Dwelling Place

Al Pittman: Today on the Dwelling Place.

Notice it says that he said, "I'm going to offer you the sacrifice of joy and praise." Psalm 34:19 says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all." David knew that deliverance would come from the Lord, so he offers to the Lord a sacrifice of joy and of praise. Thus, David's response by faith is this: he says, "And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies." That's faith.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to the Dwelling Place, a radio ministry from Pastor Al Pittman of Al Pittman Ministries. The purpose of this radio program is to encourage you, strengthen your walk with the Lord, and grow. To support this ministry financially or learn more about the ministry, visit us online at AlPittmanMinistries.com. Your donations keep this radio ministry going. Thank you for partnering with us. Now, here is Pastor Al.

Al Pittman: So our Lord knows. The reason the Lord says that is that he must be number one. He must be the one thing, like David said, that we desire above every other thing, because he knows everything else will never satisfy you. He didn't give you your spouse to make you happy. You know that, don't you? In fact, they've said marriage is not designed to make you happy but to make you holy.

Married people are real quiet on that. Oh, that cuddly little thing that you just couldn't live without. You were on the phone for hours talking to her. You couldn't wait to pick her up on Friday night after you got off work. That cuddly little strawberry thing has turned into sandpaper and is honing you down, rubbing you the wrong way to make you the man of God he intended you to be.

Ladies, you too. He was perfect, that knight in shining armor. He just swept me off my feet, and now he is grinding me to be the woman of God God wants you to be. It hurts, but it feels good because it's God's word. None of those things will keep you happy. People can't keep you happy. Marriage can't keep you happy. Church can't keep you happy.

Psalm 107:9 says, "For he," that is God, "satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness." Only God can satisfy your soul. Not your spouse, not the people in the church. Only God. Notice the trajectory of David's desire. It is not, "One thing have I desired of the Lord so I can get a Cadillac. One thing have I desired in the Lord so I can get rich." No. "One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I might behold the beauty of the Lord, to inquire in his temple."

That word "beauty" in the Hebrew is "noam." It means kindness, pleasantness, delightfulness, favor. It speaks of intimacy. You know, the Bible says God upholds you not with his left hand but with his right hand. The right hand is the hand of favor. He said, "If you should slip, I will catch you and uphold you with my right hand." That's the hand of favor.

God deals with you with favor. When we belong to him, he deals with us in favor. He deals with us in delightfulness, pleasantness, and kindness. Why do I point that out? Because it all speaks of intimacy. David was aiming for God's heart, not God's hand. I'm always looking for God's hand to do stuff for me. "God, use your hand to change this, whatever." But David was aiming for God's heart. That's why the Bible says he was a man after God's own heart, not God's hand.

David knew the benefit of pursuing God. Verse five says, "For he shall hide me in his pavilion; in the secret place of his tabernacle." That's the presence of God. The presence of God is with you this morning. He dwells within you. He will hide us in the secret place of his tabernacle. He shall hide me. He shall set me high upon a rock. And what is that rock? It's Jesus.

He sets us high upon a rock. Psalm 61:2 says, "From the end of the earth I will cry to you, Lord, when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." There's something higher than your reasoning, something higher than your education, something higher than your opinion. It's the word of God. Lead me to the rock, to Jesus, that is higher than I am.

After a while, we've been around the church for a while, we learn a few things. You have a little Bible college degree or something and think you know so much. No, I'm still learning. The older I get, the less I know. When I was 18, you could ask me anything. I could fix the world. At 18 years old, I had all the answers. My parents were stupid; everybody was stupid. I had all knowledge. The older you get, the less you know. You learn to trust in God and to look to him.

There is a secret place for us as believers in times of trouble. David sought that in the Lord. He sought that through intimate faith with God. Intimacy through prayer. Through the secret place. Jesus said, "When you pray, go into your room and shut your door." Don't shut somebody else's door; your door. Shut your door, and your Father who sees in the secret place will reward you openly.

The secret place. That place of intimacy in times of trouble can be called the "cushion of the sea." I've read where mariners talk about this thing called the cushion of the sea. You can have a storm on top of the ocean, but down beneath, hundreds of feet down beneath, the fish are just having a vacation. Everything on top is in turmoil, but there's a cushion of the sea, a place of calm rest.

It's the same thing in the believer's life. Everything on television, everything I see in the world is like that right now. You turn the TV on and see another school shooting, another tragedy that happened. We see all this stuff in turmoil. What we should do then is not go out and try to control the waves, but to seek the Lord in the secret place so that we can experience peace in our own lives.

The Bible says it's a place called peace, a place of peace that's beyond our understanding. The secret place. God gives us peace beyond our understanding. The word of God says God will keep you in perfect peace, keep him in perfect peace or her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him because they trust in him. If your mind is stayed on CNN or Fox News or anything else, you will not have peace. But if your mind is on Jesus, the world can be in turmoil and you'll have a peace that passes human understanding.

