"Forever of Nows" | Rev. Dr. Donovan Drake preaching | 06.28.26

"Forever of Nows" | Rev. Dr. Donovan Drake preaching | 06.28.26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

We just sang hymn number eighty-nine, Psalm eighty-nine, first verse. My song forever shall record the tender mercies of the Lord. Your faithful love I will proclaim. And every age shall know your name. We sang the psalm. Now hear the words again, Psalm 89, verses 1 through 4, and then verses 15 through 18. Hear the word of God. I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever. With my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever. Your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens. You said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to my servant David, I will establish your descendants forever and build your throne for all generations. Happy are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance. They exalt in your name all day long and extol your righteousness, for you are the glory of their strength. By your favor our horn is exalted, for our shield belongs to the Lord, our King, to the Holy One of Israel. And this is the word of the Lord. I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever. Forever and ever. Well, this week I put some thought into the word forever, and I have come to the conclusion that forever is a very long time. Your generosity dollars at work. I remember the seminary professor who described forever as a mountain of solid granite, and once a day an eagle making its wide circles would once a day brush its wing tip just on the side of the mountain every day. Brush, brush, brush, brush, brush, brush, brush. Well, the time it would take the eagle's wing to wear that mountain down into powder, the professor said, Well, that's just one day in forever. Forever is a long time. In other words, humans cannot even begin to comprehend the size of forever. So it is that we try to make forever a little smaller. For example, while many of you are at the beach or at the mountains enjoying your family and friends, I'm at that stoplight out there forever. And forever is not for everyone. There at that stoplight, if there is a car behind me, I will watch. Sometimes they will turn left on the red light. They wait until the coast is clear or semi-clear, and then they make it, completely breaking the law. But the driver must surely see the length of time at that light as a crime against humanity, so they take the law into their own hands. Or as the judges of the Bible says, all the people did what was right in their own eyes. Anarchy on the corner of West End and Mayfair. Which gets us back to the point. I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever. Who among us has time for forever? With my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. None of this is true. We don't have a forever bone in our body. And proclaiming faithfulness to all generations impossible. It's impossible, and it's getting harder and harder every day. I listened to a portion of a podcast my seminary put out featuring uh Dr. Lisa Miller, who is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia in New York City. And she spoke about proclaiming God's faithfulness from generation to generation. And she said it's coming to an end. She said we have a high school, we have high school and college students right now who may have never prayed by the side of a grandparent or a parent, who might never have ever read a sacred text, who doesn't feel at home in a house of worship. We have a rising generation with an unformed spiritual core. There is a spiritual atrophy at the center of the whole person. And now get this. She says, when we look at the data in the top peer-reviewed journals, the spiritual atrophy is primarily responsible for the mental health crisis we have. She said, it's not that we get depressed and stop going to houses of worship. It's not that we get anxious and stop praying. It's the opposite. These young people are depressed because they don't go to houses of worship. They are anxious because they don't pray. I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever. I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. To all generations, I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever. A high school student who says, Yes, I turn to God's guidance in times of difficulty, is 80% less likely to become addicted. 75% less likely to have depression. There's nothing that compares, she said. It's not a hundred percent. But the doctors said, we are built. We are built to be spiritually aware. Psalm 89. If we had time to read it all, it's a long psalm. I mean, I can't go on preaching forever. But it is written, if you read it, it's written for someone who needs a win. You know that. That feeling when you need a win, you know the prayer. Oh Lord, I need, oh Lord, I want, dear Lord, help. Sometimes we need a win. And unfortunately, for so many in our world today, the culture tells us that if you try out for the team and you fail to make the team, you don't get to play. Just give up. And that is not our song. The culture tells us that if the prodigal came back home, he'd find the house empty because dad has moved on and has left no forwarding address. That is not our song. The culture can make us thin skinned. The psalmist says the opposite. Telling us that when we need a win, when we need a win, we sing even more loudly. We sing of God's steadfast love forever. In other words, we embody God descriptors in