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Comfort for a Tough Mothers Day

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Comfort for a Tough Mothers Day. He will be reading out of Psalm 27:1-9.

But if you’re a mom and a dad, one of the great tools you have is to pray with your children. And if you want to have an impact upon the life of your children, is you pray with them. And no matter how young they are, no matter how old they are, you keep praying with your children.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders welcoming you to the Hope Worth Having program, and we welcome you on this Mother’s Day. Today we’re going to be in the book of Psalm, chapter 27, verses 1 through 9. And we’re going to talk about comfort for a tough Mother’s Day.

You know, Mother’s Day can be bittersweet, but we want to comfort you with the Word of God and we want to help you to know that the Lord loves you and He is ready to embrace you as you strive to honor Him.

So let’s get into the Bible, Psalm 27. Well, Mother’s Day is always a special day and a wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate motherhood, an opportunity to give thanks for our moms and those who have specifically influenced our lives.

We think about how important our mothers have been in our lives and the way that they have influenced us and touched our lives. It certainly is a meaningful time to be able to take just one day, certainly, to say, mom, we love you and we appreciate you.

But I also want you to remember that Mother’s Day is not always a celebration. Many of us may be saddened as we remember our mothers who are in heaven today. We miss them because of their great love and the significance of their life and influence upon our life.

It’s a difficult day and we understand that moms also have children in heaven. And on this day, it’s specific. brought to your mind again, that your child is not with you. And so I thought it would be good today to just share from Psalm 27.

And I simply titled the message, comfort for a tough mother’s day. I want us to remember as a church that those who are hurting and those who might be struggling this mother’s day. And really no matter who you are and no matter what walk of life you’re in and what you may be facing and dealing with and all that you encounter from day to day.

Psalm 27 stands out in the book of Psalms as a book that offers each one of us comfort and hope. So as we begin to look at this passage I want you to note with me beginning in verse 1, the scripture says the Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid when the wicked come against me to eat up my flesh my enemies and foes they stumbled and fell though an army may encamp against me. My heart shall not fear the war may rise against me in this I will be confident one thing I have desired of the lord. That will I think that I may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the lord and to inquire in his temple for in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion in his secret place of his tabernacle. He shall hide me He shall set me high upon a rock and now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in his tabernacle I will sing yes I will sing praises to the lord here oh lord when I cry with my voice have mercy also upon me and answer me when you said seek my face my heart said to you your face lord will I seek do not hide your face from me do not turn your servant away in anger you have been my help do not leave me nor forsake me oh god of my salvation would my father and my mother forsake me then the lord will take care of me teach me your way oh lord and lead me in a smooth path because of my enemies do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries for false witnesses have risen against me and such as breathe out violence I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living wait on the lord be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart wait I say on the lord may the lord bless the reading of His word to each of our hearts and to our minds.

And this morning I’d like to present you with four comforting truths from this passage. But I hope we’ll bless you, sustain you, and encourage you not only on this day but in the days that are ahead as you face each and every day that the Lord blesses you with.

Number one, let’s remember that we are offered the Lord’s salvation and strength. Right out of the gate, the Psalmist says, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life.

Whom shall I be afraid? Do you see that God is our light? God is our light and in times of darkness God is our light. He is the one that is guiding each and every one of us. God is the true source of all light in this world and we cannot see without His light, sometimes we struggle why people do not see and understand simple, common sense truths.

Why they can’t grasp it, and I believe it’s because they have been blinded by the world and they are living in darkness. But those who have God in their life, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they recognize that God is our light.

He is the one that awakens us and helps us to see all that is true and all that is right. The psalmist said in Psalm 36 .9, For with you is the fountain of life. In your light do we see light. I cannot see all that I need to see without the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In other words, God is the light that illuminates every other source of light, not only in this universe but in my spiritual life. He is the one who helps me to see the truth and to believe the truth and to know the truth.

The scripture says that Jesus declared, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of light. Now sometimes we allow the darkness of this world to come into our lives, even though we are people of light and we have the light and we live in the light and we have been awakened to see the truth.

But we allow sometimes in our own weaknesses and our own flesh to let the darkness come in. We believe things that are not true. We sometimes see from the perspective of the world instead of the perspective of the scriptures and God’s perspective.

That’s why the psalmist reminds us that the Lord is my light and my salvation. And so the conclusion is that if the Lord is your light and he is your salvation, whom shall I fear? There’s no need for us to be fearful people.

