When You Can’t Take It Anymore | David Jeremiah | Psalm 107

what's the choir let men praise God and

when

you're in a storm and you come out of the storm what do you do you praise God it's really important to include other people in your phrasing the last two celebrations tell us that we should Wouldn't it just be enough thank God silently in prophecy and the sincerity of your own heart? Well, we've had a good experiment where right here in this building, is it okay to praise God if we didn't have great worship and praise tonight? Yes, it was incredible but there was no choir and there was no receptive congregation and it is totally empty all I see

when

I look further into this auditorium is darkness what is missing in the praise of God right now are the people who do the praises that you say well I'm worshiping at home but I can't hear you and that's when we can hear each other when we gather and worship that's what we long for that's what we're missing that's why we can't wait to get back to church so we can be with others who are believers so we can join our voices and praise the Lord.

I hear people say and I have heard them say this. I really don't need to worship God in church. I can adore him. Likewise, working alone in my garden on a Sunday morning or in my lake cabin sounds convenient, but it's not very biblical. Throughout the Scriptures we are told to gather together in assembly for the joy of God, so if you are sitting there listening to this message and making all your plans for a new time in your worship of God and you have just decided, you know, this is great. I have my coffee in my hands.

I didn't have to dress up. I didn't have to go out on the road I didn't have to look for a parking spot I'm Wersching God at home you can do that but you're outside of God's will God's will is for you to be with God's people worshiping together in the presence of the elders says that is what we are where the teachers were the elders you are supposed to come and worship God in our presence that is to say the leaders and praise God and when we do that together we become something much greater than we could be by ourselves together we offer a completely different kind of worship than we offer when we are alone together we are the living body of Christ oh how I want to urge you if you are ready to do it right away don't lose the motivation to go and it doesn't have to be this church maybe go to another church don't get into a situation where you will feel comfortable outside the community it's not God's will for you that's not David Jeremiah I'm not begging you to come back because I want to see these seats filled even though I do I tell you what the Bible says, do not stop meeting together so that I am looking for you.

I will be watching over you when the time comes for you to return to church. I have been a pastor here at Shadow Mountain Community Church for almost four decades, but in the first few years of my time here I held two jobs. Not only was I the pastor of the church but I was the president of Christian Heritage College. I had a strong feeling that God was leading and filling both positions, but I never saw the approaching storm front during one particular summer in college. I had run out of resources, tuition money had run out and existing funds were insufficient to get us through the fall, the church had assured us, but now those resources were no longer available, the church had simply given everything it could. give and almost every week I went.

At meetings where we were agonizing over what to do slowly but surely, we were getting closer to the idea of ​​simply closing the university's doors, we even met with another Christian university to explore the possibility of a merger and I remember wondering if this was what God I had on my mind but I couldn't feel peace about it one day I was overcome by the feeling of the storm raging around me I felt like the waves were breaking over us and that we were drowning in the waves and I didn't know what to do. To do this, I gathered our senior staff and we all traveled to a local Christian camp called Pine Valley Bible Camp.

It was empty. The care

take

rs allowed us to use one of their conference rooms. A group gathered around a table to pray, but I still felt a deep feeling. of despair and hopelessness without options, I mean, we had tried everything, we have exhausted all options, we knew that our prayers were not being answered or so it seemed, we had tried everything we could think of to try and I remember at that moment I reached to Psalm 107. and reading it to the group was the storm, what I felt during a storm reminded me of the images of Psalm 107, so we sat in the conference room at Pine Valley, I opened my Bible and read the

psalm

we have studied.

In this service I told the senior staff that there is one crucial thing that we can never forget together. We have chosen to do business in the big waters in the deep waters. Not many churches have schools, but we have several. We have a preschool and three elementary schools. high school a high school and a university we have followed them out of obedience to God's leadership it is not supposed to be easy we have thrown ourselves into the deep end and we should not be surprised to find ourselves caught in the storm we talked about the challenge at hand and I returned to the theme of the

psalm

and said, men, what we have to do is cry out to the Lord.

I remember telling them that when I had cancer I had gone to the Brooklyn Tabernacle and people would come up to me at the Brooklyn Tabernacle   and he told me all the dr. Jeremiah we cry out to the Lord for you I had never heard anyone use that term before that's how they described the intensity of their prayer that's what the psalmist says they did they cried out to God I said man we have to ask God to move in the middle of this situation and do something that only he can do. I have never experienced many events like the one I am about to describe and I will never, ever forget what happened.

