November 2, 2025

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus

“The Quiet Pulse of God"

Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch

November 2, 2025                                                                                                                         Based on 1 Kings 19

I’m going to ask you to do something. Take two fingers and place them gently on your neck right beside your throat, until you can feel your pulse. Can you feel it? Keep your fingers there for a few moments until I tell you to stop.
Just notice the beating.

This is week four of our stewardship series, “Listen, God Is Calling.” Over the past several weeks, we’ve been learning the rhythm of discernment, how to listen for God’s voice speaking, how to check in with the Spirit to make sure we’re still headed in the right direction, and how to act when we hear the call. Then the cycle begins again. We Listen. We Discern. We Act. Then We Listen again.

That rhythm, steady, quiet, faithful, has been pulsing through the lives of God’s people for thousands of years. It’s how people of faith have always lived: doing the next right thing, staying attuned to the voice of God, and returning again and again to listen for what comes next.

Okay, you can stop now. Did you feel that pulse beneath your skin? How many times do you think your heart beat just then—thirty? forty? fifty? I don’t know about you, but I rarely notice my heart beating. And yet it does this for us every minute of every day we are alive. Our hearts beat on, completely unbeknownst to us. 

For a person with an average resting heart rate of seventy beats per minute, that’s about one hundred thousand beats every day, thirty-six million times a year, the average life span in the US is 78.4 years… that’s 2 billion 822 million heartbeats and not once does it take a day off. It was there beating when you were born. It was there beating when you started school, It was there in the midst of celebration and whenever you struggled and grieved, It was there when you loved, and when you were lost. It has been there all along, quietly sustaining your life.

That pulse, the one you just felt, isn’t so different from God’s voice. You might not notice it most of the time,
but it’s there always, pulsing beneath the surface, Moving constantly and steadily, quietly sustaining us,
whispering to us beneath the noise of everything else, telling us who’s we are, and what we are to be and do.

That’s really what this series has been about: learning to tune our lives to that quiet pulse. The practice of discernment: listening, checking in, acting, and listening again. It isn’t something we’ve invented. It’s something we’ve inherited. It’s the rhythm of faith that guided the saints before us, And will continue long after us. It’s how this very congregation came to be.
Generations ago, our ancestors in faith listened for God’s call and discerned that a church was needed here in the university district, to serve the campus area. They heard the voice of God calling to them to create a place where students, faculty and staff, and neighbors could meet God in community.
They acted on that conviction. They started meeting together in worship And they kept listening. They felt God calling them to build a church, they found the land, and went to work figuring out how to build it and what it should look like, once the church was built then they listened again. Each generation since has returned to that rhythm— listening, discerning, acting, and listening again— as we continue to discover what faithfulness looks like in our time.

Elijah knew that rhythm too, but in his story he’s reached a breaking point. He has done everything God asked of him. He has spoken truth to power, challenged false gods, stood alone in the face of opposition. And now he was exhausted and afraid. Now Elijah is feeling utterly and completely done. So he flees into the desert wilderness to hide out away from it all, he sits down under the only shade he can find: a broom tree, and he prays something akin to “Enough, Lord. I can’t do this anymore.”

In the chaos and noise of his life, Elijah seeks solitude, he seeks quiet, he seeks space to reconnect with the God quietly pulsing beneath everything.

And what does God do?
God doesn’t rebuke him. God sends rest. Bread. Water. Gentle care. God gives him what he needs to keep going.
And Elijah finds enough, Enough to survive this season of retreat. He Elijah travels on and finds himself at a cave on the mountain Horeb, the mountain of God, Also called Sinai. And there, God tells him to stand and watch.
Elijah expects something dramatic. After all, he’s seen God act with thunder and fire before. And sure enough, a mighty wind sweeps through the mountains. But God is not in the wind. Then the earth quakes. But God is not in the earthquake. Then fire blazes across the horizon. But God is not in the fire.

And then— a sound. Thin. Low. Gentle. The sound of sheer silence. It’s not empty silence; it’s full—alive with the steady hum of God’s quiet presence. In that moment, Elijah rediscovers what is most true:
that even when everything else falls away, God is still there, pulsing beneath the surface of our lives, steady as a heartbeat 

Today is All Saints’ Sunday, a day where we remember the saints of God who have gone before us. In our tradition, All saints are just that, it’s everyone, not just perfected individuals who are exemplary in life, but all the imperfect broken folks who did their best in their own time to live faithfully. The communion of saints, we call it. We remember all the folks in our faith who tried, who failed, who dusted themselves and kept trying to do their best with the time they were given, even up against all odds.

Reading this story on All saints a day to makes me think of the still small voice of God that has spoken steadily, echoing through generations, speaking a call to everyone. The whisper Elijah heard is the same whisper our ancestors in faith heard, the same whisper that speaks to us now. 

Today, I want to invite you to picture the people in your life, the saints, who could sense the steady pulse of God underneath the service of their life? When I ask that… Who are you picturing? How did they live in rhythm with that divine heartbeat; listening, discerning, acting, and listening again. How might their response to God’s call, inspire your own? When we gather here, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We are part of a communion of saints that stretches across time, past, present, and future, all of us moving to the same quiet pulse of God’s love.

