[MUSIC PLAYING] Well, welcome to the beginning
of the Happy Trails series. For the next four
weeks, we're going to be exploring some
of the beautiful places where we have Fresh
Life Church, in Montana, in Oregon, in Utah, and
where I'm currently at right now, in Wyoming. I'm sitting at the top of
Teton Pass in Wilson, Wyoming, overlooking the
beautiful Jackson Hole. About to head out
on a hike, and I'm so excited that you're
going to come with me. If you have your Bible, grab it. You're going to want to
make your way to Psalm 121 as we begin our first journey
in this adventure that is the Happy Trail series. [MUSIC PLAYING] So we're on top of the beginning
of a hike really called Mt. Glory, which will be
the tip of this climb. If we make it to the
top, then we'll have successfully climbed Mt. Glory, which seems pretty
appropriate to be going up a mountain called Mt. Glory. I feel like that's good in
every sense of the word. But if you have your
Bible, Psalm 121 is where we're going
to be this week. We'll jump into that
in just a minute, but let me just
sort of explain what we're jumping into in
this series, Happy Trails. We're going to be bringing
these messages to hiking trails across this beautiful part
of the country where we live and have church and get to
worship God, and it's amazing. And it's appropriate
we're doing so, because we're going to be
studying for the next few weeks here at the church,
the Psalms of Ascent. And this is a
section of scripture that begins in Psalm 120 and
goes all the way through Psalm 134. Now, just backing up,
the book of Psalms is a book full of songs. It's literally all sorts
of different types of songs that are lumped together,
that are expressions of praise and worship that are really
fitting for different occasions and different situations
and seasons of the soul. Just like a golfer
wouldn't pull the driver out when he's on the green
trying to putt or to get out of the sand trap, you wouldn't
necessarily want to chip it. I mean, I'm at the end of
my golfing analogies here, but you have different
tools in the golf bag for different
occasions, and so it is when it comes
to the book of Psalms. There are different types,
different categories, different sorts of praise that
we use for different occasions, different situations, to
express different emotions and to connect to
God in the midst of different circumstances. As you're celebrating something
or declaring independence or a Psalm that would
really come around the idea of repentance
or even just to express anger and
frustration, bewilderment, or even disgust over what
you're experiencing in life and to bring that to God. And I think it's amazing
that, as we open up the book of Psalms, we find room
to put in, just like in a pack, you would have different
places to put your water bottle or to put your trekking
poles, so in worship, we can bring to God
whatever it is, and He has a compartment for us
to put that in just to cast all our cares upon Him. Included in the book of
Psalms is this section, Psalm 120 through 134, and
it's 15 different Psalms that are called the Songs
of Ascent, or they've been called the songs
of the road or pilgrims' songs, the Psalms of travelers. And the reason we've chosen
to bring these songs, to study them on
a hiking trail is because that's
literally the context that they were intended for
and where they were primarily used when they were first
given and first written. As we know, David
wrote four of them. Solomon, his son,
wrote one of them. And then there are 10
that we don't know. Some people say maybe
King Hezekiah wrote them. We don't know. But in these 15 songs,
we have basically what would be used like we
would use a road trip playlist. No one would get in the car
and head out across the country without giving some thought--
no one that's to be trusted, anyhow-- without giving some thought
to the jams for the road. You have playlists that you're
going to create and curate carefully for an expedition. And that's sort of what we find
in this section of scripture. We have the playlist
that pilgrims would use when making their way
to the holy city of Jerusalem for feasts, where they would
worship the God of the Bible. Now, in the history
of the world, you have this amazing
individual, Abraham, who's this exceptional
individual who God gives promises to, and
connected to all these promises was this idea of bringing
a Savior into the world. Abraham, this Father
of Faith, as he's called because he believed
God who made crazy promises. He eventually had a family, even
though the whole circumstances under which that took place
was improbable and impossible. Then all of a
sudden, it happened and now you have Isaac, his
son, and eventually, you have a whole nation that we
know of today as the nation of the Jews or Israel. And they had, at the
