Everything Is Meaningless - A Time For Everything

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, starting at verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

For everything there is a season and a time, for every matter under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to break down and a time to build up.

A time to weep and a time to laugh.

A time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to seek and a time to lose.

A time to keep and a time to cast away.

A time to tear and a time to sow.

A time to keep silence and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil?

I've seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.

Yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end, I perceive that there's nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live.

Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all this toil.

This is God's gift to man.

I perceive that whatever God does endures forever.

Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.

God has done it so that people fear before Him that which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away.

Well, I admire the brilliance of God in putting different types of wisdom literature in the Bible.

There's a lot of different kinds of it.

He doesn't just say his wisdom in one way.

You have the Psalms, and the Psalms are like wisdom in song form and it's real life and it's emotional and it's very relatable.

So for those of us who need to connect emotionally, psalms are awesome for that.

Proverbs are these pithy little sound bites, right, like I don't need your emotional, just give it to me straight, just give me the headlines, give me wisdom and enough sound bite.

That's Proverbs Even puts wisdom in a love song.

But but please, yes, these are really unique kind of wisdom.

It's different wisdom and it's for different people.

It's a it's cynical wisdom.

Can you guess who it's for?

It might be for you, well, it is for you for sure.

It's like everything's everything is meaningless.

But let's talk about it, because this is also an honest observation of a man who had experience not just opinion, but real experience in these kind of matters.

And so Solomon is a man who's wrestling with life and trying to find meaning in it.

And so Solomon is a man who takes time to go deep with the things that we don't usually take time to go deep about.

To be honest, we don't think that deeply, not this deeply.

Most of the time.

Solomon is thinking about deep matters while we're watching TikTok videos or Netflix or whatever, but he's boldly going into these places that we're either like too lazy to go or too scared to go or too distracted to go.

But he's asking hard questions and he's doing it honestly.

The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living.

But actually, 600 years before Socrates, solomon's writing these words, Solomon is thinking the same thing and he's examining life and he's asking the hard questions.

If this Hebrew Bible was actually translated into Greek during Socrates time, it would have been pretty cool, because Socrates could have learned some things from Solomon, but thankfully we have it today in English, so we're going to learn from it today.

So what have we learned so far that Solomon's told us about his search for meaning?

He said that there's no real fulfillment in different types of gratification, so in money, or in sex, or in even in your job.

There's some fulfillment there, and all of these are gifts from God.

But there's still something gnawing at our souls and I think of it like so I'm grateful that I'm generally a healthy person, but one of the quirks of my body is that I am extremely allergic to poison ivy.

Anybody out there, oh man, I feel you.

I'm so sorry.

When I was a kid I was a kid and a teenager.

All those years I'd get poison ivy and I would have to go to the doctor and they would have to, like you know, give me special medicine.

They would wrap my legs up, you know, with special solution, and it took weeks to heal.

And you know, while it's healing it's itching and you can't really ever get away from the itch.

It just keeps going.

It just has to be.

You know, when it goes away when it's healed, that's when it goes away it's like oh, and I think that's kind of like what Solomon is saying.

Here we have what amounts to a bad case of poison ivy in our soul.

There's something itching all the time and it's just keeps itching.

It doesn't matter how you scratch it.

It needs to be healed.

That's what he's talking about.

He's grappling with this, and when you're grappling with life and you're trying to find wisdom, you inevitably come around to the subject of time, because time is a master to all of us.

I mean, we are all subject to time, whether we like it or not.

We're under time and we see these words.

Here he uses the word time and season, and eternity and forever, and that which has been and that which is going to be and that which is now, and so it's like.

It's like there's a, there's a connection between wisdom and time and, more specifically, there's a connection between wisdom and our seasons, because this word he uses for time 30 times.

I think I counted 30 times.

Here he uses the word time 30 times.

That word time is the word that really means an appointed time, like in a season.

It's an appointed time, and so understanding your season is crucial to living a life of wisdom, and we can see that because the scripture says that the descendants of Issaqar in 1 Chronicles 12, men who had understanding of their times and they knew what Israel should do.

Okay, I know what I ought to do because I understand my season.

Do you see?

There's a, there's a link there.

If you, if you need guidance for your life, you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing right now.

Think about this what is your season?