We can overcome fear, we can have courage, as we are living in the light of God’s truth. God is our light. We don’t have to be a people that are afraid of our circumstances, or all that might be happening in this world.

We can be people who are confident and courageous because we have the light of the Lord Jesus Christ living in us. He not only teaches us that God is our light, but He is our strength. He teaches us that God is our strength.

He says, the Lord is the strength of my life. Whom shall I be afraid? If the Lord is your light and He is your salvation, and He is your strength, again, the conclusion is, whom shall I be afraid? Is there any reason for us to be afraid if God is our strength?

When the apostle Paul was praying for the believers at Ephesus, His prayer was simply this in Ephesians 3, 16, that He, referring to God, would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.

That’s a beautiful prayer that we can all pray for our children, that we can pray for our grandchildren, that we can pray for other people in our lives, but certainly a prayer that we can pray for ourselves as we seek God, that He would strengthen us through His Spirit, that we would experience the true strength of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the one that we lean upon when we’re tired. He is the one that we lean upon when we feel spiritually weary. He is the one we lean upon when the fears and anxieties of the world are creeping into our life and strangling life very much out of us.

He is our strength. The psalmist had problems. You and I have problems, but the psalmist learned that every insecurity could be offset by one factor, and that was that Jesus Christ, God Himself, was His light, His salvation, and His strength.

The reason that I have to keep coming back to the Bible, the reason that I have to keep assembling together as believers, the reason that I have to hang around good and godly people is because I need to be reminded over and over that God is my light, and God is my strength.

For left to myself, I would deceive myself, and I would be finding myself scared, running from all the problems of this world. Be encouraged today knowing that our God is offering salvation to all who believe in Him, and He is offering strength to all who rest upon Him.

The Scripture says again in Psalm 56, verse 11 in God. I have put my trust. I will not be afraid. What can men do to me? May each of us resolve today to not be afraid when we are surrounded by problems or we are uncertain about the future.

Perhaps there are things that are unknown that we cannot explain or we do not know how they’re going to work out, but we know that God is in control of the future and He is our strength and He is not going to forsake us, but He is going to continue to encourage us.

The second great truth that I want you to see in this passage is that we are safe in the Lord’s dwelling. We are safe in the Lord’s dwelling. We come again to verse four and the psalmist says, one thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Why? To inquire. in his temple. When the psalmist uses the word inquire there, he’s talking about investigating, learning, and trying to study. He wants to learn about God. He wants to behold God. He wants to see God in all of his beauty and all of his greatness.

He wants to see God in his transcendency, and he wants to learn more and more about who God is and how great God is. And friends, as you and I learn more and more about God, one thing is for sure, we are going to recognize that we are safe in this great and almighty God presence.

This is what the psalmist desired, that he would dwell in the presence of God, that he would be able to live in that presence. Sometimes you and I remember as children that when there were storms that we would want to run to our parents, maybe we would want to run to our dad or our mom, and we want to be safe, and just being there in their presence helped us to be safe.

And you know today, friends, I want you to know that when you are having problems and struggles that you can run to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can be in God’s presence, and you can know that you are safe as you are dwelling with hell.

Now the psalmist expresses great confidence in this chapter. He continues to reiterate his confidence in God and the strength and knowing that God will provide for him. Look at verse 5, for in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion, in the secret place of his tabernacle, he shall hide me, he shall set me high upon a rock, hiding him from his enemies, hiding him from those who desire to destroy his life, protecting him.

But this confidence is rooted and based upon his closeness to the Lord. That’s the key to the Christian life, that as we draw close to Christ, Christ, as we draw closer and closer to Him, we become more confident, more secure, more safe, as we experience the presence of God in our life.

What I want you to note is that the Scriptures teach us that God is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere at the same time. There’s nowhere that you and I can go that God is not there. And so we have that confidence, we have that truth, we have that knowledge, but not everybody, not every believer always experiences the manifestation of God’s presence.

And the reason is they always don’t sense the presence of God, they don’t always experience the presence of God because they are not walking with God as close as they should be. The psalmist says here, the one thing that I’ve desired of the Lord, that I will see that I may dwell in the house of the Lord.

When the Jewish people would gather into their temples, it was a place of consecration. It was a place of confession. It was a place of commitment from their hearts. It was a place to experience the presence of God in their life.

But here’s what I want you to know. What is unique in the New Testament is we have the Spirit of God living in us, and the Bible tells us that we are the temples of God, that our very body is the temple of God, and therefore we can experience the constant presence of God in our life as we are walking through this journey of faith that God has called us to be in.

