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when I was a camp counselor in college, the camp was called camp challenge. Can you believe that ? Uh I shared psalm 1 39 with a teenager who in my perception didn't have a lot of self

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esteem And when we got to verse 14, which says, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. She said with wonder in her eyes . This applies to me. I felt like this

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was the start of my ministry and I may not have done anything as important sense. The message of the psalm for today is that the Lord of the Universe has something special in mind by creating you and

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that God keeps you in mind. Even when you feel forgotten Psalm 1 39 though raises a lot of questions for us. And these personal responses to the psalm are at the heart of the worship service we've

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constructed for today. For some of us, the idea of God's ongoing presence coming behind us and before us, hemming us in is a little icky. It's not frightening. We want to run away from

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God's spirit and the ways that we run and hide . Tell us a great deal about our own psychology are some of us afraid we will be hurt if we let God love us. This psalm invites us

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to stop pursuing God and allow God to pursue us . Evangelicals sometimes talk about the God shaped hole in each of us and in doing so, they inadvertently refer to blaise pascal. Did you know that in

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the fall songs? I think I butchered that. Or the pen says, I've included the quote on the front of your bullets in for today. Just because it's a a deep one. So if I

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read it to you, you might want to read along on the front of the bulletin. What else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim, but that there was once in humankind, a true happiness of

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which now all that remains is the empty print and trace this. She tries in vain to fill with everything around her seeking in things that are not there , the help she cannot find, and those that

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are though none can help. Since this infinite abyss can only be filled with infinite and immutable object. In other words, by God, God shaped hole . Infinite abyss, all right. But there's one

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in each of us were. Till And lately I've been thinking that the abyss looks a lot like our distinctive personalities. What if even our disbelief over a personal God maybe related to those early experiences and impressions

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that gets set down in early life, but then follow us the rest of our lives. So, I'm turning today to the question of a personal God who loves us, and I'm dwelling in our responses

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to this love and what they tell us about our faith. Our doubts about this first, our objection to the idea that God keeps us in mind become itself a moment for reflection. Let's rip on these

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responses for a moment since we've already encountered them in worship. When you encounter God's love, you might say to yourself, I can do it myself. You might say you're comfortable with, uncomfortable with a

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close personal relationship with God and it's important not to depend too much on God. If you're drawn to this response and I am a little bit, you might tend to focus on successes, tasks and achievements

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as a way to not get too close to not take a risk. You may feel like you have to play a game in order for God to love you. If you have a hard time making friends

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, if you're not soothed sometimes by your partners presence , no matter how much they try to love you , maybe you're saying I can do it myself board by intimacy and aloof to the bids of love from

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others. You steer your own course strict, impatient , demanding with the kids. You don't know other ways of doing it. You might lack deep emotional memories from your past. Somewhere in the bargain.

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You felt like it was important to keep a stiff upper lip and that God rewards you. If you're in control, someone like this, someone like us might run screaming from a God who pursues us all

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the way to shell because this closeness feels a little out of control. Or when you encounter God's love , you might say I want to be as close as possible to God, but I can't believe that

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you completely value me. You may say to yourself that you're unworthy of love, ineffective, incompetent. You might find yourself blurting out your whole story indiscriminately to anyone who listens. You feel like you need

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repeated assurance, fearing that God will lose interest in you. You might find that you're threatened by the fact that you can't make God love you. Or you wonder if God's love will ever be enough.

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Somewhere in the bargain. People said you should be grateful for what they've done for you. And when you think of gods beholding your unformed substance, you can't believe that God truly loves you approves you or

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knows you. You might try cajoling or seducing God , hoping you can get that love that you need that care from God. Or when you encounter God's love for you, you might say, I can't

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trust God, since so much of life has been chaotic and incoherent, you might say, I hate you God and I love you God. At the same moment, if you've lived with relationships that are

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dangerous and frightening, sometimes you escaped through bullying others or caring for them over bright solicitors clowning, You might stay safe at whatever cost without ever admitting that you need God. How do you get loved and

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fed in the same place? You might say, I don't want God to be close, but I don't want to be alone somewhere in the bargain. People were unpredictable. So God must be cruel,

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controlling, exploitive. The frightening images of God from scripture makes sense to you. You can't even relate to the idea that you're fearfully and wonderfully made, but you can understand the idea of hiding out from

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God in the night hoping that God will leave you alone. The idea is you will get hurt if you allow yourself to be too close to God, so I can do it myself. God, you

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can't really love me as I am, and I can't trust you God. Those three responses that we walk through together now, what's left? Right? How do we change these? Or shift these?

