Mike Bickle emphasizes the transformative power of delighting in God's beauty, asserting that this practice is essential for believers to achieve victory amidst the increasing challenges of fear, lust, and violence in society. He draws from Psalm 27, where David, facing external and internal conflicts, declares his commitment to seek God's beauty as a source of strength and safety. Bickle argues that the biblical vision of Christianity is to enjoy a relationship with God by delighting in His beauty, which is crucial for navigating life's storms. He encourages believers to cultivate a history of encountering God's beauty, as it serves as a protective narrative against fear and insecurity. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a communal embrace of this message, highlighting its importance for both personal and collective spiritual health.

7 verse 4 today and actually we're gonna look at the whole psalm or a bit of the psalm. I want to talk about the power of delighting in God's beauty. That seems kind of like a flowery lofty subject but my real purpose is to convince you that the beauty of Jesus encountering it is essential to victory in your personal lives. I want to say that again. I want to convince you not just today but in this these months ahead because I've been talking on this theme a little bit lately that the beauty of Jesus is essential in this hour of history for believers to walk in victory as in our culture fear and lust and offense and rejection and violence are increasing. We'll find out in a few moments we'll look at this a little bit more detail but in Psalm 27 when David said all the days of my life I've set my heart to behold your beauty. Psalm 27 the whole context is about conflict. The first three verses David says they're attacking me from every angle. David was being tempted with fear, with insecurity, with violence was coming after him. Men were wanting to take his position, destroy his honor. I mean he was in a battle for fear dominating and anxiety dominating in his heart and it was in that context of battling against all of these outward enemies and then the inward emotional enemies the the storm that was rising up in him where he makes this declaration. He goes I know how to get through this storm. All the days of my life I have declared before God that I will seek his beauty because the discovery of the beauty of God is the place of safety and strength. It's not just a flowery kind of poetic subject. It's very substantial and real. We're gonna break that down a bit. I call David the theologian of God's beauty. He was the premier theologian of the beauty of God in the Old Testament. Now the biblical vision for the Christian life, if I could just say it in a sentence, is to enjoy relationship with God by delighting in his beauty. I'm going to say that again because a lot of folks when they think of Christianity that's not what comes to mind. They think of kind of dutiful service. They got to do this hard work and they got to grit their teeth and just deny all the fun stuff. But that's not the biblical view of Christianity. It's to enjoy a relationship with God. A God who enjoys relationship with you. But it's to enjoy relationship with God by delighting in his beauty. You could put the word majesty. You could put the word glory. Glory and beauty are often interchangeable. The Westminster Catechism, which is foundational in the Protestant Church, says the chief aim of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. I love how John Piper kind of puts a twist on that. The chief aim of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. God is glorified when his people enjoy him. Not just when they declare he's good, when they declare it, but they in delight in what they're declaring. God is a father. God rules from a place of relationship. He wants relationship. At the very core he's a father. And Jesus is a bridegroom king. They don't want just subjects who serve at a distance, and even who admire at a distance. But he wants those that delight in what they see in God. And they want to share it. And they want to enjoy the relationship with God. So here in paragraph A, David as the theologian of the beauty of God in the Old Testament, he was the first to connect seeing the Lord as beautiful with having delight in the relationship. He put that together. He was the first one to position our, or to define our relationship with God as gazing, encountering beauty, and delighting. Like wow! That's an interesting take. I'm sure that some of the people in his generation. He said, one thing I've desired all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord. Now this is a very significant passage to us as a spiritual family. Again I want to remind you, I just said it a moment ago, but just so you really get it. Psalm 27, where this passage, where this declaration was made, was in a place of conflict. David was fighting for his life in some ways. Externally his life, and his position, his possessions, his honor were all being threatened. And internally he was warring against insecurity, and fear, and loss, and where's this going? And he said, I've got to find the anchor. I gotta, I gotta get through the emotional storm. Because if we cave in on the emotional storms, with anxiety, and rejection, and insecurity dominating, become a stronghold, we make a hundred bad decisions when fear dominates us on the inside. I mean we're all tempted with fear. We're all hassled by insecurity. We're all challenged with rejection. But the enemy wants those things to become a stronghold in our life. Not just a challenge. The enemy wants rejection and fear to become the narrative of our life. And David says, no. The narrative of my life, the big-picture story of what my life is about, is beholding and encountering the beauty of a glorious God. That's the narrative of my life. The narrative of