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The River ChurchSermons

Grant Grimes · 2 Aug 2026

Grant Grimes · Sunday, 2 August 2026 · 34:18 · 5,738 words

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

The message looks at Psalm 142, where David, fleeing from enemies, hides in a cave and pours out his loneliness and complaints to the Lord. The speaker shows that David’s honest prayer points to God as a refuge and portion even when no one else cares. The sermon then connects this to Jesus, who experienced abandonment and offers true safety and peace. Listeners are invited to bring their own struggles to God, trust Him as their refuge, and glorify Him by living out that trust.

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.

refuge 56 david 72 lord 74 flee 8 king 16 saul 10 cry 13 portion 8 cave 9 land 12 anointed 6 life 46

Topics

Prayer 2 Righteousness 1 Atonement & Sacrifice 1

Scripture referenced 21

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

Psalms 142 0:55 Psalms 142 1:01 Psalms 142 1:14 Psalms 23 3:19 1 Samuel 22 5:06 1 Samuel 22 5:13 1 Samuel 22:1 5:13 1 Samuel 2 5:19 1 Samuel 2:1 5:19 Psalms 142 5:52 Psalms 142 6:30 Psalms 142:1 6:30 Psalms 59 17:01 Psalms 59 17:14 Psalms 59:16 17:14 Psalms 57 17:37 Psalms 18 17:58 Psalms 18:1-30 17:58 Romans 10 29:50 John 16 31:09 Hebrews 13:5 31:15

Transcript

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

Pre-service announcement — 7 lines, 0:35. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Mitchell, and thanks for checking out one of our sermons today.

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Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Well, good morning, everybody. It's great to be here with you.

If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you or introduce myself, my name is Grant Grimes,

and I'm the assistant to our lead elder here at the River Church.

And it is just truly a blessing to be here with you this morning.

I am just so blessed to be able to stand up here and to proclaim God's Word.

And so if you've got a Bible on you, will you open up to Psalm chapter 142 this morning?

Psalm chapter 142.

If you're joining us online or if this is your first time being here with us,

we just want to welcome you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for trying out the river. We're super excited to have you.

Psalm chapter 142.

The psalmist writes,

With my voice I cry out to the Lord.

With my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord.

I pour out my complaint before Him.

I tell my trouble before Him.

When my spirit faints within me, you know my way.

In the path where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me.

Look to the right and see there is none who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains.

No one cares for my soul.

I cry to you, O Lord.

I say you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.

Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low.

Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.

Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

Before we jump into this psalm, you'll see at the top where the chapter heading is.

It says,

It says it's a mascal of David when he was in the cave, a prayer.

Now this would be a part of the actual psalm.

It would be read aloud.

But what a mascal is, is it is a psalm of instruction or wisdom.

A psalm that was meant to when the hearer or the reader read or heard the psalm,

that they would be instructed to do something.

They would receive wisdom.

The psalmist here is King David.

And it says he is in a cave praying to the Lord.

But the question is, who is King David?

Who is King David?

We've read many psalms this series from David.

David is an author of multiple different psalms.

But David was a young Israelite boy who grew up in the nation of Israel.

He was a young shepherd who tended the sheep for his father.

He was essentially the runt of his father's children.

But for David, he valued being a shepherd very highly.

We read in Psalm 23 that he references the Lord as his shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

It is David taking different memories of being a shepherd boy

and relating them to the Lord, that the Lord takes care of him.

The Lord guides him.

The Lord cares for his soul.

David would then have a prophet of God, someone who spoke on behalf of God,

go to where David lived in Bethlehem, and they would speak over David.

They would say that David is going to be the next anointed king.

And so that day in David's life would change the trajectory he thought he was on.

David would go to the palace.

David would go to the palace of the king at the time, King Saul, and he would begin to serve.

He would play music to ease the king's mind.

And one day as everyone was out to battle, David goes and he is bringing food to his brothers.

And the giant Goliath stands and looks over the nation of Israel and challenges someone to fight him.

And David is the one who steps up to honor the Lord.

