titled, Comfort Seeking on the Seas of Life. It comes out of Acts chapter 27. Last week we read much of the front end of the chapter, and we closed with verses 40 through 44, but we skipped the middle part of the chapter for this particular reason so we can get into it tonight. As we look tonight in Acts chapter 27, verse 40 through 44, this is the end of the story. As you heard last week, we talked about the choice. The choice was made to leave the fair havens, then the consequences are brought in. We're going to find tonight that the consequences come with a cost. We'll find in these last verses of chapter 27, the presentation of the cost, but we're going to see the great benefit that you can find as well. In verse 40, the Bible says, and when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea. and loosed the rudder bands and hoisted up the main sail to the wind and made toward shore. And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground. The forepart sucked fast and remained immovable, but the hinder part was broken with violence of the waves, and the soldiers' counsel was to kill the prisoners lest any of them should swim out and escape. But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea and get to land, and the rest, some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land." Two hundred and seventy-six souls escaped safe onto the land. And in verse 40, which is our opening verse tonight. It reveals what the shipment had done in the midst of this 14-day storm, in the midst of the consequences of life, in the midst of an ill choice here and the consequences coming their way. It reveals what they were doing to spare the lives of both themselves and the ship. It says in verse 40, it says they take up the anchors. Well, that relates to verse 29. And it says, then fear, unless we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern and wished for day. So the stern is the backside of the ship. It's the rear part of the ship. And so when you're casting four anchors off the back part of the ship, you're trying to stop yourself or at least slow yourself down from heading the direction you're going. You're going in a direction that you don't want to go. So the storm and the seas of consequence, the winds of damage were casting them toward rocks. They were casting them toward an area, so they dropped these anchors. Now we already know and we heard last week that they were casting the lading off the ship. They were casting personal belongings off the ship. They spent 14 days in darkness. You find out later on in the chapter that they had eaten nothing in 14 days. They were all weak and they were in despair. They had lost all hope that they were gonna be lost. It was taken from them because of a choice they made. And they're doing everything that they can do, every work known to man, to hinder the consequences that in reality they brought upon themselves. The choice was lost and the consequences of the sea were now their life because they went against the admonishment of the Apostle Paul to remain in the fair havens. So what I want us to think about here this evening, just real quick, as we can continue to look in the midst of these verses, I want us to stop and I want us to think about the difference that can be made, the difference that can be made both in our life and the life that we now live. I want us to look at what happened with Paul and what happened with that group. Again, everything in their power to save the ship, to save themself, was lost. It was taken away. So we'll go back real quick, we'll go to some verses in Acts chapter 27. And I want you to see this, verses 20 and 22. This is where they get into the missile, and this is where we connect last week to this week. This is that middle portion. And it says that when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, All hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after a long abstinence, Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, Sirs, you should have hearkened unto me and not have loosed from Crete and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you but of the ship. Now, this comes from a man who knows everything there is about the battle. This comes from a man who knows everything there is about loss. This comes from a man who knows everything about victory and loss, and he's telling them, okay, now listen this time because no loss of lives are going to happen, but we're going to lose the ship. Theodore Roosevelt, who was a famous American president who left the office in 1910, after going on the travels throughout Northern Africa and Europe, he made his way on the 23rd of April into Paris. And he gave this speech before 25,000 people on the 23rd of April, the 23rd of April, not August. And the group included ministers in court dress, army, navy officers in full uniform, 900 students, and an audience of 2,000 ticket holders. And the title of his speech was called Citizenship in a Republic, but it has been famously quoted afterwards as the man in the arena. And a section of that speech has become quite famous, something that I have really taken note of over the years. And it says, Roosevelt said, it is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. He said the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms? great devotions who spends himself in a worthy cause