These are notes on the sermon, Cherished and Nourished, preached by Pastor Mark Ng on Sunday, August 23, 2026 at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will encourage you to keep praying, keep believing, and not lose heart.
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The Lord desires always to be with us, to lead us, and to grow us. He does not leave us to face life on our own. He wants us to know Him more, to become established in His love, and to learn what it means to walk through every season with our eyes on Him.
This is why His words in John 16:33 are so comforting: “In Me you may have peace.”
In saying this, Jesus did not mean that we will never face trouble because we have Him in our lives. In the same verse, He tells us plainly that in this world we will face tribulation. There will be storms, pressures, disappointments, and situations we do not understand, but we will not have to go through them without Him.
Our peace is not found in having perfect circumstances. It is found in Christ.
Many people in the world look to outward things for a sense of security—money, possessions, success, or favorable circumstances. But none of these can give us the lasting peace our hearts truly need. Circumstances can change. What we thought was secure can be shaken. But Jesus alone remains the same.
Pastor Mark shared his testimony about how he once thought that having money, fast cars, designer clothing, and expensive watches would give him peace. After losing everything, he realized that peace can only come from having Jesus. He also felt the Lord’s love firsthand because the Lord was there for him at his lowest point.
When we have Jesus, we have the immutable One who stays with us through every season. So even when circumstances are uncertain, we can face the future with a good expectation because we know who is with us. His presence gives us a steadiness that circumstances cannot give and cannot take away.
When the storm hits, our answer is never to become more occupied with ourselves or our weaknesses, but to keep beholding our Lord Jesus. Because we have already been made righteous in Christ by our heavenly Father because of our Lord’s finished work at the cross, we can stand firm on the Word that says the path of the righteous grows brighter and brighter. And the more we behold Jesus and receive the gift of righteousness, the more grace and peace are multiplied to us.
When we are weak or hurt, or in the midst of a storm, we do not have to face life afraid because Jesus is with us. And He is not there to condemn us; He draws near to embrace us and help us grow. Paul illustrates this with the picture of a husband and wife in Ephesians 5. Just as a husband is called to love and care for his own wife, Christ loves and cares for His church.
So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.
—Ephesians 5:28–29 NKJV
How does the Lord nourish and cherish us? As if we are His own flesh, because, in truth, we are His body.
Ephesians 1 tells us that God “gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body” (Eph. 1:22–23). And Ephesians 5:30 says, “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.”
Christ is the Head, and we are His body. We are not separate from Him. We are joined to Him. That is why whatever concerns us concerns Him.
When one part of our natural body is hurt, we instinctively become more careful with it. We protect it, tend to it, and give it the attention it needs. In the same way, the Lord is not indifferent when we are hurting. He cares for us as His own body, and His response is to nourish and cherish us.
To nourish is to feed, nurture, and bring to maturity. The Lord’s heart is always to grow us. Even in difficult seasons, He is not standing over us demanding that we become stronger on our own. He is supplying what we need, strengthening us, and bringing us forward.
To cherish is to keep warm and to care for with tender love. It is the picture of being held close. This becomes especially encouraging when we are weak, hurting, or downcast. Just as we give greater care to the part of the body that is in pain, the Lord draws near to us in our weakness. His love does not leave us where we are, but neither does He shame us into change. He embraces us, strengthens us, and lifts us up. And as we receive His care, His life works in us and brings us toward maturity.
We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. He is our life. The more we receive from Him, the more His life is seen in us. Ephesians 1:23 NLT says it this way:
And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.
Because we are joined to Christ, His care for us does not stop when we fail. Some of the clearest pictures of God’s nourishing and cherishing heart are seen in moments of weakness and shame.
After Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God. But God was not hiding from them. He came looking for them (Gen. 3:7–9). Their failure made them feel distant, but the Lord did not reject them. Instead, because they were conscious of their nakedness, God clothed them with tunics of skin (Gen. 3:21). This is a picture of His heart toward us: He does not leave us exposed in our failure. He draws near and covers us.
This is why, as new covenant believers, our righteousness in Christ matters. Our standing before God is not based on our performance. Christ is our righteousness. So when we fail, we do not have to run from Him.
