Does God Actually Care? by Michael Eldridge
294 | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Pray With Confidence to a Loving Father
Wax up your boards — the Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular rolls on! This week, guest speaker Michael Eldridge (widely known across the internet as Acapeldridge) joins the show to tackle a vulnerable and searching question: Does God actually care? Starting with the historical background of Enlightenment Deism and Thomas Jefferson's famous "scissor-snipped" Bible, Michael examines how easily a practical deism can creep into our own prayer lives. When our worries feel small, temporary, or insignificant compared to the vastness of the cosmos, does the Creator of the universe really stoop down to listen? From Jesus' gut-level compassion (splanchnizomai) toward grieving widows and suffering lepers to the powerful assurance given to Daniel that his prayers were heard from the very first day, this lesson will renew your confidence in a Father who desires true camaraderie and actively inclines His ear when you speak.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: God isn’t an aloof, distant clockmaker deity, but an attentive, compassionate Father who inclines His ear to hear our prayers.
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Summer Spectacular Intro
Bryan: Well, cowabunga everyone, and welcome to the Seven Sermon Summer Surfing Spectacular. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy
Bryan: And thanks for tuning in here over the summer, Ryan. We've got another awesome speaker here on the episode, Michael Eldridge, uh, otherwise known as Acapeldridge, which, uh, for those YouTube followers of his, which are numerous for sure, uh, will definitely be familiar with Michael.
And by the way, the fact that he was on the episode, uh, wow, like, was that a couple years ago, I guess now. Uh, we'll link to that in the show notes for sure as well.
Ryan: drafting, uh, our A-list of hymns
Bryan: That's right. And, uh, what a fun conversation that was. Every single time I sing a couple of hymns now that, that we all sort of collectively complained about, I cannot help but remember that episode.
So, uh, really appreciate Michael for being on.
Surf Songs Banter
Bryan: And, uh, it just sort of makes me wonder, Ryan, do you have, like, a favorite summer-themed song that you like to hum around the summertime?
Ryan: Oh, man. Uh, that's a, that's a good question. Uh, I, I, I can't think of anything right now. I... There's, there's a lot of... Oh, you know what? We were just listening to, um, "Island in the Sun" by Weezer, and my-- I'm turning my son on to, to Weezer a little bit, and,
Bryan: Lord's work there.
Ryan: Yeah, that's right. That's a pretty good summer jam.
What about you?
Bryan: Uh, I'm, I like my, my go-to response is, "Let's go surfing now everybody.
Ryan: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, all the Beach Boys and yeah, the, the-- We s- just started with basically an homage to The Ventures and all, all of that, that surf music. That's a, that's a great, great reference by you
Bryan: All right.
Meet Michael Eldridge
Bryan: Well, uh, We're really excited about this episode. Uh, we're really big fi- fans of Michael, and especially 'cause you get to worship with him over there in Fort Wayne, which is super cool.
Um, so we're gonna have a conversation with Michael here, and then we'll hear his sermon
Distant God Danger
Ryan: Well, Michael, it's great to have you back on the show here, and this time to talk about your sermon, Does God Actually Care? And, uh, goes from Thomas Jefferson to, to Daniel, and, um, it gets personal, it's thoughtful, So I guess my question is, what is the danger of us seeing our Father as this distant deity who doesn't really intervene or act providentially anymore?
I think that if
Michael: you don't have a view of God that allows room for Him to work in your life, it dilutes the relationship that He intended to have with us, and prayer is a big part of that relationship. That's a big, um, thrust of the message that, you know, that I share here, um, is our prayer life specifically.
And if we're not going to allow room for God to intervene, then it begs the question, why are we ask- what are we really asking of Him? Um, if we believe that He will intervene, then when we pray, over time we build trust with God. We learn how to talk through things, even if we don't know how we're trying to say what we're really meaning to say.
I think we learn to work through God's will just to talk things out. Um, we build a history with God when we're open and we're talking to Him. Th- those conversations we remember. We remember heartfelt conversations with friends here on Earth, and when we're having a heartfelt conversation with God, even if we're the only ones whose voices, you know, the sound waves we actually hear in our ears, we still remember those conversations.
I still remember those conversations, and I can remember exactly where I was. I can remember how light the room was. I can remember the temperature of the water in the shower that anchors me down and builds a history with God. I remember what I was going through. I remember what I was praying for, and because it's so deeply inscribed in my mind and in my memory, I'm able to now, with hindsight, see how God answered that prayer.
