I’m Not Afraid of the Future | Jud Wilhite

All right, what an amazing time of worship we just had. Man, how awesome was that? That was so great. We love worshiping with you guys here at Central, and we just wanna give a quick shout out to all those watching online and in prison facilities with our partnership with God Behind Guards and the Pando app. Yes, and everyone joining us online, thank you so much for being with us this weekend. Well, now's a good time for you to take out that Central Church app, find the teaching notes so you can follow along, and let's give it up huge for Pastor Judd as he brings us a message of hope. All right. Well, welcome, everybody. Wanna welcome not only our Henderson location, but our Sunrise Mountain and Summerland and Kingman and Aliante Church families. Thank you so much for being with us this weekend. And I wonder, like I've been asking people around the church, what is the scariest movie you've seen in the last five years? I wondered how you'd answer that. I got some interesting answers. I'm just gonna throw the images up first, see if you can guess what the movie is. Somebody told me this movie, one of our young adults. Now, I've never seen that particular movie, but apparently, let's bring the title up here.

It's the movie Smile, which I don't like scary movies, so I will never see this. That's enough for me, just the smile, right? That's enough. I asked somebody else, hey, scariest movie you've seen in the last five years, and they threw out this movie. Anybody know what that is? Or TV show, Stranger Things. Yeah, Stranger Things, the last couple seasons, really scary, but the runner-up was interesting. It was the movie Inside Out, the animated movie, and it was this character right here, Anxiety. This person said, that character hit a little too close to home and scared me to death. Scariest movie of the last five years. She's like, that is me, so there you go. When I was growing up as a kid, for me, the scariest movie was this movie right here, Jaws, back in the day. Man, I was afraid to even go in the water for a very long period of time after that movie. I know some of you love scary movies, but here's the deal, I feel like life is scary enough. I don't need a movie, just life is scary. Trying to navigate the challenges of life, scary. Starting a new semester at school can be scary. Going out on a date with somebody, especially a first date, can be scary. Breaking up with somebody, definitely scary.

Having a hard confrontation at work can be scary, like navigating a big purchase, a home, a car, adulting at a whole new level can feel scary. All that anxiety and that fear, we don't know what's coming, we start to imagine different scenarios, and that fear wells up in our life. And so the last several weeks, we've been talking about how we can go into 2026 with less fear and more faith. We've said that faith, at least for me, is the word for 2026. It's the word I'm hanging onto, faith over fear. And we've been looking at one of the famous psalms of the Bible, Psalm 23, amazing psalm. Let's go back to it today. We're gonna look at the last two, last verse today, but let me just start at the top. It says, when I get to the red word, if you'll say that with me here, it says, the Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be, what? Afraid. For you are close beside me.

Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. And we've been unpacking this psalm over the last several weeks. And this psalm, it's interesting because it's sort of written from the perspective of the sheep. And a sheep is a vulnerable animal. In fact, the quality of a sheep's life is directly connected to the quality of their shepherd. The quality of their life is directly connected to the quality of their shepherd. And so David, because he's got such a good shepherd in God, he can look to the future with faith and know that God is gonna move and work on his behalf. And I don't know about you, but I want more of that in my life as I go into this new year. You know, fear is a natural response to all the things going on around us, but faith is a supernatural response. And we need faith as we go into 2026. And what Psalm 23 is gonna give us is a couple more reasons for faith over fear in our lives this year. So let's look at the last part of it. One reason is simply this, God's goodness and love pursue me. God's goodness and love pursue me. Now, how many of you don't enjoy being tailgated? How many of you don't enjoy

when somebody's right up on your bumper? Drives you crazy, right? It's no fun? I don't like it at all. In fact, I did see this bumper sticker. I've put this up before. This is my all-time favorite bumper sticker for when people are right on your bumper. Bumper, just do you follow Jesus this close? Come on, that's Hall of Fame worthy right there. But David says this in Psalm 23, the last verse. Let's look at it. He says, surely your goodness and unfailing love will what? Pursue me all the days of my life. Now, some translations will say, surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, but I actually think this is a better word for the Hebrew word, this word pursue, because this gets to more of the idea. Now, a lot of times when we think of like a pursuit, we don't think of that as a positive thing, right? It's like somebody's pursuing you. It's like a cop's pursuing you to give you a ticket or to write you up or to pull you over, right? You know, we think somebody's pursuing you. And you know, what's interesting is often when that word pursue, translated pursue, is used in the Old Testament, it is used in a negative kind of context, right?

