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The River ChurchSermons

Justin Dean · 7 Jun 2026

Justin Dean · Sunday, 7 June 2026 · 50:22 · 7,341 words

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The sermon confronts the delusion of independence, showing how we are dependent on many things and people. Using Psalm 62, the speaker explains that waiting on the Lord is an act of submission and reverence, recognizing God’s power and our need for Him. Listeners are challenged to move from self‑reliance to trust in God, examine their hearts, and respond with repentance, especially during communion. The message calls for a posture of dependence on God as our rock, salvation, and fortress.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

wait 63 dependent 20 independence 12 submission 15 lord 94 dependence 10 fortress 12 silence 13 move 23 shaken 11 fear 20 communion 12

Topics

Salvation 7 The Holy Spirit 4 Prayer 3 Atonement & Sacrifice 2

Scripture referenced 12

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Psalms 62 4:31 Psalms 62 4:38 Psalms 62 5:27 Psalms 62 6:05 Psalms 62 6:27 Psalms 62:1-2 6:34 Psalms 62:5 6:34 Psalms 62:5 6:52 Psalms 62 17:09 1 Corinthians 11 44:33 1 Corinthians 11:27 44:33 Psalms 62 47:23

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

saying something maybe controversial, maybe you'll disagree with me, but the more and more that I've

thought about it, it's kind of a working hypothesis, but the more and more I thought about it, the more

and more I think that it is true. One of the greatest delusions that I think that we face in

our lives is the delusion of independence, that we can be independent people. Now, when I first

thought about that, when I was toying around this idea of what independence looked like,

I started to think about the value that we place on independence, right? So much of our lives we

structure around basically only being dependent on ourselves, right? We want to be independent

people. We want to function on our own. We want to be self-sufficient, right? And so there is this

value of independence that we place on our lives. And in some way, we can be so independent that we

don't have to rely on anyone but us. But the more and more that I thought about this idea of

dependence versus independence, the more and more I've seen how dependent on things,

other than me, I am. Just this morning, in between the moment that I was asleep in my bed

till the time I got to the church this morning, I was dependent on my phone to wake me up. I was

dependent on my hot water heater to provide a nice warm shower for me this morning. I was dependent

on my car to drive me here. I was at the grocery store this morning picking up a snack. I had to.

And I was dependent on the grocery store to have my snack and the person stocking shelves to actually

put it on the shelf so I didn't have to go searching back in their storage. I was dependent

on the self-checkout to work because I didn't want to interact with anyone this morning

till I had my snack. I was dependent on the bank to tell my card that it actually had money on it.

I was dependent on the technology of my card to work. I was dependent on all these things just

before I got here. I was dependent on my wife to make sure that my kid got here because I

trust her to take care of that on Sunday mornings. My mind is so scattered on Sunday morning, right?

There's so many different things that we have to be dependent of in our lives, yet we formulate our

whole world around this idea of independence. Specifically, I think when it comes to this idea

of our emotions, when it comes to our relationships, when it comes to our relationships, when it comes to

our worries, our fears, our anxieties, all these things we place in this mindset of independence.

Either I don't want to be a burden, or I don't want to be a burden on other people, or I want

to feel self-sufficient. There's this value of independence that we put as much as we can

on our own strength and power as a show, maybe to ourselves, maybe to the people in

our world. But there, this man David, he was a man of great strength and power. When I think about

David, sometimes he gets kind of this, this rap for being this super emotional, super needy guy.

But when you look at the life of David, both in his accomplishment, in his work, in his person,

he was a man of incredible strength and power. He killed Goliath. He conquered,

he conquered nations. He was a man after God's own heart. He was king of Israel, a man of strength

and power. He has something very insightful to say on this topic of independence or dependence.

And we see it come out through his praise to the Lord in Psalm 62. And so we're going to be looking

at Psalm 62 this morning, but let's pray before we, before we turn to God's word. Lord,

we turn to you this morning. Lord, we are dependent on your Holy Spirit this morning

to illuminate, teach us your word. Lord, each and every person in this room, me included, is so

dependent on your Holy Spirit to teach us, Lord. And I pray that you would show up in a mighty way,

Lord, that you would grow us, that you would help us to handle your word rightly, and that you would

call us to,

be transformed this morning because of it. In your precious and holy name, Jesus' name, amen.