center of their worship, this city called Jerusalem. It was where there
was a temple it was where the Ark of the
Covenant, at one point, was housed. And it was where
sacrifices would be brought to worship
God really going back all the way to the
Garden of Eden, when animals' blood had to be
shed as a payment for the sins, and it all pointed
forward to Jesus. Anyhow, through the course
of the religious calendar, all of the rituals
and all of that, the feasts that were
on their schedule included three where
they had to travel to the city of Jerusalem,
across the nation to this city, Jerusalem,
from wherever they lived. And they would walk
there, of course. And as they would do so, to keep
their hearts sort of matched up to what was happening as
they would be ascending to get to Jerusalem, because
no matter where you came from, you had to go uphill
to get to the city because it was built up
on a plateau surrounded by mountains. If you go to Israel today, you
can see what I'm talking about. But no matter what area you
came from where you lived, you had to go up to Jerusalem. So for Passover, for
Pentecost, and for the Feast of Tabernacles, all these
rituals, all these holy days that pointed forward
to Jesus, people would be literally streaming
in and traveling and spending time on the road. While they were walking,
while they were hiking, while they were on these trails,
they kept their hearts happy or they kept their
hearts focused on what God wanted them
to be thinking about by singing these songs to
each other, these 15 songs. And so we could really say
as we're headed to Heaven, and that's what Jesus
promises for all of us, that we're headed to
Heaven, but on the way we're being formed for Heaven
and God's kingdom is being revealed in our hearts
and in our lives as we live with our eyes and
our hearts focused on God, these songs have intense
meaning for us as well. We're going to start this week
with Psalm 121, which says, and we have it up on the screen
for you, "A Song of Ascents. I will lift my
eyes to the hills. From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord,
who made Heaven and Earth. He will not allow
your foot to be moved. He who keeps you
will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade
at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you
by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve
you from all evil. He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall
preserve your going out and your coming in from
this time forth and even forever more." And God, we thank You
so much for Your word. We thank You that
we can consider this even as we take to the trails. And we thank You that on this
journey of life, as we come and as we go, You have
a plan for each of us. Thank You for every single
person at every single Fresh Life location, those
watching church online or on the archive
and the way that even now, as we make our way as
pilgrims through this world, trying to keep our
hearts on Heaven and being expressions of
Heaven to the people around us, we pray that we
would keep our heart and mind centered by worship. We ask this in Jesus' name. [MUSIC PLAYING] This first Psalm that we're
going to consider, Psalm 121, has eight verses
and it's broken up into four sections, an
introduction and then basically three things that follow. And in the beginning
of it, the author starts by making this statement
about lifting his eyes up to the hills. "I lift my eyes
up to the hills." But then he asks the question,
"from whence comes my help?" Or where does my help come from? And then eventually,
he answers his question with where he chooses to
look when he needs help. But we have to just first
acknowledge the reality that so many times we get into
situations where we need help, where we lift our
eyes up, and we're just almost like in
desperation because we're going through something that's hard. We're going through
something that's painful. And what's so
great about that is that we find within this
Psalm, the perfect recipe or the perfect
answer or strategy for what to do when
life hurts the most. John Phillips wrote in his
commentary on the Psalms about this particular
song, that it's "a song to turn to when
shadows deepen and the future looks bleak." So how does that
hit you right now? Do you feel like there's
any situation in your life that almost has
deepening shadows? Maybe it's a medical
situation or something you're going through with
someone in your family, a marriage that is on the
rocks that you're praying for, maybe a son or daughter
who you've become estranged from somehow, or something
at work or something you're going through. When the shadows deepen and
when the future looks bleak-- I think all of us can relate to
that on some level or another. And if we don't currently,
