This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to our look at
Psalm 31 to 35. This week, this is day one. We're looking at Psalm 31.

Psalm 31 happens to be a Psalm that captured a lot of people's hearts during
times of stress. Even in the Bible, you can see this. Jonah prayed part of verse
six when he was in the belly of the fish.

A lot of stress there. Jeremiah repeated again and again the phrase from verse
13. There is terror on every side.

It helped him to deal with his stress. The writer of Psalm 71 quotes the first
three verses in this Psalm, and Jesus quoted from verse five in his last words
from the cross. So it's a Psalm that teaches us how to deal with stress.

A lot of Psalms, you may have noticed, move from anguish to assurance. This
Psalm actually does it twice in verses one to eight and then again in verses
nine to 24. So it helps to take us from a place of stress to a place of
security.

To reduce the stress in your life, there are two things that this Psalm invites
us to do. They have to do with your spirit and with your times. First, this
Psalm invites us to do something with our spirit to reduce the stress in our
lives.

In verse five, into your hands I commit my spirit. Redeem me, O Lord, the God of
truth. A time of stress is a time to ask whose hands your spirit is in and to
recommit your spirit into his hands.

Now, you might recognize and know that Jesus prayed this prayer on the cross,
into your hands I commit my spirit, the last thing that he prayed before he gave
up his spirit and went back to the Father. In his day, this prayer, into your
hands I commit my spirit, it was actually part of a prayer that was prayed at
bedtime. From the days that he was a child, Jesus likely would have prayed this
prayer.

This wasn't the only time that he prayed this prayer. He was on the cross
praying the same prayer that he had prayed every day of his life. And it's a
prayer that we need every day of our lives.

Into your hands I commit my spirit. Your spirit is your mind, it's your will,
and it's your emotions. It's your mind the way that you think, it's your will
the way that you decide, and it's your emotions, the way that you feel.

So you're saying, God, all of that, the way I think, the way I decide, the way I
feel, I commit that into your hands today. That's what reduces the stress in our
lives. Your spirit, it can be in your hands, it can be in the hands of your
circumstances, it can be in another person's hands.

So right now, recommit your spirit into God's hands. Now, as David talks about
this, he shares a couple of things that this means. First, it means that I trust
in God instead of idols.

In verse six, and then verse 14, he says, I hate those who cling to worthless
idols. I trust in the Lord, but I trust in you, oh Lord. I say, you are my God.

An idol is essentially a God that you can control. You could sit it on your
shelf, and you could get it to do whatever you wanted as long as you treated it
right. You did the right thing for the idol, the idol did the right thing for
you.

Well, our idols today, they're more in our thoughts than on our shelves. They're
not little wooden statues, they're little selfish thoughts. They're ways that we
want to live our lives.

We're not looking to God and what he wants, we're looking to us. And we begin to
use our prayers, maybe even our worship, how often we go to worship, as sort of
leverage against God. And that creates huge stress in our lives, 'cause we're
essentially trying to be God.

How could you create greater stress than trying to be what you could never be?
You cannot be God. Are you trying to hold God in your hand, get him to do what
you want?

Or have you committed your spirit into his hands? When you say, God, open hands,
I'm committing my spirit into your hands. My mind, my will, my emotions, they're
yours.

Would you guide and direct me into what you want for my life? It is amazing how,
no matter what the circumstances, how difficult they might be, how the stress
begins to reduce in your life. So first, as he's talking about what it means to,
into your hands I commit my spirit.

First, David reminds us, it means I don't hold on to worthless idols. But
second, it means I focus on God's, what he calls, God's spacious place. In verse
eight, you've not handed me over to the enemy, but you've set my feet in a
spacious place.

David could have focused on his enemies, but he chose instead to focus on the
spacious, what he calls the spacious place that God had given him. A spacious
place is a place of opportunity. There's a lot of opportunity in a spacious
place to build, to grow.