So, like I said, we're in Psalm 62, and we're in this series of psalms where we're looking at

all these different psalms and the practical application that comes out of the, the picture

in praise, in, in lament, in worship, in prayer, all these different ways that the psalms play out.

And we see these characters of God, these characteristics of God, and what they teach

us for our lives. And then we look at the practical application of how to begin to work those things

out. And so in Psalm 62, it's a very rich passage. There's two stanzas in this, this psalm that I

really want us to look at because I think they drive home the greater point of what David is

saying. And they stick out to me because they give this picture of this heart posture of one

who fears the Lord and therefore is dependent on him. And so take a look, Psalm 62, we're going to

go verse one and two, and then we're going to jump down to verse five. It says this,

for God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my

My fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken. Verse five, for God alone, oh, my soul, wait in silence

for my hope is in him. He, he only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken

on God, rest my salvation and my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge in God. And so here we see that

David is writing this psalm.

And he is both sharing the reality of what is true and then exhorting himself. He's looking to say,

hey, David, this is him talking to himself, David, my soul, here is what you need to do. Here's the

truth. Here is the intelligence, the mind. And then let's connect that to the action. And so he

starts off by saying, for God alone, my soul waits in silence. And then verse five, for God alone,

my soul waits in silence for my hope is in him. And so he looks, he says, this is the truth. We are

called to wait on the Lord because he is these things. This is the only one for God alone. He

alone does these things. He alone is salvation. He alone is my rock. He alone is my fortress.

This is true. This is his character. This is the God we worship. And then he says,

soul, do this. Now, David, do this. What this points to is sometimes we can have a head knowledge

of things and it doesn't always translate to a practical living of those things. So it's the

reminder that sometimes our prayer is simply looking to God's word, praying God's word and

praying that our heart would be conformed to his word because it a lot of times does anything but

that.

But what he says,

here, he looks and he says, all right, here's what we're called to do. Here's the character of

God. And here is what I need to do. And that picture is to wait on the Lord, specifically

wait on the Lord in silence. Some of you are like, those might be my two least favorite things in the

world. Waiting and silence, right? Like, uh, I do not ever live in silence, right? I'm riding in the

car. I have a podcast on, or I have music on. I'm falling asleep. I keep the TV on, right? Whatever

it is, when the moments where even the normal people would be silent, I'm looking and saying

like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't, I don't, I'm not sure I like, like silence here, right? Many of us

are uncomfortable by silence. If I were to sit up here and I was quiet for 30 seconds, it would

feel like an eternity to some of you, probably to many of you. You'd be looking and say, um, is he

ever going to talk? Right? That's very weird. Pastor, aren't you supposed to get up there and

be preaching and you're not saying anything, right? It would be very odd. And then the idea

of waiting is even worse for many of us. Patience is something that is a foreign concept to us.

I love, uh, one of the best movie scenes, I think, encapsulates

this feeling in my heart towards patience is that scene with the sloths in the DMV in Zootopia,

right? If you've seen that movie, you know exactly what I'm saying, because even that movie scene

frustrates me. I'm like, can we just get on to the next part of the movie, right? Like,

there is this, they're just moving so slow, and you know, the main character is like, uh, can we,

can we get this going? Can we get this going? Can we get this going? I feel like that all the time,

right? And so that, those ideas of,

waiting and silence are so uncomfortable to us because, and here's where I'm going to take this

to a place that I think many of you are going to be like, what? Because this idea of waiting on the

Lord is really of submission. We've talked a lot about this idea of waiting on the Lord,

of relying on the Lord, of Him being these things in our lives, but I want to take a look this

morning at the heart behind waiting on the Lord. This waiting on the Lord, it is an act of

submission. And here's, here's why I say this, because you do not wait on people that you are

either on, that you are unwilling to either submit to or that you deeply care about. And here's my

example. If someone called you and asked you to wait at the church till they showed up,

hey, like you got a phone call, you walk out of gathering, you had a phone call, and they say,

I need you to just wait at the church till I get there. The question that I would ask is,

who would you actually wait for and how long would you wait for them? And here's, here, I'll give you

three examples of people that I either would or wouldn't wait for. So the first one, if I got a

call from someone who was spam calling me, right? I get a call and they're like, your Microsoft

account has been hacked, or your Google account has been hacked, or your Facebook account has been

hacked. I need you to get a bunch of gift cards and to wait here at the church for me to get there

in a couple hours. I just wait until I get there. I'll be like, yeah, sure, buddy. Click, you know,

like, hang up. I will not even wait a second, maybe like a couple seconds to see if I'll have

an interesting experience that day. But I'm definitely not waiting around, right? Because

