Living in the New Covenant - Suffering

So God providentially works all things out for our good, and I actually was going to ask you if I could do my sermon before dinner, because of the distance I'm traveling and I'm going to church tomorrow in my home church. I wanted to leave tonight at some point, but I didn't want to just speak and leave. I wanted the chance to say bye to people, and we'll get to do that over dinner now.

And then if somebody wanted to talk about whatever I talk about now, we'd have a chance to do that. You know, you could offer correction or, you know, whatever you need to do. But so we praise the Lord for his sovereign will over all things, which is a perfect thing to go into what we're going to talk about. Because when Adam told me we're going to talk about living in the new covenant, it's like, OK, that's an extremely general topic.

So basically he said pick anything you want in the Bible because we're living in the new covenant and the Bible is our guide. And so yesterday we talked about evangelism as something we should want to do. And I gave you some practical tips I hope and encouraged you. And so I'll remind you I have this box full of gospel tracts that are already written out for you and you can take some.

And then whatever you guys don't take I'll take home. And I've got the two different kinds of gospel tracts that you can have. and hopefully that'll help you be able to start maybe doing evangelism if you don't do it already. But tonight we're going to talk about suffering. And I'm going to mention that there's about three kinds of suffering that you're going to encounter and we're really not going to go too deep into all of them.

That could be a whole weekend topic if you wanted. and then what I want to do is at least give you a few practical tips of things you can be doing now to prepare yourself for that. And one of them in particular, I don't forget it because I just thought of it, is learning the hymns. Paul and Silas, when they were in the Philippian jail, they were singing hymns.

And I'm sure they didn't have hymn books. And so part of what's incumbent upon each of us is that we actually put these things in our hearts so that if there comes a day, and there may come a day, that you don't have a physical Bible or a hymn book with you, that you're able to recall Scripture and that you're able to recall the hymns that you will want to sing through your difficulty. There was a group of people, I don't remember what city they were in, it was somewhere in Europe, there was a whole village that was kind of a Christian village, and they actually split the Bible up and all the people of the village memorized a different part of the Bible so that if all their Bibles got taken away they could put it back together.

And so one guy got Genesis, one guy got Exodus, something like that. And so I strongly recommend memorizing books of the Bible, at the very least chapters, and maybe in some cases a couple key chapters in a book. Isaiah might be a big one to try to do, but anyone here can memorize Philippians. It's 100 verses, and it would encourage your heart the rest of your life.

104 verses. So, neat story I told Megan was, I was memorizing the book of Philippians a few years ago when my son was four, and I was just doing it with him. And little kids just soak that stuff up. They can memorize one or two verses a day easily. You can have tens of thousands of verses memorized by the time you're 20, if you start a kid when they're little.

But my little boy actually taught himself to read because he had Philippians memorized, and when he looked at the Bible, he realized the words corresponded with his thoughts. So that was kind of neat. But turn to 1 Peter. A lot of people will recognize 1 Peter as a book that's really written to prepare the people of God for suffering. and so there's there's three kinds of suffering that i want to talk about it there may be more you can think of but the first kind of suffering would be the kind of suffering that all people encounter right so you get cancer you sprain your ankle you die your family member dies there's something that's common to all humanity and and we should do those things well as christians But that's something that everyone has to deal with.

And so that's not any kind of special kind of suffering, in my opinion, for Christians in the same sense that the other kinds are. So we're not going to go into that one. If you're dealing with those things, it's worth talking to someone to get you help to know how to handle it and to handle it well as a Christian. but you can't really say that that's been granted to you as a tribulation or persecution when non-believers suffer the same fates.

The second kind of suffering though, if you look at 1 Peter 1.6, Peter says, in this you rejoice. He's talking about your salvation. He says, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. So you have various trials that have come to you and they're grieving you. But he tells you why. He says, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So you're going to be put through trials as a Christian, and those trials actually work to test your faith. And then the result of the testing of your faith is you are more assured of your own faith. God actually sends you trials in your Christian life, and the result of those trials, once you've persevered by His grace, is that you are strengthened in the faith.