We’ve been talking about the relationship between stewardship and listening to God’s voice and this is what stewardship really is about: how we respond to God’s steady, quiet call. It’s not about budgets or balance sheets.
It’s about listening for what God is calling us to do next and offering what we can to be part of it: Our time, our enthusiasm, our money, our talents, our selves.

When we make our pledges, when we give our time, when we volunteer, when we pray; we’re saying to God, We are still listening. We hear you speaking. We want to be part of it. We are joining that quiet rhythm that started long before us and will continue long after us, the steady pulsing of God’s call that knits us all together.

So when life is as loud as it is right now, when the noise of the world and the weight of the day are too much, try and pause. Place your hand over your heart if you need to. Feel that steady pulse. Let it remind you that God’s presence has not gone anywhere. That same heartbeat—the still, small voice of God— is what carries us forward, generation after generation, guiding us to the next faithful step.

Listen. Discern. Act. And then we listen again.

Thanks be to God for the gift it is to take part in this rhythm that has lasted for generations. Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

PRELUDE                                                                               “Always”                                                                      Lindy Kerby

INTROIT                               “Listen God is Calling”                                            KENYAN HYMN

                                                                                                                                                                         arr. Austin Lovelace 

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP

One: We come to listen again for the whisper of God.

Many: Not in the noise, not in the hurry but in the still, steady presence of love.

One: We come to remember the saints who walked this road before us.

Many: They listened. They trusted. They responded.

All: We join our voices with theirs: Holy God, speak, your people are listening. 

*HYMN 326                                     “For All the Saints”                                                     SINE NOMINE

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION                                                        Jeremy Carroll

God of the still, small voice, we confess that we are far too often overwhelmed. We run in fear, we hide in worry, we sink into exhaustion, we forget that you are near. We confess the ways we try to carry more than we were meant to carry: the weight of our responsibilities, the weight of the world, the weight of thinking we must do it all alone.

Silent Confession is offered

O God,
Speak to us again, O God, not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire—but in the quiet that steadies us, in the whisper that calls us back to life. Give us rest where we are tired, bread where we are hungry, and companions for the journey. Amen.    

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON                                                          Rev. Trip Porch 

*RESPONSE OF PARDON 695            “Change My Heart, O God”                  CHANGE MY HEART

*PASSING OF THE PEACE                                                                  

One:   The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,

All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD

ANTHEM                       "He Watching Over Israel" from Elijah                             Mendelssohn   

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                                    Dorothy Kyle

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION                                                                 

SCRIPTURE     1 Kings 19:1-18    CEB                                                                                                                 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, how he had killed all Baal’s prophets with the sword. Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah with this message: “May the gods do whatever they want to me if by this time tomorrow I haven’t made your life like the life of one of them.”

Elijah was terrified. He got up and ran for his life. He arrived at Beer-sheba in Judah and left his assistant there. He himself went farther on into the desert a day’s journey. He finally sat down under a solitary broom bush. He longed for his own death: “It’s more than enough, Lord! Take my life because I’m no better than my ancestors.” He lay down and slept under the solitary broom bush.

Then suddenly a messenger tapped him and said to him, “Get up! Eat something!” Elijah opened his eyes and saw flatbread baked on glowing coals and a jar of water right by his head. He ate and drank, and then went back to sleep. The Lord’s messenger returned a second time and tapped him. “Get up!” the messenger said. “Eat something, because you have a difficult road ahead of you.” Elijah got up, ate and drank, and went refreshed by that food for forty days and nights until he arrived at Horeb, God’s mountain. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

The Lord’s word came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

Elijah replied, “I’ve been very passionate for the Lord God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I’m the only one left, and now they want to take my life too!”

The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord. The Lord is passing by.” A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord wasn’t in the fire. After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat. He went out and stood at the cave’s entrance. A voice came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?”

One: Holy wisdom, Holy Word,
All: Thanks be to God           

SERMON                                                                               Rev. Trip Porch

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD

*HYMN 410                            “God Is Calling through the Whisper”                       W ŻLOBIE LEŻY

TIME FO OFFERING    Receiving Tithes and Estimates of Giving

                                       online giving is available at  www.indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                         “O Rest In the Lord” from Elijah                   Mendelssohn

                                                                                              Kya Angle, soloist                              

COMMUNION

INVITATION TO THE TABLE

GREAT PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING  with Necrology                      Barb Mase, Bill Poteet

    SHARING OF BREAD AND CUP                    # 501    “Feed Us, Lord”                                                                                        FEED US

  PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION                   

God of all generations, We give you thanks for feeding us at your table, with a grace that spans the centuries, With a hope that does not fade, with a love that connects us to all your people. Send us out renewed by your Spirit: to listen for your whisper, to live as your people, and to continue your work in this time and place. Amen.

*HYMN  730                             “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God”                                       GRAND ISLE            

TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING

CHARGE AND BENEDICTION

CHORAL RESPONSE        “God Be With You Till We Meet Again”                William G. Tomer  

POSTLUDE                                     “For All the Saints”                       arr. Michael Bukhardt         

 Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452