"Then Discipline of The Father" - Hebrews 12:1 - 12:11

All right, if you've got a Bible, Hebrews 12, I say it every week,

but if you don't have a Bible, there's a Bible on the table.

This is going to be a morning I really want you to have a Bible in front of

you, whether it's your phone or one of the Bibles on the table or your own,

because I think what we're going to look at here can be hard.

It can be a hard thing to understand. It can be a hard thing to look at.

It's certainly not something that I grew up hearing a ton about.

And when I did hear about it, it was always, we'll say, couched in some flowery language.

But when we talk about the discipline of God, the discipline of the Father,

it's easy to think about discipline when you have kids or you're around kids

or you just understand what being a kid's all about.

I can remember when I was little, we had this kind of space floor heater in

my dad's shop. It was propane.

And when it heated up, all those coals inside turned orange.

And five-year-old me thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

So cool that I knew I needed to touch it.

I just knew those things need to get touched by this hand. It needs to happen.

And every time my dad would see me walking over there, every time my dad would

see me around him, he would always discipline me in one way,

shape, or form, whether it was just telling me to stop, throwing something at

me, whatever it was, to deter me from doing that.

And of course, as a four or five-year-old, I thought, this is the meanest person on the planet.

How could he ever do that to me? Doesn't he know what kind of joy he is robbing me of?

Until eventually one day, my dad didn't catch me. I did touch it,

and it was not a good day. And there was burn gel.

And of course, my mom was mad at my dad. My dad was mad at me.

The whole thing kind of unraveled pretty quickly. But we understand discipline from that point of view.

I think what's tough when it becomes a Christian discussion is most often the

verses we hear about being a Christian are the nice ones.

The ones that make us feel good. So you might hear like Matthew 11,

28. You might know Matthew 11, 28.

Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. My burden is easy. Philippians 4, 6 through 7.

Be anxious about nothing. Let your requests be known to God and the peace of

God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. These are the kind of

verses that you put on coffee cups. They get put on shirts.

They're at conferences, on big boards. You may have them on some art in your house.

It's always interesting when those art pieces end up in a bathroom.

It's like, I don't know what's going on here, but that's a good place to have some peace, I guess.

But the thing is, there's also some

work to be done, and there's plenty of verses that say the same thing.

Jesus in Luke 13, 24 says, strive to enter by the narrow door.

For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

The Greek word here for strive is the same word that we get our word agonize.

Agonize, strive to enter the narrow door. That doesn't sound like rest for my soul.

2 Timothy 4, 7, Paul says, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the

race. I have kept the faith.

Paul doesn't say, man, I became a Christian and I just rested my way to the end.

I just sleepwalked, man. The Lord just had me the whole time.

I'm so glad I got saved. Everything was so easy.

Everything was so set up for me. I didn't have to worry about anything.

He says, I fought the good fight.

So there is rest and there is struggle. And biblically, those two things are

not at odds with one another.

They're not at odds with one another.

In fact, I would argue that the aim of our Christian working,

the aim of our Christian striving is to rest.

That is the work of the Christian life. The work of the Christian life is work,

strive to trust Christ to give you rest,

not to trust the world and not to trust your own sensibilities,

your own logic, not to trust what somebody just might tell you,

not to trust what the greatest self-help book is or the greatest psychology

book is or whatever your personality type is or whatever your number is to say

Christ is where I will find rest.

And I have to work. I have to strive to tell myself, to remind myself,

to keep my eyes, as Hebrews 12 is going to tell us, on Jesus.

That is the work of the Christian life.

The rest comes from knowing our work has been done for us by Christ,

that you don't have to do a good deed, that you don't have to take a step in

one direction or the other, that you can know that as you work,

that God has promised that you will make it till the end.

We just sang this, right? He will hold me fast.

We didn't sing. We're trying really hard to hold fast.

Man, I really hope that I can hold fast. we sang that he will hold us fast. That's what we believe.

So with that in mind, I want us to look at three things in this passage this morning.

Number one, we're going to identify the pain and sorrow of the Hebrews that he's talking to.

What is the pain and the sorrow and the working that's going on for them?

Number two, we want to identify where this pain and sorrow comes from.

