This Is My Story
by Jeremy Painter
April 30, 2025 · The Sanctuary, Silvis (Quad Cities), Illinois
Kind: sermon

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/jeremy-painter--this-is-my-story
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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Tonight, I want to speak on the praise, the greatness of your praise, towards God. My prayer is that you would make Jesus Christ the praise of your life. He is that that you're most proud of. He's your pride. He's your joy. If any man boast, let him boast in the Lord. Nothing else but boast in the Lord. Thank you, Pastor Levine, for this opportunity to be here and to spend some time with you. Thank you for the preparations that were made for the hotel room and for the dinner and time I've gotten to spend with you and your family. Oh, is there a couple pictures up there? It all started up there in the top left. That's, there she is, the reason. A couple months ago, my youngest was married and that's the wedding up there on the right-hand side. Second youngest got married last summer there on the left-hand side. Look what the Lord has done. Oh, yeah, we got married. I

didn't tell that part of the story last night. We did. We, yeah, it didn't, it didn't end with dating. You can be seated. Thank you for standing. Usually, I spend quite a bit of time simply instructing on the practical applications of the Word of God. But tonight, my goal is simply to give praise unto God. I'm not really offering instructions. There are going to be very few aughts and musts and shoulds. I just want you to turn your eyes on Jesus just tonight to see the glory and the goodness of God. And the goodness of the Lord, the Apostle said, turns men to repentance. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of how great our God is. I'm going to mostly, for the rest of this time, talk to God. Just talk to God. Almighty God, you know my thoughts from afar. You're the origin and the destination of what I say here. Lord, you know the affection that I have for you,

and I intend to worship you in what follows. Yet how well I know that my worship of you, it can't add or detract from your nature. From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. I know full well that my worship of you, Lord, says much more about me than it could ever say about you. For the one who stands in front of the masterpiece doesn't judge the masterpiece, but is judged by the masterpiece. It's my response to you that is judged. If I find you worthy, then my sensibilities are true. My affections are right. I stand before you, Lord, and hear this worship and this praise. And search me, oh God, teach me the beauty of your ways. Show me your glory. I remember once meeting a peculiar servant of yours, Lord. I had seen this servant of yours around all of my life, but always at church. He seemed to get younger though as I grew older. The first time I saw him

in church, I must have been about four. He seemed an old wise man. But now that I'm in my late 40s, whenever I see him, he looks younger than me. Though I had seen him the first time I met him, many, I had seen him over a period of many years. We weren't formally introduced until that one day I think about so often. That day I remember I was in my living room at home. I was listening to the song. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. I was listening to it on a CD player back home. That's how long ago it was. I listened to it over and over again to prepare to sing it at church that night. My first responsibility in your ministry was leading worship. But as you know, I turned around and I saw my grandmother on the couch who was visiting me. And she was sitting there, but she had her hands raised. And there was a well of

tears collecting on her collarbone. And she was mumbling softly over and over again. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. I had heard the rhythm of the song, the syncopations, the modulations, the vocals. But she was hearing something else. Something I wasn't hearing. Something I didn't yet understand. And the gravity of the moment rested upon my shoulders as I thought I was just practicing for a song, but there was an altar call going on in my own living room that I didn't feel. And that's when I first met this servant of yours. He was sitting next to her doing the same thing. I wondered how he ever got in my house. I asked him his name. He said, it depends on what language you're speaking. In Greek, my name is a pinus. In Italian, Lodate. In German, Lovett. In Russian, Cavallet. The Chinese call me Zanme. And among the Hebrew people I have long been known as Halel. You may call

me praise. I was used to seeing praise only at church. But as big as you please, there he was with my grandmother. Glorifying you, God, in my living room of all places. I had always interpreted these songs devotionally, but only when I was at church. I interpreted them mechanically when I was anywhere else, but not grandma. Not long after that, you remember, Lord, my wife, Laura said that she met this praise in the mall. Laura said, I was in the Christian bookstore. And I saw a picture of a broken man holding a giant nail in one hand and a hammer in the other. He was collapsed in despair, but held up in the merciful arms of the wounded Christ. Then I noticed I wasn't standing alone there. This praise was standing next to me, making a bit of a scene weeping for joy. I looked back at the picture a second time and I saw something different this time. It was me. I

