Faith for the Storm | Brad Leach

Well, it's so good to be back. If I haven't met you yet, my name is Brad Leach. I'm the lead pastor of City Life Church in Philadelphia, one of APC's church plants, and we have seen God do a lot over the last six weeks, haven't we? It's been a whirlwind, but being here again today, looking back, I just wanna celebrate the faithfulness of God. You don't always realize how faithful God is till your faith gets stretched to the limits, and our faith has been stretched by the loss of Pastor Jeff, but God has shown up in such a big, big way, and so I just wanna brag on you as a church. Thank you for serving. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being so resilient, and Pastor Joe and the entire staff and team, aren't you grateful for the leadership here at the church? You guys are amazing. You're doing such a good job, steady, and I had the opportunity to meet with the church's board yesterday morning, and looking at all of the reports, attendance and finances, and all of the different things that God's doing in the church, it's incredible to see how strong it is right now. Things are growing.

People are meeting Jesus and getting baptized. It's not surprising because a mark of really great leadership is that when a leader leaves a church or an organization, things actually continue moving forward, and Pastor Jeff was a great leader, and now we see that because the church is continuing to move forward with strength and momentum. Motion nights were so powerful even without the power. The power was here for motion nights. Kingdom Builders giving is way ahead of pace right now for this time of year, and so God is moving. Four years of faith, benchmarks are being set, a new building for the Butler campus, come on, this week, today, and two new church plants launching today, so God is just moving through your faithfulness, and so I just, I thank you. Thank you for leaning in, being resilient in this season, and you may be wondering about the future of the church, and I want you to know a lot is happening behind the scenes as it relates to the process of selecting a new lead pastor. The process that we are taking really just comes from the Constitution and the bylaws of the church, which gives a responsibility, first of all, to the overseer team. That's the team that I am a part of. It's a group of lead pastors that Pastor Jeff assembled to bring covering to the church,

and it's our responsibility on the overseer team to select a candidate to begin to interview a candidate, and then as there is agreement on that candidate through the interview process, it goes to the transition team, which is a group of leaders here in the church, and that is three of Allison Park Church's board members, together with the executive leadership team here at the church, who will interview that candidate, and then it ultimately goes from the transition team to the members of the church, and the members of the church will vote to select that new lead pastor, and the first thing that we have done is create a lead pastor profile, and so we have just prayerfully said, God, what is the kind of leader that you are looking to raise up to lead APC into the future? What are the qualities that we need? What are the gifts and the skills that we need? We've just looked at the principles and even the values that Pastor Jeff was using to inform his 10-year succession plan to really understand and apply those principles, and then as well, laying out the mission, the vision, the values of the church, because APC is a church with a strong identity that has a lot of momentum, and we're looking for somebody

who can carry the heart of the house that's already here, who can bring continuity of vision and lead it into the future, who has the gifts and the ability as a leader to build on the foundation that's been laid and see God do even greater things in the future to come through all of us, and so the best thing that you can do if you're wondering how to be a part, please, right now, just pray for the process. Pray for the overseers that God will give us wisdom. Pray for the transition team to have the gift of wisdom, the gift of discernment. Pray for the members to be spirit-led, because how many of you know, God already knows the person that he has tapped on the shoulder, that he's developing, that he's getting ready to lead this church forward, and so for us, it's just a discovery process. It's just God lead us to the person that you have chosen, that you have selected, and I know that he's gonna do that as we together pray and seek the face of God, and so will you do that with me? We'll trust God to lead us forward together, and as we kick off the message today, I wanna ask you a question. I'm gonna take a little informal survey, but I just want you to know this is a safe place

