And today, our sermon passage is Psalm 30.
Psalm 30.
I'll read this trusting that it's God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, clear, sufficient, powerful word for you and me as people.
! Please receive it that way.
And after I'm done reading, I'll say the word of God for the people of God.
And we say, thanks be to God.
Psalm 30.
And I'll remind you that the superscription, the part that comes at the top above the actual poem or lyrics, is also inspired and preserved as God's word.
And it's helpful, in some cases more than others, as we understand the context or the occasion of a psalm.
Psalm 30.
A psalm, a song at the dedication of the house of David.
And that's very close to the word for word.
Verses 1 through 12.
And give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment.
His favor is for life.
Weeping may endure for a night.
But joy comes in the morning.
Now in my prosperity, I said, I shall never be moved.
Lord, by your favor, you have made my mountain stand strong.
You hid your face.
And I was troubled.
I cried out to you, O Lord.
And to the Lord I made supplication.
What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it declare your truth?
Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me.
Lord, be my helper.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing.
You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.
To the end that my glory may sing praise to you and not be silent.
O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Please be seated.
Please pray with me.
O Lord, we praise you that we can cry out to God the creator.
The God who is self-existent, self-sufficient, eternal.
And you hear us, Lord.
Tiny, weak, frail creatures here on earth.
You hear our cry.
And not only do you hear it, Lord, it's your spirit.
The spirit of God himself who draws us to cry out to you.
To pray that you will dwell with us through prayer.
This is your purpose in saving a people.
We thank you how, as we read earlier, Jesus declared, quoting from Isaiah,
that your house, God, will be a house of prayer for all the nations.
You delight when your people come before you in your presence and pray to you
and cry out to you together.
Father, we pray that we can do this, Lord, even through the sermon.
That you'll receive, Lord, our prayers.
Our cries from our soul.
As your word resonates, Lord.
We pray that your spirit will do this in a powerful way.
These same words that you breathed out and preserved in scripture, Lord.
We pray that you will cause them to stir the hearts of your people.
To draw us into communion with you.
To pray, to receive from you.
And to respond in obedience.
We ask this for Christ's sake alone.
Amen.
Well, every house has a different set of expectations for those who are invited inside.
Some houses, it's expected that we'll take our shoes off before we go in.
If you visit the house of someone in South America.
I told the congregation recently we got to go back to Brazil where I grew up as a missionary kid.
If you go to someone's house in Brazil, they'll expect you to stay with them and visit for at least an hour.
These are the expectations as you enter someone's house.
I was very curious to know this.
So according to my very quick research, if you are invited into the White House, you must follow the proper protocol and etiquette.
As a guest invited to visit what many consider the highest seat of power in the modern world.
The place from where the leader of this nation carries out his executive powers.
You should do several things.
These are the expectations.
You should dress professionally.
All bags, weapons, vapes, and outside food are strictly prohibited.
You should arrive 30 minutes early.
Silence your phone and follow secret service instructions without touching historical artifacts or taking video footage.
You should maintain a respectful tone throughout the tour and avoid security jokes or loud political debates.
So there you go.
If you ever get invited to the White House, you can try to remember that list or look up a fresher list at that time.
So the question is, how should we enter the house of God?
How should we enter the house of the King of Kings?
In Psalm 30 we read, this is a psalm.
It's a song.
And then here it is, word for word, one more time.
At the dedication of the house of David.
All of those words are in the Hebrew passage.
And because of this dedication, this language,
there's not a strong consensus on the exact occasion for which this psalm was to be used.
The house that it's referring to, it could mean one of David's palaces.
2 Samuel 5.11 says that the king of Tyre, a foreign nation,
sent messengers, meaning ambassadors, to David,
and cedar trees and carpenters and masons who would work with the stone cutting.
And they built David a house.
We read in 2 Chronicles 15.1 that David built houses, many palaces for himself in the city of David.
That's Jerusalem.
And he prepared a place for the ark of God, which was a tent pitched for the ark.
So there it was, the tabernacle, a tent as the house of God,
a place for the ark of the covenant,
but palaces all around Jerusalem for King David.
So what was the occasion of Psalm 30?