at some point we will. We're just going to face
something, we're looking off. We're just almost
like, we're left going, where does my help come from? What do I do now? Where do I go? And as these pilgrims would
make their way to Jerusalem, they literally would lift
their eyes up and see hills. You couldn't go to Jerusalem
without seeing hills, and they had different
sorts of associations. They knew that lions and
bears lived in the mountains, in the hills, but there was
also a very real danger. Traveling with your family on
foot, you were open to threat. They would sleep, they
would camp out kind of on the trail in
situations kind of like what you're seeing around
me here in Wyoming, just the Middle Eastern version. We know when Jesus told that
story about the Good Samaritan, it was all rotating
around a man who fell among thieves on his way
kind of in this same exact area where they were traveling
to and from Jerusalem. He was headed on
the road to Jericho, and he fell among thieves. So there was that, too. I mean, if you were a
criminal, if you were looking to prey on victims,
you would have very real, tangible opportunity,
soft targets as families would travel. They'd have to have
money with them. They'd have to have
food with them. They'd have to have what
they would need to survive. So if you're bringing
your family out, you're exposing
yourself to risk, I guess, to head to
Jerusalem out of faithfulness and obedience to God. And if you're at a spot
that you're worried, there would be this prayer
that would kind of resonate. I lift my eyes up, how am I
going to get through this? Or the situation waiting
for me back at home, how am I going to
get through this? And then he said, "I lift
my eyes to the hills." now, in that, we
find almost like, oh, I'm going to find
just inspiration. If I lift my eyes
to the hills, I'm going to find,
wow, God's so good. No, that's not
exactly what he meant, because context is everything. First of all, there was
the fact that in that day, all the false gods that were
worshiped, throughout Israel's history, all of the
idols, all the shrines, they would almost always
be in high places. And so in Jerusalem,
you have this plateau, where a temple was built
to worship the God who created the world, who spoke
to Abraham, who established the Nation of Israel, all to
fulfill His promise he made to Adam and Eve back
in the Garden of Eden, to eventually send
forth His son to die on the cross as a substitute,
because we couldn't keep the law ourselves, make
ourselves righteous. So Jesus was going to do it for
us by taking our sin upon Him and then eventually
rising from the dead. So there is established in the
midst of all these mountains that were full of
shrines, full of gods that we worshiped in
sexual perverse acts, in all sorts of different
ways, you had literally, as he says this, he's saying,
I lift my eyes up to the hills. Where's my help
going to come from? He's thinking
through the options. Am I'm going to look
to an idol for help? Am I going to look to this false
god to get me through this? Now, we have to bring
that to our personal frame of reference. When you're feeling low,
when you're feeling agitated, when you're feeling scared, when
you're feeling unappreciated, what's your go-to false
god that you look to? Now, you might be
hearing that, going, what are you
talking about, Levi, I don't have a
false god I look to. Well, of course we do. A false god is just
anything we look to, to give us what God
has said He alone is capable of delivering on. I know for me,
the temptation can be to look to social media
for a quick hit of happiness or to an online
purchase or maybe for you it's Adderall or Xanax. When you're feeling stressed,
when you just can't handle it, is it four glasses of
wine to sort of dull and make fuzzy the things
that you're frightened by. The truth is, all
of us can end up making the mistake of
looking to the hills, looking to a false god to help
us through something that's causing the shadows to deepen
and the future to look bleak. But then what's so
great after he says, I'm not going to choose to
stare at a false God to help me, and I'm also not going
to stare at the thing that I'm scared of. Remember, these are hills
that are potentially full of criminals
and definitely full of wild animals and danger. He doesn't end there, I'm
lifting my eyes to the hills. He then says, no,
I choose to look to the Lord, who makes
Heaven and Earth, who made Heaven and Earth, that's
where my help comes from. OK, check this out. This is cool. He doesn't just
look to the hills, he looks above the hills. He doesn't look to the
mountains and stop there. Yeah, he sees it, but he
looks above the mountains. He's not choosing to
look just at a mountain. He's choosing to keep his
eyes focused on the one who made the mountain. And that's really the choice