was the broken one in the picture and the Lamb of God upholding me. She said, I started to cry. I couldn't break away. I grew up believing in Jesus, but I always believed in Him like I believed in things in space we couldn't see. I knew they existed, but I hadn't really experienced them. But here, even though I grew up in church, I never really met Jesus until here. And I met Jesus in the mall. It can't be a coincidence that when I met Him, I really met Him. Praise was standing next to me. I still found it odd that He would show up in such a public place, even if it was at a Christian bookstore. Then I remembered taking Laura to dinner in Ocean Shores, Washington, right at the edge of the world. The evening was warm and clear and we were going to get to watch the sunset over the Pacific. Everything was perfect that night. We sat by a

window in a warm fire pit. The pianist was playing a grand piano and on it, furry leaves. In the kitchen, there were clanking dishes and glasses being filled with ice, flames swishing and hissing pans and conversations all over the restaurant. And then, maker of heaven and earth, praise came in and asked to join our dinner. And I told him quietly not wanting to hurt his feelings. For he's a crowd. We're on a date. He wasn't bothered he was on a mission as if he had gone there to witness a miracle. He sat in the booth across the way by himself and stared like a child out the window looking at the sea. And then the time came at last. The hot pink sun descended into the horizon. The waters of the sea seemed to boil. Waves of heat danced over the ocean. The dishes stopped clinking. The pianist stopped playing. All conversations ceased. Everything was silent and praise stared breathless. And then, excellent

Lord, the last pink speck of your fiery chariot disappeared and the gates of night closed behind him and the restaurant filled with saints and sinners alike erupted spontaneously in applause. Everyone stood up on their feet and gave an ovation. And praise stood to his feet too but he shouted with his hands upraised. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies show his handiwork. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. I was conscious a few moments later that I too was clapping. And in my joy there was just this sobering question that occurred to me. Whom does the atheist have to thank for moments like this? Praise started showing up in all kinds of places with me after that. There was no longer just this church and everywhere else divide. We began to laugh together quite a bit. Smiled at the moon as it changed faces from night to night. We watched one time a young man

sitting with his friends and a girl that he obviously liked stole a look at him and he blushed and she smiled at this tribute to her beauty. We saw once two girls playing kickball on a quiet street and we listened to the beautiful sound of their mother's voice calling them home for dinner. It was echoing through the street. I once held my boy in my mere hands. We named him Carter, you excellent creator. You built his face out of the memories of my father's and grandfather's faces. You made his eyes China blue and the years have passed now and I'm talking to him one day and praise is standing next to me and smiling and I watched this same son who once stood at my feet and strained his neck to look up at me. He's standing now straight and tall and strong a full grown man and he shakes my hand with a man's grip and speaks to me with a man's

voice and yet he looks at me still with those same little boy eyes and praise saying that over my shoulder. I wasn't sure that maybe it might not be appropriate for praise to come with me to the symphony. It wasn't a gospel concert, it was Brahms. After the concert I asked him why he applauded the musicians so vigorously. His answer was great. He said what marvelous gifts God has given to dust and clay. Praise and I, we were great friends. We started spending all our time together in each other's company. I found everything to be an occasion to spend time with praise. It happened though one afternoon I opened up an email and I read a note from the dean of the school I was teaching for and it read, Dear Professor Painter, I regret to inform you that one of your students Denise was in a terrible car accident last weekend. She did not survive. The family has informed us of forthcoming

details for her funeral. Sincerest condolences to you and her classmates. I don't know all the reasons why she wasn't even my child but I was completely crushed. She was only 21. I think she just reminded me of my children. She was just one course away from graduating with honors. To think that I had only just spoken with her three days before. I remember the last discussion I had with her, it was about her grades. I remember pulling up her document and then I read what I wrote in the margins and my remarks showed zero awareness that I was speaking with the child on the brink of eternity and the heartbreak of a family. I looked up from the document and heard the sudden and terrible crush of a high speed collision, glass and metal and fire, rolling massive metal coming to a stop at a barricade, a sickening primal scream cut short by the angel of death in a drunk driver staggering out