What season is God got you in?

Because seasons change and different seasons require different responses, and sometimes we'd rather just like why does everything have to change?

Why can't we all just get it?

We control freaks, right, we want it.

Why can't we just get all right and then everything is right, and then just like hold your breath and don't move, nobody move.

Let's keep it like this.

But life is not like that ever.

It changes, and so our seasons have to.

Our seasons change, so our understanding of what we need to do changes, and Moses understood this too.

Moses wrote a whole song about time.

It's Psalm 90 and.

And Moses, who actually lived more time on this earth than anyone here is likely to live, although Jack is approaching Moses.

I don't know if you're trying to beat Moses or not, jack, but you're doing great so far.

He lived longer than any of us, right?

And here's what he said In Psalm 90.

He said teaches to number our days are right, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

And I think that's really fascinating because he's saying God, I need to be taught.

Teaches is not something that we have in our Self.

We don't have this, this understanding, in our own ability.

God teaches, teaches what to number, to number, and that word means really to get perspective on it, means Numbering, means to count out and to it has this, this connotation of order, ordering your days, like there's a right perspective, there's a right order, there's a proper godly order that we should have in our lives.

Teach us to order Our time and time.

It's interesting about time because time we use, we understand we have a limited amount, right.

It's a commodity, like money.

You get a limited amount of it, right.

So you have to budget it.

We spend, we spend time, we spend money, we invest time, we all these are like money terms, right.

We invest time, we spend time, we waste time, we redeem time.

It's like we use these economical terms when we talk about Time because it's a commodity and Moses is saying God teaches to count those days and the next word is to number our days.

A right One version says correctly, a right, in other words, is a right way to do it.

And it says teach us to number our days, because days are what we need to focus on, because if we get the days right, we get the years right, we get the life right.

So it's not just look at your whole life, but look at your days and teach us to number our days so that we can Get a heart of wisdom.

So there's this connection, right, wisdom, time, seasons, understanding time is part of getting wisdom.

So this is a pretty well known passage in Ecclesiastes.

Maybe you've heard of it before, maybe you've heard it preached from before.

But there's a really a beautiful, some symmetry to this passage.

There's a, it's a poem, it's the first actual poem in the book.

It's actually a poem and it's like poetic magic.

There's like there's 14 pairs of opposing events that all happen in the context of time.

So this is like a poetic device.

It's called mirrorism, where you list an extreme and another extreme and the.

The idea is, the implication is everything involved In the middle is also.

This is true about everything in the middle as well.

In other words, everything in between those extremes is included.

There's two sets of seven pairs.

Seven is the number of completion.

And so what's happening is, solomon is poetically given us this message that these truths are universal.

They imply they apply to every aspect of our lives and, strangely, the conclusion that he comes to is that God makes everything beautiful in its time.

It's he has both.

There's both futility and there's wonder, wrapped up in this passage.

It's really a Little bit strange and a little bit beautiful.

And Solomon tells us your gifts, your seasons, your times are gifts from God.

Really, all of them I Mean like the one you're in right now is a gift from God.

Really, yeah, this tensions that you see in this poetry Are like, or they hit home, because life is full of tensions, right, life is full of these kind of tensions that he's communicating here, and so we tend to, we tend to think that one is better than the other.

Right, because laughter is better than weeping, surely, right?

Yeah, yeah, surely, being born is better than dying, right, loving is better than hating, is that right?

But Solomon saying no, there's more to it than just that.

It's not that simple.

It's not as simple as polarizing your times, good and bad.

We may need to adjust our thinking here, and so there's struggle and there's beauty.

In all of our times, including the time that you're going through right now.

There's struggle, but there's beauty.

So when I began to sense that God might want me to write a book about how he's teaching me to handle grief in a Positive way from the Psalms of lament, I Just really couldn't see a way to write it.

And, by the way it's in, that book is in the last stages of editing right now.

My publisher is working with it and so it should be out later this year.

But starting to write it was the was the hardest part, because how do you?

I I couldn't see a way to write this book at all, because this is so deeply, intensely emotional.

How do you write about what's Crushing you and pulling your heart into pieces?

How do you write about this?

How do you?

And I'm a teacher and I see this pattern in the Psalms but how do you write about it?