Number three, we want to identify its purpose for their lives and for our lives.

So with that in mind, let me just read Hebrews 12. I'm going to jump back up.

We covered verse one and two last week, but I want to read it to make sure we

get the full picture of what's being said here.

Just a reminder, he's been giving them in Hebrews 11, these great examples of

God's faithfulness towards people and their faithfulness towards him.

So he says, therefore, in verse one, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud

of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, right?

This is the work, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame

and seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself,

so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted in your struggle against sin.

You have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Encouraging, right?

Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

My son, he's going to quote a proverb here. My son, do not regard lightly the

discipline of who? the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons, by extension daughters, for what son is there whom

his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline in which all have participated,

then you are illegitimate children and not his sons and daughters.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected

them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.

But he disciplines us for our good. We may share his holiness.

For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.

But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

So first thing, let's identify their pain and suffering. Let's identify it.

So in Hebrews 11, 35 to 38, he gives them, if you remember, a loadout of what

it was like in the Old Testament for many believers, for many of their religious, spiritual heroes.

They were tortured, mocked, whipped, imprisoned, sawn into destitute and homeless life goals.

Right? That's what they were.

In 12.2, he tells us right here to put our eyes on Jesus. And what specifically

are we supposed to put our eyes on?

His betrayal and crucifixion. That his closest friends betrayed him,

left him, and that he was crucified unjustly.

Now, when he identifies their pain, why is he identifying? He tells us in verse 3.

Verse three says, why do you consider Jesus?

So that you may not grow weary or faint hearted.

It should be encouraging to you that this verse, these kinds of verses are in the Bible.

The writer of Hebrews, Paul, Jesus, every single person in the New Testament

has this expectation that faith is going to be hard.

That it's going to be something that as you strive to do it,

you will need encouragement. You will need help.

Lest you become fainthearted and weak.

You can imagine these Hebrews, many of them have already been kicked out of their homes.

They've already been pushed out and it's cost them jobs. It's cost them social clout.

Unless you think he's going to throw them a Christian pity party,

which I think if anybody deserved it at this point, it may be them.

He says in verse four, keep your eyes on him lest you become discouraged because

you have not resisted to the shedding of blood.

It's as if he says, this is the most like old school football coach moment in the whole chapter.

Like you're going to the coach and you're like, man, coach, listen,

I've broken three fingers. I think my ACL is torn.

I don't think I can see anymore. And he's like, you're not dead,

get back out there. That's literally what Paul's doing.

That's literally what Paul's doing is he's like, listen, I know it's bad.

I know you've gotten kicked out of your homes. I know you've lost jobs.

I know families have been separated.

I know things are going really bad, but you haven't died yet. You haven't died yet.

Thank you. All right. And that's his encouragement.

That's his encouragement, right? This would have been a great time for Paul

to step back and go, listen, you're going to be okay.

Everything's going to get better. The Lord's really going to come through for

you and you're going to be healthy and wealthy and wise.

And if you just put your faith in God, he's going to make everything okay.

You ever heard that before? Man, just put your faith in God.

Everything's going to be great. Paul says, do not lose your faith because you're not dead yet.

It's as if he's saying, you might be soon. That could happen.

They could come kill you, but until they do, put your faith in the Lord.

Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep walking towards Jesus. Keep doing what he asked you to do.

Before we move on to these other points, I would just ask you in your own heart,

your own mind to consider your own pain and suffering.

Every single one of us has experienced pain and suffering on some degree, on some level.

Maybe different ways that we've gone about it, different areas of our life that

has seen pain and suffering more than others.

But every single one of us has experienced what it means to live on this side

of heaven, what it means to be at the hands of sinners.

Recognize that what he's not doing here in chapter 12 is really asking them

to say, what are the things being caused by your own sin? He's already done

that at the beginning of 12.

He says, hey, listen, if you've got your own sin, you've got some of the things

in your life that are sinful, put that aside.

Take that off. As he moves forward, he says, there is going to be sin against you.

People will betray you. People will do evil things to you. You will get treated badly.

You will have things that happen to you that are not fair.

They're not fair and they will not make sense.