I neither care about that nor submit to that in any authority,

or reality under the sun, right? I'm just not doing that. There's no way, right? I don't believe

that. I'm not going to give you gift cards. Like, there's so much wrong with that situation. I'm not

waiting, right? Then, imagine that Pastor Josh Combs, our lead pastor at the church, my boss,

calls me and he says, Justin, I need you to wait at the church until I get there. Wait at the

Davidson location until I get there. Okay, now I'm waiting, right? My boss calls me and he says,

wait at the church. And he doesn't give me any context. He doesn't tell me what's going on.

Something important must be happening. And also, it's my boss. I'm not going to just not do what

my boss tells me to do. And so, I will wait. But there does come a point where eventually I'm going

to go home, right? I'm not going to grab my sleeping bag and camp out here until Josh gets

here. It's just, maybe some of you have that much respect for your boss. God, the Lord is with you.

The Lord is still working on that in me, right? Look, at some point, it's like, Josh, you just

didn't show up, man. Like, I got a kid. I got a wife. I got to be home with them, right? I can hang

out here for a while. But especially if you're not calling me back or not texting me back, I'm not

hearing anything, right? I'm going to take off. Now, my wife, Meg, calls me. Imagine she's not

here this morning. She's here. But she calls me and says, hey, I need you to wait at the church

for me. I am camping out here, right? Because my wife, Meg, is not here. I'm camping out here. I'm

going to go out searching for her, right? Because it's that important, right? She is my wife. If I'm

not hearing from her, she's not responding to me, right? Something's wrong. I need to go find her.

I'm going to track her phone. I'm going to do whatever I can to go and find her because I need

to figure out what's going on. Why? Because I care deeply about her. Because she matters in my life.

And so this idea of waiting on the Lord, it shows both our act of submission in the authority of

the Lord and our deep care and love and desire of the Lord. Why? Because we will look and we will

wait. And so then comes the question, well, why do we submit? And here is a concept that many people

view as foreign to them and many are uncomfortable with. There is a natural fear that we should have

in the Lord. Now, when we hear that word fear, we think of it in a very negative context. This

idea of a tyrannical fear that if we don't obey God, that he will just zap us, right? The wrath

of God be like, all right, you just wait. You know, you're gone. That is not how the Lord works.

If you are a believer in the Lord, you know that you have been saved from the wrath of God,

which we're going to talk about a little bit later. But there is this fear of the Lord is

this anxiety, worry about God. It is a deep reverence for God. A wonderful honor comes out of

a recognition of who God is versus who we are. This fear of the Lord, it's this recognition

that God is the things that we see in God's words. Specifically, if you want to look at Psalm 62,

look at the ways,

that God is described here. This rock of salvation, this fortress. Our God is someone who is not

shaken. Someone that our hope is in, that our salvation rests. And there's this wonderful

picture of his glory, his majesty, and his power. We look at the ways that God is described,

and then we look at us. We are just simply not those things.

And it's okay, because none of us are those things. We are not unshaken. We're not. We are not

the source of salvation. We're not. We are not. I don't think I would classify any of us in this room

as a mighty fortress, right? There are all these things. When we talk about the glory, and the

majesty, and the power, those are God. Those are not us. And so we look at God, and we see that he

is all these incredible things. And we see that he is a mighty fortress. And we see that he is a

awesome. And when I say awesome, I don't mean like awesome. I mean like things that keep us in

awe of God. He is so magnificent. He is so wonderful that the only reaction when we look at a God like

that is to simply be in awe. And when we see God as that, and then we look at ourselves, we look

and we say there is a natural reverence, seriousness, and a depth of respect that we have for God. Why?

