That I May Know Him - Michael Mast

I greet you in the name of Jesus this morning, and also bring greetings

from the Shady Long Congregation in Mountain View, Arkansas. And we there do

appreciate you sharing one of your own with us. At times, we there

say it's not often enough, and I think you hear say it's too often,

so maybe we've actually we're actually about at the right place there, But

we have appreciated that. It feels like I need to use my outside voice

here. Normally inside we tell our children to use their inside voice. They

see you in the back, and I'm going to use my outside voice,

so you for sure hear me this morning. That was just a subtle jab.

We always sit at the back at our congregation. The pews in the

back are much more comfortable. I just know they are, even though the

front ones are not used as much. I appreciated what has been said this

morning. It is just, of course, my mind ties things together.

But I but I was connecting all these dots, had this little dot to

dot thing going on in my mind. The opening this morning was talking about

being, in my words, being consumed with knowing God that God wants our

heart, He wants that that innermost part of us, that that controls who

we are and what we do. Our Center School talked about the same idea,

who is actually in control of those of the inner workings of our being?

Is it yielded to the Lord Jesus or do we try to manipulate and

do it ourselves take control of those innermost parts of our lives? And then,

and brother Leland here just just a couple of minutes ago, talked about

how God knows us, how he remembers us. And I was just marveling

there. I think, Leland, you hit a very tender I'm gonna call

it a nerve within my being? Is that idea? Does God actually know?

Does he see? Does he hear? And you said God remembers And

as one of those truths that we hold on to sometimes in spite of our

cynicism and skepticism. And I've been pondering for some time along that line,

what does it mean to know God? Or to I don't even know how

to describe it. What does it mean to walk with God? What does

it mean to find God? Because I believe that that as followers of Jesus

Christ and of our heavenly Father, we should be consumed with this desire or

this passion of walking with God, and Proverbs talks about that gives us that

idea of what does it mean to how do we? How are we,

as followers of the heavenly Father is supposed to walk in day to day life.

Proverbs gives us some pretty good pointers on that. And yet, what

does it mean? How do we? How do we find God? How

do we walk with him? I'm going to depend on your memory quite a

bit this morning, just a few just a snapshot of the apostle Paul's longing

to get us thinking here this morning. In Philippians chapter three, the apostle

Paul lists his credentials and the good things that he has done, and who

he was, what he did, and and all of those good things.

If you, I don't know, if you recall those things. He was

one of them was, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He was

the most righteous and religious person that there was. That was who he was.

And then he goes on to say, in all those things, those

aren't important things. But he says, and then my memory failed me.

I hope your memory is better than mine. Mine is not as old as

some of yours is, and yet it lets me down at times right when

I need it. But his goal was that he could win Christ. And

he goes on to say in verse eight of Philippians, chapter three, or

excuse me, verse nine, and that I might be found in him,

not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which

is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

And verse ten is really the first part is really what captures my attension

that I may know him, and goes on to say the power of his

resurrection number one, the fellowship of his sufferings, and wants to be made

conformable one to his death, and it continues on there. I'm not going

to spend a lot of time on that this morning, but thinking about what

kind of passion consumed the apostle Paul. That he said, all of the

these things here, he had them all lined up in order, and it

looked really nice. He said, those aren't very important, But my goal

and my passion is to know Him first and foremost. And we read the

life of the apostle Paul and we see how that worked out. He was

passionate for building the Kingdom of God, was it always that way for him.

We're gonna leave that there. We're going to leave the apostle Paul there

because and we're gonna go back and look at some other individuals. But keep

that in your mind as we go on through this. How do we develop

passion for knowing God and finding Him and walking with Him in everyday life so

that He becomes the focus of our lives. Jesus said it another way in

Matthew chapter five. He said, Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after

righteousness, for they should be filled. We all know what hungering and thirsting

are. If I go too long here this morning, your bellies are going

to tell you that it's time for me to stop, because you're going to

get hungry. And I'll try to keep this in a timely mode this method

this morning. But we understand the physical hunger, do we understand that spiritual

hunger, that emptiness, that longing, that desire for something that you just

can't put your finger on. I believe that's that's where we find that some

of those desires within our very being. We can use the word hearts,

and we talked about that morning. It's a little bit the desires and longings

and hungerings within our heart. They are intended to be filled in Jesus Christ,

and sometimes we try to fill them in many, many different ways and

we come up empty. But in this process of finding God, of knowing

God, we often do wonder if He cares about us as individuals. And

I think Leland touched on that earlier this morning, because we know that Almighty

God has created the universe and each individual, and yet how is it possible

that He knows each one of us so well that he knows the unspoken longings

within us, and he desires that we walk with him interesting love. Interestingly

enough, we are all fascinated with ourselves, and He enamored with ourselves.

