Live Free with Josh Howerton - Choosing God's Presence over Pressure • Pastor Levi Lusko | Ep. 313 | Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

We all experience pressure in our lives. Sometimes it’s a good thing; sometimes it feels bad. What can we do when we experience the pressure of fear, anxiety or lack of control? In the presence of God, we can experience the fullness of joy and peace that surpasses all understanding. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.com. dot church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey Lake Point Church. My name is Levi Lesko, and I'm so excited to be back with you again today on the Daily Drive with Lake Point Church podcast.

I don't know what every time gets me about joining you this week on, and then I just like, my brain goes, go, go, go, go, anyhow, we're going to get through this together. It's been an honor this week to open up scriptures with you. And I want to talk to you today from a beautiful text. That's Psalm chapter 84. And I want to talk to you about choosing presence over pressure. That was at the beginning of this year, what I felt like God really gave me as my focus. I know a lot of times we pick words for the year. And as last year was ending, 20, 23, was ending, I felt like he gave me the word courageous.

And I wanted to walk in courage this year. But then as the new year began, it really began to become clear to me what that courage was going to look like. And it was going to be the courage to choose presence. over pressure. Now, of course, when we talk about pressure, that's not to insinuate that we're not going to experience pressure. Obviously, pressure in a certain sense is unavoidable. In fact, it's actually desirable, really.

If your heart is beating, you should check, because I would hate to be speaking this to a dead person, right? You can't have that. Yep, you feel that? That's because there's blood. pressure. It's pressure that keeps our blood flowing through our circulatory system. If you are driving right now while you're listening to this, if so, 10 and 2, hands on the wheel, baby. It's because you have pressure in your tires. So there's a sense in which we want and need

pressure. And so it is when it comes to faith. Serving God, there's going to be pressure. If you serve on team, if you're sharing your faith, if you're giving, if you're leading in any capacity, there's going to be opposition. The Bible talks about, you know, a great door was opened up to me, but there was also many adversaries. The country preacher way of saying that would be new levels, new devils, right? The more we do for God, the more the enemy opposes us. Why did God have Satan coming to him saying, I would like to sift Peter as wheat, or come to God saying, I would like permission to attack you? Which is really insightful, by the way, whatever you're facing, God approved it. So that should give you a confidence in going through it,

that if it got to you, it had to go through him. I personally wish God oftentimes would say no when the devil comes in. Like, hey, God, I'd like to attack Job or Peter or Levi in this way. I'm like, God, have you considered just saying no? But whatever he allows, it's because he wants to use it in his providence and in his sovereignty to accomplish his purposes that he might receive glory and that we might walk in strength and in joy so we can confidently face whatever he allows to come our way. And that's going to feel like pressure, okay?

So when I say pressure is bad and presence is good, I'm not saying all pressure goes away. I'm talking about the negative aspects of pressure. What do you mean? Let's define our terms a little bit. I'm talking about the pressure of panic. I'm talking about the pressure of anxiety. I'm talking about the pressure of fear, right? And we know those things aren't from the Lord because Scripture tells us clearly that God did not give us a spirit of fear.

but of power and love and of a sound mind. So fear then becomes our choice to sort of white-knuckle things. You know what I'm talking about. I need to make this happen. Our culture is preoccupied and obsessed with manifesting. Everyone's loving this idea of I need to manifest this dream. I need to manifest this future. I need to make this happen, which puts the pressure all right here, right?

That thought of like, I have to make this. to conjure this up. That is going to inevitably, and you would expect for where that to be prevailing or sort of secular looking at things, for there to be rising levels of anxiety. And surprise, surprise, there certainly are. So that's the kind of pressure that I'm talking about. I'm talking about something else being in God's seat, something else being on God's throne. What's the alternative? The alternative to that kind of pressure is the presence of the Lord. Now let's come to Psalm chapter 84 to look at what the sons of Cora said about presence. How lovely is your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts.

My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young. Even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God. blessed are those who dwell in your house. They will still be praising you. Selah.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. The rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength, each one appearing before God in Zion. Oh, Lord of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. O God, behold our shield and look upon the face of your anointed. Here we go.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. I don't feel like there's a lot of pressure in God's presence. What is there instead that we find when it's no longer on us, when it's no longer about us. It's not me manifesting my future, conjuring up my dreams, making it all happen. It's no longer about me and mine.

It's about him. It's about his. It's about his kingdom, his power, his glory. What happens in God's presence? We experience peace. Isaiah 263, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts you. There is nothing like the person. presence of God. My first experience with it when I had first given my life to Christ as a teenager,

was at a prayer meeting where I discovered what the sons of Cora were trying to put language to, the sense of time standing still almost. It was a group of teenagers. We were in a youth group prayer meeting. And I was, I don't know, transported to the third heaven. I don't know what exactly happened. But while we were praying, I just sensed God. It's God. It's God. it's peace. I sensed him there in the room. I sensed a great sense of comfort and warmth and his holiness and how I fit in the grand scheme of things created to bring him praise. I felt like almost like I was having an outside of body experience. And walking away from that moment, I felt like the psalm says, I would rather have a day in your courts than a thousand anywhere else.

Eugene Peterson translates that verse this way. I'd rather scrub floors in God's house. then spend thousands of days lying on a Greek beach somewhere on an island, right? Because in God's presence is fullness of joy at his right hand are pleasures evermore. There's a sense in which we get to drink from a river of delight and no joy, no ecstasy to be found in sexual addiction or sin, in looking to a drug to bring some high. Nothing can hold a candle to what is found, the fullness of joy in the presence of God. So what of the anxiety then? What of the anxiety that comes from the pressure

when it's all about us, when it's all for us? Well, that can only inevitably lead to anxiety because, as Augustine put it, anxiety is the result of our over-love for good things. What does that mean? That means that the reason we feel anxiety is because we've put something into God's place,

that can't do God's job. Your career, your marriage, your perfect little family, your kids going off to college and playing club soccer and this, this deal, those are all good things in their own way. Sex is a good thing. Money is a good thing. All these things are just, they're all able to accomplish God's purposes and agenda if they're used as tools to worship him and not as the center of worship.

But once we put any of those things into God's category, it's going to crumble because it can't handle the weight of your soul. and so you'll start to feel that anxiety. So the power of God's presence, it's like nothing else that you can ever experience. God being with you, God being near to you, in the fire with you like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedigo experienced. God always there, God before me, God behind me, God inside me,

wonder of wonders, that Christ is in me, the hope of glory and that Christ is in God. Just this thought of, I'm a part of what's forever. I'm a part of what has no end God's kingdom. Pleasure and peace, presence. What pressure points to, though, is that something else is in God's seat. This is what Martha was kind of exhibiting with Mary. Mary was sitting at God's feet.

Martha was, well, you should tell her to come help me. She had let something else take Jesus's place, her hospitality, her plan. So ministry even can become a part of the idolatry that all of us gravitate towards. So Mary was teaching Martha about sitting at Jesus' feet to be powered so that she could rise and serve him with that heart. Let me end with this question. How do we experience more of God's presence and less of that anxiety? Well, it's a real simple process. You repent from anything you've put into God's place, and then you ask in faith for God to give and show his presence to you.

In fact, that's what we're told, Jesus speaking. My father's a really good dad. If you ask him for bread, he's not going to give you a scorpion. Maybe today, humbly ask for God to let you experience more of his presence. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time.

For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.