who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails and at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who never or neither know victory nor defeat that's when I read this I think who fits this bill The Apostle Paul, who's willing to fight, who bear the scars of their life of making mistakes, of error, who bear the scars in their life of the pain and the anguish and the bloodshed of being in the midst of battle, even though making mistakes, even though stumbling. But it's the ones who want to sit back. It wants to be the critics who critique the Apostle Paul or the man in the arena. Theodore Roosevelt had his enemies, plenty of them, but it didn't change the fact that he was a man in the arena. So Paul comes up and says, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. At the end of the day, praise the Lord for the preacher. Praise the Lord for this man in the arena who is bloodied and battered, but still moving forward. Praise the Lord for the man who is not looking for the commodious environment. Praise the Lord for this man who isn't giving heed to the crowd, the more parties we read about. Praise the Lord for the man who refuses the convenient. and lives by that battle in the arena. May I say this to you tonight, the man in the arena lives by conviction. They live by, they face the controversy and they battle through the contrary. Look with me again as we pick up where we left off in Acts 27 and verse 22 through 25. Paul says, and now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar, and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sell with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told to me." The battle was a long-fought 14 nights on this ship, 14 days on this ship. They left this ship to drive in the contrary winds of this massive storm. Despair entered in. Destruction was the result. But within this ship this night, there stood two men who testified and gave the confidence that everybody's gonna live. I don't know about you. I don't know about you, but yeah, something changed. Remember back in the Fair Havens, Paul said, we don't need to go, because we're going to lose the ship, everything on it, and all our lives. He said, we're all going to die, OK? He didn't say that verbatim, but he says, all the lives, OK? But something happened in the midst of 14 days. They get on the seas of consequence because of their choice. They get on the seas of consequence because of the problems and issues that they had. And now Paul steps up two weeks later. He steps up a fortnight later on and says this simply to them. Be of good cheer. We're all gonna live. But the ship's gone. There's no saving the ship. There's gonna be a cost to the consequences of the choice you made. So it makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean, Paul's already been proven right that they should have stayed in the fair haven. Because they were comfort seeking, they resulted in the midst of this storm. But even so now, Paul's not a sailor. Paul's not a ship builder. He was a tent maker. Paul, I mean, why should they listen to him? You're talking to Kelton this morning after morning service. Would you take advice from someone how to build a house who's never built a house nor set of plans or staking a drave or anything like that? Would you take advice from them? No. You may know the book smarts of it, but if you've never done it, you're not going to take advice from them. I want to show you something here to give you a little proof of how Paul is a man in the arena. Paul writes his second letter to the Corinthians in chapter 11, verse 23. on down to 28. And he says, are they ministers of Christ? He says, I speak of a fool. He says, I am more. Watch this now. He said, in laborers more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths off. of the Jews, five times received I 40 stripes, save one, that's 39 times five. He said, thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, mind you, that's before this shipwreck. A night and a day I have been in the deep, in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wickedness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren, in weariness and painful and watchings often. and hunger and thirst and fastings off in cold and nakedness beside those things that are without that which cometh upon me daily the care of all the churches you know what paul's saying right here paul is equating if you will he paul is equating the care he has for all of his church plants okay mind we have two we have two church plants here we planted three churches in our in our life and two are here By this time, hundreds were planted, either by him directly or through the men that he had sent out to plant them throughout the land. He is equating all of these perils that you see here, shipwrecks, the beatings, the stripes, the prisons, the deaths, the stonings, to his burden of love and care of those local New Testament churches. I want you to think about that for a second, because if there's a man that has been in the arena, there's a man who says he bears the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there's a man that has the scars to prove that he's the man in the arena, it's Paul right now who stepped up in the middle of that ship and said, sirs, you should have listened to me in the beginning. You see, the more part on the ship, the more