It I enjoy conversations with people, and some conversations with people, it doesn't

take you. You're very familiar with this. You don't have to ask very

many questions, and you will find out all sorts of things about this person,

and you walk away saying that guy cares about himself a lot, He

likes himself and the things he does. He feels pretty good about himself.

And other conversations I've tried to ask people about what they do and all they

do is they give me a non committal answer and then ask me about myself.

What are you doing? What are you You've ever been a part of

that? Some people are fascinated with themselves and other people are fascinated with others.

And I believe, as individuals, in our journey of walking with God,

we need to move past that fascination with ourselves into a fascination with God.

First of all, what does he have to say to me? Versus

what do I have to say to him? Just a couple of individuals from

Scripture. And I'm here's where I'm not going to take the time to read

these illustrate these examples from Scripture. I'm going to depend on your memory and

tell you some Bible stories this morning. The first one that comes to my

mind is a man by the name of Cain. You know Cain. You

should if you have, if you've read your Bible, you have read about

Cain. He comes very early on in the genealogies, and some interesting things

about Cain. He had a brother Abel, and we read that Cain and

Abel offered sacrifices to God. We don't know a lot of what all was

taking place in that time. What all instructions they had been given as to

what sacrifices, what offerings they were to make to God. But we read

that Cain and Abel brought offerings, and we read that Cain was a tiller

of the ground, he was a gardener, a husbandman, and he brought

some of the first fruits, some of his the best things that he had

in his garden or whatever he had, and made an offering to God.

And it says that Abel brought a lamb, and brought a lamb, one

of his one of the flocks, to God. It says that God was

approved of abel sacrifice, but he did not approve of Cain's sacrifice. Notice

that God came to Cain and talk to him, and we could we could

read that if we would take want to take the time to hear, time

to hear. What is interesting is that God came to Cain with an invitation

for relationship, and Cain rejected that interaction with the Almighty God at that point

in time. And we read what happened with Cain later on he was our

Sunday school talked about being angry. Cain got angry with Abel, and one

day they were out in the field the two of them, and Cain slew

his brother. King killed his brother, and God came to Cain once more.

Notice these interactions. This is what is really interesting to me, is

that God continued to come to Cain and interact with him. God came to

Kin and said, where's your brother? And you know the famous lines.

I'm sure you have always have used these before in your own self defense.

I don't know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother. He's

big enough to take care of himself. Why are you asking me where my

brother is? And my bright brother's keeper? And God then put a mark

on Cain that was so over or excuse me. God told Cain that he

was going to be put out, and this was such an overwhelming thing to

Caine that he begged God for protection. In my own words here maybe overemphasizing

it, and God pleased to mark on Cain. I don't know. The

Bible stories say there was a big X on him. I don't know what

all they show. We don't know what kind of mark God placed on King.

But God placed to mark on Cain for his protection. Even though all

of these things had happened, so that if somebody seen Kane they wouldn't go

out and just get rid of him for what he had done. But here

is what catches my attention about Cain. I'll read about the other individual here

in just a minute. In Genesis, chapter four, verse sixteen, the

scripture says that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in

the land of Nod on the east of Eden, and king to his wife,

and she conceived and bear Enoch. And he Cain builded a city and

called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.

And this became Cain's life. He went out from the presence of the Lord

on his own, and he built a city. Why did he build a

city? Wasn't it for his protection? God had placed a mark on him?

