Greater Courage

Hey, my name is René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. I'm so glad that you are here with us today. And I want to start out right out of the gate just sort of giving you an update on what's happening with our 2020 vision. This is an amazing project. If you don't know about this, this is, well, one part of it is the building that is going up on the west side of our campus. This is what it looks like behind the construction walls. It is almost done. We are going to the building just putting on the finishing touches, waiting for our final inspections, and then we're going to be moving in the furniture, grand opening sometime this spring.

There are beautiful huge rooms inside like this. There are also classrooms inside, including classrooms specifically for our school. I'll show you the next one, the next slide, please. There you go. And there's all sorts of classrooms, large and small, that are going to be for our school here at TLCS, Twin Lakes Christian School, and our Sunday School and Saturday Night School programs. You're going to love it when it opens. Stay tuned for more. And by the way, even as I speak, a community center is going up in India at Little Flock Children's Home as a part of this project.

Every single building on our campus here at Twin Lakes Church is represented by another building in the developing world that we built on the mission field as we were doing each building project. That's been a part of kind of our ethos ever since the Pastor Craft days. So I want to thank you guys very much for supporting 2020 Vision. Let's thank everybody who's been so generous to this. It's been awesome. Very exciting. And I want you to grab your message notes that look like this that are in the folders that you guys got when you came in.

Let's continue our New Year's Series greater, focusing on the greater things in life. And I want to start with just a reminder of why we are doing this series. If you look on page one of your notes, the verses there in the box, we're going to put them on screen too. Paul, writing to the Philippian church, says this. He says, "Finally, brothers." And you know what it means when a preacher says, "Finally"? Absolutely nothing. He says, "Finally, brothers." Whatever is true. Whatever is honorable. Whatever is just. Whatever is pure. Whatever is lovely. Whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about what? These things.

What things? Those things. The good things. And would you agree with me that we are distracted from these good and greater things all the time, right? By the to-do lists in life. By the worries of life. By the fears of life. By the news we see on TV. So in this series what we've done is we've put together this book called "Greater." It's available for free if you didn't pick it up the last couple of weekends at the info desk and all around campus. And every day there's a positive promise. There's a verse from the Bible for you to read. There's a prayer for you to pray so that we get into a 31-day habit as we kick off this year of focusing on the greater things.

Say focus on the greater things with me. I'm out loud. Say it. Focus on the greater things. Say it again. Focus on the greater things. Those things. But this verse raises a huge question. Because if it's true that we're supposed to think about the good things, the positive things, what's your offer is good and lovely and excellent and praiseworthy, then do we never think about the bad things? If it's true that this is what we're supposed to think about, then what do we do with bad news? And this is really relevant because right now there's a lot of bad news in the world.

NBC News just did a brand new poll. "For most of 2015, the country's mood was defined by anger." And now, now, this was a poll that came out last week, now that has abruptly changed to what? Fear. Do you sense it? Are you sensing it? Here's another headline two weeks old. Brookings Institute says we currently have a quote, "Fear dominated public sentiment." That means the statements people make in public, in media, in social media, according to their study, are just dominated right now by fear as we enter 2016. Seven in ten Americans, according to them, are now afraid of the future.

And what happens when you're afraid of the future? You kind of isolate yourself. You lock yourself up in a room for fear of the future and you don't take any risks because you think, "None of my risks are going to pan out." And why are Americans feeling this way? Well, you know as well as I do. There's a lot of terrorism in the news, right? The refugee crisis, it seems like Europe's falling apart and the Mideast is falling apart and the markets are collapsing, they're unstable, and so we are afraid. But listen, there's a lot of possibility out there too. There's a lot of great opportunities out there too.

I do a lot with Mount Hermann Christian Conference Center right up here near Felton. Raise your hand if you've ever been to Mount Hermann. Can I see your show of hands? Wow, most of you here. It is a great place, isn't it? It is one of the premier Christian Conference Centers in the entire nation. Do you know when Mount Hermann broke ground? What year? Anybody know? Shout it out. 1906. What else happened in 1906? The San Francisco earthquake that devastated the Bay Area. And about a month before they were supposed to break ground, this happened. And so Mount Hermann had a prayer meeting of all of its founders and they said, "What are we going to do?"

