Thank you. Nice to see you. I want to invite you to bow your heads with me once more and go with me before the throne of grace tonight and corporately ask the Lord to illumine our hearts and our minds and our understanding in the ministry of the word tonight. Would you bow your heads with me? Father God, we thank You that we've been able, even tonight, to sing Your Word. Not the words of a hymn writer, though there is a place for that. But we've been able to sing the very Word of God, the words that Your Spirit has inspired, and the words that Your people, both Your people Israel, under the Old Covenant, and the Israel of God under the New Covenant, have sung for millennia. under every kind of government, and under every kind of oppression, and under every kind of success, and under every kind of circumstance, and for all of them, it was a bomb for their soul. They relished in the hope that these words brought. And Father, we pray that tonight we would relish in the hope that they would give to us. And to do so, Father, we need to be expectant that those words would do that. And I'm under no illusion that everyone here has that expectation. I'm under no illusion that everyone here even has Your Spirit within them. And so, Father, I pray that You would move Your Spirit within those who indeed have Him and would help them in this moment to be determined, as Paul commands all of us to do, to be transformed in our minds, by the renewing of our minds under the ministry of the Word. And that, Father, we would grab onto that Word as it is put forth before us tonight by your minister, with your help of your Spirit, and that we would rise up to heaven as it elevates us there. and that, Father, we would get beyond the doldrums and get beyond the little skirmishes that we've had with husband and wife and child and co-worker and maybe even brother or sister here in this congregation, and that we would see the bigger picture, that you would give us a panoramic, Father, of the eschaton, that we would see with the mind's eye and the eye of faith, the very gift that you have obtained through the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ, that is already paid for. We need not work for it. We need only endure by your grace until you take us to heaven, and there, Father, you will give us that gift which has been reserved from eternity past. So Father, would you help us tonight to get past any perfunctory mode that we might be settled into already, and that you would put us both spiritually and perhaps even physically on the edge of our seats, and that we would not do church tonight, but that we would be the church, the church of the living God. We ask all these things in Christ's name, and all God's people said, amen. Just one comment. I listened to a certain preacher in Idaho this last week, a YouTube video, and when he got done with his pastoral prayer, there was such a resounding Amen. from all the men in the congregation that I thought that there was an earthquake. And I just want to put that out there to you men, okay? It is good for you to give a hearty amen when the prayer is finished. None of this invertebrate, amen. Or in your mind, you say, like the people of God did in the time of Ezra after the Word of God was read, Amen. Because what does Amen mean? It means, so be it, may God have it done. So let us be men and women of the Word when we hear it proclaimed. I want to draw your attention tonight to Psalm 119, and we're going to consider the Kof stanza. The Kof stanza. Kof in Hebrew is roughly equivalent to the K or the Q in certain constructions. And I'm going to read for you verses 145 to 152. And once again, we already sang this, so having sung the Word, we will now read the Word. And after reading the Word, we will hear it preached. and pray that the Spirit will move in each and every one of our hearts. Psalm 119, verses 145-152. Listen carefully, this is the Word of the Living God. The psalmist says, With my whole heart I cry, Answer me, O Lord, I will keep your statutes. I call to you, Save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help. I hope in your words my eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I may meditate on your promise. Hear my voice according to your steadfast love, O Lord, according to your justice. Give me life. They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose. They are far from your law, but you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. Long have I known from your testimonies that you have founded them forever. That's part of the reading of God's word. In the early chapters of Calvin's Institutes, he talks about the most important thing that a Christian must reckon with, and that is the knowledge of God. Calvin talks about the knowledge of God in a very unique way, but a way that is not unheard of or unfamiliar to anyone who knows the scriptures and understands the creator-creature distinction, that understands that God is everything that we are not, and we are nothing that God is. And because there is that creator-creature distinction, you cannot, in some sense, begin with knowing God. It's just not possible. And so Calvin suggests that the way we know God starts with knowing ourselves. You have to start with knowing yourself because when you know yourself, you can tap into, in some sense, the image of God in which you were created, and that can be kind of a touchstone to tap into what God and who God is. But it's also important to understand who you are as a creature made