The Early Church regularly used the Book of Psalms as an unending source of insight for the Christian life—to inspire faith, to praise God, and to encourage one another. This summer, we’re going to do the same thing at Cornerstone. We’re making a playlist of some of the Psalms greatest hits, compiling a mixtape that we believe will help inspire you and motivate you during the dog days of summer.

Scripture says, “Truly my soul finds rest in God.” It’s a beautiful concept in theory—to rest in God—but in reality? It sounds so abstract. What does it actually look like to find rest in God? Can I even afford to rest in today’s fast-paced culture? The answers to these questions point us to the truth that there’s more to it than just finding a quiet resting place in God, but learning a quiet resting pace from God.

Hey, are you guys happy to be in God's house today? You guys are happy to be here. Thank you, Roy. Appreciate it. It is so good to be here. So good to be worshiping with everybody. I'm excited to be here and to be preaching. It's been a bit a little bit since I was here. Right. We've had two weeks off. We've had two weeks off, so it's good to be back. I was in Cain, Pennsylvania. Brenda held down the fort in the Allegheny National Forest at a family camp on pasture and preached the last few weeks. Can we give it up for pasture Brenda for preaching so well?
Yeah, we were at this family camp in Kane, Pennsylvania. It was an awesome time. My wife, Jessica, and our three kids went to it. We had a blast. It was awesome. It reminded me of the family camp I used to go to whenever I was young.
It was just it was a lot of fun. One funny thing was all of us fit into the cabinet. Like if you've ever gotten, has anyone ever gone to one of these like church camps? Church camp? Yeah, we had some people in first, the nine o'clock service, same thing. These church camps are so much fun. The cabins, man, they're like, what 200 Square feet like these things are tiny. They're like little tiny houses. And it's just like the ones that we grew up going to. And so you walk in, and there's like the bottom floor, and the top floor at the top floor is just a loft. It's just a loft with a bed in it. On the bottom floor, you walk in, and it is your kitchen slash living rooms slash dining room slash office. It's, it's everything, right? It's everything. It's all things in this one little room. And so, needless to say, with a small little place like that, it was hard to find any kind of peace and quiet, right? That didn't happen with five people, three of whom are eight or under, in that tiny places are not happening. Now at this family camp. I was speaking a total of preached eight sermons, which was wild. I preached eight sermons and led six Bible studies. And so, getting ready for all of those things, I needed to prepare. I needed to read Scripture and go over my notes on what wasn't going to happen in that little cabin wasn't like no way was happening. So they told me, and luckily, I didn't even have to ask. They were already on the ball. They were already thinking about it like Pastor Jacob, and we've got an empty cabin across the way from you. You can go over there and use that as your like Little De facto office anytime you want throughout the week. And I appreciated it. I went in there a few different times to work. Because in there, it was able to be what can be quiet. It'll be quieter. And that's what we're talking about today. We're going to be talking about quiet today as we hop into our sermon. Who needs some quiet in their life? Let's see those who need some quiet. You have forgotten what quiet is? You don't even know it's been so long. You're like quiet. What's this strange word that you speak of? All right, all the parents in the room said Amen. To that, I'm sure.
Quiet is this thing that we see pop up over and over in Scripture. It's this theme that makes itself, resurfaces time and again, and it's the focal point of what we'll be reading today from Psalm chapter 62. This is a Psalm of David of David; if you have your Bible and want to follow along, we're Psalm 62. We will look at the first eight verses of Psalm 62.
Now I'm going to be reading from the New Living Translation. We're also going to have the words up here on the screen. Listen to what King David writes. I wait. I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, where I will never be shaken. So many enemies against one man, all are trying to kill me to them. I'm just a broken down wall or a tottering fence. They plan to topple me from my high position. They delight in telling lies about me. They praise me to my face but curse me in their hearts. Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope isn't him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge—a rock where no enemy can reach me. Oh, my people trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him, for God is our refuge. Amen. God is our refuge. God is our refuge. He is our quiet place.
And we need a quiet place, don't we? We live in loud times. Is anyone aware of that, that we live in loud times? Busy times? Crazy times. A lot is going on right now. And we know all of it. We know about all of it. I was talking with Bruce Oberlin, one of the guys on staff in between, or Well, last night at our Saturday service, we were talking. And we're just like me, and there's a lot of sad stuff going on right now. Like in our church, family and friends of our church family have a lot of hard things going on right now. And we're like, hey, what's, what's going on? Is this something new? Is it something we're just like we're experiencing all of a sudden? And as we're talking about it, he and I were saying we're like, you know, what I don't think it is. I think, to a degree, life always just has its hard moments. It's just now we're aware of all of them. And we're aware of everybody's hard moments, aren't we? That's the gift of social media, right? The gift of social media, we're aware of everything. Everything that happens, we know about it. We live in loud times. We live in busy times where we know everything that's going on. And so we have stuff all over the place competing for our attention.
