Chosen Sojourners

We're thankful that you're here.

Like I said, we're kicking off a new sermon series called Uh Hold Fast of Faith, where we're looking at the entire book of First Peter.

And this morning we're just going to be in 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 through 2.

1 Peter 1:1–2

So if you have a Bible, uh go ahead and open it up or open the app that you use your Bible stream for, and that way you can follow along with us.

But we're going to read the introduction.

We're going to dive in because we got a lot of content and just these two verses to really work through.

So let's go ahead and read the passage together this morning.

It says this in 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 through 2, it says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, and the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ, and for sprinkling with his blood.

1 Peter 1:1–2

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

Now, if you don't know yet, we do have sermon notes that you can follow along with.

There should be a link in the description of the live stream where you can follow along and fill in your own sermon notes as we kind of walk through this passage of scripture together.

So we'd love for you to utilize those where you are this morning.

But we're going to kind of dive right in.

And so here we are, we're in 1 Peter, and one of the things that we have to start off by asking the question of is who is Peter?

Who is this person writing this letter that we find here in the New Testament?

And Peter is an apostle, right?

He's an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Peter's one of the primary disciples or apostles discussed in the New Testament.

So when you think of like, all right, here's a quiz: name all of the different uh disciples or apostles of Jesus.

He only had 12, right?

I can't hold that many fingers up, but he only had 12.

Name them.

I'm sure Peter comes up in that list as you're trying to recount who those were.

And I'm sure one dude, uh Bartholomew, is not, right?

You're not sitting there thinking, oh, Bartholomew, first one.

I knew that, right?

So Apostle Bart, not thought of, but Apostle Peter, he's the one that's going to be in the forefront of your memory because he was a central figure in the New Testament, a central figure in seeing Christianity and the message of the gospel spread throughout the earth.

You see, he was the one who walked on water toward Jesus in a step of faith.

Peter's the among the three who witnessed Jesus' transfiguration.

His confession of Jesus being the Christ is the one that Jesus himself said that confession would be what his church would be built upon.

Now, just after he confesses this, Jesus actually calls him the devil and prophesies his denial.

He cuts off the ear of a guard who comes to arrest Jesus.

He's the first disciple to experience the risen Christ.

He's the one who stands up on the day of Pentecost to preach the gospel, and 3,000 people are saved.

He and Paul stand out really as primaries in apostleship.

Paul to the Greeks, Peter to the Jews.

And he finishes his ministry as an apostle of Jesus Christ by being hung upside down on a cross facing his death because he declared he was not worthy to die in the same way as his Savior.

So this Peter, this is the one who's writing this letter.

Now we have to really acknowledge something because what he does is he gives us his name, he's Peter, he's writing the letter, and then he gives us why that what he's about to say is actually important or why it actually carries weight.

He says that he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.

You see, apostle just means sent one.

And Peter has been sent with the message of Jesus to advance the kingdom of God on earth.

Now, apostles hold a specific authority, and that's why he's coming out the gate, establishing the authority that he has in the office of which he holds.

You see, there's no other office in the entire New Testament or in the scriptures where it has this authoritative suffix of of Jesus Christ.

You don't have a prophet of Jesus Christ, you don't have pastor of Jesus Christ, you don't have that.

What you have is alone apostle of Jesus Christ.

And so it holds this authority, it holds this weight about it.

Equal, we would say, to the Old Testament prophets, because the all of the scripture and the church is built on the foundation of the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New Testament.

You see, if the Old Testament prophets spoke the very words of God about promises who were to be fulfilled by Jesus, then the apostles speak the very words of God, being able to communicate how Jesus specifically fulfilled those promises.

And so when Peter asserts himself as an apostle of Jesus, then his words are also God's words, and we should receive them as such.

And so, very at the very entry of this letter, we see who's writing it and what authority he's writing it on, and what and this means something for us.

It means we're about to hear the very words of God.

And so we should open our ears, we should open our hearts to be able to listen and receive what God would have for us.

Now, let's take a look at the background of this letter because we can try to dismiss it maybe if we find ourselves disconnected from when this letter was written 2,000 years ago or so.

Uh, we can try to see that there's a disconnect there, but but actually, we're gonna find this morning how relevant this letter still is for us today.