But what if that wouldn't do it? King built a city for protection,

and we all know what walls are. Cain became his own protector in

his moving out from under the protection of God. He felt he needed protection,

and he took those matters into his own hands. He built a city

for self preservation. And this was only a I was going to say,

a figment of his imagination, because the minute he stepped outside of those city

walls. He was vulnerable to whatever, to anyone that came his way,

anything that came his way. It does seem to me, I'm gonna leave

Caine here, just in his own city, his own walls. It does

seem to me that this is a picture of what life can be when we

attempt to do it on our own. I know if any of you have

ever built a wall to protect yourself from other people. I have. I've

tried to anyway, and in a minute this wall comes down. You're like

old people going to see the real me back inside my city wall. Here

seems like when we are looking for solutions and answers to our life outside of

a knowledge and relationship with our heavenly Father, we build walls for protection,

only to discover that they don't protect us as well as we think that they

should. We attempt to bring comfort and resolution to our own life. We

want relief, and we were willing to seek whatever relief and whatever ways we

can. That was Cain. No. Remember here, we're thinking about what

it means to walk with God, what it means to know God and have

him a part of our lives. Can we read that he went out from

the presence of God, and he lost that by his own choosing. Another

man in the list of the patriarchs is a man by the name of Enoch.

And this is he's another familiar man to us, because it's recorded the

scripture records. In the little blurb that we have in Genesis about Enoch,

it says that Enoch walked with God, and it goes on to say that

after where's that fragile memory of mind? Was it three hundred and sixty five

years or three hundred something years? Says that Enoch was not because God took

him. And I want to contrast Cain and Enoch this morning, because there

is a stark contrast in their lives and the method in which they live their

lives and how they operated. Hebrews eleven, verse five tells us in Hebrews

says it this way, by faith, Enoch was translated that he should not

see death, and he was not found because God had translated him. For

before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God. Now that's

quite a record to have written about someone, to say that this man pleased

pleases God. Not only did Enoch please God as he walked with him,

but he also lived in the type of freedom where he was able to say

things without fear of what people would do to him. Can we read he

went and built a city, he stayed within that we don't read of anything

more from Cain. Notice what the Book of Jude says about Enoch Jude fourteen

and fifteen. It says, and Enoch also the seventh from Adam prophesied of

these things. We don't really know what he prophesied, but notice what he

said. Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saint to execute

judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all

their ungodly deeds which they have committed, and of all their hard speeches which

ungodly sinners have spoken against them. Do you catch the freedom that Enoch has

in his words. He is not trying to hide behind something. He is

free to speak because he is walking with God in such a manner that brings

freedom to his life. Some of these words are hard to understand, but

it does seem that Enoch recognize that a relationship with God and walking with him

brought about something far greater and more important than immediate comfort. You as well

as I understand that there are some things you are very careful that you say.

In some places, you are very careful in the words that you say,

the things you talk about because of the repercussions. And some of us

who tend to be more people pleasers or even more careful and circumspect in the

words we say because we don't want to offend someone. And Enoch understood that

speaking the truth and saying or excuse me, speaking truth, the truth of

God's word, the truth of God, the truth about God to people was

more important than all these comforts that could come from being really careful about his

words. So why did God take Enoch? We look at that, we

say, well, Enoch was in a time when speaking the truth, speaking

against evil was very important. Why did God take Enoch? We don't know

those details. However, whatever the case, we do know that Enoch didn't

need to build a city for his protection because he walked with God and God

took it. We look for instant gratification. We want it now. We're

just a little bit like Caine probably in a lot of ways. We don't

want to deal with the difficult things, and in doing that we tend to

forget about the big picture. This is just a side note here. In

some school the lottery was mentioned and my years picked up. Now I don't

know much about the lottery. I wish I did. No, I don't.

You can correct me, those of you that are more knowledgeable about this.

I believe you can play the power ball for two dollars a play.

Is that correct? None of you know. You're gonna admit that you know.

Anyway. In October of twenty twenty three, the powerball was someone won

the power ball for one point seven sixty five billion dollars, and I think

currently there has been a later drawing, it's not been quite that big.

The largest win was two point three billion dollars. And I cannot comprehend that.

