In the Meantime • July 12, 2026 • Andrew Spradlin • Ecclesiastes 8-16-9-10

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.

We're so glad you're here and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible and learn how you can apply it

straight to your life. So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Ecclesiastes chapter 8.

Ecclesiastes 8 · chapter mention

I think it's going to be helpful for you to keep a copy of God's word open for you

so you can take a look at what God has to say this morning.

For eight chapters now, Solomon has been taking us on his search for significance.

Solomon, the widest man in the world, has set out on a journey to discover the meaning and the purpose of life.

And Ecclesiastes sort of serves as a journal of his findings.

Now, his journey took him down a lot of different roads,

roads of incredible wealth and fame,

of parties and sensuality, of knowledge and education,

but every road he went down was a dead end.

Solomon tried everything under the sun

and it all left him empty.

His conclusion was that life under the sun

without God is vanity.

We pick up in chapter 8, verse 16.

He says,

"...when I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth,

even though one sees no sleep day or night, then I saw all the works of God, that a man

cannot find out the good that is done under the sun."

For though a man labors to discover it, yet he will not find it.

Moreover, though a wise man attempts to know it, he will not be able to find it.

We see here that our knowledge as human beings is very, very limited, isn't it?

Now, throughout the book, Solomon has faced some very difficult realities,

realities of injustice and oppression, realities of suffering and evil.

And Solomon said, I applied my heart.

my whole heart to understanding everything

that God is doing in the world,

and I now realize that no one could figure out

all that God is up to.

This past week, my family was on our family ranch in Oklahoma.

And one morning I was sitting with my mom in the living room there.

We were overlooking the pasture with all the cows and the granite mountains were in the distance.

And we were just kind of taking it all in.

And then she said, isn't it amazing how whether we're here or we're somewhere else, it all just keeps going.

And then she said, everything has its purpose.

Right?

What a simple yet profound thought.

Every blade of grass, every little bug,

every fish in the pond, every cow,

every mountain range from the expanse of the galaxies

to the smallest of atoms, God knows it all intimately.

And it all has its purpose.

Solomon was coming to grips with the fact

that no man can know all that God is up to in a moment.

Now, in April, I remember reading a short article about a new island

that has just been discovered near Antarctica.

And I was amazed that with all of our sophisticated technology, satellite maps,

we still haven't explored the entire Earth's surface.

Only about 5% of the ocean has been explored by mankind.

0.001% of the deep ocean floor has been seen by us on camera.

Our knowledge is very limited.

And yet sometimes people think, well, if I were God, I would do this or I would do that.

Listen, if you were God, we'd all be in a heap of trouble.

Our knowledge is limited.

Chapter 9, verse number 1, he says,

For I consider all this in my heart, so that I could declare it all,

that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God.

People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see before them.

Solomon says, Our knowledge is very, very limited, but take heart,

because God is sovereign.

He says, all of us, including all of our works,

they're in the hand of God.

Earlier in the book, Solomon asked the question,

he said, can anyone make straight

what God has made crooked?

Solomon, he keeps reminding us

that one of the keys to enjoying life

is to recognize that God is God.

and we are not.

God is sovereign, and that means that he has got everything

under his control.

You know, I find incredible comfort in that.

I love knowing that the most painful experiences

of my life have passed through the hand of God.

Now, that does not mean that God's actively causing all

of the painful experiences of my life,

but he certainly has allowed it.

Everything that comes our way is Father-filtered.

And you know what?

That means there's purpose behind it.

Now, I may not like the purpose.

I may not know what the purpose is,

but I can know that there is purpose,

and by faith,

That's enough.

Verse number two, he says,

all things come alike to all.

One event happens to the righteous and the wicked,

to the good, the clean, and the unclean,

to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice.

As is the good, so is the sinner.

He who takes an oath is he who fears an oath.

There's an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one thing happens to all.

Truly, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil.

Madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that, they go to the dead.

Now, what's this one event that happens to us all?

death, isn't it? The Bible says the soul that sins shall die. Well, we've all sinned,

which means if the Lord tarries, we're all going to die. That righteous person who lived their life

for the Lord is going to die just like the wicked person who lived their life all for themselves.