We know that David desired to build a house for God as well,
but God said, you're a man of blood.
It won't be for you.
And Solomon was the king who got to build the temple.
Some have interpreted the comma after the word house
to mean the dedication of the house, meaning the house of God.
Maybe David writing this psalm so that when the temple is built by Solomon,
they could pull Psalm 30 out and sing Psalm 30 at the dedication of the temple.
Now, one other interpretation would be the house represents a dynasty.
So the dedication of the house of David, meaning the dynasty of David.
So every new king that would be inaugurated from the line of David,
this would be the occasion to sing Psalm 30,
praising God for sparing David's life and keeping this going.
Now, whether Psalm 30 was written for the dedication of each new king taking office,
or for the celebration of the Lord's house, the temple,
here's the truth for you and me.
Psalm 30 is relevant for us.
It's a guide for how we are to enter the house of our king,
the house of the king of kings, Jesus Christ.
And we get to do this at the start of each new week,
every Lord's Day when we gather to worship him as a congregation.
So the outline for our sermon today is four ways
for you and I to enter the house of our king.
Four ways to enter the house of our king.
Number one, as you enter the house of your king,
Psalm 30 teaches us to sing of God's faithfulness over the grave.
The first way to do it is this,
as you enter the house of the king,
sing of God's faithfulness over the grave.
I want to show you this in verses one through four.
Look at verse one with me.
David writes,
I will extol you, O Lord,
for you have lifted me up
and I've not let my foes rejoice over me.
It seems like David is feeling the end is imminent.
This is going to be my last day on this earth.
My foes, the people who have been trying to kill me all along,
they're going to rejoice.
They'll be happy.
And everyone who's been loyal to me will be mourning and sad.
It's going to be the end of my life, my reign, my kingdom, my house.
God, you are not going to keep your promises.
I won't get to see my enemies destroyed.
They'll be the ones cheering at my destruction instead.
And verse two gives us insights.
Many have concluded that most likely this end that David felt approaching to him
came because of physical sickness.
It tells us he was likely having a life-threatening illness.
Look at verse two.
O Lord, my God, I cried out to you and you healed me.
And verse one, when he says,
You lifted me up.
You lifted me up out of a sickness, perhaps,
out of the deathbed,
and put me back on my feet upright.
That verb, to be lifted up by God,
it's the same word used to describe drawing water out of a deep cistern.
You know, so you picture a well, a pit that's dug very deep,
and someone much stronger has to lift up the water
or a captive that's been thrown inside that cistern.
David doesn't just need God to give him a little hand.
David needs God to reach down all the way into the depths
and lift him up.
Lord, you do the lifting.
I don't even have strength to help at all.
He's been in this dark, suffocating pit.
He's trapped.
He's helpless.
And he cried out to the Lord.
The Lord healed him.
The Lord mended him.
The Lord set him right again.
Look at what he says in verse 3.
Oh, Lord, you brought up my soul from the grave.
You have kept me alive.
He says literally next, he says,
you kept me alive.
You kept me from those that are descending to the pit to death,
that I should not go down to the pit.
I was on the path of destruction, of perdition.
I was being carried downward.
And you're the one who pulled me out of that broken downward pattern.
You preserved me.
You healed me.
You mended me.
As you enter the house of your king, sing of God's faithfulness over the grave to give us life at all.
Now, the Lord has preserved some of you and some of your loved ones from physical death, from physical illness.
You shouldn't be here right now.
I can think of near-death experiences in my own life and probably many more that I'm not even aware of.
And the Lord is the preserver of life.
He's the one who has kept you.
He's the one who has kept you from going down to the pit and given you life and preserved you.
You enter his house praising him for life, for keeping you from the grave, for being faithful,
fulfilling the purposes he has for you here still.
When we think of a person on their deathbed and a near-death experience,
I know some of you are praying, and I've prayed from up here before with you for Pastor James Dolezal.
He's a professor at one of our seminaries and a faithful brother in Christ.
As some of you might remember, he was going for a walk near his home,
and he was using a crosswalk, and a car hit him by accident.
But it collapsed his ribs, broke them.