Why do you think every Sunday that I preached the prayer before I started to preach, I prayed that God would go before us and remove any distractions competing for our attention? Why do you think that is? It's because we need it. Because on our own, we will get distracted on our own. You're not here right now. You're already after the surface. You're thinking about that to-do list. When you get home. You're thinking about that lawn that needs mowing, you're thinking about that place, you're going to eat lunch, right? Like you're, you're already somewhere else. And so we need God's help to like, whoa, whoa, let me focus back in, let me zero back in where I need to be, where I'm supposed to be because we live in loud, busy times. And we need God's help. And we're going to get some of that. today. We are in this series of summer mixed tape. Have you guys been enjoying this series so far? If you've been enjoying it, I hope, I hope so. I hope that it's been a help to you. Do we have any stranger things fans in the building? There? We get to see my 11 o'clock crowd. You guys are more honest. Our nine o'clock crowd was like Stranger Things. What's that? Like? Yeah, right. You've watched it isn't a judgment free zone like you can even say Pastor Brenda is a huge Stranger Things fan all of a sudden. We were watching it on vacation. The new season came out, season four. We started watching that she'd never seen an episode, not a single one. Episode ones playing. She's over there, doing some work on our computer, watching it now, and then getting to the end of the episode. And it's, I mean, if you've watched season four, you know the end of episode one is pretty intense. So he goes oh, I don't know how people get into this. Like, I don't even know how you do it. We're like, and you're jumping. You're jumping in like all these episodes down the road. If you would give it a chance from the start and let it build up. I'm sure you would like it. Pastor Brenda is not; that was early June. Okay. early June, Stranger Things just finished season four. Pastor Brenda has one more episode to watch, and she's fully caught up. Fully caught up. She just obliterated four seasons like that. Right? She's, she's hooked now. It is. It's a fun show. It's a crazy show. Honestly, one of my favorite things about Stranger Things is its contribution to revivifying 80s music. I love 80s music. There are my fellow rockers, and the right people love 80s music. I love it. I love 80s music. So you know, whenever they put out these episodes, it's funny because you look at the top charts on Spotify and iTunes, you got all these like new songs, but then all of a sudden, you've got Master of Puppets by Metallica. Like one of the top trends you're going to, that song came out in the 80s. Like what in the world? How's that trending back at the top? It's Stranger Things, and you're seeing all these songs journey in separate ways that songs are trending again, because the Stranger Things, but the biggest one probably the sleeper song hit of Stranger Things have been running up that hill by Kate Bush. It's like the theme song of season four. People had been obsessed with it. People do all these, and you know TikTok And Instagram reels to this song. In the song, I won't spoil anything. But there's a character in Stranger Things. Her name is Max, and she's kind of she kind of put under a spell by the big bad guy like I don't know if you want to call the spell if that weirds you out a curse, whatever, whatever makes you feel better. That's what she understands under this curse. And the only thing that's able to like snap her back to reality. The only thing that's able to bring her back is her favorite song. There's something about her favorite song that can set her free now, right? Now, why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you this because what we're doing throughout this series, summer mixtape, and a playlist of the Psalms is we are building a soundtrack for our lives. We're building a sound
on track for our lives. In the same way, this character, Max, needed to hear her song to snap her back to reality, to get her mind focused on where it should be to set her free. I believe that we need to have certain songs constantly playing in our lives. We need the truth of God's word, constantly playing in our lives to help snap us back to where we're supposed to be, to snap us back to reality. And so that's what we've been doing. Throughout the series, we've been curating a mixtape and finding some of the psalms that are a little bit of a deep track, right? We're not. We're not picking Psalm 23 and all the ones that are well known. We're taking some of the lesser-known Psalms and looking at them to see what they say about us, what they say about God, and what they say about our identity in him. And our hope is that as we go through these weeks, by week, you will take the Psalms and play them in your life, allowing them to be the soundtrack of your life. That's what the early church did. The church's early church started right after Jesus's death and resurrection. We know from history that what they would do is they would read the Psalms, would worship the Psalms, would pray to the Psalms. These songs were the track of their life. And I think we can learn much from the early church and make the Psalms a track for our life. And so today, we're adding another track to our mixtape, we're adding another track to our mixtape. Today, if you're a note taker, our sermon title is a quiet place and a quiet pace. A quiet place at a quiet pace. We need quiet.
