, everything that we've studied so far in this series on the attributes of God—God is always all of those things. Fill in that blank at the beginning of the box that's on page one of your notes: God is always all of his attributes. He doesn't even begin to lean away from omnipotence or love or holiness. He's not omnipotent one half hour and then he switches over to love. He is always all of his attributes.

In fact, look at that list in your bulletins in the little box of the attributes of God. These are just some of the attributes that we've studied so far in this series. When I say God is always all of his attributes, look at this box here. I want you to kind of look at this as an experiment. You could circle any one of these descriptions of God and make all the other words into adjectives that describe the word you circled. See, what are you talking about, René? For example, go to the far right side here. See where it says God is love? Well, if you circle that, you can make every other attribute of God a descriptor of love. His love is a faithful love, his love is an omnipotent love, his love is a majestic love. Or if you circle omnipotence, his power is loving power, it's faithful power, it's holy power. God is always all of his attributes. God is consistent. Another way to put it: he is faithful. God says, "I, the Lord, do not change."

Now again, you might say, "All right, mildly interesting for like some theology or philosophy course." But how does this make a difference for my life today? In so many ways. But today I want to talk about just four of the implications of God's immutability. These are four anchors in an always changing, unstable world that you can have in your life. Jot these down. Number one: God's power is unchanging. His strength, always available to you, is unending. Psalm 102 says of God, "The heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out, but you remain the same." I was looking at an astronomy website earlier this week, and I found an uplifting fact. Since its birth, the Sun has already used up about half of its fuel. Eventually, it will run out of hydrogen, and as this website put it, it will then be forced into radical changes, which will result in the total destruction of planet Earth. And you've only got about five billion years to get ready for that, by the way.

But this verse agrees with that. Even the stars, which seem to us like they're eternal, they will perish; they will run out of fuel. But God never runs out of fuel. Now, what about you? Your energy ebbs and flows. The older I get, the more I see that mine mostly ebbs. You know what I'm talking about here. I don't know about you, but I've noticed I'm not alert first thing in the morning, and I'm not alert in the afternoon. Earlier and earlier at night, I find I run out of steam. I'm finding I really want to go to bed about 9:30 every night now. I'm becoming an old man. I have a glory moment right at about 10:15 a.m. where I am right in the pocket for about an hour. Every other moment of my day, I'm either resting up for that or I'm recovering from that, right? But not God. The Bible says he never slumbers nor sleeps.

There's an amazing man named Dean Karnazes. He is called the ultra marathon man. In 2006, he accomplished the seeming impossible. In 2006, this man ran 50 marathons, one in each of the 50 different states of the Union in 50 consecutive days. Can you believe that? Just an amazing display of endurance. You say, "Well, that was 2006. What has he done lately?" You know, he's dead. He exploded after that. No, just kidding. This year, Dean ran 3,000 miles cross-country from the Bay Area to New York City, averaging 40 miles a day. So this guy's got an amazing reserve of power and energy, right? Well, you know what his number one tip is for better health? Number one: sleep. He says even he needs rest. The best athletes need a lot of sleep. But not God. He never slumbers nor sleeps.

I love this quote from Max Lucado. He says, "God has never said the words, 'I'm feeling strong today,' because he feels equally strong every day." Think about it. God never pauses to eat or asks the angels to cover for him while he naps. He never signals a timeout or puts the prayer requests from China on hold while he handles South Africa. If you need a strong hand to hold, you'll always find one in his. His power, which is available to you, especially at moments that you realize how weak you are, that never changes. And this just gets better because number two: God's love for you is unchanging. God's love is unchanging. He loves you with a real personal love that will never stop. Look at Jeremiah 31:3, and I'd like us to read this verse out loud together because it's so important. And if you came lonely today, feeling unloved, I want you to hear the church's voice as if it's the Lord's voice saying this to you. Let's say this together: "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Do you hear God saying, "I will never stop loving you, never?"