in the image of God so that you can see the contrast between you as a created being and the one who is not created, the creator himself. We must see ourselves in contrast to God. And that's how Calvin explains it. We can't truly understand God, His character, His work, His redemption, His loving kindness, unless we first realize who we are in contrast to God. Now that doesn't stop when you get saved. It continues for the rest of your life in your communion with God. In fact, One of the most common ways that people lose their way, one of the most common ways that people stray from the path, including ourselves, one of the most common ways that we go the way of the prodigal is that we cease to have a sober assessment of ourselves. Let me say that again. Because every single one of us in this congregation, including yourself, are susceptible to this. We cease to have a sober judgment of ourselves and we think more highly of ourselves than we ought. I challenge all of you this week, meditate on Romans chapter 12 verse three. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned him. And when you think with sober judgment, there's many things that take place. And one of those things that take place is you understand your place. And yes, you have a place. And no, you should not presume to take a place higher than what the Lord has assigned to you. And actually, Jesus told many parables about that. We have a place. We have a place in society. We have a place with our role. We have a place in the church. And we need to recognize that. And we lose our way when we lose that sober assessment of yourself. So, how do you keep a sober assessment of yourself? How do you keep a sober assessment of yourself? How do you stay in tune with who you are and who God is and what that means on the mountaintops in life? What that means in the valleys in life? What that means in the doldrums of life? How do you keep all of that in perspective? Here's the answer. It's very simple and it's all I'm going to talk about for the rest of the time I have. by meditation upon the divine word of God, by Christian meditation. You must meditate on the word of God. You need the raw materials of the word of God. And Psalm 119 in the Kof stanza gives us a snapshot of what Christian meditation is. All of the ingredients are here. Many of them we've already heard in our exposition of Psalm 119, but we're going to hear them in a congregated form, if I could put it that way, tonight. So let me give you, very simply, a definition of divine meditation. And I'm going to draw it out of verse 148. Verse 148, the psalmist says, My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, watch this, that I may meditate on your promise. So I wanna say a few things and then I'll give you a working definition. First, I want you to understand here the nature of this word that it has to do with obsession and absorption rather than distraction and amusement. I'm gonna say that again. Meditation has to do with obsession and absorption, not distraction and amusement. Now, what do I mean by that? This word denotes this idea, the word meditate in verse 148, it denotes this idea of being possessed by, excuse me, obsessed by something not directly emanating from outward conditions. I want you to think about that for a second. If you're not going to be distracted by outward things and you're going to turn inward, there's a certain state of affairs that you have to put yourself in. You have to control your circumstances and you have to be willing and able and desirous to obsess on something in the inward man. And the word indicates not only obsession, but absorption of the soul being oriented towards something to which it is led or towards which it directs itself. Now, how different is this, being obsessed with this word right here, being obsessed with this in such a way that you don't care about the notification you just got on your phone? You don't care. In fact, you don't even hear a notification on your phone because you were so intentional in setting the table of the Word of God to meditate upon it and suck every last nutrient of marrow out of the bone of the Word of God that you put your phone on do not disturb because you don't even want it to bother you. You don't even want it near you. It's in the other room. And we'll get to more ways in which you can do that in just a moment. But that's different than what we typically do. We're typically drawn toward distraction and amusement. Distraction and amusement. And don't think it's just our day with social media, okay? You can look at a picture of men and women on a subway in their morning commute in 1920, and every single one of them's face was covered with a newspaper. Nobody's talking to anybody. They're all looking at newspapers. I don't care if it's a newspaper or a cell phone or whatever the case may be. We're distracted. And that presents the main challenge for the Christian to engage in meditation. But it's not only obsession and absorption in the thing that you're focusing on, but it's also praise and lament. By meditating, we're considering it, we're thinking on it, but oftentimes that turns into either praise to God or lament unto God. The word is often associated with a complaint or praise, though the complaint or praise is not the main thrust of the meaning, rather it is the emotion out of which the complaint arise. So I want to give you a working definition then of Christian meditation. Here it is, it's a little long, but please bear with