Better Than Bitcoin // Summer Mixtape: A Playlist of the Psalms // Read

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.

Have you ever made a bad investment? Put your trust and faith in something that just didn’t pan now? Of course you have…we all have. A career, a relationship—we invest our time, talent, and treasure…and then the bottom falls out. But the good news is that here is an investment we can make that will never give a bad return. And we can start today.

Well, I am thrilled to be here today and speaking to you. I never lose the thrill of getting to share God's word. And the biggest thrill is always when I share it right here in Cornerstone Church. And I want to thank all of you. All of you must be pretty good swimmers that you made it this morning. It's, it's pretty, pretty wet out there. I was telling one of my friends we were talking before service that this is one of those mornings when lots of people get up and get ready for church and then decide to stay home because it's so wet out there. But I'm so so glad that you're here today. When he asked me to speak today, Pastor Jacob gave me the title and the psalm we were going to preach from; it's Psalm 84, And the title is better than Bitcoin. Okay, so I'm not one of those who know all that stuff. And I'm like Bitcoin coin, and I've heard that I'm going to have to do some research because, to me, it just sounds like it sounds like play money sounds like something a little kid would play with. But you know, I didn't realize that it was the cryptocurrency, but what does that even mean? So I had to look it up to find out why we would call this better than Bitcoin. And I want to read to you these are straight from financial journals that I found online. And this is what I found out about Bitcoin. Investors are more interested than ever in cryptocurrency criminals. Two reports of cryptocurrency crimes have increased 312% yearly since 2016. These crimes include hackers stealing investors' coins to people falling for scams. Okay, now, let me just tell you, if you do Bitcoins, if you do that, your money is safe from me. I don't even know what they look like. So if I came hunting for your Bitcoin, that's worth a lot of money. I would never do that. You may want to hide your paper money pretty well, though, because I do know what that looks like, okay? The money you put into bitcoin is not safe from value fluctuations. Bitcoin is a volatile investment. If you're looking for a safe investment with guaranteed returns, don't invest in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrencies. Just over the past few months, the price of one Bitcoin has fluctuated between $30,000.60 and $1,000, which means if you thought it was precious, and you believed that this was the thing to invest in for the future, you could buy it for you could buy one coin for 60,001 days, and in just a day or two, it could be worth only $30,000. That doesn't sound too smart to me. Understand that these are very volatile investments. So if big fluctuations cause you to lose sleep, this isn't the space for you. Well, that would cause me to lose sleep. So it's not the space for me. But that's not the kind of investment most of us lose sleep over, right? We've all made bad investments, and everybody made a bad investment here. That's not financial, perhaps, but you made a bad investment as far as a career or a job change, or you bought a house that didn't work out well, or you had a relationship you invested everything in, it didn't work out. We have had some kind of bad investment that has bottomed out for us. It's been hard; bad investments are difficult to take. But there is an investment that Psalm 84 talks about that will never give us a bad return. It's investing in our relationship with God, and it will never give us a bad return. And Psalm 84 is all about it. Now, if you look it up, I'm reading. This morning, I don't have my Bible with me because it's too much up here. And I'm likely to knock things off. But I have the words from the Bible printed exactly on my paper. So I am using the Bible. You can follow along on the screen and see that I am, or you can follow along on your device if you do. The translation that we're using is a new living testament. When you look it up in there, there will probably be a title of a little title paragraph before the psalm starts. And it will tell you David did not write this. It was written by people who worked in the temple psalms that worked in the Temple. And it's called a song of a sense or a Song of Ascents, and it means it's a song that they would sing together when they were going up to Jerusalem and up to the main Temple.
Where it would be to see God, it was a traveling song. Do any of you have any traveling songs that you ever sing? When you're traveling?

My husband did. My husband loved oldies, and he loved to blare them very, very loud. Our kids still have favorite memories of riding with him, and his fire burned when that thing was just shaking down the road, really loud, and singing those songs. Those were his traveling songs. And I'm going to have to tell you the truth. The only traveling song I ever sang was on the bus on the way to camp, and the song that we sang was 99 bottles of beer on a wall.

