Um, but but it's always a little strange for me, you know, you know, I always look forward to when my wife is away, because then, you know, why she's gone, I can play and stuff, you know, and get away with more stuff than I usually do, although I get away with a lot. Um, but, uh, you know, I always look forward to that week, but then, you know, after, you know, with building up all that anticipation after she's gone. And I take her to the airport and I come home and the house is empty and, you know, I take care of my business during the day and I come back at night and she's not there. And it just, you know, I was starting to realize, you know, I'm not, I'm not as happy about that as I thought I was going to be, you know, I kind of miss her, you know. And all the while, you know, while she's getting ready to go, she's going, you're going to miss me when I'm gone, aren't you? And I was kind of, you know, shrugged off, you know, oh yeah, yeah, I'm busy, you know, yeah. You know, but then the reality of the case is that I actually do miss her, you know, I mean, I don't know why I'm so surprised by that. I guess because of my man and that's how we are, but, um, but you know, when I, when I really miss her is, you know, two, two times on Sunday morning when I come, when I come back and forth out in the foyer and she's not there, greeting everybody as they come in. And I said, you know, wow, what's my wife? You know, my wife is supposed to be right out there someplace, you know. And then when I'm up on that back bench, you all see me back there every Sunday morning, that's my seat in the back. And I don't know why I always like the back row. I don't like sitting up front with my back, everybody else. I get nervous about that. But I'm too paranoid. I don't trust you guys enough to sit way up here in the front, you know, my back turned all of you. But at any rate, the last thing before I come up here and speak to you. The very last thing that I do is I reach over and I kiss my wife and I say pray for me. And she's not here this morning to do that. Now I was sitting next to Rob Paglisi back there and I thought, maybe, you know, sorry. I just couldn't bring myself to kiss Rob, sorry, you know, but you can't turn for me, Rob, okay? It's like feeling like I need a lot of prayer this morning. But anyways, that's our situation, isn't it? That's where we are. That's where we live. We need prayer. And the reason why we need prayer, according to the book of Hebrews in chapter 4, verse 16, is because we need help. And because we need help, we need grace in order to get grace, the writer of Hebrews instructs us we have to pray. That is we have to calm before the throne of grace. Hebrews 4, 16 says, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Well, let me tell you what I love about seeing Team Mexico appear. And especially those young kids, I'll tell you nothing just sort of charges my soul and my spirit. When I see those young kids up here who have gone to Mexico and had an experience like they had. And let me tell you why. Because what we do, when we do that, you don't have to be a child to understand this. Whether you're a child, or an adult, or somewhere in between, when we do that, what we're doing in our lives, what we're saying is that we want to exist in such a way that whatever we attempt to do in our lives could not be done apart or without from the grace of God. Not just as common grace that everybody gets every day, just by virtue of our very existence, but the special and supernatural grace of God. Beloved, I want to do things in my life and with my life that I could not otherwise do apart from the special and supernatural grace of God. That's how I want to live. And when these kids and Mike and David, when they went down to Mexico, that's what they're doing. They're doing something. They're attempting something that they could not otherwise do apart from God's special and supernatural grace. That's how I want to live. And that's how I want all of you to live to live in such a way that whatever you do and whatever you attempt to do with your lives could not be done. It would be impossible to do an impossible to live that way except that you were empowered and enabled by God's special and supernatural grace. That's the kind of grace we're talking about that is necessary to live the Christian life, to live this kind of a life where you will do things that would be impossible for you to do apart from His grace. Beloved, that's what I want for us as the people of God is the churches, covenant, Presbyterian Church. I want us to live in such a way to attempt to do things that would be impossible for us to do, impossible for us to accomplish apart from a special and supernatural grace. I want to preach, but I don't just want to preach. I want to preach empowered by the grace of God and with the Holy Spirit. I want to pray, but I don't just want to merely pray. I want to pray by the grace of God with the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to administer and partake of the sacraments, but I don't just want to administer and partake of the sacraments. I want to administer and partake of the sacraments by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to do missions in evangelism, but I don't just want to merely do missions in evangelism to the sake of doing it I want to do it empowered by the grace of God and by the Holy Spirit. I want to do a lot of things I want to go out and go into the jails and prisons and hospitals in this city And I don't want to just do those things. I don't want to just do mercy ministry. I don't want to just go out on the street and preach the gospel I want to do it empowered by the grace of God and by the Holy Spirit and that takes more than just common grace. The grace of God with the sun shines on both the just and the unjust. The grace of God that causes the rain to fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous to do these things and the way that we want to do them to live in this way requires special supernatural grace. And that grace we said last week comes from these things. It comes from the word of God. It comes from prayer. It comes from the sacraments and it comes from fellowship. Those are the means of grace. Those are the things that God uses to communicate to us, his special and supernatural grace, so that we can do things that we could never do otherwise. But that's what I want. Now listen, we need grace for those things. But let me tell you something. Sometimes we need grace just to get through the day, don't we? Hmm? I want to do all those things. But sometimes all I want to do is get through the day. Here I feel like that. You know, we have dreams, we have visions, we have goals, we have objectives, we have a whole lot of things that we want to do. And then what happens? Life just sort of takes over, doesn't it? And sometimes life takes over in such profound ways and ways that we can't control that the only thing I can think about is, look, I just want to get through the day. You ever feel like that? It isn't interesting. I want to start at the end of this verse that we looked at in Hebrews chapter 4 because I think that's the proper place to start. I want to start right at the end of the verse. What does he say? Says, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we will receive mercy and find grace to what? To help, to help in our time of need. Look folks, sometimes what I need is help. In fact, if you're, if I'm honest, that's what I always need and that's what you always need to. We need help. If you're honest, I need help. You need help. We all need help. You ever be in a conversation with somebody and they're doing something foolish or they're doing something stupid and you look at them and you raise your eyebrows, you look over the top of your glass and you need help.