Death is coming for us all. I read about a

I read an old Arabian tale about a merchant in Baghdad

who sent his servant to the market.

And when the servant returned from the market,

he was terrified.

He said, when I was at the market,

I was bumped by someone behind me in the crowd

and I turned and I saw that it was death.

And death made a threatening gesture towards me.

And so he asked his master if he could borrow his horse

so he could flee from death to Samara.

And so the merchant lent him his horse.

And later that day, he, the merchant, went to the market where death also was standing in the market.

He saw him there, and so he approached death, and he asked,

Why did you threaten my servant this morning?

And he said, I didn't threaten him.

I was just startled to see him in the market in Baghdad because I'm scheduled to visit him tonight in Samarra.

We may ignore death.

We may even try to run and hide and flee from it,

but it's coming for us all.

Hebrews 9, verse 27 says,

Hebrews 9:27

as it is appointed for men to die once,

but after this, the judgment.

Amen.

Our days are all numbered, and we don't know the number.

Only God knows that.

I mean, we know the number of minutes in an hour.

We know the number of hours in a day,

but no man knows the number of days in a lifetime.

And so because we don't know that,

sometimes we live as if we're never going to die.

I mean, we've never experienced that before,

and so we just kind of ignore that it's coming.

And Solomon says that is a foolish way to live

because you're ignoring reality, right?

Death is coming for us all.

If you're not ready for it, it's going to wreck you.

I've done a lot of funerals in my ministry,

and it's amazing how families grieve so differently

based on whether they know Jesus as their Savior or not.

Now, every family certainly grieves, even Christian families,

they grieve the loss of their loved ones.

But while Christians grieve with a sense of hope,

those who don't know the Lord, their grief is often uncontrollable anguish.

It's different, it's hard to watch,

it's hard to be in the same room with them

because there's no hope, they've lost everything.

It's this deep sense of anguish, why?

Because they know the person who died

was not prepared to die.

And their hearts are full of anguish and it haunts them.

If you're ignoring death, you're playing the fool.

Others though, instead of ignoring death,

They're paralyzed by death.

They live defeated lives because they think,

well, I'm gonna die someday, and when is it going to happen?

It's all gonna be over, so what's the point?

Verse number four, Solomon says,

that's an unnecessary way to live.

Look what he says, he says,

but for him who is joined to all the living, there is hope.

For a living dog is better than a dead lion.

For the living know that they will die,

but the dead know nothing.

And they have no more reward,

for the memory of them is forgotten.

Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished.

Nevermore will they have a share in anything that's done under the sun.

We see here that there is hope for those of us who are still alive, right?

Ever heard the saying, where there's life, there's hope?

Well, that came right out of Ecclesiastes 9, verse 4, I can tell you.

Ecclesiastes 9:4

Solomon, he says a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Now, a dog in biblical times was a detested animal, but on the other hand, the lion, it's a respected animal, right?

It's king of the jungle.

So Solomon's saying even if your life seems detestable to you, if you're still alive, there's still hope for you.

Now, our hope is only as good as the reality we place it in, right?

And as Christians, our hope is in Jesus Christ, the source of all reality.

Now, in verse number five, Solomon's making not a theological point.

He is making a poetic point, an under the sun point.

If you're dead, there's no more life for you to live.

Things are over for you.

But if you're alive, you not only have time to prepare for death, you also have time to enjoy life.

You have time to enjoy the life that God has given you.

Now, in verse number seven, Solomon transitions to some application.

He's been saying death is a certainty.

It's coming for us all.

Now he says, in the meantime, here's how you live.

Verse seven.

Go.

Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart,

for God has already accepted your works.

Let your garments always be white and let your head lack no oil.

Here's what Solomon is saying.

He said, live with joy.

Live with joy.

You're dying, in the meantime, live with joy.

Now, joy is very different than happiness.

Happiness is connected to the happenstance of life,

the circumstances of life.

And if bad things happen, I'm sad.

If good things happen, I'm happy.

That's not how joy works.

Joy is much deeper than that.

It does not come from our circumstances without,

it comes from the Lord within.

Like Pastor Matt illustrated last week when a hurricane is tossing the waves back and forth on the surface of the sea.