my life is not how bad I'm being treated, and how much I might lose. Those are issues that I'm working on, and I'm addressing. But that's not going to gain the upper hand in my inner life. And that's not going to become the narrative of my life. Well he goes on, Psalm 37, he describes his walking with God as delighting in the relationship. Like wow! Again, in that hour of history, this was, this was a, you know, a brand-new idea. This was kind of earth-shattering, kind of new idea. Delighting in the God of Moses, who the mountains shook and everybody trembled. How could you delight in such a God like that? Well David determined that his lifelong goal in his youth, his 20s, in his 60s, in prosperity, in adversity, he was going to make viewing the beauty of God the primary goal of his life. Meaning it wasn't just a cool, flowery phrase. He was looking for the beauty of God wherever he looked. He was conscious about it. I know a lot of believers, they love Jesus. They're very sincere. But they don't think about his beauty and they're not consciously looking for it as they look around and all the life dynamics and what's happening in the whole created order. They're not connecting beauty of God with what they see and what's happening. I'm talking about the good things that they see and that's happening. Now in Isaiah chapter 33, this is a very well-known prophecy for the generation the Lord returns. And I quote this prophecy a lot because it's important that we know the Holy Spirit is going to emphasize the beauty of Jesus in the generation the Lord returns. And that generation will be the most violent, the darkest, the most hostile, dangerous generation in history, humanly speaking. But it's the hour of history where the Spirit will move and magnify Jesus as King with His power and manifest His glory. But it's interesting that one of the primary things in that hour of history is for us to see the King with power but to see the beauty that He possesses and to actually delight in it and find a place of strength and a place of safety in that place of delight. To see the King in His beauty. The most powerful weapon in God's arsenal against Satan is the beauty of His Son. I want to say that again. The most powerful arsenal, I mean a weapon in God's arsenal to equip us to resist fear and lust and offense and boredom and all these other things is to be preoccupied with the beauty of the God-man, the one who's fully God and fully man. Paragraph C. I have a quote here from a famous Russian novelist from the 1800s. He said, beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men. I mean that is such an accurate statement. Beauty. It's a battle for beauty. The enemy wants the human family to find beauty in immorality and self-exaltation and to find beauty outside of relationship with God. And the Holy Spirit wants us to discover the true and the ultimate source of beauty which is God Himself and relationship with His people. It is the great battleground between God and Satan in this hour. And it's my opinion, it's not a prophecy, but it's my opinion. We're in the early days of that generation that will see the coming of the Lord. And if that is true, the decades ahead will be the most violent times of human history. The darkest, the most dangerous. I'm talking about humanly speaking, externally. But it will be the hour where the Spirit of God will do, will release greater power, the great harvest. The church will enter into a realm of glory and power and purity. And at the very center is the magnifying of the beauty of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Now if you read the book of Revelation, which is you know the end time storyline, the very first line of the book of Revelation, the very first line in the entire book says this. It titles the book. It gives us what the book is about. It says, the revelation of Jesus. In other words, it is the beauty, the unveiling of the beauty of Jesus. It's the unveiling of the beauty of Jesus Himself. That's what the book is about. A lot of people when they read the book of Revelation, they think it's a book about the Antichrist, the power of the Antichrist. It's not. It's the unveiling of the beauty of a man. And when that man comes back to planet earth, he's going to cause his beauty to cover the earth. Now in Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 14, the famous prophecy that the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Well the glory and the beauty are interchangeable ideas. When Jesus returns, the source and the ultimate expression of all beauty, when He comes, His beauty is going to fill the earth. And it's remarkable that He's not only coming in His person, He's bringing the new Jerusalem with Him down to the earth. And the new Jerusalem is that diamond-like, brilliant city that God has made beautiful even as a bride on her wedding day. And that beautiful city is coming to the earth. It's descending to the earth. The beautiful man will make the earth. He will make all things beautiful. This is true in His time. Now in paragraph D, just to give you kind of a real simple overview of what I mean by the beauty of God, and I've got some teachings on our website where I break it down quite a bit more, and in the future I'm going to break it down really in detail. So you're not left in kind of an abstract kind of, you know, wow the beauty of God, that's amazing. Well what what do you mean? Like I don't know, He's beautiful, wow. But we need to have it far more concrete and practical in the breakdown than that. So here in paragraph D, I'm giving you a few tracks to run on. I'm giving you a few tracks to run on here in paragraph D. That God's beauty speaks of what is attractive about Him. God's beauty speaks of what is attractive about Him. And it's, He's like a multi-faceted diamond. There's so many facets to who He is. God's beauty includes how