we all have in this life. Are we going to
look to the hills or to the one who
made the hills? This is the Goliath principle. Saul was so scared
of Goliath because he lived his life focused
on how tall he was and how he was taller than
everybody, that was King Saul. But when Goliath came,
who was taller than him, he had no answer for
that because now he was being threatened by
something taller than he was. But David didn't look at
Goliath and see someone taller than his power, because
his power didn't come from how tall he was. His power came from
how tall his God was. So here's what I'm
trying to tell you. If you look to the
hills, you're either going to look to a false
god who can't help you or you're going to
look to something that's going to scare you. But if you choose to look
higher than the hills, above the hills,
you look to the one who's bigger than the thing
that's bigger than you. You see what I'm saying? What you're up against in this
life is bigger than you are. I get that. I know cancer is very real,
and divorce is very hard. And grief is very
savage and merciless. Those things are big,
and if you look at them, you're going to have to
resort to a false god to help you just to cope. It won't give you
true lasting peace, but it can give you, at
times, just a distraction for a little bit of time. But if you choose to
look above the hills, you look to the one who is
bigger than the thing that's bigger than you. And that's how David had
such a great peace heading towards Goliath. And that's how the author of
Psalm 21 makes it through this. "I don't just choose
to look to the hills. I look for help to the one who
made the Heaven and the Earth," who made the mountain that
seems so intimidating to me. And when you live that
way, listen to me, it unleashes three
things into your life that we're going to uncover
in the next three couplets. The first is this, you
find that, in God, you have a sure-footed guide. A sure-footed guide,
write that down. David talked about how,
God, what I'm focusing on is going to keep me from
falling on this path. The path that I'm on, even
as I'm talking to you, I don't know if you can keep
see me shifting my weight. My left foot keeps
going to sleep because this path
is steep and it's covered in pebbles and rocks
and my feet want to slip. But what's cool about it is
the shoes that I'm wearing have traction. I mean, hiking boots these
days, a lot of times, the tread actually gets made
by companies that make tires, like Michelin. They make tread
for hiking boots, and you have all
these different things that basically give you
traction on the trail and keep you sure-footed. That's what David says happens. Once your eyes are
on God, He will not allow your foot to be moved. And then he said
this, look at this-- "He who keeps you
will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will
not slumber nor sleep." Here's what's so cool about
having a sure-footed guide keeping your feet into
a place of traction-- because he never
sleeps, you can. You catch what I'm saying? God doesn't slumber. God doesn't sleep. God doesn't clock out. God doesn't ever
turn his phone off, so that means that you can. I think all of us
are tempted to feel like we have to keep everything
juggling, the business, all this stuff. And so as a result, we
sleep with our phones on our nightstand, and
we never have a moment where we're unreachable. And we never get that breathing
in, breathing out, being on a trail, just
being quiet and still and knowing that God is Lord. Because at times, we're
so frantically trying to keep up, to fake
it till we make it, to project this epic image. Look how great my kids are. Look how beautiful my home is. Look how white my teeth are. And we're trying to
keep this image up, but just the ability to rest
and go, hold on a second. The one who keeps my
feet on this trail, He never goes to
sleep, so I can. I don't have to strive. I don't have to try
and put up a front. I don't have to try and solve
all these battles myself. I can just trust
God, walk with Him, breathe deeply, enjoy
life, and trust Him. It's an amazing thing to
have a sure-footed guide. [MUSIC PLAYING] The second thing that
we find that comes as a result of looking
above the hills to the one who made the
Heavens and the Earth is that we get shelter
for every season, a shelter for every season. Not only is He a
sure-footed guide who keeps our foot from
slipping as we go to new places, as we're continually
going up and continually going into God's
plans for our lives, but we also have a
shelter for every season. And the truth is, it's a
real blessing right now to be in the shade of this tree. Out of the frame over
here, beautiful rocks. And kind of where
I'm at right now, I have a little bit
of a shelter to rest. And part of being out on