Deep down on the ocean floor, there's a little crab walking along in peace, undeterred by the storm.

That can be you and I as Christians in the midst of the storms of life.

We can have a true sense of joy and peace down deep because joy and peace is an inside job.

Now, it's important to recognize we cannot muster up that joy on our own.

Joy is a gift from God.

Just like all the fruit of the Spirit, joy is a gift from the Lord.

But simultaneously, it's a choice by man.

Unless God gives you joy, you're not going to have joy.

But unless you choose joy, you're not going to have joy.

As I was working on this part of my message,

Thursday morning, joyfully writing about choosing joy,

my computer glitched and I got kicked off my notes.

I couldn't get back on it.

I tried everything I knew how to do.

I was immediately frustrated because I was on a roll.

I was about to knock this thing out.

And then in a moment, it was as if God said,

"'I'm testing you to see if you'll practice

"'what you're gonna preach.'"

So I called our IT team, Tim came over,

and as he was trying to resurrect my document,

I went down the hall to Ben Krupla

to see how his new role was going on our team.

And you know what?

I maintained joy throughout the whole morning.

Why?

Because I chose joy.

You see, joy is connected to the posture of one's heart.

It's a mindset.

It's an attitude that God gives us through his son, that God gives us through his spirit,

and that we also choose.

Solomon is saying, enjoy the life that God has given you.

Enjoy the little things in life, like eating and drinking.

Now, it's amazing how often the Bible tells us to enjoy our food, right?

And enjoying my food is one of those commands in the Bible that I regularly look forward to obeying multiple times a day, right?

I actually went through a long season of life where I didn't enjoy my meals.

Through the years, I've developed a lot of food allergies and intolerances.

I cannot have corn.

I can't have most nuts.

I realize I don't feel very good when I have breads with gluten.

And so now you may not think corn's that big of a deal to have an allergy to,

but corn is like in everything.

Read your labels.

It's an everything process just about.

And so when you combine the two, no corn and no gluten,

I'm pretty limited on what I can eat.

And so there was a long season of my life

where nearly every meal I was discouraged

that I couldn't eat what I wanted to eat.

Everyone around me is having these amazing things,

things like tacos with tortillas,

things like burgers with buns, cold Dr. Pepper,

can't have that, corn syrup.

I can't have any of these things.

So I was discouraged, but eventually I realized

that's kind of a miserable way to live.

And so what I did is I learned to focus

on what I do get to eat.

And now I enjoy my food more than ever before

because I know it's a gift from God.

My meals are full of amazing things like meat and potatoes,

like beans and rice, right?

Like eggs and cheese, fruits and vegetables.

And you know, I still get to eat my favorite food group,

steak.

Praise God I'm not allergic to that.

In fact, I praise him and thank him regularly.

I'm not allergic to that.

I told Kelsey the other day, I said,

when our kids move out of the house,

we've got four teenagers we're trying to feed,

it costs a lot of money.

I said, when they move out,

let's keep our grocery budget exactly the same

and we'll shift all that extra money to steak.

That's what I want to spend my extra money on,

enjoying a whole lot of steak.

I think it's biblical, right?

Enjoy your food, he says.

Now Solomon also says, let your garments always be white.

Let your head be anointed with oil.

In biblical times, white garments were worn to a party.

So Solomon, I think is saying,

treat every day like it's a party.

Have fun, enjoy your life.

If you're working out, have a good time exercising.

If you're on kid duty,

have fun playing with those little guys.

If you're driving down the road, enjoy your road trip.

You know who does this better than anyone that I know?

My wife, Kelsey, is actually the main thing that attracted me to her.

She keeps my life fun.

In fact, she says that sometimes I'm boring and that it's her job to bring fun into my life.

She actually does a really good job of it, right?

Verse number nine.

He says, live joyfully with the wife whom you love

all the days of your vain life

which he has given you under the sun.

All your days of vanity for this is your portion in life

and in the labor which you perform under the sun.

Solomon is saying here, not only live with joy,

he's also saying live with love.

Relationally, Solomon moves from enjoying our food

and our dress, the simple things of life,

to enjoying our most valued relationships

that we have, specifically our spouse.

