How to Enter the House of Your King

And today, our sermon passage is Psalm 30.

Psalm 30.

I'll read this trusting that it's God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, clear, sufficient, powerful word for you and me as people.

! Please receive it that way.

And after I'm done reading, I'll say the word of God for the people of God.

And we say, thanks be to God.

Psalm 30.

And I'll remind you that the superscription, the part that comes at the top above the actual poem or lyrics, is also inspired and preserved as God's word.

And it's helpful, in some cases more than others, as we understand the context or the occasion of a psalm.

Psalm 30.

A psalm, a song at the dedication of the house of David.

And that's very close to the word for word.

Verses 1 through 12.

And give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.

For his anger is but for a moment.

His favor is for life.

Weeping may endure for a night.

But joy comes in the morning.

Now in my prosperity, I said, I shall never be moved.

Lord, by your favor, you have made my mountain stand strong.

You hid your face.

And I was troubled.

I cried out to you, O Lord.

And to the Lord I made supplication.

What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it declare your truth?

Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me.

Lord, be my helper.

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing.

You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.

To the end that my glory may sing praise to you and not be silent.

O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

The word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Please be seated.

Please pray with me.

O Lord, we praise you that we can cry out to God the creator.

The God who is self-existent, self-sufficient, eternal.

And you hear us, Lord.

Tiny, weak, frail creatures here on earth.

You hear our cry.

And not only do you hear it, Lord, it's your spirit.

The spirit of God himself who draws us to cry out to you.

To pray that you will dwell with us through prayer.

This is your purpose in saving a people.

We thank you how, as we read earlier, Jesus declared, quoting from Isaiah,

that your house, God, will be a house of prayer for all the nations.

You delight when your people come before you in your presence and pray to you

and cry out to you together.

Father, we pray that we can do this, Lord, even through the sermon.

That you'll receive, Lord, our prayers.

Our cries from our soul.

As your word resonates, Lord.

We pray that your spirit will do this in a powerful way.

These same words that you breathed out and preserved in scripture, Lord.

We pray that you will cause them to stir the hearts of your people.

To draw us into communion with you.

To pray, to receive from you.

And to respond in obedience.

We ask this for Christ's sake alone.

Amen.

Well, every house has a different set of expectations for those who are invited inside.

Some houses, it's expected that we'll take our shoes off before we go in.

If you visit the house of someone in South America.

I told the congregation recently we got to go back to Brazil where I grew up as a missionary kid.

If you go to someone's house in Brazil, they'll expect you to stay with them and visit for at least an hour.

These are the expectations as you enter someone's house.

I was very curious to know this.

So according to my very quick research, if you are invited into the White House, you must follow the proper protocol and etiquette.

As a guest invited to visit what many consider the highest seat of power in the modern world.

The place from where the leader of this nation carries out his executive powers.

You should do several things.

These are the expectations.

You should dress professionally.

All bags, weapons, vapes, and outside food are strictly prohibited.

You should arrive 30 minutes early.

Silence your phone and follow secret service instructions without touching historical artifacts or taking video footage.

You should maintain a respectful tone throughout the tour and avoid security jokes or loud political debates.

So there you go.

If you ever get invited to the White House, you can try to remember that list or look up a fresher list at that time.

So the question is, how should we enter the house of God?

How should we enter the house of the King of Kings?

In Psalm 30 we read, this is a psalm.

It's a song.

And then here it is, word for word, one more time.

At the dedication of the house of David.

All of those words are in the Hebrew passage.

And because of this dedication, this language,

there's not a strong consensus on the exact occasion for which this psalm was to be used.

The house that it's referring to, it could mean one of David's palaces.

2 Samuel 5.11 says that the king of Tyre, a foreign nation,

sent messengers, meaning ambassadors, to David,

and cedar trees and carpenters and masons who would work with the stone cutting.

And they built David a house.

We read in 2 Chronicles 15.1 that David built houses, many palaces for himself in the city of David.

That's Jerusalem.

And he prepared a place for the ark of God, which was a tent pitched for the ark.

So there it was, the tabernacle, a tent as the house of God,

a place for the ark of the covenant,

but palaces all around Jerusalem for King David.

So what was the occasion of Psalm 30?

We know that David desired to build a house for God as well,

but God said, you're a man of blood.