where confession is good for the soul, so here's my question. How many of you would say, I am a weather junkie? Anybody? You just have a little bit of an addiction to the weather app on your phone. Here's the survey. How many of you would say, I, already checked the forecast for tomorrow let me see your hand if you have already checked the forecast for tomorrow that's a lot of us that's okay that's reasonable now how many of you would say next weekend the egg hunt's coming you've already checked the forecast for next weekend hand back up okay i love it what about easter weekend two weeks out you've already checked anybody we got a few hands you've already checked easter weekend what about july 4th weekend anybody already checked july 4th weekend this is a place of healing and breakthrough here so you are you're okay you're in a good place but you know there was a time when there was no weather app that you could check to know what's the weather gonna be like next week you just had to go outside of your house and be surprised by whatever happened and today i want to tell you a story from the gospel of mark from jesus life and his disciples who sailed into some ugly weather and they were surprised by a really big storm and the story is in mark chapter 4 and we'll begin in verse 35 here's what the gospel writes on that day when evening had come he said to them let us go across to the other side and leaving the crowd they took him with them in the boat just as he was and other boats were with him so they left the crowd jesus got into the boat with his disciples i want to give you just an idea of this so you can picture it here is a boat we'll put a picture up on the screen that is called the galilee boat or famously known as the jesus boat you can actually see this boat in israel just next to the sea of galilee they found this in an archaeological dig in 1986 and we of course have no idea that jesus ever rode in this boat personally but it is typical of the kind of fishing and transportation vessel that was common in the first century at the time of jesus and so this is likely the kind of boat that they would have been in as they sailed out into the sea of galilee and you'll notice how shallow this boat is which is why they would really never sail out into the sea when a storm was brewing because the waves would just very

easily come over the shallow sides of the boat there was no really no way to empty the boat when that began to happen so it was very very dangerous and so think about 13 guys crammed into this little boat and they begin to sail across the sea of galilee and verse 37 tells us that a great wind storm arose and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling now this word great i want you to kind of make a mental note of that word this word is used three times here in this short story and the word translates literally into our word mega and so we're going to take note of each of those occurrences but the first is there's a great storm a mega storm and to give you some context for this here's another picture of the sea of galilee the sea of galilee is really fascinating topography it is the lowest body of water on planet earth in relationship to sea level it really is more of a lake it's about 13 miles long seven miles wide at its widest point 200 feet deep at its deepest point and because of its because it's so low and the surroundings of it are very high next to the sea of galilee is mount herman which is 9200 feet above sea level the hills of galilee also are next to it and then you have the desert and you have the mediterranean and so what happens is that the warm air comes in from the desert and the mediterranean and the cool air air comes down from the mount the mountains and the hills and the warm air and the cool air gets trapped down in this bowl that is the sea of galilee and it begins to swirl and as a result it can turn into tornado force winds it can just change on a dime and in this case luke tells us in his account of this story in luke chapter 8 that when they first set out to begin on the sea of galilee they were sailing which tells us that it was a very calm night at first but now that they're out there the weather changes and they are caught in this fierce storm the waves are coming into the boat they're afraid that they're going to capsize and i think this story is so relatable because we face storms in life you may never have experienced you know a hurricane on the water but in our lives storms come into our lives and here's what we learn if you face enough storms sudden storms make us feel like our lives are spinning out of control you maybe have experienced this where things begin to shake up and you can't stop it or bypass it or control it and there are times we're going through life and everything's going according to plan and we have the illusion of control we think that we're in control but then a storm comes and we realize we have very little control over our lives maybe you know what it's like like to go in for a doctor's appointment for, you think it's just gonna be a routine checkup

and she feels something that feels a little off and so she orders some tests and now over the next few weeks, your life, it feels like it's spinning out of control. Or to walk into your boss's office for what you thought was gonna be a routine review and he tells you that your job's being eliminated and now your finances, your career, all of that, your future, it feels like it's spinning out of control. There are all kinds of questions, it's chaotic. We experience that and when that begins to happen, how do you respond? It's fascinating to me in this story because Jesus and his disciples, they have opposite responses to the storm. Verse 38, we see first how Jesus responds but he was in the stern asleep on the cushion. This is amazing to me. Jesus is, I gotta imagine in the fetal position, there's not much room. I mean, they're crammed into this little boat and he's just a picture of peace, he's a picture of calm and rest. I mean, if you're God, you don't freak out in a storm. You know you've got more power than the storm but the disciples, they have the exact opposite response. Verse 38 says, they woke him and said to him, "'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' So Jesus is sleeping, his disciples are panicking and for a while, they were trying to handle things