Now remember, I think that Solomon's writing Ecclesiastes

as an old man and he's filled with a lot of regrets.

Instead of enjoying the wife of his youth all the days of his life, he traded love for lust.

He had a thousand wives and concubines, and he's telling us, please learn from my mistake.

Find a spouse and enjoy the love that you have one for another.

That's a choice, isn't it?

I love the marriage motto that says,

choose your love and then love your choice.

Every day we make a choice of whether or not

we're going to love and enjoy our spouse.

And that choice really has to do

with what we choose to focus on, right?

I mean, every wife in the room has some things

about her husband she doesn't enjoy,

things that irritate her.

And every husband in the room has some things he doesn't enjoy about his wife,

things that irritate him.

And yet I know of a bunch of amazing marriages in our room.

A great marriage develops in part when we choose to focus on things we like about our spouse

instead of things that irritate us about our spouse.

You know, the reason so many people, I think, are miserable in their marriage

is because they're thinking about themselves.

They think that their spouse is there to make them happy.

And so if you're not happy, you're thinking, well, my unhappiness is their fault.

They're supposed to make me happy.

Listen, the best husband in the world, the best wife in the world is not capable of bringing you joy and contentment.

Only the Lord can do that.

God did not design them to fulfill your deepest needs.

So stop setting your relationship up for failure by expecting something that's unrealistic.

Now, the question becomes how, right?

How do we start enjoying our spouse more?

Well, I think one of the starting places

is to stop thinking about how you need to be loved

and to start thinking about how you can love.

When you make that shift within your mind,

and it's a conscious shift,

it is a decision that you will make.

When you decide to embrace God's calling upon your life

as a Christian of unconditional love,

when you do that,

that's when life really begins to blossom.

That's when your marriage will begin to blossom.

You'll be able to enjoy the wife of your youth

all the days of your life

because you've decided to love her every day

whether she deserves it or not.

Now, I think this extends beyond the marriage relationship into all the relationships of life that we are to love.

I have got a list of people in my mind who I have consciously decided to love.

Now, why would I do that?

Well, it's because they're not easy for me to love.

And so I've decided I'm going to love this person even though they may never return my love.

The history shows they're not ever going to return it, but I'm going to give it to them anyway.

And you know what?

That allows me to enjoy those interactions with them.

Why?

Because my goal is not to get something from them.

My goal is to give something to them.

Love God's love.

And that gives me joy as a Christian.

So Solomon says, live your life with joy.

Live with love.

And the last thing he says is live with some passion.

He says in verse number 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.

For there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you're going.

Solomon says, life is very short.

So enjoy it, love it, and live with some passion.

Whatever you do, do it with all you've got.

Now Solomon specifically in this context is talking about being passionate at work, right?

I read that a man or a woman who is about 50 years old,

who's worked consistently since they got out of school, has worked about 56,000 hours.

That's a lot of work.

Sometimes, though, people spend a lifetime at a job that they hate.

They're bored by it.

They're miserable.

They don't believe in the purpose of it.

And so they just kind of show up.

They just kind of go through the motions.

That's no way to live life.

Find a job that you're passionate about, that you believe in, and do it with all your might.

Now, I think we desperately need to teach this to our kids.

As parents, coaches, teachers, we've got to teach this.

So let me ask you, in sports or in athletics or a school,

whatever it might be, what do you praise your kids for?

Do you praise them for their talent and their performance,

or do you praise them for their character and their effort?

Because whether you realize it or not,

your praise of them is shaping their values.

What's important?

What is important in life?

Your praise is telling them what's important.

It's very important that we praise our kids' character

and their effort, their passion.

Passion is a very important thing in life.

It's very hard to define,

but we know it when we see it, right?

It comes from this deep place within a person

and then it kind of oozes out of them.

Now, the good thing about passion is it can be caught.

It's not often taught, but it is caught.

I mean, you cannot command a person to have passion,

but you can give it to them.

You can spread it to them, right?

It's kind of contagious.

And that's certainly the case

with our relationship with Jesus.

Nothing should bring us more passion in life

than our relationship.

with Jesus. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31 says,

1 Corinthians 10:31

therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do,

do all to the glory of God.

That means whatever we do in life,

it should be done passionately for the glory of God.