It won't be for you.

And Solomon was the king who got to build the temple.

Some have interpreted the comma after the word house

to mean the dedication of the house, meaning the house of God.

Maybe David writing this psalm so that when the temple is built by Solomon,

they could pull Psalm 30 out and sing Psalm 30 at the dedication of the temple.

Now, one other interpretation would be the house represents a dynasty.

So the dedication of the house of David, meaning the dynasty of David.

So every new king that would be inaugurated from the line of David,

this would be the occasion to sing Psalm 30,

praising God for sparing David's life and keeping this going.

Now, whether Psalm 30 was written for the dedication of each new king taking office,

or for the celebration of the Lord's house, the temple,

here's the truth for you and me.

Psalm 30 is relevant for us.

It's a guide for how we are to enter the house of our king,

the house of the king of kings, Jesus Christ.

And we get to do this at the start of each new week,

every Lord's Day when we gather to worship him as a congregation.

So the outline for our sermon today is four ways

for you and I to enter the house of our king.

Four ways to enter the house of our king.

Number one, as you enter the house of your king,

Psalm 30 teaches us to sing of God's faithfulness over the grave.

The first way to do it is this,

as you enter the house of the king,

sing of God's faithfulness over the grave.

I want to show you this in verses one through four.

Look at verse one with me.

David writes,

I will extol you, O Lord,

for you have lifted me up

and I've not let my foes rejoice over me.

It seems like David is feeling the end is imminent.

This is going to be my last day on this earth.

My foes, the people who have been trying to kill me all along,

they're going to rejoice.

They'll be happy.

And everyone who's been loyal to me will be mourning and sad.

It's going to be the end of my life, my reign, my kingdom, my house.

God, you are not going to keep your promises.

I won't get to see my enemies destroyed.

They'll be the ones cheering at my destruction instead.

And verse two gives us insights.

Many have concluded that most likely this end that David felt approaching to him

came because of physical sickness.

It tells us he was likely having a life-threatening illness.

Look at verse two.

O Lord, my God, I cried out to you and you healed me.

And verse one, when he says,

You lifted me up.

You lifted me up out of a sickness, perhaps,

out of the deathbed,

and put me back on my feet upright.

That verb, to be lifted up by God,

it's the same word used to describe drawing water out of a deep cistern.

You know, so you picture a well, a pit that's dug very deep,

and someone much stronger has to lift up the water

or a captive that's been thrown inside that cistern.

David doesn't just need God to give him a little hand.

David needs God to reach down all the way into the depths

and lift him up.

Lord, you do the lifting.

I don't even have strength to help at all.

He's been in this dark, suffocating pit.

He's trapped.

He's helpless.

And he cried out to the Lord.

The Lord healed him.

The Lord mended him.

The Lord set him right again.

Look at what he says in verse 3.

Oh, Lord, you brought up my soul from the grave.

You have kept me alive.

He says literally next, he says,

you kept me alive.

You kept me from those that are descending to the pit to death,

that I should not go down to the pit.

I was on the path of destruction, of perdition.

I was being carried downward.

And you're the one who pulled me out of that broken downward pattern.

You preserved me.

You healed me.

You mended me.

As you enter the house of your king, sing of God's faithfulness over the grave to give us life at all.

Now, the Lord has preserved some of you and some of your loved ones from physical death, from physical illness.

You shouldn't be here right now.

I can think of near-death experiences in my own life and probably many more that I'm not even aware of.

And the Lord is the preserver of life.

He's the one who has kept you.

He's the one who has kept you from going down to the pit and given you life and preserved you.

You enter his house praising him for life, for keeping you from the grave, for being faithful,

fulfilling the purposes he has for you here still.

When we think of a person on their deathbed and a near-death experience,

I know some of you are praying, and I've prayed from up here before with you for Pastor James Dolezal.

He's a professor at one of our seminaries and a faithful brother in Christ.

As some of you might remember, he was going for a walk near his home,

and he was using a crosswalk, and a car hit him by accident.

But it collapsed his ribs, broke them.

Almost all the ribs are broken and puncturing his lungs.

Both lungs collapsed.

He was intubated, all the fluid filling up the lungs.

Mentally, he was in almost a comatose state, off and on for many, many weeks.