That was the traveling song, probably not a good traveling song to sing. But it was great for us. Then, these songs were different. And they were songs about the anticipation of getting to the Temple and Jerusalem to God's house, and Mary and Joseph very likely sang. One of the songs, there's a group of them very likely sang one of the songs when they took

Jesus Baby Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated, they were close at that time, or when they made the much longer trip to go there when he was 12 years old. It tells about the security of investing in our relationship with God. The first thing we read in Psalm 84, and you'll understand it more in a moment, is that when we invest in our relationship with God, we get a secure place. Verses one and four of Psalm 84 say, how lovely is your dwelling place, oh, Lord of Heaven's Armies, what joy for those who can live in your house, always singing your praises. Now, they were talking about the Temple before Jesus died on the cross for us and changed everything. The Temple was the focus of where God was on this planet. It how's the Ark of the Covenant. It was the symbol, the symbolic place of the tabernacle, that the people had had in the Old Testament as they traveled through the wilderness. It was the symbolic place of the presence of God. And, if you've read the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, you remember that the curtain that separated the holiest place where the presence of God dwelled. It was split in half at the moment that Jesus died. And it was symbolic. It was telling us that now everybody could be part of the Temple. Everyone could come in and have access to God. But back in these days, they didn't have that. And so, getting to go to the Temple, getting to go to the place where God's presence was, was an amazing thing for them. And they didn't get to do it very often unless they lived in the city of Jerusalem. Most of them only got to do it once a year because it was a costly and long trip. And if you lived way out, it might be a trip you would make once in a lifetime if you were fortunate to get to that place. So when they're singing, what joy for those who can live in there in that house, live in your house, God, they're talking about how awesome it must be to be in a place to be right there where the presence of God was, they were on the fringes. And that's why they sang because this is excellent stuff to be there. They couldn't wait to get there and experience the joy and all of that, knowing they were where God was. Now, it's different for us. Isn't that wonderful? It's different for us. We no longer have to go to a specific place to experience God. It's all different because of Jesus. This is the way he described it. He was talking about how his spirit was with people. And he said all who love me would do what I say. My FatherFather will love them. And we will come and make our home with each of them. Do you understand that? When you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, accept what he did on the cross, invite Him into your life to be your Lord, and accept His sacrifice for you. At that moment, God Himself comes to live in you. You don't have to go to a special place to experience them. You don't have to do that because you are, in a very real way, the house of the Lord. He lives in you. His FatherFather lives in you. His Holy Spirit lives in you. That is why if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and have committed to him, you should not have come to church here this morning, looking for God and hoping you would find him here. You should have brought him with you. Helping other people find him here. That's the way the deal works. Because you are his, you are he lives in you. You are part of his Temple. But it's not a private deal. It's not private. It's not just you. You're not. Jesus sees you as incredibly unique and special and wonderful, but

You're not the only one who has this relationship, and you're not supposed to have it privately. Paul said it this way first Corinthians 316. Don't you realize that all of you are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? It takes for us to have the full experience of what God wants for us. It takes us to work together, and together, be his house together be his kingdom; as pastor Jacob preached a couple of months ago, very powerfully, he told us, we are part of bringing his upside down kingdom to this world with who we are and how we live and how we love. That's the way it's supposed to be. So he says, Don't you realize that all of you are his Temple? Other places in the New Testament very beautifully tell us that you and I are stones in His Temple. Together, we build something we can't do alone. No, I'm not telling you that you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus. You do. You have a personal relationship with Jesus Jesus lives in you. But you are not intended to have a private relationship with Jesus. That's not the way it's supposed to work. And he wants us to work together to be a witness to the world. He says that when he calls us the light of the world. We talked about that last week when he called us the light of the world. He said You are like a city set on a hill. At the same time, the city has lots of houses in it. Right? The city has lots of houses, and there are a lot of windows where the light shines out. And that's how we're supposed to be together. We're supposed to do things together that none of us can do alone. We uniquely experienced that this week. Now, we just experienced this morning. I sing greatest thy faithfulness to myself a lot. I love it. I love that song. It's been one of my testimony songs for my whole life. And I sing it, and God blesses me, and it's wonderful. But I experienced something different this morning. When Barbon, the worship team, led us in it together, I experienced something different. There's something powerful and something wonderful when all the stones get together. And we build something. There's a sense of community here that's different. And it's not just when we're in this place. It's around the world. It's different things just between services. I got an A note from a friend who has a very sick grandson. And she asked me, she said, Could you please post this on your Facebook page so that many people would pray? What is she calling? She's calling for the stones to get together and do something great they can only do together. And that's a wonderful thing. That's what we're supposed to do. This week, we experienced it in two powerful ways in the part of the Temple where the stones are called cornerstone. And that is with two marvelous men who experienced the power of God through his community. One of them is Robbie, Robbie tremble, who just led us in worship here.

