Seeking God's Face When He Seems Hidden

6 · Reviews last week's exegetical work establishing that 'hide Your face' equals God's manifest presence, then announces this sermon will focus on the practical means David uses to seek that presence

Now we're keying in on the phrase, 'How long, O Lord, will You hide Your face from me?' And if you weren't here last week, we made the case I think rather well, by the way, the biblical case that "hide Your face from me" is sort of the Old Testament way of talking about the presence of God. The face of God is sort of the synonym to the presence of God. In fact, the two words are united. And so what David is doing is he is calling out for God to restore this sense of felt presence. And he is doing it, this is sort of the sermon on how we talk about practically how to seek that. One of the sermons will talk about how practically to seek that. And I'm going to just walk you through in this psalm the ways that he goes about seeking the presence of God.

7 · Establishes the first point: David's fourfold repetition of 'How long?' demonstrates the urgency with which we must seek God's presence

And the first point is this: he seeks God's presence with urgency. Right? He seeks God's presence with urgency. 4 times in the first 2 verses, he says what? How long? How long? How long? How long? I encourage you sometime in your weekly conversation with just a random person, just say the same thing 4 times in a row and just see kind of like how people respond. There is a lot of emphasis here to say over and over again to the Lord, how long? He wants this to change right away. This is so important to David, in fact, that he enters into a little bit of heresy.

8 · Identifies David's theological imprecision in asking if God will forget him forever

He says, "Will You forget me forever?" There's an imprecision to his language here. David's not being that theologically precise.

9 · Cites Spurgeon's assessment of David's imprecise language as foolish speech

Spurgeon says of this line, "Ah, David, you're talking like a fool."

10 · Uses Spurgeon's metaphor about David's emotional state being more disordered than his instrument

Spurgeon also said in this psalm, "It seems that David's heart was more out of tune than his harp." That's cute.

11 · Argues that David's theological imprecision paradoxically demonstrates sound theology because it reveals desperate longing for God rather than mere intellectual assent to doctrine

But I think we can forgive and understand David's theological imprecision because it's actually, I think, evidence of a really good theology. Let me say this again. I think the fact that David is over-exaggerating and saying, "Oh Lord, how long will You forget me forever?" when the truth is God doesn't forget him, hasn't forgotten him, won't forget him. It's a completely false category. I think in some level, David's use of that very imprecise language shows that his theology is really sound, and here's why: because he really misses God. Friends, I want to be so careful that we are not self-impressed by having good theology and think of that as enough and as a substitute for an experience with God, right? Like, I believe wholeheartedly in the sovereignty of God. And in, in a few weeks, probably more than a few weeks, we have a sermon on, on prayer. And one of the things I've noticed is, is that it's really great that I believe intellectually in the sovereignty of God, and it's really great that I have these, these 5 points of soteriology called TULIP, which I see, you know, God's, God's leadership in salvation and so on and so forth. That's really great. And yet there's a person down the street in another church who doesn't believe any of that, who is praying all the time for the Lord to help him. And I look and say, who really believes in the sovereignty of God, right? Who actually believes it? The one who checks off a bunch of theological boxes, or the one who is constantly pleading for the Lord. And I just don't want us to get to the point where we say, we've arrived, we know what we're supposed to know, therefore we've arrived. Because the Bible says that there's something that we need to know about God that surpasses knowledge. And David's just crying out, and he's being very imprecise in it. He's saying, O Lord, O Lord, will you forget me forever? And it's completely not a proper theological category, and yet it shows Great theology. He's desperate. He feels this sense of sorrow.

12 · Catalogs the symptoms David experiences in God's absence: grief, spiritual sleepiness, fading fire, physical shakiness

He says, "How long will I take counsel in my soul and feel sorrowful all the day long?" The word for sorrow there is grief. David's going throughout his day just missing this sense of the presence of God. He feels sleepy. He says, "Light up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death." He's talking about this sense in which he's growing progressively weaker He's sort of fading. The fire inside of him isn't burning anymore. He feels shaky. He says that, "Lest my foes rejoice, lest I am shaken." David talks about his legs a lot actually in Scripture. Not a lot, but he's proud of his legs. He's like, "With God I can leap over a wall." In Psalm 119, he's like, "I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart." And here he's saying, "I don't feel like I've got anything under me because without the felt presence of God, I'm just not right." David is saying, "This is no way to live, God. This is no way to live."