And then this, finally, as I'm checking the Caring Bridge,

every time they update it, almost every day.

And this wonderful message came through just a couple days ago from his son.

Quote,

Seeing my dad was extremely encouraging.

When we left him three weeks ago, he was intubated, mostly unconscious, incoherent, delirious.

But tonight, he was able to have a fairly normal conversation with us.

He was happy that we are there and continued to talk about God's care for him after his accident.

The scripture that they encouraged everyone who would read that with is this.

Acts 17, 24 and 25.

Amen.

The Lord preserves us from the grave every moment we have on this earth still.

The Lord is the giver of life.

And yes, we worship him, but not because he lacks anything.

He is the one who a temple cannot contain.

His throne in the spiritual realm of heaven, it is coming with power to earth.

One day, the new heavens and the new earth will fill this cosmos with the glory of God and all will behold him.

And so when we have life and breath, even in these broken bodies that deserve to be dead already,

we have life and breath to praise him, to sing to him, to give thanks for his faithfulness over the grave.

And that's what we're exhorted to do in verse 4.

Look at that.

Now the king turns to the people, the people of God as the representative of the king of heaven.

And David commands the people,

Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of his.

Give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.

You see what David did?

By God preserving the life of his mediator, the anointed king,

God is now issuing praise to all the people.

Because God preserved the life of the anointed one,

and God was faithful over the grave of his anointed king.

All the people of God are called to praise God,

and to remember the holy name of God because of this great deed.

We're only one-third of the way through this psalm,

and I'm sure you can already see how this points to final fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness, his holy name.

That's the essence of God.

That's the being of God.

His glorious attributes, and where are they most brightly displayed?

Hebrews says it's the full radiance of God's essence displayed in the person of Jesus Christ.

His anointed.

These first four verses point us to Jesus Christ, the king.

Brothers and sisters, and whoever has an ear to hear,

Jesus Christ is the king whose enemies rejoiced over him, shouting,

Crucify!

Jesus Christ is the king who cried out in a loud voice from the cross in agony to God.

Jesus Christ is the king who lived and suffered in obedience to God.

Jesus Christ is the king who was buried in the grave.

David was spared the grave at this moment, but Jesus died, was buried.

And yet God proved his faithfulness over the grave of King Jesus.

Jesus Christ is the king whose life was brought up from the grave.

He was restored.

Jesus Christ is the king who calls all God's people to sing praises to God.

When you worship the Lord, when you sing, when you cry out to him,

you are obeying the command of your king, King Jesus.

Remember his holy name.

Jesus Christ is also the Lord whose kind work in his life and his death and his faithful words

to keep all the promises of God, to secure our righteousness,

to secure everlasting life not only for himself,

but for all whose lives are bound up in his.

He is the one we praise.

We praise the Lord for the life of King Jesus, don't we?

We praise God for lifting up Jesus from hell.

The Apostles' Creed professes he descended into hell.

He didn't skip a step in fulfilling God's plan.

He fully endured all God's wrath in our place.

So as you and I now enter the house of our king,

we sing of God's faithfulness over the grave of King Jesus.

And because we're in him over our graves as well.

That's the first way we enter the house of our king.

The second way we enter the house of our king is

by singing of God's loving, fatherly discipline.

Enter the house of your king singing of God's loving, fatherly discipline.

This is what David does next.

Look at verse 4.

Sing praise to the Lord.

Verse 5 says,

For his anger is but for a moment,

but his favor is for life.

Verse 5,

His anger is but for, literally, for a twinkling.

His displeasure at sin is real.

The sin of this world,

the sin of this world,

it reveals that God is just and holy.

God does not turn a blind eye or pretend like sin is that bad.

It's not that bad.

No, God sees all that happens and he knows the intentions of man's hearts.

And his wrath against sin is real.

But that's not the emphasis.

The emphasis is the contrast.

While his wrath against sin is real,

it's just for a moment, a twinkling.

His favor is for life.

He doesn't pass over the judgment that we deserve,

but his favor is for life.

And that word favor,

it's the same root of the word for delight or pleasure.

When God looks at you,

he sees Christ.

And he sees you united to Christ.

There's no room for wrath.

Christ absorbed all the wrath.

If you're in Christ,

God has no anger toward you.

He is a loving father.

He has pleasure in you.

