We're turning to 1 John chapter 4, 1 John chapter 4 for a Bible reading here today, this afternoon. 1 John chapter 4, 1 John chapter 4. And we're reading from the 7th verse of the chapter here. 1 John chapter 4 and the verse number 7. Let's hear God's word. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. loved. If God so love us, we ought also to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. We love one another. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casteth out fear, because feareth torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. Amen, and we'll end our reading at the 19th verse of the chapter. Let's pray with the Word of God before us open. Our loving Father, O God, we thank Thee that we can say such today that Thou art our loving Heavenly Father. Lord, as we come, dear God, to consider Thee once again, that our hearts might be lifted to Thee Grant, O God, our sight and our vision to be taken up with our God. Let us forget about all who are around us. All that is happening in front of us, even behind us, to the side of us. We cry, O God, that our minds will be brought into captivity and every thought centered on me. Grant, O God, the uplifting of our God. Grant all hearts to be encouraged and strengthened and instructed. Even as we meet around the open book, fill me with thy spirit. Blessed God, I pray. Help me to preach with authority, with power. Grant, O God, the enabling of thy spirit. Let us not fall into the trap like Samson did. He shook himself and went out as at other times. Yet he wist not that the Lord had departed from him. O God, depart not from me. Remove not thy Holy Spirit from me, but give us a double portion. And grant, O God, thy hand to be upon us as it was upon Ezekiel there in his prophecy. May the good hand of God be upon me, and grant, O Goddess, the leading and guiding of Thy Spirit, even now as we meet around Thy Word as the family of God. For we pray these, our prayers, in and through Jesus' most precious name. Amen. Today we come to the 32nd, and the final message on this series of messages that I entitled, Behold, your God. You'll recall that we took the words of Isaiah chapter 40, the verse number 9, as a starting point for this series of messages. O Zion, that bring us good tidings, get thee up to the high mountain. O Jerusalem, that bring us good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God. As the weeks and months have progressed, we have thought about our God, the living God, the true God, the only God. We thought first of all about the doctrine of revelation, how we come to know God. We know him, yes, through the natural revelation around us, but more specifically we get to know him in the special revelation that we have of him within his most precious book. We thought about the benefits of beholding God. We thought about who it is that can behold God, and then we started to think about the very being of God. We thought about His spirituality, His substantiality, His personality. We took a number of weeks to preach on the infinity of God, and as we did so, we thought about His omniscience and His omnipotence and His omnipresence. We came to consider the eternity of God and the immutability or the unchangeableness of God. Time was given over to think about the triune being of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We took time to think about the deity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the deity of God, the Holy Spirit. Over the last number of months, having considered the incommunicable attributes of God, we then start to think about the communicable attributes of God. We start to come and behold our wise God, powerful, holy, just, good, true, sovereign, jealous, faithful and patient God. It's taken us 32 weeks as we have come to consider our God. And as now we come to this concluding message, I want to remind you again of a number of quotes that we began this series of messages on the attributes of God with. I remind you of that quote of A. W. Tozer. He said, Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. The basic trouble with the church, he said today, is her unworthy conception of God. Our religion is little, he said, because our God is little. Our religion is weak because our God is weak. Our religion is innoble because our God is, or the God we serve is innoble. We do not see God, he said, as he is. Then he said these words, a local church. will only be as great as its conception of God. A local church will only be as great as its conception of God. See, each Spurgeon said, there is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject so vast that all of our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. No subject of contemplation will tend to humble the mind more than thoughts of God. When A.W. Pink came to write His classic, On the Attributes of God, a worthy little book to read. He wrote in 1930 these words, the foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of his perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted served nor worshipped. Something more than a theoretical knowledge of God is needed by us. God is only truly known in the soul. As we yield ourselves to him, submit to his authority and regulate all the details of our lives by his holy precepts and commandments. In other words, it's not just the theory. but it is that which impacts the soul that causes us to be the Christian and causes us to be the church that God wants us to be. I trust these messages have helped you as much as they have helped me to understand just a little more, just a little more of who God is and what our God is like. And yet, with all that we have come to understand about God from our meditations on Him, we would have to answer Zophar's questions found there in Job 11, the verse 7 in the negative. Canst thou, he asked, canst thou by searching find out God? No. Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? No. Because we would have to agree with Zophar, it is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper than hell, what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. Our transcendent God is beyond our comprehension. We are at a loss with these finite minds of ours to fully comprehend the infinite One who inhabits eternity. Let us then simply adore this incomprehensible being, let the grandeur and let the infinity and let the majesty of his glorious perfections make him then the proper and only object of our adoration, of our love and of our worship. The day we come to behold our God for one final time. And as we do so, I want us to behold our loving God. Behold our loving God. Now we did give a little consideration to that truth of God's love when we thought about the goodness of God, but I believe that this truth is the most fitting. The most fitting consideration to conclude this series of messages on. God who is infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably wise, powerful, holy, just, good, true, sovereign, jealous, faithful, and patient, is also a God who is infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably loving. He is infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably loving. because we can't get away from the very simple truth that the hymn writer penned, Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so. Yes, Jesus loves me. As we behold then our loving God, I want to firstly consider with you the description that we have of God's love within the Scriptures. The description of God's love. How is the love of God described in the Word of God? The love that emanates, the love that proceeds from a loving God is described and depicted in the Word of God, first of all, as a sovereign love. It is a sovereign love. God sovereignly sets his love upon those whom he wills. Such is the prerogative of the sovereign God. We see the sovereignty of his love in a number of Bible passages. Moses related to the people of Israel the sovereignty of God's love with respect to them. He said in Deuteronomy 7 verse 7 and 8, The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people. For ye were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you. God's love for Israel did not depend upon anything in Israel. As a matter of fact, Israel was repeatedly seen as a rebellious and as a stiff-necked people. There was nothing within them that made them worthy of the Lord's love. God loved them because he sovereignly chose to do so. I've loved you because I've loved you. That's my sovereign prerogative. God's sovereign love is seen in the life of one of Jacob's friends, or Jacob's sons, or one of Isaac's sons, Jacob. Quoting from Malachi 1, Paul quotes in Romans 9, verse 13, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but he saw have I hated. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." God sovereignly chose to set his love upon Jacob and not upon Esau. That was God's sovereign prerogative. Paul knew something himself of the sovereign love, sovereign love of God to him. He would say in Galatians 2, verse 20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Surely there was someone else in Israel, a greater individual morally speaking, maybe someone that was more akin to the Christians that were in Jerusalem at that present moment of time than the Apostle Paul, who was breathing out slaughterings against the people of God. Surely there was someone else in Israel, but God sovereignly set his love upon his servant. You see, as God's children, we need to remember that God loved us, not because of anything in us, not because of anything that we would do. Not because of anything that we would do now, presently, or do at some future date. No, but rather, he loved us according to his own good pleasure and will. Dr. Gill said, no greater reason can be given of God's loving his people but his own sovereign goodwill and pleasure. Nor ought any other to be sought for. He loves them simply because he will love them. He loves them simply because he will love them. It is his will to love his people. What a wonderful thing. Sovereign love. Sovereign love emanates from the being of God, from the God of love. God is love. In the second instance, God's love is not only a sovereign love, but God's love is a great love. It is a great love. Now, mother's love for her child is certainly a deep love. A husband's love for his wife, or vice versa, a wife for her husband is a strong love, a pastor's love, for his congregation is a special love. But there is no love as deep, there is no love as strong, there is no love as special as the love that God has for his people. It is the greatest of all loves, the love of God to his people. Paul wrote, of that great love when writing to the saints in Ephesus. Ephesians 2 verse 4 and 5, But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love were with, he loved us, even when we were dead, and sins hath quickened us together with Christ by grace. Or you see, if there we see it again, there is nothing in us that would cause God to love us. We were in our sin. We were still in our sin when He began to love us, we could say. And yet we're going to see that there was no beginning for His love to us. But as we think about it in time, we see that God loved us when we were in our sin, when we were rebels against Him, when we defied His law, broke His commandments. He still loved us. The love of God is unparalleled. There is no love in this world that could equal it. Not even the love of a mother to a child, a husband to a wife, a pastor to his congregation. It is an unparalleled love. And Paul states that, that God's love appears the greatest at the conversion of the sinner for his great love. Wherewith he loved us. Christian, when God saved you from your sin, He did so because of His great love. His great love. Love. Divine love extracted you from sin's dunghill. Divine love cleansed you. Divine love robed you. Divine love set you among princes. Divine love lifted you from the horrible pit. Divine love extracted you out of the miry clay. Divine love set your feet upon the rock, Christ Jesus. God's love is the greatest love. It's a great love, unparalleled. It is a transcendent love, infinite love, the love of God. And that's where we come to now. It is an infinite love. Yes, yes, it is a sovereign love, a great love, but God's love is an infinite love. Paul speaks of the geometry. of God's love there in Ephesians 8, the verse 18. We read from verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ which passeth, which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. It