Because the banks don't want to loan us money, none of the construction people want to build. Everybody is just kind of cocooning and they're afraid of the future. And they said, "No, we need to go ahead." Aren't you glad they did? Fear dominated public sentiment, but they went ahead with courage. I was just in Dallas visiting family over the holidays, the last couple of weeks, and one of the places I was was Fort Worth. I performed a wedding for my niece there. It was next door to the beautiful First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth. It is a beautiful building.

You want to know when they broke ground on this building? The end of October 1929. What was happening at the end of October 1929? The stock market crash. Fear dominated public sentiment. And literally, according to the church plaque, the day after the stock market crash, they broke ground. Why? Because even when fear, even when seven out of ten Americans are afraid of the future, there's possibilities. In fact, there's obligations for us to keep moving forward and grabbing what God has for us.

So what I want to do today is to talk about how you can move with greater courage into your future, because maybe you're not being made afraid by the headlines, but there might be some things in your life that are causing you to hesitate moving forward in faith. And I want to teach you a principle about this from the Bible that I never learned as a kid. I was raised in a great church, but somehow or another, this principle from the Bible never sunk into me.

From observation of some of the people I knew, I kind of learned there were two ways to respond to bad news in life, to suppress or to obsess. You could suppress. You could say the Bible says to focus on the things that are good and pure and excellent, praiseworthy and lovely. And so I'm not going to watch the news. I'm not going to read the news. I'm not going to talk about the news. Not even the news headlines, not even my own personal bad news. I'm going to deny my own shame and deny my own pain and everything's happy and la la la la. Nothing's going wrong. I'm going to live like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

So you could suppress. The problem is when you suppress anything, it's like trying to push down a beach ball on a swimming pool. It always pops up more violently, right? So you can suppress or the alternative was, in my observation, to obsess. To obsess so much on the negative headlines. Why? Because maybe it's a sign that the Lord is coming soon and maybe it's a sign that the Mideast things are a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. And so I've got to pay attention to the news at all times just in case the president calls me and wants my advice. And so he just turns you into a bad news addict. And I've been there.

But is there an alternative? Is there a better way to deal with bad news? Is there a way that's healthier? Is there a way that's more constructive? Is there a way that without denying reality allows you to move forward with courage? Not that I know of. Let's close in prayer. No, just kidding. There is. There is. Look at Psalm 112, page one of your notes right at the bottom there. And I want us to read this out loud and really think about these great words in Psalm 112 verses 6 and 7. Are you ready? Let me hear you. The righteous will never be shaken. They do not fear bad news. They confidently trust the Lord to care for them.

Now, if you have a stand page one for just a second here, because I want to meditate on an amazing phrase that I literally never noticed before I studied. I want you to underline, circle, star the phrase, "They do not fear bad news." Say that out loud with me. They do not fear bad news. Does it say they do not hear bad news? No. They do not fear bad news. When they hear bad news, they're not afraid of it. And there's another shade of meaning to this. I think there are a lot of people whose spirits are brought down not by the bad news they hear, but by the bad news they fear. You see what I mean?

They live in fear of bad news. They're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why does this happen? Maybe you've gotten so hammered by bad news one thing after another, and maybe it started very early in your life. You got bruised. You got wounded. And so now you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And consequently, the littlest thing, if you're in the wrong frame of mind, can just send you off in a million directions. Well, I want to talk to you about how to get to the place where you have no fear of bad news. Wouldn't that be a great place to live? Well, to get there, I want to spend the rest of our time telling you a story. It's one of the great stories of the Bible.

Flip your notes over to page two, and let's look at three keys to courage when faced with bad news in the book of Numbers, chapters 13 and 14. And I'll tell you why this is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It fascinates me because I am not naturally a person of courage. And that may surprise you if you just hear me up here speaking, but anybody who lives with me, my wife, and anybody who works with me, Mark and Val, anybody who works with me close, they know I am not naturally one of those, "I don't care. Let's just go ahead. Darn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead." I'm not that guy. I'm the cautious guy.

This is why I dated my poor wife for four years before I proposed to her. You know? Is there any risk involved with the decision? And I don't know if I want to step into that water, you know? Everybody else step into it first before I do. This is why this 2020 Vision campaign, it's going so phenomenally well. The building in India is almost done. We raised more than a million meals for Second Harvest. The year we started this campaign, the building next door is almost done. There were exciting things, possibilities, but there was a lot of risk. And man, it took me a year to get over. Should we do this? Should we not do this? Test in the wind? I don't know. If there's any risk, I'm kind of scared. And maybe you can relate.