on their own and they thought they had it under control. A lot of these guys grew up in the fishing business so I'm sure they've been in storms before. They're rowing harder and harder but they realize we have no control and now they're out of options so they turn to Jesus and they just shake him. You know, it's not this gentle nudge of just, hey Jesus, Jesus, wake up, how was your rest? No, they're freaking out. Jesus, don't you care we're about to die out here in this boat? Don't you care what's about to happen to us? And I don't know if you can relate to that. Have you ever felt like God was asleep on the job? You're going into a storm, your life is starting to spin out of control and saying, hello God, do you care, do you see? Are you taking a nap? And I love Jesus, I love, first of all, he doesn't even answer their question. He just flexes and out of all of the Jesus flexes in the gospel, this is one of my favorite. In verse 39, it says, he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. That's our second great, our second mega. It's a great storm and now a mega calm. Jesus wakes up and I don't know about you but when I wake up from a nap, I need a minute.

Give me a little space. I don't know if he stretches, if he has to wipe his eyes but he sees this storm that's raging and feels the anxiety of his disciples but he looks at the wind and he looks at the waves and he speaks a couple of words, peace, be still. And it's incredible, Mark actually says he rebuked the wind and the waves. It's the same word that when Jesus would speak to a demon and he would cast a demon out of somebody, he would look at the demon and say, be muzzled. It's the same word, he speaks to the storm, be muzzled, shut up, he rebukes it. And all of a sudden, this great, this mega calm, this mega peace comes over the waters and if you've ever been on the water in a storm, you know even after the wind dies down, the waves can still be choppy for a little while until they begin to calm as well but the peace here is so comprehensive that as soon as it takes place, the wind and the waves are totally still so calm you can see the reflection of your face in the surface of the water, unbelievable. And now Jesus has their undivided attention and look at what he says in verse 40. He said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? So what's this whole story about?

It's about faith, it's about the faith of the disciples, it's about your faith, it's about my faith, it's about our faith as a church. And I look back over the last four months or four weeks rather that may feel like they've been four months and what's God been speaking to this church about? I see this theme coming to the surface as God's just been speaking about faith and building our faith and teaching us to trust him and Johannes was here four weeks ago and gave a real prophetic promise that God was gonna give to APC a mighty spirit of faith. And then Greg Hubbard was here and challenged us to be faith responders. And last week, Pastor Kelly Brownlee encouraged us to express our faith. And so God has been speaking this consistent message to this church to walk with faith and to move into the future with faith. And Pastor Jeff gave us the vision, four years of faith. And this is a theme because God wants to build our faith and God wants to build your faith. He wants to increase your capacity to trust him because the truth is storms are coming. We're gonna walk through seasons where we don't have control of our lives and God wants to build our faith so that in those moments we can be confident in him. What is faith?

I wanna give you just a really simple definition today. Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Faith, it's trust, it's confidence in somebody, it's confidence in something. And you can know this, that all of us live with faith. You don't have to be a religious person to be a person of faith. All of us have trust in someone. We are trusting in something, even if it's our own work ethic, even if it's the story that our modern secular world is telling us. The story that our materialistic world is telling us that this modern world is telling us is that your life really has no purpose, that you and I are here because of billions of years of blind chance. Billions of years ago, there were some random chemical reactions that somehow sparked life and humans happened to evolve. And so we came from nothing in the end, we're gonna die and go back to nothing. We'll just become atoms floating around in the universe. We'll just go back to being nothing. Oh yeah, but also don't forget at the same time that you are incredibly special and everything should revolve around you. So you do you, boo. No wonder like we walk around