So that's what I try to do in my life.

Work hard for God, play hard for God, rest well for God.

I've told you this before about my habit on Sunday afternoons.

I love to lay down and take a Sunday afternoon nap.

Well, the other day, Desi Claffey, who sings in our choir, told Kelsey,

she said, on Sundays after church, I lay before the Lord.

I like that.

I'm still in that, right?

That's living life with passion, with purpose.

I want to take a nap for the glory of God, right?

Right?

We should be passionate people.

Now, passion, let me caution this.

Passion does not always mean rah-rah.

God has made us all differently.

We have different personalities and wirings.

Sometimes the most quiet and unassuming people

are the most passionate people in all the world.

Here's what I'm saying.

Don't live a life of boredom on autopilot,

just kind of coasting through life,

endless scrolling, mindless entertainment.

Live life with passion for the Lord.

Why?

Because life is short.

It's really short.

Now remember, Solomon is writing and talking about life under the sun.

What about life beyond the sun?

Because for the believer, for you and I, death is not the end.

And that's actually what allows us to enjoy life.

Because we know that there's eternal purpose.

Solomon has been describing his life under the sun,

his journey in life and how every path he went down,

he went down a lot of paths.

He said every path was a dead end, literally a dead end.

Yes, what he said throughout the book,

that life without God is meaningless, why?

We're all gonna die and it's gonna end.

For the Christian, for you and I who have trusted Christ,

our journey of life does not lead to a dead end.

No, no, no, no, why?

Well, because sin has been paid for

and death has been defeated.

Jesus accomplished that on the cross and through the resurrection.

We know that God offers us resurrection life, eternal life.

Death for you and I is simply a transition point to eternal life in heaven.

Revelation chapter 21, speaking of heaven, says in verse number four,

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There should be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Listen, eternity changes everything, doesn't it?

Eternal life gives us a perspective that changes everything.

In April, our church hosted world-renowned Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace.

And if you weren't here, it was kind of a packed house,

but if you weren't here, I highly recommend go to our YouTube page,

find that apologetics conference.

It was outstanding.

While Wallace was...

discussing the problem of evil,

he pointed out that atheists view the timeline of life

as a line segment, right?

A line segment.

You've got a starting point of birth

and you've got death at the end.

And in between, you've got sin and suffering

and evil and oppression and all of these horrible things.

This is life under the sun, as Solomon described it.

But then Wallace reminded us that the geometry actually changes when we start describing the Christian worldview.

You see, a line segment has a beginning point and an end point, but a ray, it has a beginning point that continues in to infinity.

Christians, you and I, we view life as a ray, right?

There's a beginning point of birth, and you may not be able to read those words.

words underneath there, but it's birth,

and then quickly followed, death.

And then you've got this eternal life

that extends for you and I.

Now, the further we live into eternity,

the shorter that gap between birth and death

is going to be on our graphic, right?

Where eventually, in light of eternity,

this current life, filled with evil and suffering and death,

is just a millisecond compared to eternal life.

Now, the Bible says that that millisecond,

that brief life, that life is like a vapor,

it's here for a moment and then it's gone.

That brief life, it echoes into eternity.

It matters a lot, doesn't it?

Now, you may not agree with that.

You may not like that,

but Solomon has made clear throughout his book,

you're not God.

You don't get to decide, He does.

Jesus said, what good is it if a man gains the entire world and yet he loses his own soul?

Solomon has told us today that our knowledge is very, very limited.

But don't worry.

God is sovereign.

Yes, you are going to die.

We're all going to die.

But since you're listening to this message and you haven't died, you're still alive.

There's hope for you.

You know what?

There is.

God loves you.

He loves you more than anyone's ever loved you before.

He loves you with an infinite love.

And no matter what you've done, all of your failures, all of your guilt that weighs upon you,

the way you've treated people, the way that you have rebelled against him,

all of that you feel, but he still loves you so much that he sent his only son, Jesus.

to die on the cross for your sins,

so that you could have forgiveness

and experience his love and his grace

if you give your life to Jesus.

You see, you could trust Jesus as your savior

and be given eternal life.