The third aspect of faith that we find here is what I call responsive faith. David is not just giving God lip service, but he also responds to God. Responsive faith, verses six to ten. "And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me. Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in his tabernacle. I will sing, yes, I will sing praise to the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice."

Aren't you glad that God knows your voice when you cry? Your voice is not lost in the crowd somewhere, but God distinctly knows your voice. My mother used to tell me that when I was a baby and I was born and they had me in the baby room with a bunch of other babies, all the babies would be crying and she could always hear my voice. I have a baritone voice, and so she said, "I could hear your voice above all the rest. That's my baby."

Mothers know when their baby cries. You can be in a room full of babies crying, but when you hear your baby, something perks up. You know it. That's the way God is. Your voice is impressed upon his own heart. He remembers our voice. He knows you have a certain cry and tone that he responds to. So David says, "Hear, Lord, my voice when I cry to you. Have mercy also upon me and answer me."

Verse eight, "When you said," here's the response, "Seek my face, my heart said to you, 'Your face, Lord, I will 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, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take care of me."

Even if my mother and father were to forsake me, Lord, you would take care of me. Some of us have mother and father issues in our lives. They have forsaken you; they haven't been the greatest. But God hasn't forsaken you. You have a heavenly Father. Some of us may not even know who our father was, but you have a heavenly Father. Even when our parents can forsake us, and our parents were not perfect, and we who are parents are not perfect either, when our parents fail us, God will take care of us.

David is rejoicing in that. That's where his hope lies. David is responding to God's love and God's faithfulness. What's his response to? God's love and God's faithfulness in his life. He has a history with God. There's a phenomenon today in the workplace called "quiet quitting." Maybe you've read about it. It's kind of interesting. Maybe you've done that on your job. If you have, you should repent.

That is, you show up to work and you're just there in body but not in mind. You don't want to be productive; you're halfway doing your job. Don't do that. In fact, the Bible says whatever we find to do, let's do it unto the Lord. You don't like your job? I hate my job, but I love Jesus, so I do a good job.

But sometimes people enter into this place of quiet quitting. They show up, but they've quit within their hearts. They're not productive. I thought that happens sometimes in a spiritual sense in the church. We stop responding to you. We've quietly quit. We show up on Sunday, but we're no longer moved by your word. We're not moved by the Holy Spirit. We're not sensitive to your touch anymore.

We all go through seasons like that. But Lord, help us to respond to you in faith, not to just grow cold or allow our hearts to become stone because God desires to give you a heart of flesh. So God wants us to respond to him. The Bible says that we must respond to him because faith without works is dead. We cannot come to God unless we believe he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

We have to diligently seek the Lord because we believe that he is worthy. We respond to him because we believe he is worthy. David did not allow trouble to steal his voice. Notice it says that he said, "I'm going to offer you the sacrifice of joy and praise." Psalm 34:19 says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all." David knew that deliverance would come from the Lord, so he offers the Lord a sacrifice of joy and of praise.

Thus, David's response by faith is this: he says, "And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies." That's faith. He backs up that declaration by responding to God by offering him a sacrifice. It's a sacrifice called the sacrifice of joy and praise for a good reason, because your flesh hates it.

Your flesh doesn't feel like offering God joy or expressing joy to God or praise to God when you're going through trouble. It's the last thing that in your mind you want to do, because it's an offense to your mind to worship the Lord. The devil is sitting there saying, "Why? You can't find any reason." But we can find reason in him because he's always worthy. No matter what I'm going through, he's always worthy. Whether on my sickbed or in health or whatever the situation is, employed or unemployed, you are worthy of praise.

That's when the atmosphere in your life, spiritually speaking, begins to change. When you find it within yourself and something rises up within you and you say, "I will praise him anyhow. In the face of my trouble, I will give him the sacrifice of my joy and praise." That's when things change in your life. "Well, I'll praise God when the check gets here." That's not faith, and it's not a sacrifice.

What God responds to is when we respond to him in faith. "God, I believe that you're a rewarder and I will praise you because you are worthy." It goes against the grain of our flesh. Philippians 4:4, Paul the Apostle says, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And then, just in case some of us are hard of hearing, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice, just in case we missed it the first time. Paul felt compelled to say it twice.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice. It's more than just a feeling; it's a decision. To rejoice is a choice. It's just like marriage. All these illustrations about marriage. Well, I've been married all my life. But I learned a lesson in marriage, and that is that you have to choose to love each other.

Oh, some of you remember your honeymoon. You remember when you got married, and how wonderful it was. You stood before that pastor. I've married a lot of people over the years and I'm always amazed how the guy is so emotional. He's reading his little written, prepared statement: "When I look in your eyes, I just love you." Dude, man up.

