Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: God is promising so much more. If you just kind of recount what's being said here and you put it in our modern context, it's beautiful. God is saying, I will forgive you and guide you and guard you. Beyond your expectation, beyond your fathoming, beyond anything you could achieve. This is what I will do.

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace. The audio broadcast ministry of Pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Brian shares the second half of a lesson from Psalm 25. Dr. Chapell reminds us that God's way is better than our own, and He is promising His blessing and rest for our soul.

You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Brian's book, The Promises of Grace. Dr. Chapell offers a careful look at the beauty of grace and all it brings to believers. These blessings come with the understanding that because we cannot hang on to God, He hangs on to us.

Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of a lesson, The God Who Is Better.

Bryan Chapell: Oh, God. What did I do? I don't mean my failure. I mean, what did I do that you're so mad at me, that you won't hear my prayer? Why won't you fix this? God, what, what do you want out of me so that you will answer my prayer and make this go right again?

All of us know that prayer. When disappointment or discouragement or shame, has come because our career has not gone the way that we want, a relationship has not gone the way we want, or maybe you're at that phase of life that health will never be the same again.

Oh God, what do you want of me? In order to answer that question, you actually have to consider what do you want of God? The Psalmist is actually bold enough to ask that question in our behalf. For people whose prayers are up to God, I lift my soul to you. God, please help, please answer, please come to my rescue. The Psalmist actually puts the prayer in our mouths, what do you want of God as you are praying this prayer?

The obvious is put in front of us. To the Psalmist who has just asked in verse one, Lord, I lift up my soul to you, begins his prayer. He says what he's praying for. Verse two, Oh my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame, let not my enemies exult over me. God, guard me. I need your help here from the disaster that's coming from the difficulty. I I trust you. But don't let me be put to shame. Keep me from being ashamed and keep my enemies, whatever's in the wrong, from having a party at my expense.

God, take care of me. I believe you will. I believe you're sovereign, I believe you're wise, I believe you're powerful. I believe what your word says, that you put a hedge of protection around me, that nothing comes into my life anymore, but what is for my ultimate good and for your own glory. I believe you're my good shepherd. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You say you'll take care of me. Okay, God, do it.

And yet God is saying, your soul will be in well-being. You're you're praying for a good hospital report, and he's saying, but rest in me. I am still the good shepherd. I will lead you to still waters. I will take you in the path that you should go. I'm still providing for you. That is who I am. I'm the one who is giving rest to your soul. And beyond that, I'm giving influence to your life.

Beyond the physical, God is also promising his blessing beyond the immediate. The offspring of the upright will be blessed by inheriting the land. Now, that does not mean that everybody who has children and is a believer is going to be a land barren. Right? It's not the first. This is a a Hebrew idiom that is saying your influence will outlast you to children's children. The blessings of the land upon Israel were the blessings of the Covenant. And God is here saying, your children will know of my blessing as well. I I look at the balloons at the end of the stage as we're getting ready for vacation Bible school, and I recognize that what God is promising to His people, is that the prayer that we made earlier in this service, is is not silly and it's not going to be thwarted. That God is saying to people, you are praying for affluence, I am giving you influence.

You you just want a big bank account, you just want your job to go well. I am telling you that not only can I provide rest for your soul, I can create a reverberating influence of your life for generations to come. Some of you are here today as adults because of the influence of this church upon your lifetime as a child. And now we are being given the privilege of saying, God can do the same. He can do it over. In fact, it's part of his promise that he is saying for those who will follow him, that he will actually create influence beyond the immediate. And that influence is not the end of the promise. It is it is beyond our fathoming that God is promising his blessing. Verse 14, the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him. Please think this is the biblical notion of reverential fear and awe and reverence. It's not the notion of of terror. That God who made the whole universe, the creator of all things, before whom we should tremble,

Says I'll be your friend. I'll be for you now. So that not only will we have influence with others, we will have the friendship of God as the promise of his blessing. And that's ultimately going to go beyond our circumstances. Verse 15, my eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net. I don't know what your net is. I don't know if it's circumstances or income or health or relationship, a marriage that's coming undone. But God is saying, listen, I have eternal object in view here. And whatever you are facing, I will, as you turn to me, I will turn to you and ultimately provide rest for your soul. So that whatever is this earthly event, is not going to capture you in such a way that hell is your future. You are rescued from that. I will pluck your feet from the net that is threatening to cast you, pull you down, trip you up from a relationship with the Lord.