And as I talk through this lesson, a lot of times we get that. It, it doesn't come as often as we would like. Sometimes it comes days or weeks or months or years down the road, and sometimes it doesn't even come at all. But I think a lot of times it does. I don't think God just leaves us in this perpetual haze.
I think He... I think God is happy to answer our prayers. I think, n- I don't think anything makes God happier than when we are struggling, as we all inevitably will struggle, to, beyond all reason, um, beyond all human reason, reach out to God. It doesn't make sense to anybody else on Earth, but to the Christian who yearns for a real relationship with their creator, I think that makes God happier than anything else in the world because He sees the true faith that it requires And I think God delights in letting us see his answers.
And that's not a blanket statement because obviously there's, there are a lot of times where we ask questions over, over a long period of time. But I don't think that God lets anybody go the entirety of their life never, never having seen his hand, um, answer their prayers. But so to answer your question, uh, what do we gain or what, what's the danger of seeing God as distant?
With prayer, we have a relationship with God in its fullness, and it's ever-- it's continually growing. Just like Enoch walked with God, there's so much that is packed into that statement. I mean, there's, there's years' worth of heartfelt prayers and years' worth of patience and trust and trusting in God's will, even though it might not be known in just that phrase, Enoch walked with God.
But that's what we're all looking for, years' worth of experience and camaraderie built into just those few words. And if we don't have that expectation or that, that belief that God wants to actually intervene or that he will intervene, then our relationship is completely prospective. It's left as something that would hap- would happen in the future, but it's not an, a thing that's happening now.
So I, I am s- I can believe in my salvation now. I can believe that Jesus existed, and that by being baptized into Jesus, my, my sins are washed away, and I can be in a state of grace before God to where I'm acceptable to him. But as far as the relationship is concerned, that is exclusively futuristic to where one day I'll walk with God when, as the Book of 1 John says, I'll see him as he is, and I'll be like him.
But that's only something that can ever happen in the future, and that's just not something that I see in the New Testament when you've got people like Paul who say that our spirits cry out, "Abba, Father." We've been given a spirit of adoption, and our hearts cry out, "God, you are my Father right now That says that we've got a relationship with God right now.
But if you don't believe that God will intervene, then I don't see how you have the possibility of having any real relationship with God that moves beyond just an academic intellectual exercise.
Prayer Makes Memories
Ryan: You know, that is-- I love hearing you talk about prayer this way, and you went a, a very different direction than I, I maybe thought you would go because your answer there is not so much about the difference God is gonna make in our lives and in the world because of our prayers and because He is an intervening God, which, which is all there in your conversation, but about, you used the word our camaraderie, because He really is present and active as a partner walking with us, listening, uh, engaging with us.
I, I love the idea you brought up there, and I've never really thought of it before, of making memories with God in prayer while you're-- like you do with a friend in conversation. And I have, just like you talked about it, I have so many of those where I'm, like you say, in the shower, and I remember the exact moment, and I'm 16 years old, and I'm, and I'm committing myself again to God or in the desert praying about whether I should ask Adrian to marry me or I'm, you know, all of these moments, you know, praying with Adrian about when we didn't think we could get pregnant and what's going on, and she's having an existential crisis or just, you know, praying with friends about difficulties and, and those moments, like you say, sometimes you just see, ah, I see what you did there, and you see looking back how He answered.
And sometimes it's more like a, at least for me, it's, it's more like a sense of momentum and presence. Like, okay, I don't know exactly what you're doing, but as I've been praying and talking with this w- you know, talking with you about this more
I have a different sense about it, and I see movement, and I feel you in my life, and I see in these relationships how things are changing. And, um, but so I'll let you comment on that, and then it brought up a whole new convers- a new question I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw a curveball at you on. Okay.
Therapy vs Talking to God
Michael: Yeah, there's, there's something therapeutic in talking to God, and I, um, I think the temptation is to think that talking to a mirror is the same thing as talking to God.
That you don't, you don't need to talk to God, you just need to talk it out by yourself and, you know, just, just speak into the air. I don't think that's true. I... Now, I... There is something to that in that when you hear words out loud, even if it's yourself saying them, you can start to develop a gauge as to, is this a legitimate concern or am I just making something up?