The wonderful man knows Jesus loves him with all of his heart. He had something happen that nobody wanted to happen. He was practicing for a song he was singing today, almost two weeks ago now. And when he was practicing singing, he felt something pop in his head. And he immediately had anguishing pain, a terrible headache, and a lot of nausea. And it wouldn't go away. It was there for several days. Nothing he did for it would help it. And so he had to go to the emergency room. When he was there, they admitted him quickly. They checked on things; they found out that he already had aneurysms one three centimeters, one, seven centimeters, and blood traces in his spinal fluid. Pretty scary, right? Pretty scary. He immediately I did Jacob did. Rachel did lots of people on our staff put out prayer requests for him. And his family did. Immediately there were hundreds and hundreds of people, probably 1000s of people praying as people shared it. We're praying for Robbie, Pastor Jacob and I went to the hospital to see him. And we had a wonderful, wonderful talk as we were there together. And Robin, with tears, explained to us. His family was there, and he explained what they were about to do. They were going to see if there was any way they could just, they could wrap those things in some kind of way. I don't understand, but make them so he would be secure and safe without brain surgery. They were hoping for that. But they were preparing him preparing the situation for brain surgery. And he was preparing his heart for it. And, you know, here he is. He's a young man vital, doing wonderful things. And, of course, it would be preferable not to have that happen, right? It would be preferable, as we talked and prayed with him. He wept his family wept. You know we all were concerned. But as we prayed, it was the most wonderful thing. Robbie said, Man, I can feel all the prayers of God's people. And yeah, there's a little bit of nerves here because it's a situation I've never been in before. But I am so confident

I'm so at peace. I know God will do what is best for me. I didn't think I would be at this stage of my life, you know, thinking about my funeral, or if I leave this life or if something happens, I didn't think I would be there. But I am, and God is with me. I can feel the prayers of His people. Right. Right, Robbie? Right. And you know what happened? The aneurysms were gone when they went to the final test to take him for surgery. They were just gone. Isn't that something?