of his car and running away into the night and of sorrows acquainted with grief. I thought of my words in the margin of the paper. What do such words about such trifles mean now? I remember to Emily Dickinson, the poet's words, the bustle in the house the morning after death is one of life's greatest salinities. The sweeping up of the heart and putting love away until it will be needed again in eternity ring through my mind. And so I tried to busy myself with menial tasks in hopes that my mind wouldn't think too much about what this means for my theology. I heard a knock at my office door. I opened the door. There was that familiar face of that friend. It was praise, but I didn't let him in, not today. Two days later, the knock came again. I opened the door. I didn't have anything to say. Lord, I thought I had finally found the place. My friend, praise didn't belong

in a family's suffering. I told him this is no time for praise. I tell you truly, Lord, you know my heart. I didn't reject you, but I believed at the time that the other side of life should have its day in court. It was pain's turn to have the floor. Pain and praise. Two different voices. Two advocates for two different sides of life. One an evangelist for you, the other an evangelist for darkness and chaos. But praise just sat there in my office and stayed. The next morning I walked in, he was already there. I sat down and ignored him completely. I was in no mood for conversation. I ignored him for a few more days. Every morning he was still there. After a few more days I heard another knock on the door and I was glad because I knew it wasn't praise. He was still sitting on the couch. I opened the door, but this time it was a dark figure

more fitting to my mood. I didn't need to ask his name for I knew instantly I was looking at death. I wouldn't let him in. I closed the door and stood against it. I heard him whisper from behind the door. I have seen the moment of my life flicker and I have seen the eternal footman pull my coat. My knees turned soft. I shoveled over to the chair. I remembered praise was still with me. In anger I shouted at him, why are you still here? He had never said too much outside of his exclamations of worship, but this time faithful Lord he spoke to me and said, my longtime friend, do you think you're the first to feel pain? You act as though pain is a private revelation of yours. You imagine that suffering has given you a glimpse of a reality that somehow eluded the saints and the prophets of the past. You're assuming in spite of all you've been shown that

the saints of ages past have praised God only in the absence of pain. Pain and praise though aren't two different voices. They're one I'm here to tell you. When the sweet psalmist of Israel cried, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabaqtani, I was there. I was Job's true friend when he said, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed is the name of the Lord. When David cried with bitter tears, God why are you so far from helping me? I was there. I was with King David when he climbed to top the walls of Mech the Chaim and wept. Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son. When Israel was in Babylon at Khabar and they hung their harps on the willows, I was there and they still sang a lament for the ages. Nothing would have been heard from the Philippian jailhouse that night if pain had not brought Paul and Silas there and I was there and our voices filled the night and made the earth

tremble. Jeremy, do you believe that the Holy Ghost inspired these darker passages? Or did the Spirit only inspire passages that speak of the glories of God and the triumphs of His people? You remember my answer, God. I replied, I believe the Holy Ghost is the author of both. All Scripture is given by inspiration of the Spirit. But it was my upbringing that taught me to say those words even when my emotions didn't believe them. And praise answered. Then you believe that the Lord was saying to one and the same Lord, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You know the Spirit wrote those words? There is a contradiction even in God's own heart. Suffering and praise are not two different voices. I am the voice of both. Have you forgotten that the symbol of true faith is the cross? Do you remember in John's Gospel that the Son of God said He went to the cross to glorify His Father? I

marvel that you think I don't belong where there's suffering. You have learned that I don't just belong in church. You've learned that I don't just belong in church and you're home. You've learned that I belong everywhere in life but only so long as everything in life is okay. You're okay with my presence when there are answers but you imagine I'm out of place when there are questions. But if this is all you've learned from me in the last 15 years, you haven't really learned anything at all. And he pulled his chair up a little closer and real close to my face with his voice low. He said, why aren't you asking how it was that your grandmother was singing on your couch on that day you met me? You should be asking why. Don't you remember that your grandmother went to bed every night later in her life knowing that her husband had been unfaithful to her and had started another family secretly

with another woman? Your grandmother's friends when it came out and her church and her relatives all knew and she bore this shame everywhere she went and don't you remember that when she was younger she stood over the grave of her own child, the earth? Had she erased these things from her mind that day she sung that song in your house? Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh what a foretaste of glory divine air of self. This is my song praising my Savior all the day long. Do you imagine that the tears of joy she shed in your living room were not mixed with great sorrow? Could it be that this is what you missed when you saw her raising her hands and weeping? Do you think it's significant she was worshiping to a song written by a blind woman who sings of visions of rapture bursting on her sight and of watching and waiting and looking above? With what eyes do you suppose Fanny