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I've been thinking a lot about this prompt. Um , I'm grateful for the invitation for the here I stand reformation prompt because it's really caused me to go deep in a way, uh and wonder, kind

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of what's Phil browning household all about as a minister . And what does it mean to me to do ministry? Um that idea that I shared with a teenager that were fearfully and wonderfully made and that God

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cares for us as if God had nothing else to do. The way I told that story sounds a little too easy, right? It almost feels like she could believe it because the bible told her so

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. But if you find yourself saying like I do , I can do it myself. God couldn't really love me as much as I need or can I trust God? Then maybe some psalm 139 messages harder

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to sink in to the soil of ourselves. Our hearts are restless until they rest in me and then they're restless and then they rest in the and then the restless again and then they rest in the right

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. But I believe that prayer, encounters with others and the love of the church can help as people try to experience God's love. God's love starts with where we are, our fear and our avoidance and

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even our hatred towards God. And slowly makes a space for a feeling of being kept in mind by a loving presence. This means that God starts with our infinite of this, our God shaped hole.

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All those ways we tell God, Hey, I'm fine, I can do this myself very organized and then God slowly works with us. Thankfully none of us are left the way our families made us and

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we're not left the way that our society makes us . In fact, were pursued by a caring God who knows us better than we know ourselves, who hems us in before and behind with a loving presence

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. It's because of this love for us. This fact that God loved us first that we can stop our habitual strategies of shielding ourselves from love. Some of us do it by escaping to thinking, don't

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we? Indeed, rational thought can seem like a temporary shelter from all the feelings that we don't want to face. Some of it. Some of us do it by pursuing others and trying to force them

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to change into our ways. Others do it by becoming paralyzed with fear, chaotic and hopeless. But God's love for us can slowly come into our heart , helping us to know that were kept in mind

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by God. When we begin to experience this love on a regular basis, we can feel more secure , knowing that God keeps us in mind. But God does this gently most of all, and with

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a sense of humor, because God knows exactly who we are and is gentle with us about it. One way that God's love, okay, ready for the big reveal, the personal moment in the sermon

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. One way that God's love has done this for me is through the practice of centering prayer is a form of listening to God. This was important at a particularly fractious moment in my life, 18 and

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19 years old, when I had dropped out of college and almost joined a dangerous Hippie commune. If you can believe this, this is me, with hair down past my shoulders. I'd also faced a

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lot of loss at once, and so, leaving my family of origin was a difficult process for me , But in this, in the midst of this season, in my life, I learned to let

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down my guard for 20 minutes a day, focusing on one word and breathing as God re centered my spirit. This helped me not to join the commune and instead begin a profound orientation of my life to

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the work of ministry, based on the lived experience of resting in God's presence. I feel like centering prayer was the start of my adult faith. There are reasons why you might doubt God's unconditional love for

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you. I don't want to take these reasons away . There are reasons why it may be hard to believe that God cares for you personally, regardless of what you could do or perform, that the Lord

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of the Universe has something special in mind in creating you and that this God continues to keep you in mind. Finally, as we reformed christians, we actually don't need to experience personal, a personal experience

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of God's love. We can experience God in the sacraments and works of social justice, but for all those here who are tired and maybe a little bit lost today, I hope that this invitation to God's

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welcoming love helps. What about the passages at the end of this song, someone 39 where the psalmist lashes out and hates those who hates God. These are part of our experience as well. There's no

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need to sugarcoat them. Since this kind of hatred , we get it right, we understand. But in some ways what matters most is our hunger for God's love, Hunger that I find uniquely awakened through

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this song. That's why I tend to keep finding it in my bible and when I lied retreats and teach churches, this quote that I'm going to share with you in closing is the title for this gives

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us the title for the sermon today. Hunger. That is certainty. And the quote is from Simone Veii from her journalist gravity and grace. And again , this one is a little on the dense side

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. So I printed it at the front so you can follow along. This is like Phil's favorite quotes . This one is right in the top, their top five. In the period of preparation, the

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soul loves and emptiness. It does not know whether anything real answers. It's love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The

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soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces this hunger by crying a child does not stop crying. If we if we suggest to it, perhaps there's no bread

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, it goes on crying just the same. The danger is not less. The soul should doubt where there is, whether there is any bread, but lest by a lie, it should persuade itself that

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it's not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying. For the reality of its hunger is not a belief. It is a certainty God starts with us where we are fearing and in doubt

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unsure of God's love for us, and slowly answers the hunger of our hearts hunger that's profoundly personal, shaped like your God shaped hole or infinite of this or whatever, and this shape is shaped that only

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your nearest friends and neighbors would recognize. And so the shape that God's love has for you is likewise profound and mysterious and personal it reaches you and wants to change here. We can't feel easier comfortable in

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its presence, but it wants to change us to become less fearful, more hopeful, less alone, bright eyed disciples who are assured of God's love for us, regardless of what we can achieve or accomplish