He goes out to the battlefield, slays the giant, and becomes a hero to the people.

And so what happens is David is welcomed.

He eventually marries one of the king's daughters, and so he becomes royalty with Saul.

But that soon changes for David.

Once Saul figures out that David is the next anointed king, Saul decides that David is a threat to his throne.

And so one night David is fleeing from the palace because Saul has sought to take his life.

What David does from there is he flees to an enemy nation hoping to seek asylum there, but it doesn't work out.

And so David has to flee.

David flees to a place called Adullam, and as we'll see when we turn to 1 Samuel chapter 22, that's where he resides.

If you'd turn to 1 Samuel chapter 22 in verse 1.

1 Samuel chapter 2 in verse 1.

It says,

David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.

And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him.

And everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt and everyone who was bitter in soul gathered to him.

And he became commandment.

And there were with him about 400 men.

Now I want you to mark that in your Bible and go back to Psalm chapter 142.

What is going on in David's life is that David is fleeing from Saul.

His own father-in-law has sought to take his life.

And so David has ultimately gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

David is not an ordinary man.

He was a man that was known throughout the kingdom for slaying the giant.

He was a leader of men in the battlefield.

But things have taken a turn.

David is now the outcast of society.

He is a fugitive in his own nation.

And so David begins in verse 1 of Psalm 142 to explain his prayer to the Lord.

He says,

David essentially brings the reader along in his prayer to God.

He says,

We see that David doesn't hold anything back from God.

If we look closely at those two verses, we see he cries to the Lord.

He pleads for mercy.

He pours out his complaints.

And he tells the Lord his troubles.

In the first two verses, we see the raw, emotional, honest David with the Lord.

He doesn't go to God and say,

Lord, life hasn't been.

I've been peachy recently.

I'm hoping that you can do something.

But he goes to God and says,

Lord, I'm in distress.

I am crying.

I'm pleading for mercy.

He is complaining to the Lord.

And I know many of us, when we hear complaining to the Lord,

there's a little shudder within us because we think we can't do that.

But David lays everything out before God.

He begs for his life.

And he shares his burdens with his heavenly Father.

Look back at verse 3.

It says,

When my spirit faints within me,

you know,

my way.

In the path where I walk,

they have hidden a trap for me.

Look to the right and see.

There is none who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me.

No one cares for my soul.

David's prayer persists.

He doesn't just throw this somewhat of a prayer up to the Lord,

and it's general,

and it's not super descriptive.

No, he goes to God,

and he begins to lay out his current circumstance.

He begins to give the Lord a detailed list of grievances David has with his life.

He says that the very spirit within him begins to faint,

meaning that he is spiritually exhausted.

He's spiritually tapped.

He doesn't know how much further he can go,

how much he can continue on with the plan that the Lord has for his life.

We can imagine that as David,

as the next anointed king of Israel,

he would be thinking that he would be living the high life once he was anointed.

And yet now he is fleeing from his own family.

He's fleeing from his own nation,

hiding in a cave.

His enemies have,

have entrapped him.

His own nation has turned against him.

As I had spoken of earlier,

David was a commander for the military,

meaning that the very people Saul sent to kill David were David's own soldiers,

his own friends,

people he would have served alongside of people who would have seen him do wondrous things for the nation.

The very people who,

as we read in first Samuel say,

as David is walking into the kingdom,

Saul has killed his thousands and David,

it has killed his thought,

his 10 thousands,

meaning that the very people that had praised David before are now seeking his life in order to kill him.

Saul wanted to get him out of that cave,

get him out of wherever he was hiding in order to kill him.

I really want you to pay attention to what David says in verse four.

he says,

look to the right and see there is none who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me.

No one cares for my soul.

David says,

look to the right.

And when we read that at first,

we might be thinking,

okay,

well,

he's just showing that no one's standing there.

But for a king at this time,

for someone who was in the palace,

if you were looking at the throne room and you look to the right of the king,

it was a symbol of power,

It was the strong hand for most kings.

And so when David says,

look to my right and no one is there.

He is saying that there's no advisor.

There's no protector.