This week, it was 20 years since Magic Johnson announced his HIV positive diagnosis, and in several interviews this week, he told the story of how the doctor revealed his diagnosis to him. He then had a long drive back to his house, and he walked up to his door and cleared his throat. He had a rehearsed speech to tell his wife everything. When she opened the door, completely unsuspecting, he said his rehearsed speech just fell by the wayside, and he just fell to pieces and looked at his wife and told her he was HIV positive. He told her in the next sentence it was because of his infidelity, and then he had to tell her that she might have it too. And then he had to tell her that the baby she was two months pregnant with might have it too. Well, mother and child didn't get it, but they didn't know that at the time. And then he said through his tears, "Obviously, this is devastating, and I clearly understand if you want to leave me, and I promise you I will not make it difficult." He fully expected that she would walk out on him, and that was the last—that was the moment that would be the end of his marriage.

And he says she slapped him hard, whack, and then said, "All right, no more talk of that anymore ever. I will never leave you. We will tackle this thing together. And the first thing we are going to do now is kneel and pray together right now." And she took his hand, and they knelt together right in the entrance of their home in prayer. And in an interview I saw this week, he said, "I know why I'm alive 20 years later. I mean, I thank God for the drugs, but I'm alive because of her unending love for me." Maybe you feel a little bit like him, like, "I understand why God would no longer love me. God, I would totally get that because I've been unfaithful to you at times." Maybe you think that because you've been pushed away by others because of things you've done, and you naturally assume God will do the same, and you feel like, "I get that, actually. I would kind of deserve that." But the Bible says of God, "Your love never changes." God says, "Do you understand? My love for you will never change, ever."

Now, maybe that's hard for you to get because perhaps in your life, relationship after relationship has let you down. People that you loved let you down. Maybe someone that you thought you would love forever divorced you, left you. Maybe your dad or your mom or both abandoned the family. They said, "I love you," and then they changed their minds, and you still bear those scars. Well, look at this verse: Numbers 23:19. "God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" Some of you, this is the phrase you need to remember from all of this: God is not a man that he should lie. He will never change his mind. This verse is saying never think that God is like the absent parent who broke his promises or the spouse who left you. This verse is saying God will never look at you and say, "I want a divorce. I'm gone. That's it. I've had it." His love is unchanging.

Then we long for this kind of love, and when it really sinks in that you've got it, man, you've got an anchor that goes deep in an unstable world. I love this quote from A.W. Tozer: "What can the world do to a man or a woman who is grounded in the love of God, who swims in the ocean of his love as a fish in the mighty sea? What can sin do? What can the world do? What can accident do? When you know you're immersed in the love of God, like the Bible says, nothing can separate us from his love." And I want you to circle nothing. Nothing.

Before I go to the next point, one time our daughter Elizabeth, when she was about four years old, was sitting at the dinner table during the evening meal, and she'd had a tough day and had to be sent to her room for a timeout. She was a very emotional little toddler anyway, and she felt lonely that night. With a furrowed brow and a worried look, she said, "Excuse me, everybody. Whoever loves me, raise their hand." That's probably a result of being a child of René Schlepfer, right? Show of hands, who loves me? But you never have to wonder if God loves you. Listen, some of you walked in those doors this morning thinking, "I have been rejected so many times, and I feel so lonely, and I feel so unworthy of any real love from God." And God wanted you here today. It's not a coincidence. You may feel like it is, but it's really not. God wanted you here in this moment so he could say, "I'll raise my hands. I'll raise my nail-scarred hands and say, 'I love you so much, and my love for you is investing love, and it's eternal love, and it's omniscient love, and it's omnipotent love, and it's holy love.'" That's how much I love you. You need never doubt God's love for you or God's power for you.