We need rest more than ever. More than ever, we need this. Now. I'm not talking about literal naps. I'm not talking about little sleep, although the more, the better. I'm all. I'm pro nap. I am pro sleep. I'm a big fan of both. But that's not what we're talking about. And that's not what the Bible's talking about when it talks about rest. When it talks about quiet, what biblical rest is, is it's peace, peace. It's this mindset that is completely calm, knowing who sits on the throne. That's what biblical rest is. That's what biblical quiet is. And that's what we're talking about today. That's what we need today. Because we have so little of it. We have so little of it. We look at the situations in the world. And we think, how can I rest? How can I have peace and comfort? Have you seen gas prices? Like I know, Jessica sent a couple of family members a text the other day saying the speedway down on Arlington gas is 369. Can you believe it? And we're all like, Oh, wow. 369. And it's sad that that was good. Like, how is that good? How is that noteworthy? It's just so expensive. Gas is terrible, not just gas inflation in general. You know, I saw a statistic, and this is mind-blowing. Americans today are paying $5,200 more for the same stuff they had last year. Just to live your exact life and 2021 over again, you're going to fork out 5200 more dollars. That's 400 Plus every month.
I don't gotta tell you that you know it. Me and Jessica know it. Whenever we, whenever we're, you know, last year, you get to the end of the week, and you look, and you're like hey, we have margin like we got some we can get that we can go ahead and get this for the girls, we can get this for Griffin. Like we have margin this week by like Wednesday. It's okay, so what time does the check deposit on Friday? What exact moment does it go in? It's It's intense. And so you look at that, you look at gas prices, you look at inflation, you're going to get quiet. Rest calm. How? How am I expected to do any of that with what's going on in the world? And then just going on in the greater world, what's going on in your world? If you're a human, you got blood pumping through your veins, and chances are you have relationship issues.
You've got issues with a spouse, issues with a sibling, issues with a friend with a neighbor with a co-worker, because we're all people, and that's what happens. Things are hard things are difficult. Chances are you've got issues at work. You've got to mean we just got stuff all over the place. And then the cherry on top is Monkeypox that's coming down the pike, which had that on their 2022 Bingo card, right like, oh yeah, Monkeypox. That's going to be the next thing that comes now. I look at all this, and I'm like, Man, we've got inflation. We've got gas prices. We got relationship issues, and we got work issues we got we got Monkeypox. Our pet's heads are fallen off like we've got all this stuff going on. And you're telling me, Pastor, that we need rest, calm, and a quiet pace in life.
How, how, how in the world? Is that even remotely? Feasible? Right? But we do need it. We do need it, why don't you stay with me? I could use some
peace and quiet.
You could, and I could. We could use peace and quiet in our life. And the good news is, we can get it. We can. And no, not in some abstract theoretical way, in a real tangible way, we can have peace. This is the fact. God wants to be our quiet place in life. And he wants to teach us a quiet pace in life.
Ben says one more time. God wants to be our quiet place in life, and he wants to teach us a quiet pace. In life. What we're going to do is hop back through Psalm 62. We're going to jump through some different verses, and I want to look at verses five and six. Again, real quick. This is what King David writes, let all that I am wait quietly, before God, for my hope is in Him. He alone is my rock, my salvation, my fortress, where I will not be shaken. Do you see what King David is pointing out here? He's pointing out two things that God is doing one, and God is a quiet place. He's a place of peace. He's a place of comfort because he alone is my rock. He alone is my salvation. He's my fortress, where I won't be shaken. He is my quiet place. But not only that, he's not just my quiet place. He wants to teach me a quiet pace of life. Look at Verse five, let all that I am wait quietly before the Lord. My hope is in Him. King David says yes, God is my quiet place, where I find peace. And God is also teaching me how to pursue him and pursue peace in life. This quiet pace of waiting on God of seeking him out. God wants to be our quiet place and teach us a quiet pace. And it's so important. It's vital that we realize God wants to do both things. This is not an either-or. That's a silly thing we often do in the church, and we try to act like it's this or this. It's this or this. A lot of times, it's both. A lot of times, it's, and God wants to be our quiet place. And he wants to teach us a quiet pace. Let me kind of give some flesh to this real quick. So
my daughter Evelyn was playing coach pitch baseball this year. And at one of the games, Eden, my daughter, and my nephew, Max, were playing off to the side. And they both they're playing and having a good time. Until they both start walking somberly towards us, you know how kids just
go great. What happens? Someone hit somebody or something, something happened. They're walking over there like that. And then they come up to us. We're like, what's going on? And Eden says. Those kids are being mean to us. Like, this is shocking news, right? Eden hasn't faced this a lot. Hasn't faced kids picking or saying anything like that, that they're mean to you what they say and even says, well, they called Max and name. And then they pointed at me and said, I hate that girl. And we're like, hate that girl. What in the world? Am I looking at it like that? They said that. Meanwhile, my wife Jessica is rolling up her sleeves. She's like this hour I go to jail. I'm not going to work on some little eight-year-old punk who called who told my kid that they hate her, right? So I'm like, calming Jessica down. I'm like, Just hold on. Don't get back. I'm trying to hold her back.