You are reminded of His love for you. Because one of the fears that you can have as a Christian and one of the things that if you a part of I don know how to say it like if you a part of American Christianity which is a different religion from what we practicing here I'm talking about something else, is that actual suffering and trials is actually an indicator that you're not in God's favor. And so I'm going to try to repeat that.

There's a religion out there that teaches people that if you're having trouble, that's actually a sign that you're not in God's favor, you're being judged. But according to the New Testament, the trials and suffering that you actually receive are gifts from God. And they're there to help you to actually encourage your faith. If you turn to Philippians 1, look at Philippians 1, the end of that chapter here.

You got Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. in Philippians 1 verse 28 and 29 the end of the chapter Paul says don't be frightened in anything by your opponents so he's talking about when you have adversaries he says this is a clear sign to them of their destruction but of your salvation and that's from God and he says in 29 for it has been granted to you. That for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in Him. Well, that sounds good, right?

And it says, but also suffer for His sake. Suffering as a Christian in the New Covenant is a gift from God. And there's many outputs of it that we can recognize. But one of them is it sanctifies us. The suffering often helps point us to our weakness, which causes us to cry out to God for his strength. And a lot of times it helps identify sin in our life.

It helps us identify the areas of our life where we're not really trusting what God has said, where we're trusting something else. So suffering is a gift. It's not pleasant though. And so although we're to rejoice in our trials and tribulations and we're to trust that God sent them, it's never pleasant. That's why it's called suffering. So there's a bit of a paradox in our minds there because we know we're supposed to rejoice in them in the trials, but at the same time, they can be very painful and it can be very difficult.

And we should have compassion on others when they're going through trials. But it's been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you not only believe in him but suffer for his sake. So suffering, I just want you to remember, is a gift from God. Just like God helping us with the schedule tonight. And Adam thought he made a mistake, but in reality, this is how God wanted it.

And we rejoice. Well, this isn't really suffering. But God also providentially is going to grant each and every believer some form of suffering in their life that is meant to draw them closer to Him and test their faith. Not because God doesn't know that you have faith. He granted it to you. He knows. the testing of your faith is so that you will be assured that you're one of his children as he perseveres you through the suffering in the book of Colossians chapter 1 we have a similar concept Paul says in verse 24 he says now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church.

So Paul is suffering and this is an interesting phrase. He says, in my flesh I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. And when I first saw that phrase, I thought that was really strange. Like Christ wasn't afflicted enough is how I thought it read in English. I don't know what it says in the Holman Christian Standard Bible. But what it's saying is that because Christ is not present anymore in this world in the corporeal sense.

In his humanity, he's at the right hand of the Father. He can only be in one place in one time. That's Christology 101. He is a human. He's a man. He's truly human.

He's not here anymore. He's here spiritually, but he can't suffer in the body anymore. And so we suffer because people want to attack him. Because people don't like Jesus Christ, they attack those who represent him. And so when Christ says, in his flesh he's filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, the church, Paul's saying he suffers because he loves the church and he loves Christ.

And as long as people can't get their hand on Jesus to re-crucify him if they wanted to, they'll attack the people who love him. So if you go back to 1 Peter, chapter 3 now, Peter has this theme throughout his book of suffering. In chapter 3, Peter says, I'm sorry, 3.13. He says, now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? So there's a general principle.

If you do good things, chances are pretty good things will happen to you. You reap what you sow. This isn't karma. This is just biblical way to live. but there are people who are going to persecute you he says even if you should suffer for righteousness sake you're blessed have no fear of them nor be troubled but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord is holy and always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you so what I want you to understand and we talked about this this morning is that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the whole universe he's the king of the earth the the earth is his and the fullness thereof this is his dominion but there's another there's another king in town lowercase K King will say there's powers and there's dominions and authorities and rulers who are completely anti Christ and when you come into this world and you say no I actually the real king which is what Jesus said He invading a kingdom of Satan He's invading an area that Satan and his, we'll say, minions think is theirs.

And so because of that, there's been this invasion. They're going to rebel. They're going to fight back. And so as a Christian, standing up for Jesus Christ. as a Christian saying like you said in Psalm 96 10 Yahweh reigns or Jesus Christ reigns you are committing an offense against somebody who thinks this is their kingdom and so because of that you should not be surprised when suffering comes when you look at first Peter 4 12 Peter says beloved do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.