How do you write a teachy book about what you're feeling so deeply?

Right, it's like this is there's no way.

This is not even, because when you're in the depth of that grief, you, even you even kind of know that it's not as simple as just little steps to getting out of grief.

There's something way deeper than that.

So I, I didn't.

I Didn't know how to do it.

Yet I saw a pattern and I know the Lord was trying to, he was leading me to write it, but I couldn't see my ache.

I'm a teacher and my ache is not academic.

Does that make sense to you?

My ache is real.

It's like real.

How do you do this?

I don't like it, I don't want to do it.

And then I took a bike ride on a brilliantly sunny afternoon by the river and over the ridges of my beautiful native East Tennessee, and by the end of that bike ride I felt like the Lord was was showing me a way that I could write this book, because the beauty of East Tennessee was affecting me.

But the beauty of East Tennessee is not just the natural beauty, it's also the beauty of the people and it's also the beauty of the struggle, and I thought about my own family and the struggles that I heard from my, my ancestors, and how they Went through so many difficult things to stay here, to live here, to settle here, and also Melissa's side of the family.

And so it's the beauty of the struggle and I began to see there's beauty in struggle and there's beauty in struggle because there's presence of God there.

There's beauty in struggle because there's kindness there and there's strength there and there's deep roots in Jesus in your current struggle, in your time.

God is sovereign over our times.

Brothers and sisters, we tend to polarize our seasons though, like Complain to God about the bad times and then we kind of ignore the good times, like like we, we don't say much about the good times, we kind of expect them, like we're entitled to good times.

But he says for everything there's a season, there's a point in time.

How can that be?

How is there a time to kill?

How is there a time to break down?

How is there a time to weep and mourn?

Is it?

Is there a time to hate?

Is there a time for war?

Solomon is observing.

These things happen in a wonderfully beautiful but tragically fallen world, their Tensions.

That's what he's saying and he's not ignoring it.

Okay, so let's think about a minute.

So just a few of the things that he says.

He says there's a time for war, there's a time for peace.

Is there a time for war.

Does that mean God ordains war?

That's a good question.

I Think times of war and hate and death do not mean that God is God is any less present or any less Good or any less kind.

In Ukraine I saw the effect of war on every level.

I saw it a national level, I saw it on a community level, I saw it in a church level, I saw it in families, I saw it in personal people, in individual people.

I saw it Economically, I saw it psychologically.

War affects everything and I was trying to imagine a world without war and it will be a reality someday.

Someday everything's going to be redeemed.

But in the midst of that war and that struggle there was beauty, there were beautiful things being done by heroic people, and war can afford the opportunity for the most beautiful and brave and heroic actions that could never happen in the time of peace.

My friend Marek is one example.

Marek is the man who owned the property where we had this songwriter camp in Poland, and Marek is probably my age and his family and his wife's family during World War II were killed during the Nazi occupation.

But they weren't killed by Nazis.

It was all a big mess in that part of Poland and Ukraine.

It was a big massacre of Ukrainians, or by Ukrainians on Polish people.

These Ukrainians just rose up and killed their Polish neighbors by the thousands, even while the Nazis were taking over.

It was a big mess.

It was a big mess, but this is horrible atrocities that the Ukrainians did on the Polish people.

And yet, my friend Marek, when the war broke out and these millions of Ukrainians came across the border in weeks, he immediately opened up his place.

He can house over 50 people there.

He immediately opened it up to Ukrainians and there were Ukrainians staying there.

While we were there still, there were eight of them staying there still.

Why would you open up your house to people whose descendants may be the very people who killed your descendants?

Why would you do that?

Well, we ask him why did you do this, marek?

Why did you do it?

And you know what he said If I don't forgive, I will not be forgiven.

I thought well, this man's following Jesus.

That's exactly what Jesus said.

Anyway, further he said I can forgive because I have been forgiven.

Beautiful things can happen in the midst of the tragedy of war and Solomon is simply observing here.

Okay, there's a time for war, there's a time for peace, it happens.

This is what he's saying Doesn't mean God is absent.

He says there's time to mourn, and a time to dance Is one of those better than the other?

Mourning and dancing?

Well, we think so, don't we?

Well, in a few weeks somebody's going to be preaching to you from Ecclesiastry 7, but I want to give you a little hint here, because here's what Solomon said it is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.