There's no legal counsel that a king ought to have.

David looks at himself and goes,

I'm the next anointed king,

but there's no one with me.

There's no one that cares about me.

There's no one who sees my situation.

There's no one who is going to help me out of this cave.

I'm alone.

There's no one to help him seek relief.

He's utterly alone and has no one to provide for him.

As I was reading through this,

I began to wonder how many of us are in David's situation.

We feel like no one is there to care for us.

We feel like we're just crying,

to get through life,

hoping that one day it's going to be better.

You know,

maybe once I get done with school,

you know,

maybe once I'm married,

maybe one day when I have kids or grandkids,

maybe there's some sort of life event that's going to make everything better,

make everything more simple,

make everything the life I want to live.

For many of us,

our life is currently in shambles.

There's things that are cracking.

There are things that aren't working out the way we hope they would.

Maybe for you,

that's a medical diagnosis that you just recently,

got that you're looking at the Lord going,

this isn't,

this isn't what I wanted.

This isn't what I thought was going to happen.

This isn't the life I planned for myself,

or maybe it's a lost job or lost family member or some sort of brokenness that has affected your life.

The list is endless.

Some of us are thinking as we're reflecting on our own lives.

Well,

yeah,

I feel like there's these things going on in my life,

but if someone were to look at my life,

they'd say,

but you're surrounded by people.

You have a life.

You have a loving family.

You have a loving spouse.

You have people that can support you.

And yet,

as we look at David,

he's surrounded by his family and 400 men.

And yet he feels completely alone,

having no one to turn to.

Many of us feel like we are the provider.

We're the one that has to be strong.

We're the one that has to put on the face for everybody else,

because if we shake,

then the world shakes.

A writer describes this as this is one of the worst aspects of life.

It's the effects of grief.

It's isolating effects because others are not experiencing the same struggles.

You are,

you assume that you are alone and unique in your pain.

And even the smallest insights or slights become large in your eyes.

Why can't they see me?

Can't they see I'm dying inside?

These are the kinds of questions we ask in a crowded room filled with laughter and normalcy.

And yet we feel like we're in a prison,

meaning that there may be people surrounding you,

but you feel like they don't care.

You feel like they can't see you.

See the predicament that you're in.

That may be your parents,

your spouse,

your kids,

whoever it is in your life that you're hoping one day is going to see what's going on.

See what you're going through one day that you are going to come to them with what's going on in your life.

And they're going to go,

I know I've seen it.

I care for you.

And David goes to the Lord in verse five.

He says,

I cry to you.

cry to you.

As David is speaking,

he's reminded of who he's speaking to.

Oftentimes when we are having trouble in our life or we get in trouble or there,

or there's different things going on,

we begin to think of the person we're going to.

We think about it before we go to that person.

We think about it on the drive to go see them.

We think of the type of response they're going to give us.

Charles Spurgeon,

a British pastor from the 1800s writes as a child tells its mother,

it's griefs.

Tell the Lord all your griefs,

your complaints,

your fears,

tell them all out in great relief will come to your spirit.

I can think of times in my life where I either got in trouble at school or I was an idiot and did something,

punched my brother,

And I knew I had to go to my parent or I knew there was something in my life that was just tearing me up.

I was upset about something.

And I remember thinking about going to my parents.

And many of us have a parental figure in our life that we can imagine going to as a child.

And we begin to think,

okay,

who's going to give me more grace?

Who's going to be more merciful,

especially when we're in trouble or when there's something going on.

Okay.

Who's going to be the most loving one?

Who am I going to go to that?

I know.

Okay.

They are going to be loving and caring because we always have that one parent.

That's the tough love parent.

Like,

suck it up.

You're 20 years old.

You don't need to be coming to me anymore.

I'm just kidding.

But there's things going on in your life,

right?

That you're like,

okay,

how do I share this with them?

How do I go to them?

How are they going to respond when I,

when I share this?

David knows God's responses and goes to God.

He says,

I cry to you.

I say,

you are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.

He doesn't go to God going,

I wonder what the Lord's going to say.