And you will even look at the world around you and go, listen,

I feel like I'm doing everything God wants me to do, but yet these people seem

to be getting all the things that I feel like I should have.

And that's hurtful and painful and there's suffering that comes with that.

And so not to tear off a scab, but before we get into this next part,

I just want you to think about those things.

Maybe some bitterness that you still have about some things that have happened

to you. Some bitterness about some things that you're still working through.

And the question's gonna become, how is the author of Hebrews,

ultimately how is the Holy Spirit through the author of Hebrews to them and

to us going to prepare us to deal with the pain and suffering that comes in

this life at the hands of sinners and at the hands of sin itself.

And ultimately at the hands of your greatest adversary, the devil.

I would argue with you that the answer to this question will tell you more about

your faith than possibly any other question you could ask.

When life isn't fair, when things don't go your way, especially when you feel

like you're doing everything right and everything seems to be going wrong,

where is your faith? Where is your faith?

So we've identified their pain. Hopefully you've identified your pain.

Again, I'm not meaning to bring up old wounds, but I think God is willing to deal with those things.

So let's identify the cause of that pain. Again, here's where I really want

you to have a Bible in front of you.

I really want you to have a Bible in front of you. I want you to see what I'm saying.

I don't want you to think this is something I'm making up out of thin air.

This is maybe a different way than you've heard in the past.

Maybe not. And that would be great.

But where does it come from? Well, the first place it comes from is where we think it comes from.

Hostile adversaries, sinners, Satan and his demons, right?

That's where we expect these things to come from. Evil people do everything

they can to inflict pain and sorrow on God's people. This is all throughout the Old Testament.

All throughout the Old Testament, you see evil nations doing everything they

can to inflict pain upon God's people, pain upon his prophets.

The ultimate example of this, of course, is in Jesus's life,

where evil men, evil leaders, take an innocent man and crucify him.

And even Jesus's again closest friends commit evil against him and betray him and leave him.

Church history would tell us that every single apostle's life ends at the hands

of a sword except for John's and his life ends on the island of Patmos all by himself.

The truth is, that's the easy answer.

It's easy to say evil men do evil things to good men.

It's easy to say the devil and his demons do evil things to God's people.

It's a true thing, but it is an easy thing. All of us agree on that.

But I don't think that's the main thrust of this passage.

If you put it all together, we've got Hebrews 11 that gives us all of these

heroes of the faith, all these sinful people that God uses in his grand narrative.

And then as he transitions, he starts talking about how some of these people

met their end, some of the evils that was done to them.

And then his ultimate example of this at the beginning of 12 is who? It's Jesus.

So here's the main idea. I think the main idea here is that God is sovereignly

in control of every single bit of pain and suffering that you and I experience.

Now, he may not be the sole cause of that, but he is in control of it.

That every single thing that you experience, every single affliction and betrayal

that you feel is used by God as a way of him disciplining you for his glory and your good.

I think that's the main thrust of the passage.

Because it's easy to say that bad people do bad things to good people.

It's a much harder thing to sit and meditate on how God could use some of the

things that happen to us as his discipline towards us, that he's in control of those things.

Verses five through seven essentially say that one of the reasons that you are

growing weary and losing heart is that you have forgotten the exhortation,

which is addressed to you as sons. And he quotes Proverbs 3, 11 through 12.

I'm going to read this one more time. I'd encourage you to read it as well.

My son, so I got to say this every

time it says son, you can insert son or daughter. All right. It's both.

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.

For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son and

daughter whom he receives.

In other words, what adversaries do to you out of sinful hostility,

God is doing out of fatherly discipline.

He is the main actor in there. I'm going to read it one more time.

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.

For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son and

daughter whom he receives.

That's what the Bible says.

What the text does not say is that God is waiting on someone or something to

do you harm for him to step in.

God is not an emergency room doctor.

He is not waiting and sitting to see what someone's going to do to you,

what kind of pain and sorrow you're going to experience,

what kind of afflictions are going to be placed on you, and then for you to

get rolled into his operating room and to start doing everything he can to put you back together. it.

The picture we have of God here is that he is

a physician who has seen the very beginning and end of your life and has guided

your steps in such a way that every single thing that happens to you is part

of his plan to save you and to bring you to him wholly and blameless.