It's like somebody's coming either to get after you or God's coming to bring justice to you. He's pursuing you. That's scary, right? But David says, as a believer, when I look out to the future, my perspective on the future is this, that God is pursuing me, but he's pursuing me with goodness and unfailing love. Goodness and unfailing love. Those are rich words. Let's do a little word study together. First, the word good or goodness. In Hebrew, the word that's used is the word tov. And this is what the word tov means, okay? Beneficial, best, charming, cheerful, choice, delightful, fair, favorable, fine, fit, generous, glad, good, good-looking, gracious, happy, intelligent, and kind. Let's just leave that up for a minute. I mean, that's a pretty, like if I was to come to you and say like, hey, hey, hey, so I got somebody that either you, if you're single, or if you have a loved one that's single, like I got somebody that you should meet. And they say like, well, what are they like? And I say, oh, well, they're beneficial, best, charming, cheerful, choice, delightful, fair, favorable, fine, fit, generous, glad, good, good-looking, gracious, happy, intelligent, and kind. What would you say?

You'd say, no, they're not, that's too good. That's too good to be true, right? That's only on the resume. But what David is saying is this is who God is, and God is pursuing me in a good sense, and God is ultimately coming, following me with his goodness. His goodness is my destiny. His goodness is my future. You know what? As a believer, you can expect to encounter in 2020, 26 trouble, yes. Difficulties, certainly. Challenges, absolutely. But you can also expect to encounter the goodness of God because his goodness pursues you. Not only goodness, he uses another word. It's translated in the New Living Translation that we just read, chesed. It's a interesting word in the Hebrew language because it's really hard to translate it over into English. And so sometimes it's rendered like mercy, kindness, loving kindness, steadfast love, abundant goodness, great loyalty, much mercy doing, or loyal love, chesed. And chesed's interesting because it's like stronger than bondness. It's more permanent than a feeling. It's higher than friendship. It's deeper than family. It gets to the unchanging covenantal love of God

for his people, and it flows out of his character. This is the unfailing love, the chesed of God for his people. We could define chesed this way. Let's bring up that next slide. God's commitment to do a generous and surprising amount of good in your life over the long-term, not based on your performance, but based on his promise. So when David looks to the future, he says, man, I see goodness, and I see the unfailing, loyal love of God in my future. When we look at 2026, we can look at the year with great expectations. We follow the same God. We can say with David that God's goodness and unfailing love will pursue us all the days of my life. Because I have a good shepherd, I believe what's coming for me is ultimately not the worst. It's God's goodness and unfailing love. Listen, I may face difficulty and stress. I might face hardship. I might feel like my back is against the wall. I may fear there won't be enough, but God's goodness and loyal love are more than enough, and they're coming for me. Listen, I may be gossiped about or criticized. I may feel alone. I may be disappointed. Look, I might be frustrated,

but God's goodness and love are on the way. I might mess up. I might get it wrong. I might get discouraged, but God's goodness and love are coming. Look, when I envision the future, I see his goodness and his love pursuing me all the way home, even through all the ups and downs. Even if everyone turns against me, I know that God is for me, that he's for you. I can't lose his love. I can't lose his goodness. They pursue me. God is working for me, even when it feels like life is working against me. And so the psalmist looks out and he says, man, God's goodness and God's love, that's my destiny. That's where I'm headed. When you think about this year in your life, just real talk, do you think goodness and love are on the way? When you think about 2026, some of you think about all the things, some of you just think about tomorrow and you go. Oh, but what a mindset shift David gives us. He's like, when I look to the future, I see goodness and love on the way. That's who my God is. That's what he's gonna do in my life. That's why we can have faith over fear in 2026,

because God's goodness and love pursues me. Here's another thought. God's presence is with me forever. I don't know if you ever had an aha moment where you just saw something that you can't believe you didn't see for years, but I've had a few of those. I wanna share a couple of them with you. One aha moment I had was with the word Fortnite. Now I'm not talking about the video game. I know you video game people are like, oh yeah, Fortnite. But like I hear the word Fortnite and I would always know it's like a window of time, right? But I never knew like how much time, is it like a month or like four weeks, Fortnite, like 40 days? I don't know, I just said, somebody said like Fortnite is short for 14 nights. It's two weeks. I was like, oh, well, aha. Where was I? Some of you are like, where were you, Judd? Others of you are like, really? Get your phone out. It was an aha moment. Like I hadn't quite seen it that way before. Another aha moment I had was when, you know, like if you ever get a rental car and you're driving that car and you have to gas it up and you're trying to realize like what side of the car