Almost all the ribs are broken and puncturing his lungs.
Both lungs collapsed.
He was intubated, all the fluid filling up the lungs.
Mentally, he was in almost a comatose state, off and on for many, many weeks.
And then this, finally, as I'm checking the Caring Bridge,
every time they update it, almost every day.
And this wonderful message came through just a couple days ago from his son.
Quote,
Seeing my dad was extremely encouraging.
When we left him three weeks ago, he was intubated, mostly unconscious, incoherent, delirious.
But tonight, he was able to have a fairly normal conversation with us.
He was happy that we are there and continued to talk about God's care for him after his accident.
The scripture that they encouraged everyone who would read that with is this.
Acts 17, 24 and 25.
Amen.
The Lord preserves us from the grave every moment we have on this earth still.
The Lord is the giver of life.
And yes, we worship him, but not because he lacks anything.
He is the one who a temple cannot contain.
His throne in the spiritual realm of heaven, it is coming with power to earth.
One day, the new heavens and the new earth will fill this cosmos with the glory of God and all will behold him.
And so when we have life and breath, even in these broken bodies that deserve to be dead already,
we have life and breath to praise him, to sing to him, to give thanks for his faithfulness over the grave.
And that's what we're exhorted to do in verse 4.
Look at that.
Now the king turns to the people, the people of God as the representative of the king of heaven.
And David commands the people,
Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of his.
Give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.
You see what David did?
By God preserving the life of his mediator, the anointed king,
God is now issuing praise to all the people.
Because God preserved the life of the anointed one,
and God was faithful over the grave of his anointed king.
All the people of God are called to praise God,
and to remember the holy name of God because of this great deed.
We're only one-third of the way through this psalm,
and I'm sure you can already see how this points to final fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness, his holy name.
That's the essence of God.
That's the being of God.
His glorious attributes, and where are they most brightly displayed?
Hebrews says it's the full radiance of God's essence displayed in the person of Jesus Christ.
His anointed.
These first four verses point us to Jesus Christ, the king.
Brothers and sisters, and whoever has an ear to hear,
Jesus Christ is the king whose enemies rejoiced over him, shouting,
Crucify!
Jesus Christ is the king who cried out in a loud voice from the cross in agony to God.
Jesus Christ is the king who lived and suffered in obedience to God.
Jesus Christ is the king who was buried in the grave.
David was spared the grave at this moment, but Jesus died, was buried.
And yet God proved his faithfulness over the grave of King Jesus.
Jesus Christ is the king whose life was brought up from the grave.
He was restored.
Jesus Christ is the king who calls all God's people to sing praises to God.
When you worship the Lord, when you sing, when you cry out to him,
you are obeying the command of your king, King Jesus.
Remember his holy name.
Jesus Christ is also the Lord whose kind work in his life and his death and his faithful words
to keep all the promises of God, to secure our righteousness,
to secure everlasting life not only for himself,
but for all whose lives are bound up in his.
He is the one we praise.
We praise the Lord for the life of King Jesus, don't we?
We praise God for lifting up Jesus from hell.
The Apostles' Creed professes he descended into hell.
He didn't skip a step in fulfilling God's plan.
He fully endured all God's wrath in our place.
So as you and I now enter the house of our king,
we sing of God's faithfulness over the grave of King Jesus.
And because we're in him over our graves as well.
That's the first way we enter the house of our king.
The second way we enter the house of our king is
by singing of God's loving, fatherly discipline.
Enter the house of your king singing of God's loving, fatherly discipline.
This is what David does next.
Look at verse 4.
Sing praise to the Lord.
Verse 5 says,
For his anger is but for a moment,
but his favor is for life.
Verse 5,
His anger is but for, literally, for a twinkling.
His displeasure at sin is real.
The sin of this world,
the sin of this world,
it reveals that God is just and holy.
God does not turn a blind eye or pretend like sin is that bad.
It's not that bad.
No, God sees all that happens and he knows the intentions of man's hearts.
And his wrath against sin is real.
But that's not the emphasis.
The emphasis is the contrast.
While his wrath against sin is real,
it's just for a moment, a twinkling.
His favor is for life.