He feels and how He thinks. The subject of God's beauty is what He does. I mean look at creation. We're gonna just take about two or three minutes and just take a snapshot at creation. It's how He looks. And it's described in Revelation chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 4. The very appearance of God, I mean just a little bit, but enough to really awaken our appetite to see more of His grandeur. It's the power and the knowledge and the affection He possesses. These are all displayed in creation. If we look at creation through the lens of the grace of God, we look at creation through the lens of the Word of God, we see the beauty of God. We look at redemption and we see the beauty of God in the face of Jesus in no more intense way than looking at what happened in Jesus and His life and death and resurrection and His leadership over history. When I think about how God thinks, you know there was a well-known movie, best picture of the year in 2001, called The Beautiful Mind. Some of you remember that movie in 2001. Well I tell you that Jesus is the ultimate beautiful mind. He is the, the man. He's fully God. And before He became a man, under the Father's authority, it was Him that the Scripture ascribes to creating the heavens and the earth. And He is the architect and the artist of creation. I mean He designed the creation, its purpose. He is the artist that beautified creation. And He is the one that put it into motion and it all flows out of His beautiful mind and His beautiful heart. Now it's, this is a theme that the Lord has really made clear to us as a spiritual family that we are to emphasize. Most of you know, and I will, I'll give you this, just the briefest rendition of this, that it was 33 years ago. In May 1983, the Lord spoke audibly about us doing 24 hours prayer with, with singers and musicians. I mean the audible voice of the Lord. I've received two audible voice of the Lord directions in 40 years of ministry. And one of them was do 24-hour prayer with singers and musicians. Now I was neither a singer nor musician and still, I'm not, but in the resurrection I'm hopeful that I'm going to pass the audition in the resurrection. But the interesting thing is that when God said to do that, He said Psalm 27 4. That was the verse He used. And 33 years ago that was so odd to me. To do 24-7 worship and prayer was odd. I remember my first response to the Lord. I said, why? I mean why do that? I mean it, I wasn't interested at all in that, to be totally honest. And then the verse Psalm 27 4, I didn't think it connected. And now that it's some 30 plus years later, I look back with more understanding of Psalm 27. That was the hour of David's great crisis. The hour where the storm of fear and insecurity and rejection was trying to bear down on his soul. And the enemy was assaulting him and trying to shift the narrative of his life to how bad he was treated and how bad a deal he got. And David said, I refuse to do that. The narrative of my life is I relate to the beautiful God. That's who I am and that's what I do. That's the story of my life in a time of trouble. And like no time in history, the years ahead will be the time of trouble. And the beauty of the Lord, as the songs of the Lord go forth, even across the earth. I don't mean just from here. I mean from all over the earth. The most beautiful songs of God's heart will wash and renew and empower and protect the people of God. I mean it really is Psalm 27 4. I look back 30 years later and go, Lord you really hit it right. You really know the Bible well. That's the perfect verse. But I remember how, how mystified and even a little bit put off I was by the idea of the, of that verse with 24-7 prayer and even doing 24-7 prayer. The whole thing was strange to me. But now it makes so much sense. Then I mentioned a couple weeks ago, and I'll give the story real brief again, that it was in 1996. It was 12 years later after the Lord spoke Psalm 27 4 and said to do it with the beauty of God. It was 12 years later in 1996, November. Right here I just, in this I'll just give you the short version of that story again to remind you of it. Very dramatic time in the Lord. I was at an all-night prayer meeting. We had a Friday night prayer meeting all night. And it was at midnight and we're gonna go to 5 in the morning. And I remember I'm standing right there and I just quoted Psalm 27 4 that I received 12 years earlier. And I said, well Lord, you know things are kind of slow. And here we are an all-night prayer meeting. I just said, I'm just gonna do what David said. You know this, Lord, I just want to behold your beauty. The power of God came on me. I mean visible. It rested on me. Not visible. I mean discernible. I could sense it strong. It just like swoosh to me. Just like a wave of His power for three, four seconds. And I went, whoa, what was that? I said, wow. It was exciting, alerting, alarming. All those kind of words. And so I said it again. Lord, oh to behold your beauty. It came on me again. Wow. Then I did it a third time. Came on me again. Something's going on. And I kept saying some version or iteration of this phrase, your beauty. I have many different ways I said it. And for five straight hours, every time I said it, the Spirit of the Lord, for a few moments, nothing happened. Then I'd say it again. And I said, Lord, in 40 years of pastoring, that's never happened before or since. I said, well, what's going on? And there's more to the story. I won't go into it all. But a week later, I got a letter in the mail. And the lady said, I had a dream from the Lord about you last Saturday night. The very time I was doing the five hours. Right during the five hours. She was from North Kansas City. And she said, I mean she didn't know anything about it. I didn't tell anybody about it. About that five hours. And she said, I saw you. The Lord said He's