Crosby was seeing the Lord? Your grandmother had learned that something could only be taken from her if it had been graciously granted to her in the first place. One has to be given health to know what sickness is. One has to be blessed with the miracle of a child to understand what it is to lose one. I never ever forget the pain but I take the pain and reinterpret it within a much larger truth and one day every tear will be wiped away and all of that will be lost in the goodness of God and with those words praise stood up and left and closed the door quietly and I still felt the sting of death had nothing left to say. At what point does disappointment become pouting? The next day I went to Denise's funeral Lord you remember that her brother gave her eulogy and at the end of the eulogy he said my sister and he used the past tense was

and then changed it to the present tense is a believer and one of her great sorrows in life was that I didn't share her faith. In fact I had never believed in life after death I was convinced there was only one omnipotence in the universe and that was death but since she's died I've had the hardest time imagining that someone so good and so full of life as Denise was could really be dead. I'm beginning to believe I think that she's not the faith that all the Christians are talking about has started tempting me death didn't change what Denise means to me Denise has changed what death means to me oh my God I put my head in my hands and I wept by the time I was done praying the light of your heaven shone upon my soul I understood and I bowed my head again in reverence and I looked over sitting next to me was the familiar but somehow changed

face of praise again and I saw in his face eternity like a great ring of pure and endless light calm and bright round beneath the time in hours, days and years his hands were uplifted just as I had met him next to my now departed grandmother 15 years earlier and he whispered praising my savior all the day long it's kind of like the story that that novelist in the middle of the 20th century wrote in slaughterhouse 5 of Billy the pilgrim who sat watching on TV one night a bomber taking off with a full payload and winging its way over city and dropping bombs on the buildings below and destroying the city and its inhabitants but suddenly in that story Billy started seeing the video backwards and instead of bombs dropping on buildings and buildings crumbling the bomber as it flies over the city by some strange power pulls the bombs out of the ground below and heals the earth wherever it flies

backwards the buildings with surprising ease by some invisible hand invisible design reassemble like Lego blocks and the bombs fly upwards and harmlessly back into the planes bay doors and the bomber lands backwards on the carrier and men take out the bombs in reverse and put them on a train and the train takes them back to the factories where they were made where women disassemble the bombs and load the chemicals and explosive powders onto carts and the carts roll backwards into mines beneath the earth where men take the dangerous materials out of the carts and pack them safely with picks back into the earth and bury them forever this reversal is the heart and soul of the gospel message in the beginning all is perfection but mankind rebels weeds wrap themselves around every beautiful thing and strangle the life out of it sickness and disease death and destruction but the grace of God steps in Jesus is born as a reversal not a wife

giving birth to a child in the normal course of events but a virgin somehow giving birth to the son of God and not God bringing forth man but this time a woman bringing forth the son of God and when he grows into a man wherever he goes a reversal occurs there too a blind man's eyes are restored back to health lame hands and feet go back to a state of health a dead man instead of being put in a tomb walks alive out of a tomb covered in grave clothes that friends and family have to unwind and at the cross a thief is restored to innocence and made fit for paradise the son prays that men will be forgiven as if they were completely unaware of what they were doing and when Jesus dies the graves around the city expel the saints they didn't tune for centuries 40 days later the son who came down from heaven and was wrapped in swaddling clothes

ascends back up into the sky swaddled this time by a cloud and 10 days later men repent that is they turn around and become like children again and the crimson stained sons of Adam are washed white as snow like babies men and women speak tongues they don't know and the angel who spoke to the disciples promised that just as they watched Jesus ascend into heaven so they will one day see him likewise return and all the host of heaven shall be dissolved one day and heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll and the Eden that was lost in the beginning shall be restored the tree of life shall be planted in the middle of the heavenly city in the life of Christ the rain that comes down and produces the grape if of Jesus others turned into wine in Jesus life it is temptation that stumbles it is sickness that catches a cold it is death that dies in army of devils

say we did our best Satan says I offered him the whole world he merely wagged his finger and said what is the world next to having the father the soldiers say we beat him more than any man the spear says I emptied his very heart of blood the stone says I gave my all but he rose anyway throw all of the ugliest things at Christ and watch what he makes of them throw leprosy at him and watch it become baby's skin throw hate at him give him a sinner and watch him make a saint give him water to wedding give him legion give him the storm on the sea give him the traitor give it all sparing nothing awful a crown of thorns the spike through the flesh the barb spear the soldiers whip the sponge with sour wine the curses, the insults, the unbelief roll a ten ton stone over his grave give him and it is finished but watch it become

