"Though an army and camp against me, my heart shall not fear. The war rise against me, yet I will be confident. When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh." Here's the first thing that I want to say to you, and then we're going to look at the beginning of the Psalm. Oh, please hear me say this. Biblical faith never requires you to deny reality. You do not have to deny reality. If you have to establish momentary, personal hope by denying reality, you are not exorcizing biblical faith. What I love about the Bible is that it's shockingly honest and gloriously hopeful at the same time. And the honesty doesn't negate the hope and the hope doesn't diminish the honesty. There are stories so shocking and tawdry in the Bible if they were in a paperback book at your local CVS, you wouldn't pick it up. Now, why is that so? Because God wants you to understand that the deepest depths of the darkness of a fallen world are not deeper than His grace. And so He's going to stick fallenness in your face. I love what Corrie ten Boom said again and again. "There is no pit so deep that Jesus isn't deeper." Amen. Can I say this to you, ladies? Stop denying reality. Stop putting a saccharine smile on your face. Stop giving platitudinous answers to one another. Stop telling stories that make you look better than you actually are and make life look better than it actually is. Listen, Jesus doesn't need you to defend his reputation with your functional lies. That's not the gospel. If you're lying about your life, if you're real good at non-answers, it's not faith. It's shocking religious selfism. I'm sorry, but it's true. And I know because I'm good at that. I'm an expert at it. No one in this room is a better self-swindler than I am. Very honest. Some of trouble. But notice where it begins. This Psalm of trouble doesn't begin with trouble. "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?" Let me say it this way. And then I want to unpack this for you. Peace in times of trouble begins with rich scriptural theology. You are called by God to be a theologian. Everyone in this room is called to be a theologian. You must love, you must embrace, you must eat up, you must hug the theology of scripture. You must bask in it. The Lord is light. What is light in scripture? It's what's pure. It's what's holy. It's what's just. It's what's right. That in this world, there is one who is pure, one who is holy, one who is just, one who is right, who rules over all things. The Lord is salvation. In its broadest sense, what does that mean. In scripture, it means He is the one who delivers me from evil. All forms of evil, external and internal. There's deliverance from evil. Boy, there's one thing that I embraced as I watched my daughter struggle five days in. They kept upping her medication, trying to give her relief, and they OD'd her. And they called me. I went running down the hallway and they're reviving her. It's like you had no handholds. But I held onto the fact that there's salvation in my God. This kind of evil will end. Jesus will win. Yes. Amen. Amen. The Lord is stronghold. Stronghold is a safe place that I always have a place to run. There is in this world a place to run. Don't ever tell yourself there's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to run. There's a place to run. Now, you think that I've been giving you good theology. Well, you're wrong. I've been giving you disastrously bad theology. You confused? It's okay to admit that you're confused. I can see enough to see some of you. You look confused. Because I left out a word. I said, "The Lord is light. The Lord is salvation. The Lord is stronghold." That's bad theology. That's bad abstract academic theology. And we're good at that theology. Notice what David says. "The Lord is my light. The Lord is my salvation. The Lord is my stronghold." He's now depicting something awesome and glorious. This one who created it all, this one who rules it all, this one of holiness and glory has by grace now connected the awesomeness of His glory to me. That glory is mine. My light, my salvation, my stronghold, but by grace, I could have never earned it. I could have never achieved it. I didn't have the sins to desire it. I would have no power to acquire it. It's all of grace. Grace has connected me to light and salvation and stronghold.
Transcript: Session 3
WOMEN HELPING WOMEN
30
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