going to speak to you about His beauty. And He's going to, He wants the beauty of the Lord to be a primary emphasis of what's going to happen in your midst in the future. Well, that was 20 years ago I had that experience and received that letter from the Lord. And I want to say that as a spiritual family, the subject of the beauty of the Lord is something that He wants us to take hold of. He wants us all to experience it. He wants us all to be messengers of it. I don't, I mean, we'll all share it in our own different ways. Many in conversations. Some in blogs and technology. Some in songs. Some in sermons. Just some in coming and going conversations with people. But it's capturing this and then sharing it and growing in it. Understanding it's central to our safety in our future and our strength in the days to come. Just like it was to David. And this isn't unique to our body. I believe this is a message the Lord is stirring up all around the world. That it's not enough to move in God's power and to be faithful and serve us. But we're interacting with a King that has power. But the King is beautiful. And He delights in the relationship. And there's a captivating of our heart. There's a capturing of who He is and a delight and a fascination that comes to us that's essential to who we are. And how we're going to live before God. Now in terms of the created order, I like paragraph F here. I'm going to give a quote from John Piper who's one of my favorite Bible teachers. He says this, that seeing the natural world, the created order, we are to let our eyes run up the beam of beauty to the original source of beauty which is the Lord Himself. So when we see beauty in this world, we're to, kind of the word picture, there's a beam of light and it's to draw our attention, the beams of beauty to the original, the source Himself of beauty. And then we're to worship Him. We're to enjoy Him and delight in Him. Paragraph G, there's two books that I highly recommend. I've asked our bookstore to promote them. And I'm getting together a number of other quite good books on the subject of God's beauty from different parts of the body of Christ. Because this is something I want us to excel in. Meaning grow in it is what I mean by excel in it. I mean it's not peripheral. It's something that's a priority. It's something we're strong in. It's not just a few singers and a few preachers, but it's something that our whole community is imbibing and drinking deep of. And we're oozing out this reality. That's not a very biblical term to ooze out, but I think you understand what I mean. Well, just paragraph H here. I'm just going to take a minute on this. I shared about 20 minutes on this on Friday night. A lot more detail. But these books I've just recommended by Sam Storms and Thomas Dubay. I have it right there in the notes there. We're highlighting our bookstore and some others as well. They give a lot more detail too. But I just wanted you to get a little snapshot. Paragraph H, Psalm 19. Now remember David's the theologian of the beauty of God. And he says, Psalm 19 verse 1, he says, Let the heavens declare the beauty of God. Glory and beauty is often interchangeable. Let the heavens, or he says that the heavens do declare the beauty of God if you have eyes to see it. If you have the right perspective and the right theology and the right science, you can see more of the beauty of God. Jesus is both the architect and the artist that created the heavens and the earth. Well, just a couple, just a little snapshot at the grandeur of who Jesus is. This is Jesus back in Genesis chapter 1 before he became a man. That Jesus is eternally the uncreated God, like his Father and like the Spirit. And the scripture ascribes to Jesus as the creator under the Father's authority. But when we see the grandness and the greatness of what that beautiful mind conceived and what that powerful being and that beautiful heart did in creation, we look at it and we see the vastness and the bigness of it. And then we take a step back and said, that's the God, that's the person who is earnest about relationship with you and me. I mean, when we see who he is and then what he wants, he wants you and me. Why would a God that great want you and me? And he wants us so earnestly. He's so zealous about this eternal relationship. Paragraph 1, just again, just a couple of thoughts from the other night I shared. I mean, light travels 186,000 miles a second. That's 6 trillion miles a year. Okay, we can't even relate to that. 6 trillion miles a year is how far light travels in one year. Well, the nearest star to us, of course, is our sun, but I mean, second to our sun, is 4,000, I mean, 4 light years away. That's almost 25 trillion miles is the closest star to us. There are trillions and trillions of stars in the known galaxy. The closest one to us is about 25 trillion miles away. I mean, the one next to us. And from a big picture look, if they were looking at us from another part of the universe, we would look like we were right next door to each other, like almost touching each other at a distance. We're 25,000, 25 trillion miles apart. That's the vastness of our universe, the Milky Way galaxy. 100,000 light years in diameter. 100,000 light years from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other. There's 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. 