It's true. But the truth is we all need help. Every single last one of us. I've told you before time and time again that in my journals, I don't journal all the time but when I'm especially having a low time or when I feel like, you know, I'm just not getting through or I'm just not being productive in the way that I say, I'm not being used of God the way that I think or my soul is dry, my spirit is dry. The most frequent prayer that I write in my journals during those times is this. Lord, help me. I need help. I cannot do this. I don't have the resources. I don't have the resources to preach the way that I ought to preach. I don't have the resources to do the sacraments to pray to care for the souls of the church. I can't do it. Need help. The truth of the matter is beloved is we all need help and we need it desperately. The good news is that the help is there. You know, just the other day, I got in my car. I was going to go pick up my dry cleaning and one of my goals before my wife gets out of town is to take care of everything that's going to be an expenditure before she goes because she's going to expect me to take that out of my, you know, my play money, you know, otherwise. So I try to get all that done. I try to get, you know, pick up my dry cleaning, get my haircut, take everything I need to do so that, you know, I don't have to dig into my play money while she's gone, you know, but she tries to do it this the opposite. She tries to arrange it so that I have to put gas in my car so that I have to go to the grocery store so I can pick up my dry clean so I don't have to play money left. You can see we're not coming from the same place, right? So I went to the dry cleaners to, you know, pick up my dry cleanser. I got in the car in my garage and I went to crank it up and I heard it click once, you know, it went click and then it turned over and I thought, hmm, that's not good. But it turned over, the car was running so I thought, okay, I'll go to the dry cleaner, pick up my clothes so I went over there and, you know, interestingly enough, right before I, as I was leaving the house, we have one of those weather alert radios. Do you have one of those? I'm going to have a weather alert radio. You got one, you got to have one, you live in Florida, don't you know? Okay? So we got one of these weather alert radios and the alarm went off, on the radio. And all that's not good. You know, so I went in there, you know, tornado warnings, thunder, severe thunderstorm warnings and seminal county. Okay, good. So I look out the window and it's nasty. So I quick like, run to the car, start it, it clicks, then it turns over so I say, okay, I'm going to run the, you know, to the dry cleaners, get my dry cleaning before, you know, that storm comes, you know, so I get, I get there and in my mind, I made a mental note, I said, leave your car running. So I pulled the dry cleaners and the first thing I do is turn my car off. I'm going to look, why, why did I just turn my car off, you know, I made a mental note for all the good that that was. And so, so I, I went into the dry cleaner that got my, I dropped off my dry clean, came back and went out to crank my car and you know what happened, don't you? It not only clicked once, but it just kept on clicking. And so I'm sitting there, you know, and first of all, it's got to be 110 degrees in the sun. I mean, I, you know, I, I know sooner, stepped out of my car, put my hood up and I was drenched. I was going to have to take the clothes I had on off and take them into the dry cleaners. I was totally sweat through and I hadn't even just opened my hood. And then I look up across the road heading southeast and it is black. I mean, the clouds, I mean, these are the worst clouds I have seen. I've lived in Florida for 20 years and I haven't seen clouds this bad only two or three times in my whole time here. I mean, it looked nasty. It was definitely, you know, thunderstorm, severe thunderstorm in tornado weather. And I'm thinking, oh, great. Now, here I am, one I'm roasting and then now I'm going to be caught in a torrential downpour. And so I open up my hood and I look at my battery cables and, you know, all that whitish, greenish battery acid, you know, is just caked on the positive and negative poles, right? You know, that just drives the men in this congregation crazy. I know, but yeah, that's just me. I don't have those gifts. I'm sorry, you know, and, you know, just caked with battery acid. But I do know the little trick. See, so I thought, okay, I'm going to run to the 7-11, which is right next door to my dry clue. And I'm going to get a can of Coca-Cola. I'm going to pour it on, you know, my two poles there to just, you know, about this, right? It dissolves the battery acid like that. I said, great, so I got my little can of coke. I dissolved the battery acid and I went to start my car. Click. You know, I'm just not cut out for this kind of work. And I happen to look up on the other side of the park a lot. And right there are two good friends of mine. And, you know, so I said, you know, with some of my friends, we talked like mafia also, as you know, I said, yo, thank you guys in the wrong neighborhood. You know, they looked up and they saw me and they came over, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, and they saw that, you know, my hood was up, you know, and they said, so do you go like, Jimmy, you need some help? You know, I was like, no, I got my bottle of coke, you know. You sure? You don't need something? No, no, I'm fine. Really? It's all good.