the trail is that, at times, you're exposed for
long stretches, and the sun can kind
of beat down on you. And that's why it's so important
that you have water with you and that you have sun
protection and sunscreen. And normally, you'd wear
a hat if you weren't-- if you didn't do
your hair today. It takes a lot of work
to look this good. But the truth is, having shelter
to take a break for a bit is amazing. And back on the trail, as they
would head towards Jerusalem and sing this song,
Psalm 121, they could definitely relate to the
beautiful presence of resting under some shelter. Because you get
dehydrated quickly, and you can run
down pretty fast. And we find that
exact idea here, and where it says in verse five
that "the Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your"--
look at this-- "shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you
by day nor the moon by night." So we have here both
sides of the spectrum. And some of us are in
seasons right now where it just feels like
night, and others of us are in seasons, where the
sun's shining, and it's bright and it's beautiful,
and it's daytime. But the truth is,
in every season, we have a shelter, a
shelter from the sun that's going to dehydrate
you and get you overheated, but also a shelter
when it's night and it can get quickly cold. When you're up in the mountains,
it can go from being super hot, then, all of a sudden,
man, you're freezing. And so whether it's
the sun beating down on you or the cold of the moon,
the cold of night, we have, in the One who made the
Heaven and the Earth, we have this beautiful
concept of shelter. It's funny, the moon, you think
about how in a previous day, there used to be this belief
that the moon could actually make you sick, that
you could actually, if you had too much exposure
to the moon's light, to the moonbeams, that you
could actually kind of develop insanity. And that's where the word
lunatic actually comes from. We think of lunar movements,
of the lunar cycles, and the effect they thought
the moon would have on you was that it could
cause you crazy. And so we know that's
probably not true, although, the moon
does have an impact. I remember the nurses,
when one of our children was born, telling us that
there's more babies that come in when there's a full
moon than on other nights, and obviously, can
have a different effect on different things. We know that there are
cycles to a woman's body, and the impact of-- I'm not sure if the moon
has an impact on that, but what I do know is that this
verse is saying that there's grace for every season. And I actually want to
just speak to the husbands for a moment, that we
actually can really be a benefit and a blessing
to the women in our lives, to our wives or to
anyone we're around, if we're giving extra
grace when we know that there's cycles going on. And in our family, we've had
to kind of figure out rhythms and how to give extra grace
and how to receive extra grace. I know my wife, if she
was giving this message, she would say she's had to
learn in different times, when there's a cycle or a
season to life happening on a monthly basis, that she has
to prepare herself extra ahead of time to know when
there's surging emotions and different feelings. And it's almost like your
mind can play tricks on you, she's told me and really having
to choose grace and choose to put what God says
above how she feels. And I don't have to
have a monthly cycle to know that's
something that we all need to do, to be able
to choose God's word and choose to believe. We have a shelter for us. We don't have to sit
out there on the exposed terrain of the viciousness
of just doing what we feel. When we can find that
shelter, find that shade, we're protected from the wind. We can have
protection from rain. And we can have a shelter
for the different things that we face in this life,
whether that's the heat of day or the moon that
hits us by night. But it's not just shelter. I love this. Look at the verse one more time. It says, "God is your shade"-- look at it-- "at
your right hand." Now, no hating on any
of my south paw friends. All the love for you all. But in the Bible, the right
hand was a position of power. The right hand was a
position of strength and it kind of
symbolized authority. So when the Bible says, God is
your shade at your right hand, it's saying that
He's shelter for you, even in areas where you
think you've got it. And I think all of us can
relate to kind of feeling like we can muscle up. We can kind of pull ourselves
up by the bootstraps. We don't need help
from anybody else. But not only does the Devil
attack you where you're weak, he does that. The Devil also attacks
you where you're strong. When you look at some of the
classic stories in scripture, you think about how God