He says, rejoice because you share Christ's sufferings. And so what I want you to be prepared for is a specific kind of suffering, which is persecution. I want you to be prepared for the idea that there are people who hate Jesus Christ so much. There are powers and principalities and rulers and authorities that are spiritual in nature and invisible, and you don't see them and they hate Jesus Christ more than we can even imagine.

And they oppose him with all their being. They have no hope of salvation. And they are fighting against him establishing his kingdom. And they are fighting against people like you and people like me trying to take dominion and increase and all the things we try to do. How hard is it to raise godly children in this society? Like everything in your world is oppositional to what you're really trying to do as a Christian.

There's a few things that we can maybe agree with, with, you know, watching a ball games fun and things like that. But for the most part, there's very little outside of your home and Christianity and outside of your church that's trying to help you out. It very much is oppositional. And a lot of times it's very subtle. This is one reason why we should listen to particularly elders in your church who have discernment as they warn you to, hey, maybe you should avoid this thing.

Maybe it's not obvious to you why, but they know that deep down inside, like the social justice stuff that Doug was talking about, CRT. You know, there's these ideologies people espouse that are contrary to Christ. And what they do is they take an old one and they rename it. and then they give it like Christian words, like the word justice or the word social and anti-racism.

And they give things new words that sound good and then we buy into them. And so you have to listen to people that try to help you. But prepare yourself for persecution. And a couple of things you need to do is you need to prepare yourself to hold on to your faith. So if you look at 1 Peter 4 now, in verse 6, there's a really interesting verse that the Holman Christian Standard Bible actually nails the translation of really good.

So I'm glad you guys are using that one for this night. Peter says, God does. Now in the ESV it says this is why the gospel is preached even to those who are dead. It kind of sounds weird like the gospel is being preached to dead people and it took me a while actually to wrap my mind around this verse. I just had the Holman on the first try. But the idea is this, is as a Christian one of the temptations you're going to face when persecution comes, when even other Christians line up against you. and God forbid maybe even some spouses or against spouses or children rise up against parents but Jesus predicted these things would happen so I hope it doesn't happen to people in this room but he told us to prepare for it when these things happen to be prepared to know that even if in an earthly sense you suffer enormously even to the point of death do not let that separate you in your mind and heart from the fact that God loves you and that God has redeemed you and he never promised that you're going to make it through this life alive.

He actually promised suffering and persecution. And it's actually, again, I'm just so concerned that people who begin to suffer that they will forget that God loves them in those moments. and I just want that impressed upon you that God, if you're one of his children he loves you, he loved you from before the foundation of the world and you know what's really neat about God's love is God cannot love you any more than he already does and God cannot love you any less than he already does you can become the best Christian that ever lived tomorrow it won't change the way he loves you you can become the worst Christian who ever lived tomorrow it will not change the way that he loves you God's love is immutable and unchanging and if he set it upon you it's not going to change based on the things you do so I want you to feel confident if you're the one that faces persecution if you're the one these bakers that are being singled out for not baking cakes for homosexual weddings these photographers that are being singled out all these people are just average church goers they're not picking like the strong bold preacher guys that are well known and stuff like that they're picking on the ones they think are weak at least and so that's why you do need a strong relationship with your church because we are weak in reality but none of you is weak if you have God on your side none of you is weak if you remember that no I have Jesus and he loves me and he will never let anything happen to me that outside of his sovereign will And that his sovereign will may be that you suffer greatly in this life I'll give you a bit of confidence though. If you turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1.

Sorry, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. I want you to have a bit of confidence of why you should be okay with some of this persecution that can come. And that is in verse 5. Talking about the persecution and afflictions that the Thessalonians were enduring, Paul says, This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering.

And then he says what? He says, since indeed God considers it just. So God considers it right. It is God's just. He loves justice. He is justice.

God will always do what's right. God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you. And to grant relief to you who are afflicted. As well as to us. when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, but listen, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God. So all the suffering that you go through as a Christian at the hands of persecutors.