This numbers far beyond my comprehension, and we're not going to spend much

time on it. However, we do seek for instant gratification. If you

look at the lottery tickets that are one, the vast majority of them take

a cash payout. And this is some statistics. And what I'm talking about

is how we seek for instant gratification. We don't think about the long picture,

the big picture of the long range. So in let me see here

is one in October twenty nine, of twenty twenty two, the power ball

was at eight hundred million, and so if this would have been one in

Arkansas, I live in Arkansas, and so it was just curious what could

I have gotten if I decided to live in this manner? If I would

have won an eight hundred million lottery jackpot, I could have taken a cash

payout of two hundred and seventy million dollars right here right now. That's before

taxes. So then they take the taxes, and I have no idea what

the tax bracket is and on two hundred and seventy million, but I assume

it's pretty high. However, if I would have chosen to take a thirty

year payout, the total amount that would have been won out of that hundred

million would have been five hundred and sixty four million versus the cash winning of

two hundred and seventy million. Now, it doesn't take much of a mathematician

to realize that if you take a thirty year payout, you're going to get

double what you would get if you would take the cash payout, unless you

think that you're being jipped, being taken advantage of by taking a thirty year

payout. The first payment of your lottery winning in Arkansas would have been ten

million, fifty six thousand dollars for one year, and the thirtieth payment,

thirty years down the road would have been thirty one million something dollars. This

is a foolish waste of time here, However, to me, it highlights

how much we pursue instant gratification. What can I get now? How does

this affect me? Now? How and lose sight of the big picture?

We as people are this way. We do look for instant relief to our

current struggles. However, Christ offers hope to us, not necessarily relief in

the midst of our suffering, but in the midst of our suffering, he

asks us to pursue him. Crab says we should pursue him hotly, even

when we would rather stop and pursue our own comforts and well being. Now,

I heard just a little bit of some of the things that are happening

here in your congregation. Someone that's sick, been sick for a long time.

That is difficult in many I don't know what all y'all are facing here,

but I assume that you all have your whether it's major or minor sufferings

or difficulties or struggles, all of us have something that we would wish we

would not have. And if we know that, if we read scripture,

and when we read the scripture, we read how the Lord Jesus came and

he took away the problems, he healed the sick people, everything made everything

better, and we long for that. But here in today and now,

we do not always get that instant relief. And yet in the midst of

that we are called to walk with God, to seek Him, to hunger

and thirst after righteousness. Because God knows what is best for us, he

provides us something more fascinating than ourselves to live. For. We're pretty fascinated

and enamored with ourselves, and yet Jesus Christ offers us something more than that

to live for. He wants us to lose some of this fascination with ourselves

and become fascinated and enamored with Him. Perhaps another way that we can talk

about this desire and this longing is to say that we have hungers and emptinesses

in our lives. And I mentioned that just a little bit early on,

we have empty places within us that we long to be filled, and we

sue filling of that in different ways. And we're not going to spend a

lot of time in here, because here's where it's a good place for me

to start stepping on toes. And I don't even know what things y'all do

to fill the emptiness is within your lives, So I don't even know how

to connect with you on that level. And no back at home and they're

in Arkansas. We pursue things because we think, if only I could have

this, if only I would be at this point in time in my life,

if only I wouldn't have to deal with this person or this situation,

life would be so much better. But we seek to find fulfilling and satisfaction

for those for us. And you know, these desires and hungers and longings

and emptinesses within us are motivators. We are motivated to do things. I

do tell my children my family at times that one of the reasons I get

up and go to my work, I enjoy it. It's okay. One

of the reasons I do is because I know that there are bills that are

going to have to be paid. Those are motivators for me. I'm not

at the stage of life where I don't have to worry about any of those

things. I'm not We're going to leave it at that point there, But

that is just one illustration. We are motivated by things we know are coming

our way. If I'm supposed to preach on Sunday or whenever I try to

think about it, that is a motivator. You have things you prepare for.

If you don't prepare and you are and it becomes evident that you didn't

prepare for what you were supposed to pray for, you are ashamed. And

we don't like to be ashamed, and so we're motivated to do those things

and many other things here. We're motivated motivated for here. Part of our

struggle here, though, is that we know we as followers of Jesus Christ,

know that we should hunger and thirst after him, and yet we find

that we want to come to him on our own terms. We want to

write down the terms and conditions I will come if I will follow you,

if I don't know what old terms and conditions we could put in here,

But we tend to do that, and sometimes we in our terms and conditions

we have some self preservation in there, we have a few of these walls

like King built so that we can make sure that if this doesn't work out,

we've got a safety net to fall into. And I don't think that's

what we are called to do. So maybe part of our struggle in walking

with God and knowing him, part of the struggle we face is what is

our view of God? How do we perceive God? How do we see

him? Do we believe that God is who he said he is or what

do we believe about him? Do we believe that God has our good in

mind? Do we trust him? Or do we believe that God will work

out the problems in our lives? Do we believe that He might just let

us muddle through them alone and figure everything out on our own. Because depending