has had to help people to realize even their strengths
can be areas of vulnerability. You think about
Moses, the Bible says he's the meekest
man who ever lived, and yet, he was tempted in
areas of explosive anger, where he was anything but
meek as he was raging. Or you think about David,
a man of great passion. It was his passion
that was his strength, but it also was his passion
that was his undoing. Abraham, hello, the Father of
Faith, who had lapses in faith and gave into his doubts. Or Elijah, probably the
most courageous person you could find, and yet,
what did he give into? Incredible bouts of fear and
showing anything but courage. So we not only need to trust
God for shelter and shade and protection in
areas of weakness, we also need to trust Him
in areas where we're strong. And we need His help, even
when we're feeling good because that can be a time
when we're susceptible and open up to attack. What a great idea, and
what a great thought, that God is a shelter. He's providing shelter
for you for every season. I'm going to rest up for a bit. [MUSIC PLAYING] 10 minutes later,
he successfully gets his Bible in his backpack. [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, we've made it
to the top of Mt. Glory. We started at 8,400 feet,
and now we're up 10,086 feet above sea level. Over the course of
one mile, gaining 1,600 feet of elevation,
and my lungs and my legs are telling the story about it. But the reward, of course,
is the view from the top, commanding views of
Jackson Hole and the Snake River and the Gros Ventre Range,
and this is the Glory Bowl. Apparently, people
love to come up here skinning up on their
skis and then crushing it down in the wintertime. And we've also reached the end
of our first Psalm, the first of four that we're going
to be teaching through during the Happy Trails series. Psalm 121, where in
these final verses, we have this idea
that God's going to preserve us from all evil. "The Lord will preserve
you from all evil. He shall preserve your soul." And so our final of three
takeaway truths that are unleashed in our lives
when we choose to not just look at the mountains, not look at
what we're afraid of, not even try to look to something on
the mountains, a false god to try and help us,
but we lift our eyes higher than the
mountains, to the ones who made the Heavens and the Earth. The third thing that's
unleashed in our lives after our sure-footed
guide and the shelter that we have for every
season is the fact that we have a
guardian for our soul. "He shall preserve your soul." There's a lot of
things in our lives that need to be kept,
need to be monitored, need to be taken care of. We have to preserve our health. We have to conserve our energy. We have to watch
out for our time. But the single most
important thing for you to take care of and for you
to watch out for is your soul. If your soul's not well,
it doesn't matter what is going well in your life. Even if you have
money in the bank, even if you have
lots of friends, even if you have a great
job, if your soul's not well, it'll just affect
you in every way. And that's why God is so
concerned about your soul that He wants to preserve
your soul from evil. God is interested in who
you are on the inside, in your character,
in your spirit, in the parts of you that don't
show up when you take a selfie. He cares about what the Bible
describes as your inner man, and that's why He's constantly
moving you towards your better self, towards who
He made you to be, towards who Jesus paid
for you to become when He died on the cross
and rose from the dead, giving you Resurrection power. That's why it's so important
to daily spend time with Him. We're always consuming media,
consuming through friends we hang out with, but
when we turn to God, we allow Him to
nourish our soul. Worship, prayer, coming
together with your church family to lift up the name of Jesus,
being in a small group, serving in your community,
choosing the solitude of a beautiful mountain hike
over binge-watching another TV show on Netflix or
purchasing something is serving instead of consuming. These sorts of things
really nourish your soul on the inside. And while sometimes it
can feel like there's so many demands on our schedule, so
many things pushing and pulling for our time and for the
limited resources in our lives, it can feel sometimes like we're
being selfish if we take time for ourselves, to say, hey,
I'm going to take a few hours and just go be alone. I'm going to take
some of the best part of the early
part of the day and be alone with God before
I rush in to work or go to a meeting or whatever. It can feel like it's selfish to
take me time and go to the spa and get a pedicure. But let me just
tell you something-- the most selfless
thing you can do is to take care of your soul. It's so important I