There, there is something to that, but talking with God is so much more than that. Um, there is a faith that is built when we remember the things that God has said in his scripture, and I think these things build on each other. So God speaks to us through his scripture, and sometimes he speaks to us in his silence, the silence that we're hearing when we're praying to God.
Our sound wa- sound waves are filling the void, and it's not necessarily God's sound waves echoing out from heaven, saying, "Hey, I'll tell you exactly what you need to hear right now." But we do have this relationship, multifaceted relationship, that builds on itself. The more we learn about God in scripture, I feel like the more rich our prayer lives are able to be.
The more that we're praying Aside from our Bible study, the more enriched our Bible stu-study is allowed to become. Um, all of these things are different facets of the relationship with God that, that do build, and prayer is a huge part of that, and believing that God is there with us in prayer is a huge part of it, too.
Hymn My God and I
Ryan: Uh, well, and as you're talking about all of this, there's, you know, these, these metaphors and these pictures that we're, we're using, and it's making me think of all these songs, and it, it just dawned on me, I should ask you a song question as, uh- Yeah ... as somebody I like to talk to about hymns. Um, is there a hymn that you think of that captures this spirit of prayer, of camaraderie?
Um, what, what comes to your mind, and why?
Michael: Yeah. My f- it's one of my favorite songs over the last five years. Um, it's, it's definitely in my top three. It's called "My God and I." It was written in, um, the mid, early to mid 1900s, and, um, he... the, the s- hymn lyrics say, "My God and I go in the field together. We walk and talk as good friends should and do.
We clasp our hands, our voices ring with laughter. My God and I walk through the meadows hue." And then talking about camaraderie, um, the second verse says, "He tells me of the years that went before me, when heavenly plans were made for me to be, when all was but a dream of dim conception, to come to life, earth's verdant glory see."
I'd, I don't think we often think of our relationship with God in that way, and it's, um... or maybe we do. May-maybe we get more and more to that point. Maybe it's not a yes or no thing. Maybe it's I'm getting a richer relationship over time. Things are getting clearer. And, and you hear people talking about that, you know, old champions of the faith, people who are nearer to the finish line, and you hear them talk about how much more comfortable they are in their relationship with God, which maybe young Christians, um, they've not built that relationship yet over time, but they will.
And, um, just that thought of looking back on life And laughing with God about it. Like, "You remember that one time when I was going through this?" Mm-hmm. "What, what exactly were you thinking? Is this what you were thinking? Yeah, I thought you were thinking something like that." And just laughing at how it all turned out, and maybe laughing about, "Why was I so anxious about that?"
And God will say, "Well, you had a lot going on at the time. You remember, you know, you were going through these exams, finals were coming up, and that was a short-term thing, but it was really weighing on you and complicating things." Or, you know, "Remember that one relationship that you had?" "Oh, yeah, I do remember that relationship."
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael: I think we're gonna have that. And, and I don't think that's just a thing in heaven. I, I do think that's a thing now. I think that's something that, that we can have now. And every, every prayer that we have in each day that goes by, in each phase of life that we walk through with God, we get closer and closer to this hand-in-hand
Ryan: walk with God.
Mm-hmm. There, there is a sense of, of deep joy that comes with regularity in prayer. I really appreciate all of this.
Daniel and Patience
Ryan: I, I'll, I'll close with this question. It's an emotionally powerful sermon. I mean, you can hear it in your words how personal the sermon is and the topic is. And I'll just ask, what do you hope that listeners get from the assurance, specifically the assurance that Daniel received about his prayers and all the promises that God has made to us, that He sees and hears and knows us, and that He is active in our lives? Daniel's prayer life
Michael: is one that we can learn a lot from.
Um, although it's not the thrust of this lesson, it is a huge part of Daniel's life that he had regularly scheduled appointments to pray. And not every single moment of Daniel's life was a lion's den moment or a, a fiery furnace moment. Um, there were certainly mundane days as well. And for some reason, I think we get into this This problem cycle where we only remember to pray when something's really bad, and I think although, like I said, it's not the point of this lesson specifically, we need to learn from Daniel's regularly scheduled appointment with God in prayer that surpassed all of circumstances, whether things were really bad or really, really good or somewhere in the middle.
But in this lesson specifically, the thing that we need to learn from the assurance that Daniel received is patience in prayer. When the temperature of our lives is turned up the most and we're really looking for an answer right now, that's the hardest time to be patient, and that's the easiest time for us to question, does God really hear us?