with some cognitive dissonance today, unsure of where our real value comes from and wondering where to find meaning in our lives because we're being told to believe this story, but then to believe that your life is meaningful and has purpose, you know what that requires? Taking a really massive leap of faith. That Cliff Connectal, he's an apologist and he outlines six miracles that you have to believe in in order to deny the existence of God. In order to deny God's existence, you gotta believe in these six miracles that number one, existence comes from non-existence, that order comes from chaos, that life comes from non-life, which by the way, there is no scientific evidence that that's possible, that life can come from non-life, that personal comes from non-personal, reason comes from non-reason, morality comes from matter. You know what, any of those six things would be if they happened, they would be a miracle. If you think about the order that exists within life, right now there are 37 sextillion biochemical reactions happening in your body every single second. If your double helix DNA that's in your body right now were stretched end to end, it would reach to the moon and back 150,000 times. Yet, every single cell in your body is ordered and structured in brilliant physiological systems that perfectly support life, perfectly support growth and movement.

You know what's happening inside your body right now? More than acid reflux. It's a miracle. A miracle is happening inside your body right now. What do we know about the universe? Astronomers estimate the existence of more than two trillion galaxies, only two of which are visible from the Northern Hemisphere, that's the Milky Way that we live in and Andromeda. Each of these two trillion galaxies have about 100 billion stars. How many stars is that? You can do the math if you can. I put it into my calculator and I think I broke my phone. The answer came back, it was like letters. And so, I don't know, it adds up, from what I understand, to 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe, which if you break it down, that's 25 trillion stars for every person alive on planet Earth today. And so, here's the problem if you're an atheist. If you deny the existence of God, you have to believe in the miraculous, yet you don't have a miracle worker. But here's what we all know. The evidence points to this. We know that life is a miracle. And if you look at this quote from Glenn Scribner, he says, Christians believe in the virgin birth of Christ, materialists believe in the virgin birth of the universe.

Choose your miracle. Are you gonna believe that nobody created everything from nothing for no reason, or that life was created by a creator who came here because he loves us and wants a relationship with you? And the purpose and the meaning and the value of your life is because you are a son, a daughter of a God who created you to have value, who's adopted you into his family, who gave his life for you. That's the true story. And so, as we come back to our story here in Mark, Jesus looks at these disciples who are freaking out, and he says, guys, don't you have confidence in me? After all of this time we've spent together, don't you? Don't you have faith that I'm gonna see you through this storm? Why wouldn't your assumption be that I do care? Why wouldn't your assumption be that I'm with you, that I love you, that I can take care of this? Where's your faith? And the question is, how do we build our faith so that when the storms of life, and they're gonna come, that when they come, our impulse isn't fear, it's faith. Our instinct is to trust God. I wanna ask you this question. Is your faith ready to face the storms of life? And if you're not sure, or you don't think so, I wanna close with these three thoughts.

How do you build a faith that can be sustained through the storm, that can sustain you through the storm? And right out of this story, I wanna just give you these three thoughts, and we'll close, but here's the first one. Build your faith on God's promises. Build your faith on his word. Build your faith on the promises that he's spoken into your life. At the beginning of the story, we actually read it in verse 35, there's a detail that is so subtle, you might miss it if you're not paying attention to it, but I wanna go back and I wanna read again what Jesus said at the very beginning of this journey. On that day, verse 35 says, when evening had come, he said to them, let us go across to the other side. You notice what he didn't say? Hey, let's get in this boat, we're gonna sail out into the middle of the Sea of Galilee, a big storm is coming, and that's gonna be the end of that. It's been a good run, you guys. No, he said, get in the boat, we are going to go to the other side. And God often speaks into our lives promises, he gives us a promise from his word, that often launches us into new journeys of faith, into new adventures of faith. But what can happen is that once we get out

into the middle of the story, into the middle of the chapter, into the middle of the journey and the lake, and the storm begins to come, and the wind is picking up speed, and the waves are coming in to the boat, and we start to lose control, that we begin to doubt in the dark what God spoke to us in the light. And you need to remember that if Jesus told you you're going over, guess what? You're not going under. And don't panic if it feels like God is silent. Because the truth is, he has already spoken. He has already spoken hundreds of promises, they have been bound, they have been recorded, they were passed down orally, in an oral culture for many, many years. Now they have been written down, they have been digitized even today in our generation, and those promises are for you and they are for me, and they speak to every kind of storm that you could go through in your life. There are promises, hundreds of them in God's word, that apply to your health, that apply to your job, that apply to your finances, promises that apply to your relationships, your family, your kids, promises that apply to your mental health, anxiety and depression,

