In this sermon, the speaker addresses the feeling of wanting to run away from difficult situations and challenges in life. He uses the example of the psalmist David, who expressed his desire to fly away and find rest in the face of trouble. The speaker emphasizes that the enemy uses disappointments, pressure, and betrayal to make us want to escape. However, he reminds the audience that this desire to run is not from God, but from the enemy. The sermon concludes with a prayer of surrendering the past, present, and future to God and praising Him despite the challenges we may face.

Sometimes, even when you're in the center of God's will, and God's anointed you and called you, you can get one of the great temptations in life, which is to run away. I'm gonna try to keep it real here, okay? This is real talk. Every man of God, every woman of God, every godly man, every godly woman, has been tempted by circumstances sometimes to just wanna throw up their hands and say, I gotta get out of here, I can't take this anymore. Do I resonate with anyone here in the auditorium? Okay, we don't like to say that, because it sounds like we're not devoted Christians, but it's true. You just wanna, like, run. Why we know this is true, is some of the greatest people in the Bible knew what it was to wanna run away. One of them was the psalmist David, and in this psalm, he tells us the two reasons, and I feel this is prophetic for tonight, that's my sense, because it's just very odd what's been happening here, praying with people, and who's visiting, that this is something God wants you to know. So here it is, very briefly. This happened to a man of God, who was a man after God's own heart. Look, listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea. Hear me and answer me, my thoughts trouble me. Did you ever have that happen? My thoughts trouble me. Not the devil, my own thoughts. And I am distraught at the voice of the enemy, at the stares of the wicked, for they bring down suffering upon me, and revile me in their anger. This man is facing it. My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death assail me, fear and trembling have beset me, horror has overwhelmed me. Just look at that. My heart is in anguish, anguish, terror of death assail me, fear and trembling have beset me, and horror has overwhelmed me. There's a man who's very honest in his prayers to God, because he's telling God, like, I can't take this, this is what's happening to me. Now, it's hard to know when the Psalms were written what part of David or the psalmist's life that it happened in. This could have happened when David was on the run from King Saul. This could have happened when possibly Absalom, his son, rebelled against him, and it looked like he was not gonna make it through that. But this is not a guy who has a bad day. This is a guy whose life is at stake. This is a guy who has the horror of the threat of his life being ended, torn away from him, killed, as in muerte, death, die. What makes this worse for him is because the nature of it is partly related to somebody close to him. And it's enough to be in a bad situation where people are accusing you, angry, fighting, fussing, lying, and all of that, and trying to hurt you. But notice what it says here. If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. If a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship, as we walk with the throng at the house of God, is a guy that I used to worship with. He's the one who's turned his arrows on me. If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it. If a foe were raising himself, a Philistine, somebody like that, no, but it's you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend. So here's the double pressure on the psalmist. And God inspires this so he knows that this is sometimes what we go through in life. He's not only surrounded by difficulty, but he's stabbed in the back by somebody close to him. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had someone in your own family, your own relative, your own whatever, your own gumbare for a lot of years, a friend, someone you trusted in, and for like no reason they turn on you? And that hurts more than anything else because if it was somebody out who hated God and hated you from the get-go, you'd say, yeah, I understand that. But now when a friend betrays you, a family member betrays you, that hurts. Oh, I've counseled people who have been hurt by their family, that hurts. As a young person, I saw my mother turned against by her family which church she had left. And she had left that church and wasn't living according to what they thought was right. And they didn't even know my dad had started drinking. And oh, I heard that they said mean things about my mother. And I was the wrong young boy to hear somebody hurt my mother. I got so mad at them all. I could have swung at all of them. Somebody hurt my mother, but what made it worse was these were relatives of hers. When your relatives hurt you, that really hurts. How many are with me so far? All right, end of story. So where does this lead? This leads to this. David says, the psalmist said, I said, oh, that I had wings of a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert. You see, the enemy uses disappointments and pressure and then the backstabbing of people we trust who hurt us in our heart. And especially when you're a Christian, you become more and more vulnerable. But you become more and more open with your heart if you're a real Christian. Because you want to be like Christ, amen? But that all makes for the vulnerability of ending up