Is your spirit right now, is it constricted by the challenges in your
circumstances, the challenges in your relationships? Pray, God, put my spirit in
a spacious place. Into your hand I commit my spirit.

Refuse to commit your spirit into the hands of those enemies. And instead
realize that God has made you to stand. God has made you to stand in the
spacious place of growing in him and serving him.

Facing stress in my life, in your life, it has to do with my spirit, but it also
has to do with my times. In verse 15, my times are in your hands. Into your
hands I commit my spirit.

And now here in verse 15, my times are in your hands. Deliver me from my enemies
and from those who pursue me. My spirit in God's hands, that's the internal.

My times in God's hands, that's the external. That's the day to day of life.
Listen to the life of one whose times are in God's hands in verses 19 to 24.

Let me read those verses. How great is your goodness, which you have stored up
for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take
refuge in you. In the shelter of your presence, you hide them from the intrigues
of men.

In your dwelling, you keep them safe from accusing tongues. Praise be to the
Lord. For he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.

In my alarm, I said, I am cut off from your sight. And yet you heard my cry, my
cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Love the Lord, all his saints.

The Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud, he pays back in full. Be strong
and take heart, all of you who hope in the Lord. He's telling us here what it's
like when your times are in God's hands.

When your times are in God's hands, you're depending on, he says, the greatness
of the Lord. How great is your goodness? In fact, he says, the greatness of God
is stored up for you.

God's goodness, God's greatness in your life, he's stored it up in advance.
There's more than enough of it. It's in the bank for you.

You don't have to worry about it. So when your times are in God's hands, you are
leaning on, you're depending on God's goodness. You're depending on the shelter
of his presence, that he will be with you through any circumstance and in any
circumstance.

You're depending on the fact that he will hear your cry for mercy, that he knows
what's happening in your life. He's going to hear, he's hearing that cry for mercy
that you have today. You're depending on the power of his preservation.

The Lord preserves the faithful. It may not look like it today. The stresses of
your life may look like you're losing, like you're not going to get preserved, like
everything's going to get lost.

But the truth of the matter is, when you look at it through the eyes of the Lord
and through the eyes of eternity, the Lord will preserve you. He will preserve
the faithful. I want to go back to verse 21, as we talk about putting our times in
God's hands.

He gives us this picture in verse 21. Praise be to the Lord, for he showed his
wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. A besieged city, in his day,
was a city that was surrounded by enemy forces.

You've seen this in movies like Lord of the Rings, and you've pictured it maybe
as you've read through the Bible. There's this city that's completely surrounded
by the enemy. There's no way out to get food and water.

There's no way to protect yourself against that great enemy. It looks like
everything is absolutely lost. And some of us, we feel besieged sometimes.

You're surrounded by enemy forces. There's no way out. Your resources are
dwindling fast.

A lot of parents, they feel that way every day when their kids come home from
school. We are besieged in this moment, in the reality of life, when you feel
like there is absolutely no way out. You need to remember, and God teaches us
this again and again throughout the scriptures.

David had learned this in his life. You need to remember that God uses our
impossible circumstances to show us his incredible love, he'll do it again and
again and again. David writes and he says, "It was there in the besieged city
"God showed me his wonderful love.

"It was there when things looked darkest. " That's when God's love will shine
the brightest in your life. Let's pray together.

Our Father, you know we go through times of stress. You're there with us. You
sense what we're going through, what we're facing.

And I pray right now, we pray that as we face this stress that we're under in
this moment, that we would look to you. And in looking to you, we commit our
spirit into your hands. Instead of holding onto it ourselves, we give it to you.

And we commit our times into your hands. It's up to you, Lord, it's not up to
us. We can trust you with it, because we know that even in the besieged city,
you will show up.

Even when things look the darkest, you're there with your light, with your love.
And so we trust in that today. In Jesus' name we trust.

Amen. Join us tomorrow. David's going to give us a model for prayer.