What the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

What is this man talking?

Is he not confused?

What is he even saying?

How can this be?

He's saying there are things that we learn in the school of sorrow that we can never learn in the other way, and I can tell you that that's true.

And I'm talking about foundational things, things that become a rock for your life, things about God, because grief is a great revealer.

Grief just rips open the curtains and shows what's there in your own heart.

It reveals what's in the heart of people around you.

It reveals, most importantly, what's in the heart of God.

You began to see God as you never saw him before, in the middle of your grief.

It's a great teacher, and if we're going to live with understanding in any kind of light or wisdom in this world, we have to listen, even in times of sorrow.

There's a time to mourn.

There's a time to dance.

God's present in both of those.

Sometimes we mourn and dance in the same season.

Well, he also says that there's a time to keep and a time to throw away.

And I think I can almost hear some of you saying to your spouse see, the Bible says we need to have a garage sale, and that might be true.

There's a time to get rid of it because it's cluttering your life.

Right.

But this is not just a garage sale mentality Might be, but it's more than that.

There's a time to hold on to truth.

That you know.

I mean to wrap your arms and your legs around it and say I'm not letting this go, no matter what is being talked around.

This is true and I know this is true.

There's a time to let go of, throw away my own false ideas about myself or my own ideas about you that are not informed by the gospel, that I believe there's a time to throw away ideas because they're no good, they're not right, they're not, they're not God's ideas.

There's a time to keep, there's a time to throw away.

Paul said there's a time to put away childish things.

I was a child and I spoke like a child and I behaved like a child.

I understood like a child, but there was a time I became a man and I had to put away childish things.

Sometimes it's time to grow up, brothers.

It's time to grow up and be a man.

There's a time Then he says there's a time to break down and a time to build up.

I love it because it's a construction metaphor and every house flipper knows that you have to tear it down a little bit to build it back up.

You can't make it what it is, what it could be, and less changing what it is right.

You have to do that.

But what if I don't like what's being torn out of my life?

What if what's being torn out of your life is the very thing that's going to make you more like Jesus?

Maybe what you're going through is not killing you, it's killing what's killing you.

It could be so that you can actually live.

What if I can't be built into what I could be without some of the things first being torn down?

And construction is all about the end result.

I actually was at one point in my life project manager of a $4 million building project and I learned a lot.

Part of what I learned was it's not a big project, it's a whole bunch of little projects and a whole bunch of little projects that are moving toward one big end, and the end is always in sight.

You have to start with the end in sight always, but the end product is always what the construction workers are working toward, right, the contractors working toward the end.

Jesus is also working toward a finished result, right.

He's walking with us relationally through processes, but there is a place he's taking us to.

He's taking us to a place of maturity and is forming Christ inside of us, and tearing down is not always the enemy.

That's what I'm trying to say that construction is messy and it's uncomfortable all the time.

All right, some of you weren't here last week and you didn't hear the announcement that, because of the great growth that God's given us, we're going to two services.

Derek mentioned it September 17th.

We're gonna go to two services and, if we're thinking right, there's no way to see this but blessing, because the things we prayed for for years God's giving us and we're living in his blessing.

But score require changes.

So I heard something from pastor Ray Hughes one time that will help us a lot in life if we understand it.

So actually, you might want to take a picture of this or take some notes.

This is really good.

Healthy things grow, growing, things change, changing things challenge us.

It's challenging.

Things drive us to God.

Going to God leads to trusting God.

Trust leads to obedience.

Obedience makes us healthy.

Healthy things grow, growing things change.

Changing things challenge us.

It's, it's a big cycle.

Growing into maturity is a cycle, but if you know it, if you're, if you see the big picture, it doesn't surprise you when it happens.

You don't freak out because you're challenged by something and Something is driving you to God.

This is this is really important.

You know, if we're going to grow, there's a constant cycle of change.

There's a time to tear it down, there's a time to build up, there's a time to go to services.

I Through that in there, but I think it's true, but here's what.

Here's the thing.

Solomon says all this about time and then he says this.

He says God has made everything beautiful in its time, in its time.

Okay, and I thought, what?

How do you?

How do you understand that?