You know, inside I'm dying here. I said, help me. Of course, I need some help. I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. I'm dying here. It's 110 in the shade. And it's about ready to pour rain down out of me. It said, Ricky, go get your car. Pull it over here. We need to jump fit this car. So they came over and they jumped my car and then I got my car and I went home. You know, folks, if you ever in your lives felt like you run out of juice, you ever felt like your battery just doesn't have any more power? You ever feel like the important poles, the positive and negative poles in your life are just completely corroded, having trouble even turning over and bad? You ever felt like all the power and reserve that you have in your life has been zapped? And not only has it been zapped, but it's zapped and you're standing out there wilting in the heat and you look over just over the horizon and the storms of life have just surrounded you and it looks like in any minute now all hell is going to break loose in your lives. You ever felt like that? You know what that says, Blower? That says we need
and notice what it says. He says so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. That tells us that the help of God is always on time. Not only do we need help, but when we ask for help, God's help is on time. Just yesterday I saw the two guys that showed up miraculously to help me in that parking lot. And my one friend, Joe, every time we see Joe, Joe's this big big man, you know, he comes up and he puts his arms around him and he puts his arms around me and he says that was a miracle the other day. I said, what are you talking about? He says, you know, I've only been in that I've only been in that strip mall twice in my whole life and that was one of the times I've been there in the last seven years. The strip mall has been there seven years. So I've been there twice. So that was a miracle. That's a beyond. So I thought I ran into a couple of friends who were able to help me with my battery a jump. You know, my partner saw how to load differently. He said, you know, that's a miracle. You know, that, you know what? They showed up, they were there right when I needed them. God's helps on time. It's always on time. When we have a need, when we need help, God shows up on time, 11 and we all need to help. And so that's the starting place. See, we need prayer. Yeah, we need prayer to do all the things that I said, all the things that we want to do to live our lives in such a way to do things that we could not otherwise do apart from the special and supernatural grace of God. But we also need grace. We also need help sometimes just to get through the day. And that's okay. And what does he say? He says approach. You need help. Yes. So what? So approach. Approach. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence. See, I need help. What do I do? You go to the throne of grace, you approach the throne of grace, you come to the throne of grace with a humble confidence before the Lord. We need the approach. And that the picture here is really a neat little word picture. The picture here is is this. It's a picture of a holy liturgical procession marching to the throne of God, the throne of grace. You know, sometimes we fail to see the bigness of little things. You know, every Sunday morning I get up and make my way to church as you all do. And, you know, it's just sort of amazing to me. I see several kinds of processions as I'm getting up and going out to my car and making my way to church. I see some people who have made processions out to the road. And, you know, this is their day where they're going to exercise. Okay. And I'm Sunday morning. I'm on my way to church and I see all these people out there exercising. Now, the thing that really perplexes me though, as I look at these people and I really mean no offense, but it's just kind of ironic that, you know, it just so happens that it looks like Sunday is the only day these people exercise. You know, Monday through Friday, I see people out exercising and they all look like they exercise regularly. The people I see on Sunday morning, it looks like this is the only time they ever exercise. I'm not going to tell you how I know that.
And, you know, of course, I'm thinking whatever pastor thinks, you know, these people really should be in church. But as I'm coming to church, I see car after car and family after family. Coming to worship God on Sunday. I pass several churches along the way and I see people driving all these different churches. There are two churches made here. And, you know, I don't think we really are able to see what that really looks like because of our vantage point. But if we can get up and get an aerial view of what that looks like, you would see thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of people getting up out of their beds, getting dressed, getting in their cars and making a holy procession, a kind of liturgical parade to come before the throne of grace. It's a beautiful picture of God's people in procession coming before his throne, before the throne of grace in their time of need when they need help. And then they can receive the grace and mercy that God has for their souls. It's a beautiful picture of love. And that's what we're doing here. We have all come and made our pilgrimage. We've made our holy procession. We have approached the throne of God. We've come before the throne of grace so that we might receive mercy and grace in our time of need. So help. That's what we need. Approach. That's what we're called to do. Receive. He says, right? Receive grace and mercy. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive grace and mercy, define grace to help us in our time.