No, no, we did, Jessica, we handled it. We told the coach like the coach was told, like, Hey, this is awkward. We're not trying to get these kids in trouble for saying this. But we don't know if they're just saying it to these kids or if they're saying it to other people, but you just need to be aware of this happened and because of the call. Thank you. Yeah, sorry about that. Well, we'll handle it. So it was great. Right? We rescued and saved the day like that. All was made right in the world. But that wasn't the only thing that happened.
We also talked to Eden. Jessica talked to Max. And once, he told them, " Hey, look, I hate that that happened. I'm so sorry. That happened. But you know what, don't take it to heart. Like Eden, that little boy saying he hates you, sweetheart. He doesn't even know you. He doesn't even know who you are. He doesn't even understand what he's saying. So we taught them, and we're telling them hey, this is how you process something like this. This is how you handle something like this. And you know what if they say that again, just a little right hook if you get your weight into the just deliver, and that's, you know, you can handle it.
Some people instantly are now pulling out their phones looking for a new church like Pastor Jacob said, there's some great churches in the area. Let me find one where the PastorPastor doesn't condone violence.
Uh, no, we, you know, we taught her we taught him we taught them how to process and handle this. And I want you to know, God wants to do the same thing for you. God, yes, God wants to be your rescuer. He wants to come in, and he wants to save the day. He wants to be your safe place, your quiet place, where you can find peace, comfort, and rest. He wants to do that. But he also wants to teach you. He wants to teach you a quiet pace in life that says, of course, come to me for rescue, of course, come to me for comfort, of course, come to me for rest. But I also want to teach you how to live that way throughout your life. So that whenever stuff comes your way, the loudness and the busyness of the world comes your way, you are in lockstep walking with the spirit, and you know how to process these things. Do you know how to handle these things? Because I've taught you a quiet pace. In life. God wants to be our quiet place and teach us a quiet pace. It's both. It's both. I think about the way that we talk about Jesus. Jesus is one of the two most commonly referred to titles that we see in Scripture. What are they? Savior, Lord,
that's not a coincidence. It's very intentional, very purposeful. Jesus wants to be our Savior, and He wants to rescue us. He wants to save us. He wants to redeem us. He wants to be our Savior, our quiet place where we find comfort and rest.
But he doesn't stop there. He's also our Lord. He's also our teacher. He's also our Rabbi. And he wants to teach us. He wants to show us this way of living and how we can handle things. We can handle circumstances, and we can handle situations because we are in lockstep with the spirit. It's not either. It's both. It's both. Now what we're going to talk about in our remaining time? We're going to talk at a quiet pace. And what does that looks like? What does it mean? And how do we walk out a quiet pace in our lives? I believe two concepts we see from Psalm 62 build this out and give us real tangible application for how we can walk through life at a quiet pace. The first thing that we're going to look at is Psalm 62. We're going to look at verses three and four. Again, David writes this about so many enemies against one man, all of them trying to kill me. I'm just a broken down wall or a tottering fence to them. They plan to topple me from my high position. They delight in telling lies about me. They praise me to my face but curse me in their hearts. Who can relate to that?
Who's like, I think I just found a new life verse like some of that stuff. It hits so close to home. It feels like me. And I've been going through so many interpersonal issues, so many things where people have hurt me, either intentionally or unintentionally. You've been going from high to low, high to low. That's what we see throughout the book of Psalms, right? We see one psalm, David's on a mountaintop, God is good. God is my refuge. He's my strength. He's me, and he's my king. I love God, the very next song of God, where are you? Why have you forsaken me? Do you? Are you even there? Like it's just Whoa, like mountaintop to mountaintop and valley to valley. It's all over the place. And that's kind of life, isn't it? One moment, you're singing the praises of how good God is. The next, you're saying, I have enemies all around me, trying to kill me. They delight and telling lies about me. They praise me to my face but curse me in their hearts. That is life. That's a life that we face. And this is what I want to tell you. This is the first concept we're talking about when it comes to walking with a quiet pace of life. If you want true biblical rest, be something that you experience in your life. True biblical rest, this peace that passes all understanding this piece that it doesn't matter what life throws your way. You're solid because you know who's the source. Suppose you want that kind of rest in your life. This is what I'll say. It will never come if that rest is conditional on having convenient circumstances.