on our belief and our understanding of God affects how we approach Him and how

we live for him. If we believe that God is going to say,

well I think you can get this one, Yeah, I think you can

handle Listen by yourself, we're going to tend to be like Cain and say,

okay, well, then I'm going to need some walls for some protection.

If I'm going to need to and yet in that God comes to us,

and he longs to make himself known to us if we accept what he

brings to us. Finding God is a process, and knowing God is a

process that we become a part of. It's not so much that God plays

hide and seek with us. Have you ever thought that there might be this

cosmic game of hide and seek where we're trying to find God and he's hiding

behind a tree, and every now and then he says, speak of oove,

here I am. Maybe it's so much that we don't recognize him where

he is, and every once in a while we say, there you were

all the time, right in plain sight, and I just did see you.

I think that's more. What it is than God is hiding from us,

is that we cannot see him well. So it's more it's not so

much this hide and seek game, but it's more that we are unable to

handle seeing all of God, or seeing very much of Him at one time.

We in our humanness, cannot tolerate the entirety of Almighty God. There

is absolutely no possible way and catch glimpses of Him here and there. Because

God allows us, I believe to know just enough about him to assuage your

hunger, not to take it all away, And he doesn't take away all

of our appetite all at one time, because if one time we've seen all

of God in his enormousness and entirety, we'd say I have seen it.

I don't think I need to know anything more about him. I've seen everything

I need to know. However, when we catch a glimpse, we say,

yes, I want more of that, and yes I want more of

that. We continue to pursue him. And also, as we find out

a little more of God, we find out how little we know about Him

and how little we actually do know about life. We may be all also

begin to see God from his perspective. One of the ways we know that

we are learning to know God, one of the ways we know we're learning

to walk with Him and find him, is when we believe that God is

good no matter what happens. Rather than the instant something happens in our lives

that is not desirable, we say, well, where's God in this?

Wasn't God paying attention? Was He taking a nap? Rather, we say

God is good in spite of this. We believe in the goodness of God.

And that is one of the if you're looking for metrics, I like

ways to kind of put some measurement to things. Am I knowing God?

Do I know more than I used to? And so if we believe that

God is good no matter what happens, there's one of those metrics. We

are actually making progress on this journey of war with him. Another one of

those is developing through our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The unshakable confidence

in God's absolute goodness and perfect love no matter what we may experience in life.

And this is right there, tied in with this other one, this

trust, this unshakable confidence where we believe in spite of if we would go

back into scripture, which is where we should stay, actually, but if

we would look at some more illustrations from scripture, we would see after Jesus

rose from the dead. You remember Thomas, man named Thomas. We call

him doubting Thomas. Make ourselves feel better, say, and Thomas wasn't there

the first time Jesus appeared to the other disciples. And Thomas said his famous

words, unless I can put my finger in that print in his hand and

put my fist inside, I'm not gonna believe. And Jesus came to Thomas

another time, came to disciples, and Thomas was with them, and the

first thing Jesus did was Thomas, Hey, here you go, here go,

here's your opportunity. And Thomas was not Thomas, he was a human

man. He said, I believe. And Jesus went on to say,

blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And we are

very much like Thomas. We say, well, if God would just reveal

himself to us in some marvelous, extraordinary way, I would not I would

believe without a shadow of doubt. There would be no question in my mind.

Jesus said, Blessed are those who don't have those earth shattering experiences and

yet have that quiet confidence, that unshakable confidence in who I am. I

tend to find myself being a fair weather follower of God. I love rain,

by the way, I was a carpenter. Being a carpenter all my

adult life, rainy days meant can sleep in, just love rain. And

even today I love rain because it's just it's just it's refreshing. I No,

I don't have to go outside and do anything. I can sit in

the house. Okay, so I live in Arkansas. We don't have seventy

nine days straight of rain. That must make a difference. But I find

myself a fair weather Christian when everything is going good. Yeah, I love

Jesus. I follow him when it's rainy, when it's cloudy, when it's

difficult, when I can't see the way, I say, oh, I

don't know about this whole following Jesus business. It's difficult, it's tough.