13 · Establishes the insidious nature of God's absence: it produces spiritual anemia and vulnerability that develop so gradually they go unnoticed, normalizing a spiritually sick state

Last week I said that it is dangerous to go too long without experiencing the presence of God because we become internally anemic and externally vulnerable. And you know what's interesting about both those states, being externally vulnerable and internally anemic? You don't notice it. It's progressive. It just kind of sneaks up on you. And sick becomes the new healthy.

14 · Explains how God's presence functions as a baseline of glory that enables proper evaluation of lesser goods

Let me tell you one way that we become more vulnerable to the enemy without the manifest presence of God. God's presence is meant to establish for us a baseline of glory and joy and goodness and truth and beauty. It's meant to create a baseline, sort of. We were talking about how hard it is to know where you are in this area, because in other areas that we've lived, there's a river and you know where the river is, and you kind of feel this sense of— I know there's a river here, but it's not as dominant in this part of the city. Or other people have talked about how they lived in a place where there are mountains, and you always know where you are in relationship to these mountains. Friends, the longer we go without experiencing the manifest presence of God, the more susceptible we become to seeing things that aren't really that great and aren't really that important and aren't really that wonderful as more wonderful and great and important as they are, because we lose all sense of perspective. The enemy sneaks in and begins to offer us substitutes for God, and because the real thing is a distant memory in our experience, those things seem better and more helpful and more promising than they actually are. This is just one of the ways we become more vulnerable to our enemy when we lack the manifest experience, presence of God. So David is leveraging this in his prayers. He says, consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say I've prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

15 · Articulates the second principle for seeking God's presence: recognizing that our need for God and God's commitment to His own glory are inseparably linked, giving us boldness in prayer

So I told you first, if we're going to seek the presence of God, we should do it with urgency. And the second point is just this: connect God's glory with our need. Connect God's glory with our need. David knows that without God's presence, he will fall prey to his enemy. And he also knows that if he fell prey to his enemy, God would not be glorified. You see how David intertwines his need with God's glory?

16 · Applies the principle by showing how to pray with confidence: appeal to God's commitment to His own glory while acknowledging our desperate need for His presence

Do you know how to ask God for something with boldness and assurance and confidence? Ask God to glorify His name. And guess what? God has connected our salvation with His glory so that He will intervene on our behalf to protect us from our enemies in the way that He sees fit because He is committed to glorifying His name. And so what David's doing here is he's saying, God, You promised to glorify Yourself. And God, You promised to take care of me. And those two things are interconnected. And so I'm calling out to You. I'm saying, intercede in my life. Return Your presence, Your manifest presence to me because I am exceedingly vulnerable And if you don't do it, I will fall to my enemies, to your enemies.

17 · Directly exhorts the congregation to adopt these two postures—urgency and linking glory with need—as a unified body, hinting at the corporate dimension to be developed in the following week's sermon

So we call out to God with urgency because we really, really, really do need God's manifest presence in our church and in our lives. And we call out to God with a sense of, listen, If you don't do this for us, we will fall. We will fall. It's only a matter of time. And you know, if we could just get to the point as a group of people, everybody I'm looking at this morning, if we could all get to the point where we really believe those two things and felt those two things and stepped into every Sunday morning together crying out to God for those two things, Boy, I'll tell you. I'll talk more about that next week.

18 · Pivots from urgency and glory to the third principle: approaching God as Father, which explains and justifies David's imprecise language

So we cry out to God for His manifest presence because we need it desperately. And he's imprecise, David is imprecise because he's desperate, because he's under attack, he's vulnerable. But I think there's a strong case to be made that his imprecision is also due to the fact that he's approaching God as a Father.

19 · Uses a personal story about decoding a child's imprecise speech to illustrate the fatherly heart that interprets inarticulate prayer

Children don't strain to find the perfect word when they're telling their dad they need something. I was with Noah and his boys this week, and Bryce, poor Bryce, you know, you have to decode Bryce. Like, you have to know what he's saying. And I'm always impressed when parents can decode their children because I have no idea what's happening. But isn't that exactly what God promises in Romans 8, right? That there are some times when we have needs and groanings too deep for words, and that we should just trust in the Father's heart to interpret what's going on and to give us what we need.