It's never going to come.
If you are having rest if have true peace in your life. The different biblical definition of peace is conditional on having convenient circumstances. I hate to break the news to you, but you're never going to experience rest, peace, or true comfort because life is not convenient. It's just not there are no convenient circumstances stuff happens. Things come the way that you would have never thought of or experienced. Let me tell you this. So January 1,
2022
I made to-do lists, and it was beautiful. And it was glorious. All right, like this thing I had, I have stuff sectioned out by categories like my work-to-do list, my home to-do lists, my to-do lists like my book to-do lists, like I have all these to-do lists, and they're wonderful, and they're great. And they're, they're even like organized by date. Like by this day, I'll have this done by this day to have this done. So I've got it categorized. I've got due dates by week and month. It looks amazing.
So we just recently had the midpoint of the year, like a week and a half, two weeks ago, we had the midpoint of the exact midpoint of 2022. And so I did a real quick audit of my first half. So I have my calendar open. And I have my to-do list open. And I'm looking at January, and I look good. I am looking at February. Looks good. I am looking at March.
It's all right, and I guess okay. Look at April, like Did I do any of this stuff? Like I didn't get this done? I'm looking at myself. And I'm like, Oh, my goodness, I didn't get any of this stuff down here either. And I'm realizing, man, I just, I have so many things I didn't get done. And you want to know what happened? I started to feel bad about myself. Sorry to feel frustrated, get down a little bit until I looked at my calendar.
Because as soon as I looked at my calendar, I was like, Okay, what did I not get done? I didn't get this, this this this? Okay, what were those due dates? Let me see. Oh, well,
look at what I was facing. Look at that week. Wow, what a busy week I had so much going on that week. Who could have expected me to get any of that done? Of course, I want to move these things to the year's second half. Let me look at some other tasks. And so I look at other tasks. Look at my calendar. Oh, wow. So much going on that week, man. And just, of course, I didn't get these things done. And I'm going through it and excusing everything I didn't do because of the circumstances I was facing.
Until God hit me on the back of the head, I realized, you know what, you know what those circumstances are called? Life.
That's life, bro. And if you are waiting for these things to go away suddenly, they're not. They're not. They're going to keep on coming. And in fact, you had those circumstances at the beginning of year two, and you were just more disciplined, you're more dedicated, you're able to push through those and still get things done. But circumstances, man, those are a part of life. They come and go in if you are someone who's like, man, rest, I know, I need that in my life. I know I need a pace of life that is just consistent and steady. And it's undaunted, and it's unfazed. And I know that I need that you will never find a good time to start doing that ever. There's never going to be a time when you have convenient circumstances in your life. And if that rest you seek is conditional on convenient circumstances is never coming. You'll just keep kicking the can down the road until one day it's too late.
You don't wait for a quiet time. You make quiet time. You make it happen. That is just a reality of the world that we live in.
One of the most famous pieces of Scripture is John chapter 17. It's Jesus's high priestly prayer. One of the things that Jesus says in it, it's one of the most well-known pieces of Scripture. Even if you don't read the Bible, you've heard this phrase before Jesus talks about his followers. He's not just talking about his followers, and then he's talking about his followers up until today. He's talking about you if you follow Jesus, and what he says is, my followers, Father, they are in the world, but they are not of the world. And that is one of Scripture's most rich, theologically complex ideas.