They were just gone. What a mighty thing. And it's a privilege to be part of that. We were stones together, building a sense of community. But the marvelous thing is not that Robbie got that miracle. The miracle before that he was okay with whatever happened was the marvelous thing. He was going to serve Jesus, and he was going to be okay. One way or the other. So another wonderful man, equally wonderful with Robbie. Ron Roundtree, Ron has been my friend for more than 40 years. He was one of my husband's close, close friends. And he was here doing what he did. He always did. He was the leader of our services in recent years at St. Edwards and Pebble Creek. He went there and spoke on Sunday mornings and led the people there is did a incredible job. But he was here on Mother's Day, which I think was May 8, and on Mother's Day. The next day, he was feeling good, just doing good, with no problems in his life, and he went to the doctor regularly.
And when he woke up on Tuesday morning, he had not slept well that night and had been in tremendous pain in his sight. And he told his wife, he said, My pain is not going away. I probably think I should go to the emergency room and ensure I do not have appendicitis. So then went to the emergency room. He was in the emergency room for eight hours. And that whole time, they weren't having him set there. They were working on him running tests and doing different things. And at the end of that time period, they came to Ron and Cheryl, and the doctor said, you know this is not my place to tell you a full detailed thing. You're going to need to check with an oncologist right away. But I want to tell you that it's very clear to me that you have aggressive stage four cancer looks like you have a large tumor on your right kidney, and you've got it in your lungs. Yeah, I believe you have it in several places. What a shock, right? What a shock in a couple of days. He had surgery movies and right kidney, but then they did find out that it was all through his body. Lots of things were going on. So that was just the middle of May. And here we are in the middle of July. And tomorrow, we will be celebrating his life in a memorial service. But let me tell you about all the prayers for him. Let me tell you about everything in that situation. It was just like Robbie's. It was just like Robbie's. There were tears. There were some sockets needed to adjust life. But I was with Rob Ron many times during these days. So it was pastor Jacob, and his family was there. And his testimony was so powerful and so good. Of course, he got very weak. Of course, he got to the place where he couldn't talk very well. But all the way along, he would say these things. Oh, man, I can feel the prayers of God's people. I can feel the prayers of God's people. Wow. He said, I know I'm ready to go. I'm not afraid I can do this thing. There's nothing better than that secure place. Absolutely. Nothing better than that.

Answers were different. One went to heaven. One lived to serve more days. But they both had the same secure place, the same secure place. They had a relationship with God that made them know they were his. And they had a relationship with his people. They knew that it was not private. They were stones and a temple. And they could ask for prayer. They could ask for the kind of love and support they did, and they would get it. That's what happened. Do you know what it is? It's like a call-ahead restaurant. It's like when you have reservations, and you show up there. If you just show up there, there may be 100 people in line, and you may never get what you want to eat. But if you have a reservation, you're at the head of the line, and you get right in. I'm telling you, friends, you need to invest in your relationship with God today for that secure space. And you need to make sure that you're investing in it with a group of people who will love you and help you in his name at the right time. Okay, so that's the first thing. We have a secure place when we invest in our relationship with God. Second thing when we invest

In our relationship with God, we have secure strength. We're stronger than we ever thought we could be because of it. Listen again to the psalmist. What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord, who have set their mind their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It means that they are set on seeing God.
They're set on seeing God, and they're absolutely determined. Now, let me tell you about myself. When I was young, I always had this desire, and I loved to read; I loved adventure books, and I loved to read stories from around the world. I love that I, you know, look at pictures of everything like to watch things about it. And I had this thing, and I thought I wanted to travel the world. I thought I wanted to go all around the world on a big trip and have this big adventure and come home and have seen everything I wanted. That
never happened. It never happened. I never did that.

But in 2020, my friend Bev Neuenschwander and I did do something that we had both wanted since we were young; we both wanted to go to Israel, and we wanted to get to make that trip. And so we did it. And as a bonus, we got thrown in and went to Greece too, which was just amazing. When we were in Greece, I think it was the next to the last day that we were there. We were walking down this big hill in the city of Corinth, we were walking down this hill, and we were with a small group. And this young man came hustling up to us. He was in shorts, nice looking, a strong young guy had a big backpack on, and he said, Hey guys mind if I walk with you? And we're like, no. And I loved it. Because we got to talk and I said, What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long you're going to be in Greece? And he said I don't know how long I will be here. I thought that was kind of interesting. And