and every single one of those promises, church family, they belong to you, they are part of your inheritance as a child of God. And so I wanna encourage you today, put your trust in God, stand on the firm foundation of his promises, get into his word, if you're going through a storm, let him speak to you, let him give you a word, let him give you a promise so that you can know, God, you're with me, you're in this, and even though this is out of my control, it's not out of your control. Here's one of the promises, the one who started the good work in you, he's gonna be faithful to complete it, and so he's not done with you yet, he's not done writing the story yet, and if he told you you're going over, you're not going under. So we're gonna build our faith on God's promises. And then secondly, build your faith on God's love. We're just like the disciples, I know I am. So often in my life when things get scary, is I can jump right to this question, right to this assumption, God, do you care? Don't you care that I'm struggling? Don't you care that I'm hurting? Don't you care that it feels like I'm about to drown? And where does that come from? I think it comes from this logic that we have

in our human thinking, that if you care about somebody, you're gonna shield them. If you care about somebody, that you're gonna protect them from anything that's difficult. But we see here how God thinks about that, they ask Jesus the question, don't you care? First of all, Jesus doesn't even answer their question. I love this about Jesus, by the way, he's a ninja. When they ask him questions, he just like, he just came back at them with a question. And he just, he's there, I got a question for you. Where's your faith? And the implication from Jesus is this, that when we begin to doubt his love, and we begin to doubt his care, God, do you care? He's saying if you had faith, if you had confidence in me, you'd never have to wonder, do I love you? You'd never have to wonder, do I care? And there are times, listen, we go through seasons of life in which the care of the Lord, it may not be. as visible because our circumstances don't feel very loving. They don't feel very caring. But what's faith? Faith is the assurance of the things you can't see. And it's the evidence of what you can't see. And so when you can't see the evidence of God's love, that's where we have to have faith in the fact

that God is love and the fact that he only and always loves us. If there's something he's allowing in your life, it's because he's loving and it's because he's gonna work it out for your good. We know this, why? I wanna take this just one more step. And this is fascinating for me to think about, but there's a parallel story, actually, to this story in Mark 4 in the Old Testament, and that's the story of Jonah. And if you read the story of Jonah, you'll find a lot of similarities. In fact, the descriptions are almost identical. There is a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, and when you compare the Septuagint and the account of Jonah's story to Mark's account here of Jesus and his disciples in the storm, a lot of the same even words are used. But think about the parallels. Both Jesus and Jonah were in a boat. Both boats encountered storms. Both Jesus and Jonah were asleep in the boat. In both accounts, the others in the boat, they wake up Jonah and they wake up Jesus because they think they're gonna die. And in both stories, there's a miraculous calming of the sea. But don't miss what I think is the greatest parallel of all, that in Jonah's case, when they woke Jonah up

and they said, hey man, something's going on. This boat's going down. What did Jonah tell them? He said, you gotta throw me overboard, and you gotta sacrifice me, and you gotta throw me into the sea, and if I die, the rest of you can live. And what do we know about Jesus, our beautiful Savior? Is that Jesus in Matthew's gospel said, one greater than Jonah is here, referring to himself, because Jesus said, throw me overboard. Jesus said, I'll go ahead and be thrown into the greatest storm that has ever raged. The storm of sin, the storm of death, the storm of God's furious judgment and wrath. Jesus said, go ahead and throw me in. Go ahead and throw me into the grave. Why? Because Jesus loves you. He loves you. And he said, greater love has no one than this, that he'd lay down his life for his friends. And scripture tells us God demonstrated his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us, and don't you think that if Jesus was willing to be thrown overboard into the ultimate storm of sin and death and hell and the grave, that Jesus is going to lovingly see you through the smaller storms that come into your life. And so the greatest thing we can remember when we're going through the storm