me. Christian meditation is the planned setting aside of the heart and one's time to absorb one's soul in the raw materials of God's word in order to find our center of gravity in God's will and respond in praise, lament, and trust. Let me just give you a few thoughts on divine meditation by men wiser and holier than me and also deader than me, because they're Puritans. I know that's not proper grammar. Thomas Hooker, this is what he says, meditation is a serious intention of the mind whereby we come to search out the truth and settle it on the heart. Thomas Brooks said this, remember, listen, it is not hasty reading. but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching of the flower which gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower, which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian. William Finner said this, meditation pulls the latch of the truth and looks into every closet and every cupboard and every angle of it and it labors to affect the heart. Thomas Boston said this, meditation is a necessary duty to the performance of which people should set themselves seriously making choice of such times and place for it as the duty may be gone about with the best advantage. Meditation is to think on some spiritual thing in order to the bettering of the heart. And finally, Nathaniel Renew says this, meditation is of that happy influence. It makes the mind wise, the affections warm, the soul fat and flourishing, and the conversation greatly fruitful. Meditation is to be the motion of the heavenly spirit heavenward, to carry it up to heaven and keep it a time there, a looking of the eye of the mind and a lifting up of the heart, a making, a stay, and taking a spiritual solace in heaven with God. Let me just give you one more from the governor, not our governor, but the governor, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The governor says this, he says, he who finds God in the closet will find Him in the furnace. I love that. One of the reasons why we so often quote unquote don't find God in the furnace is because we're not used to that type of meditation. We're just crying out, white-knuckling it. Please God, do something, do something. That's my prayer over and over and over. I can't enter into this moment and actually take the, or have the audacity in the moment of the furnace to say, God, as hard as this is, what is it that you're trying to teach me? What is it that you're trying to teach me? I've counseled people who don't, like to suggest that that is a question you should ask angers them. But how are you gonna get me at it? Well, first off, I'm not a genie, okay? I'm not a magic worker, I'm a minister, and I'm pointing you to the word of God. And once again, I would agree with Spurgeon, he who finds God in the closet will find him in the furnace. So I've given you a working definition of meditation. Now let me give you four ingredients, four ingredients of it, okay? Number one, you see this in verse 145, the whole heart as the rudder of Christian meditation. The whole heart as the rudder of Christian meditation. Look at verse 145, with my whole heart I cry. Remember, it is not simply the reading of God's Word, but the meditating upon it that fosters real communion with God. If you are simply reading your Bible so that you could argue with a Christian, that is not worship. If you are simply reading your Bible so that you can solely evangelize, as noble as that may be, that is not meditation. You are not sucking on the marrow of God's Word for the nourishment of your soul. And yes, we need to say that in Reformed churches because we tend to be cerebral. We tend to be those who like to argue, sometimes just for argument's sake. Sometimes like, I don't even believe what I'm saying, but you said you believe that, and I don't like you in this particular moment, so I'm going to argue against you. There's a real thing of jerkishness that is not exclusive to Reformed Christianity, it's really throughout Christianity. But it takes great work to get the whole heart attuned to God in meditation. Wise it is to start out in an ardent prayer to God at the outset, begging Him to give you the heart for meditation in that moment. So as you sit down with the raw materials of God's word in your time of devotion, or whatever the case may be, you prime the pump by crying out to the Lord with an honest plea. And you say, Lord, you know what, I'm gonna be honest, I'm tired, I haven't had enough caffeine, I haven't even wiped all the sleep out of my eye, but I know deep down in my heart that I wanna commune with you, but the desire's not there, so God, I cry out to you ardently, and I say, please give me that desire. Give me that desire, Father, and until then, I will take up the raw materials of the Word of God, and I will read them, and I will cause my eyes to pass over the words, and I will wait for your Spirit to drop that desire in such a way that warmness begins to wash over those words and come directly into my heart, and I love the things that I read, and I read the things that I love, and I feel the Spirit moving within me. Notice in verse 145, he says, answer me. Give me warm affection, dear God. May this not be an exercise in stale mantras or ambiguous petitions. Make my heart fully alive to you in this moment. Let's come back to Spurgeon. He says this. He's commenting on this verse and on the psalmist and he says, his whole soul pleaded with God. His entire affections, his united desires all went out toward the living