Because he is so much more than we think. He is so much more than we think. He is so much more than

us. Why? Because we are nothing compared to him. I'll use this example. Regardless of your political

views, if you are standing in the White House, you are going to tread carefully. You're going to be

very careful about what you say, the words you say, right? You're going to be very careful about

the places you go, that you don't wander into places that are off limits. Why? Because you're

the danger you can find yourself in if you start acting like a fool. Like when the best case

scenario is you get kicked out, you know you need to be a little bit careful. You need to tread

carefully. Why? Because you have a natural respect, specifically for the Secret Service

in that moment, right? And so when we look at the Lord, we should have this natural fear and respect

and honor for the Lord that leads us to tread carefully. To tread carefully. Not in a stepping

on eggshells, but in a way that says, I'm going to be very intentional with how I walk. Very

intentional with how I live. I'm going to be very intentional with my priorities. I'm going to be

very intentional with how I handle sin, with where I go to for advice, with how I shape my life,

which,

is how I view the truth of God's Word. All these different things, we begin to look and say,

the fear of the Lord produces in us this value, respect, and reverence for the ways in which God

has called us and is leading us. And so out of this fear of the Lord, it leads us with this humility

towards this submission to God. And that starts in salvation.

If you have confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord and believed in your heart that He has risen from

the dead, you have the salvation of the Lord. If you haven't done that, then my encouragement to you

is to do that this morning. That is an act of humility. That is an act that has to start and

culminate with this idea of the fear of the Lord. Because you look and you say, here is this God who

is so perfect and so holy and so mighty, and I,

I have sinned. I have pursued those things that are against God, and because of my sin,

I have made myself an enemy of God. I'm in trouble, right? That's the fear of the Lord,

the recognition of, I am in deep trouble. Why? Because here's this mighty God, and I've placed

myself at war with Him. I'm losing that war, right? Like, that's just the reality. Like,

the victory is God alone. He is this mighty,

mighty fortress. I am not. And so when I'm at enmity with God, we look and we say,

salvation starts because we say, God, we humbly come to you. We cannot produce our own salvation.

You are the source of salvation. All these things that you see in 62 push this idea of the gospel

when we truly recognize that. Lord, I am not the source of my salvation. Lord, I am not a rock.

Lord, I am not this fortress that is not greatly shaken.

I am not hope. You are these things. And Lord, so I turn to you as the source of these things. And

God gave us that source in His Son, Jesus Christ. Christ came and lived a perfect life,

and He went to the cross, dying on the cross, and on the third day, raising from the dead,

paying the penalty for our sin. He is seen as the source of salvation. He is this fortress.

He is this rock in which all things are founded. He is glory. He is refuge. And so when we go to the

Lord and we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we believe in our hearts that He's risen from the

dead, and that we go and say, Lord, we are sinners in need of salvation, that is humility. That is

the beginning of that submission. And that is a start to that fear of the Lord. Those things do

You do not go to the Lord genuinely and ask those things without those three things. A fear of the

Lord, humility, and a desire to submit to God. So this morning, if you are wrestling with salvation,

check your heart for those three things. If you're like, man, I've been hearing this picture of the

gospel, but I don't know that I'm on board. I can answer your questions till you're blue in the face

until I'm blue in the face. The reality of your relationship with Jesus will,

only start when those three things are present in your life. Then, as we've been given this salvation

and our sins are forgiven and we're saved from the wrath of an almighty God, we are not then just

like, okay, that's where our submission ends. All I got to do is ask for this salvation and I can go

back to my own way of living. And that's where we look and we say, we are called to grow according

to God's word. We are called to be transformed.

All those different things. And so that transformation begins to happen in this

idea of submission, but submission that comes through dependence. Dependence. If you value

your own independence and your own control over your dependence on the Lord, you will have no

natural desire to be obedient to God's word. Because you look and you say, I can figure it out.

I can do these things. I'm strong enough. I don't need help. And so you go on living the way that

you want to live. I don't care what God's word says about truth. Because I can understand. Because I

can figure it out. I don't need God's word to tell me anything. But when you look and you say,

I will wait on the Lord, that plays out in the actual activity of waiting. And what does that

mean? It means that you are dependent on the Lord. This is this heart that David is reminding himself

that he both should have and needs to have. Go back. Read 62 with me. 1 and 2, 5 through 7.

For God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and

my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. Verse 5. For God alone, O my soul,

waits in silence. For my hope is from him. He is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not

be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory. My rock, my refuge is God. He looks and he says,

out of this picture of submission, there is this dependence on having all these things

from God. David doesn't say, I become these things. He goes,

I wait on the Lord and God is these things for me. I can be dependent on God. Why? Because I'm

waiting on him. Now, what does that picture of waiting for him look like? Does this look like,

okay, I wake up in the morning and I lay in bed and I pray. Say, God, tell me when you want me

to get out of bed. Tell me when you want me to get out of bed. Okay, God, I'm not going to get

out of bed until you tell me that I'm going to get out of bed. Right? And I just wait and wait

and wait. All right. And then I feel like God is telling me to get out of bed.