20 · Liberates the congregation from anxiety about theological precision in prayer by appealing to the confidence that comes from approaching God as Father rather than as theological examiner

I say all of this so far because I want to free you up from being overly concerned about very precise categories in establishing simply this: Lord, we need more of you. Does that sound biblical to you? Right? And do we really need in every instance— I'm all for theological precision— but do we need in every instance to go there first when as children we should go to the Father and say, I need you. I don't even know how to say this. I don't know how to ask for it, but I'm asking in urgency that the quality of my relationship with you isn't what I need it to be in order to live the life you've called me to live. To say that with urgency, but also a sense of God's fatherhood. You see, that's what I think is happening in this psalm, really. I think David is confident in the Lord's fatherhood.

21 · Exegetes 'steadfast love' as the Old Testament's primary way of expressing God's fatherhood—the union of strength (ability) and love (willingness)

Look at verse 5: "But I have trusted in your steadfast love." "I have trusted in your steadfast love." The Old Testament doesn't refer to God as Father all that much, about 14 times, give or take. That's really something that Jesus develops, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But although the Old Testament doesn't often refer to God as a Father, it routinely refers to God's fatherly love. It just doesn't use the word Father. And I want to be clear on Father's Day to give you men the simple version of what it means to be a good dad. We get this directly from God. Be strong and be loving. There you go. Be strong and be loving, and be strong in your love and loving in your strength. Let those two qualities intertwine in your relationship with your kids, and they will be blessed. Be strong, be loving, be strong in your love and loving in your strength. Over and over again, we see those two qualities being knit together to form this phrase we see consistently in the Psalms. Steadfast love. The steadfast love of the Lord is this sense of God's strength and faithfulness and capabilities united with his emotional intention for the good of his children. It's the sense of God being willing and able to love you, of being able and willing to love you.

22 · Identifies David's trust in God's steadfast love as the pivot point of the psalm, then challenges the congregation about how recently they've seriously considered God's fatherhood rather than treating it as an assumed truth

So what David is saying as he is as he's really not happy with the quality of his experience with God, and he's crying out for God to give him a sense of his manifest presence, what David is saying is, pivot point for me is that I trust in God's willingness to love me and his ability to love me. I trust in the fatherhood of God. What do you know about the Fatherhood of God? How recently have you thought about the Fatherhood of God? I think it's one of those truths we very quickly forget to think about. I think it's one of those truths we very quickly allow to pass in our rearview mirror as something very simple and assumed.

23 · Establishes the first fact: God is the archetypal Father, the original after whom all human fatherhood is patterned, as evidenced by Acts 17's declaration that all humanity are His offspring

So let me give you just 5 facts about the Fatherhood of God. Let me go through a little mini-sermon within this. Talking about the Fatherhood of God. First of all, God is the perfect Father. God isn't like a father, fathers are like God. God is the perfect Father. Acts 17 says that God made the world and everything in it, and he gave to mankind life and breath and everything. He determined allotted periods and boundaries for where they would live. Acts 17 says we are indeed his offspring. So the first fact about the Fatherhood of God is that God is the perfect Father.

24 · Establishes the second fact: sin's heinousness derives from the fact that it is rebellion against a perfect Father, not merely violation of an abstract moral code

The second one is this: that's why sin is so foul. Sin is so foul because of the fatherhood of God. God is not an anonymous cold force. We are not sinning against an anonymous kind of idea. We're sinning against a person. We're sinning against someone who is the perfect Father. The Fatherhood of God is why sin, one reason why sin is so foul.

25 · Establishes the third fact: sin's primary damage is creating a gap between Creator and Father, making us orphans

Number 3, sin makes us orphans. The basic problem with sin is that it severs our connection to God's Fatherhood. You know, we're so used to fathers abandoning children, but there was a time not that long ago when children abandoned fathers. There was a time, and it still happens to this day, we're so used to the deadbeat dad stuff in the news and so on and so forth that we've completely forgotten about another theological category, and that is simply children leaving their fathers. And in Genesis we see just that, we see the original sin and every sin afterward essentially be a looking at the Father in the face and saying, "I don't need your fatherhood, I don't want it, I want to be my own man." I want to be my own. Sin breaks, severs the fatherhood of God. You know, this week I was just thinking about people that we've counseled over the years, and I was just thinking about fatherhood, and these two words came to my mind: Creator and Father. And I thought, there should never be any gap between those two words. And every time there is a gap between those two words, there's pain. You know, when we have to have different words to designate, like, well, he was my biological father, or baby daddy, you know, and what we're saying essentially is, like, this is the person who created me, but we have to use special designations because it's not the person who raised me. If that's your story, there's a gap between creator and father. There's pain in that gap. You know that all too well. And that goes all the way back to Eden, when through sin we created a gap between our Creator and our Father. Friends, you could never sever your relationship to God as Creator. That's just a fact. He created you. But in your sin, you can sever the relationship between God as your Father And that's what makes sin so hard. It severs the greatest blessing in this world of having God as our Father.