is a thought, this love, this truth that God is love. It passes our understanding because it is infinite. It's beyond our comprehension, brethren and sisters. There is no limit. to the extent of God's love in either the realm of space or of time. Go to the furthest star in this universe by some means of transport, child of God, and you'll still be found in the very center of God's love. Reach to the highest planet or the highest star to the outer bounds of the universe and thank God you'll still be in the love of God. It reaches beyond time, it reaches beyond space, the very love of God. One preacher put it like this, everything about God is infinite. His essence fills heaven and earth. His wisdom is unlimitable, for he knows everything of the past, present, and future. His power is unbounded, for there is nothing too hard for him. So his love is without limit. There is a depth to it which none can fathom. There is a height to it that none can scale. There is a length and breadth to it which defies measurement by any creature's standard. Infinite love. Child of God, remember that infinite love upholds you today. Infinite love embraces you today. Infinite love guides you today. Infinite love is protecting you today. Infinite love is providing for you today. Oh, child of God, rest and bask in the infinite love of your God, a love that can never be exhausted. In the fourth instance, God's love is an eternal love. We're thinking about infinity with respect to time here, the eternality of the love of God. God has loved his people with an everlasting love. The verse is known to us all. Those words that we find in Jeremiah 31 verse 3, the Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, yea, I have loved thee. With an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. An everlasting love, before time began, he loved his people. Before time began, he loved his people. Before the worlds were put in place, he loved his people. Having been given to him by the Father in the covenant of redemption, God has loved his people from time immemorial. Beyond time, from eternity past, thank God He loves us. Oh, love with everlasting love, yes. Oh, yes, we find that God's love for His people, yes, it reaches back into eternity, but thank God it reaches forward into eternity as well. Having loved His own, John 13 verse 1, having loved His own which were in the world. He loved them on to the end. On to the end and beyond. To the outermost limit, the word is end here. To the outermost limit of eternity. He loved his own and he continues to love his own. God's love for his own people. He loves his own people to the end of time. And he will love them throughout the endless ages of eternity. Because nothing, not even death itself, brethren and sisters, can separate us from the love of Christ. Romans 8, Romans 8, we find there in those last verses of Scripture, neither death nor life, angels or principalities, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing shall separate us from that love. Is it not comforting then to know that God's love is an enduring love? It endures. God's love for us is a love, as the hymn writer put it, that will not let me go. O love that will not let me go. I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe. O child of God, it is a love that will not let you go. He loves you dearly. And so when we feel him, And when we falter in our Christian walk, and when we disappoint Him, and when we wander out of the way when we grow cold, and we backslide, He still loves us. He still loves us. Now how that love is manifested to us even in such days, the manifestation of His love will change. That is most obvious in Scripture. Because in love he may have to chasten us, but there's no question mark can be placed over his love even when he comes to discipline and to correct us. You fathers, you mothers know that. When you discipline your child, there's no question mark over your love for your child. You still love them. And so it is with our God. but in an infinite and in a more pure way than ever our love for our children. He in love chastens us. Whom the father loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Again, Dr. Gill said, God changes his dealings with his people, but never changes his love. He sometimes rebukes and chastens them, but he still loves them. He sometimes hides his face from them, but his love continues the same. Now that is not a license for us to stay in such a pitiful state, but that is to encourage us out of that state and to draw us back onto himself again. That the Father still loves me, even though I have wandered from him. Was that not what motivated the prodigal in Luke 15? The Father's love for him. In my Father's house, there's bread enough and to spare. Out of his love, he provides for the servants, and he'll provide for me out of his love. It was the love of the father, I believe, that drew the young man back to the father's house. And so his love should draw you back, for he still loves you. Because between God and his children, there is an indissoluble bond, an indissoluble bond of love. that even death cannot sever. Isaiah 54, verse 10, for the mountains shall depart and the hills shall be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from me. Neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord, that hath mercy on me. In the fifth instance, God's love is an immutable love. It is a love that does not change. Human love is forever in a constant flux It waxes and wanes, it rises and falls like an emotional roller coaster. We love today, we hate tomorrow, but not so with the love of God. The love of God knows no fluctuations whatever within. With God there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning gems reminds us of that, and therefore his love knows neither change in the direction of increase or demise. It is forever the same. Child of God, is it not a cause of admiration and adoration that God continues to love you and me despite our coldness, despite our backslidings, despite our proneness to wander? Amidst all the changes that we feel within and without, thank God we can rest on the truth that God's love for me never alters, it never varies. With Horatius Bonner we can sing with the