But when Peter was writing it, let's look and see what the background and context was of the audience of which he was writing to.

You see, this letter is written to a vast group of people spread throughout the region that's expressed here in the text who have embraced the gospel.

They've been made converts and are experiencing various types of social, political, and relational suffering.

This letter declares to a people that becoming a foreigner in respect to culture is a consequence of being chosen by God.

However, being chosen also demands that we are to be reconciled to God through Christ.

And so we live in this new relationship found here because of the revelation of Jesus and his gospel.

This letter is a voice of comfort for its readers.

Throughout the letters, we hear a pastor call to his loved ones to be established in faith, in obedience, and patience to comfort them in suffering.

You see, Peter is one who saw Jesus resurrected and had a conversation with him.

And Jesus asked him this very strange question.

He said, Do you love me?

Well then feed my sheep.

And so he understood his position.

He understood how he should care and tend to the flock, which was Jesus' sheep as a shepherd would.

And he's here now as a compassionate, empathetic pastor, writing to the people of whom he's probably had a direct influence on, seeing them come to faith and seeing them be placed in their current situation.

You see, this letter, it actually is carried out through the churches of Asia Minor.

And so those different territories and areas that we read in the very first part of the scripture, uh, this comprises what we know as Asia Minor.

Or today it's mostly settles and resides within common day Turkey.

And so he's writing these people dispersed throughout that area who have become Christians and are now suffering and facing certain political, social, and relational trials.

And so that's who he's writing to.

Now let's see what words he uses to comfort them, to encourage them, and to build up their faith, knowing the situations that they are in.

So when we look at verse one, the way that we would summarize verse one in and of itself is that we who are in the family of God are chosen sojourners.

We who are in the family of God are chosen sojourners.

The first thing Peter addresses after establishing his authority to speak is that the people he's actually writing to have been chosen by God.

Now, if you were writing to a people encountering suffering, encountering trials and hardships, what words would you use to try and bring comfort and encouragement to them?

Maybe you, writing this letter, would talk about God's love.

Maybe you would talk about the depth of God's mercy.

Maybe you would talk about God's providence in this situation.

Maybe you would talk about God's peace that he establishes.

You see, we might choose different languages, words of God's love, words of his mercy, his grace, his providence, but we have to understand that and able to comfort them, what Peter sees is that all of those things, his love, his mercy, his grace, his providence, is culminated in what we call the doctrine of election.

You see, God's sovereignly choosing of these people is the culmination of all of those other attributes of who God is and how he interacts with his people.

And so when Peter wants to communicate, God loves you, when he wants to communicate, he's shown mercy to you.

When he wants to communicate, he's sovereign over your situation.

He boils it down and distills it to this very truth.

God has chosen you.

How comforting is that?

And Peter knows that this should be comforting to these people as they are facing these trials.

You see, his love, mercy, grace, providence are put on magnificent display in the election or the choosing of his people.

Today we often see the reality of God's election as something very unpractical or incapable of being applied for spiritual maturity.

But Peter, he sees that the very first thing that needs to be affirmed and understood in the midst of facing suffering.

My beloved, my children, you have been chosen by God.

You have been chosen.

God the Father, all-powerful creator, sovereign king of the universe, has chosen you.

If you have faith in the Son of God, if you have faith in Jesus, in his perfect life, in his substitutionary death on the cross, in his being buried and raised again.

If faith resides in your chest, then you have been chosen by the sovereign King of the universe.

Let that truth flood your heart, let it flood your soul in the midst of trials and suffering.

See the glorious rejoicing in knowing that God has chosen you.

Realize the assurance and the peace in knowing that God has chosen you.

Experience the comfort.

The comfort in the midst of trials, in the midst of suffering.

God the Father has chosen you.

What comforting truth in such perilous times.

And Peter knows this.

That's why he begins this letter with such a statement.

But we have two parts of this identifying factor that Peter uses for the people who he's writing to.

First, it's chosen, but then the second part of that is sojourners.

Chosen sojourners.

He calls them exiles.

You see, God's choosing for himself a people in the midst of a sinful world has caused them to be foreigners where they live, exiles, living as citizens of an eternal kingdom under the reign of an eternal king, but finding their current home here in this world.