There are so many layers to it and different ways of looking at it. And one of the ways of looking at that statement applies to what we're talking about today: we are in the world but not of the world. You see in the world. We face circumstances, right? That part of the world is that stuff happens there's sickness and disease and layoffs and yes, inflation and yes, sky-high gas prices, like we just face that stuff. That's that's circumstances. That's part of being in the world. You just face those things. You can't do anything to change them. If you have blood pumping through your veins and oxygen in your lungs, you will face circumstances, and yes, circumstances that you didn't choose, that you didn't want, that you don't want anything to do with, but that's part of being in the world. But Jesus says that while we are in the world, we are not of the world. We're supposed to handle things differently. Well, let me tell you how the world handles those things. anxiety, stress,
Panic, debt, bad relationship decisions, and lashing out at kids and family. That's how the world handles circumstances. But we are called to be in the world, but not of the world we are called to. Yes, we will face the circumstances, but we are supposed to face them differently. We're supposed to handle them differently. And so everybody else in the world is waiting for perfect circumstances before they do that thing that they know they're supposed to do. Not so with you. Not so with us. We are to pursue the quiet pace of life that God has in mind for us, regardless of our circumstances. We are to be in the world, but not of the world. We have got to pursue a quiet pace of life. We've got to pursue it. Now. The first way we do that is by realizing that you're never going to find the perfect circumstances to start. You just aren't. We need to realize that we need to admit that we need to remember that if rest is conditional on convenient circumstances, I will never get it. The second thing that we need to remember is Psalm 62, verses one through two. Let's look at those real quick says I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, where I will never be shaken. You see, the second thing that we need to remember. The second thing we need to know if we are going to walk through life at a quiet pace is that God isn't a good source of rest. God isn't a great source of rest. God isn't the best source of rest. God is the only source of rest. If you want true peace. If you want true comfort, true quiet, and true rest in life, God isn't one of many options. And he's not even the best of many options. He's the only option. He's in period full stop in the sentence. God is it do you know, in Psalm 62, what we what we've been reading today, verses one through eight, the Hebrew word that is used to describe a loan or only the singular the standalone, this one and only it's used five times in the first eight verses five. David is calling our attention, saying look, I'm not telling you, God's a great way to find rest. That's not what I'm telling you. If you're getting that message from me, I'm miscommunicating God is not a great source of rest, comfort, and peace. He's the only source. He alone, He alone is my salvation. I wait quietly before God because He alone is the only rock. He's the only salvation David wants us to know. God isn't a good golden source of rest. He's the only source of rest. You see, we live in a world full of knockoffs. We live in a world full of things that promise the world, but they never quite deliver that. Right? We live in a world of knockoffs. If anyone's ever been to Disney before Magic Kingdom, I think they have them all over the place. But has anyone ever tried? They're called a Dole Whip. It's like, has anyone I saw one hand shoot up anybody else? There are those hands, those things? They're amazing. Like they're I could go for one right now like I'm steaming I could go for Dole Whip right now nice and cold. These things are so good. And they're becoming more and more popular. Like you'll see them on people's social media. People are trying to make homemade ones trying to do it yourself and stuff. Different ice cream places are starting to make their own like, hey, try our dole whip. Right? Even sheets. The gas station is doing their dole whip. Like everyone's trying to get in on this thing. Let me tell you, and I tried some of them there. Okay. But man, adult whip at Disney just hits different. Like it just does it. It tastes so good. And it tastes so right to say, so perfect. It's the only there's a lot of knockoffs that try to imitate the flavor or try to imitate the taste, but they just they can kind of come close but not even really right.
You know, nothing in this world can provide rest, peace, and comfort. Like God can. He's the only source for it. That's it. It's just him. Everything else that promises it to you is a cheap knockoff, and it will not deliver like it acts as it can deliver, and we look to those places a lot. We often look to other quiet places, trying to find that peace, comfort, and rest, but they just don't deliver, man. We look to food, we look to substances, we look to our work, we look to relationships, we look all over the place to try to find this restless comfort, but man, it just doesn't. It just doesn't deliver. At most, it can deliver a seat.
And that's it most. Whenever we went looking for Halloween costumes might have been last year, maybe the year before. I can't remember. But we're looking for Halloween costumes. And there are the good ones that are like the official, like the officially licensed ones. They're like $80, right? They just cost so much money. Or there are the knockoffs. Okay, there are the ones that got like $20 in they like from far they look alright like you can walk in and be like, oh, there we'll get one on this one. So you walk up. And the funniest thing about these knockoffs is the names for them. So we're talking about stranger Things, right Stranger Things talking about earlier in the sermon, the knockoff brand for Stranger Things for Stranger Things costumes, Kid you not as called unusual events. It's like, the marks version of Stranger Things, the days the discount of Stranger Things, right, like, unusual events. So you can get an unusual events costume for like 11 or for hopper. And if you look at it from far away, it looks good. Like it looks all right. Then you get closer and realize it's made out of tissue paper or something. Right. And so you get this costume. And it looks good. First, you put it on at first. And you can even be hopeful like me, and Jessica will think, " Oh, this is cool. Get the girls in costume. And then they'll get to use it to, like, do like they can play with it around the house even after Halloween. Yeah, right. Like these costumes, you get them. And after one night of wearing them just out trick or treating, they get home and look like they went ten rounds with a bobcat like it's just their stuff falling apart. And it just is not good. It's just not good at all. And so these knockoff costumes they can deliver for a season. For a moment, they look good. For a moment, they feel good for a moment, and it feels like they're going to deliver what they promised. But they always fall apart. They always end up underdelivering. They never give you what you thought you were getting. And the same is true with all these knockoff false little g gods, that we try to find our hope and our peace and arrest and are quiet and promised the world, but they can never deliver it. They always fall short. They always fall short instead of giving us what we want peace, comfort, and purpose. They give us unease, and they give us stress, they give us anxiety, and they give us depression, worry, bitterness, and resentment.