Okay. So I stand up out of bed. All right. God, tell me when to get dressed. Tell me when to get

dressed. Right? We will never get anything done. Right? Like we just won't. Right? And then we get,

we say, all right, all these facets of our life, we're supposed to just sit and we're supposed to

wait in silence till God audibly tells us what to do. No, no, no. This idea of waiting on the

Lord is this dependence on him. It looks like this dedication and all that we do towards

honoring God, seeking his instruction and following the guiding of the Holy Spirit. Let

me say that again. Waiting on God looks like being dedicated in all that we do to honoring God,

seeking his instruction and following the guiding of the Holy Spirit. So you're going to say, okay,

Lord, I don't need to wait for you to tell me to get out of bed. Your word tells me to go and to do

things. Right? So I need to go and to do things. I need to go and to do things. I need to go and to

do. But as I go and I do these things, I will go with this mindset that I will honor God in all

that I do. That as I walk through my life, I will seek instruction on how to live. And as the Holy

Spirit shows up in my life and guides me, convicts me, calls me to do things, I will do them. So

in the way in which God has called you to go, how do you know how to do that? This. That's why I told

you, you need to have a Bible. You need to be reading your Bible. Why? Because if you want to

wait on the Lord, wait on the Lord in his word. He gives you instruction. This gives you the

characteristics of how to live your life. But then we look and say, when God speaks, I move. I am

according to his word, how it calls me to live in the character of my life. And I wait on the Lord

because when he speaks, when the Holy Spirit moves in my life, I will go and do that. How did this

look in my life? I was at home in Florida. Many of you love to vacation in Florida. I'll be honest,

I don't see it. It's just so hot down there. I was living in Florida. I was around my family. I love

my family. I'm working in a church down there and I get a call from Pastor Caleb. Hey, I think you

should come and do

youth ministry up here in Michigan. Caleb, I don't know anyone in Michigan. Like, you're the only

one, right? Like, I don't have any family there. I like doing youth ministry, but it's not like

the most awesome, greatest thing of all time. Like, why? I think the Lord's calling you. Well,

I don't like that answer. No, that's how, that was not my response, right? But I look and we say,

okay, if, if, if he's feeling the Lord's calling him, maybe I should seek the Lord if the Lord's

calling me. Here I am eight years later. I don't know that I would have chosen to show up to Michigan

right? If I'm picking my destination. You guys don't even really have that good of sports teams.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Some of you are like, oh, I'm picking a

different location. Uh, no, but, but I look and say, this is where the Lord has called me. And so

when the Lord speaks, I move. In the major and in the minor, when I'm driving, pulling off the

interstate and I see someone sitting there with a sign and the Holy Spirit convicts me to give,

I give. When I begin to see things

in my life that are not congruent with God's word and the Holy Spirit is convicting me and people in

my life are convicting me and telling me, hey, we see this, this doesn't match up. That's the Lord

speaking. I move. I change those things. I do those things. Why? Because I'm waiting on the

Lord. And when the Lord shows up, I will move. That's what I look like. When I have this proper

fear of the Lord, this proper humility of the Lord, this proper submission to God, I look and say,

you because you are these things in my life. If I'm doing the things contrary to you, then no wonder

I feel greatly shaken because the person who is the source of my refuge, my strength, this thing

that protects me from being greatly shaken, I've chosen to do the things contrary to what he's

called me to do. And so on and so forth. And so we look and we say, Lord, when you call me to do

things, I will move. Lord, you're calling me to get involved with the growth community or lead

a growth community or volunteer at the church. Lord, I will do those things. Lord, you're calling

me to be more consistent in prayer and reading your word. Lord, I will do it. I will. I will

move. Lord, you're calling me to change careers. I will move reluctantly, but I will move. There is

this picture of waiting on the Lord. I think it is so greatly seen in David and the accepting of

being king. He knew

that there was going to be danger that came with that. And he was reluctant. He may have been

reluctant more so or less so, but the reality is there was a lot of fear I would imagine in that,

especially as he's running from Saul, the king, literally trying to kill him. But he looks, he

says, I will move. I will do what you've called me to do, Lord. So that's the first picture of

waiting on the Lord. The second picture of waiting on the Lord is when life hits, I will trust in

him, not me. So I wait to hear from the Lord. And how

do I wait in the Lord? According to his word, when he shows up, I will move. And when I'm in need of

him to move, I will trust that he will. I will trust that he will provide. I will trust that he

will take care. I will trust that he is these things. He is my fortress that I shall not be

greatly shaken. I will trust that he is my rock and my salvation, that in him I have hope, that he

is a God full of glory.