And how about this? Number three: God's word is unchanging. This is very practical because stuff we humans write is always going out of date. But Isaiah 40:8 says, "The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever." Isaiah's saying here flowers don't always stay fresh, but God's word is always fresh. It's never obsolete. Anything we human beings write eventually becomes obsolete. In fact, it's downright comical to read old popular mechanics, like here's one from 1951 all about the home helicopters that we'll all have in the 1970s. Isn't that a nice promise? Or do you ever look at a map from just a few years ago? Look at this one: no more East Germany, no more Czechoslovakia, no more USSR. And there's all kinds of other changes. Or look at this old computer magazine ad: you can get a 15-megabyte hard drive for only $2,500. And why would you ever need more than that, really? Or how about this one: "For a better start in life, start cola earlier." How soon is too soon? Not soon enough.

You got to build your life on something more stable than human ideas, and God's word lasts forever. I read that when Alan Shepard went into space on one of the first space missions, a reporter asked him, "What are you thinking right now?" and Shepard said, "I am counting on God's laws of physics to stay consistent." And that's right. When he made the universe, God made physical laws that never change, and he also made spiritual laws that never change. Now temptation always tries to get you to doubt this. The first temptation ever in recorded human history was preceded by the words, "Did God really say?" And the same thing is happening today. "Did God really say that? Did God really say that was wrong? Did God really say?" And to counter the voice of temptation, you need to build your life on the stability of God's word to gain stability and reduce stress. Jesus said it: "Whoever listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock." Your convictions will sway; mine do. Your outlook will change, but God does not recalibrate his word based on what's current, either to the right or to the left, right? This is why we really try hard here at Twin Lakes not to change our preaching agenda from the Bible and its main message of grace. As Craig Barnes says, who preaches here once a year, he said, "If you focus on the center, you don't have to worry about the edges." So focus on the center. Fill your mind with things that never change from God's word.

And finally, number four: God's promise is unchanging. What promise? Anything he promises. God is faithful. Last year, I was asked to speak at the funeral of a man who died at about the same age as my father when he passed away, about 36, leaving two young children who are about the same age as me and my little sister, and a widow who was about the same age as my mom. In other words, it was a situation just like our family many years ago. And so I asked my mom what words of wisdom she had for this woman who was about to walk the same path that she had walked. My mom stopped and thought for a moment and then said one phrase: "The Lord will provide." Through all of the ups and downs of her life, widowed twice, she's seen plenty, and she has seen want. But she knew those four words are always true: the Lord will provide. Because look at Psalm 145:13. In fact, would you please read this great verse out loud with me? Let me hear you: "The Lord always keeps his promises. He is gracious in all he does." If that's true, then what are some promises of God? Well, there's so many. There's about seven thousand promises in the Bible, according to a guy who counted. But this is one of my favorites: Proverbs 22:9. "The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor." This is a promise, and now we scientifically know that this verse is true. When you give, you are blessed. Researchers in the field of positive psychology call this the generosity effect, and study after study is proving this empirically. A study at UC Berkeley concluded, quote, "Giving reduces mortality significantly in later life, even when you start late." And that last clause is good news for some of us. And another study, a helper's high occurring when people help others, is credited with making 43% of those studied feel stronger and more energetic. Other studies show that when people give, it lowers their levels of stress.

Now I'm not going to go all health and wealth on you here, but it comes down to four words: do good, feel good. And that kind of blessing is a promise in Scripture, and I'm urging you to discover the truth of this through the holiday food drive. Next week is our final week to collect, but I don't want you to give until it hurts. I want you to give because it feels good. Right before this service, a young woman who's 13 years old here in our church just recently turned 13, I Nes, she came up to me and handed me her food drive envelope because she said, "I really want to give this to you because my family's not going to be here next weekend." And so here's my food drive envelope. And I look down, and I asked her if I could share this with you, and she said no, but I'm going to anyway. No, just kidding. I am. I look down, and there's 120 bucks in here. I only say that—I don't usually know what people give to the church at any level—but she handed this to me, and she's only 13. I said, "Well, I Nes, how did you get this money to give?" And she said, "Well, I didn't have any money, and so I decided I'd go to all my neighbors, and I knocked on their doors, and I just said what we were raising money for at church in our million-pound goal and how we want to feed an African village for a whole year. And I said, 'For the next 10 weeks, just tell me if there's some chore I can do around your house. I'm good at baking cookies. I could take out your garbage. I could wash your car.'" And she did all of those things for various neighbors, helped clean house and so on, and earned the money. And she said, "I just want to give a hundred percent of it to Jesus because I know that's who I'm giving to when I give this to the hungry." Because of what she said in Scripture, and I told her it was just giving me goosebumps. It's awesome, isn't it?