part, remember? They said, we know more about the ship than this guy, but Paul knew more about the storms. The majority said, we know more about traveling, but Paul knew more about treacherous times. The shipment said, we know more about the seas, but Paul knew more about the seasons of change. He's the man in the arena. On top of all these things alone, Paul mentions intent to Timothy in his final letter, just weeks away from losing his life. He said, but thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, watch this, long-suffering, charity, patience, watch this, verse 11, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. What persecutions I endure, but out of them all the Lord delivered me. You know what happened in Lystra? Now, he's been persecuted. I mean, I don't know about you, man, but in today's world, Paul would have a massive self-esteem problem because everywhere he went, they tried to kill him, okay? I mean, my goodness gracious, they're running him out of Dodge everywhere he goes. I mean, they're throwing rocks at him. They're falsely accusing—I mean, everyone. But he says, once was I stoned. He mentions that in 2 Corinthians. In Acts 14 we have the record, it says, and there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, Paul mentions that there in Timothy, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Now this is a very, the King James Bible is so perfect that it can take something so bad and make it sound pretty, or at least clean it up. King James Bible would never take your mind into the gutter. The King James Bible will never take you in a place of darkness. It'll never take you to those places. But when it says they drew him out of the city, I'm gonna dirty it up for you. That got your attention, didn't it? You ever dragged a dead body? Wait, let me rephrase that. Have you ever, have you ever, oh my soul. All right, let's go back to hunting. This is just a shipwreck already. Well, have you ever dragged a corpse of any kind? I'm talking about animals. Okay, thank you, you have. And anyway, they're not light, are they? We'd have to put horses down at times. One of the hardest things on the earth they ever have to do. But you know their pain and suffering was so bad. You know, you got a 1,000-pound animal, 1,500-pound animal trying to drag that thing. You know, you have a dead weight. Those that would go hunting, you would have to carry a deer that weighed 200 pounds off and just drag the thing. I'm just trying to tell you here, when it's dead weight, it's dead weight. Now, they dragged Paul out of the city and left him for dead. You say, well, preacher, was he really dead? There's people who argue these different points, but Paul became the only soul in the church age to go to heaven and to return. He says this, and I'm not gonna elaborate too much on it tonight in 2 Corinthians 12 too. He says, a new man in Christ, about 14 years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, whether in the body I cannot tell, whether out of the body I cannot tell, God knows such a one caught up to the third heaven. And if you read that chapter out, you're gonna find out that when Paul went there, he says he saw things that were unlawful for him to repeat. Unlawful. So when somebody writes a little booklet out there that they went to heaven and they saw this, that, and the other, no sir, they did not. It doesn't line up with scripture, it doesn't happen. Paul says it's unlawful to repeat. Paul was dragged out and left for dead. He was stoned dead, dragged out and left there. He went to the third heaven. He saw things that he was unable, unallowed to repeat. And what happens next in Acts 14, 20 says, how be it as the disciples turned around him, turned around about him, he rose up and came to the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas and Dervish. The guy just got stoned to death in this town. They dragged him out for dead and all the disciples are looking at him and then he pops up, right? Then he goes back into the place where they just stoned him, man. That's the man in the arena right there. Men will criticize Paul, say he shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have done that, but you don't listen to the critics that's never been there. Here's a man, a preacher of the gospel, who suffered the loss of all things according to Philippians chapter three. I say this, he is above and beyond all humans, the man in the arena. Here's the beautiful part of it. Paul's confidence. didn't come in his own power. As a matter of fact, Paul's confidence didn't even come from his own past. Now remember, he said a moment ago, he said, the Lord delivered me out of them all. What does that remind you of when Paul gives that list of all of these things that have happened to him, and at the end of it he says, but the Lord delivered me out of every single one of them. Reminds me of about a 14-year-old ruddy boy who's standing before a 6-foot-11 or a 9-foot-and-a-half giant out there in the Valley of Elah named David. And he just turned over to King Saul and says, you know what? God delivered me out of the mouth of the lion. He delivered me out of the mouth of the bear. And this Philistine, this thing, this is nothing. David's confidence wasn't in the stones. It wasn't in the sling. It wasn't in his ability to hit a target, you know, dead on. It was his ability was in the one that delivered him time and time and time again. But Paul's confidence this night, it wasn't even in his past. But it was the one who stood next to him. The man who stood next to Paul. The man who makes all things possible. The Bible tells us this. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve." Now before you think there's a long, blond, flowing hair, blue-eyed man with wings standing next to Paul that night, that doesn't even exist. I'll give you 1,000 pounds if you find one angel in the Bible with wings, all right? And before you say, ooh, a cherubim's not an angel, they're a cherubim. A seraphim's not an angel, they're a seraphim. And mind you, a cherubim has four wings and a seraphim has six. It doesn't exist in the Bible. They're just men. I say just men. But before you go any further, the biblical definition of the word angel is not messenger. God has plenty of angels that did jobs and works that didn't have a message. The biblical definition of the word angel is appearance. I'm going to hit a few examples of that, but this is not the message tonight to go on and prove it, even though we have and can. But in Genesis chapter 22, verse 11, you know the situation with Abraham who took Isaac up on Mount Moriah. Isaac was about a 30-year-old man at this time, and it says, and the angel of the Lord called on him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thine Do thou anything unto him? For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son," watch this, from me. Who's speaking? God. Who called unto him? And the angel of the Lord. That Lord there is the same Lord we read about in Psalm 23, and that's where we get the name of God is Yahweh. You'll see Exodus chapter 3 in just a minute that when the burning bush, when he spoke out of the burning bush, he says, I am that I am. That I am that I am comes from the derivative of the word Yahweh and is Yara in the Hebrew. It means the same thing and you know. what the Lord had said, Jesus Christ. Exodus chapter three, verses two and four says, Then the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Verse four says, And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. He says, Here am I. And as he goes down and gives Moses the job that he was going to do, he's like, Who am I going to say that sent me? He says, I am that I am have sent thee. That's the word, I am that I am, is Yah-rah, where we get Yahweh from in Psalm 23, as well in the last verse you just saw. Time and time and time, and example, example, example. In the Old Testament, you find the angel of the Lord, which is the pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. So who stood next to Paul that night? You see, Paul is most assuredly the man in the arena. Paul bears in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul bore the scars of preaching the gospel into the world and going against the grain. But now we have a man that was in the arena who was bloodied and beaten, yet risen again. See, the confidence of listen to the preacher now with Paul's life doesn't come from Paul's past, but it comes from the person that stood with him that night. Isaiah chapter 53 is one of the greatest Old Testament prophecies that shows what Jesus Christ does for us. It happens to be the portion of scripture in Acts chapter eight that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from in that chariot when Philip ran alongside. And he says, tell me, he goes, tell me now, he goes, who's speaking, who is he speaking about? Himself or somebody else? And old Philip said, he picked up, and he said, right we're in Isaiah 53, and he witnessed to him Jesus Christ. And that old Ethiopian got saved, the first Gentile we find being born again. In verse four of Isaiah 53, it says, Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, and yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison, from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grape with the wicked and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. And he hath put him to grief, when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed, and he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." There's another account in Isaiah 52, another prophecy. It says, Jesus Christ on the cross, it said that they were astonished at thee. His visage was so marred, more than any man in his form, more than the sons of men. You see, our artists in our modern world have cleaned up the cross. Pilate put a sign on the cross that said, King of the Jews, in three different languages. You know why? A testimony that we've done what you've asked us to do. He was unrecognizable. He was unrecognizable as a human. And yet the book of Hebrews tells us tonight, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. In other words, he's been through it. In other words, he's conquered it. In other words, he stepped away from it and now stands with Paul in the midst of a horrendous storm, in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the arena, giving him assurance, saying, you know what? It's all going to work out. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly. I would add just a little bit to what Roosevelt said, just given the time, the man or the woman in the arena, that's where the credit belongs. We all have our battles that we fight. Most of us and many of us are going through battles that no one knows about. And yet you can stand up and tell someone else, you know what? Be of good cheer. And I've been through this. And you're going to get through it as well. The exhortation now, rather than admonishment now, was there's some good cheer in your life. You're going through the storm. It's been a horrendous 14 days. You haven't eaten everything, but here's the deal. Jesus Christ, who is the man of the arena, who went through all this and that and stepped out of the grave, the Apostle Paul, who's the man of the arena, who bears the marks and the scars, who has been bloodied and beaten and stoned and all these different things, he's been through them all. He says, be of good cheer. Verse 22 says, and now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall no loss of any man's life among you but of the ship. This is what he's saying. You're not all gonna die, but if you stay in the ship, you're gonna live. If you follow my orders now, if you listen to me now, then you'll be able to live. So be of good cheer, because even in the midst of the storm, what we all need to understand, no matter how dark it is, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much the storms of life are just beating us down, We still have the presence of God in our life. He said in the book of Hebrews, he says, I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee. In verse 23 he says, for there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve. Despite what you may think here tonight, God is with them in the midst of the storm. And in days when things seem dark and days when you can't see to do anything at all, days when you don't even think that you can get past whatever's going on in your life today, whatever those things may be, You need to rest assuredly that God's with you, that he's never gonna leave you nor forsake you. Now I told you earlier, I mentioned, I got one point left and we're done. I said something changed. Paul said you need to stay here in Fair Havens. You take off out of here because you want to get someplace more comfortable. We're all gonna die and the ship's gonna be destroyed. But somewhere in the midst of that 14 day journey, in the midst of all that storms, in the midst of all those problems, we find the presence of grace. Verse 23 says, You see my friend, one thing that we need to remember in our life, there is the grace of God that comes into our days. There is the grace of God that is bestowed upon us. And in the midst of them rejecting the word of God, in the midst of them, let's just call it what it is, rejection from the word of God, rejection from the admonishment of God, the rejection that they got into the consequences, and there's gonna be a cost of it. It could have been their lives, but it ended up being the ship. And even though we make mistakes in our life, and even though there's been problems arise, and even though all the things that happen in our life, the Bible gives us this confidence today, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Grace did much more about. I want you to think about this here today. We look out in our world, and I know we make a bit of joke here and there about what's going on in life and things like that, but we look out in the world that we live in today We try to figure out who the next leader is going to be, who the next government that can come in, and what they can do, and what this and that. And then we get in an uproar when the one that we wanted in there doesn't get in there. And then the one we wanted gets in there, makes some more mess of things, and we get an uproar over that. And then this law's changed. All these things. We're never happy. We're not going to be happy. I want to tell you, the Apostle Paul lived under five Roman emperors. Now, I don't know about you, But when you go back to the Roman Empire, you know, the same empire that later on Nero would impale Christians and douse them in oil and use them to light his garden in the back of his castle? Yeah, we don't have it too bad, do we? You know, the slightest little things come into our life. We'll skip out of church, we'll skip out of reading the Bible, we'll skip out of praying, we'll skip out of doing right, we'll have a tizzy fizzy, we won't represent Christ at all. And the fact is, the Apostle Paul, under five different Roman emperors, under a wicked government, an oppressive government, a government that robbed them of every bit of peace there was, they're noted as those that turned the world upside down, have come hither also. Boy, wouldn't that be a reputation to have. I mean, how would you like that when you showed up into your gym or you showed up in your office or you showed up and man, those people that turn the world up, they come in here now. I like it because if we're turning the world upside down, that means we're putting it right side up. And it's not the government's job to do that. It's not the family's job. It's none of whose job it is to do it is the Lord Jesus Christ. But it's not going to happen. Unless we as Christians do the right thing. I've been asked dozens of questions in the past several weeks. I've been asked all this and that. And my response to every single question that comes my way is preach Christ. Ultimately, what's going to make a difference in the eternal life? Is that what's going to make a difference in the temporal