He is your primary care physician, and he is in control of everything that happens in and around you.

God is the ultimate doer in this text.

I'll just give you two quick examples. If you want more, ask me.

I'll send you about 20, but let me give you two.

In Genesis 50, a story that we talk about a lot in here, the story of Joseph.

Joseph's brothers decide that they don't like him anymore, mainly because Joseph

was being a little cocky at the breakfast table and essentially told them that

they were going to bow down to him one day.

Not the best thing to do to your older brothers. okay and so they decide you

know it'd be better is if joseph was dead.

And so they go outside, they plan to kill him. The older brother steps in and

you think the older brother's gonna talk some sense into him and say,

actually guys, let's not do this. Let's not kill him.

Let's just take him back. Maybe we rough him up a little bit, teach him a lesson.

No, the older brother's plan is let's not kill him. Let's just sell him into

slavery. So much better.

So if you know the story, you know, Joseph gets put into slavery,

ends up going to a guy named Potiphar's.

God raises him in Potiphar's house. He ends up being the manager of Potiphar's

estate until he's accused by Potiphar's wife of sexual immorality with her.

So he ends up in prison. Looks like he's going to be sold up the river and killed.

God gives him the ability to get these dreams figured out for Pharaoh.

And then he ultimately rises to Pharaoh's second in command.

There's a famine in the land.

His brothers come back to him. And there's this scene in Genesis 50 where their dad has died.

And all these brothers think, listen, now that our dad's dead,

Joseph is going to kill us.

The only reason he was keeping us alive is because our dad was dead.

He didn't want our dad to have to see us get murdered. And so he is definitely going to kill us now.

So they come to him hand in hand and basically, Joseph, we'll do anything so that you don't kill us.

What does Joseph say in Genesis 50, 20?

You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.

It's one of the greatest verses in the whole Bible. And in all honesty,

one of the ones that makes the least logical sense in the whole Bible.

Right it makes no sense and i remember getting to this verse when i was in college

and having an existential crisis

of like how can both of these things be true and so i thought surely

i'm gonna look up the hebrew and so i got you know my big hebrew looks got out

as a bible college i thought i was smart so again my hebrew looks coming out

i'm reading all the words i'm trying to figure them out it turns out the hebrew

word for meant when it says joseph's brother is meant to do it and the hebrew

word for meant when it says god meant to do it guess what same exact word,

So if you were to ask the question, who put Joseph into slavery?

There is two answers. If you were to say his brothers did, you'd be right.

That's exactly what his sinful brothers meant to do. That is a correct answer.

But if you said God did, you'd be right.

You meant it for evil. God meant it for good, but both of them meant it.

And yet Joseph seems to have no issue that God did that to him.

That's the hard part for me.

He doesn't look at God and go,

how in the world could you allow that to happen to me? I was a little kid.

I was a teenager and you let them throw me in a pit and sell me into slavery.

I thought I was going to die. And then I get accused of things I didn't do.

How God, how could you being good and kind and gracious to me?

How could you say that you are loving to me and allow those things to happen to me?

Joseph says to his brothers, am I in the place of God?

In other words, am I in control of all things? No, God is. And this is how God

has allowed things to play out. This is his hand at work.

All right, second example, simple question here. Who killed Jesus?

Who killed Jesus? I'll let you think about it for a minute. I'm gonna go to Acts chapter two.

Again, if you were to say who killed Jesus and you were to answer,

well, evil men killed Jesus.

I think you would be right. I think you would be correct.

Peter, when he's given his sermon at Pentecost, says this in Acts 2.36,

let all the house of Israel know, therefore, that God has made him both Lord

and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

He looks at these Jewish leaders, he looks at them and he says,

you crucified Jesus. You did it.

You delivered him into the hands of the state. You are the one that convinced

them to kill him. You are the one that drove the nails through his hands.

You are the one that did that. You did that.

Yet in Acts chapter 4, as they are praying with the church after being released

Acts 4 · chapter mention

from prison, they say this, for truly in this city, they're in Jerusalem,

the same place that Peter preached in Acts 2,

for truly in this city, they were gathered together against your holy servant,

Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles

and the people of Israel. Pause. That's who killed them, right?