How do you handle that? I think there's some excellent principles here in this story that answer a lot of these objections. Here's the setup. It's 1450 B.C. And the children of Israel have just been released miraculously from slavery in Egypt, and they have traveled down through the desert of Sinai and up to the border of the Promised Land. And they're right on the border, and Moses, their leader, sends 12 spies into the land of Canaan. And he says, "I want you to spend 40 days there scouting out the land." And he says something interesting. "I want you to bring back the fruit of the land." These people have been in the desert. They are dried out. He says, "Bring people back the fruits so they get a vision of the possibilities there."

And actually, this is the first point of the three on the back of your notes there. Point one is you need to size up the situation. That's the first principle. You need to size up, not size up yourself, by the way. If you size up yourself, you will always retreat in fear. But you do have to size up the situation. You know, as somebody said, "God does not want you to be foolish." You know, "I don't want you to apply the message this way." "Thank you for that encouraging word about courage, René. I'm gonna open up a bakery in downtown Santa Cruz, 'cause I like to make muffins. I'm gonna be brave." No, you're gonna be broke. Unless you look at the business climate and look at the rents and God wants you to size up the situation, He does not want you to be foolish.

So these guys spent 40 days doing this, and then here's the report, Numbers 13:27. And they told Him, "We came to the land to which you sent us, and it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit." And to get this sentence, you have to know in the previous chapter, it says that one of the things that they brought back was some grapes. And we live in wine country here, so you can understand this. The grapes were so abundant that it says, "Two guys cut off one of the vines, and it was so laden with grapes that two spies carried it back in, strung between a pole between the two of them." So there's all these grapes, and the land's overflowing with milk and honey, and you read this, and if you're like me, you've thought to yourself, "Well, that's like poetic. It can't be that lush in Canaan, because it's not that lush now."

Well, you know what's interesting? Now we actually have archaeological evidence for how lush the land of Canaan was back then in the days of the Exodus. For those of you who are archaeology buffs, a headline in the paper just about a year ago, "3700-year-old Canaanite wine cellar reveals sophisticated winemaking." It talks about how the Canaanite kings apparently drank plenty of wine, and it says this, "For the first time, archaeologists have hard evidence for it. After unearthing, a Canaanite royal wine cellar." And this is it on the screen. "They found 40 huge wine jugs dating back 3,600 years, right around the time of the Exodus. These carried a total of 2,000 liters of wine, and they found dried remnants of the wine inside."

Turns out it wasn't like our modern wine. It was more like a mixed drink. Here's what they found when they analyzed the dried residue inside these jars. The scientists identified a number of ingredients in the wine, including what? Honey, terebin thresin, cedar oil, sipperis, which is a wild grass, juniper, mint, myrtle, cinnamon. And what the scientists are saying is, for this to be the ingredient in their wine back in those days, long before all the technology we have today to produce orchards and so on, it was an incredibly lush, fertile land in the climate in those days, exactly like the Bible says here.

But the spies go on, Numbers 1328. "However, the people who dwell in the land are strong." This is still gathering information. These are all facts. "And the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there, the Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country, and the Canaanites and the most feared and dreaded enemy of all, the Cellulites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan." You've heard of them, probably. Scary people. And the parasites and all the rest lived there. So the point is this. The spies size up the situation.

And watch this now. All 12 spies agreed on those facts I have just read. But then, number two, see the difference between facts and analysis. See the difference between facts and analysis of the facts. Do you know the difference? Some of you know that before I was in ministry full-time, I was in broadcasting and worked at a number of radio stations, mostly in Portland and San Jose and Tahoe and just around. And years ago now, when I was in broadcast journalism classes at San Jose State University, one of our teachers who was teaching an investigative journalism class did an interesting exercise.

He would put on an overhead projector, do you remember those overhead projectors? Ancient technology. Canaanite era technology, but we used to use these. And he would put up sheets of paper that had just all kinds of random facts, just random facts about some event. A random quote and all kinds of different times and dates and weights, just random facts. And he would say, "You have three minutes to write a coherent story about these facts, and you can't include all of the facts. You have to pick and choose because you only have three minutes to write it. Go!" And he would put the sheet of paper up there and we would have to write three stories to just bang out a coherent thing about those facts.