26 · Establishes facts four and five: Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father by closing the Creator-Father gap through His death, adopting us back into God's fatherhood at great cost

So sin destroys that family relationship with God. Number 4, Jesus came to reconcile us back to the Father. Like I said before, there's only about 14 instances in the Old Testament where God is referred to as Father, and then Jesus shows up and it's just Father this and Father that. He revolutionizes the way that we address God. Why does Jesus enter the scene and suddenly use the word Father constantly to refer to Yahweh? Because He's right with God. It's because His relationship hasn't been severed. He's Father. He's perfectly in relationship with God. That's what Jesus came to offer, and that's, that's number 5. The Father pays a dear price to reconcile us. Jesus did not come to flaunt his perfect relationship with the Father. He came to give us a perfect relationship with the Father. Romans 5 says, but God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we now have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received— what? Reconciliation. Jesus came as the only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him would be made right with the Father. Sin destroys that important link to your Creator. It creates a painful gap between those two names. But Jesus comes back and offers us reconciliation, and he does that by offering himself. Hebrews says that through Jesus' suffering, he brought many sons to glory. He brought many sons to glory. We are adopted back into the fatherhood of God through Jesus' precious work on the cross.

27 · Transitions from five facts about God's fatherhood to five benefits of being God's child, connecting the theological foundation to the practical pursuit of God's presence

Now why is that all connected to the presence of God? Well, I've given you 5 facts about the Fatherhood of God, let me give you 5 benefits, real quickly, of being God's child. Another little mini-sermon within a sermon.

28 · Establishes the first benefit of sonship: direct access to God through prayer, as Jesus taught in the Lord's Prayer

5 benefits of being God's child. The first one is access. When you are a child of God, when the Creator is also your Father, You have access to God. Jesus teaches us to pray in a whole new way. He says, "When you pray," say what? "Our Father who art in heaven."

29 · Establishes the second benefit: God's fatherly compassion toward His children, citing Psalm 103:13

A second benefit of being a child of God is that you have fatherly compassion from God. Psalm 103:13 says, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." Your whole relationship with the Creator of the universe changes. And suddenly you have access to Him, and He looks at you with compassion as a father looks on his child.

30 · Establishes the third benefit: God's fatherly generosity, particularly in giving the Holy Spirit (His presence) to those who ask

The third benefit of being a child of God is generosity. Victor read this in the call to worship. I'm going to read it again. This is fundamental to seeking the presence of God. It's fundamental to Father's Day. The two things just happen to work out quite well together. Luke 11 says this: So I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Jesus is saying this. Seek and you will find. By the way, Jesus' mission is to reconcile us, to give us a Father again, right? Can you imagine the delight in His heart when He's saying this to His disciples and He knows that He's going to pay for this to be true with His death? He gets to tell human beings who were once fallen and severed from their fatherly relationship with the Creator this: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you, if a son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask! Ask Him.

31 · Summarizes the first three benefits and introduces the fourth: belonging to God's family

So the third benefit of being a child of God: you've got access, you've got God's compassion, you've got God's generosity. Fourth benefit is you've got a family.

32 · Offers pastoral comfort to those for whom Father's Day stirs pain, promising that God sets the lonely in families through adoption into His church

You know, these familial holidays— I guess most all holidays are familial except for Arbor Day— most holidays remind us of family. These aren't great times for everybody, right? A day like Father's Day can can actually be a hard day for a lot of people. A day like Christmas can be a hard day for people. It can make you feel lonely. Let me tell you something, one of my favorite verses, not only that's in the Bible, that I've seen God do over and over again is found in Psalm 68 where it says, "He sets the lonely in families." He sets the lonely in families. If you're lonely, God has adopted you. God wants to adopt you through Jesus if he hasn't already. And he wants to bring you into a family of God. You know, the other side of that verse, by the way, says this: God sets the lonely in families, but the rebellious live in a sun-soaked or sun-scorched land. Again, those who have been reconciled are at the table with Dad, and those who rebel wander the wilderness like Cain in a sun-scorched land.