He doesn't show his face to us very often in this up and down.

However, God wants to be found of us. He is not wanting to

be hidden us to punish us. He delights to be known. He rejoices

when we are close to him. But our search for him must be on

his terms. We come to God on his terms, We walked it with

him on his terms. We find him on his terms, not on ours.

And those terms involve a radical shift away from our natural inclination to evaluate

his goodness. I mentioned this earlier. When things happen, we say,

oh, it's God good. This situation does not feel like God is good.

And this situation, well, God could be good, But when we

come to him we do not have this freedom to evaluate things on whether God

is good or not. Because He is good. Perhaps one of the big

keys for us and finding God, of knowing God, of walking with God

like Enoch did, because he's our example. This morning Enoch walked with God

and he had that legacy in that testimony is to come to this place of

deep settled peace and rest in His goodness. And I think the best picture

of this, let me see, I don't see anybody here. Oh,

right, there go, We've got civil this morning. The best picture of

this deep settled peace and rest in God is the picture of a child in

their parents' arms, fast asleep. It's noisy in here. There can be

other children crying, and that child stays asleep. I don't know how many

of you ever seen that. Sometimes if the depending on the size of the

child, you can go outside, you can get in the vehicle, you

can put him in, you can do all kinds of things. That a

child stays asleep. Why I would take that child from their mother, you

would know it. I can make a sleeping child cry in an instant.

I've got good nap on that. There is this bond, this trust between

the child and their parent that is unshakeable. You cannot remove that. And

I believe to me that is the best picture of this confidence that we are

supposed to have, we should have, supposed that we should have or can

have. In our heavenly Father. We are in his arms when we are

following him, when we are seeking him, pursuing him, and walking with

him, and in his arms we are at rest. I'm sure we've also

seen a I'm going to say a father trying to calm his unhappy child,

sometimes mothers as well, and there's kicking and screaming in a lot of noise.

When we say, boy, something's got to happen here. Do we

do that with our heavenly father. He wants to carry us and we're kicking

and screaming, and we get set down because you can't hold a screaming,

kicking child very long. Or perhaps we as adults sometimes need to take need

to have one of those swaddling blankets. I never was good my wife could

take a child, get their arms beside their sides, have them wrapped up

so tight the arms couldn't move and they were stuck there. Maybe we need

to be swaddled at times, and maybe that's what happens to us in essence.

Heavenly Father says, wait a minute here, this is not for your

good. I'm not going to allow you to do this. So what does

it mean to walk with God? What doesn't mean to find God? Hebrews

eleven says it this way, and this is immediately after the the statement about

Enoch. It says, but without faith, it is impossible to please him

God. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and

that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. I don't know

if that really sums it up. I'm not sure there is a good way

for me to sum this up, because I said earlier that this whole concept

of walking with God is a lifelong process. At the moment, I'm at

this point, some of the others are far down the road of walking with

God. And yet we all are on this journey together. And as we

remember that without faith in God and in His son Jesus Christ, it is

impossible to please Him. We cannot come on our own terms, We cannot

do it our own way. We do it the way He wants us to.

Longs for us to completely depend on Him and we don't have to earn

our relationship. As we come to him, he gives it to us,

and He blesses us. One more verse to finish here in thinking about what

if? And some of us face these questions, what if I'm not doing

it right? What if I'm not good enough? Jesus said in John chapter

six, in the midst of a big dissertation for sak time, I'm not

going to talk about it, but Jesus says that all that the Father giveth

me shall come to me and notice the rest of his words, and he

that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. And I'm

going to leave that as a promise to us for us this morning, that

in our journey of finding God, when we come to him, He's not

going to reject us for his reasons, because as we act on faith and

come to Him and believe in his goodness and his greatness and his mercy,

he draws us and he gives us a place in his arms, and he

wants to carry us with him. So God bless you as you continue to

walk with the Lord Jesu Christ in everyday life and believe in His goodness in

spite of the things that come your way. I'll turn time back to leave him