behold I make all things new earthly kings will give and take only your best but not heaven's king even if you were to give him your worst rejoice ever more Christian the universe in which you dwell it's going to turn out like a comedy for as Luke's gospel says blessed are you who weep now for you shall laugh and again I say rejoice Mary you may now sing your magnificant Elizabeth shout for joy Zechariah prophesy over Israel Simeon you may now depart in peace Peter rise up from your shame and preach Pentecost Matthew get up and leave your money table Mark writes your gospel John in exile lift up your eyes for your redemption draws nigh Paul lay your burdens down and rest at home with your Lord do you think our work is hard in this world try being the devil for a day you think you wrecked God's plans for his precious world you were such a genius you found the

right words to talk his favored creation Eve out of obedience you sit back with glee and watch the world become a little more like your hell every day but there's always trouble for the devil a constant gnawing anxiety a terrible sense that your eternities work is being undone he can construct the devil can the most elaborate schemes dreamed up through ages of insomnia sophisticated tessera mosaics of the darkest sins but since he's no maker his materials are necessarily those which God formed once upon a time in beauty and innocence and goodness he has to keep a constant watch over his human subjects but even those he watches very carefully are in danger every day of being tempted by our awesome God Satan's human subjects are only one sunrise away from hearing the soft springs of heaven there only one smile away from seeing the sky part in the golden light of glory gleaming through the devil has to be careful that he keeps

his patience in a not too high not too low state of mind because if they experience joy they're getting it straight from God the only true source of joy and if they get too low they're in danger of seeing a little too clearly the marvelous light that God scatters gratuitously everywhere and just when the devil thinks he's outsmarted God and hung Christ like a curse from a tree he finds out far too late that this was God's plan all along and then when Christ was on Calvary that God was actually flexing his muscle and pulling the hell out from under the devil's feet everything the devil does ends up compelling God to make things better than they were before Satan beats up Paul but then Satan finds out that all his work had managed to accomplish in the end was making Paul a better man a humble man a man who refused to be carried away by pride for a moment I can

almost pity the poor devil for he has to construct his lies out of the material of truth and thus he finds that the nearer he approaches the mastery of his art of deception the more framework of his lie is threatened by the weight of the very materials of truth that he had to use the greater the lie the greater the truth he had to use to make it the more complete the deceit the more the man may stumble into God the devil is the artist whose art always turns out to mean the opposite of what he meant you meant it for evil but God meant it for good and in the very end of the Eden that Satan helped destroy will be replaced but not just by another Eden no in its place will be a golden city 1400 miles wide 1400 miles high 1400 miles deep my God great you praise you the name of the Lord praise him oh ye servants

of the Lord he that stand in the house of the Lord in the courts of the house of our God praise the Lord for the Lord is good sing praises unto his name for it is pleasant whatsoever the Lord pleased that he did in heaven and in earth in the seas in all the deep places he causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth he makes lightnings for the rain he brings the wind out of his treasury oh Lord our Lord how excellent is thy name in all the earth oh give thanks unto the Lord for he is good his mercy endures forever to him alone doeth great wonders to him that by wisdom made the heavens to him that stretched out the earth above the waters to him that made the great lights praise the Lord praise God in his sanctuary in his mighty praise them for his mighty deeds praise them according to his excellent greatness praise them

with trumpet sound praise them with loot and harp praise them with tambourine and dance praise the strings and peeps praise them with sounding cymbals praise them with loud clashing cymbals let everything offer a thousand tongues to sing thy praise praise ye the Lord praise ye the Lord great is our Lord and greatly to be praised problem that has confed every loss the sea of forgetfulness longer remember the greatest pain of our life any more than we remember the second step we took out of bed 16 days ago he will wipe away every tear all of heaven and earth for thou hast made us kings and priests unto our God and redeemed us by his blood blessing and honor and glory and power come to thy name that was and is and is to come the Almighty inside this veil of tears in this fallen world I won't wait until I'm on the other side of life and free of all these cares to

praise you I will now on my knees glory be unto thy name I have only one thing left to say blessing and glory and honor and power be unto thy name