Does He actually care? Have I done something wrong? Have I not used the right words? Do I need to use more words? Do I need to use less words? Is there a secret password or a combination? Hmm. All of those thoughts, and so the one thing to gain from this is to know, and I love that verse where, um, he says, "From the very first moment you set your heart and humbled your heart to pray to God, He heard from the very first word."
And we need to take some kind of assurance in that. It's not a guarantee that as soon as God hears it, He's gonna provide the solution then and there. Because even in that context, there was another three weeks until Daniel actually got that assurance from the angel. But the angel tells him that there were reasons why you've not been answered directly yet, and those answers, th- those reasons are well beyond your comprehension.
But just know that God heard you from the very first moment, and you can keep praying. You can continue to express all of your desires. You can continue to lean on God. But you should never, in all of your leaning and all of your reaching out, ever believe that you're doing so to a silent and an ambivalent God.
Because God does care, and He does actively listen. He inclines his ear to our cry, and He turns His eyes to see us. He is actively plugged in. It's like the telescope is already set up. It's oriented toward us. The radio is turned in our direction. The antenna is pointed right at us. He sees us. He hears us.
He's on the edge of His seat just waiting. All you have to do is just start, and He hears
Ryan: He hears. It's a great lead in for this sermon. Thank you so much, uh, Michael. Really appreciate you and appreciate this lesson and this conversation, and we'll listen to the sermon now, "Does God Actually Care?" by Michael Eldridge
Sermon Deism Explained
Michael: Deism is a philosophical and religious belief system that showed up in what's known as the Enlightenment era This era was in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, mostly in Europe, but also moved to America with the people who moved to Europe, or from Europe to America. Deism acknowledges the existence of a creator or a higher power, but this creator in deism set the world in motion and then backed away.
The creator doesn't interfere with the cogs and the machinery that's already turning. And so as a result, deism rejects the idea of divine intervention in the world, either by the presence of miracles or either in speaking to humans in the form of revealed religion. So several of the American Founding Fathers, as you may or may not know, were in fact deists.
And you can see some of their, uh, beliefs shown in our founding documents. Thomas Jefferson, uh, said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Thomas Paine was an outspoken part of the revolution and, uh, was a very dominant writer. He was also a profound deist, and some of his words were very prevalent in some of the, the writings that were published, um, and were widely read throughout that day. Uh, both Paine and Jefferson, being deists, rejected organized religion.
And in reflection of this rejection, uh, Thomas Jefferson created his own Bible, which is known as The Jefferson Bible. And you can see it. It's pictured here. It's, uh... I think there are a few different copies, but this one is, is currently in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. He literally cut out parts of the Bible, and he chose which parts to cut out.
Uh, he cut out the parts that had anything to do with God intervening in the world. Uh, so the supernatural events in the Bible, uh, Jesus' miracles, um, these were all cut out, parts where God spoke to or directly intervened and changed the natural working of the world. And instead, what you have as a result are just a collection of general moral teachings and do good to one another isms.
It lacks the completeness that God wanted in the Bible, and it's almost comical when you see it. It's just scissors cut- cutting out the words of God. But this reflects this thought of deism. And deism, as time went on, fell out of favor like many Enlightenment ideologies. But although it may not really be practiced today and actively thought of the way that it once was, there are some ways in which deism creeps into our own personal lives.
And this morning, I'd like to specifically talk about prayer. Um The idea of an intervening God can be difficult to really internalize and believe. We might, we might accept it intellectually. We might say, "Well, in theory, God still works today." But if we were to ask, "What about this specific situation?" We might start to have more doubt creep into our mind, and there may be v- various reasons why we let that doubt creep into our mind, which on their own merit may seem logical.
It's hard for us to believe that God, who cannot be seen with human eyes, nor even understood and grasped with human minds, can be spoken to by human tongue. Somehow you and I, who are stapled to weakness and mortality, are able to bridge the invisible and impossible gap and somehow reach out to the eternal.
And perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that when we speak to God, He hears us, and not just passively as though we might hear traffic in the background noise or hear the wind blowing, but that God makes an active effort to hear us. We're told in Psalm 34 that the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and in Psalm 116, He inclines his ear.
God stoops down and listens intently when we speak. And the hardest part of all of this may very well be that we can't prove it with the tangible evidence that we crave as humans. And barring the miraculous, we have no choice but to accept it in faith, and that is a very difficult thing to do.