You see, every time this word is used in the Bible, it's to communicate a people chosen from among a group of people to be included inside of God's family and to be recipients of his generous blessing and privilege.

Peter isn't necessarily pointing them to reflect on their current relationship with the culture they live in as much as he's reminding them of their temporary residency.

You see, these people are scattered among the areas of where people is writing, of where Peter is writing.

But they're not scattered because of persecution.

They're not been displaced from their homes.

They are just scattered throughout that region, residing in those areas.

And what has made them a foreigner, what has made them exiles, is the very fact that they have faith in Jesus.

They've been taken out of this world and brought into the family of God.

And so where they currently reside, they reside as exiled aliens in a foreign place because they have a different home now.

You see, God's choosing of them, his love, his mercy, his grace that has been poured out on them and has been shown and demonstrated, and their faith in Jesus has caused them to be sojourners in the land of which they reside.

Peter's saying, Remember, God has chosen you and he's made you someone different, a foreigner in exile, a sojourner in a culture that won't understand you, a culture that might fear you, a culture that might revile against you.

And it's expected, it's expected for the weight of their foreignness to be felt.

In the midst of everyday life, in the midst of the trials that they go through, the weight of their foreignness should be felt.

And it's not just simply in the interaction with the cultures that they have, but they should sense and have this feeling of weary travelers journeying toward an eternal home.

You see, the weight that they should feel first and foremost is not necessarily the tension of the culture, but the homesickness of their heart.

They are chosen sojourners.

Verse 2, we come to, and I would summarize verse 2 in this way is that grace and peace is ours because of the work of God on our behalf.

Grace and peace is ours because of the work of God on our behalf.

In this short introduction, the Apostle Peter packs in so much theological truth for his readers to grasp onto the string of theological declarations, work to show us how confident we can be of the grace and peace that is extended to us following.

So Peter's gonna work through, so you are chosen sojourners, and this is how.

And he's gonna work through the Father, the Son, and the Spirit of how we became this way, and then he's gonna end this uh greeting with a declaration of grace and peace be multiplied to you.

And so that string of events before he declares that blessing on us is how we are able to obtain the grace and peace of which he wishes to multiply.

So let's work through it.

First part is he says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

This statement introduces us to the how we became such chosen sojourners.

We have become chosen sojourners first and foremost by the foreknowledge of God the Father.

Not a foreknowledge according to any action of our own, but by an intimate knowledge of us as his children.

A lovingly, fatherly knowledge that expresses his intimate care for you before the world was made.

So it talks about in throughout the scriptures how God knew us, formed us, and shaped us in our mother's womb.

He knew us before the foundations of the world.

God's intimate awareness, God's intimate knowledge of us is so deep and eternal that this is the foreknowledge of which Peter is referring to.

God knew you in a lovingly, caring, fatherly way before the earth was ever formed.

God is the father of his chosen people.

Not in some generic, intangible way that we can't relate to, that we can't really understand.

No.

It's in the way he's the father to Jesus.

His eternally beloved Son.

You see, the same affection and love that God the Father has extended to Christ, his eternally beloved, is the same way in which this foreknowledge choosing has spurred him on.

This love for us is so deep and intimate.

The second way Peter introduces us to how we became such chosen sojourners is in the sanctification of the Spirit.

You see, this work of the Spirit is the agent by which the crossing of the Father becomes actualized in the individual.

So let me say that again.

This work of the Spirit is the agent by which the choosing of the Father becomes actualized in the individual.

The work of the Spirit brings the past to the present.

You see, to sanctify means to simply set apart.

And so in God's choosing a people for himself among a people, he then releases the spirit to actualize his choosing in our present day and time.

And so the past becomes the present, and this setting apartness becomes a reality for our life.

While the choosing of the Father identifies us, the work of the Spirit incorporates us, placing us into the family of God, children of the Father, set apart from the world, we are alien residents of.

We are chosen and sanctified so that we might be obedient.

We are chosen and sanctified so that we might be obedient.

Obedient to whom?

Obedient to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Obedience to Jesus is a life-giving joy to the children of the Father.

We are simply children looking to be conformed to our older brother.

I mean, many of you probably have children at your home, and you can relate to this.