I wonder if the Lord's going to be kind to me or gentle.

I wonder how the Lord is going to respond to the situation I'm in.

But he goes with confidence.

He goes with confidence to God and says,

this is what's going on.

Here's the list.

And I'm upset with,

but I know you are my refuge.

I know you are my portion in the land of the living.

He lays everything out before God because David knew who the Lord was.

David trusted God.

And so David grounds himself knowing that God is his refuge throughout the Psalms.

The term refuge is used multiple different times.

If you turn to Psalm 59,

just left in your Bible,

a couple of pages,

Psalm 59 in verse 16,

it says,

but I will sing of your strength.

I will sing of your strength.

I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.

For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.

one,

just one page later says,

be merciful to me.

be merciful to me for in you.

My soul tapes refuge in the shadow of your wings.

I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

I cry out to God,

most high to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

And in Psalm 18 and verse one and 30,

it says,

I love you.

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,

my God,

my rock and whom I take refuge,

my shield in the horn of my salvation,

Verse 30 says this God,

his way is perfect.

The word of the Lord proves true.

He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

David was no stranger to who God was.

Those are Psalms.

That David himself wrote throughout his life.

What does David mean by refuge as a military commander who would go into battle?

He knew the land.

He knew what he needed to see,

especially in the land of Israel.

During that time,

God had said,

you are going to have cities of refuge.

You're going to have specific spots that people can go to find protection,

whatever they need.

They can go to this city and that will be a fortress,

a strong tower,

for them.

If you had to flee from a battle,

you were seeking refuge.

If you're a refugee,

it means that you're seeking asylum,

seeking protection from a way out of destruction.

David says,

this is who the Lord is to me.

The Lord is my strong tower.

The Lord is my shield.

The word of the Lord proves true.

He's not going to lie to me.

He is who he says he is,

and he is my refuge.

And David goes even further than that to say,

the Lord is my portion in the land of Israel.

The land of the living man is that sweet to hear.

The Lord is my portion in the land of the living,

meaning that if David wasn't going to leave that cave,

the Lord was enough for him.

If he never got out of that cave,

if he never got out of trouble,

if his situation didn't change,

he said,

you're enough.

I don't need more.

I don't need riches.

I don't need the crown that you said is going to be placed on my head

because Lord,

you are my refuge and you,

I find everything I need.

But the question is,

is where's refuge found for you?

You say that the Lord is your refuge.

Do we say,

that the Lord is my portion in the land of the living?

He's all I need.

You see,

David could have found refuge in being the next anointed King saying,

well,

the Lord has set me high and lifted up.

I'm supposed to be the next King of Israel.

That's where I belong.

That's what's going to bring me peace,

It's going to give me the life I want.

He doesn't say,

you know what?

I find my protection.

I find my refuge in my family.

His very own family was the one seeking his destruction.

David could have found his refuge in his reputation saying,

I killed Goliath.

I can surely get out of this cave and go kill King Saul.

I've got 400 men with me.

Surely I can take these men and I can conquer any land that I want to live in.

Are these things that you find your refuge in?

Is it your job that when life gets difficult that you decide,

you know,

I'm going to just work harder.

I'm going to work later.

I'm just going to pour myself into my work because that's what will bring my family

It'll bring me financial peace.

It'll bring me security.

It'll bring me all of these different things.

I hoped my life would have,

or maybe it's your family that you go.

Okay.

When tough times come,

when I'm really struggling in life,

you know,

we're a strong family.

We rally together.

We come together and it's all great until there's bad blood until there's things that don't exactly work the way you wanted them to.

And the family starts to crack a bit and you don't blame yourself.

You blame the Lord.

why are you doing this?

Or many of us turn to the world.

We turn to,

we turn to alcohol.

We turn to pornography.

We turn to all these different substances,

hoping that it will numb our mind.

It will numb our pain.

It will make us feel a certain way so that we don't have to go to the Lord.

We don't have to ask the Lord to be our refuge.

We don't have to ask the Lord to deal with us kindly.

Is it tied to who people think you are?

did the Lord push on me this week?