God is promising so much more. If you just kind of recount what's being said here and you put it in our modern context, it's beautiful. God is saying, I will forgive you and guide you and guard you. Beyond your expectation, beyond your fathoming, beyond anything you could achieve. This is what I will do. But as precious as that is, it's it's now a puzzle.

Do you remember the order that the Psalmist prayed? Guard, guide, forgive. In what order does the Lord answer? Forgive, guide, guard. We are praying for results first. What is God offering first? A relationship.

We, we're pragmatic, we we want things to function, we want life to be easy, we want everything to be fixed right now, this way. Let's go. God, you know, and and God is saying, I need your heart first. I I need you to know you are secure in me in this fallen world, where there is not physical security, where bodies come unglued, where relationships come undone, where employers fail.

I need you to know, I need you to know that you are secure with me before you know that I am guiding you and guarding you. You see, if you don't trust that God is for you, you cannot live for Him. When the hard circumstances will come, you'll say, God, you are guiding me, you are guarding me. When when when the difficult path is ahead of you, and you don't know what's ahead, you will say, I don't want to go down that path.

What makes us willing to accept the guidance and the guarding of the Lord, is to know that we are in a secure relationship with Him. We want results and then relationship. In fact, we'll promise the relationship to get the results. Okay, I'll say I I'm sorry, God, so that you'll fix this. I I'll humble myself, I'll go to church more so that you will answer in the way that I think you ought to answer.

And God is saying, trust me. And I will lead you in the way that you should go, and I will guard you on that path for your eternal good because you know that I love you.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor and author Bryan Chapell. Have you thought about the fullness of God's grace and the role that it plays in your life? You can hear and understand that you are saved by grace. But what other spiritual benefits can an understanding of grace reveal? And what has God promised to believers that His grace will provide? In the book, The Promises of Grace, Pastor Bryan offers a careful look at the beauty of grace and all it brings to you as a believer. God's Word does not promise more money and fewer headaches. But His grace provides a confidence in our relationship with Him. Pastor Bryan wants to help you focus on the promises that you can expect God to fulfill. Promises of assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, and perseverance in trial. You can request your copy of The Promises of Grace when you go online at unlimitedgrace.com. Or by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223. And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.

Bryan Chapell: What difference does it make to recognize that we pray for results and God is far more concerned for relationship? I think of it in the words of a pastor whose book I was reading recently, John Henderson. And he described a couple who was learning the hard way that God wants a heart even more than the results that they wanted. He describes Patricia and Claude, not their real names, for reasons you'll soon see.

He says, Patricia had a long and painful childhood. An older brother molested her for years. Before she was even eight years old. At nine, she was assaulted by a visiting uncle. Her mother turned a blind eye. Her father was too drunk to care. In high school, she bounced from boy to boy who would give her attention if she would give them her body. Then one morning, she woke up in a stranger's house, naked, hung over, with people she did not know. And recognized how humiliated and hopeless was her life.

The pastor wrote, praise God, she did not take her own life at that point, but rather received an invitation from a family to go to a church summer camp. Last thing she wanted to do, but perhaps there would be some friends or boys there. So she went to the summer camp and for the first time in her life, heard of the blood of Jesus that pays for your sins completely, that tells you you can really be forgiven and cleansed and made right forever, regardless of what's been in your past. And for those of you who are going to be working in our summer camp in our vacation Bible school, I must tell you, this is not a rare story.

You you may think, oh, this is some obscure thing. We every year deal with children who have had these kinds of experiences, who are desperate to know the Lord and don't even know they're desperate. And so we invite them, those who make our lives hard because their lives have been harder. And Jesus has goodness for them. The shame and the disgust and the rage that Patricia had been feeling for years, like a kind of cancer in her body, went into remission after that summer camp.

Two years later, she met Claude. Claude had lived a very different kind of childhood. His parents made sure that he suffered little or nothing of hardship. Theirs was a Christian home, but it was full of anxiety and expectation and legalistic standards. He said if something went wrong, I was supposed to fix it and get over it.

When Claude married Patricia, he knew that she'd had a tough past, but he expected her to fix it and to get over it. Since their sexual encounters prior to marriage were easy and fun, Claude imagined that once they were married, it would be easier and more fun. So he was totally unprepared for their wedding night, when Patricia in tears and terror ran from him. He did not understand what many of you who work with adolescents and young marrieds well understand. And that is once you make love with another person, even in marriage, who's part of your family now, it resurfaces the past in stereo like you cannot believe. And that is not rare.