100 billion stars. Our sun is only one of the stars. There's 100 billion of them. The closest star to us is 25 trillion miles away. I mean, the vastness is unbelievable of the Milky Way galaxy. Well, here's what's more mind-boggling. The Milky Way galaxy is one of over 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. Scientists are earnest about this. They're strong about this, these kind of numbers. The Milky Way is a small galaxy. Beloved, God hasn't exhausted His creative abilities yet. I mean, it's so big. He's got billions and billions of years to go. I don't know if He's going to keep, I don't know how that works, but He's not exhausted His creative abilities. I mean, this is who the God is that is relating to us. Well, I got a few more details there, but you can just read them. I just put them in just kind of to kind of whet your appetite to read those books and just see what science has given us. I mean, scientific research and knowledge is the gift of God to us, and it gives us insight into the beauty of the Lord in a most remarkable way. I mean, we get so used to the stars and the sun. I mean, we go out at night and look, and wow, you know, take a couple minutes, that's amazing, and we move on. Beloved, it's more than that, but with the insight, I don't mean the visual is amazing, but with the scientific knowledge we have, putting a little bit of energy to understand just the broadest ideas related to it. I mean, the most general ideas, like I put down here. It just makes us take a step back and wonder and just amazement at who He is. I mean, we go and we look at our sun. Do you know how amazing our sun is? Now, I know the last couple of days the sun's been a little bit annoying, but just, but don't go there. You know, I was just looking up at the sun going, amazing. Then I stepped inside the air conditioner, looked at it through the window, and I said, this is one star of trillions and trillions. Oh, you're amazing, and you like me. I got it made. I got it made. This is remarkable. Like, oh, I love you, and I love loving you. This, I'm delighted in who you are and what you do. Let's look at the top of page two here. Well, David, the theologian of the beauty of God, he summarized this subject in one phrase here, Psalm 34. He says, oh, magnify the Lord. Magnify the Lord with me. Now, to magnify the Lord, that means to make much of the Lord, to elaborate on Him, to luxuriate on Him, to elaborate on who He is, to expound on Him, to celebrate Him, to treasure Him, to speak much of Him, to make much of Him. Those are all kinds of things. Those are just little different ways to say magnify or exalt the Lord or to talk about His beauty because for David, to magnify the Lord and to behold His beauty, they are two sides of one coin. It's the same truth. To David, the theologian of the beauty of God, when he says magnify the Lord and he says behold His beauty, he's talking about the exact same thing. Now, when you read through the book of Psalms, of which David wrote the majority of them, I find three different activities, very simple activities, but they come to, I mean, they're highlighted over and over again. And I put these three activities that David taught as the specific ways that we magnify the Lord or specific ways that we behold His beauty, we grow in His beauty. Three specific ways. They're very simple, but it's essential that we do them. It's not enough to kind of even see them. We have to actually do them in a lifestyle. David talks about meditating on the Lord, praising the Lord and declaring, I mean, meditating on His excellencies or His beauty, the same thing. Praising the Lord for His beauty or excellencies and declaring. And so what that really means, it's very, very simple, very simple, but it's essential to meditate. We study it. We think on it. So we think deeply. We think often on it. We look at the scripture and what it says about it. And again, I've got a little bit of detail here in this handout and quite a bit on the website and a lot more coming because I'm really wanting us to go deep in the subject. So David's saying to magnify the Lord or to behold His beauty, meditate on it, think much on it, study it, search it out. Give time to getting information from the scripture, but also information from science. I'm talking about the true information that exalts God. And there's a lot of it out there. Some of that scientific stuff is false, but I'm talking about the truth that exalts God and that is a spirit of truth. But it's not enough to get the information, to study it and search it out. That's what meditate means. The second idea is we praise. What I mean by praise is we tell God what it is we're seeing and what we think about what we're seeing. We say it back to God. And then number three, we say it to people. So very simply, we search it out diligently. We say it to God and we say it to people. Very simple. We search it out diligently and think on it. Then we say it to God and then we say it to people. Now, number one here, meditating on God. When we search it out and we have new discoveries on God, it's only little moments of insight. It's just little fragments of insight, so to speak. It's not necessarily a big download of information comes. You might get one little angle into one of the facets, I mean one little glance into a facet of His beauty. And so when I think of gazing on the beauty of the Lord beholding it, I think of the Lord giving me small bits of insight that have a little inspiration. And though it's not any one insight that is the dominant one, but it's the collective number over years of these little insights that have a bit of inspiration collectively. Over months and years they transform our life. But we need to be intentional about it, about meditating, searching it out. It's not enough just to kind of hear a couple sermons on it, hear a few songs about it, mention it a few times. David said, no, in a time of trouble, I want to draw on my history of encountering the beauty of God because that's what's going to secure my heart in the time of trouble. And not only that, it is the core reality for which our salvation relationship with God is all about. Beholding His beauty, delighting in it and enjoying Him, and then out of that partnership we serve and do the work of the ministry out of that partnership of delighting and enjoying in who He is. Number two, we praise