Well, I can understand it pretty easily, because what I love about summer in East Tennessee is Ripe fruits and vegetables are like one of the great joys of life.

All right, I ate a tomato last week.

It tasted like a tomato and they taste good when they taste like a tomato.

I Came back in time to get like the end of the peach harvest one of my favorite things.

Man, I had a cantaloupe last week.

That was the sweetest thing, it was great.

I've got some apples on my tree now and there there is so laden down, it's like there's it's a bumper crop, but if you try to eat them right now it's not gonna be pleasant, really bitter.

So when they're not ripe yet, it's bitter.

When they're past ripe, it's rotten.

But in the middle there's a beautiful season In season is beautiful, right.

There's a window of beauty and I love that.

And if God is sovereign over our seasons, do you believe that he is able to help you to see the beauty in your current season.

Do you believe there's?

There's beauty there in your current season?

And I'm speaking, maybe, to some people who are in a difficult time.

We were praying this morning with the pastors, and, and John prayed especially for people who are going through rough times and I think this might be, this might be a good.

You know, this might be a reason we're in Ecclesiastes 3 today, right, because we have to understand God's.

We have to understand God's the sovereign.

He's sovereign over our seasons, and last week Kelly said he mentioned that phrase carpe diem sees the day, you know, and I just kind of like to expand it a little bit and say we have to seize our season.

Yeah, seize the day, make the most of the day, redeem the time is how the bible puts it.

Right, but seize your season.

God is always acting, he's always moving for his purposes.

So I need to not only endure my seasons, like my difficult seasons, not just endure them, but press in and listen, actively listen, learn and grow from them.

Seize your season, because Solomon says it's a gift from God.

Even this season it's a gift from God and if you got to go through it, at least learn something from it right, redeem it Wherever you are.

That's where you are, and so you got to be all there.

That's pretty profound, isn't it?

I should have put that on the screen.

Can't change the past, we can't control the future, but we really, all we really have is right now.

So how are you stewarding right now?

How are you stewarding your today?

That's the thing, because God's God says it's a gift to you.

And yet Solomon doesn't stop there.

He talks about time and everything.

All these things have their time, but there's more than time.

There's eternity.

And this is what makes this passage so profound to me is that it's a realistic look at the time, but then it's like also a realistic look Like lift your heads up a little bit from present circumstances, because there's there's eternity as well.

And Solomon makes this statement, this declaration, which is really profound, that God has put eternity in our hearts.

God's put eternity in our hearts.

There's something inside of us that translates into our hearts.

There's something inside of us that transcends time and deep inside of us we know that there's something more than what we experienced by our senses.

We know that that's the itch right.

Things that are limited to time and our finite earth can never really Satisfy us, because we're created in the image of eternal God and he's put eternity in our hearts.

So we have to add something outside of time to our lives in order to be fulfilled.

We have to add something outside of time to our lives in order to be fulfilled.

Cs Lewis said it this way I find in myself a desire.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.

Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.

I think that's what Solomon is really saying here.

God has put eternity in our hearts.

The CS Lewis is saying the shadow proves the sunshine.

That's what he's saying.

He's saying the emptiness proves the fullness is what we were made for.

So when Solomon says everything is meaningless, he's saying that every endeavor we put our hand to on this time-bound earth is not enough to scratch that itch of an internal being, that thing that God's put in our hearts.

So the question is today, what am I looking to fulfill my life.

All these things have their time, but do I think they can fill the void in my life?

And this is where the book points to Jesus?

And because the fullness that fills our hearts came to us from eternity.

It came to us in the fullness of time.

Paul put it this way in Galatians 4.

But when the fullness of time had come, god sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as sons.

The fullness of time this is what our time-bound hearts are longing for is eternity stepped into time.

And the very last verse of this book, or the last few verses of this book, solomon kind of gives his whole statement on the meaning of life and he says this is the conclusion of the matter Fear God, keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.

And the problem with that is we all know that none of us have fully kept the commandments of God.

None of us have done our duty, and there's a problem there, right?

But there's one who perfectly obeyed all the commandments of God, living a sinless life, and he broke into time from eternity with eternal life, and he offers it to us today.

Even this book is pointing to Jesus.

Jesus submitted himself to time in order to free us for eternity.