Those people killed them. They made that decision. They decided that was what

was going to happen. They hated Jesus.

They were going to kill him. Verse 28, to do whatever your hand and your plan

had predestined to take place. Who killed Jesus?

If you were to say Herod, Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people

of Israel, you would be right.

If you were to say that God had planned and predestined for that to take place, you would be right.

Again, this is why it's so important. Have a Bible out in front of you,

because I want you to see it for what it says, that there is this pattern over and over again.

Again, to reiterate that God is not waiting for bad things to happen to you.

He is not a triage doctor. He is not waiting on the battlefield for you to get

shot and then to try and figure out the best way to treat you.

He is your primary care physician.

He is the one who puts everything along the path for you to care for you,

to discipline you, to scourge you in such a way that a father would do for his sons and daughters.

And in the same way that at four and five years old or two years old,

you look at a parent, you look at someone who loves you, that's disciplining

you and says, how in the world could you slap my hand right now?

Why would you do that? Why would you spank me? Why would you take that away

from me? Why would you remove those things from me that I seem to love so much?".

It is only a faithful person that can look at God and say, God,

I do not understand why you are doing what you were doing.

I don't understand why you allowed those people to treat me this way.

I don't understand why you allowed those people to talk to me this way.

I don't understand why you allowed

those people to take advantage of me in this way. But I do trust you.

I trust you. I believe that you're in control.

Namely, when he says in Hebrews 12, looking to Jesus,

the author and perfecter of our faith, what he's saying is, look to the one

who was betrayed more than anyone else by the plan and predestined knowledge

of God. Look at that person.

Look how he responded. Look what he did when he's in the garden and he prays,

Father, if there's any way that this cup could pass from me,

but not my will, but yours be done.

Jesus in his flesh knows what he's about to do is going to be an incredibly

hard thing, but he also knows that God is in control.

So who's working out your faith? If you were to say you are, you would be right.

That's a true statement. You are working out your faith. It is the call on your

life to read your Bible and to pray and to come to church and to sing and to

be a part of other believers' lives, to fight the sin in your life,

to get out of those things as best you can.

It is your job to do that, but who is keeping you in the faith? God is.

God is. Both of those things are true.

And if your next question is, well, how does that make sense?

My answer is, it doesn't. It doesn't.

It doesn't. And I genuinely mean this when I say it.

If you can read these scriptures and come to a different conclusion,

I would love to talk to you about it. I'd love to hear what you had to say.

Again, this morning, I don't feel like I've done a whole lot of preaching as

much as I've just done reading.

That's what the Bible says God is doing. I would say, do not for a second relieve

God of the responsibility that he himself has taken upon himself.

So many people don't like to give God this, he's in control.

He knows everything from beginning to end. His plan is being worked out literally

throughout human history.

What he says is going to happen will happen. A lot of the pushback I get is,

well, God would never do that.

I was in the same boat. That's exactly how I thought.

God would never do something like that. He would never allow something like

that. That's just Satan going rogue and God didn't see it coming and God was

going to use that anyway, and he's going to show up and make it better.

What I was really doing there is saying to God, I don't think you can handle

that much responsibility.

Why don't you let me handle this for you? Why don't you let me explain away what's going on.

God has taken upon himself this responsibility. He has told us in his word that

he is sovereign over all things.

He has told us in his word that we are to work out our faith with fear and trembling.

Both things are true. But if you are a believer, know that your pain is not

the result of God's hate towards you, but his love towards you.

So we've talked about what is their pain? What is your pain?

We've talked about who is the cause of your pain? Who is the cause of your suffering?

Where does it come from? Last thing, what's its purpose? What's its purpose?

Verses 10 and 11 tell us, essentially four words. You can read verses 10 and

11. You'll come up with these words.

It is for our good, our holiness, our peace, and our righteousness.

Our good, our peace, our righteousness, our holiness.

This is the design of a loving Father that comes to us sometimes painfully and

mysteriously through the hostility of sinful adversaries and the natural fallenness

of the world that we live in.

That he says to us, listen, I am in control.

That's the hardest part about being a dad. You love your kids as best you can,

but you realize real quick, I'm just not in control of everything.