is the gas cap on? And somebody showed me this. I'd never seen this before. Let's bring this up. This is when you look at like your fuel gauge in a car, do this after service. Look at your fuel gauge. So you see the little arrow there right by the little gas pump? Yeah, you're gonna find that's on most cars. And what that says is your gas cap's on that side that the arrow's pointing to. Like, really? Why did I never know this? I had never heard this in all my life. I'm like pulling in and trying to get the gas hose, you know, to go over the car because it's on the other side or whatever. And all the time it was just right there, you know? Wow, it's aha moment. Somebody just had one right now. I can feel the room. Like somebody's having an aha moment. You're gonna go back to your car and you're gonna be like, I don't know what that message was about, but I gotta start the car and see if this shows up on my fuel gauge here where the gas cap is. It's an aha moment. And I wanna share with you like an aha moment

that I had in understanding the Bible. And it's one of those aha moments that you think, when I think about it now, I'm like, I should have got this. I mean, I went to college. I went to graduate school. I got a master's degree in theology. I studied Hebrew. I studied Greek. I did all the things, right? And I never quite got what I wanna share with you today, which is kind of an aha moment that tied the whole Bible together for me. And really, I think David gets at it in Psalm 23, six in his own way. Check this out. Help me out on this red word. He says, I will live in the what? In the house of the Lord forever. In other words, he's looking out. He's like, God's goodness and love pursue me. And then he says like, I will live in the house of the Lord forever. In other words, God's blessing, God's presence, God's goodness, that will be my reward. That is the thing that I'm looking forward to. That is the thing that I'm hanging onto. And my sort of aha moment was when I first came to faith, I kind of thought like, well, before I came to faith, I thought God primarily was interested in me

so that I would turn my life around and do good and stop doing bad things. Do good things, don't do bad things, right? Then when I came to faith, I thought like, faith was primarily about like forgiveness and eternal life. You know, like if I could be forgiven and I could live forever, awesome, right? Like, that's great. And it is about those things. But I think my aha moment was just realizing like, there is something bigger than all of that. And that is the presence of God in our lives. That the big point of the whole Bible is about the presence of God moving and working in our lives. In other words, forgiveness is what restores the relationship with God and his presence. Eternal life is how long you get to enjoy the relationship with God. God and his presence. But the whole point is in the book of Revelation where we finally get to the end of all things and it says, God will be their God and they will be his people. It's the presence of God that is actually the promise of God all through the Bible. And I think this unlocks some things for me and help me see some things. So I've done this before, you'll hear it many times

if you're around here at Central because I think it's so helpful when we think about the whole story of the Bible to think about what is the point. And I wanna suggest to you that the point is the presence of God in people's lives. That's the whole point. And we see it starts in the Garden of Eden, right? In the first pages of the Bible, Adam and Eve, it says they're walking through the garden and God is walking with them. In other words, it's this intimacy, it's this closeness, it's God's presence with his people. And then what happens in that relationship? Well, they're supposed to, let's pull that back for a minute. They're supposed to, thank you. They're supposed to basically rule over the world and they're supposed to have children, right? And those children are gonna propagate and spread. And what's happening is God's relational presence is spreading throughout the world through Adam and Eve and their children. That's the idea, right? These will be God's people. They will worship God. They're created in his image. He's empowered them to rule and to dominate and basically to have children and to forward their line. And then sin enters the world, right?

And Adam and Eve rebel. And sin is way more than like they ate from the tree in the Garden of Eden. It's like rebellion against God. All of a sudden, their eyes are open and they realize this relationship has been shattered with a holy God. They've rebelled against him, they've gone another way. And so what you see as Genesis goes forward, God starts to try and reestablish his relationship with people back to the garden. And so you see this through Noah, Abraham, agreements, covenants God makes with people. And ultimately, we get over here and we see, we'll bring this up now, the tabernacle, which the tabernacle is what kind of went forward and led the people through the wilderness wanderings, but it was seen as the place where the presence of God now dwelt, right? So God's presence is now in the tabernacle, sacred, amazing, incredible thing. And then eventually, they built a permanent temple and now God's presence was in the temple. And the people would come from far and wide and they would worship in the temple and God's presence was there. Interesting, when Jesus dies on the cross for our sins, the veil that separates the most holy place in the temple from the rest of the temple, the Bible says it's torn from top to bottom.

In other words, now God's presence is among his people in a whole different way. God's Holy Spirit begins to move and work in our lives. And so Paul writes in the New Testament now, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God now dwells within you as the temple of the Holy Spirit. And this is like the church age. This is where we are now. And really like this isn't about the building, the church building, it's about you as the people of God who believe God, who love God, God's Spirit dwells within you. And one day in the new heaven and the new earth, which is still to come, we see the ultimate culmination of all of it, which is what I already shared with you. God will be their God and they will be his people. So what's the whole point of the Bible? What's the point of Jesus coming and living and dying and rising again? What's the point of our faith? What's the point of salvation? God is restoring the relationship of his presence in the midst of his people. It's all about the presence of God in our lives. That's like the story of the Bible. I mean, God is always with us. He's present. And you don't have to wait now because God's Holy Spirit is already within you.