Is your refuge tied to who people think you are?

you're a great young man or young woman.

You know,

that you love the Lord,

but deep down inside,

when troubles and trials come,

that's all you have to remind yourself of.

Well,

I went to a Christian school.

I,

I was an all a honor student.

I had all of these things in my life.

And that's what you hold refuge in is truthfully.

You're holding refuge in yourself.

All of these different things become an identity for us.

But what David says is refuge is in the Lord.

Many of us here have chased one refuge after another,

but each one has left us.

unprotected, shelterless, and alone, wondering what's going to fix our life, wondering what's

going to solve the problem. I think many of us, it's time to get real with the Lord, to get real

with God, meaning that we don't just go to the Lord and say, hey, I'm going to throw up this

prayer and hopefully you do something about it. But when life comes at you in full force, that

you go to God and you say, Lord, this is what's going on in my life. I'm going to lay everything

out before you. I'm going to completely, and as we talked about at our summer camp this year,

wholeheartedly give my life to you. We can preach it to our kids, but we can't do it for ourselves.

We can say that's a great theme for summer camp, but then when it comes down to us, we go, you know

what? I'm just not in it today. I'm just not in it for the Lord to be my refuge. But we have to

be honest with the Lord. We have to give him our complete lives. We have to make him our refuge.

grounds himself in the Lord and then made to request in verse six, he says, attend to my cry

for I am brought very low. Deliver me from my persecutors for they are too strong for me.

Bring me out of prison that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me for you

will deal bountifully with me. I've been reading through the book of Exodus and numbers this past

week, and I began to think for the Israelites. And it just was like the Lord connected the two

pieces together that oftentimes when we come to,

you know, trials and difficulties, we begin to think that God is so distant that he doesn't see

us, that he doesn't care about us, that he doesn't see what's going on in our life. The Israelites

thought that so much that in the book of Exodus, they make a golden calf to be their God, thinking

that there, if there was some visual of God being with them, that that would be better than the God

who parted the Red Seas, who rescued them from the land of Egypt. And we do that in our own life.

If I just had something,

visual in front of me, that would be a good enough refuge for me. The book of numbers, however, says

God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said,

and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? Meaning that when God says he

will be your refuge, he's not pulling on your chain. He's not looking at you going, okay, you

know, I'm going to trick you into doing this. I'm going to make you think all these different things.

No, what the Lord is doing is he's saying, I am your refuge.

And I will be faithful to it. I will honor you. I will give you faithfulness to my covenant. He

will honor his covenant. He will honor what he has for you. He's not tricking you into it. He's not

trying to give you a bait and switch. No, God is going to be faithful. He's not a liar. And he's

not like mankind that changes their mind. How does God fulfill being our refuge? This is the best

part is that for David, David has a relationship with God. He hears the voice of God. He talks with

He's praying with them. What God did for us is he said, you know what? I'm going to give you

something even better. I'm going to send myself to you. And so what the Lord does is he sends his

refuge as Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. He is our refuge. Christ is our refuge. And if we

look at this passage, we see that Jesus went through the same exact reality David did in Psalm

142. If we look back at the beginning verses, when David says his spirit fainted within him,

Jesus has the same thing happen. The night that

Jesus would be betrayed. When he goes to the garden of Gethsemane to pray to the Lord,

he begins to pray to God and say, my spirit has fainted within me. I'm in trials. I'm in

difficulties. Lord, if this cup can pass, please let it. And yet the Lord says, no, you are,

you are going to continue to do this. You're going to continue to go to the cross.

Enemies laid traps for Jesus throughout his ministry. The Pharisees were around Jesus,

and they set these different traps in order to trap him and prove that he wasn't the son of

God. The night that Jesus was going to be betrayed, his own disciple, Judas sets a trap for

him, kisses him on the cheek in order that the Pharisees would know who Jesus is. And he was

alone on the night he was betrayed. His closest friends abandoned him. Jesus gets arrested and

everyone abandons him. And there's a glimmer of hope when Peter is watching Jesus and he stays

next to him. And yet by the time the rooster crowed, Peter had denied Jesus three different times.