When the older children in your home or the oldest child in your home does something, the youngers want to be like that.

They want to conform to that.

They want to take on their hobbies, their interests.

They want to become like their older sibling.

And the Bible calls Jesus the firstborn among many brothers.

He is truly our older brother.

And us as children of the Father seek to be conformed to that image of our older brother.

And how do we do that?

We do it through obedience and the work of the Spirit.

While we strive to have obedience seen in our lives, we know that perfect obedience is beyond us in this life.

Because of this, we need the sprinkling of Jesus' blood.

Look, we realize obedience won't be fully known and have here in this life.

We're going to continue to sin, we're going to continue to fall.

That doesn't dismiss our striving toward obedience.

That doesn't dismiss the necessity of working with the Spirit to see greater strengthening of obedience in our lives.

But we we have to understand is that the fullness of obedience.

Obedience and perfection to Jesus, we will not see in this life.

And so we need the sprinkling of his blood.

Now, there's only three cases in the scriptures where this ceremony of sprinkling with blood is actually applied to God's people.

And the one that is probably most relevant to what Peter's trying to talk about is when a leper would come to show himself clean, and it would be ceremonial to sprinkle that leper with blood, affirming the pronouncement that he is clean.

And when we think about that with us, you see, the leper, when a person in the scriptures would get leprosy, they'd be ridden with this disease, they would have to remove themselves from fellowship, they'd have to actually take themselves outside of the community of God's people.

They would be ostracized, marginalized.

And every time somebody would pass by them, they would have to declare unclean, unclean.

But see, with the work of Christ, with the sprinkling of his blood, we are actually brought intimately near in fellowship with God and with his people.

And in rejoicing praise, we get to declare for all eternity we are clean.

We are clean.

You see, that's the beauty of the work of Christ on the cross.

Those who are far off and cut from God are brought intimately near.

But not just with him, with his people, who he has chosen, who the Spirit has sanctified.

And for all eternity, because of the blood of Christ on the cross, we get to declare clean.

Peter, in this short introduction, demonstrates for us how the fullness of God, expressed in all three persons of the Father, Son, and Spirit, has worked to bring us into his eternal family, giving us an eternal home where grace and peace is ours for all eternity.

And so what's our main idea this morning?

It's this.

We reside now as aliens, travelers on a road to the eternal home of our Father, of which He has established for us.

This truth should comfort our weary souls and give us confidence in the midst of trials and suffering.

You've been chosen by Him.

His love has been poured out for you.

And he demonstrates how fully and eternally he's accomplished it through the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Now let grace and peace be multiplied to you.

But the problem is that we don't really believe this.

If we're honest with ourselves, as we're trying to navigate this time, as we're trying to navigate our own faith, we realize places and situations where we really don't believe this, where this truth doesn't bring us comfort because our hope has been placed in something else.

And so some of us, some of us expect to find comfort in our obedience rather than in our identity.

You see, some of us expect to find comfort in our obedience rather than our identity.

We flip the script, we switch what should be because we think that doing the right things and keeping our nose clean will actually earn us something.

You see, we think if I just keep all the rules and do all the right things, then God will reward me by removing me from suffering.

The problem is when suffering eventually comes, as it will, we get angry at God.

We get angry at God and we feel a sense of injustice.

I've done everything you've asked me to.

I've been obedient, I've kept my nose clean.

I haven't made the same decisions that they have.

How can you let this trial, how can you let this suffering come to me?

I prayed the right prayers.

I went to church, I did the right thing, I did everything that you asked me to.

How can you let this suffering come to me?

We get angry.

We get angry at the Father who loves us, who cares for us, because we feel this deep sense of injustice.

You've gone against my obedience.

In our eyes, the suffering we're encountering is undeserved.

You see, we worked so hard to prevent it.

And now our foundation of self-work and self-righteousness has crumbled beneath the reality of our suffering.

Right?

We said the right prayers, we did the anointing, we prayed the right thing out of the psalms, we we made sure that we rebuked and we put up the hedge.

We did everything that we could.

We even uh uh lived holy, we were obedient, we made sure that we didn't live as the world lives, we made sure that our lives were set apart uniquely through obedience.

How then, God, in the midst of all of this, could you still allow suffering to come?