Pastorally, just to step aside for a moment, it is not rare that young people who have had damaged childhoods struggle now in marriage with that damage of that particular sort, terribly. And for us just to say, well, just get over it, is totally unrealistic. And for the church just to say, well, just fix it. That's past, Jesus forgave it, and and you're fine now, just get over it. Is not to understand. But what God knew, what we must know, what the church must be willing to say is, the fix-its were impossible. For Claude or for Patricia, until they both knew profoundly a God who forgives and takes shame away as far as the East is from the West by the work of Jesus Christ.

To recognize deeply and profoundly that they needed a God who instructed sinners in his way. Not just the saints, not the people who've got it all figured out. Patricia needed a God who would guard and guide their behaviors, but because he had already been merciful to them, far more than their behaviors deserved. They needed to know a God who who was better than their behaviors. They needed a God who would forgive even forgotten sin until it resurrected its head in their lives and in their relationship. They needed a God who would be merciful to messed up people. They needed a God who would provide a savior for shame, even if it was done to you, rather than what you did.

They just wanted God to fix their marriage. God knew he needed their souls to be made right with Him, or the marriage wasn't going to be fixed. It's what all of us need to know. We're just praying the pragmatic, functional, bank book, career, relationship prayers. God, just just guide me and guard me. And God says, first, I need your heart. And you need my heart. You need to know, I have made you right with me so that you can trust me through this, so you can turn to me through this, so that you know that when you have turned away from me, I'm still turning to you. And when you're struggling, I am still for you.

God wants relationship far before he wants the result, and we need to know that. Or we will turn away in the relationship because we're not getting the results we want as soon enough or fast enough as we think God could be acting. But when we know it, we actually know how to pray. It's what the Psalmist is willing to do. I mean, his words could be in the mouths of so many of us. First 16, God, turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged, bring me out of my distress, consider my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sins. God, it's so hard right now. I'm I'm struggling so much, just just listen to me and and give me your heart because you have forgiven me my heart.

And when that's the relationship that God has established, then the results are lives that truly by his guarding and guiding begin to honor him. Verse 19, consider how many are my foes and with violent hatred they hate me, but God, guard my soul, deliver me, let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. There are the foes, there's the enemy, there's the affliction, but here is somebody running to find refuge in God. I still see the difficulty. I still know the challenges, but I take refuge in you, my God, whom I trust because I know your heart now. And let me live for you now. Verse 21, may integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.

The courage, the willingness to live, the actual seeing of the results that we wanted, come from the relationship first. Now that I trust you, I can rest in you even when the world is restless. I can hope in you even when my life seems hopeless. I will trust you for eternity when the earthly has abandoned. Why? Because you have forgiven me, because your mercy is greater than my behavior. And I love you. And it's what the Psalmist is praying, may integrity and uprightness preserve me. I'm waiting for you now, God. To show yourself strong, to do what you need to do, even if I do not see it in this life, I will believe in you because your mercy has been demonstrated through the work of your son. So make me ready and willing to fight for you, to face the hard things and still live for you because my heart is set on you, the one who have given your heart to me.

The end of all that, the proof of it is the very last verse. Redeem Israel, oh God, out of all his troubles. Once we rest in God and that relationship is secure, the prayer changes for the first time. Instead of it being self-focused, it's God's purpose-focused. Lord, I'm not now praying for my results. I'm praying for your results. Redeem your people. Take my prayer, take my life, take my behavior and use them for your purposes among your people. God, I trust in you. Guard me, guide me, but do these because I believe in your mercy. And because I believe in that, make me a fountain of it for the world.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. If you've been blessed by this message and would like to hear more from Dr. Chapell, I would encourage you to visit unlimitedgrace.com. In addition to messages from Pastor Bryan, you can explore the many sermons, podcasts, seminars and more available to you. Also, be sure to request a copy of the book from Dr. Bryan Chapell called The Promises of Grace. We'll send you a copy right away as our way of saying thank you for your most generous financial support. Once again, go to unlimitedgrace.com. Or you can give by calling 844-41 Grace. That's 844-414-7223. Please be sure to join us next time as once again, we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by His unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.