I said you know, what do you mean by that? Do you have to be back home at a certain time, or what's happening? And he said, Oh no. He said, I've taken a year off, and I'm traveling the world. I was immediately fascinated. I was like, wow, you've taken a year to travel the world. How did you do that? And in my mind, I'm thinking rich boy, you know, that's what he's got going on here. And that was certainly not true. He was not a rich boy. He had parents that he loved very much. He maintained regular contact with them through his phone, but they did not finance his trip. He financed it himself. And he did it. He said I couldn't even tell you, except since I've been here when the last time was when I ate a meal out because I was saving my money. I knew I was going to do this. And I said it didn't bother you, you know, leave friends, and you don't have a family or anything besides your parents? And he said, No, I haven't been on a date. And I couldn't even tell you when because he said I didn't want to get a relationship going, that I didn't want to leave. I knew I wouldn't go on this trip if I got too involved with a girl. And it was too important to me. And I said, Okay, so did you say Did you honestly save enough money to be gone for a year to do all of this to pay your hostel or your hotel bills or to do all this? And he laughed? And he said, No, I have a, I have a little tiny like tarp kind of thing back here in the back. I've slept outside more nights than I can tell. You slept without shelter sometimes. But every place I go, I get a job, I get a job. And that's why I don't know, and I'll leave Greece whenever I've made enough money to go to the next place. What was the difference between him and me? A whole lot, right?

A whole lot. But the most basic thing was that he was determined to do this. And I just kind of wanted to do it. I just kind of wanted to do it. It's the same way for us. The only way they said what joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And that means they've set their minds on seeing God. They want to know Him. They wanted to be in his presence, and they were determined. The only way you and I will make this journey. The only way that we will live a life that causes us to see God in our daily life and causes us to see him at the end of our journey. The only way we will make it is to have that kind of determination and sacrifice the kind they had, the kind my friend in Greece did feel. Just tell yourself the truth on this one. You and I feel justified in quitting our journey over the smallest of disappointments. Suppose we don't get that job. We're just kind of mad at God. And we think, well, I just guess I'll do my own thing. He's not looking after me. I guess I'll just do that. We don't like something that, you know, the church does, or we don't like something in society or whatever any little thing gets us upset and, you know, a really big thing—people who prayed for Robbie. If he hadn't had the results he had, there would have been

Some of those who just decided that God doesn't hear an answered prayer would be done with it. I hear it all the time. My aunt doesn't go to church anymore because her husband died, and she's mad at God. She said God doesn't hear prayers if that's the kind of God he is. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, get over yourself. All of us have to leave this planet sometime, somehow. We all live in a broken world. Everybody's not going to get well. Every time it's not going to happen. We will quit over the smallest of disappointments. And then, when it comes to a prayer that we wanted to be answered in a specific way, we'll just go nuts. Do you know for you to quit on your journey with God because he didn't do something you wanted him to do in the way you wanted him to do it? That is so stupid and foolish. It is just like if you got a free trip to Disneyworld got a free trip there. And you spilled your coke or scraped your knee within five minutes of getting in there, and you left never to come back again. Would that be stupid? Of course, it would. It is far more ridiculous for you to give up on your journey with God because you've been disappointed. On every journey.

There are mountains and valleys in their curves in the road. It's true for everyone. And it was true for them. Listen, verse six is there, and when they walk through the valley of weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs. The autumn rains will close it with blessings. On the way to Jerusalem, there was a really big valley that you had to cross to get into Jerusalem. And it was a deep valley with, you know, mountains on the sides all of that it was deep. And it was a place that was hard to travel to. But they say here, and when they walk through the valley of weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs. That's what God will do for you. If you have this secure space and relationship with God, where God lives in you, you know Jesus Christ, and you are his home. He lives in you. And you are together with people who are also living for Him. And together, you are building a temple for His glory and your space. If you have that space and invest in your relationship with God for secure strength, you will go through those valleys that everybody else faces, and they drop out of the game. They get discouraged with people, with God, and they drop out of the journey. You will not because when you're in the valley of weeping in hard times, you will recognize the incredible special strength of God, the secure strength that he is giving you in those times. You will amaze yourself at how God will help you, you will find that in that valley, you will have wonderful fruit, the fruit will grow in the valley, it says this, they will continue to grow stronger, and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem. Do you know what that means? That means if you focus on investing in your relationship with God, your strength will be so strong that nothing will deter you. You will see God in your everyday life. When are other people saying where God is? Where is God? You're like, wow, I see him everywhere. When other people are worried about the end of their journey, you know that you will see God face to face. Let me tell you about Ron again. As I said, I was with him many times. And he said, he said to me, and of course, towards the end, he got weak where he is voice was mostly a whisper. And he wasn't able to talk a lot. But the last time I was with him before he left us, he left the next day, the last time I was with him.