God. There may be no beauty of elocution about such prayers. There may be no length of expression of depth of doctrine or accuracy of diction, but if the whole heart be in them, they will find their way to the heart of God. I hope that's encouragement for some of you who maybe have never prayed publicly here on Sunday night because you're afraid of what people might think. I understand that. All of us have been there at some point. But I just want to remind you it's not about what other people hear you say. It's about God hearing your prayers as you carry them up to Him. The voice, this is the second ingredient. the voice and the body as the propeller of divine meditation. So we saw first, the whole heart as the rudder of Christian meditation, and now secondly, the voice and body as the propeller of divine meditation. We see this in verses 145, 146, and 149. 145 and six, with my whole heart I cry, answer me O Lord, I will keep your statutes. 146, I call to you, save me that I may observe your testimonies. And verse 149, hear my voice according to your steadfast love. Now in the same way, beloved, that a propeller, in the same way that a propeller propels a boat or a plane, so our voice and body can aid in propelling our heart and soul in a particular direction. There's something to be said for verbal reverberation of vocal cords crying out to God. How many times have you fallen asleep while you're praying to God in your mind? You don't have to raise your hand. We do it. It is very healthy for us to audibly pray to God. Now if you're in a public place and you just want to pray, that's fine, that's fine. But I'm saying when we come before the Lord, we want to hear ourselves praying to God. We want to hear our voice and let it be a propeller to lift those cries and those petitions up to God. The stirring of the soul is often initiated by the physical motions of both the body and the voice. And when we cry out to God with all of our heart, we become very uninhibited physically. Have you ever noticed this? Have you ever noticed this? I learned in Israel from the Jews to rock back and forth when I pray. I do this in my private prayer time. Truth be told, a lot of the reason they do it is they want to stay awake. That's fine. We're embodied beings, we're embodied souls, and we do need to stay awake. But another reason to do it is because that prayer comes through in the locomotion of our bodies. We may weep, we may extend our hands, we may fall on our face, we may get on our knees, and there's something in the physical realm that causes us great turmoil on the inside. Have you ever had somebody think that you were crazy when you were praying? When I was flying back from Arizona, I was on the plane, and I was trying to read and I was trying to write thank you cards for my graduation party that I still haven't finished in May, and it just wasn't working, it was too much turbulence, so I just closed my eyes and I started praying. And I just, when I pray, I just get into this space where I just start rocking back and forth. So I'm praying, and time is passing, and all of a sudden, I don't know, it must have been 30 minutes or so, and I feel this tap of my heart. I wake up, and all these people in the plane are standing around me. They thought I was having an epilepsy event. They're like, sir, are you okay? Yeah, just praying. They're like, oh. And they walk off. I mean, I kind of felt bad. I wasn't trying to be ostentatious. I was just praying. And guess what? That's okay to pray in public. Everything else that the world does in public, you have the right as a Christian to pray in public. But people thought I was having a seizure. So our voice and our body serve as the propeller. But number three, and this is so important, please write this down, please take note of it. The time and the environment as the sanctuary of Christian meditation. Look at verses 147 and 148. I rise before the dawn, verse 148. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night. Beloved, I understand that there are night owls. I understand that everybody does things a little bit differently. I understand that everybody's body clocks and chemistry works a little bit differently. But I will say this, there's something to be said for starting the day with prayer. I know some people I talk to, they're like, well, I do it at night. But I've also talked to some of those people and they say, yeah, I wait until the end of the day. I just push it off, push it off, push it off. By the time I get to the end of the day, I push that off too. The procrastinator's way often to pray is at the end of the day, I mean, why do today what you could put off until tomorrow, right? But there's something that he said by starting the day with prayer. You know, when we talk about tithing and giving and our offerings, there's a principle in the Bible of giving from your first fruits, and that is a biblical principle, and you should do that. Why? Because it's actually an exercise in trust, right? You're trusting that though I give this to the Lord, He's going to provide for all my needs. And if something comes up, He's going to, in an unexpected way, take care of me. And if He doesn't, He's still enough for me. He's going to take care of me. Well, you know what, what do we say with our time in the day? Oh, I don't have time for that. Well, it's the same principle of trust. You give unto the Lord at the beginning of the day, your meditation, your worship, your prayer, your coming before him on your face