is that God loves us, he's with us, and he's embracing us and that he cares. So we're gonna build our faith on God's promises, God's love, and then finally God's power. And we see God's power on full display here in this story. Let's finish it in verse 41. And they were filled with great fear, there's our third mega, and said to one another, who then is this? Who is this guy that even the wind and the sea obey him? They experienced the third mega, verse 35, it's a mega storm, or verse 37 rather, verse 39, a mega calm, and now verse 41, mega fear, which interestingly enough comes after the storm, the mega fear, because it's one thing when you realize there's a storm going on outside my boat that I can't control, but what do you do when you realize there's a God inside my boat I can't control? And what Jesus revealed through this miracle is that he is God, that he's the creator, and that even creation itself, the wind and the waves have to bow before his power and authority. And so if you're freaking out a little bit today because your life's a little bit outside of your control, can I just remind you, you have a God who is in control. You don't have to be God. And if your hands are on the levers and your hand is on the wheel and you're trying to control all the details yourself,

maybe it's time for you to take your hands off of those controls and to lift your hands instead in worship and say, God, I'm done limiting you. God, I'm done with the doubt and the faith. I'm gonna set it aside and I'm gonna invite you. Build my faith. Build my faith. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your love. Thank you for your power. Thank you for every promise that you have spoken over our lives. And where we are so prone to doubt and to fear, we just take a moment and repent, and we invite you to come and to build our faith today so that we can trust you and stay close to you and draw near to you, even in the storm. Amen. Just with your eyes closed, I wanna ask you a simple question this afternoon. And here it is. Is your faith in Jesus? If you put your faith in Jesus. We all have our faith in someone. We're all trusting in something. Whether or not you're believing the modern story of our secular world, or it could be that you're just trusting in yourself and your own work ethic and your own ingenuity and trusting yourself to figure out a way

and to do more good things than bad things to earn God's favor somehow. There's only one person who has proven in history to deserve the full weight of our faith and our trust, and that's Jesus who did for you what you can't do for yourself. If you're here and you have never put your faith in Jesus or you have wandered away from God, and today you know you need to come home and you need to put your faith in him, I'm gonna lead us in a prayer in just a moment. But if you wanna be included in that prayer and make that decision today to reach out to Jesus in faith, I wanna invite you right now to lift your hand, just as a physical way to respond and to reach out to God. And say, God, I need you in my life today. I wanna put my faith in you. Would you do that just for a moment? Just raise your hand and say, Brad, that's me. Include me in that prayer today. And I'm gonna invite all of us as one spiritual family now to pray this out loud. But if that's you, pray this from your heart. Say, Jesus, thank you for your power, your love. I believe you died in my place, and I believe you rose from the dead. And so I lay my sin before you. I lay my pride before you, and I give you my faith. Fill me with your Holy Spirit.

Fill me with a power beyond myself. Give me the ability to trust you, even when life's outside of my control, and build my faith. Amen. Come on, can we just celebrate our God who is a savior? And right now he's pouring out grace and he's pouring out forgiveness. That's who he is. And I just wanna encourage you, if you prayed that prayer with me, welcome to the family of God. What a moment this is for you. It's a moment of new birth. And we wanna come alongside of you. We wanna encourage you. One of our pastors is here, Pastor Matt. He's standing in the back, waving right now. And in just a moment when we close the service, he's gonna be right outside these doors. And I wanna invite you before you go today to connect with him. And he's there to answer your questions, to make sure that you have a Bible, to make sure you can take the next steps you need to take to grow in your faith. We wanna help you do that. I wanna invite all of us to stand together here across the room. And we've got another song that we're going to sing

in just a moment that just has a very simple line. We're gonna declare, I put my faith in Jesus. And I think for some of us, we just need to make that declaration today. To say, Jesus, I put my faith in you. And I wonder in particular, if you're here and you'd be honest enough to say, Brad, this message was for me. I'm going through a storm right now. If that's you, would you just lift up your hand? I would love to pray for you. Thank you. Love to pray for you today before you go. Just lift your hand and keep it up for a minute. I'm going through a storm today and I need to renew my faith, re-up in my faith. Let's just pray for a moment. God, I just pray right now for every one of your sons and daughters in the room who are watching online right now, who perhaps are walking through something, God, that's out of their control. I pray that you would come and that you would build their faith. I pray, God, that you would prove your faithfulness to them again. God, I pray that you would take fear, that you would take anxiety, that you would take whatever's swirling inside of them and that you would cause it to be still.