We were talking. I asked how are you doing, and he said, I'm good. I'm good. You know what, Brenda? He said God is so close to me. I feel the prayers of these people. And God is so close to me. In a strange way. These have been some of the best days of my life. He said God is a witness to me that my life has mattered. And I know I will see him face to face, and it's been good. He said, Y'all take care of Cheryl, don't worry about me. I'm good. God's got me. Don't worry about me. And I leaned over, kissed him on the forehead, and said, buddy, I love you so much. And then some of you will understand this well because you've been around long enough you knew all of these guys. But Ron, for 40 years, was one of my husband's closest friends, and there was a circle of guys that played golf together and did crazy things together. He Ron was one of those, Doug Benoni was one of those, Frank barelli There was a group of them, and Doug Doug funcione died shortly after Charlie did He had lung issues, and a lung transplant failed him, so he went to be with the Lord just a couple of months after Charlie died.

So how do these guys show love to each other's how many of you do? They tease each other mercilessly. That was the way they said, and I love you. And Doug was the one who got the brunt of a lot of it. And he deserved it. If you knew Doug, you knew that he was a jokester and deserved everything he got. But you know, he and his friends were already in heaven. But I leaned over, and I kissed him again on the head. And I said, Look, Ron, I hope I see you before you leave here. I'm planning on it. But I will see you over there if I don't see you again. And you make sure that you and Charlie both meet me. And now, this guy, hours away from death, says in his weak little voice, " I will, Brenda. But I don't think we'll bring Doug with us.

Who can leave this life with that kind of serenity and joy? Only someone with their serene strength in the Lord, their secure strength, and Lord, had that he was having the time of his life as he was leaving this life. That's what God will do for us. It means that God will be present in our hardest of times. When you invest in your relationship with God and refuse to drop out, you will reach your destination and see God you. Will, you'll be just like them? You will see God. You will see him here.

And you will see him there. You will the bottom will never fall out on this investment. It never will. So Paul tells us he says this in Galatians, six, nine. So let's not get tired of doing what is good. We will reap a harvest of blessings at just the right time if we don't give up. So here's what I want to tell you today, wherever you are, if you've known Jesus for a long time and you've gotten weary, if you have never made that full commitment to Jesus before, I want to tell you to make a new commitment today. You see, what our responsibility is, is obedience. It's our responsibility. Our outcome is God's. We don't know what he will do with our obedience; we just know it will be great. Because if we invest in our relationship with Him, the bottom will never fall out. He's an investment guru. He's not only the one who knows the investments we should make, but he multiplies our investments. And in the end, don't ever get tired of doing good. Okay, we have a secure place. We have a secure strength. And then last, when we invest in our relationship with God, we have a secure supply source. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I would love it. Suppose we had secure supply sources around here. We don't think there are shortages in everything, do something you need. It's a shortage, got all that. But we have a secure supply source that will never run out when we invest in our relationship with God. Now the first and most important part of this is that God helps us accurately assess what is valuable and what is good. And what is not? Because we don't have the brainpower, we don't have the intelligence to know what's good.

We're like the prospectors in the early days of our nation who got fooled by fool's gold. And you know, they would give up everything they had to get this that was not secure. We're like the poor Native Americans who were taken advantage of by the early explorers, who gave away their lands and sold their land for trinkets worth pennies. We do that. We do the same thing. You know what lots of people do when they're young. They spend all time kinds of time with people who were not their friends, and they think they are what they hope they are. They spend time with people who are not their friends, who don't want anything good for them, who lead them down wrong paths and do all that and completely cut their family off, the people they'll need for the rest of their lives. The people who are their source of supply. And then we do that as well as we're older.
We often make investments in things and people that will never meet our true needs. We're like the prodigal son. That story of the boy in the Bible. He left his home. He left his FatherFather, who was the source of his sheer supply. And he went out looking, thinking he could do it better. And he lost it all. He came back home. Fortunately, the FatherFather, their FatherFather, took him back. Now this psalmist here wrote this song from a new perspective. Listen to what he said. A single day in your courts is better than 1000 anywhere else. I would rather be a gatekeeper in

A house of my God then lives in a good get to live a good life in the homes of the wicked. For the Lord God is our seminar shield. He gives us grace and glory, and the Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right. You know what he's saying here when he says I'd rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God.
Hold on to your seats. He's saying I'd rather be Joe Krueger.