Peter gives us another powerful picture of this. In John 18, Peter denied Jesus three times. Though there was a coal fire burning, John 18:18 noted that it was cold, mirroring the desolation of what was going on then and also Peter’s own feeling of distance from the Lord. Yet after the Lord’s resurrection, He came looking for Peter as he was fishing with the other disciples on the Sea of Galilee. It was a cold morning, but on the shore, Peter saw another coal fire, with fish and bread already prepared (John 21:9).
The coals of fire could have caused Peter to recall his failure. But the Lord did not meet him with condemnation; He met him with warmth and food, saying, “Come and eat breakfast” (John 21:12).
That is the heart of grace. When Peter was cold, Jesus warmed him. When Peter was hungry, Jesus fed him. When Peter had failed, Jesus drew near and restored him.
And notice the order: Jesus fed Peter before He commissioned him.
We often think about what we must first do for God after we fail. But the Lord’s way is different. He wants to nourish us first.
Let Him feed you first. Let Him serve you first.
We do not grow by condemnation. We grow by grace. His grace lifts us from where we have fallen, restores us, and brings us forward again.
Failure may make us want to hide, but Jesus comes near. Shame may make us feel cold, but He warms us. Before He asks anything from us, He invites us to receive from Him again. And as we receive His love, His strength, His compassion, we are strengthened to rise up, move forward, and even to serve others.
What about when what we have prayed and hoped for doesn’t come to pass? Just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were disappointed and downcast, and they said, “We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21), speaking of Jesus.
We may be hoping for a life partner, for our child to enter a certain school, for a job opportunity, for healing, or for a breakthrough we have prayed about for a long time. Sometimes, the outcome is not what we expected.
This brings us back to what happened on the road to Emmaus. The disciples were discouraged because what they had hoped for had not happened. Yet the resurrected Jesus drew near and walked with them in their sorrow and confusion. He did not simply come to soothe their pain; He came to help them see beyond it. Their hearts had become fixated on an outcome that they desired but did not happen, so Jesus began to turn their eyes back to Himself and to a larger hope than the one they had lost.
And some disappointments can go very deep. Few things are more painful than praying again and again for someone we love, believing for healing, and then having to say goodbye.
In moments like that, there is little meaning in forcing an explanation where there isn’t one. The Lord does not ask us to pretend that the loss does not hurt. But neither do our losses and unanswered questions mean that He has left us or that His love has failed.
Pastor Mark shared his encounter with a little boy with a terminal illness whose parents were still believing for his healing and had asked many pastors to pray for him, Pastor Mark being one of them. When Pastor Mark spoke privately with the boy, the boy shared that he had seen the Lord and wanted to go and be with Him. His struggle was that he knew how deeply his parents wanted him to remain with them. Pastor Mark prayed for him, and a few months later, Pastor Mark heard that the boy had gone home to be with the Lord.
His parents naturally hoped for healing and for more years with their son. That longing was real. But this boy’s story does not end with their loss. He is now with the Lord, pain-free and strong. And though the grief of those who remain is real, being in grief is not the same as being in hopelessness.
We may still have questions. We may still miss the person deeply. But we can grieve while knowing that this separation is not forever, and that a day is coming when we will see our loved one again.
In the same way, Jesus helps us see beyond what is immediately in front of us. He does not minimize the pain of our loss or disappointment, nor give us a shallow answer. He lifts our eyes to a hope that is larger than this present life.
And that is where we can still hold on to the goodness of God—not by saying that everything that happened was good, but by knowing that even in something we do not understand and would never have chosen, Jesus has not left us and His heart is still for us.
So when we fail or when disappointment leaves us with questions, we do not have to force ourselves to make sense of everything. We can keep walking with Jesus and allow Him to widen our view and see beyond. He sees further than we do, and because our lives are held securely in Him, we can always pray and keep moving forward with hope.
We hope these sermon notes blessed you! If they did, we encourage you to get the sermon and allow the Lord to speak to you personally as you watch or listen to it.
© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2026
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.
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