And how do we do that? We do that by spending time with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The secret to experience the presence of God is delighting in communion with God, is to have that desire in your heart, that passion, and if that is waning in your life in these times, if you have found yourself distancing yourself from God and maybe drawing away from God, I want to encourage you to seek God and to ask Him to put in your heart a desire that you would be like the Psalmist who says, the one thing that I desire is that I will seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Now I want you to note there in verse 6, as we see, that not only in drawing close to God, we have the confidence of His protection and His safety, but look at this in verse 6, and now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me.

Because the Apostle Paul tells us that we are more than conquerors, we are victorious Christians, we do not walk around moping because there are problems in this life. We do not walk around the Christian life with our head down and we’re just kind of stooped over and we are defeated and discouraged.

No, my friends, that’s not the image that God wants us to have. He wants us to lift our heads up. He is the lifter up of our head. We do not lift up our head because of ourselves. We do not lift our heads up because somehow we’re better or stronger than others, but rather we lift our heads up because we know the Lord Jesus Christ, and we know that we’re under his sovereign care, and we know that he’s got this, and we know that he’s going to take care of us.

And no matter what happens in this world, we are confident that our God is in charge and in control. When you, as a believer, walk with your head down, you are sending a message to this world that our God cannot handle our problem.

You are saying to the world, don’t come to my Jesus because he cannot handle change and conflict and circumstances that seem so heavy. No, my friends, we have a savior that went to the cross. and he won the victory on the cross.

And he is alive today. He conquered death, he conquered sin, he conquered hell. He is alive today interceding at the right hand of the Father for you and I. And we are a people of victory. We are a people that should express joy.

We are people who are living in hope and in the comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we refuse to retreat. We refuse to go backwards. We refuse to give up. We keep marching forward for the Lord Jesus Christ because we trust in the Lord.

The scripture says in Psalm 33, you Lord are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts my head. Be a people of victory. We also want to learn out of this passage that we are received into the family of God.

We are received into the Lord’s family. We come down to the next section of chapter 27 and I want you to note in verse 10, he says, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.

Here the Psalmist is saying that even if my own family rejects me, even if my own family wants nothing to do with me, I am in the family of God. And listen, friends, we live in some unique times and sometimes that are difficult to really comprehend.

Friends, listen to me. You always have the Lord. I want you to be encouraged in knowing that even if you find yourself estranged from family, you are received into the family of God and that God is watching over you.

And the invitation to each of us as we back up into verse eight is that we would seek his faith. Now, whenever the Bible invites us to seek the face of God, it is inviting us to seek his favor and his blessings in our life.

That is that we are seeking the favor of God, that he would show blessings upon us and that he would… would pour His grace upon our lives. Now how do we do that? The scripture says that the Psalmist said, when you said, seek my face, my heart said to you, your face Lord, I will seek.

How do you do that? How do you seek the favor of God? How do you seek the blessings of God in your life? I think it begins with prayer. It begins with prayer. That we are called to be a prayerful people.

The Bible tells us, Jesus said, to knock and it shall be open, seek and you will find. He tells us that we are to ask and we shall receive. We are continually over and over. We are pursuing God through our prayer life.

It’s easy to get busy and forget. We need to take time in the morning to seek God. We need to conclude our day in seeking God. We need to continue to seek His favor upon our family and upon our lives.

And upon our community, we continue to seek God. We need prevailing prayer. Our most powerful tool for overcoming insecurities in our life is prayer. Remember what the scripture says in Philippians 4 -6, be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God and the God of peace shall guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re losing your mind, friends, you seek God through prayer. Because God says, if you’ll seek me in prayer, if you’ll bring your anxieties, if you’ll bring your cares, if you’ll bring your worries, if you’ll bring your problems to me and while you’re doing it, bring them with thanksgiving in your heart.

And he says, bring every request, small or big, no limitation on what we can bring to God. Bring every prayer request to God. And here’s what the Bible says, he will guard your heart and your mind through Christ Jesus.

There are times we feel like we’re losing it, don’t we? But here’s the key, it is prayer. Let me tell you a powerful tool in your life, you may not realize it. But if you’re a mom and a dad, one of the great tools you have is to pray with your children.

And if you wanna have an impact upon the life of your children as you pray with them, and no matter how young they are, no matter how old they are, you keep praying with your children. And you keep seeking God and you keep showing that example to them because you pray God’s favor and you pray God’s blessing over them.