And then he would say, "After three minutes, next, go!" And he would put some different facts up there. And we had to write story after story after story every three minutes another story. One thing it did was teach us how to write fast, which I'm still grateful for. But another thing it taught us was this. At the end of the class, he would get up and he would read just randomly selected stories that students in the class had written. And it was amazing how different the stories were, even though we were all writing about the same exact facts. And how some of the facts that he sprinkled throughout those random facts, like ten times that he did this, were connected to other facts. And some of the student reporters saw those connections and wrote a bigger story. And some of them never saw the bigger picture.

And he said, "What I'm trying to teach you is do not believe that when you're a newspaper reporter or a broadcast journalist, you are only reporting the facts." He says, "Nobody only reports the facts." He says, "You're writing a story." And he said, "Even if you're trying not to slant it," he told us, "by your editorial decisions, what facts to include, what facts not to include." What parts of a long quote to include, what parts to leave out. He said, "You are slanting the story." So he said, "Be a person of integrity and realize that and slant it in an accurate direction." It's an interesting class.

Why do I bring that up? You are an investigative journalist every day. And you are writing a story about your life. And based on what facts you choose to include in your story and what facts you leave out, based on what quotes you choose to emphasize and focus on and what quotes you don't, that changes the slant of your story, the story you are writing about your marriage if you're married. The story you're writing about your children. The story you're writing about your future. The story you're writing about your relationship with God. So be careful. You will never objectively see the facts. You're writing a story. So what story are you writing? Is it a story that's consistent with the story the Bible tells?

You see, two people can see the same reality and write completely different reports. And we see that happening here in the story, verse 30. "But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, 'Let us go up at once and occupy the land, for we are well able to overcome it.'" But that's his conclusion. "Caleb and one other spy," we read, "Joshua." Those two said, "Let's go." Next verse. "Then the men who had gone up with him, the other ten spies who saw the exact same thing as Caleb and Joshua, said, 'No, we are not able to go up against the people, for they're stronger than we are.'" And so they spread to the people of Israel, "A what?" "A bad report." And let me just stop there for just a second and ask you, are you a bad report spreader?

Do the facts you choose to emphasize always spread a bad report through social media? Through your conversations? Every time? You know, somebody comes up and says, "How are your holidays?" "Oh, they were terrible and the traffic was awful and we missed a flight, we had to reschedule and there were four screaming babies on my flight when we got there and my family drove me crazy and I couldn't get anything I wanted." "I just thought to myself, 'I'm so glad for the holidays to be over and get back to work.'" "Oh, okay. How's work?" "Oh, work's terrible, the boss is getting my back and it's awful." Every single thing. You wonder why people aren't asking you, "How are you anymore?" You know? Last time they asked you, it took two hours and they had to get somewhere.

Now, I'm not saying you have to be cheerful all the time, that's not what I'm saying. Everybody has a right to a grumpy day. I'm saying habitually, are you a bad report spreader? Habitually. You say, "Well, there's bad news in my life. Do you know it's possible to spread a good report with bad news? Let me give you an example. When I was in Texas, I visited my Aunt Pia, here's a picture of me with Aunt Pia just a couple of weeks ago. That's the woman that I've told some of you about when my father died. I'll never forget her holding my young head in her hands and looking at me, even while she still is crying about my father's death.

And she says to me, "But René, you still have a good future." And she, I mean, I remember, I'm not even five years old, and I remember her saying, "You have a great purpose. God has such a destiny for you." When I look at you and I think of the things God is going to do through your life, oh, I almost have to cry. It's so amazing. You know, she said this stuff to me over and over again. And I had to kind of like pay a pilgrimage to her in the care home that she's living in in Austin. And I took her out to lunch with some friends of hers and just told her I couldn't, you know, keep a straight face, just bawling, telling her your words at a crucial juncture, a crucial border point in my life changed my life because she did not deny the bad news.

I saw her convulsed with grief over my father's death. She'd known him since junior high over in Switzerland. She didn't hide it, didn't sugarcoat it in any way, shape, or form. She said things just got a lot tougher, but God's got a great destiny for you. That is living with the bad news, but bringing a good report. That is what Caleb and Joshua do. It's going to be tough. There's fortified cities. There's strong people, but let's go. It's worth it. But look at this bad report. The other 10 spies, the land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. It's not just there are fortified cities. The land eats people up.