God. Very, very simple. And when I praise the Lord for one of His excellencies or a facet of His beauty, one of these little insights that I get that have a little bit of inspiration, it touches me a little bit. The way I praise the Lord for it is I thank Him for it specifically, and then I ask Him to show me more about it. Then I thank Him for it again and I ask Him to show me more about it. And what I do when I thank the Lord is I journal. This is something they taught me way back in my college years over 40 years ago. I remember meeting with a man there in the navigators' ministries and he told me, he says, journal. And I go, what do you mean journal? He goes, write down what you say to God. I go, what? God already knows and I already know. He goes, no. No, he goes, it doesn't work that way. He goes, you write it down and actually you will capture it and it will grow in you if you will write it down. I said, really? I didn't really believe him. I thought it was kind of, you know, a girly thing to do. And I remember I said, I don't know, I'm going to journal and carry a little book around, a little flower on it or something. No way. And anyway, he got me to do it and it changed my life. When I look back over 40 years, by seeing something about God that you admire, that excites you about him, to actually say it back to God. Instead of just going, wow. Say, thank you, Lord. Like you look at the stars and say, thank you that you made that star. You're so brilliant. I mean, you're so powerful, but you like me so much. I say, thank you and then ask him to show you more about that one little facet that you're specifically admiring and thanking him for. And I tell you, and then you go back and you say it again, the very thing you wrote down. You go back over and over it again. And you just, little by little, it just keeps adding. You keep adding to it. And by the declaring of it, you grow in your insight by declaring it to God. Well, the same is true when you say it to people. When you declare it to people. And I mean, much of this is conversational. I don't mean you're going to get three or four friends together at a social gathering, stand up and preach to them and declare this is the truth. I mean, just in a casual, conversational way or in a family context or in a friendship. Sometimes it's in a formal teaching context. But when you declare one of the facets that you admire and that captures your heart about the Lord that fascinates you about him, it actually grows in you. And again, journal those as well. Meaning when you're done, you know, maybe you're done with the conversation to, you know, the, maybe you've had a fellowship time yet. You get done with that. And I've do this many times. I'll write down two or three phrases after the conversation's over. You know, I'll forget a couple of them, but I'll remember two or three and I'll write them down. Then when I get a chance, I go, I add them into a place in my laptop where I store all the stuff. And, and, and I found out that it just keeps growing and growing, uh, my understanding. And a lot of it comes from my own lips. And, and that's how it will be with you. If you'll say it to God and say it to people, you'll say it different every now and then. And it's in the different way. The Holy Spirit's actually teaching you about the beauty of the Lord, but capture it, journal it and say it again. Don't just journal it and be done with it. Journal it with the idea you're going to re-say it back to the Lord again. Look at paragraph B. Now, as we verbally magnify God's beauty, our insight into it and our delight of it increases because the Holy Spirit moves when the word is spoken. That's a principle from Genesis one on. Back in Genesis chapter one, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the earth, but the darkness was prevailing, but the spirit of power was there, but the darkness was there. And then when Jesus under the father's authority spoke, let there be light, then the spirit released the light. And all through history, when God's people say the word of God, then the spirit moves. Now the spirit doesn't always wait till people say it, but that's the general rule of the kingdom. The spirit releases activity when the people of God say it. That's how it is in Jesus's ministry. That's how it is today. That's why we pray for the sick. That's why we say things to people and the spirit touches them. Well, the same is true with praise. When you say it to God, the spirit's still touching you because you're still saying the word. And the spirit moves when the word of God is spoken. Now, not every time you're going to feel some dramatic new insight, but as the rule of life, when you say it, more happens. You know, just the way that humanity works, our human process, that the fires of love, they burn low if that love is not expressed. But if you express the love, then the fire increases. That's how it is in human relationships. You say it, the love increases. You know, we naturally want to tell people when something happens that excites us, or something happens that's extraordinary, or something happens that we delight in. It's our natural way. We want to tell somebody because we're built that way. And by the sharing of it, not only does another delight in it, but you actually delight in it more when you tell it and God knows it. That's one reason God says, tell me about me. I already know about me. Tell me about me for your sake. Because when you tell me about me, and it comes through your lips, the Lord is saying, it will grow in you and you will delight in it more. You will see it and feel it more. We will enjoy the relationship more together because God is a God of relationship. You know, one of my favorite things of being a pastor for 40 years is, I mean, it's happened hundreds and hundreds of times. I love it. It almost happens on a weekly basis. I mean, for 