You see, we flipped it.

God says that your comfort is not in your obedience, your comfort should be in your identity because suffering will come.

Suffering will come to test the genuineness of your faith.

And it's when we find comfort in our identity in the midst of suffering, we can rejoice that we belong to Him and to Him alone.

You see, our obedience is an expression of the reality of our identity.

Our obedience is not the thing that earns us a place in the Father's house.

If we truly believe, we will desire joyfully to be obedient people.

But our obedience never earns us a place in the Father's house.

He loves us, he's chosen us before the foundations of the world.

He knew us.

And we're living in the response to that reality of our identity, not of our striving.

But some of us, see, some of us expect to find comfort in false assurances.

Some of us expect to find comfort in false assurances.

We think things like relationships, accomplishments, wealth, substances, experiences, or even just positive thinking will remove us from suffering.

We strive to build these things as a means to bring us comfort.

Yet all of these things are just a delusion.

Right?

We work hard, we make sure that our savings are in the right place, we make sure that we uh are getting the right career choices.

Some of us might even buy land to make sure that if all this goes, right, we can live off of what we can grow and farm.

All of us will start in different certain ways, try to build an infrastructure of comfort and safety around us.

And what we're doing is we're propping up false hopes that will inevitably fall back and crush us.

None of them can bring true comfort or provide us with an escape from suffering.

One day suffering will come.

If we can guarantee anything to you, it's this suffering will come.

And when it does, it will most often come in the form of the idol that you once used to prevent it.

So maybe it was your job, maybe it was your marriage, your children, maybe it was that home, maybe it was whatever you put into that void.

When suffering does come, more than likely it's going to come in the form of the idol of which you use to try to escape it.

I mean, look at the world around us right now.

Look at what's going on.

Now, this isn't a one-for-one parallel of what these uh Christians that were dispersed uh were facing when Peter was writing this letter.

It's not a one-for-one.

I'm not trying to act like it is.

But what we're facing right now isn't necessarily absent of it either.

And the truth is, if we look around at our neighbors, if we look on social media and the news, everything that you held on to for security and comfort just vanished from your grip.

Jesus is the only true security.

Jesus is the only true comfort.

And the beauty of the gospel is that his grip will never let go of you.

Let us find joy in that.

Let us find comfort and peace in that.

You see, both of these, both of these thought processes are false comforts, false assurances that just leave us empty, broken, and confused.

The embrace of God's divine, gracious, loving, providential choosing of us for such a time as this is our highest comfort.

And so we face suffering with strength and not fear, understanding its value for refinement toward the image of Christ that we are to bear.

So the gospel declares this Jesus suffered under judgment and wrath, so that we might be comforted with grace and peace.

Jesus suffered under judgment and wrath.

So we might be comforted with grace and peace.

Peter finishes his greeting to the chosen sojourners by declaring grace and peace be multiplied to them.

This declaration of blessing is driven by the reality of his hearer's election.

This grace and peace would seem something completely unattainable.

It would just be good vibes sent their way.

If it wasn't for the finished work of Christ, if it wasn't for the foreknowledge of God choosing them, if it wasn't for the power of the Spirit sanctifying them, if it wasn't for the total and full work of God in our salvation, this grace and peace would be unattainable from their grasp.

But because of the work of God, because of his providence and sovereignty and bringing us to himself, that grace and peace can be actualized, it can be tangible, it can be expressed in our very being.

It's not something that is ambiguous, it's something that is actually multiplied to those of whom he calls his own.

Grace, God's complete undeserved favor and peace, God's complete sufficient comfort is multiplied to you today.

If you're sitting at home and you're watching this live stream and you're worried about the trials and the temperature of the culture right now and what's going on, all I can say to you is this: if you have faith in the Son of God, then the grace and peace that Peter prays and declares to be multiplied to his hearers can be multiplied to you because you can be comforted in your identity.

You can be comforted in the knowledge that you are a child of God.

But if you don't have faith in Jesus, if you don't trust him for your salvation, then the grace and peace that Peter extends to his listeners is not for you.

It's beyond the reach of your arm.

And you should worry and fear and trembling.

Because it's only through Jesus.