And all the people we saw there are of great height. We saw giants. Nephilim, the descendants of Anak came from the giants. We seem to ourselves like grasshoppers. All 12 spies saw the exact same facts, exact same evidence, exact same data, had the exact same experience. Exactly the same. Only two viewed it positively. Ten had this defeatist attitude. And you know what's interesting? I heard psychologists say that it's about a 2 to 10 ratio most people have between positive and negative thoughts. It's that bad. Most people. It's too positive to 10 negative. Same exact ratio here. But the point is, which voices are you listening to? Because the voices you listen to are going to determine whether or not you take a single step forward.

I heard somebody say something I thought was a great line. The news I receive is not as important as the report, I believe. And it's true. I'll give you an example. Do you remember Jamal Hashway? I'll show you a picture of Jamal. He was here just a few weeks ago when Mark preached a couple of weeks before Christmas. Jamal is a member of a church in Amman, Jordan where millions of Syrian and Iraqi refugees have just been pouring. And his little church there, I've been to his church, I visited it. His little church there saw these refugees just on their streets and went, "We've got to do something about this."

They started a health clinic for them. They started a soup kitchen for them. They started Bible studies for them. They started broadcasting programs for them on a little radio station that their church has. And they've seen amazing fruit come out of this. I asked Jamal when he was here, I said, "So Jamal, what's your take on the refugee crisis?" And Jamal told me three straight stories of people who have found salvation and hope in Jesus Christ as a result of being upended, as a result of being homeless refugees. But they've come into connection with other people who are believers and so they have found hope in Jesus Christ. And he was just brimming with, "God is using this. He's doing amazing things."

In fact, he said, "If you look at the spread of Christianity throughout history, it's almost always a part of a refugee crisis. Almost always." Jamal was not denying the bad news. He sees the same bad news you and I say. He knows it better than you and I know it. It's on his doorstep, literally. But he didn't, he saw the bad news, but he had a good report. And that's why his church has the motivation to go forward. And that's why you have to, number three, stay focused on God's power and not your own strength. Otherwise, you'll be saying, "I'm like a grasshopper in my own sight." No, stay focused on God's power. God's power, not your power. Otherwise, you'll panic.

You know, last year, we were in Israel and one of the places we visited was the Dead Sea. I want to show you a picture of it. The Dead Sea is an amazing place because you can float in the Dead Sea without even trying. This guy, it looks like he's like in three inches of water, right? And he's just sitting on sand. No, he's in ten feet of water. That's how you float. You float like a little water bug or something on the Dead Sea. It's incredible. We don't experience it. We don't have anything like it here. You can literally stand in the water without your feet touching. It is impossible to sink.

You know something else that's weird about the Dead Sea? There's lifeguards at the Dead Sea. Lifeguards at a sea where you cannot sink. A friend of mine, Manny Fernandez, asked one of them one time, "Do you guys have like the most boring job in the world?" You know. And it's interesting. He said, "Actually, we have two to three rescues every month and some of them drown." And Manny said, "That's incredible. How could that possibly happen?" And the lifeguard said three words. He said, "Panic kills them." Panic kills them. He said, "They're not used to it." And all of a sudden, they panic and they think they're sinking even though it's impossible. And he said, "It's kind of gross." But he said, "They flip over and they drown while they're floating face down." Panic kills them.

And here's the thing. You and I are promised, scripturally, we're going to float. God's going to work all things together for the good. It's a promise. But panic can kill us. That's what happened to the Israelites here in Numbers 14. Look at verse 1. So, here, they're panicking. "All the congregation lifted up their voices and cried. And all the people wept that night and all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron. It's their fault. Play them out on our leaders. And the whole congregation said to them, 'If only we died in the land of Egypt or if only we died in the wilderness.'" What's incredible is, had they encountered one difficulty yet in the land of Canaan? Not one.

This is all, all this panic is a result of a bad report. That's it. It's just a reaction to the news. One of the things that shows me is that people have an expectation that if they're going God's direction, everything's going to be easy. That's not true. You and I don't have a, this is not our, we think, this is our option. We think our options are a life with stress if we're sinful and a life without stress if we follow God. You know what your options actually are? A life with stress if you're sinful and a life with stress if you follow God. Those are your options. There's stress in the wilderness. And there was stress going into the promised land. There were fortified cities. There were challenges ahead. The difference is the stress in the wilderness gets you nowhere. And the stress when you're going God's direction gets you somewhere.