That when it looks like there is no hope, when it looks like there are things that are coming for me

that would normally shake me, I trust and say, God, I can trust that you will handle these things.

Maybe that's through me and I will work and do things, but I will not fret. I will not fear

because I trust in you or whether that's through miraculous and mighty means. The Lord is working

on your pastor in this, I will say. A couple of weeks ago, my dad was in the hospital. I

got a call, 1 p.m. on a Tuesday from my mom, who's a teacher. And I was like, oh no, something's wrong.

Step out of the meeting I was in, answer the phone. She's like, hey, your dad's at the hospital.

He's having some stuff go on. We don't really know what's going on. Now, my dad is typically

the pillar and the stable one in my family. And so there was immediately a sense of being shaken

in me. So I was like, oh no, what's about to happen? We don't know. And my idea of how to handle this

was independence, not dependence. I went through the rest of my day and I acted like nothing was

the matter. I asked a couple of people to pray for me here and there, but I tried to not show

in any way that there was turmoil inside of me, that I was fretting. I preached at a recovery

gathering. I tried to preach as if nothing changed. I pull into my house late that night and I'm sitting

upstairs. My wife comes in. She's like, she didn't have to say much. She goes, how are you doing? First response, I'm

doing good. I'm fine. I'm handling it. And then she just kind of waited, kept looking at me. And

then I start kind of just really vomiting out my emotions to her. You know, I'm really afraid. What

happens if something happens? What happens to the church that my dad's leading? What happens to

my mom? Does she move up with here? Do we move down there to her? Like, we need to make sure

that she's taken care of. What happens with their bills? What happens with funeral arrangements? Who

speaks at the funeral? Please don't ask me to speak at the funeral, right? All these things,

I started picturing a million miles down the road at the worst situation, and I start inserting

myself as the solution, as the one that bears all the burdens. Well, I guess we're going to have to

handle this. Meg, I think I might need to fly down there, take care of things. Just thing after thing

after thing. I'll do this. I'll do this. I'll take care of it here. I'll do these things, right?

Putting the dependence on me. And I don't even really know exactly the words she said, but she

basically just said, slow down. In my mind,

she, this is so weird, but it was like, I was a horse that was just moving a thousand miles. She

was like, whoa, like, just calm down. You know, like that, because that's just me. I just feel

this restlessness and the way that she, she, like this beast. I don't, because I don't know how to

control it a lot of times because I want to be independent. And she comes in as just this

comforting voice, a voice given through the Holy Spirit. As much as I would love to give that credit

to her, the Lord was using her in a mighty way in that moment. So look and say, be dependent. Stop

being the one. Stop thinking that everything needs to be dependent on you in this moment.

Rely on me. Trust in me. That doesn't mean ignore your family. That doesn't mean don't do some of

the things that you think need to be done. But there is such a fear and a trouble in your spirit.

Why? Because you are seeing you as the thing

that it all depends on. There's the most just visceral picture of how to live out this passage.

Just wait on the Lord. Man, it's about difficult. Then in those moments, right, when life just hits

you, we look and say, I'm not going to trust in my capability because I fail. I'm not going to

trust in my character because I'm not perfect. I'm not going to trust in my security and my

emotional well-being because all those things are fleeting and easily shaken. But we will trust in

where things are outside of our control. When we feel the worry and the anxiety and the struggle

and the fear and the fret, step into our hearts. We will look and say, I trust in him, not me. I

depend on him, not me. And I will work in my dependence on him. I will do these things, not

with this idea that I'm going to fix it all, but that he will do these things in my life through me

or around me or in my life. And I will do these things in my life. And I will do these things in

spite of me. And so we look and we say, Lord, when you speak, I move. And when life hits, I trust.