So every day when you wake up and you begin the day giving thanks to God and you set your mind on the good things God is doing in your life and you commit yourself to obey him and to follow him and to worship him, what are you doing? You're orientating your life, right, to the presence of God working through you and in your life. And then you start going through the day and God starts showing up in conversations and you're like, I don't know, that's weird. Was that a coincidence? That can't be a coincidence, you know? Like you realize God is moving and working in your life and then we come to church and we sing and we worship. What are we doing? We're acknowledging the presence of God in our midst as we come together. We see people get baptized. We're seeing people take steps of faith as they begin to grow in their faith and God's presence takes root in their heart and in their life. That's really the end game. What is God trying to do in all of this? Re-establish his presence in the midst of his people. That's the aha. That's the little arrow on the gas gauge. That's the whole point of it all.

That's where it's headed and that's what God's doing even now. I remember when my daughter was. Little, well, I remember two times that she woke up screaming in the middle of the night and was terrified. One time, my favorite story to tell, I came running into a room and I threw the light on, it was like two in the morning, and she's laying on her back, real little, and she's just screaming, ah, ah, ah. She's looking at her finger and I'm like, what, what? She goes, booger, booger, booger, get it off, get it off. I'm like, okay, yeah, we can handle that. I got the boogers, no problem. I didn't tell her, like, you just eat that. That's what kids do. No, I just, I said that to Ethan, not to Emma. You know, she's a girl. But I remember one time she woke up in the middle of the night and she was terrified and had a bad dream, and I went in there and I said, what's wrong? And she said, I just, I was afraid that you guys vanished, that you were gone, and that I was here all alone. And I remember just laying down beside her and saying, you know, unfortunately for you, Emma, that's never gonna happen. Even when you want to get distance from me, I will be there. Because I'm your dad and I love you with all my heart, and your mom loves you with all her heart, and we will always be here for you,

we'll always be available for you. Now listen, if that's the perspective of a failed, sinful parent, how much more is that the perspective of God towards his children? And so when you look out at 2026 and all the things coming at you, man, David gives us a word here because he says, look, God's presence, his goodness and his love are actually pursuing me and his presence is with me, not only today, but forever. You don't face the future alone. You don't face your fears alone. You don't face what's coming around the corner alone. And that doesn't mean everything will go the way you hope it does. I prayed with a family right before service with a family member for a husband who's facing really serious medical situation in his life. And at the end of that prayer, I said to her, so I think we're trying to come to grips with two things. On the one hand, we're praying for a miracle. We're praying that God will heal, absolutely show up, defy science and do a miracle, right? And on the other hand, we're preparing ourselves if it's time for this loved one to go home, that we'll accept it and that we'll receive the peace and the strength from God in the middle of that loss to walk forward every day. It's the human condition, right? It's all we can do. We pray for a miracle.

If the miracle doesn't happen, we experience God's goodness and God's love, even in the heartache and the loss. And he pulls us through. I think sometimes in churches, what I've seen over the decades is it's easy to look at somebody else's loss and say, where was God in their life? But what you find, because I've walked with so many of those somebody else's, is they're not asking that same question. Because while they can't explain why what happened happened, what they know for a fact is only God got them through it. God's presence and God's loyal love and his goodness got them through it when nothing else would. It's amazing to me that people going through life-altering tragedies that aren't asking, where was God in all of this? Because they already know, they experienced him, even when they can't explain it. He carried them through. So I would just say, don't put your questions over other people's lives, right? Let them have their own questions. You have your own questions. But I think what you'll find is God's present in the darkest valley, right? David says the darkest valley. God's present in the loss. God's present in the pain. God can carry us through the darkest situations.