going to say it again. The most selfless
thing you can do is to take care of your soul. So think back to this past week. How much time have you given
for your soul to thrive? How much time have you given
to being alone with God? If we all added up
our Instagram minutes or added up our Amazon Prime or
our YouTube clicks, I get it, we'd be up there. But what if we think, just
think through honestly, in the last week or so, how much
time have we spent with God? Now, that's not to condemn you. It's to inspire you in
this next week that's still to come with decisions
that haven't been made, to seek first,
the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
and all these things will be added unto you. Now, Levi, why do you say
it's a selfless thing? If I'm taking care of my soul,
that's being self-centered. Well, actually, on the contrary. Once you take care
of your soul, you're actually able to take care of
other people and to help them. And the best thing you
can do to change the world is to improve yourself. And there's nothing you can do
that will better improve you then spending time with God. I don't know if you
noticed it, but we've had a shift in this
Psalm that we've been reading on this Happy Trail. At the beginning of
the Psalm, it was I lifted my eyes up to the
hills, whence cometh my help? My help comes from the Lord who
made the Heavens and the Earth, that's first person singular. But from verse three on
to the end, it's all you, you, you, you. It's now this Psalmist
talking to other people, encouraging other people. He will not let
your foot be moved. He will not let you
trip on the trail. He's your keeper, your shade. He will not let
the sun strike you. He'll preserve your soul. What happened? Here's what happened-- the
Psalmist spent some time making sure his soul thrived,
and once that happened, he had something to
give to other people. You see, you can't pour
water out of an empty cup, and that's why it's
actually a selfless act to get alone with God and
to take care of ourselves so we actually have something
to give to the world. If you want to help
your family, if you want to help your
friends, if you want to help people
in this world who don't know God or
people who are hurting, you have to receive
from God so you have something to give to
other people on behalf of God. And that's what we find here
in this precious promise. It's the same idea
on an airline when they tell you to put
your mask on before you put the mask of someone else. You're like, no, I
would never do that. Well, if you pass out,
you can't help your kids. If you don't have oxygen
flowing through your lungs, you're not there to help other
people who are in danger. So take care of your soul. You can't take people where
you haven't been yourself. You can't lead
anyone else on trails that you haven't
walked down already. Now, I want to end here,
where the verse ends. "The Lord preserves You." Verse eight, look
at it on the screen. He'll "preserve your
going out and your coming in, from this time
forth, even forever more." I know I normally give
the message's title at the beginning of the sermon,
but I saved it for the end for this reason. He ends with this idea of
no matter where you go, no matter where life
takes you, this God who wants to give you shade,
who wants to make sure your feet don't slip, this God who
wants to guard and preserve your soul, He's got you. He's got this. He's looking out for you. He's a bodyguard for you
wherever you go, always watching out for you, moving
you towards your best interests. The promise is, no matter where
you go, He can take care of it. So here's my sermon title
for this message, Psalm 121. You could jot this down-- entrances, exits, and everywhere
in between, because that's where God can take care of you. Entrances, you're coming
in, exits, you're going out, and anywhere in
between, that about covers the gamut of this life. I like how the message
translation puts that verse. It says, "He guards
you when you leave. He guards you when you return. He guards you now. He guards you always." And if that doesn't just choke
you up to think of the fact that there's nowhere you
can go, 10,000 feet up, down in a valley low, riding
high, in the penthouse, feeling like life's thrown
you out on the street, it doesn't matter where you
go, coming in, going out, at the top, got a
lot of followers, don't have any money,
lots of connection, feel like you're a VIP, feel
like no one knows your name, going out, come
in, He's got you. He loves you. His eye is on you, and He has
plans for your life, entrances, exits, and everywhere
in between. Thank you so much for
watching this teaching from our Happy Trails series. For more content from Fresh
Life Church and to stay up to date while you're
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