40 years. Sometimes it's several times in a week. And I know it. I could see it a mile off when it comes. They come walking up to me. I mean, this happened 40 years ago. It happened a couple times this week. It happened a couple times last week. They come up, their eyes are lit up. I know what they're going to say. I could prophesy it to them and they'll think it's a prophecy. They'll go, I met someone. I saw that 20 yards away. And they, why are you telling me? I don't say that, but I don't know. I don't want you to do nothing. I just want you to know. I got to tell somebody. I just want people to know. People that I love. I want them to know I met someone. Yay. It's it. That's it. They don't want me to do anything. They just want to say it. That's how it works. Beautiful. You know, I mean, if there's a financial breakthrough or somebody has a tremendous encounter with the Lord or a healing, you want to tell somebody. That's just how it works. Well, that's, that's a little bit behind God's command to praise and declare the truth of his beauty because it does something in us. It does something in those that hear it as well. But I'm talking about right now what it does in you. You know, I heard a joke about a pastor that he was annoyed because some of his top leaders, they were skipping the church services to go golf on Sunday morning. You know, and he heard about it, some of his elders and he just, come on, you guys go up on Saturday, not on Sunday. Well, he's golfed on Saturday and Sunday. And so he got annoyed by it as the joke goes. And so he decided to fake sec, went on the other side of town to golf just to do it, just to prove he could do it too. So he gets up there all by himself, no one's with him just to, and he hits on the first, you know, I'm not a golfer, so, but he hits the ball and hits a hole in one. I mean, boom, he's just so excited, you know, and then the heavenly curtain pulls back and Peter asks his angel. He says, well, why did you let him do that? I mean, here he is, you know, ignoring his work, et cetera, et cetera. And the angel said, who's he going to tell? He's going to like suffer the rest of the week. Like I can't tell nobody that was his discipline. I guess according to the joke that we want to tell somebody the CS Lewis quote, which is really, really dramatic. I mean, really insightful. He says, we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses what we enjoy. It completes what we enjoy. And so we're called to praise. We're caused, called to vocalize it. Okay. Let's look at paragraph C now in Psalm 145, David, this is the most practical Psalm on the beauty of God, on magnifying God. David puts it all together in one place. I mean, Psalm 145 is like Christianity. Beauty of God 101 Psalm 145 is beauty of God 101. Well, David's going to take the three principles that I've, uh, I've identified, uh, that I connected with magnifying God, meditating, praising, and declaring his excellencies. And you're going to find them all there. He lays them out. David doesn't Psalm 145 one after the other. He says in verse five, I will meditate on the, on the splendor of your beauty, magic, glory, or beauty. You can use it interchangeably. David says, I'm going to take time to search it out. I'm going to search it out. I'm going to think on it. Then in verse six, he goes, I'm going to tell people about it. Then in verse 10, he goes, we're going to tell God, we're going to bless God. We're going to tell God, and we're going to tell people. And he goes on and describes it more. You can read it on, on, on your own. But some, I just wanted to point out that Psalm 145 brings together David's practical theology of growing in the beauty of God and how to magnify the Lord. Paragraph D, I just give a little bit more detail, uh, saying some of the same stuff, but how to approach this in a practical way. Now let's look down at paragraph F. Let's look at Psalm 27 for just about the next two minutes or so. Now Psalm 27, that's the Psalm we started with. Again, the context is David is being assaulted by an army of people who are against him. They want to take his position. Therefore they're going to take his possessions because he's King. They want, they want to move him out and they want them to take the palace and all that is his and all of his honor. They want to ruin his reputation. I mean, this is the most life destructive description of what's happening on the outside. Then what's happening on the inside is there's a storm. He's being again attacked by fear, insecurity, anxiety. Now again, we were all attacked by that, but the enemy wants to do more than attack you by it. He wants it to become a stronghold in your life and your emotions. He wants you to be captured by offense, by fear, by anxiety because a person that gets captured by fear or offense or anxiety or anxiety, there's like a hundred dominoes will go down. If you get captured with fear, you'll make many wrong decisions and many wrong choices. So if the devil can lie and, and, and cause the narrative of your life to be how you're being mistreated and who's doing it bad against you. If that becomes the narrative of your life, the devil can get you in a place where a hundred dominoes will go down. Many, many bad decisions will come out of that because you're in a completely the wrong narrative. David says, no, I'm not going that direction. The narrative of my life is the beauty of the Lord. There's a big picture of a glorious, beautiful God. I am his, he is mine. His presence protects my heart and emotions. I'm going to make godly choices. I'm going to believe in him and I'm going to line back up and commit myself to encounter his beauty over and over again. That's what he's saying here in Psalm 27. Verse 2 says, the wicked came against me. He describes it. Verse 3, it's an army. It's an army. It's a large number of men organized to assault his