He doesn't pass over the judgment that we deserve,
but his favor is for life.
And that word favor,
it's the same root of the word for delight or pleasure.
When God looks at you,
he sees Christ.
And he sees you united to Christ.
There's no room for wrath.
Christ absorbed all the wrath.
If you're in Christ,
God has no anger toward you.
He is a loving father.
He has pleasure in you.
He has delight in you,
his precious child.
David says,
weeping may endure for a night.
You can just picture around his deathbed,
all his loved ones and family members and the nobles
and all those whose lives might be threatened
if their king dies now.
They're mourning.
They're weeping.
In the ancient Jewish way.
And he says,
but joy comes in the morning.
That word joy,
it doesn't mean a quiet,
internal happiness.
It's a loud, piercing cry.
It's a shout of joy.
A shout of triumph.
A ringing shout of praise
that breaks the silence of the night.
Well, because Christ fulfills this psalm,
this is how we reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They're mourning.
They're weeping at his graveside.
But on the third day in the morning,
the tomb is empty.
And there's a shout from all of heaven,
the host of angels,
the great cloud of witnesses.
And those on earth,
those women who got to go and see it,
and Peter and John,
they join by faith,
shouting in their hearts with joy
at the resurrection of the king.
When we sing many of our favorite hymns,
we're joining by faith,
shouting for joy at the gospel.
I love that line that we sing sometimes.
Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing,
my great Redeemer's praise,
the glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of His grace.
That's what we celebrate
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, we praise God on the other side of suffering.
Yes, there's favor.
Yes, there's joy.
But there's also mourning.
And there's also weeping in this life.
You know this very well.
Here's the encouragement from Psalm 30,
from David's own testimony.
God uses our suffering in this short life
to make us better worshipers forevermore.
God uses our suffering,
our weeping, our mourning in this life
to make us better worshipers of Him
now and forevermore.
That's the testimony I heard recently
from James Dolezal,
and not only him, but his family.
You notice how he told his son
of how well God had cared for him
after his accident.
You're probably wondering like me,
how's his wife doing?
How is Courtney Dolezal, for example,
handling this suffering in this life?
Well, she wrote right after her son.
She said,
insurance authorization came through today,
and James was transferred
to a great rehabilitation hospital nearby.
Thank you for your prayers about this.
I am so thankful for this move.
At this facility,
James will receive physical,
speech, occupational,
and cognitive therapy.
He will be worked hard,
and we hope for great improvements
in all these areas.
Now listen carefully.
She wrote,
I trust that as God has used this trial
to glorify Himself in our lives,
as we watch God answer prayers
time and time again,
and preserve James,
and provide for our family,
she says,
God will use it also for James' good
as He continues to heal James
and form him into the image of Christ,
however that will look in the future.
She's bearing witness
that the suffering in this life
serves God's purposes
to shape us
to be better worshipers forever.
This life is short.
These years,
these bodies,
they're fleeting.
But our union to God,
our worship of God,
our communion with Him,
as we're conformed in the image of Christ,
remember,
Christ is the King
who calls the people to worship God,
in spirit and in truth.
This is forever.
You might be wondering,
how can that type of testimony
even come to be?
And it's only by God's life-transforming grace.
When each of you write out your testimony
and join this church
through our membership process,
we get to hear this,
how God's grace
has slowly but surely
continued to transform
your life and mine.
This is what the great hymn writers
have captured
in their testimonies as well.
We sing,
when through fiery trials,
and this is the word of God
to His people,
thy pathway shall lie,
my grace all sufficient
shall be thy supply,
the flame shall not
ultimately hurt thee,
I only design
thy dross to consume
and thy gold to refine.
the suffering of this life,
it makes us better worshipers forevermore.
This is the loving kindness
of our Father for us.
we can shout at the victory of Jesus Christ.
He rose from the dead.
His house is inaugurated.
And no matter what we are suffering in this life,
no matter how hard and sleepless
and sorrowful the night was,
we know at least by faith,
with the help of the Spirit,
His joy comes in the morning.
And then the eternal sense,
this life is a nighttime.
And the eternal morning
is coming soon.