with the word of God open, tears, weeping, rejoicing, laughing, praising, and you trust that he's gonna have enough time in the day for you to do what you need to do. There's also the law of entropy that I think can be applied here. In all energy exchange, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will be less than that of the initial state. What happens to your energy levels? You wake up, you're fully charged, right? And as the day goes on, what happens? Well, that happens with your bandwidth too, right? Your bandwidth. You get to the end of the day, I don't have bandwidth to pray. No, you probably don't. So the law of entropy itself, here's natural law, okay? The law of entropy itself tells you you should start at the beginning of the day. But here we have the psalmist. I rise before dawn. So you rise from sleep, et cetera, and you get on your knees and you pray. So meditation's at the beginning of the day. And this is a constant theme in the Psalms. David will often talk about praying to God at the beginning of the day. But it's not just time, okay, when you do it. It's time that you give. But here's the other thing I'm gonna say. Listen to me very carefully. It's also the environment. It's the environment. If you do not prepare an altar and a sanctuary, so to speak, for your time of divine meditation, you will not suck out all the marrow that is to be sucked out. This is why, one of the reasons I get up early in the morning and do this, because I've got a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. I've got a dog. I've got a phone that beeps. I've got all kinds of things that are jockeying for my attention. And when I get up before the watches of the night, I could walk out on Dam Neck Road and I could literally sit Indian style, sorry, Native American style, anyways, crisscross applesauce, all right? I could sit in the middle of the road and there's not a car in sight. No, I don't do that, I'm just saying. There's no one out there. There's no one to be distracted by. And I can give my full attention to the Lord. And I could cry out, and I could bob, and I could weave, and I could do whatever it takes as the Spirit moves, and I could enter into divine meditation and be obsessed by the Word of God. And be obsessed and absorbed into the Spirit of God. Not in an ontological way, but in a filling way. But I have to create that environment. And the problem, beloved, is, and I've had conversations with many of you about these spiritual disciplines, and I hear a lot of the same excuses. Well, you know, I'm more realistic. I just kind of do it on the go. Oh, yeah, like during traffic, when you're tempted to be an angry driver, that's a great time to do it, right? You're so distracted during that time. Okay, well, I'm not saying you can't pray on the way to work or on the way back, but your attention is divided. you must give your full attention to the Lord so that you could be absorbed into Christian meditation. And if you're not intentional about this, it'll show in your devotional life, it'll show in your affections, and it'll show ultimately in your life. Fourth ingredient, God's word as grist for the mill in meditation. I want you to notice that throughout the stanza, He uses seven different words for God's word, and in each one, he connects a particular verbal idea to each one. So you have to be intentional about what your soul is being absorbed into in your meditation, okay? Because I can get up in the morning, and immediately I can grab my phone, and by the way, this is a horrible thing to do. I commend you to not do it, if I could put it that way, okay? The first thing that you see in the morning should not be your phone. The first thing you see in the morning should be the Word of God. You see that phone and what's gonna happen? You look at your newsfeed, you're automatically irritated. You're already angry, okay? Your soul needs the marrow of the Word of God to give you a center of gravity that will serve as an optic to then read the news, right? So that you can say, as bad as it gets, I've got the eschaton. As bad as it gets, I believe that Christ is going to come back to judge the living and the dead. So I could read the news now, but you have to be reminded of that in the beginning. But you have to be intentional about what your soul is being absorbed into in your meditation, and you have to put it in the center of the sanctuary and on the top of the altar, that over which, that over which you are obsessing. And for us, it is the word of God. So, let me give you a few examples of how he considers each one of these descriptions of the word and applies it. Look at verse 145b. I will keep your statutes. That is a resolve. That is a resolve. He, in the midst of meditation, is speaking to the Lord and he's saying, Lord, today I will resolve, I will fortify my soul to be intentional at the outset of the day to keep your rules. You know what he's doing? This is what he's doing. He's moving through the day and imagining every challenge and every temptation that he's going to face. I mean, we know this, right? You have the same coworkers. have the same route to work, you know that idiot that always cuts you off to get in that lane or whatever the case may be. So you're imagining all those challenges that are gonna come and you're fortifying your soul. You're saying, if that idiot does it again, I'm still gonna try to drive like a Christian. You're seeing it, and you're saying, I will keep your statutes. I have a battle plan