33 · Establishes the fifth benefit: the privilege of glorifying God through dependent, needy prayer—particularly prayer for His presence—which displays His fatherly character

The fifth benefit, this is a great one, is childlike worship. John's introduction to the verse he read was perfect. This is all about this fifth idea of childlike worship. The fifth benefit of being God's child is that you get to glorify Him by being needy. You get to glorify Him by asking Him. For things. You get to show His fatherly strength and fatherly love by depending on Him. You get to show the worth of the mountain stream by drinking of the mountain stream. And you get to show the glory of God by calling out to God and asking Him for the things that are the most important. And He will show Himself to be a good Father when we call out to Him and say, Give us more of your Holy Spirit. Give us more of your presence. Help us to know your presence more clearly.

34 · Returns to Psalm 13:5-6 to show David's trust in God's steadfast love as the foundation for his confidence that his heart will rejoice and he will sing

Let's look back at verse 5. But I've trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. He's trusting in this inclination of the Father to love and the ability of the Father to love. I will sing to the Lord because He's bountifully with me.

35 · Introduces the fourth principle for seeking God's presence: when you cannot feel joy, remember God's past faithfulness

This is the third point. First point is ask God with urgency. The second one is connect His glory and our salvation. Third point is rely on the Fatherhood of God. This is the fourth point, and that's just this: remember when you can't rejoice. Remember when you can't rejoice. Here's what I mean. If you'll notice the tenses in verse 5, I've trusted in your steadfast love, my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. You see the tenses? Past tense, future tense. I have trusted, I will rejoice, I will sing because he dealt bountifully with me. Future, past, future, past. Here's the thing, I can't make my heart rejoice. But I can make my heart remember. We're talking now about how to seek the presence of God, and sometimes the affections aren't there. What do you do then? Well, when I can't rejoice, I can at least remember. I can at least look back and see God's faithfulness to me in the past.

36 · Applies the remembering principle by directing the congregation to their conversion as the supreme evidence of God's commitment to being with them, establishing confidence that He will answer prayers for His presence

And friends, we talk about the gospel a lot because it is a transforming effect in all sorts of areas of your life. But in this moment, as we are seeking the presence of God, one of the fundamental questions we have to ask is, does he really love me? Will he really do this for me? Will he really overlook what Will He really forgive me? Will He really be my Father? There's no better place to go than to your conversion. If the Lord saved you, then you know one simple fact. Listen, friends, this is so important. I think some of you just need to let this soak into your cells. God did not save you to merely tolerate you. He saved you. That is to say, He bought you with the precious blood of His only begotten Son to be with you, to spend time with you. He saved you to spend eternity with you. Friends, God was willing to move heaven and earth to be with you. And when you ask him, when we ask him together for a clearer sense of his presence, we can have confidence that if he ripped us out of the grave and gave us life so that we could be with him, this prayer, this ask, is well within His ability and His intention.

37 · Transitions to practical instruction by identifying singing as one of several 'means of grace' God has given for seeking His presence, previewing several weeks of teaching on these tools

So we seek the presence of God because we know if we're in Christ, God has moved heaven and earth to reconcile us with Himself, to bring us into His presence. Now I want to get ultra-practical for a minute. Look what David says in verse 6: "I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me." Here's a really important tip, pro tip for you: God has actually given us a handful of tools that we're supposed to use to pursue His presence. Sometimes you may have heard these called means of grace, and the idea is that God's given us these practical things that we can do to seek his presence, and singing is one of the tools that God has given us. And over the next several weeks, we're going to talk about, I think, most of the tools. I'll probably forget one or miss one, but most of the tools that God's given us to seek his presence. We can't make it all happen, but he's given us tools to seek him.

38 · Tells a personal story about learning to start fires to illustrate the necessity of gathering small materials before the spark can catch—a metaphor for spiritual disciplines

You know, I used to be quite the outdoorsman back in the day, back when I could sleep on the ground. And one of the essential skills, I mean, probably the essential skill, right, is to learn how to start a fire. And just like every other kid before me and every other kid after me, I made the same mistake as I was learning how to start a fire. And guys, if you know how to start a fire, you know this mistake well. You grab the big stuff and you think it's just going to magically light on its own. Every kid makes a mistake of overlooking the small stuff. And without the small stuff, you can't build the fire. And every kid gets impatient and wants to skip gathering all the small things that you need to catch that spark. To start that fire. But that's really the only way, short of a 50-gallon drum of kerosene. It's the only way— done that too. It's the only way— my eyebrows have grown back. The only way you can actually start a fire is to spend a lot of time on the small stuff.