Does God Care
Michael: We may believe that God does hear us, but can we believe that God actually cares?
You know, if God didn't care, I don't think I could blame God for not caring. Why would God care? God is bigger than the universe. God created the universe. Perhaps He's just too big to care about something that's so small. You know, if I were to pray to God and He were to respond back to me and say, "Michael, I hear what you're saying, but there's eight billion other people I've got to listen to right now.
Just take a number like you do at the deli counter and get in the back of the line and I'll get to you when I can," I would not be able to fault God for saying that. And yet he doesn't do that. He's not too busy upholding the universe. He's not too busy listening to the other 8 billion to hear about my temporary and physical and emotional concerns.
And may- maybe that's the biggest thing that affects me personally as I've been reflecting on my own prayer life over the last several months and thinking about what are the things that impede me from really believing that God cares about me. It's my smallness. It's, it's the fact that the things that I most often pray to God about are openly and exclusively temporary in nature.
And sometimes I feel ashamed to pray to God about something that I know at the very end, when this world is burned up and all of the elements melt away with intense heat, as Peter says, that I'm standing there on that day of eternity and I don't even remember these things. They're just a, just a blink in the eye that just gets further and further in the rearview mirror.
So why, if on that day I won't remember these things, why does it bother me so much now? And that's what I'm praying to God about, things that I know won't matter in the end. And if God would even say that, "Michael, it won't matter in the end, I promise you," I would say, "Yes, I know it won't matter in the end, but I still feel it now, and it still hurts now, and it's still keeping me awake at night now."
God understands that too. Life on Earth is hard. Does God actually care?
Jesus Teaches Prayer
Michael: I want to start by saying emphatically and clearly that God says that he cares. In answering this question, let's start first with what God says. He says that he cares. I've chosen one of the simplest passages, one that perhaps we're very familiar with, to illustrate this.
I think God shows that he cares when Jesus teaches us to pray in Matthew chapter 6. And he says, pray like this. In verse nine, "Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread." Thought of daily bread refers back to the Israelites in the wilderness who were responsi- who were completely reliant on God to feed them.
They were in the wilderness, they didn't have food, and they cried out to God. Not often in the best ways did they cry out to God. But they did, and He fed them on a daily basis. The food would drop down from heaven in the form of manna, and they would pick it up every day, and they were only supposed to gather what they needed for that day so that they could be reminded the following day that, yes, God cares for you today too.
He cares for your temporary hunger, things that won't matter in the scope of eternity, but He cares about your daily needs. And perhaps it's made so clear when Jesus instructs us to pray to God for the things that we need on a daily basis, our daily bread. In Matthew, chapter six, moving on in the context of this, this same, um, discourse that Jesus gives, He says in verse 25, and I'll read verses 25 through verse 32.
He says, "For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink, nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin, and yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, you of little faith?" Let's take just a pause there. He gives us two illustrations of things which, as I mentioned, this difficulty that I have is praying about temporary things, and maybe you share that with me.
But He gives us two illustrations here of very temporary things. Birds. Birds are cool. I guess some people think they're cooler than others. They're fun to look at. You can watch their patterns, and you can look at birds like you can look at any other part of creation and see God's power demonstrated.
And yet birds are very temporary. And, uh, you know, we're not gonna be able to, to get an idea of, of something that's grand and necessary and impactful just, just by looking at, at birds, and yet birds catch the eye of our Father. Birds in all of their temporariness and all of their, uh, littleness are important enough to God to where God takes the time to feed birds.
You can say the same thing about the grass of the field, and he even says, "The grass of the field is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace." In other words, temporary. We know it's temporary because God tells us what he's going to do with the grass of the field at the end of time. He's going to throw it into the furnace, and yet grass is clothed with glory, more glory than even Solomon and all of his wealth and riches and wisdom.
And if God's going to take the time out of his busyness to worry about grass, then why won't he take the time to worry about you who are made in his image? Are you not worth much more than they? So God cares about grass. He cares about birds. And if he cares about those things, then he'll care about you, too.
In verse 30, he says, "You of little faith. So then do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' for we, uh, we... or 'What will we wear for clothing?' For the Gentiles eagerly seek these things, and your Father knows that you need these things." God explicitly says that he cares about little things.
He cares about temporary things. He cares about things that are only pertaining to this temporary earth because he cares about you.