Again, I'm not talking about if you get cancer and miscarriage or some of these things that happen to people that are really hard, but they're common to all men. I'm talking about when you're persecuted because you stood up for Jesus Christ. or what's more common when you actually stand up for Jesus in a way where it's not obvious. Okay. It's one thing if somebody walks in your house and says, deny Jesus.

And you say, I won't deny Jesus. And then you suffer for it. But usually it comes in the form of, hey, why don't you call this man a woman? You know, why don't you? It comes in some other form than just blatant, you know, I'm just crossing off the name Jesus and writing Buddha somewhere. You know what I mean?

And so when you are forced by the world to have to decide between obeying what Jesus has written or suffering for it, losing a job because you refuse to call, you know, Eve, Adam at work, you know, these things are going to happen to Christians. They might not happen at your job. but when you suffer for that you have to remember that God will actually take great pleasure in having vengeance upon the people that do that to you and so you can sit back and you can obey Romans 12 where it says do not repay evil for evil overcome evil with good you can obey Romans 12 where it says not to take vengeance for yourself but leave it to the wrath of God and what you do is you try to bless people and you pray that instead of that person actually receiving the affliction, do them, you pray that God would forgive them by the grace and blood of the Son, Jesus Christ, and that you may gain a brother, maybe through your testimony of your suffering. That may be how that works.

So I want to encourage you to be ready, so you have to hold fast to your faith. You have to know what you believe, and you have to be ready if somebody challenges that you have to be ready to have an answer for it that's what 1 Peter 3 said in verse 15 that's in the context of while you're suffering and one of the ways you do that is you continuously attend church and for my I'm not NCT you guys I think knew that you go every Sunday you should be there you should be faithfully giving not only of your money but of your resources, your time. You should be praying for your church, for your pastor or pastors.

You should be praying for the other people in your church. Your life should really be very much revolved around your local assembly and loving the people there. And that helps boost your faith. And then secondly, you should be doing things on your own to commune with Jesus Christ so you have a good relationship with Him. A good relationship with someone helps when the difficulty comes.

This applies to marriage too. But simple things. You read your Bible on your own. What did Doug say today to the ladies after you give birth? Remember what he said? He said, you guys are Christian Publishing's main target.

They know their demographic. It's stay-at-home moms that sit around and read books more than other people maybe. He said, read the Bible first. Remember? Because that's what's really going to feed your soul. These other books might be great, but when you only have 20 minutes a day to actually get a break while you can stay awake because you're wrestling with a baby 24 hours a day, make sure you're reading God's Word.

It'll feed your soul better than anything else. Even if it's just a little bit at a time. Even if you read the same thing every day. There's nothing wrong with reading the same thing every day. You find a psalm you really like, read the same psalm every day for a month. You probably have it memorized after about two weeks anyway.

And you'll have it in your heart by accident. But read God's word and commune with God through prayer. Go to God and pour out your heart to him. And tell him how you love him. Tell him how wonderful you think he is. Praise him for all that he's done.

Remind yourself of those things through your prayer. And ask him to supply your needs, to make you stronger for these days ahead. and to help you to be faithful even if difficulty comes. The most faithful people in church history were all human beings. Forgetting Jesus, he's a little unique compared to us. But all the faithful men of God, the heroes that we will talk about sometimes at conferences or just in conversation, do you know that they all had the same exact Holy Spirit indwelling them that indwells you right now?

With all the same power, with all the same wisdom, the same Holy Spirit that's in you right now, the weakest person in the room, if you think you're the biggest sinner, that same Holy Spirit indwells you, that indwelled guys that sang hymns while being burned to death. I think we forget that. And we look at these other guys and we think, oh, what a great hero of the faith and stuff.

And they are, some of them. But we forget that we have the same Spirit. because we're looking at our own weakness rather than his strength. So glory in his strength and pray. Pray that he'll strengthen you. So you need to read the Bible. You need to pray.

And those are two things I think every Christian should do. And I hope if that sounds like me laying down law on you instead of grace, I think a Christian should want to do those things. You wake up and I don't have to tell you to eat. I shouldn't have to tell you to feed yourself with God's word and commune with the one you say you love so much. And then thirdly, I think people should memorize scripture.