There is only one true source for quiet for true biblical, quiet unrest. And that's God. That's it, and there's nothing else. There's nothing else God is our quiet place. And he wants to teach us a quiet pace. And that's how we get there. That quiet pace of life. That's what it looks like. It looks like admitting you know what I know; there's never going to be a perfect circumstance. I will never have the optimal conditions for me to start living the way God wants me to. That ain't happening. But you know what, I'm going to keep my eyes and focus on the source, the only true source of peace and comfort. And I'm going to know that he's good, that he never fails, that he will deliver on that promise. And so I'm going undaunted and unfazed, walk towards him, my quiet place, my source. And as I ignore all the situations and circumstances that tried to throw me off, I'm going to find that he is faithful and good. And he and he alone will give me the rest and the peace of mind, the peace that passes all understanding that nothing else can give us. Here's the thing when we do that, when we start walking at a quiet pace with our focus on God, our quiet place, this is what happens. We get a payout. As we're walking with this quiet pace in life, there is a payout. There's a return on that, and that return is this word, confidence. God gives us confidence in life as we pursue this quiet pace of just following him, just following his will of following his way. Listen to Psalm 62, verses seven and eight. David says my victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me. Oh, my people trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him. For God is our refuge. You can see the confidence dripping from every word of those pieces of Scripture. God is my victory. He is my honor. He is my refuge. When I'm in him, no enemy can touch me. Nothing can happen to me whenever I put my faith in my hope and I walk with God God gives us confidence. As we walk at a quiet pace, we get confidence. Let me tell you whenever I'm going on a long-distance trip. I'm a cruise control man. Like I love
cruise control. I didn't always. I used to be the let's get down there as quick as we can. Let's get home as quickly as we can.
Until I got a ticket that changes things, doesn't it? Is there anything more infuriating than coming home from vacation or going to vacation and getting pulled over and getting the tickets just oh so infuriating? So I decided to like, you know what? No, I'm just cruise control down the whole way back. I just said it. I just said it. And so I'll get that sweet spot, like two to five, right? If it's 6568 to 70. Somewhere in there, right? I get the sweet spot on cruise control, and we're good. And this is what I do. I don't let anything faze me.
I don't. If a car flew behind me, I tried to stay in the middle of the left-hand lane. The car comes flying up behind me. I'll move over but go right ahead. I'm not; I'm not going faster. You will not change my pace. Like you go right ahead. There's a car in front of me going slower, trying to slow me down. I'll move over and get up in front of it. Put it back to cruise control, get it right where I had it.
I don't let anyone faze me. Now here's the thing: if you're like me, you're a cruise control person.
It isn't an incredible feeling. When you pass by a cop, you pass by a highway patrol, and you don't know it, but as you're coming up on him, you see him, and you just have utter confidence that you are not speeding. Isn't that a fantastic feeling? You're you borderline feel like aggressively yeah what now like oh, you got a problem with me officer because you can't do anything I didn't speed I was going the speed limit like I'm good. You look at all the other cars around you slamming on their brakes, hitting the brakes, and you're like,
not me, like I haven't had to tap this bad boy in the last half hour because I've just been at the same consistent, steady pace.
I haven't let anything throw me off. And doing that gives you confidence. It breeds confidence. You go past police, you go past the little camera taking shots, you go past those areas where it says this, this area's a speed limit is enforced by airplane, and you don't care. Because you know you're good. Because you have the right pace. The right pace gives us confidence, confidence that circumstances can't interrupt, can't faze us, can't throw us off.
That's exactly what God wants to give us in life. And as we do that, we focus on Him as our source, our strength, our shield, our salvation, our quiet place, our place of peace, comfort, and rescue. And we walk towards him, unfazed by what's happening around us, saying, You know what, I'm never going to have perfect circumstances. I will not let anything slow me down or speed me up. I'm, I'm just going to keep doing what I know. I'm supposed to do the steady, consistent, quiet pace. As we do that, God proves himself to be faithful. And when we see him faithful, guess what it does gives us confidence and steel in our backbone. We're experiencing this at Cornerstone. We see this happening. Confidence. It's our word for the year. Right? If you've got your Cornerstone bracelet, if not, you can grab one. I think we've still got some by our merch wall out there. But our word for the year is confidence. That's the word we're claiming for this year that we've been believing. And we are experiencing confidence because we, as a church, have been trying to walk at a quiet pace this year.