He has delight in you,

his precious child.

David says,

weeping may endure for a night.

You can just picture around his deathbed,

all his loved ones and family members and the nobles

and all those whose lives might be threatened

if their king dies now.

They're mourning.

They're weeping.

In the ancient Jewish way.

And he says,

but joy comes in the morning.

That word joy,

it doesn't mean a quiet,

internal happiness.

It's a loud, piercing cry.

It's a shout of joy.

A shout of triumph.

A ringing shout of praise

that breaks the silence of the night.

Well, because Christ fulfills this psalm,

this is how we reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

They're mourning.

They're weeping at his graveside.

But on the third day in the morning,

the tomb is empty.

And there's a shout from all of heaven,

the host of angels,

the great cloud of witnesses.

And those on earth,

those women who got to go and see it,

and Peter and John,

they join by faith,

shouting in their hearts with joy

at the resurrection of the king.

When we sing many of our favorite hymns,

we're joining by faith,

shouting for joy at the gospel.

I love that line that we sing sometimes.

Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,

my great Redeemer's praise,

the glories of my God and King,

the triumphs of His grace.

That's what we celebrate

in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now, we praise God on the other side of suffering.

Yes, there's favor.

Yes, there's joy.

But there's also mourning.

And there's also weeping in this life.

You know this very well.

Here's the encouragement from Psalm 30,

from David's own testimony.

God uses our suffering in this short life

to make us better worshipers forevermore.

God uses our suffering,

our weeping, our mourning in this life

to make us better worshipers of Him

now and forevermore.

That's the testimony I heard recently

from James Dolezal,

and not only him, but his family.

You notice how he told his son

of how well God had cared for him

after his accident.

You're probably wondering like me,

how's his wife doing?

How is Courtney Dolezal, for example,

handling this suffering in this life?

Well, she wrote right after her son.

She said,

insurance authorization came through today,

and James was transferred

to a great rehabilitation hospital nearby.

Thank you for your prayers about this.

I am so thankful for this move.

At this facility,

James will receive physical,

speech, occupational,

and cognitive therapy.

He will be worked hard,

and we hope for great improvements

in all these areas.

Now listen carefully.

She wrote,

I trust that as God has used this trial

to glorify Himself in our lives,

as we watch God answer prayers

time and time again,

and preserve James,

and provide for our family,

she says,

God will use it also for James' good

as He continues to heal James

and form him into the image of Christ,

however that will look in the future.

She's bearing witness

that the suffering in this life

serves God's purposes

to shape us

to be better worshipers forever.

This life is short.

These years,

these bodies,

they're fleeting.

But our union to God,

our worship of God,

our communion with Him,

as we're conformed in the image of Christ,

remember,

Christ is the King

who calls the people to worship God,

in spirit and in truth.

This is forever.

You might be wondering,

how can that type of testimony

even come to be?

And it's only by God's life-transforming grace.

When each of you write out your testimony

and join this church

through our membership process,

we get to hear this,

how God's grace

has slowly but surely

continued to transform

your life and mine.

This is what the great hymn writers

have captured

in their testimonies as well.

We sing,

when through fiery trials,

and this is the word of God

to His people,

thy pathway shall lie,

my grace all sufficient

shall be thy supply,

the flame shall not

ultimately hurt thee,

I only design

thy dross to consume

and thy gold to refine.

the suffering of this life,

it makes us better worshipers forevermore.

This is the loving kindness

of our Father for us.

we can shout at the victory of Jesus Christ.

He rose from the dead.

His house is inaugurated.

And no matter what we are suffering in this life,

no matter how hard and sleepless

and sorrowful the night was,

we know at least by faith,

with the help of the Spirit,

His joy comes in the morning.

And then the eternal sense,

this life is a nighttime.

And the eternal morning

is coming soon.

The rising sun

to bring that inaugurated house of God

to fill this whole earth,

to give us our resurrected bodies,

to dwell with Him

in perfect peace forevermore.

So we enter the house of our God,

singing His praise,

remembering that He is our loving Father.

Number three,

as you enter the house of your King,

sing of His kindness

to pardon your pride.

As you enter the house of your King,

sing of His kindness

to pardon your pride and mine.

This is what David confesses next.

Look at verse six.

Now in my prosperity, I said,

I shall never be moved.