life? And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. What's going to make a difference in the storms of this life today and the seas of consequence and the cost that we may face? What's going to make that difference? is the Lord Jesus Christ. And these men here tried, they did everything they could do to save their life. And I understand it was their temporal life they were facing. But let's put this in the eternal here as we close. Beloved, there is no amount of works that you can do in this world today that is ever gonna get you to heaven. Nothing, there's not amount of work. What needed to be done has already been done on the cross of Calvary. What required a soul to be saved and born again was conducted on Calvary when Jesus Christ died on the cross. What is required from mankind is to believe on the death, burial, and resurrection. Romans 5.8 is one of my favorite verses when it comes to salvation. But God, and I'll tell you, we went through a whole series one time of but God, you remember that? Man, as soon as it's all gonna be a mess, but God stepped in. Man, I got myself in trouble, but God intervened. But God had intermission. All these different things. I love the but Gods, they're wonderful. But God commended his love toward us. And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You guys are familiar with the analogy that I've used. I've used it all over the world. I've used it in South America. I've used it in Vietnam. I've used it in preaching. I've used it in Israel. But I take that example. I pull keys out and I'm like, Tim, I've got the keys to a brand new Ferrari or whatever car you like, okay? I personally wouldn't take a Ferrari probably because I'd be uncomfortable in it, but whatever dream car you have, I got the keys right here, they're yours, the petrol's full, the insurance paid, the taxes are paid, and I'm gonna give them to you right here, right now, okay? Two things have to happen. Number one, if I say, give me a pound and I'll give you the keys, is that a gift? No, it's a good deal, but it's not a gift, all right? So we got through that one. But in order for you to receive that, you've got to take it. God committed his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, to sin is to transgress the law of God, to break his law, to prove that we are lost, that we are without God in this world. And yet he still offered his love toward us. So Christ died for us to pay for our price, to pay for our sins. And I'm saying all that to make this point tonight. We can be of good cheer this evening because God is with us, because grace, the grace of God is in the midst of our lives. But in order to receive that grace by faith, you've got to believe on that death, burial and resurrection. So Paul had the encouragement in the midst of this evening, he had the encouragement in the midst of this storm that everything was going to be OK for one singular reason. Jesus Christ stood next to him. Jesus Christ stood next to him. He knew his past, every one of them, the Lord's delivered me out of it, but he knew there was gonna come a day when his time was up. That's why when he wrote to Timothy, he says, I fought a good fight. He says, I kept the faith, I finished my course. But we know now that in the midst of storms, in the midst of trials, in the midst of tumultuous times, If we'll just give God the chance that he has, he's already there. It's not like we gotta ask him to be there. He's with you. Holy Spirit of God is inside of you, and the Lord Jesus Christ is standing next to you. Ephesians tells us that we're in heavenly places in Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father. So I mean, we're not getting away from him. Sometimes you just gotta step back. Be where our feet are. Quit trying to jump off and out of the storm. Let it drive. Ride the storm out with the one who has been proven to be the man in the arena, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. Stop being a comfort seeker in the midst of the seas of life. Will you bow your heads tonight? Father, thank you, Lord, for the blessing of this evening. Thank you for all that you've done and who and what you are. And we pray now for your continual blessing and your direction, your guidance in our life. We ask for your help, your mercy. Pray that you'd lead us into the right way and forgive us for we have failed you. But Lord, I do ask you tonight, If you'd bear witness with our souls, give us the direction that we need to better and best serve you. Lead us safely, Lord, in the way that will be pleasing in the name of Jesus Christ. But at the same time, Father, I pray that as we step forth through these doors today, that we would go with the intentions to make a difference, that we would go knowing that we're entering the mission field, that we would go trusting that the Lord is with us in every step of the way. And instead of us trying to get away from the storm, when the storms come, Let us trust and depend in You. Let us trust in Your Word. Let us put our faith in that which You have given us that will ride the storms out, and in the end, we'll be better for it. We ask these things in the precious name of our risen Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen and amen. I hope the preaching and teaching of the Word of God was a blessing to your heart this evening. I want to ask you to stand tonight