We began to pray around the table with great intensity. emotions and sincere tears it was one of those powerful spiritually charged atmospheres that arise when needy Christians are serious about seeking God's deliverance pleading tears and there was a knock on the door it was the owner of the camp she told me to come out I went out to the hallway and got up from the prayer meeting. I went out into the hallway and she told me: you have to call your office. I didn't have a phone and there was a pay phone on that campus and I found the pay phone and I called my secretary at the church and she said are you sitting down?

I told her no, I'm in a public phone booth, I can't sit down, she says, well if you can't sit down, wait and this is what she told me. She said the women in the college mailroom had been routinely opening mail and came across a strange envelope that contained no letter, no letter, but it did have a check and the check was for half a million dollars. . I don't think so, I know she should have because she had just asked for it. I returned to the meeting with my eyes full of tears and everyone was anxious, they wanted me to tell them who had died, they thought they had been called because someone in the church had died.

I said no one has died. Let me tell you what happened. We have been sitting here in this room in the middle of a storm and we have been crying out to God for His help and He heard us and He came to us in their problem and took us to a place of peace to say we began to praise God . It would be a euphemism. I'm glad you couldn't see what we did when you came out of a storm where all seems lost and God does something magnificent worship is unforgettable that's known as a happy ending and I wonder if you still have doubts that your story will have such a Maybe the storm rages for you as you read these words and listen to me tell you.

Maybe you are lost in a desert of shattered hopes or locked in a prison of debt, maybe you are facing a hospital ward full of health worries or family problems and you feel like you will be lost forever, wherever you are, whatever the crisis. There is an important principle at play here: if you feel helpless, you have just become eligible for God's help, you only need to cry out for salvation from him and he will do the rest and do it well, and when the storm comes. finished you will be a new person, wiser, stronger, ready to serve him, the sea will be calm, the breeze will be soft and the silence will be presented as a sanctuary for you to exalt his name and sing his glorious praises if he can control the storm .

What other wonderful works could be done in your life with that exciting thought that you will throw away and jump into deep waters and see God work in your life, but you say dr. Jeremiah I don't know God I know about him I hear you talk about him Sometimes I look at you and I hear you talk about God but I don't know him well that's where the journey begins let me tell you what I do know that you don't I don't want to go into a storm without God, I just don't want to do that.

Some of you are trying to negotiate that right now and would say a big amen if you could. Let me tell you how you can bring God first. everything in your life and then know that wherever you end up, if it is in a storm, he will be with you and will never abandon you. The Bible says you come to God through Jesus Christ. His son John tells us that there is no other way to God except through Jesus Christ, he is the way, the truth and the life, so if you want to have God in your life you have to accept Jesus Christ his son as your Savior and the son of God Jesus Christ came to this world for you and for me he went to the cross of Calvary there he paid the debt for all our sins with his incredible death, infinite death in an infinite God and because he paid the debt for our sins we can be forgiven if only We ask so I would like to lead in a prayer at the end of the service in which you can ask God to come into your life Jesus Christ to be your savior when you make that decision it will change your life you will remember it as the most important thing you have ever done I have done and I want to encourage you to do it now, dear God, in Australia, in Ireland, in Brazil, in Great Britain, in almost every state in the United States, there are congregations gathered throughout the wide spectrum of this world, people gathered together as we worship and there are some who have been brought to this moment so that they can find God through His Son Jesus Christ and Lord as you have brought them to that place and they have this willingness to make this decision help them with all their heart to seek you the forgiveness and the hope that you bring, so this is what I want you to do, just pray this prayer, dear God, I need you in my life.

I can't make the storm without you. I know and believe that Jesus Christ is your son and that he came into this world to pay the penalty for my sin so that I can be forgiven and so that I can be saved and so that I can be born again and come to know Jesus as my own Savior and Lord to May Lord Jesus come into my heart. and forgive me of my sin give me the gift of eternal life that you promised to all who ask you help me to live for you from this moment on help me find those who believe in you and grow with them in community in a church in a bible study lord I thank you for caring so much about me that you would give your life for me