And we may never understand why, but there's a bigger question than why. Even if you knew why, can I just remind you today that it probably wouldn't be enough? Wouldn't take the pain away. Wouldn't necessarily change things. There's a bigger question than why, and that is who? Who do I trust in the middle of this situation? Who am I gonna lean on in the middle of this hardship? Who is going to see me through? And can I just encourage you, what I've seen again and again and again in my own life and in others' lives is God is always faithful to see you through. He will carry you on his arms, even when you can't explain it. He will give you what the Bible calls peace that passes understanding. He will bring friends and people around you that you didn't even know before, and suddenly they're there. He'll take you through your darkest moments and bring you out of it stronger and more able to help others and encourage. And so your trial becomes your testimony, right? Your challenge, that difficult thing, becomes the thing that you now share and use to encourage other people and to help them along the way. We look at the new year and we expect God's goodness

and his love and his presence, no matter what we face. And so it's faith over fear. Fear says I'm all on my own, right? But faith says the Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. Fear says I have to hustle, I have to be hypervigilant or else everything is gonna go wrong and fall apart. But faith says he gives me all that I need. Fear says I'll always be stressed and overwhelmed. Faith says he lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me beside quiet waters. Fear says I'm so tired, I'm so confused. I'll never find my way forward, but faith says he renews my strength. He guides me along right paths. Fear says I'll never get through this, but faith says even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid for you are close beside me and your rod and your staff, they protect and they comfort me. Fear says I'm never gonna win these battles. It'll never get easier. I'll always feel this way. But faith says you prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Fear looks at the future and fear says the worst is on the way, but faith looks at the future

and faith says surely your love and your goodness will pursue me all the days of my life and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. I have a good shepherd and I trust my shepherd. So maybe this week, if you love that scripture like I do, maybe make it the screenshot on your phone or if you're old school, put it up on the refrigerator and just remind yourself when the fear comes and the stress comes, you have a good shepherd and he is guiding and leading in your life and what's coming in your future is his goodness and his love and you'll live with him in his presence ultimately forever. You know, as a church, as we try to serve those in need, we remember that what's coming in our future is goodness and love. As we try to give back and pour out into the lives of others, what's coming for us is goodness and love. We don't have to worry about us. Let's take care of others because God's goodness and love is gonna take care of us. It's what's coming for us. We take care of others, we serve others. We look outside our walls because it's not about us. God's gonna take care of us. We wanna serve them. You know, goodness and unfailing love are on their way. In fact, in John in the New Testament,

I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, but the Bible also describes Jesus as a lamb, the most vulnerable and the most helpless sheep that there was, the lamb, right? He was the lamb. Every year at Passover, it was a lamb that was sacrificed by every family to atone for their sins in the Jewish religion and so when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to be baptized in the Jordan River, he said, look, behold, the lamb of God, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In the book of Revelation, all of heaven and earth sing, worthy is the lamb, the little defenseless lamb that was slain. It's a reference to Jesus who was crucified and placed in a tomb and three days later, he rose again to sit at the right hand of the Father and now he is once again, our good shepherd, the one who laid down his life for the sheep. Jesus knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to feel helpless. He knows what it is to be lied about and abandoned and abused and hated and betrayed and to lose everything, including his life and the Bible said he did this, not because he was tricked or he was forced or he was outmatched, he did it for the joy set before him. He did it for you and I, his sheep.

He laid down his life for us so that our sin could be dealt with, so that our shame could fall away, so that you could live with faith over fear, so that you could come to the good shepherd and live in the house of the Lord forever. So fear is natural, but faith is supernatural and Christ has paved the way for us. And if you're here today and you've never crossed that line of faith, I'd love to invite you to just reach out to God and ask him to move and work in your life, to ask for his forgiveness, to ask for his power, to flow in you and through you and to ask for his presence and his spirit to work in your life and he will do it. In fact, I wanna ask all of you to bow your heads and close your eyes and if you've yet to cross that line of faith, I'd love to lead you in a prayer. is to open your heart to God. The whole point of God's activity in the world is to reestablish relationship with you, that his presence may dwell fully in your life. He wants to give you life and life to the full. And so if you wanna receive that life and that forgiveness, you can begin that journey by repeating a simple prayer after me. You say, dear God, I thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus into the world.

I believe he died on the cross for my sins. I believe he rose again. Forgive me for my sins. Give me the gift of eternal life. Help me face the challenges that I'm up against. God, I surrender my life to you in Christ's name. And friends, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if that's your prayer, if it's your commitment today, I wanna ask you to just slip your hand in the air. Just slip your hand in the air, reach out to him today, acknowledge you're gonna trust him. You're gonna follow him whatever location you may be at. If you're watching online, if you're watching on the Pando app, if you're in one of our meetings and gatherings in our partnership with God Behind Bars, just slip your hand in the air. Just acknowledge you're gonna trust him today. God, we thank you for who you are. I thank you that you're a good shepherd. And I pray you will move powerfully in each individual's life. Reaching out to you today, I pray you'll show up with forgiveness and grace and hope, restoration. God, we love you. We're so honored to come together and learn together as a community. We thank you for each of these individuals.

And we ask these things in Christ's name, amen.