My wife is leaving tomorrow on our India mission trip with our dental team. They've had one stress after another heading into this. All kinds of difficulties. That doesn't mean they're out of the will of God. It just means it's like going to the promised land. There's fortified cities. There's giants to conquer. But you know you're going the right direction. What are you going to do? Sit around in the wilderness and have stress for no reason? And this is what Joshua and Caleb try to tell them. They said to all the congregations of the people of Israel, the land which we pass through to spy it out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, He will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land that flows with milk and honey.

Notice they did not say, "We can do it. Yes we can. Moses, Moses, He's our man, right?" They said, "Who can do it? God can do it." They also didn't say, "There's no giants. There's no fortified cities. Nothing bad could possibly happen." They saw the size of the difficulties, but they also saw the size of their God. They said, "He will bring us into the land." Think of this. Think of the giant that you're facing right now. Just finish this sentence. The giant I am facing right now is, just finish that sentence in your head. Well, the following sentence is always true, but God is greater. See, this isn't a story about positive thinking. This is a story about positive faith.

Did you know over 170 times in the Bible, God promises the children of Israel, "I am going to give you this land." This is not about Joshua and Caleb thinking they're awesome. They're great soldiers. This is about Joshua and Caleb simply trusting in what God already did for them and trusting in the promises of God. And that becomes really clear here. Don't miss this last verse. Caleb says, "Only don't rebel against the Lord. Don't fear the people of the land for their bread for us. Their protection is removed from them. And the Lord is what? With us. So do not what? Fear them." Wait a second. Did you just notice something here? Did you notice that he kind of equates rebelling against the Lord with fearing the people?

Now, how is fear a rebellion against God? Well, the people feared because they forgot the miracle of their own deliverance. They thought that the Promised Land was all up to them in their own effort. They forgot the miracle of their own salvation. So what about you and me? Have you forgotten the miracle of your salvation? It's so easy to do, to stop being gospel-focused and to think it's all about my own effort. But when you remember, God set me free with the ultimate Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ. And if he set me free from Egypt, he's not going to abandon me on the border of Canaan. If he gave me his own son, how will he not also gladly give me all things?

Really what it comes down to, we say this a lot here, what it comes down to is this. Preach the gospel to yourself daily. Don't forget that God loves you. God is gracious to you. God is with you. God has saved you. Jesus died on the cross for you and Jesus rose again and he's with you now. How does this make a difference when it comes to overcoming fear? One of my kind of role models as a pastor is a guy named Tim Keller in New York City. Tim's an amazing speaker and I can hardly believe it when he says he struggles with fear. Like when he goes to speak to groups. And so he keeps a little card with him at all times that he reads when he's afraid of an opportunity like that.

And I put his card right here on a box on page three of your notes. I'll put it on the screen too. He reads this to himself. He says, "Do I live by my performance or by the grace of Jesus Christ?" What if God is calling me to fail anyway? So what? I have his love, I have his kindness, and if I fail, he will only use this failure to prepare me for something that is better. My worthiness is not found in my success. The reason I'm scared is because I'm holding on to an imaginary life raft. Jesus is my security. So I don't have to worry about failure here. I love that.

You see, here's the big idea. You got to see bad news in light of the good news. See bad news in light of the gospel. God is gracious to you. God loves you so much you can't even conceive it. And God has prepared a way for you. And so he is not going to abandon you now. You can go forward in life with confidence. And as Tim Keller said there, "Even if you fail, he will use your failure to build Christlike character in you." So go forward. I want to wrap up with that verse that we started with, where it says, "They do not fear bad news." You know, let me just point something out about this verse. I wish it said, "They do not have bad news." Can we just come up with a new translation of Psalm 112? And have it say, "The righteous will never be shaken because they don't have bad news." It doesn't say that. But it says, "They don't fear it." Why? Here's the key to greater courage. They confidently trust the Lord to care for them.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this promise in Scripture. And God, I just think of the people 40 years later, finally going into the land with a shout and the walls of Jericho just tumbling down. And God, I pray that you would help people move forward into that future in their own lives too. I know all over this room there's people facing huge problems, huge worries, huge challenges. Or fearing bad news that might happen. Help us instead to confidently trust in you. And Father, I think that some for the first time right now may want to say, "I confidently trust in you." Kind of officially step over the line. I just pray they'd say in their hearts, "God, I believe this. I believe it. I don't understand it all, but in my heart I believe what Jesus did on the cross because of your love for me. And I believe that Jesus rose again to empower me. Help me to grow in confidence now and to confidently trust in you, my Lord, to care for me." In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.