Beloved prayer is the way that one of the ways, along with the word of God and the sacraments and fellowship, it's one of the ways that we receive mercy and grace. Now a lot of times we use the words mercy and grace synonymously. And it's okay to do that. But technically there's a difference. There's a relationship between those words are related, but there's also a difference between those words. They're not exactly the same thing. Mercy has to do with our misery. Grace has to do with our unworthiness. You know, Henry David throw the transcendentalist said that most men in the generic form, we could say most men and women, live quiet lives of desperation. We passed it off as resignation, he said. But it's a really desperation. If I were going to interpret that then I would say what he's saying is is that most of us secretly and quietly live miserable lives. We hide it well.
And quite frankly there's nothing wrong with sort of hiding that. It's a good social logical function to some degree. In some ways it's healthy. It's not really healthy to go around with all your feelings hanging out and on your shirt, sleep, and such. There is a sociological function for a stiffer upper lip every once in a while. But nevertheless we've got to be honest with ourselves and honest with others and honest with God. The large part of my life is miserable. I don't know why it's miserable. Maybe it's just because of the world time in which we live in the world in which we live. We're not home yet. And so there's this tension. There's this balance between yes, I experience contentment I experience satisfaction, I experience joy, but those feelings are not sustained indefinitely until the coming of the Lord. Our spiritual lies, when we talk about sanctification and spiritual formation, you know, a lot of times you see charts and they draw, you know, this is justification. It's this vertical relationship between God where God justifies you, it declares you're not guilty, pardon you of all your sins. And this is sanctification. They draw this straight line, you know, from earth to heaven, you know, as this, you know, the spiritual life is this one big continual, you know, progressing in the face. In fact, that's what we call it, right? Progressive sanctification where more and more we're being transformed and conformed into the image and the likeness of our God, right? Is that your experience? Is that what sanctification looks like to you? That's not my life. That's not my experience. Okay, if you're going to draw a line for me, it probably would look like the stock market. You ever see that graph? I don't know where I got that from, but it summarizes my life. My life is up and down. That's why we need help. That's why we need grace. That's why we need to come before the throne of grace and prayer. You know, we've in this worship service, we pray some six times. Did you know that? No less than six times we offer prayers to God. You know, beloved, I've become a big fan of church architecture, church buildings, because they say a lot, they speak inaudibly. They tell us, you know, they tell us the gospel so that we can see it with our eyes, what we've just heard with our ears. I was raised in Roman Catholic and I left the Roman Catholic church in part because it was two superstitious and then I became a Protestant and then I realized that in many ways, Protestants are more superstitious than Catholics,
just for different things in a different way. It was a big, beautiful building here. I first became a Christian, you know, it was all anti-building. Oh, you know, what do you need a building for? All you need is a box. People are the church. All right, you've heard all that. Then as I grew my faith, I realized the importance of having a building that glorifies God that speaks to our eyes the same message that we say with our lips and our mouths. Become interested in the furniture of the church, you know. Furniture for Protestants is rather sparse, wouldn't you say? You ever been to a Catholic church before? Much more in some of it is superstitious and some of it I think just grieves the heart of God if it doesn't grieve your own heart. We're pretty basic, few stools, chair, table. We don't have a pulpit. We've got a lector sitting in pews. Most Protestant churches, though, don't have one thing this church has.
All Catholic churches have ever been in heaven. It's amazing to me. We never use them. It's the kneelers.
What I found is that Protestants don't like kneelers. I don't know why that is. What do we got to get? Did Martin Luther fight the Reformation because they had kneelers on the pews? Is that what that was about? Did John Calvin write any treatises about no kneelers in the church?
I don't think so. What is it about them we don't like? And I wonder if that's not a metaphor for our lives. Do you use the kneelers that God has given you? You use the knees that God has given you. It's a good posture for prayer, right? Down on our knees. It acknowledges to ourselves and it acknowledges to others and it confesses to God that we need help that we need grace and that we are coming to him out of that need asking for mercy. Mercy for our misery and grace for our sin. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you. We thank you for the word of God as a means of grace and we thank you for prayer. Lord, I know your people need prayer because their pastor needs prayer. And Lord, so we pray that we would pray. We pray, Lord, that you would work in our hearts, a desire to commune with you, our God, that we come before you in adoration, in confession and thanksgiving and supplication that we would be anxious for nothing but in all things. Let our requests be made known unto God so that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding with God and garrison our hearts. Lord, that you would give us strength, that you would enable us and empower us to live in such a way and to do things that we otherwise couldn't do without your special and supernatural grace. We ask this in Jesus' name.