Her eyes were just sparkling, and I said, "I Nes, can I share this?" Because I can talk about how good it makes you feel to give, and she said, "It really does make you feel good." She goes, "When do we get to start the Christmas project? I can't wait!" And her eyes were just sparkling. Now, if you're not certain what the food bank is, I want you to watch something. Watch a video shot. This is all in a couple of hours the other day at Second Harvest. In the background, you can see what goes on at Second Harvest, and in the foreground, just a few of the groups that go to that food bank to withdraw food to then give away to others. So here's what happens in a typical afternoon.

"Hi, I'm Storian Peterson. I work for the St. Vincent de Paul pantry at Holy Cross, and we come and pick up vegetables and fruit at the Second Harvest once a week, and we help approximately 200 to 400 people a month to come by and pick up groceries." "I'm Mary Mulford. I represent the Circle Church, and we run a food pantry and a soup kitchen, and we are serving about 1,200 people a month right now." "My name is Ron Romo, and I work with Janice of Santa Cruz, and we feed approximately 30 to 40 people per day." "I'm Mitch Morrison. I represent the United Presbyterian Church in Watsonville. We've been with this agency here—let me see how many years—we started right after Second Harvest did serving the public, and we are up to about 6,800 people a year." "My name is Arden Bachman. I'm with Green Valley Christian Center, and over the past year, we've gone from about 115 families to almost 400 and over." "Hello, my name is Henry, and I work for two different agencies: for our rescue mission and Monterey Bay T Challenge, and we feed approximately 9,000 meals a month." "Hi, my name is Sandy. I'm from the Church of the Nazarene. I help run the soup kitchen, and on a weekly basis, we serve, I'd say, anywhere from 200 to 300 people out on the levee." "I'm Murray Nahnhoff, and I'm with Twin Lakes Church People's Pantry." "I'm Dick Manning, also with Twin Lakes Church People's Pantry. We serve about 130 to 140 families every week. We're here every Wednesday, and we appreciate Second Harvest like you can't believe." I think we ought to thank everybody who works with our People's Pantry and like these two guys. They do an amazing job.

But I love this because we're helping out those great churches and missions when we give to Second Harvest. Again, one week left, then on Thanksgiving, the total is revealed, and I am very stoked about that. But back to the promises. There's so many great promises in Scripture, but here's one of my favorites: "For the Scripture tells us that no one who believes in Christ will be disappointed. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." This promise is always true. This offer never expires. It's not like you go to God, and he says, "I'm sorry, you missed the one-day sale. You know, we had eternal life going for simple faith through God's grace last weekend, but that was last week. Now you need to make a pilgrimage and sacrifice a goat. Sorry about that." No, it's always by grace, no matter what you've done, no matter who you are. And then once by faith I have placed my life in God's grace in the hands of Christ, what happens next? Another promise. Look at 1 Corinthians 1:8-9 from the Living Bible. Man, I love this: "God guarantees right up to the end that you'll be counted free from all guilt on that day he returns. God will surely do this for you because he always does what he promises." Secretly, you ever worry about whether you're going to heaven? Maybe you've accepted Christ, but you sometimes wonder, "Am I still saved?"