39 · Applies the fire-starting illustration to the pursuit of God's presence, arguing that small spiritual disciplines (singing, church attendance, service) are the tinder that catches the spark of God's manifest presence

And friends, that's really the way life works. As we're seeking this thing that honestly is the most important thing, we need to experience the presence of God. I don't know many other priorities that would overcome this one in my life. I don't think there are any. Because this would inform every other area of my life. As I'm seeking this, as I want this to happen, it is going to be very easy for me to neglect the small stuff. It's going to be very easy to get this dream in my head of this wonderful thing that could happen and forget to realize that in almost every good thing in my life, it's happened because I connected and brought together a bunch of very small, seemingly meaningless things and brought them together. And those are the things that caught the spark. Those are the things that really honestly built the fire. The Christian life is not a job. But it is full of duties. Duties that lead to delight. Duties that should start in this sort of, I really, really want God. And if I can sing or come to church or serve or care for my neighbor and see those things turn into a way that God delivers this thing that I long for, I will happily gather all the small things together so that God can light the fire.

40 · Interprets David's decision to sing as a practical choice to use a God-given means to seek His presence, even though David cannot manufacture the presence itself

When David says, "I will sing to the Lord," I think he's starting to gather the tinder. I think he's choosing to engage in behaviors that he knows will predictably lead to the thing that he's seeking. Though he can't flip the switch, I think he knows there are means There are methods. There are things that we can do to gather the tender. And I think singing for David and for you and for me is one of those things. So he's beginning to seek the means.

41 · Briefly introduces the corporate dimension of seeking God's presence (to be developed next week) by noting David sent the psalm to the choir master

Two other things really quickly before we close. He's corporatizing his prayer. I am convinced, and we'll explain this in the weeks to come, that seeking the presence of God is a team sport. I'm convinced that God will actually— is calling us to seek his presence together. We'll talk about that more next week.

42 · Offers pastoral assurance that seasons of God's absence are temporary and will end when His people seek Him, grounding this confidence in God's fatherly commitment to His children's survival

And finally, most importantly, he views this as a season. And I can't say this enough— David views this absence of God's presence as a season, as, as a thing that will end. He says, "How long? How long? How long? How long?" Because he knows this can't go on forever. It won't. Let me just tell you point blank, it won't. It won't go on forever. This dry spell in your life won't go on forever. This dry spell in this church, if you think there is one, won't go on forever. God always blesses his people when they seek him in this way. God will meet us. He will meet us, and he will do that because we can't survive without it. And it is God's will that the church survive, and it's God's will that you continue. So he will do this because he's a good father.

43 · Closing prayer applying the sermon by corporately calling out to God for His manifest presence, appealing to Luke 11, and framing the request in missional rather than ingrown terms

Let's pray. Lord, we cry out to You. Please, just even now, begin to stir in our hearts a spirit of unity as we take a step together toward You, calling out right now, Lord, together that we need You, Lord. We need more of You. Stir us up from our complacency. Stir us up from any sense of fear. Lord, through Jesus, You've done everything necessary to bring us into Your presence. You've done everything necessary to be our Father. So we call out to You right now according to Your Word in Luke 11. We ask you, Lord, that you would bless our church with more of a sense of your presence when we gather together. Please, Lord, bless us with that. We know, God, that if you will be with us present— and God, you made us the way we are, we're human beings, we need you to reveal yourself to us in all sorts of ways, Lord— we know that as you do that, that that will never be— that doesn't get ingrown. That doesn't become stagnant. That always overflows into the nations. That always overflows into the city, into our neighborhoods. And so we don't seek this as sort of a navel-gazing way or a way to become further ingrown. We seek this for the exact opposite reason: to give vitality and power to our witness in the world. Please, Lord, bless us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

44 · Introduces the Lord's Supper as the ultimate expression of God's desire for intimacy with His children, inviting all who are reconciled to the Father through Christ to participate

Well, the Lord's table is offered up to us as God's extension of, I'm with you, I love you, I've paid every— I've done everything I need to bring you to myself. I feel like I've introduced the table throughout this message because essentially there's nothing more intimate than to ask somebody over for dinner. There's nothing more intimate to say, I want you with me. I want you near me. I want you to be with me. And that's what God's doing. He's inviting us to his table, his feast, and it's a feast made possible by Jesus. If you have placed your faith in Jesus and believe that through his work you've been reconciled to the Father, so there's no more gap between Creator and Father, that they're together, I encourage you to participate in the Lord's table with us today. Come.