ourselves. We become the ones who shine with steadfast love. We are the ones who maintain faith forever. None of this, remember that you are dust, and the dust you shall return. Nothing mortal about this. Look, I am faithful forever. You be faithful, God, forever, because you have this covenant. The psalmist says, God, do you remember those festival processions when everyone would come out to the streets and praise your name, lift your name on high? Did you like that? It could happen again. I'll get the song started. Does that sound like anyone who's depressed to you? Anxious? Alone? We are not one striking you're out, people. We don't give up on one another. And we don't give up on God, even when things are tough. Oh God, you are my God. I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water, I have looked upon you. When times are tough, we don't conform to a miserable day. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We are the light of the world. We shine, we love, we reconcile. It drove the Roman Empire crazy. They tried to kill us, and we just kept popping back up, stronger and stronger, because the steadfast love of God is forever. And that forever is what we all thirst for. We're wired for this. It's our living water. I'm going to sing of God's steadfast love now and now and now and now and now and now forever and ever. That's all forever is. It's just a series of now. He doesn't get mired in anxiety and depression. I'm going to sing of your steadfast love now, now, now, now, now, now. You're going to have to listen to my singing, Lord. You lover of all generations. We should embody this. The next time you have a little road rage in your system, roll down your window and say, hey, buddy, I'm going to sing of God's steadfast faithfulness to you. God loves us, loves us so big. God loves us all. I'm going to tell of God's faithfulness forever and ever. I'm going to start right now. I love you. Sorry. This is what we believe. See if it doesn't change your heart. See if it doesn't purge the anxiety and the anger out of our souls. We are not those people. We believe in big things. We say things like, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever. That's big. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's big. Oh, for a thousand tongues we sing. That's huge. When we've been there ten thousand years, bright, shining as a sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. That's eternal. That's forever. The staff, the pastoral staff. This congregation met up on the mountaintop sometime in the spring. We were supposed to have our staff retreat. Right at that moment, the ice storm hit. But we had to shelve the staff retreat for a few months. We had to shelve everything for a few months. You remember that. We had to empty out this sanctuary. We did a worship service with nobody here, brought back all that COVID stuff. I could feel it in my bones. And we got up a little later than we wanted to. More into the spring, we had a staff retreat, and we were all a little frustrated because all the plans that we had for January and February just got shifted and lost and bluff. We didn't get what we wanted. What did we want? What the pastoral staff wants is for all of us to know the words. To be able to sing in unison, to put the discipline back into disciple, to build the muscle of steadfast love. To quit swimming against God's plan of the great reconciliation of everything. Just quit swimming against it. Start moving ourselves away from that which divides and provides anxiety and lacks. It all lacks a certain hope of the eternal. So we prayed about it, thought about it, talked about it. And the theme in the fall is going to be this. The theme for the fall and the spring is taste and see that the Lord is good. It's the words of a song. And we will start to sing that song together. One of the invitations to taste is to taste the big things of life. Expand our ministers. So if you've gone to church all your life, that's great. Do you make space in your life to pray? Can you make space in your life to pray? In the series of all the things that you have to do to make memories, can you make a memory of a verse of scripture? Can you commit yourself to a verse of day? A verse a day. That you wake up in the morning and you taste your coffee. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Just say that. At lunch, when you're tasting the ham sandwich, this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. At night, this is the day that the Lord has made. All of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Do it every day. Do it for a week. And then the next week, maybe a different verse. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Just say that. You don't have to memorize the whole thing. Just say that. It'll make you want to memorize the whole thing. I guarantee it. The statistics show it. We have a job. We have a calling. A high school student who says, Yes, I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty, is 80% less likely to become addicted. 75% less likely to have depression. 82% less likely to commit suicide. There's nothing that compares. Nothing else comes close. We are built to be spiritually aware. Salvation is at hand. So tomorrow morning, or right now, I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord. Forever. With my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. And let's watch for the winds. Let's watch for the transformations. Let's look for the light. Now and forever.