Now, those of us who have already done that,

we've already experienced the forgiveness of God in our life,

the life, abundant life that he offers

and the eternal life that he offers.

God wants us to live in a way that honors him in the meantime.

We're all going to die.

We're going to go to heaven.

But in the meantime, live with joy.

Live with love for one another.

Live with some passion.

Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, if you will, both here and at Olive Drive.

I want to invite you right now.

to meet God by faith

and to experience his love and his grace

by trusting Jesus as your savior.

Maybe you came today or you started tuning in today

with no thought that your eternity

would be changed in this moment,

but God's speaking to you today

in a way that's clearer than ever before.

And you recognize your own sin

You feel the weight of it.

You feel the distance that that sin has caused between you and the Lord.

And yet, you're understanding and believing that God loves you

and sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins.

And that through faith in him, you can be forgiven.

And you can be restored and reconnected to a real, genuine relationship with God

so that from the inside out, he can bring transformation to your heart.

He can touch the deep places of your soul that have felt empty,

and he can fill them with his love, his joy, his peace.

I want to invite you to get to know God today, to trust his son, Jesus.

In just a moment, I'm going to pray.

And after I pray, we're going to stand to our feet at both campuses.

There's going to be pastors and leaders here at the front,

and we're just going to invite you to step out from wherever you're at.

That might feel intimidating, but so many of us have walked the same aisle.

For you just to step out and take one of these leaders by the hand and say,

I want to give my life to Jesus.

It's time.

I want to experience what God has in store for me.

Then you do that.

We're going to have pastors and leaders here.

They're not going to embarrass you in any way.

They're not going to ask you a question you don't know how to answer.

They're going to meet you where you are, just as God's going to meet you where you are,

and then they're going to help you take the next step of trusting him.

Maybe you say, I want to be baptized like others today.

And you let us know.

We'd love to visit you with you about the meaning of baptism, why it's important,

how you can make known and public your faith in Jesus.

Maybe you say, I want to be a family member here at Valley.

I'm part of the family of God.

I've trusted Jesus, but I want to be a part of this family.

I want to be a member here of this local church family.

We would love to visit with you about what that means and how you can do that.

You come and let us know.

Maybe you just want to come in for prayer.

Just say, you know what, I'm going through this or I'm going through that or I'm just, I'm not.

I'm not experiencing God like I should.

I've walked away from him.

Or whatever it might be that you're facing, you just want one of our leaders to pray for you.

We would love to pray for you.

Maybe you don't need to talk with any person here except for God.

These steps are open for you to kneel and pray, do business with him.

However God leads, please come in just a moment.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for loving us with a perfect love.

Thank you, Lord, that the mess that we have made of life through our sin, the mess that causes death,

you came to fix, to clean up through your son Jesus.

And we thank you, Lord, for your patience.

Sometimes we're frustrated by what seems to be the lack of justice in the world.

Amen.

We want justice, Lord, but we're also grateful

that you've been patient in extending your justice

because, Lord, we would be judged as well.

And so, Lord, we're just grateful that you're waiting

for more people to come to faith in you

until you return and make all things new

and all things right.

Until that day, Lord, we await what you do in our lives

and we ask you to do a special work today in our midst

First of all, I ask you, Lord, to really just open the eyes of people that have had their eyes closed to you.

And that you would soften their heart.

Maybe they've gone through some stuff.

Some really, really bad stuff.

And over time, whether that's some of their own failures or other people's failures on their life, it's resulted in their heart hardening.

And they haven't been open to you.

I pray, Lord, that they would have an open heart and an open mind today.

And they would receive you.

Please, Lord, by your spirit, would you touch them in a deep place?

Would you do that which I've been unable to do by my own words and my own study and my own preparation?

Lord, would you take your word that you gave us?

And would you impart it to us?

Lord, I pray that you touch people and give them life.

Help them believe.

Give them the courage that's going to take the step out and come and give their lives to you.

Lord, I also pray for our church family and everyone who already knows you as Savior.

We're your children.

Lord, help us live as your children in the meantime before we die and go to be with you.

In the meantime, Lord, would you give us joy and love and passion?

And Lord, may we choose joy, love, and passion.

We know it comes from you.

So help us, Lord Jesus, we pray in your name.

Amen.

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