truth, my love, my love is oft times low, my joy ebbs and flows, but peace with him remains the same, no change Jehovah knows. Thinking about the description of God's love and the word of God, I could continue to speak for the remainder of this service and the freeness of God's love. I could think of the generosity of God's love with you, the all-sufficiency of God's love, the holiness of God's love, the incomparableness of God's love, the wisdom of God's love, the omnipotence of God's love, the purity of God's love, and many other things, but there we must end. Because even if every stalk even if every stalk on earth was a quill, and every man on earth was a scribe, and if all the oceans were filled with ink and the entire sky was a scroll of parchment, to write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. God is love. In the second place, I want you to think about the display of God's love. God does not hide or conceal his love. God does not hide nor conceal his love, but rather, rather he lavishly exhibits that love from day to day. We see his love, you may not think of it first of all, but we see his love in creation. We see that God is loving. It is because God is love that our needs as well as the needs of every living being that lives on this earth, they're daily met. It's because God is love. It is because God is loving that this world and universe are upheld and governed by him, upheld by his power. Octavius Winslow, he said, if creation demonstrates the being of God, then every star that glows and every flower that blooms and every gem that sparkles and every spring that murmurs is an evidence that he who made all for man loves man with a love of infinite benevolence. Part of the glory of God that is revealed in the heavens is the love of the Creator. God provides the rain, the sun, the crops to grow, food on your table, crammed cupboards full of food. As you open them today, just say, God is love. God is love. We see God's love exhibited in providence. The providence of God is divine, is really God's guardianship and his care of his creatures and creation. Providence is simply the means by which God accomplishes his will in this world. Child of God, all you have to do today is to look into the book of providence. The providence as it has been seen in your own history, your own personal history, Whenever you open that book of providence, you'll see that God is love. Surely in his providential guiding of your steps, in the charting out of life's pathway for you, in the overruling, and the directing of all events in your life, and turning evil into blessing, and extracting sweetness from life's bitter troubles, in all these things, we see the love of God. How apt we are How apt we are to misinterpret the dark providences in life, but behind them all is a God that is too loving, too wise, too kind to cause His child a needless tear. Faith must ever look to the end and not to simply the beginning of the dark providence, and as they do so, As the eyes look to the end, they see that all things are going to work together for good. So therefore, every cloud, child of God, that darkens your sky, I want you to remember that it has been placed there in your sky by your loving God. Every valley into which you descend has been purposed by Him who is love. Every heart reigned and every falling tear has been placed and measured in the balances of God's love. So do not be hasty. Do not be hasty in your conclusion, child of God, that God does not love you. God does not care for you when faced with the painful and the mysterious events of this life, because God It does not say that God was love, that he will be love, but God is love. He is love. We see God's love exhibited, yes, creation, providence, but we see God's love exhibited in redemption. Redemption is the pinnacle. It is the zenith. We could say that it is the Everest. God's love John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son Romans 8 verse or 5 verse 8 but God commendeth his love toward us why we were and not while we were yet sinners Christ died for us 1 John 3 16 hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us 1 John 4 verse 9, and this was manifest, the love of God towards us, because God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Verse 10, here in His love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We see the love of God manifest in its greatness, in redemption, in the saving of our souls, in salvation. Just think of the many different strands of redemption's plan, each designed and manufactured, created, brought together by a God of love. I see the love of God the Father in redemption. I see the love of the Father displayed in his contriving of a scheme of salvation whereby the sinner can be reconciled to God. I see his love in the choosing of his elect. and choosing His elect in Christ from the beginning on to salvation. By Him I see His love and His appointing of the Son to be the Savior of His people. I see His love and the pardoning of sins through the blood of Christ and their adoption and their regeneration and their conversion and the giving of eternal life to them. There's the Father's love and redemption. You see the love of the Son. He becomes the surety of His people. the guarantor of all blessings. We see His love by Him taking into union with Himself our nature. Sinless nature, yes, but He takes humanity to Himself. He takes our humanity into union with His deity. We see Him in His love and redeeming His people, and working out a righteousness for us, and reconciling us to God, and giving Himself as a sacrifice for sin, and laying down His life on the cross of Calvary, and the shedding of His blood, and the cleansing of our souls from sin, and the remission of our sins. This is all seen. We see His love, the love of the Son. Yes, and we see the love of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, because He comes to convince us of our sin. He comes to warn us of our need of righteousness and of coming judgment. He comes at the same time as He convicts us to comfort us, because as He shows us these things, He shows us the remedy for sin that is found in Jesus Christ. Yes, and after conversion, He continues to love us, as does the Father and the Son, because