I would rather be Bob Tarbut, and I would rather be Stacy Sally. I would rather be any of the people who stand back here and greet and welcome people into God's house. I would rather be that my life that be everything of my life, than spend a good life in the homes of people who don't know God.

That's what he's saying. He's saying it's a better life than that. To stand on the edges and welcome people into the family of God. That's a wonderful thing with a guy here, years back. He's the FatherFather of my sister-in-law, Kathy Mason, and his name was John Weeks. He's been in heaven for quite a few years now. But John had a broken life up until he moved back from Florida. And he was a single guy. He moved back from Florida, moving into the area, and J. And Kathy invited him to Cornerstone Church, and he got saved because of our ball team. He played ball, and from the friendships, he made on that team. They were gatekeepers, and they were inviting him into the family of God. He became a Christian, a Jesus follower, because of that experience. And when he did, he wanted to serve in the cornerstone, and the place he started serving as a gatekeeper in the house of my God, he was an usher. And he would welcome people in, and he loved it so much. It was so great. He loved getting the offering baskets together, doing everything with them, welcoming people, and letting them know this was a great church, and you got to return. And he was just marvelous. And he would say to me so many times, and we're really good friends. And he would say to me repeatedly, Brenda, I can't believe it every Sunday that I'm here. I just love it more than anything I ever did. When I was running around, it was more exciting. It's more adventure.

He'd rather be a gatekeeper. That was the verse that we used at his funeral for him. And why would you rather do that than have everything else that looks so good and big and flashy? Well, because you and I don't have the first idea of what's good. We trust our thoughts and wisdom. We think we know what's good. That's why we lose our money on stupid things. That's why we choose a job that takes us down the wrong path. It's why we choose relationships and make choices that take us to the wrong place. But here's the deal. God knows what is best for us. God knows what is good for you and what's not. He knows what's good for you.

He's the only one who does. He wants what's good for you and what's best for you. You know, many of us will have people who know what's good for us, but they don't want us to have it. Because they're jealous. They don't want it for us for some reason. Well, God knows what's best for you and wants what's best for you. And here's the kicker that makes it also awesome. He has the power to do that for you. He has the power to give you what is right. So you want to invest in Him. The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right. God knows what it's best, what is best for you. If it is good for you. If it is the best choice for you. God will ensure you'll get it if it truly blesses your life. You don't need to worry about that. You just have to trust that he sees the end of things. I will never forget something that was a transformational moment for me. In these years of my life, it happened the night my husband died, uh, when he died, and it was unexpected. You know, nothing was wrong with him that should have caused him to die. But he was going to have surgery. We were going to Cleveland Clinic on Tuesday he died on Sunday. We'll be going there on Tuesday to relieve pressure and his neck from falls, and he had a knee that needed to be replaced. And so anyways, his big shock that he died and we were that evening in our house, or home and the whole family by my brothers and their wives and nieces and nephews and our whole family was there, and it was late, and we were all weeping and crying. And at that moment, I saw Jacob, who is our pastor now. I saw him step into a place of leadership in our family, which blessed me so much. It helped me so much. It was a word from God. He was weeping himself. But he said Listen, guys, I feel like I need to say something. He said we are so focused on what we thought would happen and what we thought would be good for us and what we thought would be good for Dad, we thought that he was going to get the surgery and everything would be hunky dory, and everything would be good. And dad would, you know, get to be active as he was at once. But we don't know that that's just what we thought. Something else could have happened. Dad could have had problems in surgery, he could have been in a wheelchair, any number of things could have gone wrong, or it could have gone good, we don't know. But we know that God is good, that he's always been faithful, and that he is trustworthy. And we need to trust him with this. From dad's perspective today, I guarantee he already agrees with what God did.