I think you should have an intentional approach to memorizing scripture. And I'm not a big fan of the like a Juana type thing where you just memorize a verse here and a verse there. I get that sometimes it's topical and that maybe helps a little. But I think you should pick a section of scripture and just memorize this section. And you know, there's a psalm that's only two verses.

Psalm 117, praise Yahweh all nations, extol him all peoples, for great is his steadfast love. and the faithfulness of Yahweh endures forever. Praise Yahweh. I just quoted a whole chapter of the Bible to you from memory. You know what I mean? Nobody has to know it was that short. I could go home and say, yeah, I quoted a whole chapter during my sermon.

You know what I mean? You're not supposed to do it to brag, but you can start with small sections of Scripture. There's about a dozen Psalms that are only three to six verses, maybe more than that even. And just start feeding yourself with God's Word in your heart. And do that every day. and work at it every day. And if you need help with that, there's lots of people who've memorized big chunks and there's apps if you're a phone person and there's other techniques if you don't like using a phone.

And some of you, if you just turn the garbage off that you listen to all day and just turned on Scripture, you'd probably pick it up naturally. And so that's part of what you can do. And then memorize hymns. And you memorize songs just by singing them. You don't have to sit and try to memorize a song. sing songs over and over when you're in your family do family worship and what we do at our family we don't try to make a new thing every day we sing the same songs every day of the week because I'm the pastor I pick the songs on Monday that we're going to sing Sunday and we sing them all week long we share them with the rest of the church we sing them all week long and then by Sunday everybody almost knows all the songs already and we've mastered the tune if it was a tough one and things like that so turn to Hebrews chapter 2 though there's one other kind of suffering that you're all going to encounter if you're a Christian it's actually a wonderful thing to encounter this because it's again this is a tested genuineness of your faith this kind of suffering so the first kind was the kind common to man we're all going to face it you have to be ready for it but I wasn't preaching on that one that's just you're a man you're a woman, you're cursed in this cursed world and so there's going to be difficulties the second one was the persecution that comes because you actually a representative an ambassador for a king who invading somebody else a land that somebody else thinks is his We just put it that way And as long as you going to stand up for Jesus you going to be rebelled against by the disciples of Satan, for lack of a better phrase.

The third kind of suffering is the kind that Jesus faced. It's described in chapter 2 of Hebrews. So if you look at verse 17, chapter 2, the apostle, usually I say Paul when I'm doing Hebrews, but we don't know for sure. The apostle who wrote it, though, or the person who wrote it, says, therefore, he, Jesus, had to be made like his brothers in every respect.

So first of all, it's mind-blowing that you're called Jesus' brother or sister. You share an inheritance with the guy who owns everything. I mean, it's crazy. right? think about it from an angel's perspective a perfect angel who never sinned watches the things we do and then finds out wait they're going to inherit all the stuff Jesus gets and like these guys have never sinned but that's what it means to be in Christ you know you get everything that's his but he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so he was truly a man so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people so Jesus Christ became a man so that he could actually identify with us when he went as the high priest on our behalf for because he himself has suffered when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted So that's an interesting phrase there.

It says Jesus suffered when tempted. And this is what I want you to imagine. I want you to imagine a different kind of suffering than being persecuted. And now I didn't get, you know, I'm dairy free and the persecutors keep giving me dairy. Or, you know, probably way worse things happen. And Lord, I hate to say it, but bad things could happen to people in here.

And I want you to be ready for it. But this kind of suffering is a little different. This isn't about like pain and physical discomfort or feeling left out of a situation or losing your job. It's not like that. This is the perfect Son of God. the perfect pure son of God who hates sin with a holy hatred. He hates sin more than we can describe.

God hates sin so much that the only solution to sin is death and bloodshed. And yet Jesus actually suffered living in this world surrounded by temptation. Now, I believe, I guess you call it perfectionist. There's a word, I forget it right now. I don't believe Jesus could have sinned even. I forget all the different theological terms.