The rising sun
to bring that inaugurated house of God
to fill this whole earth,
to give us our resurrected bodies,
to dwell with Him
in perfect peace forevermore.
So we enter the house of our God,
singing His praise,
remembering that He is our loving Father.
Number three,
as you enter the house of your King,
sing of His kindness
to pardon your pride.
As you enter the house of your King,
sing of His kindness
to pardon your pride and mine.
This is what David confesses next.
Look at verse six.
Now in my prosperity, I said,
I shall never be moved.
Literally, I shall never be shaken.
It's like David's saying,
in my pride,
I thought my life was stable.
In my pride,
I thought I controlled my own destiny.
In my pride,
I thought,
I'm securing a dynasty
for my own glory on this earth.
But now,
loving Father has humbled him.
He says,
I see that any glory,
anything praiseworthy in my life,
it's all of God's doing.
And I should receive no glory.
All the glory goes to God.
In the ancient world
and in prophetic language,
kingdoms are represented by mountains.
And so that's what David says.
He says,
that God rejects
men who seek their own glory.
But in verse seven,
Lord,
by your favor,
you have made my mountain
stand strong.
Yes,
there's a dynasty.
There's the house of David.
There's a kingdom
in the bloodline
of this one man on earth
for God's purposes.
But it's the Lord
who made this mountain,
this kingdom,
stand strong.
Not David,
as he thought in his pride
or his prosperity.
David confesses
he had to learn this the hard way.
And how was it
that God corrected him?
In verse seven,
David says,
Lord,
you hid your face
and I was troubled.
We know what this is like,
don't we?
God gets our attention.
To have the holy God
look upon you with favor,
that's the greatest blessing,
the greatest joy,
the greatest peace
that a person can ever experience
is the face of God
shining his glory on us.
But when it feels like God
has hidden his face from you,
you feel troubled.
You feel heavy laden,
uneasy,
restless.
Yet God is so kind.
He always turns us back to him.
Have you felt this
where you were troubled
and the Lord turned you back to him
to seek his face one more time?
God is patient with David
to do this again and again
because you and I need it
as much or more as David.
God does it to us again
and again and again.
He humbles us.
He makes us hunger for him.
He makes us want to seek his face
and to cry out to him.
That's what David does in verse 8.
One more time.
I cried out to you, Lord.
To the Lord I made supplication.
And then he pleads God's own purposes
for his life in his prayer.
In verse 9,
he reminds us of the purpose of our life
to glorify God
and enjoy him forever.
And he stirs this up again
as he makes supplication,
as he cries out to God.
Look at verse 9.
What profit is there in my blood
when I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it declare your truth?
He's saying,
Lord, give me life
so that I can praise you.
I was made from dust.
To dust I will return.
But as long as I have breath,
as long as you sustain me,
do it for your glory,
for the purpose for which you made me,
to sing your praise.
Give me life
so that I can declare your truth.
We can pray this way too.
Lord, I am weak,
but you are strong.
I fail often,
but you never fail, Lord.
I don't deserve mercy,
but God, you are merciful.
Lord, I fail in my words.
I don't keep those desires
and those prayers that I ask.
But you are always faithful
to your word.
And our Lord commands sinners
like David, like you and me,
to cry out for pardon
again and again and again.
No matter what you've done,
brother or sister,
no matter what you've done,
especially if you feel the weight
of your sin before God,
especially then,
cry out to God.
Trust that God is kind.
He will pardon you.
He's humbled you from your pride.
And he's done this in his kindness
to be able to forgive you
and restore you.
David prays in verse 10,
hear, O Lord,
have mercy on me.
Lord, be my helper.
He confessed his pride.
Now we see him confessing his need
for God to be his helper.
As you enter the house of your king,
sing of his kindness
again and again
to pardon your pride in mine.
Well, fourth and finally from today,
from Psalm 30,
as you enter the house of your king,
sing of his life
transforming grace.
As you enter the house of your king,
sing of his life transforming grace.
Look at verse 11.
You have turned for me
my mourning into dancing.
The word for mourning here
in the ancient Jewish culture,
it's like a group of people
gathered around for a funeral.