position, his honor, his finances, everything. But here he says, my heart shall not be afraid because the battleground was fear. Throughout the Psalm, fear is the issue that he's contending against. But notice at the end of verse 3, he says, I'm going to be confident. Well, David, what are you going to be confident in? I mean, they're coming from everywhere. They're surrounding you like an army. I mean, there's more of them than there are of you. What are you confident? That's where he says, verse 4, I will gaze on the beauty of the Lord. I mean, this phrase, gazing on the, or beholding the beauty, it's not spoken in a vacuum. It's spoken, David's describing his response in a time of crisis. Now, beloved, I want a history of encountering the beauty of God before I encounter great crisis. And God is preparing the church to have a history in this. And these days, because crisis is mounting up in a global way, I don't want to face great crisis without a deep, long history of this. Verse 5, David says, in the time of trouble, he hides me in the secret place of his tabernacle or his presence. He goes, because I'm gazing on his beauty, my heart is hidden in his presence. I'm not yielding to fear and insecurity and rejection and offense. Therefore, I'm not going to make crazy ungodly decisions because I'm thrown off. I'm off kilter completely. He goes, my heart's protected. He goes, I can think clear and sound. I know who my king is. I know who I am to him. I know what the real story is. So I'm protected in the presence of his, the tabernacle of his presence. Verse 6, so I will sing praise. Now, what that is opposite of, I mean, if you've got people attacking you, what do you, you don't want to sing praise. You want to tell other people about how bad a deal you're getting. When people have trouble, they don't want to praise. They want to tell about their trouble. And then more specifically, they want to tell about the people that are troubling them. They want to get the other story out. They don't want to praise God. God goes, no, no, stop. Come and declare to me your delight in my beauty and what you know about me. And the average person's like, Lord, no, I want to vent about how troubled I am and I want to pay back or at least get the score even about who's after me. David says, I'm not going in that direction. That's decision number one. I'm not going to make wrong. I'm going to be protected in the tabernacle of his presence. Verse 5, and the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to get the narrative. God, you're the king. You're beautiful. You're glorious. I know the story. I know the real score of what's going on. Verse 8, we'll end with this. Worship team, come on up. So when David says, when you say to me, Lord, when I'm in trouble and I'm complaining and I'm hurting, you say to me, David, seek my face. David says, I say back to you, you're right. Your face, oh God, I will seek. That's the same thing as saying I'll behold your beauty. So David in trouble, he says, Lord, Lord. And the Lord says, I'm going to help you on the trouble. I really am. I'm going to work on the circumstances, but I are something I want first. I want you focused on my face. I want you focused and focused on me, says the Lord. Not because the Lord feels insecure, because that's the only place of safety and sound reasoning that David can be in. Because if David's looking somewhere else and not focusing on God's face, he's going to get the wrong narrative on the inside. He's going to make some really bad decisions and bad choices and bad conclusions. So then David says, Lord, your face, you're right. I will seek it. That's my story. That is my testimony. And beloved, I believe this is what God is saying to us as a spiritual family. He wants us to really give ourself to the message individually and corporately of the beauty of the Lord as the solution and safety and reward in a time of trouble. Not just trouble decades down the road, but trouble today, trouble in our personal lives, trouble that's mounting up in society. There is a biblical answer. So our heart is in a place of safety. So we don't do crazy things when we're fearful or disturbed or, or, or offended, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, amen. Let's stand before the Lord. Lord, here we are before you. Lord, we are a people of your beauty. Lord, I mean the whole kingdom of God is not us particularly, but Lord, we say yes to this message of the beauty of the Lord. Lord, you said 33 years ago, Psalm 27 four, do 24 seven prayer around night and night and day prayer around the beauty of the Lord. Lord, we say yes to that. Lord, you told me in 20 years ago in 1996, the beauty of God is an essential message. And Lord, I say yes to it. And I'm asking people all over the room just to sign your heart back up to this. Some of you, you've had a hold of this and you've lost it. Others of you, this is a new idea and you're going to be like David. I'm challenging you today. You're saying in your heart, I will all the days of my life respond in pressure by beholding beauty. I will respond in pressure by beholding beauty. I'm going to develop a history in beauty. If that's you in the room, I'm going to invite you to come forward. If you're saying, you know, I need to make a new decision or a first decision, or maybe some of you are under the pressure of, of, uh, people are attacking you or things are going wrong. You're being mistreated. You're being silenced and put, you know, ignored or dismissed by people. Your heart is hurting. And the Lord says, look at me. Don't look at them. Look at me right now. Your heart is hurting. Come on up. If you would like prayer or others of you, you, you need physical healing in your body and we want to pray for the sick almost every time we gather. So if you need prayer for your body or anything, come on up and we'll pray for you.