But, you know, Jesus never sinned. So don't ever think I'm saying he sinned. But he was surrounded by temptations to sin. He was surrounded by situations in this cursed world where there was opportunity given to sin And he was tempted by the devil himself right he was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted led by the spirit to be tempted by the devil and what i'm what i want you to understand is that jesus suffered greatly because to even be in the presence of it even though he had no sinful inclination inside him that could have even brought about sin for him to even be in the presence of it is a form of suffering and some of us don't understand that because we actually kind of like our sins still some of us have the little pet sin that we sort of we like to do and we feed it once in a while and then we we pretend we don't want to do it but then we keep doing it but some of you will understand this better than others there are people in here that have overcome some things in your life.

There is some sin in your path that you have now put behind you and you hate it. And you hate it with a holy hatred. And when you encounter a situation that tempts you, even if you don't have that inclination anymore, it's disgusting to even think about for you. That kind of hatred is what Jesus has for sin. And if you identify with Jesus Christ, as you grow in your sanctification, you're going to face that as well.

And you're going to suffer that kind of suffering. And what you can remember is that because of the Holy Spirit indwelling you, because God's law has been written on your heart, because in Ezekiel he's going to give you a heart of flesh and take out your heart of stone, and all the promises we have in Jesus Christ in the New Covenant, that there is actually power over sin. So whereas before you were a Christian, from a theological perspective, you could do nothing but sin.

Now, as a Christian, you have the ability to do righteous things in Jesus Christ. But there's going to be a struggle because we live in a world, and even if your flesh was perfect like Jesus, there's still a struggle of suffering because it surrounds you. But there's a second kind of suffering that I'll say, I don't think Jesus would have had to deal with in the way we do.

And that is that your flesh that you carry with you is still not redeemed. It's not glorified. So your soul has been redeemed. You have a new heart. But you actually carry around a piece of dead flesh that you look forward to the day that God's going to give you a new one. He's going to recreate it.

And it's not going to be able to sin anymore. but you have a flesh that actually wants to sin and you wake up in the morning and you say your prayers and you ask God for strength and you read his word and you say to yourself I'm not going to do that thing that I did the other day again and then you go about your day and what happens? Some days you end up doing the thing again and you almost wonder why did I do it? I didn't even want to do it and Paul addresses that for us in Romans chapter 7 when he says, I do the things that I do not want to do, and what I do want to do, I do not do.

And Paul is describing for us the battle we have as redeemed saints who love what God has told us to do. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day Psalm 119 tells us As redeemed saints we want to do the right thing We know things we ought to do We just went upstairs and we made lists of things we should do So, you know, there's more to it.

But we did that with Doug and me up there. And yet it's still a struggle. And that's because there's part of you that is still warring against your spirit. So there's a battle going on between your spirit and your flesh. and the truly regenerate person, the person that wants to grow in holiness, that battle will be a form of suffering for you. I mean, just for a lot of guys, I think I'm probably speaking for a lot of people, we live in a hyper-sexualized culture with imagery everywhere.

You can't go to Target. Without seeing big pictures of people that are scantily clad. You can't watch a video on the internet without the ad popping up before you have a chance to even close it down. We are surrounded by temptation to sin. And it's something that a holy man hates. But you suffer through it and you look to your Savior.

And so if you remember one thing from what I said the last two days. I just want you to remember look to the Savior he's the answer to everything all the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus Christ he's the one that fulfilled God's law because we could not we could not do it before we got saved or after it's still him, you still need Jesus and he's the one that prayed prayers that God heard and answered and he prayed for us in his high priestly prayer in John 17 he prayed for us and God answers the prayers of his son so I want you to remember that I want you to be prepared though do not be surprised when fire trials come upon you whether it's worldly normal suffering or whether it's a form of persecution or whether it's you just suffering through the battle you have with your own flesh warring against your spirit just remember that Jesus Christ he is the one that fulfilled all righteousness and he sent his Holy Spirit to empower you and as a seal to bring you home one day to be with him. So let me pray.

Father, thank you that you are always wise and good and you orchestrate everything according to your perfect will and we make plans and we say things like Lord willing. And so we thank you that your will is always wiser than ours. And I pray that you would bless us as we go to fellowship over a meal and that you would prepare each and every one of us for the sometimes unique things that we'll face and help us to rely on your strength and not our own, Lord, in the days to come.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.