Right now in your presence, we recognize your authority, God. We recognize your power. And I pray that once again, you would look at the storm that's going on in our lives and that you would speak that word, peace. Come on, just close your eyes. If you need the peace of the Lord today, maybe you've just been running at a pace that you can't quite sustain and you're tired. Maybe your mind's been running, trying to figure out a solution to some problem or a decision that you need to make. If you need the peace of the Lord, just close your eyes right now and just receive it. I just hear him saying again, peace, peace, be still. He's speaking to some minds that have been overthinking some things. He's speaking to some hearts that have been in a panic and he's saying again, be still, be still. God, we just stand in stillness before you and recognize that you are God. You're inviting us again to be still and know that you are God. Build our faith today. Build our faith today. If you're comfortable, just take your hands and lift them up to the Lord right now. Would you just begin to worship him in your own words? Just begin to declare to God, you are the creator.

You are the one who silences the wind. You are the one who silences the waves. Say this with me, God, you are faithful. Say that again, God, you are faithful. God, you're a faithful God. God, you've never let us down and you never will. And so we look to you. Let's sing this last song together. ♪ I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ My anchor to the ground ♪ ♪ My hope and firm foundation ♪ ♪ Oh, he'll never let me down ♪ ♪ So I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ My anchor to the ground ♪ ♪ My hope and firm foundation ♪ ♪ Oh, he'll never let me down ♪ ♪ So I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ My anchor to the ground ♪ ♪ My hope and firm foundation ♪ ♪ Oh, he'll never let me down ♪ Sing that again, I'll put my faith. ♪ Oh, I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ My anchor to the ground ♪ ♪ My hope and firm foundation ♪ ♪ Oh, he'll never let me down ♪ Sing, praise this. ♪ Oh, great is your faithfulness to me ♪ Sing it. ♪ Great is your faithfulness to me ♪ Come on, let's declare his faithfulness.

♪ From the rising sun to the setting sea ♪ ♪ I will raise your name to me ♪ Come on, he's worthy of our praise. He's worthy of our faith. ♪ Great is your faithfulness to me ♪ Sing that one more time. Great is your faithfulness, great is your faithfulness. ♪ Oh, great is your faithfulness to me ♪ So faithful, God. ♪ Oh, great is your faithfulness to me ♪ Come on, let's believe what we're singing. ♪ Great is your faithfulness to me ♪ From the rising to the setting of the sun every single day, no matter what comes. God, you're faithful, you'll be faithful. Come on. ♪ From the rising sun to the setting sea ♪ ♪ I will raise your name to me ♪ One more time. ♪ From the rising sun to the setting sea ♪ ♪ I will raise your name to me ♪ ♪ Great is your faithfulness to me ♪ God, you've been faithful. God, you are faithful. And so I pray this week we would walk in faithfulness to you. That you would make our faith fuller and fuller and fuller, fuller than it's ever been. As we come back to your love, as we come back to your promises,

as we come back to your power. May we live today and this week with trust, with confidence in you. No matter what's going on around us, God's confidence is in you, amen, amen. Come on, aren't you grateful for God's presence and God's faithfulness? It's so good to be together. Thank you for being here today. I want you to know that no matter what's going on with your March Madness bracket, God is good. Even when the picks aren't predictable, here's what's predictable. God's gonna be faithful this week. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. We'll see you next weekend for the egg hunt. Just a couple weeks until Easter. What a beautiful time to be a church family. Have a great week.