Compassion in Miracles
Michael: But more than just what Jesus says, God, through Jesus, demonstrates that he cares. He doesn't just say that he cares, he shows us that he cares. We read, um, a passage from Luke chapter 7 verse 11 through 17 about this widow who's lost her son, and she is weeping, and it says that Jesus felt compassion for her and said, "Do not weep."
And I'll... Consider that word and keep that in your back pocket because we'll read another story, one that touches me. In Mark chapter 1 verses 40 through 45, a leper comes to Jesus. It says, "Beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him and saying, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean.'" And it says, "Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I am willing.
Be cleansed.' And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed." I specifically like this version in the Book of Mark. This, this story is recorded for us in three gospels, three of the four gospels, but this is the one version that uses this phrase, "Moved with compassion." It's that same word that we read in Luke chapter 7 about the widow who had lost her son.
Moved with compassion. Compassion moved Jesus. In this, in this verse, we see some of the natural, instinctual, um, involuntary response that often comes with humanity, and we see it in Jesus, who was God, who took on flesh and learned what it was like to be human. It says that compassion moved Jesus. Not that Jesus chose to be compassion, but Jesus saw a circumstance, and naturally, compassion welled up within him, and Jesus found that he was having these strong feelings of compassion.
This word compassion is one, uh, that you won't probably stumble on much, but I'm gonna take a moment to share it with you. The word here is splanchnizomai, and remember what it looks like 'cause there will be a spelling test at the end of this. Uh, I'm just kidding. Splanchnizomai is a very unique word, and sometimes I choose to share what it means and sometimes not.
I'll choose to share what it means with you this morning. Splanchnizomai means to be moved as from one's bowels, hence to be moved with compassion. In that day, the bowels were thought to be where love and pity were seated A good comparison of this might be what we consider the heart. When we think about all of the love and the, uh, the, the strong adrenaline that flows through our veins and the beating of our hearts when, when we're called to fight or flight, we think, "Wow, that person's got such a strong heart."
We even think about David as, as somebody who was passionate for the Lord. He was a man after God's own heart. Well, here we see, and it was thought at that time, that the bowels, the deepest parts of you, the most inner parts of your being, that's where love and pity sat. And it makes sense if you think about it because we f- we often feel that, uh, when, when the children in our lives fall down and scrape their knees, or they are, uh, feeling sorrow, they, they've lost their favorite toy or whatever it may be, a small thing, don't we have that gut response to pick them up and hold them and solve whatever problem is weighing heavily on them?
We have that gut response to rescue them, and that's the same gut response that Jesus had here. It, it welled up from the deepest parts of his being when he saw this man whose life was absolutely wrecked by leprosy. His, his body was in pain, most likely constantly from this disease. He was likely depressed and anxious and at his last rope, and he falls before Jesus and acknowledges the divine power of Jesus by saying, "If you are willing, you can heal my wrecked life."
And Jesus wants to rescue that man. He wants to lift him up and pick him up and just hold him and fix the problem in all of its temporariness. He could have easily said to that leper, "I'm only here for three years, man. Like, I get it. This is really hard on you. I've got other things that I've got to do."
But he doesn't say that. He rescues this man and touches him in his leprosy and says, "I am willing." Jesus was moved with compassion, and we see him being moved with compassion. He doesn't just say, "I care." He shows that he cares. In many of Jesus' miracles, he demonstrates that he cares. In raising Lazarus from the dead and seeing his sisters weeping, Jesus feels those same tears welling up in his eyes as he weeps with them.
In healing the paralytic in Luke chapter 5 as he is lowered down from the roof, Jesus shows that he cares about all of our hearts and our temporary, temporary body's diseases. In healing the centurion's son, he shows that he cares in Luke chapter 7. And these m- miracles were, were not just a demonstration of his power over nature.
There are plenty of those as well. These miracles were shown to s- to show us that God cares about people and the things that they're experiencing here on Earth. Now, I wanna show you one more passage, and this final thought here that I'll share with you bears much more extrapolation.
Daniel Heard Day One
Michael: But I'm gonna, I'm gonna open this thought, and I'm gonna share this one passage with you because it's become important to me over the last few months, and perhaps I had read it at one point in time and forgot about it, or maybe I had not read it, but it was shown to me, and it's been moving me, and I think it will with you, too.