saying, you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to fly away from here. You know that old song about I'll fly away? This is a different kind of fly away. This is I want to get out of town. I can't take it anymore. I'm done with this. I cannot endure what I'm going through and some minister here, hear this, people I trusted in fussing and messing with me and stabbing me in the back, hurting me. And Satan does all of that to try to bring us to a place that we'll run away from the place where God has put us. But where are you going to run to? Because no matter where you run, you got to bring yourself. And if the problem is in your heart, wherever you go, you got the problem. So, am I right here? In other words, you can't run away from the thing that God has called you to do, the place he has asked you to stand in, the responsibility that he's given you. You can't run away from that. Can I fight for someone here tonight? Please do not run away. It's always too soon to quit. It's always too soon to quit. Always too soon. Don't quit, don't run away. Yeah, but you don't know. I know I don't know, but don't run away because running away solves nothing. You'll run away into a deeper problem than the problem you even have now. And that's why this Psalm, now God inspired this Psalm because he knows what we would go through in our marriages, with our children, in our jobs, in our workplace, schools, family stuff. And then the Psalmist says, no, I'm not going to run. He says this, cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never let the righteous fall. The righteous person here is really the person who puts their trust in God. Cast your cares upon the Lord. Now, brothers and sisters, we said it 10 times. We'll say it 10,000 more times. Either I'm going to carry it or God's going to carry it. Either you're going to carry it or God's going to carry it. Casting your cares upon the Lord in the original languages, both Hebrew and Greek, means to actually take the thing and put it on him so that it frees you up. And a lot of times we do that in prayer, but our prayer isn't in trust and in faith. And what we do is we give it to him and then before we just get to Smith Street, we take it back and say, I got to carry this thing. How many want to cast all your cares on the Lord tonight? That is a spiritual transaction that is life transforming. It's not as easy as it seems. You know, just cast your cares upon the Lord, but there's something about us. These things stick to us. But as it sticks to you, it weighs you down and you want to run. If anybody's here tonight who has been tempted to want to run and flee and fly away, a dove is usually a good symbol in the Bible, but not here. Dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, but not in Psalm 55. Oh, that I could fly away like a dove, you can't. You're not a bird, you're a human being. And God wants you to stay where you are. Do what he called you to do because he will sustain you. He will never let the righteous fall. Can we put our hands together and say that? Come on, God will never let us. Say it with me. Cast your cares on the Lord. He will sustain you. When will he sustain you? When you cast your cares upon the Lord. Don't you get the relationship? If you're gonna worry yourself to death, how can he sustain you? You gotta cast your cares upon the Lord and he will sustain you. Say the last line. He will never. He will never let the righteous fall. Okay. So I want our missionaries and all the pastors that are here in the building, come up and stand in the front. Pastors and deacons and deaconesses, come up quick on the steps here. But I want all the missionaries and other visiting pastors, we're honored to have you here today. But anybody here in the balcony or downstairs, Pastor Simba, you read my mail, God read my mail. I sometimes feel like I can't take it. I wanna run away. So those verses were for me. I wanna let God know I am not running. I am trusting. I'm gonna stand and trust. Come out of your seats. Stand behind these good pastors and leaders. And we'll pray for you in closing. Just get up here and stand behind them and say, I've been tempted to run. I've said in my heart, oh, that I could fly away and just get out of here. I can't take it. No, no, no, that's not God. That's the enemy. He's gonna help you. Everybody repeat after me. Dear God, we surrender our past to you. Not only our sins, but our successes. Thank you for them. But it's a new day. We surrender today to you. Help us to obey your every leading. We surrender our futures to you. All our plans, everything we want. We lay it on the altar. Let your will be done. Thank you for loving us. And we love you back. And we praise you. And we honor you. Amen. Everyone just lift up your hand one last time and open your mouth. And just praise him for 30 seconds. Come on, pastors, everyone, let's do that. That's why we have a voice to praise him. We give you the calves of our lips. The fruit of our lips praises to your name. We're not ashamed. We're not embarrassed. We're not self-conscious. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall be on my lips. And now Father, I pray that the love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit would be with all your people. Get us home safely. No accidents, no muggings, no thefts, no anything. Get us home safely with traveling mercies. And when I and everyone else lays our head on the pillow, would you remind us one last time to praise you, Lord? So that one of our last words at night is thank you, Jesus. We pray it in Jesus' name. And everyone said. God bless you. Turn around, hug a bunch of people, okay?