He sheds abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, the love of God. He implants within the believer the divine nature. He gives to us every Christian grace that we need for life. He helps us, He assists us in every journey, and He seals us unto the day of redemption. Oh, we see, we see the love of God in redemption. Father, Son and Holy Spirit loves me. Loved me, saved me, redeemed me, reconciled me, adopted me, continues to work in me, continues to be patient with me and kind to me and providing for me. Oh, the love of God, the love of God for me, for you, child of God. Child of God, it is love, divine love, that has forgiven you all your sin debt. All your sin debt. Think of it. Not a sin stands against you in heaven. All have been answered. All have been paid for by the Christ of God. Oh, it's divine love that blooded out your transgressions as a thick cloud, that have cast those sins behind God's back so that they'll be remembered against you no more. Divine love has dealt with the enmity. that existed between you and God has reconciled you to God. Divine love extracted you from the snare of the devil and has translated you into the very kingdom of God's dear Son. Love that brought him from the realms of glory just to save a sinful soul like mine Isn't the love of Jesus something wonderful? It is! The love of God is something wonderful. Love brought him down, love brought him down, down to us, to live for us, to die for us, to rise again for us. Love brought him out, brought him out of heaven that we might be brought in, brought him out of the ivory palaces into the world of woe. Only my great Redeemer's love made my Savior go. Love brought him down. Love led him through life. Love conducted him to Gethsemane. Love supported him under the horrors of Calvary. The transaction at Calvary evidences that our God is the loving God. He loves us. We do not fear like the Muslims. who fears an austere Allah. But thank God He loves me, the God of glory." The God of glory. Do you know anything about redeeming love? Do you know anything about redemption? Have you been redeemed? Have you come to rest upon the finished work of Christ? If not, may you come to a knowledge of sins forgiven this very day, very quickly. The description of God's love, the display of God's love, the directive from God's love. The love of God is said to be shed abroad on our hearts by the Holy Ghost, according to Romans 5, verse 5. Love is the fruit of regeneration. Love is the fruit of regeneration, for the fruit of the spirit is what? Love. In the Savior's preaching ministry, he laid down an order when it comes to where our love and our affections are to lie. As those who profess his name, we are first to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and then we're to love our neighbor as ourselves, and that is God's order. That's God's order. We cannot love our neighbor if we do not love God. Love for neighbor springs out of a supreme love for God. This chapter reminds us that we are to love the brethren. We are to love the brethren, God's people. It is the evidence that the love of God is within us, because it goes on to say, if a man say, verse 20, we didn't read it, I love God and hate his brother, he is a liar, a liar. Strong words, but the truth. It is because God loves us that we are directed, yes, to love Him. But when we love Him, we'll love His Word. When we love Him, we'll love His commandments. When we love Him, we'll love His house. When we love Him, we'll love His truth. When we love Him, we'll love His day. When we love Him, we'll love His people. When we love Him, we'll love God's servants. When we love Him, then we'll love all that is, that has His blessing upon. But we'll not love the world. the things that are in the world? Where does your love lie today? Do you love the Lord or is it the case that you love the things of this world? God loved you and died for you. Is that not reason enough for you to stop loving the world? and start loving Him supremely in your life. We love Him because He first loved us. Does it not amaze you today to think that the infinite loves the finite? That the Creator loves the creature? That the Most High loves the worm? That the Holy One loves the unholy? that the sovereign loves his rebellious subjects because it ought to. It ought to amaze you that God loves you because it amazes me that he loves me. As we draw then this series of messages to a close, can I say that we have literally only scratched the surface when it comes to beholding our God. Today, as we live in the flesh, we see through at last darkly. But there's coming a day when face to face, we're going to see him. And we're going to be like him. And that which has been known to us only now in part, will then be fully known. So child of God, when you're in the valley or whenever you're on the mountain, when you're going through days of sunshine as well as days of shadow, look to God. Behold your God and draw all the comfort you need for all of life's trials and all of life's troubles from such a sight. Our God is in the heavens. Let us bow down and worship Him, for this God is our God, and He will be our guide even unto death. Give us a glimpse of the greatness of our God. Let's pray. Our loving Father, rejoice, O God, in thy love to us. We find no cause of that within ourselves, but we find it all within the purposes and the will of God in our lives. We thank thee that God loved us, loved me and gave himself for me. And as we leave this house today, we pray that the love of God would be shared abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. And that which God loves, let us love. And that which God hates, let us hate. And Lord, we pray that when we find ourself discouraged and downcast, may our eyes be lifted to heaven, where this God reigns and rules. Not only in heaven, but all around us, he lives. Let us live in light that God is always near me. He's with me, and he's guiding me, and helping me, and sustaining me. O God, encourage our hearts. May we ever see thee as thou art. May our views of thee ever be biblical. May, O God, we continue to desire to know more of Thee, even in our Christian lives. We pray these, our prayers, in and through Jesus' precious and lovely name. Amen.