Literally, I shall never be shaken.

It's like David's saying,

in my pride,

I thought my life was stable.

In my pride,

I thought I controlled my own destiny.

In my pride,

I thought,

I'm securing a dynasty

for my own glory on this earth.

But now,

loving Father has humbled him.

He says,

I see that any glory,

anything praiseworthy in my life,

it's all of God's doing.

And I should receive no glory.

All the glory goes to God.

In the ancient world

and in prophetic language,

kingdoms are represented by mountains.

And so that's what David says.

He says,

that God rejects

men who seek their own glory.

But in verse seven,

Lord,

by your favor,

you have made my mountain

stand strong.

Yes,

there's a dynasty.

There's the house of David.

There's a kingdom

in the bloodline

of this one man on earth

for God's purposes.

But it's the Lord

who made this mountain,

this kingdom,

stand strong.

Not David,

as he thought in his pride

or his prosperity.

David confesses

he had to learn this the hard way.

And how was it

that God corrected him?

In verse seven,

David says,

Lord,

you hid your face

and I was troubled.

We know what this is like,

don't we?

God gets our attention.

To have the holy God

look upon you with favor,

that's the greatest blessing,

the greatest joy,

the greatest peace

that a person can ever experience

is the face of God

shining his glory on us.

But when it feels like God

has hidden his face from you,

you feel troubled.

You feel heavy laden,

uneasy,

restless.

Yet God is so kind.

He always turns us back to him.

Have you felt this

where you were troubled

and the Lord turned you back to him

to seek his face one more time?

God is patient with David

to do this again and again

because you and I need it

as much or more as David.

God does it to us again

and again and again.

He humbles us.

He makes us hunger for him.

He makes us want to seek his face

and to cry out to him.

That's what David does in verse 8.

One more time.

I cried out to you, Lord.

To the Lord I made supplication.

And then he pleads God's own purposes

for his life in his prayer.

In verse 9,

he reminds us of the purpose of our life

to glorify God

and enjoy him forever.

And he stirs this up again

as he makes supplication,

as he cries out to God.

Look at verse 9.

What profit is there in my blood

when I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it declare your truth?

He's saying,

Lord, give me life

so that I can praise you.

I was made from dust.

To dust I will return.

But as long as I have breath,

as long as you sustain me,

do it for your glory,

for the purpose for which you made me,

to sing your praise.

Give me life

so that I can declare your truth.

We can pray this way too.

Lord, I am weak,

but you are strong.

I fail often,

but you never fail, Lord.

I don't deserve mercy,

but God, you are merciful.

Lord, I fail in my words.

I don't keep those desires

and those prayers that I ask.

But you are always faithful

to your word.

And our Lord commands sinners

like David, like you and me,

to cry out for pardon

again and again and again.

No matter what you've done,

brother or sister,

no matter what you've done,

especially if you feel the weight

of your sin before God,

especially then,

cry out to God.

Trust that God is kind.

He will pardon you.

He's humbled you from your pride.

And he's done this in his kindness

to be able to forgive you

and restore you.

David prays in verse 10,

hear, O Lord,

have mercy on me.

Lord, be my helper.

He confessed his pride.

Now we see him confessing his need

for God to be his helper.

As you enter the house of your king,

sing of his kindness

again and again

to pardon your pride in mine.

Well, fourth and finally from today,

from Psalm 30,

as you enter the house of your king,

sing of his life

transforming grace.

As you enter the house of your king,

sing of his life transforming grace.

Look at verse 11.

You have turned for me

my mourning into dancing.

The word for mourning here

in the ancient Jewish culture,

it's like a group of people

gathered around for a funeral.

And they're beating their chests

and they're wailing loudly.

They're in sorrow together.

That's the mourning he's describing.

But God turns that mourning into dancing.

And that word for dancing,

it's like if you pictured a Jewish wedding

where a bunch of people are in a circle

and they're linking arms

and jumping around in a circle,

whirling,

cheering,

full of joy.

It's a complete reversal.

The nation gathered around

the death of the grave of the king

is now turned to a nation

celebrating a wedding.

The greatest picture of life,

celebration together.

He says,

another beautiful image.

You have put off

the sackcloth

of my mourning or weeping

and clothed me instead

with gladness.