Anointing, an egg of knowledge, correct on my head. I knew that. But it came home to me in a way that was so true. God knows what is best. And in every situation, we have to choose if we're going to have the life that we want to have if we're going to see God's goodness here or see him here. And if we're going to see him and see Him face to face in the future, we need to make that decision. I'm asking the worship team to come forward for a minute. At the same time, I will talk to you just for one more minute about something so important. If you honestly, truly repent of your sins, and you asked Jesus to be your Savior,
heaven is going to be your home.

But there's more to it than that. If you want to seek God in your life here and live a secure, safe, satisfied, happy life, there's more to it than that. If you want a secure space, you must do what I told you this morning. If you want secure strength that keeps growing and growing, the older you get in the ward, the better you get. If you want a secure supply that will never let you down, that you will know what's good for you, and God will give it to you, you have to be more than just a ticket to heaven. You got to have more than that. You have to invest in your relationship with God, and you invest in your relationship with God first and foremost. And primarily, when you decide for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life, no matter what happens, I will not second guess God. I'm not going to do it, not second guess God for the rest of my life. I choose to believe that God is good, faithful, and will always handle life in the best way possible for me, and I will trust him. I am not going to get off track; I'm going to stay determined, and I am going to follow him. I am going to walk with him. I'm not going to jump off because I feel like he let me down. I'm going to believe in him. No matter what, I will never change if he answers the prayer the way I want him to. Or if he does not. There were three guys in the Bible. True story. True story. We call them the three Hebrew children. They were three Jewish boys who were taken captive out of their land. And they were taken to the land of Babylon away from their family and friends under the power of a pagan, wicked king. And that king declared that for 30 days, you weren't allowed to pray to, worship, or honor anyone but him

30 days, these boys knew that that would be derailing their relationship with God; they knew it would take them off the journey. And they were like my friend in Greece, and they were determined, nope, nope, nope. Every sacrifice that it takes. This is not a casual trip. For me. I am on a journey. I'm going to see God in my everyday life. And I'm going to see him face to face one day. That's the way they've thought about it. And here's what they did. They didn't make the excuse that many of us, maybe most of us, would make. They didn't say well, and it's only for 30 days. We'll just keep this thing private. We'll not do it for 30 days, and then we'll get back on track. No. They believe that God was so good. And he was so trustworthy. And he was so faithful that he was worthy of their 100% following and investment every day of their lives. So this is what they said to the king. We know you said the furnace would be seven times hotter than normal. Yeah, we know that. You said if we don't bow down. We're going to be thrown in there.

Here's what we know. Our God is the most powerful, most amazing God. God can deliver us from your hand no matter how powerful you are. God can deliver us. He can save us from the fire. We know that it can—the little glitches. We don't know if he's going to or not.
But that doesn't make our decision for us. We don't need any guarantees. We know that he can. But if he doesn't, if not, we still won't bow down. If not, we will know forever that he still is good. We will not bow down.
They saw God. They saw God in the furnace with him. They saw God for the rest of their lives and met God face to face. That situation I have to make. You say you don't understand why other people see God. When you don't answer, I hear this. It's right here.

You have to decide ahead of time. God is good; he's faithful. He's trustworthy. No matter what he does, I will not bow down. I've made that decision. It makes me know that life is good. I feel the presence of God with me every single day. I have this reminder in my home, this picture you see, and this is hanging on the wall in my dining room. The flower below it is the yellow rose from Charlie's funeral that was for me. And above it is my commitment. And if not, he is still good. If not, if God doesn't do anything the way I think you should. I'm going to recognize that he is good. He is faithful and he is trustworthy. He is my God, forever and forever. And so, I see God every single day. And there will be a day I see him face to face, and you can do.