In the God is book, I tell the story of how when we first moved to Santa Cruz, Elizabeth was just a little bit over a year old, and we took her one day to the boardwalk and rode on the sky ride. Here's a picture just to remind you of what that is. It's kind of like a gondola scare ski lift. How many of you have ever been on the sky ride before? How many of you believe that is the scariest ride at the boardwalk? That's right. It is the gondola scare lift. That's exactly what it is. But so Lori gets on with Elizabeth, who's just a really little tyke at that time, and right after we reached about the middle of the ride, Elizabeth decided she wanted out, and she started just squirming and freaking out. She was one car away from me. I was with Jonathan, who was three at the time. Elizabeth was sitting with Lori, and as I looked to find out why Elizabeth was just screaming at the top of her lungs, "No, no, no!" I saw her squirming away from Lori, trying to slip under the safety bar and get out of the gondola. She could have fit very easily. Lori says she has never felt an adrenaline rush like that in her life as she grabbed Elizabeth and held on for dear life—Elizabeth's dear life. And as I watched helplessly from about 20 feet away, Elizabeth kept pushing Lori away, letting go of her hands several times. Her flip-flops came off and spiraled to the sand 30 feet below. But Lori never let go of Elizabeth. I mean, I watched my wife in pure mama bear mode. Do you know what I'm talking about? Why? Well, because my wife loves her daughter fiercely. She did everything in her power to prevent that child from slipping away.

Listen, there are times in your life when you squirm and you twist and you want to get away from God, and you may in fact let go of him. But God never ever lets go of you. Why? Because he loves you fiercely and eternally and majestically. So he keeps you in his grasp. In fact, circle or underline the phrase "God will surely do this for you." You don't do it; he does it for you. Jesus says in John 10, "You're in my hand, and no one can snatch you away." Isn't that good news? Well, look at your bulletins. Listen, in life, between now and when you die, you're going to experience a lot of stressful change—a lot of change. My question is, how are you going to respond to those changes? You can't prepare for most of them because by definition, they're unpredictable. So how are you going to handle all the change in your life? What's going to be your source of stability? There are four things to remember when you're under stress. These are absolute facts. These are spiritual anchors. God's power is always available to you. It's infinite. It never weakens. It never runs out. No matter what you do, God's love for you will always be there infinitely. It goes on and on forever and ever. You can never drain it. God's word is always true, no matter how society's opinions change, and God's promises are always valid—always.

And these four things, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Think back in the past few weeks. You've learned about God's holiness, love, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, sovereignty. And now know this: none of that will ever change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And by the way, this is just one verse of many that says Jesus Christ is God incarnate on earth because this sentence can only be said of God. God is the only being who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so all those truths about him, they never shift no matter what you're going through. Cling to that. Focus on that instead of the problems all around you. I got to tell you, the grayer I get, the more I can sing that old song, "Great is Thy Faithfulness," with gusto. Because I have more and more memories proving that God is faithful, that God is dependable, that God never changes. I have learned this bottom line to life: I can depend on Christ.

I want to suggest this week when you go through a tough time, say out loud, "God, I know I can depend on you." This is what we mean when we say, "Put your trust in him." Say, "Lord, I know I can depend on you for my ultimate security." As things around you change, just say, "God, help me remember I can depend on you. You are rock solid." Now some of you need this right now. So I want to suggest that we go to the anchor, the solid rock in prayer together. Would you stand with me for a closing prayer? I'm going to pray and kind of lead you through a prayer, and then we're going to sing a song where we affirm the truth that God is faithful, that God is unchanging, that God is dependable and consistent. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer right now. And with everybody's heads bowed, let me pose a question for you. Are you stressed out because of all the changes that you've been going through in your life? Would you like to have a rock solid foundation? Then I'm going to invite you to pray four things.

First, "God, I believe your power is unchanging. I am powerless over all the changes in my life, but you always have the strength I need." And then second, "I believe you love me infinitely, and you proved it by coming here to pay for my sins, and then you rose again. I don't understand all that, but I choose to have faith in it." Third, "I believe your word is always true. Help me to stake my life on that." And finally, "I believe your promises are good forever. They never run out. They never expire, and that includes your promise to keep me saved." And so for maybe the first time today or maybe for the thousandth time, I want to place my trust in you firmly as my dependable savior. I want to walk out that door today anchored, firm, secure in my strong, unshakable, unchanging, always faithful God. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.