When they leave my house and go to school, when they go outside to play with

their friends, when they go do things that I'm not in control of,

there's nothing I can do.

As a dad, I'm at the complete mercy of the world around them.

And then one day, I'm sure some of you already know, they're going to go out

and they're even more at the whims of the world around them.

And that is an incredibly scary thing to think.

I can do every single thing right. I don't.

I don't, but I could. And yet, I have no control over what the world could do to my kids. None.

So I take solace in the fact that if God, who is their heavenly father,

is in control, he knows exactly what's going to happen to them.

He knows exactly where they're going to go. He knows exactly what kind of pain

and sorrow and suffering they're going to experience.

And he has promised to meet them there, to give them strength to deal with those

things, and ultimately to deliver them holy and blameless before him in the end.

That is the solace that we take as parents. That's the solace that we take as God's children.

Not that we won't experience pain and suffering. I don't think anyone in the

room is under that impression,

but that we can rest in the fact that our pain and suffering is in the hands

of a sovereign God who controls every single atom and molecule in the universe

and does it in such a way that you will be delivered,

faithful to the end.

That is the purpose of your suffering and your pain.

Let me close just by looking at verse 9 one more time. This is the question I want to leave you with.

Will we be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

That's such an interesting way to phrase that. I've never heard an altar call like that.

I've never been in a service where the altar call is, will you subject yourself

to the Father of Spirits and live.

That's not exactly I decided to follow Jesus. That's a little different.

Maybe I've decided to subject myself to the Father of Spirits that I would live

because the alternative is, will you rebel against the Father of Spirits and die?

Will you look at God and will you say, no, I don't want you to be in control.

I don't care that you're soft. I call the shots in my life. The pain that I've

experienced, I get to decide how I'm going to deal with it.

The people that have wronged me, I get to decide what kind of vengeance I get to pour out on them.

The bitterness that I feel towards those people, I get to decide whether or

not I want to let that go or not.

To place yourself under the Father of Spirit is to say, vengeance is yours,

Lord. You will make all things right in the end.

I don't have to have the final word because my father will have it for me.

Like the Psalm we began with in Psalm 149, we can sing praises to God in the

midst of pain because we know that one day he will pour out righteous judgment

on the world around us and everything will be made right.

That we will figure it out, not that everything will be okay,

not that everything's going to get better, but that our Father will make it right.

Will you trust yourself to the Father of spirits and live? Let's pray.

Father, again, thank you this morning for Trinity Bible Church.

God, thank you for good discussions, hard discussions about your Word.

And I know when we talk about your control and your sovereignty over everything,

it can quickly turn into a merely a theological discussion.

One where we're just trying to figure out who's right and who's wrong,

who's smart and who's not.

But God, the truth is your sovereignty in the Bible, your control in the Bible

is not a matter of debate.

It is a matter of comfort for your children.

And when you remind us that you are in control of all things,

that discipline comes from your hand for your kids, that no one can do anything

to us, that you, at the very least, do not allow.

You tell us those things, not so that we could argue over your control,

but that we could rest in it.

As was popularly said, that the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which

his children rest their heads at night.

So God, I pray that as we have these conversations about your control,

as we have these conversations about pain and suffering.

God, that we wouldn't minimize any pain or suffering that has happened in someone's

life, that we would be kind and gracious.

But God, that we would be a people that reminds one another,

hey, God is in control, and He loves us, and He cares for us like a good father cares for his kids.

That God has promised us to keep us, that He will hold us fast,

that what he began in us, he will complete, that the faith that he authored

in us, he will bring to completion.

God, would the pain of this world be a reminder of the goodness that awaits us in eternity with God?

God, we pray that you would come quickly, not just to remove our pain and sorrow,

but because we want to see you. We want to be with you.

We trust that your promises that will happen.

God, if there's anyone in here that hasn't trusted you, that hasn't put their

faith, hasn't been given the faith to see you for who you are,

to entrust their soul to the Father of Spirits that they would live,

I pray that you would do that for them.

God, that they would make the decision to commit their lives to you,

and by the same token that you would sovereignly open their eyes and give them

a new heart and new eyes to see you for who you are. today i pray amen.