In Jesus' ministry there was a time he plucked up, there's a time he planted.

There was a time that he gathered and there was a time that he scattered.

There was a time that he spoke and it was a time he kept silence.

It was a time he was a prince of peace and it was a time he went to war on our behalf.

In Ephesians 1, paul said it this way God revealed his hidden design to us, which is according to his good will and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son.

This is what God planned for the climax of all times, the time of times.

This is what God planned to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth.

Time wraps up in the eternal one, jesus, and it's always been God's plan and we're part of it today.

So even this journey through meaninglessness is pointing us to Jesus Christ.

I think we all understand the itch and we all understand the life apart.

I don't know, you guys, what we're going to sing that song this morning, but it's you kind of saying part of my sermon life apart from God is meaningless.

But God is calling to us in our time-bound, meaningless life, pulling us, drawing us into an eternal existence, the life we were meant to be created.

In Jesus.

We have life and we have it to the full, and that's beautiful.

So what does it mean for us?

I think there may be three things we can do today.

So, once you stand up, and maybe whatever applies to you, you can pray this If an unexamined life is not worth living, then let's examine our life today.

Okay, for those of us who trust Jesus Christ as our Savior, maybe the question is are we frustrated because we're searching for fulfillment in the things that can never fill us?

Are there things that we're looking to for satisfaction, for identity, for significance, for security or for provision that only can come in Him?

He's the only source of it.

Maybe that's a point of repentance for us this morning and also for those of us who know Jesus.

Let's don't forget that people we meet every day have eternity in their hearts.

I'm not saying they have eternal life, I'm saying that they have eternity in their hearts.

They have something that wants eternal things.

Whether they show any interest or not.

Deep down inside, they know there's something more that this life just doesn't fulfill, and many of them are so ready to hear the good news.

Let's not forget that and let's just offer it.

Let's offer this eternal to all these time bound people around us right and to those who are not following Jesus.

I just want to remind you the last verse that we read today.

The very last verse in our passage said God seeks what has been driven away.

God seeks what has been driven away.

I don't know.

I don't know if you feel apart from God, maybe distant from God.

Maybe there's something you feel like has pushed you away or driven you away from God.

Maybe there's something in your past or your family or your church experience or your personality, or you just feel like you're away.

I just want to tell you that God is seeking for you this morning.

He is seeking for those who are driven away.

So, father, thank you for your word, and I know that there's so much more in it than we can deal with this morning.

But I also know that you want to challenge us.

You want to comfort us, you want to point us in the right direction, but you also want to challenge us and draw us up into a place of deeper relationship with you.

So, lord, I want to pray for all of us, but I pray for all of us who trust Jesus Christ but maybe don't see the ways that we are looking for fulfillment and stuff that can never fulfill us.

Lord, would you help us, would you turn our hearts away from that?

Lord?

We don't want to be the ones who forsake the living water and hew out for us ourselves these broken cisterns that can't ever hold water.

Lord, we don't want to be those people.

We want to turn to you the living water, and we want to drink deeply of you, lord.

So teach us, lord, teach us, show us where we don't see these things and draw us into that place where we're always drawing from you.

Lord, that's what we're praying, god.

I pray for those people who are around us this week and I pray for divine appointments this week, and you would give us the boldness, lord, to push past any timidness or any thoughts that maybe these people don't want to hear what I have to say that we can see people and have a love in our heart for them, so that we can see that they're hungry for what's eternal, and give us grace to offer them what's eternal, lord, and let people be born again this week.

God from us and Lord, also, I want to pray for the people who feel like they've been driven away or feel so far apart from you, lord, when I ask that they would be able to feel your heart for them and sense your drawing to them, that you're drawing them to yourself and that you long for them, that they would acknowledge this eternal that's in their own hearts, god, and that they would turn to you, lord, and pray for that.

And, lord, I just want to pray also that you would take these words and that you would do what you want to in our hearts this week with them, that you bring them back by your Holy Spirit to our remembrance and teach us and I pray your blessing on this congregation, lord that you would bless everyone, that you would keep everyone, that you would cause your face to shine on everyone, that you would be gracious to everyone and every household, lord, that you would lift your countenance up on each of us.

God, you would give peace to everyone.

I pray this in the name of the Prince of Peace, jesus, amen.