beforehand. Secondly, verse 146b, save me that I may observe your testimonies. We've been talking about this in Ephesians class, right? Save me, indicative, what God has done for us in Christ, so that I may, what? Observe your testimonies, imperative, so that I may respond in my behavior on the basis of what you have done for me in Christ. You say, well, I know that, I know, but are you fleshing it out every single day? He fortifies his soul by reminding it of why he is keeping the commandments. I'm not doing this just because that's what Christians do. I'm doing it because a personal Savior came down from heaven, the second member of the Trinity, and was slaughtered on my behalf, and he took my punishment, and I took his righteousness, and that Savior's the one that I want to give my life to in holy consecration that He might call down His holy benediction on my life every single day. I want that personal Savior to be the one to whom I give obeisance and allegiance. It's a personal thing for Him. Thirdly, I cry for help and hope in your words. I think that's straightforward. Number four, I meditate on your promises. Well, I mean, that's what meditation is. Meditation is sucking the marrow of the promises of God and stirring up your soul to see those promises as better than any promise that this world gives. Number five, verse 149, according to your justice, renew me. Wow. I want you to reflect upon the connection between God's justice and my renewal. God's justice and my renewal. Pondering that connection is meditation. That's something that you should do. God has sworn a covenant and he will not change his mind. Fulfilling that covenant is his justice. It is his mishpat in the Hebrew. And that unfailing, unchanging, consistent faithfulness of justice, despite my flakiness, despite my changing double-mindedness, is extremely rejuvenating. I think in Malachi 3.6, for I the Lord do not change, therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. That is his commitment to his justice. He will not change. He will fulfill his covenant. In fact, if he doesn't, then he must die. That's the picture that we have in Genesis 15 of the animals being split and blood being made into a pathway and not Abraham, but Yahweh alone in the smoking oven going down the path. So as to say, if I do not keep this covenant to multiply your descendants and save a people through your descendant, then may I be like these dead animals on the ground. Because God is committed to his justice that rejuvenates us. Psalm 71, 20 and 21. You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again. From the depths of the earth you will bring me up again. You will increase my greatness and comfort me again and again and again. Sixthly, Look at verses 150 and 151. He uses the word law and commandments, 150 and 151. They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose. They are far from your law, but you are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are true. The wicked who transgress God's law are far from His law, but the Lord is near to the righteous. How? Because the righteous are near to His commandments. Because God identifies with His commandments. And why is that important? Well, there's a sense in which the wicked may be near to cultural acceptance in this time, and we may be far from cultural acceptance, such that we are the outcasts. We're not on the right side of history, right? But we are on the right side of the eschaton because the commandments that God established before the foundation of the earth, they were there in the beginning long before the LGBTQ agenda. They're there in the beginning, and they've been here throughout history. They've waxed and waned in the obedience in which the church has given to them, but they've been there. They've never gone away. And when Christ comes back, he's going to make it entirely evident to everybody that this law is the standard by which every man, woman, and child will be judged. And then in eternity, God's righteous law, which is his character, will be forever. And so you want to be comforted, though you be outcast in this world, if you are near to God's commandments, you are near to God and you have the eschaton. God's testimonies are established and founded forever. And I already said that, so. What will be popular tomorrow, I don't care. What will be established in eternity, God's law, that's what I care about. It was established in the beginning, his word, it is reverberated throughout time, and it'll last throughout eternity. Why? Because it is his word. And in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and that word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten Father, full of grace and truth, and there, beloved, is our precious Messiah. The word become flesh. Nearness to that word and that Messiah and that person, second member of the Trinity, is our good. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you that we can enter your throne room at any time and we can meditate upon your promises. You can bring us to a place where those promises are realer to us than the unbalanced checkbook. They are realer to us than the heartache that we currently feel because of the disappointments that we have experienced at the hands of others and the words of others. Your promises are realer than anything. But Father, help us to dig deep to get there. Help us to meditate on your promises and fortify us in them. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand. Thank you, brother.