test paul

Paul Lively: All right, it's good to see everybody this morning. I left my 35 pages of notes at home, so you don't have to worry about that. Randall told me I had till three, so we're good. So we're good. About three weeks ago, I did something I've done a million times. Only this time, in the midst of doing it, I heard a pop and spent the rest of the day over at the medical facility getting them to look at my elbow. My elbow's fine. That's the good news. The bad news is, there's lots of things that I do on a daily basis that I can't do for a while. I can't push, I can't pull, I can't lift. There's lots of things like that that I can't do. And for somebody with ADHD, that's difficult. And so I don't like doing that. The lady even told me at the office, she said, "Don't even pick up a cup of coffee." I was like, "You don't know Jesus. I'm just telling you, that's not going to happen." It's hard sometimes to be still. Wilbur was talking this morning about being on crutches and how that hampers what you do. Sometimes it's hard to be still and to stop and not do anything. Not my favorite, but one of my favorite passages is found in Psalm 46. I'm going to read you the whole passage. It says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very ready help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth shakes and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. There's a river whose streams make the city of God happy, the holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She will not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. The nations make an uproar, the kingdoms totter. He raised his voice and the earth quaked.
The Lord of armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Come, behold the works of the Lord who has inflicted horrific events on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bows and cuts the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariots with fire.
Stop striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted on the earth. The Lord of armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold." To me, it's a very beautiful passage and such an encouragement, but he encourages us to be still and to be silent.
And nobody likes silence. When I was a youth minister, I would talk to my kids about silence and I would stop and just not say a word and just stand there. And after about 30 seconds, you see people fidgeting and moving around. Nobody likes silence. We have noise machines that we put in our rooms at night so we don't have to sleep in the silence. Nobody likes silence. But sometimes we have to be physically silent and just stop and let God speak to us and let God work in our lives rather than the normal panic we have. We need to just stop and be still for a minute.
There's a couple of things in this verse or this passage that I really like. I told my wife the other day that they wrote this passage backwards because it should start with, "Be still and know that I am God because He's our refuge and our strength." When we stop and see striving and see struggling, then we realize that He's our strength and our refuge, our help. And He's the place that we can turn to when life is a struggle, when things are going really bad, when things are maybe not going bad but not going great. When we look around and we see the panic around us, I make a list every day of what needs to be accomplished that day and lay it on my desk and mark things off. I'm still working on things from three weeks ago on the list because other things have come in and taken priority. We get in those turmoil times where it's easy to panic and think, "Oh my gosh, I'm never going to get this done," or, "Oh my gosh, this is going to happen," or, "What's going to happen here? What's going to happen there?" Our grandson left last night and went riding around with a friend. And about 20 minutes after he left, the city of Lubbock posted a road closure for an accident. My first thought, "I hope he's okay," you know, and it was hard not to not to call him and say, "Are you really okay?" It wasn't him. Unfortunately, it was somebody else, but it wasn't him. Sometimes we need to stop. He's our refuge and our strength. He gets us through the tough times. He helps us with the struggles. He helps us with the very, very difficult times.
Therefore, we will not fear though the earth changes. We live in a world that's changing every day. And quite honestly, most times it's not for good. We're in a world that is not ruled by the Prince of Peace. And we see those struggles every day. And it's a struggle.
We have to give ourselves times to refocus. And so just to stop and calm down and think for a minute and let God talk to us and be silent. So often we don't know the outcome of the struggles.
We don't know what's going to happen, how it's going to turn out. And that's what really gives us a problem is we don't know the outcome. I'm not a total control freak, but I'm a control freak. And I want to be in control. And when God's in control, it's a struggle sometimes to stop and let Him be in control. It's a struggle to listen to Him. Maybe we need to not let the inner turmoil take over. We need to stop the panic. What if we spent just a few moments listening to Him during our day? Turn off the radio, turn off social media, turn off the TV, and just stop and spend time with Him and just listen to what He has to say to us.
I can panic all of you because in 30 days from today, a new class of freshmen walk onto this campus. That can panic everybody. We had our team meeting this morning at maintenance, and I was telling the guys 30 days from today, 30 days, the new freshmen come in. We've got projects going everywhere that we're not ready, but it's going to happen. And sometimes during this summer, it's been moments of sheer panic because you look at what all has to be done and what can't be done right now and has to wait and things just not working out and all of that. But when the freshmen come on campus, some of them are going to come on with excitement. They're going to come on with fear, panic. Mom and dads are going to walk on with their freshmen, and they're going to be distraught. Their hearts are going to be breaking. We can relate. Our granddaughter's coming on as a freshman this year. And so we look at her, and it's like, there's no way she's in college yet, you know, but she is. She's excited about it. These students need to look at all of us and see the calmness of Christ. When they're panicked and they're looking around and they don't know where they're going, they don't know what's happening, they're going into a classroom, and they don't know anybody, and it's just sheer panic. They need to be able to look at us, and we can demonstrate the peace of God that comes from knowing who He is.
There's an old hymn that I really love, and I love it because of the story behind it. If you don't know the story, find me, and I'd love to tell you the story. You do not want me singing this hymn, I promise you. But the first line goes, "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows, like sea billows, roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." We can have that wellness, we can have that peace.
Let me end this with a prayer that I think we all need to remember and use it on a regular basis.
It's a very, very simple one-line prayer, but it's very, very powerful. This is, "God, I have no idea what you're doing, but I trust you. I trust you." God, thank you for loving us, and thank you for being our Savior and being our guide. Thank you for being the strength that we can rely on.
Thank you for being the peace that we can find. God, I pray for the students as they come back, the freshmen that are starting a new chapter in their lives, the students that are coming back just to continue on that journey. God, I pray that you would just bless their spirits, bless their lives. God, find encouragement among the faculty and the staff here at LCU that they would find such a loving spirit here, that they would fall more deeply in love with you. God, just give us peace and safety as we go about our day. In your precious name I pray, and all God's people said, "Amen" and "Go God."