In the fact that he suffered what we deserved, God's judgment and God's wrath, are we able to be comforted through God's grace and God's peace?

And it's faith in that work where Jesus stood in the gap between us and God's wrath that we're able to have it and hold it and treasure it and let it comfort us.

Allow this rich doctrine of grace to be a flood of divine enjoyment to your soul.

Church, it's good news.

No matter what we go through, no matter what trial, no matter what suffering, we have good news.

Grace and peace is ours because wrath and judgment was his.

Let us be comforted in that identity.

Let's be comforted in that truth.

And so if this is true, and if we actually work to live this out in our lives, what would that look like?

And the first thing I have for our gospel vision this morning is this that we would live as sojourners in a land that is not our home.

We would live as sojourners in a land that is not our home.

As I've been kind of uh praying and watching the culture unfold and been studying for this sermon series, one of the things that has kind of come to me is that we need to be more homesick.

If we're Christians, if we are children of God the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit, we should be more homesick.

We don't wake up, if we're honest, with the reality, with the mental framework that actually causes us to make certain decisions in our lives, we that causes us to choose different things about how we're going to live.

The framework isn't built around this is not my home.

The framework isn't built around, I'm just a wandering traveler through a land, on to my eternal home in glory.

We can go days, weeks, months without that ever really entering into our framework of mind or impacting our lives in any significant way.

And so as you look out around the culture, as you gaze out the windows of your homes and you see this kind of ghostness and this fear that's filling our city, I pray that you, Christian, would be awake to the reality that this is not your home, but that in your very being you begin daily to be homesick.

Let heaven and earth pass away.

Let this all go, let it be burnt up and destroyed.

We still have a home.

We still have a father.

We still belong to a family.

And so I pray that us as Christians in the midst of this will see Peter's writing, we'll see ourselves in the context of the culture of which we're in, and we will say, I'm homesick, I'm unwavered, I'm not fearful, I'm not scared.

Grace and peace is multiplied to me, and I'm just a traveler waiting to go home.

Number two is that we would find our comfort in the midst of trials, knowing that we are his.

We would find our comfort in the midst of trials, knowing that we're his.

Our comfort wouldn't be in how much we stockpile.

Our comfort wouldn't be in how many tests are available to our culture, our comfort wouldn't be in the government's plans and policies, our comfort would not be in anything else, but who we are in Christ, belonging to the Father.

That's where our comfort would be.

Look, church, if we don't believe that God has got this situation under control, then what are we doing?

Where is our faith?

Where is our hope?

And whether famine, pestilence, plague, suffering, persecution, you name it, no matter what we face, we can face it with grace and peace because we belong to Him.

And so I pray for us that we would find our comfort in the midst of any trial that we face, whether now or in the future, knowing that we're his.

And lastly, we would live in the grace and peace that has been given to us.

Man, what testimony of gospel truth is it?

When the world looks at us, when the culture sets its eyes upon us, and it knows, it determines that we're exiled aliens.

You're living so differently.

The way that you're making choices, the way that you're living out your life, the confidence, the assurance, the comfort, the peace that you are walking in.

How have you obtained it?

How are you not freaking out right now?

How are you not scrambling for every last bit of resource that you can get your hands on?

How are you so calm?

It's not because I'm stupid, it's not because I'm uh not paying attention to what's around me or choosing to ignore reality, it's because in the midst of the storm, I can be unmoved because I have the unwavering grace and peace of God in me.

And we can live as a testimony of the gospel.

We can live as a people, no matter what, who are unmoved by our life circumstance.

Because we know that through the finished work of God and the Father's choosing and the Spirit sanctifying, and in the Son's cleansing, we have grace and we have peace.

And that truth for us should cause us to be seen from the world around us as weary travelers wandering to a better home, an eternal home that God has established for us.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the beauty of the truth of your word.

We thank you for the accomplishment that you have made on our behalf to bring us into your family, to cause us to be your children, to give us an eternal home.

And so we pray this morning that as Peter wrote to these Christians, these brothers and sisters, in an effort to bring them comfort in the midst of trials, that these very same words would flood our souls with grace and peace in the midst of the trials that we face.

Let us hold fast to the faith you have given us and not to the fleeting things of this world.

Give us peace that is beyond understanding.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.