Just an undaunted, unfazed, we know what God has called us to do, and nothing come hell or high water will throw us off of that.
Let me give you some examples. We knew that God was calling for us to start a Saturday service. We needed the extra space. Especially summer is a harder time because people are out on vacation. People are doing sports events for kids. But man, it gets packed in here during the fall and the rest of the year, and we need the extra space. Now guess what circumstances told us to do? Hey, summer is coming. You don't need to keep doing Saturday services. Oh, man. There are not as many people here. Just stop it for a season. You can start up later. Just pump your brakes a little bit. Just stop, refocus, but we knew no, no, this is something that we know we've needed to do that God has put on our churches hard to do to create more room. And so we're going to keep doing it. And guess what? God's proven Himself faithful. Last night we had a great crowd here. And we had a crowd of people who get this would not be able to come in any other time. People whose only opportunity to worship is Saturday night. They work on Sundays. They have other things going on on Sundays. So this service means so much to them. And we see these people speaking and saying who and how much it means to connect and be part of a church family. And that gives us confidence knowing you know what? We stay at that steady pace. We then slow down when
we pull back. We didn't speed up like we were doing what God called us to do. And he's proving himself faithful. And it gives us confidence are here now campaigning everything in the world is saying to slow down.
Hello, we're like in crazy inflation right now. The world might be undergoing a recession right now. We won't know until the second quarter numbers are in, but we're probably already in one. Just pump your brakes. Don't you don't need to build that building now, just maybe later down the road? Just slow down a little bit. But we're not like we're not. And we're not being unwise, right? We're talking with our builders; we're talking with the people that we've been working with. We're making sure we're doing everything wise, everything as smart as we can. But we're not slowing down. But we're also not speeding up. We're just keeping the same steady pace that we know God wants from us. And you know what's happened, guys? We're about $30,000 away from hitting the $500,000 raised mark, which is incredible. That's only God type of stuff. That's miracle stuff. That's since March 2021. That's incredible. And we're seeing God be faithful. And guess what that does. That gives us confidence. Like, let's just keep pushing forward. Because we know he is proving himself faithful, we're keeping our eye on him, our source of peace. And we're ignoring these things trying to knock us off his path. And guess what he's doing. He's showing that he's faithful, and it gives us confidence. Lastly, we've had some people who have been raised up and brought up through Cornerstone, some awesome people who have either been on staff or their ministry partners. And they've gotten to a place where they are able to pursue ministry and other churches, and other churches are like Man, this person's Great. We'd like to hire him. And we'd like to have him here. And we send these people out because guess what we believe at Cornerstone? We believe the kingdom of God is a pipeline, not a puddle. We don't believe that. It's for us to hoard all of our resources. All of our people are going to No, no, you can't go anywhere else you do. We don't want you to know that there is nothing more exciting and invigorating than raising leaders here and sending them out with Cornerstone DNA to other places to carry what we love. But guess what? It doesn't make it any easier when they're gone. Right? Like that's, you've got things to fill in ministry partnerships, and it's like, wow, everything's telling you to slow down a little bit, pull back, pull back, oh, don't be so aggressive with ministry or do this. Because Do we have the people? Are we going to be able to do it?
And we're not letting that faze us, and we just keep stepping up. And guess what happens? God proves Himself faithful. And people step up, and people fill the spots, people that we didn't even know were like, hey, I can do that, hey, I would love to be able to do that. And they're filling in the spots, and God is filling back in because guess what, he's good on his word. And he is faithful. And he does give peace and quiet and comfort.
When you walk at a quiet pace, you get confidence. That's the payout of it. And God wants that in your life. I will ask the worship team if they will come back as they do. I just want to reiterate and stress how important it is to get this. Everything in the world right now. Everything is trying to speed you up, slow you down, and take you off the course that God has in mind. It's trying to fill you with worry, depression with anxiety. That is every single message that you're getting. And in the middle of that, you have got to remember, and you know what? I got to remember who my sources were. I've been looking for peace and quiet uncomfort and rest in all the wrong places. The world's never going to be able to deliver it to me. All it will give me is depression, anxiety, anger, resentment, and unease. Now I'm going to focus on the source, and I'm going to ignore the things around me. I'm going to focus on him, and I'm going to look to God, I'm going to look to my help, I'm going to focus on him, and we're going to follow His ways. And I promise you that he will prove himself faithful as you do that. He wants to do that for you. And these next moments, the worship team is going to lead us. I'd like to encourage you to let's stand to our feet. And let's worship that God who inspires confidence in us as we look to him.