Word for word,

he says,

you have,

you are belting me,

putting a belt around me

of rejoicing.

So God

loosed or took off

that sackcloth,

that burlap,

rough bag

that you would put on

when you put ashes

over yourself

and you,

you look miserable

to reflect how you feel inside.

And instead,

God has

wrapped him up

with gladness

like it's a cloth.

And God has done this

for a specific purpose.

Look at verse 12.

Why does God do this?

It's to the end

that the glory

of this worshiper

may sing praise

to God

and not be silent.

He says,

it's to the end

that the glory,

that's word for word,

the glory,

meaning the weightiest

part of David,

we translate it as

his soul

or his inner man,

his inner being.

It's the heaviest,

most worthy,

most noble part

of a person

that the Lord

stirs up

to sing his praise

instead of be silent

and for the soul

to be

without a body

to praise God

and to be

entered the realm

of the dead.

To be silent

is to be

cut off,

to be dumb,

to be

utterly unable

to worship

your creator.

If a person

never experiences

the life

that Christ offers,

your soul

is never united

to him,

your spirit

remains dead.

You are unable

to fulfill

the purpose

for which

he created you.

But if the Lord

has united

your soul

to God

through Jesus Christ,

then you will

sing his praise.

You will not

be able

to be silent.

You will

practice

in this life

what you're

designed to do

for all eternity.

This is his

life

transforming

grace.

These contrasts

point out

to us

this wonderful

transformation,

mourning

to dancing,

weeping

to gladness.

From guilt

to grace,

this is how

God moves us

in Christ.

from bondage

to freedom,

from filth

to purity,

from mourning

to dancing,

from weeping

to rejoicing,

from death

to life.

Why does

the Lord

do this?

It's so that

David

and all that

God would save

under the old

covenant

and all of us

that God is saving

under the new

covenant now,

including you

and I,

and whosoever

will hear of

this good news

may believe

and testify

together

of God's

life

transforming

grace

in the person

of Jesus Christ.

That's the theme

of our worship

every time we gather

in his name.

Jesus

breaks the power

of canceled

sin.

He sets

the prisoner

free.

His blood

can make

the foulest

clean

and his blood

availed

for me

and for you.

David says,

finally,

O Lord

my God,

I will

give thanks

to you

forever.

The dedication

of the house

of the Lord

ends with

thanks

to God

forevermore.

The word

forever

is eon.

It's where we

get our word

in English.

Eon

stems from

a root

meaning

hidden

or concealed.

we say

eons of time

meaning

time

stretching on

beyond

where we

could see.

It represents

a vanishing

point that we

can't even

behold with

our sight

beyond human

vision.

So our

thanks will

bubble up

and rejoice

and overflow

in gratitude

to God

enduring

into an

unseen

boundless

immeasurable

endless

ongoing

future age

of gratitude

and thanks

to God.

This is how

we will

enter

his kingdom

and his

constimated

final stage.

We get to

practice this

type of

worship now.

If Jesus

Christ is

your king

you sing

of his

faithfulness

to conquer

sin

Satan

and the

grave

for you.

If Jesus

Christ is

your king

then your

life is

bound up

in his.

If Jesus

Christ is

not your

king

then consider

how your

suffering

is God

drawing you

back to

himself

humbling

you

causing you

to desire

his face

to shine

upon you

in his

grace

one more

time.

Because if

Jesus is

your king

then you

will have

the blessing

the honor

and the joy

of being

in his

holy

presence

and we

get to

experience

that in

a concentrated

way

every time

we gather

in his

name.

The house

of God

on earth

his temple

the congregation

of his

people

his church

if Jesus

Christ is

your king

you will

delight

to praise

him

in his

house

in this

life

in preparation

for the

life to

come.

So dear

servants

of King

Jesus

enter his

house

with joy

with gladness

and proclaim

his life

transforming

grace

together

with his

people

now

and

forevermore.

Let's

pray.

Oh

Father

we praise

you.

We thank

you that

you welcome

us into

your presence

that we

can know

you

that you're

a God

who changes

us

who transforms

us

that we

can taste

in our

soul

the joy

of heaven

even though

our bodies

suffer

and are

wasting

away.

Please make

this real

to your

people Lord

please press

this upon

our lives

by your

grace

for your

glory we

ask.

Amen.