Some of you probably cried, but that's okay. That's good. That's love. I'm always amazed how the women are so together. "I just want you to make sure you make enough money every year." They have a list of demands. No, I'm kidding. But the woman's thing is always so succinct and so in order, and the guy is like... and then you're so in love and you go on that honeymoon and it's going to be like this all the time. No, it's not.

One day you wake up and, in the famous words of that prophet B.B. King, the thrill is gone. Young people, Google it. B.B. King was a blues singer, but he had that song back in the day called "The Thrill is Gone." You wake up that one morning and you realize the thrill done packed up and moved to Chicago. Thrill ain't around no more. And what do you do then? You have to choose to love each other. Not because you feel like it, not because of anything else but the fact that I choose to love you. For 50 years, I've chosen to love one woman, and she's right here.

She never had to choose to love me because she just loved me all the time. I'm so good; I'm just like that. No, the truth is that she's chosen to love me four or five times in one day. But you have to choose to love. Love is a choice. To rejoice is a choice when you're going through trouble. Verse eight says David says, "I'm going to choose to respond to God." He says, "Because, Lord, when you said 'Seek my face,' I said to you, 'Your face, Lord God, I will seek.'"

He's not hiding from God and God's not hiding from him. Jeremiah 29:13, the word of God says, and the Lord God says, "And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart." Could it be that I haven't been able to really commune with God because I've been seeking him with half of my heart? Or I've been holding my joy and my praise for God until the check comes in?

He said, "You'll seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart." That means right now, today. God is here with us. Trouble did not diminish God's sovereign power in David's life. God is waiting for our response, a response of faith. The scripture says, "Let the redeemed say so." You've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Open your mouth and praise and respond to him. Say, "Yes, Lord," inside your heart. "God, give me the strength to do it. I can't do it on my own, but I want to respond to you, not put God on ignore, but respond to him."

The fourth aspect of faith that I find here in David's response in trouble times is teachable faith. Because when you're going through trouble times, it's a time for teaching. It's a time when God wants to teach us and show us things within our lives. In verses 11 and 12, we find these words in Psalm 27. David says, "Teach me your way, O Lord. Teach me, Lord, right now in the middle of my troubles. Teach me your way, O 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."

Lord, teach me. Teach me when? When I'm in trouble. When you're in trouble, it's the time to learn some of the greatest lessons of life. I wish I could stand here and say I've learned some great lessons at seminars. I may recommend this seminar; I've learned some things in seminars. But the greater lessons in life that have changed me and molded the character of my life have been in times of trouble.

David is saying, "Lord, teach me. I'm not going to run from this or whatever. There are some things I need to learn." You know, they say that a tree grows in two different directions at the same time, which is pretty obvious because there's something called the phototropic above ground and it grows towards the sun. And then there is what is called the gravitropic, which is below ground, which is the root system that gravity pulls down.

The most important part of the tree is the one that you don't see. People like the fruit in your life. They love to say, "Oh, this guy is doing all these wonderful things." They see the fruit in your life; they love to come by and pick apples and glean off of you. But the only reason you're able to bear that kind of fruit is because your roots have gone down deep. The thing that brings your roots down deep and drives them down deep is trouble.

When God sends us through times of trouble, he's causing our roots to go down deeper. If it's a shallow tree or shallow root system and a strong wind comes along, it can uproot that tree. So we always glory in the things that we see. Your pastor, for instance, Pastor Tim and many others who have prayed with him and labored in prayer for this fellowship. The reason God is blessing this fellowship so much is because the root system's been driven down deep, but it's been driven down with trouble. They've been crying out and seeking God. So the root system, because it's deep, fruit has been borne in the phototropic above the surface where everybody can see it and go, "Oh wow, that fellowship is doing wonderful." Yeah, because there are some people in it with some deep roots that are willing to stand the test of time and trouble to watch God do a mighty work.

Guest (Male): Learn more about Pastor Al and his ministry by visiting AlPittmanMinistries.com. Also consider supporting us financially. You can send a check to Al Pittman Ministries at PO Box 50584, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80949, or visit us online. Thank you for your prayers and your support. Your generosity keeps this radio ministry going. Lastly, we would love to hear from you. You can contact us by emailing info@AlPittmanMinistries.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Again, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time on the Dwelling Place. God bless.

Have you been wanting to hear Pastor Al teach live? Well, now's your chance.

Al Pittman: Your sanctification is under the Father's authority. How God's going to provide for you is under his authority. How God is going to strengthen you in all is under his authority. Faith is trusting God for his part while doing my part.

Guest (Male): Join Pastor Al at Legacy of Faith Church in Denver, Colorado on Palm Sunday, March 29th. There Pastor Al will be teaching a dynamic Palm Sunday message that you don't want to miss. Doors open at 9:15 AM. Service begins at 10:30 AM. Head to LegacyOfFaithChurch.com to get directions or get more information. That's LegacyOfFaithChurch.com. We'll see you there.