And Jesus was fully alone. The same situation you're in the same struggles we deal with. Guess

what? God has dealt with them too. He's known as Emmanuel God with us, meaning that he came to this

earth so that we wouldn't have a God who didn't understand what's going on in our life, but we

would have a God who understands and who made it through. Jesus would continue to the cross. He

would die the death that we deserve. The Bible says none are righteous. No, not one. All have

sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Jesus would continue to the cross. He would die the death that we deserve. The Bible says none are righteous. No, not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Meaning that this world that chases us, this world that causes us to sin, this world that has so much

destruction and fear and chaos that's going on. God said, I know you need a refuge. And so I'm

going to send one to you because you can't do it on your own. You can't find refuge on your own.

And so he built a refuge in his son, Jesus Christ, and he goes to the cross. He dies the death that

we deserve. He rises three days later and he looks at us and says, I have conquered death, hell in the grave.

And all you have to do is come to me. The Bible says in Romans 10, nine, that if you would confess

with your mouth, that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved. Nothing more, nothing less. That is the good news of Jesus Christ.

And if you would come to him right here, right now, you can put all the fake refuges away

and you can find peace, security, and prosperity in Jesus Christ. Just like David, it doesn't mean

that your life is going to get so much better. It doesn't mean that trials and difficulties are going to get better.

It doesn't mean that difficulties are going to go away, but that Jesus will be your portion in the land

of the living. Prosperity doesn't mean wealth. It doesn't mean all of this hogwash that people want

to say. No, it means that Jesus is all that you have and that Jesus will get you through life.

The best part is, is because he experienced our pain, abandonment, and sorrow, he can truly be

an empathetic refuge, meaning he knows where you're at. He sees you. When you feel alone,

you don't have to go, I don't know what I'm going to do. No, Jesus sees you.

He sees where you're at. All you have to do is run to him as refuge. We find our complete and

total refuge in Jesus Christ. Everything our hearts crave in a safe harbor, Jesus claims and

fulfills. If you're looking for protection from this world, Jesus says in John chapter 16, verse

33, I have overcome the world. If you're looking for an ever-present companion in Hebrews 13, 5,

he says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. If you are in darkness right now, he will bring light. He says, I am

the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. If you're looking for

satisfaction, he says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever

drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. This world has everything to

offer to you, but guess what? It is false. It is fake. It will leave you high and dry

every single time. The only true refuge in this life is Jesus Christ. And for some of us,

we're tired. We're just tired of life. We're tired of dealing with these struggles. We're

tired of dealing with the world. But guess what? Jesus says, come to me, all who labor and are

heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Meaning we find ultimate and true peace in Jesus Christ,

our Lord and Savior. David finishes in verse 7 and says that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me for you will deal bountifully with me. You may be sitting in your

seat going, okay, I feel like the Lord is my refuge. I know Christ as my Savior. I understand that he needs to be my refuge. What's the

lesson for me here? The lesson is, is we need to wake up and we need to remember that he's our

refuge. Because guess what? It's not just us that see that he is our refuge. The rest of the world

is watching. And when we as Christians come to the Lord, when we say, Lord, this is what's going on

in my life, I am going to find you as my refuge, you as my portion. Other people watch and go,

man, what does that person have that I don't? How is that person able to go through disaster

and I can't? And it's because what we do is when we make God our

refuge, we bring glory to the Lord and we bring others to the knowledge that God is a firm

foundation, that he is a strong tower, that he is a fortress, that when people see us making God as

our refuge, it's not that they then look at these Psalms and go, you know, these are just songs that

Christians sing. No, they look at it and go, man, that is a God who shows up. That is a God who is

ever present. That is a God who is near to his people, near to the brokenhearted.

David explains the reason behind his prayer so that we can glorify God for his wondrous works

and for others to see David glorify God and by that glorify God themselves and see him as refuge.

And so this morning, will we do that? Will we hear the words that David has to say and

understand that God is calling us to make him our refuge here right now?