When you speak, I move. And when life hits, I trust in you, not me. The last piece of submission

this morning comes in the form of repentance. In all this, we see that the tendencies of our hearts

are not to do these things, are to be filled with pride, not humility, to be self-reliant and not

reliant on him, to be stubborn and resistant to the ways that he's calling us to move rather than

moving gladly. And so when we see those things and we live out that opposition, that sin in our

lives, there is the call in submission to repent. And that is the connection of that head knowledge

to the heart knowledge. That's really what David's doing here is he is trying to foster

repentance in his own soul. Because he looks, he says, I know these things and I need to do these

things. And so in our lives, we look and we say, here are the things that God calls me to. And here

are the ways that they are not congruent. They're not the same. They're not overlapping. They're not

symmetrical. That needs to change. And that submission happens in repentance, which is

sometimes we use the word repentance. It's a very churchy word. What that word

means is a confession of sin, a confession of wrongdoing, and then the action of turning the

other way, of doing the thing that God has called us to. It's a twofold. And so this picture of

repentance is so wonderfully seen in the action of communion. And so this morning, we're going to

take some time in communion. And I love how Paul gives the

Corinthian church these instructions for communion, because he says, be very careful how you walk

in communion. When you look and say, I've been united with God, and I reflect on the way in which

he lives, or he calls us to live, and I'm going to live that way. He says, be very careful. This is

what he says, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, starting in verse 27. It's going to be on the screen. I know

I didn't give you a lot of time to turn there. It says this, whoever therefore eats the bread or

an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person

examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks

without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. And so this time is a time

of reflection, of examination of our hearts, that we submit to God in this moment, in this moment,

moment of repentance, that as we together take communion, that we look and we say, Lord, I'm going

to stop, and I'm going to reflect. I'm going to say, show me, show me the ways in which my life is not

the ways in which you're calling me to live. Lord, confess, and I turn away, I repent. And then we're

unified in that, in communion. Now, it's important as we talk about communion, that we know that

communion is a very symbolic,

act, right? It's symbolic in Christ's death for us, his sacrifice for us on the cross for the

forgiveness of our sins. And so we do this, we take the bread, and in this case, the grape juice,

we take of that so that we can reflect on that sacrifice in a very symbolic way that helps us to

really see in a wonderful way his sacrifice for our forgiveness, so that we can

be united with him. And so here at the River Church, we don't have membership, so we have what's called

open communion. So if you have confessed that Jesus Christ is your Lord, and you have, and you

believe in your heart that he has risen from the dead, you are welcome to take communion with us.

I give you the same warning that Paul gives to the Corinthians. Do not do it in an unworthy manner.

Do not do it flippantly. Do not do it just because you don't want to be the one or the five

people without taking communion. To do it with a very sober heart, a heart of submission, submitting

to repentance. So I'm going to pray, the band's going to come up and sing, and that's that time

of repentance. Don't feel obligated to sing. Maybe for you it's sitting and praying. Maybe for you

it's opening up your Bible, maybe reading back through this passage in Psalm 62. When you feel

like you have examined your heart, when you feel like you've walked through that submission of

come down front and grab the elements and then hold them because we'll take them together at the

end. Well, let's pray as we move into this time. Lord, you are so worthy. You are so mighty. You

are so awesome. You are so majestic. You are so perfect and pure. Lord, and we are so not. Lord,

and we wait on you. We submit to you. Lord, produce in us this proper fear of the Lord that we may walk,

in your ways carefully and steadfastly. Lord, that we would continually submit to you, Lord,

and we thank you that you've given us a way to submit to you in the gospel and that you've given

us guidance and calling and instruction in your word. And I pray that you'd help us to submit

there as well. Lord, that we would look to your word, that we would seek you in prayer,

that we would look and say, God, when you speak, we move. Lord, and that when life hits and we want

to fall back into this tendency of self-reliance and independence, Lord, that we would instead

give that delusion up to be dependent on you, to wait on you, to move, to look to you, to be our

rock, to be our salvation, to be our hope, to be what leads us to be being unshaken because you

are mighty. Lord, I pray for this time of communion that you would help us to repent, to reflect,

on our lives, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would spit into our hearts and with a magnifying glass

show us the places in our lives that aren't congruent with your word, Lord, or your call

in our lives, Lord, and that we would repent of those things, seek your forgiveness, be restored

living differently. Pray for this time of reflection that you would keep us focused, keep out distraction,

you would help us to practice this picture of waiting on you. We love you. In the precious and holy name of Jesus' name.