And in front of the great joys of my life as a father is to even now as my children are in their adulthood is to just to pray over them, God’s favor and God’s blessing, why? That’s what I seek. I am seeking God through prayer, I am seeking his face, I am seeking his face, not only for my own life, but for the life of my children.

And may each of us, recognize that we must spend more time and take advantage of this great tool that God is giving us because through prayer He’s giving us guidance. He is drawing us close to Him and He is delivering us from the stresses of this world.

Be assured of this, that God hears the prayers of His people. He hears the prayers of His people. I want you to notice the final truth that I want to share with you in this passage in verse 13 is that we will see the goodness of the Lord in this lifetime.

Note again He says, I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. See, it was the goodness of God that sustained the psalmist. It was the goodness of God that reminded the psalmist to stay in courage, to not give up.

And this goodness was not only going to be expressed in that who God is, but it would be manifested and experienced by the psalmist in the land of the living, meaning in his current life. The Bible teaches us that God is good, even during our trials and our troubles.

God is good, the Scripture says in 1 Chronicles, O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good for His mercy endureth forever. God is the very essence of goodness. He is good in and of Himself. God is not just the greatest of all other beings.

He is the best. He is the supreme. He is God Himself, and all goodness emanates from God Himself. That’s why the Bible tells us that every good gift comes from above, because our God is a good God. And the psalmist said that he wanted to experience the goodness of God in the land of the living.

The psalmist said in Psalm 34, verse 8, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. So how does God reveal His goodness to us in this land of living that we are in?

Well three things real quickly, and I’ll go through them real fast. But number one, just through natural blessings that we see all around us. All the blessings. We look out and we see the beautiful mountains.

There was just a great sun setting yesterday, even though we had rain and we love rain, but just so much beauty, so much natural beauty here in this area as you travel the country, you can see beauty.

And when you travel the world, you can see the beauty of the Lord in different places. And this is something that we should continue to bring to our mind as we see the beauty, the natural blessings that are all around us, that we should continue to give God praise and glory.

and ascribe to Him all the greatness that He deserves, for He is worthy because He is the artist of this beautiful landscape that you and I enjoy that we get to see. How does God show and reveal His goodness to you?

Number two, by His kind interventions in your life. How many times has God intervened and shown kindness? You and I probably deserved to be dealt harshly with, but God was kind to us. Maybe there are times that we have failed and fumbled, but God just would not give up on us.

His love continuing to pursue us, and maybe we should have been left to the sidelines, but God kept drawing us and reaching out to us, and His kind interventions in our life, His divine appointments that He put into our life that He might continue to reach us for His glory and that we might experience the true salvation that is only found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are kind interventions. Sometimes they’re very small. Sometimes they are subtle, but they are an expression of God’s goodness to each and every one of us. And let us not overlook these little things that God does in our hearts and in our lives and that we have these opportunities to see the goodness of God manifested in our life.

Perhaps the supreme way that God reveals His goodness to us is through His Son, Jesus Christ. God has revealed His goodness to us because Jesus is God’s goodness in the flesh. And you and I have the wonderful opportunity to come to Christ, to receive Him, and to know His forgiveness, and to experience His grace in our life.

And when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, He changes us, the Bible says, He makes us a new creation and all things pass away and behold, all things become new. Isn’t that the goodness of God? All of a sudden, everything looks different.

All of a sudden, everything’s so beautiful because when Christ comes into your life, He recreates you. He once again brings you back in alignment with the beautiful image of God that we are created in, that sin has marred and destroyed.

But now through Christ, we can experience His goodness in our life as we put our trust and our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are gonna face problems in this world and the Christian has two options at every point along the way.

We can despair or we can depend upon Christ. We can worry or we can worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We can give up or we can look up to our Savior who is Lord Jesus Christ. the lifter up of our head. We can bear it ourselves or we can cast all of our cares upon the Lord Jesus Christ because He cares for us.

So church I say to you today take heart, be encouraged, and enjoy the goodness of God in the land of the living and wait on the Lord and be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Well hopefully every mom has been comforted and encouraged through this message. As we come to the Word of God we pray that He will uphold you and encourage you for the days that are ahead for the journey that He has you on.

We encourage you to make sure that you are checking out our website Hopeworthhaving .com. Hit the button newsletter and you can pick which one you’d like to read and you can take time to read through them on a regular basis.

It’s been good to be able to be with you on Mom’s Day and we hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. So, this is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.

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