In Daniel chapter 10, a great passage here, and I'll give you just a little bit of the background, but I won't open the whole, whole thought here. Daniel is a prophet who is in captivity in Persia, and he's been serving-- First he served, uh, Nebuchadnezzar in the Babylonian Empire. Now he's serving the Persian Empire, uh, Darius specifically, and he's been given this vision, and the vision is incredibly troubling to him.
Uh, it, it basically puts him in a catatonic state where he just doesn't feel the strength to get up. He doesn't feel the strength to take care of his, his daily, daily processes, bathing and clothing himself and, and eating. He doesn't have an appetite to eat, and this has been going on for three weeks where he's just been catatonic and, and mourning before God and praying to God.
And here at the end of this three weeks, we see an angel come to Daniel. It says in verse 10, "Behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. And he said to me, 'O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I am about to tell you, and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you.'
And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling. And he said to me, 'Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words.'" Again, Daniel's been On the floor, figuratively and literally weeping for three weeks And sometimes when we are in that same position, you know, we might have this thought, "How many times do I have to pray before God hears it?
Am I not saying the right words? Is there a secret combination or a secret password? Do I need more words? Do I need less words? What do I have to do to be heard?" The angel says, "From the first Day
Your words were hurt I'm sorry
Odd hears every single word
And that's brought me great comfort, and I hope it brings you comfort too. He hears every word And let me read the next two verses and give you another thought to think about because I don't know what you're going through. I don't know if you're in the midst of this same situation that Daniel's been in, and perhaps you need to hear this today.
And I don't know if maybe you're on a peak and the valley is coming, and I need you to remember this hear it now so that you can have it in your pocket when you need it. The angel then says, 'The prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days. Then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.
And now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people, for the vision pertains to the days yet future.' Now, I'm not gonna unpack everything that this means, and perhaps that's already been done in our recent study of Daniel that we did out here in the auditorium. But let me just explain this paragraph very simply for you in this way Sometimes there are reasons beyond the scope of our understanding as to why and when God chooses to respond in the way that He does
Sometimes we will be given the answer. Maybe in your own life you've had moments like that where you did pray to God passionately, and you didn't get the answer you were waiting for. Either the answer was no, or either you didn't receive an answer at all until weeks later, or months later, or years later.
And then perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, you were able to see God's wisdom and providence in answering the way that He did at that time. Or perhaps you've not received an answer, and you won't receive an answer until we cross the bridge of mortality and are standing with God. And perhaps at that reason we'll understand, at that point in time we'll understand.
Whether or not we receive the answer here that we are wanting so badly, just know this, that sometimes the answer is beyond our scope of understanding right now. But that does not mean that God doesn't care, and it certainly does not mean that He's not listening, because He is. He hears every word. From the very first word, God has heard, and He hasn't just heard in a passive kind of way as in background noise, but He has bent down to hear you.
And I hope you remember that. I hope you remember that God hears your prayers today. And I hope that if you can remember that He cares, that you might have the courage to pray when it seems like no one cares. And it seems like you're going to be stuck with these problems for the rest of your life.
Invitation and Closing
Michael: I hope in those dark moments, if you're feeling them today or if you feel them tomorrow, that you will remember to have the courage to pray to a God who cares If you are a Christian this morning, you have a God who invites you to call Him Father.
He's not just this distant deistic being far off, out of reach, but He is your creator who has invited you to call Him Father. And if you're a Christian, then today you have that privilege of reaching out to God at any time and knowing that He wants to hear what you're about to say. And what a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer.
And this morning, if you're not a Christian, I want you to know that God wants you to be His child. He wants you to have that relationship with Him, and He has paid the ultimate price to bring you into that relationship with Him, and that price is the blood of Jesus, whose blood and His life was shed for us so that we can have that relationship.
You become a child of God by becoming baptized, by uniting yourself with the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and that's found in the waters of baptism. I know so because God says so.
Podcast Farewell
Bryan: Okay, so big, huge thanks to R.C. Beldridge, uh, for being on the show with us. Uh, really cool that he was able to, to join us, and thank you everyone for tuning in to the Bible Geeks podcast for the Seven Sermon Summer Surfing Spectacular. Wherever you're at, if you're, uh, hanging out by the beach, you're riding the boards, or, uh, you're, you know, just mowing the lawn, I guess, if you're Alan Greeley, who likes to do that same kind of thing, uh, thanks for tuning in.
And, uh, until next episode everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you
Ryan: Shalom