And they're beating their chests
and they're wailing loudly.
They're in sorrow together.
That's the mourning he's describing.
But God turns that mourning into dancing.
And that word for dancing,
it's like if you pictured a Jewish wedding
where a bunch of people are in a circle
and they're linking arms
and jumping around in a circle,
whirling,
cheering,
full of joy.
It's a complete reversal.
The nation gathered around
the death of the grave of the king
is now turned to a nation
celebrating a wedding.
The greatest picture of life,
celebration together.
He says,
another beautiful image.
You have put off
the sackcloth
of my mourning or weeping
and clothed me instead
with gladness.
Word for word,
he says,
you have,
you are belting me,
putting a belt around me
of rejoicing.
So God
loosed or took off
that sackcloth,
that burlap,
rough bag
that you would put on
when you put ashes
over yourself
and you,
you look miserable
to reflect how you feel inside.
And instead,
God has
wrapped him up
with gladness
like it's a cloth.
And God has done this
for a specific purpose.
Look at verse 12.
Why does God do this?
It's to the end
that the glory
of this worshiper
may sing praise
to God
and not be silent.
He says,
it's to the end
that the glory,
that's word for word,
the glory,
meaning the weightiest
part of David,
we translate it as
his soul
or his inner man,
his inner being.
It's the heaviest,
most worthy,
most noble part
of a person
that the Lord
stirs up
to sing his praise
instead of be silent
and for the soul
to be
without a body
to praise God
and to be
entered the realm
of the dead.
To be silent
is to be
cut off,
to be dumb,
to be
utterly unable
to worship
your creator.
If a person
never experiences
the life
that Christ offers,
your soul
is never united
to him,
your spirit
remains dead.
You are unable
to fulfill
the purpose
for which
he created you.
But if the Lord
has united
your soul
to God
through Jesus Christ,
then you will
sing his praise.
You will not
be able
to be silent.
You will
practice
in this life
what you're
designed to do
for all eternity.
This is his
life
transforming
grace.
These contrasts
point out
to us
this wonderful
transformation,
mourning
to dancing,
weeping
to gladness.
From guilt
to grace,
this is how
God moves us
in Christ.
from bondage
to freedom,
from filth
to purity,
from mourning
to dancing,
from weeping
to rejoicing,
from death
to life.
Why does
the Lord
do this?
It's so that
David
and all that
God would save
under the old
covenant
and all of us
that God is saving
under the new
covenant now,
including you
and I,
and whosoever
will hear of
this good news
may believe
and testify
together
of God's
life
transforming
grace
in the person
of Jesus Christ.
That's the theme
of our worship
every time we gather
in his name.
Jesus
breaks the power
of canceled
sin.
He sets
the prisoner
free.
His blood
can make
the foulest
clean
and his blood
availed
for me
and for you.
David says,
finally,
O Lord
my God,
I will
give thanks
to you
forever.
The dedication
of the house
of the Lord
ends with
thanks
to God
forevermore.
The word
forever
is eon.
It's where we
get our word
in English.
Eon
stems from
a root
meaning
hidden
or concealed.
we say
eons of time
meaning
time
stretching on
beyond
where we
could see.
It represents
a vanishing
point that we
can't even
behold with
our sight
beyond human
vision.
So our
thanks will
bubble up
and rejoice
and overflow
in gratitude
to God
enduring
into an
unseen
boundless
immeasurable
endless
ongoing
future age
of gratitude
and thanks
to God.
This is how
we will
enter
his kingdom
and his
constimated
final stage.
We get to
practice this
type of
worship now.
If Jesus
Christ is
your king
you sing
of his
faithfulness
to conquer
sin
Satan
and the
grave
for you.
If Jesus
Christ is
your king
then your
life is
bound up
in his.
If Jesus
Christ is
not your
king
then consider
how your
suffering
is God
drawing you
back to
himself
humbling
you
causing you
to desire
his face
to shine
upon you
in his
grace
one more
time.
Because if
Jesus is
your king
then you
will have
the blessing
the honor
and the joy
of being
in his
holy
presence
and we
get to
experience
that in
a concentrated
way
every time
we gather
in his
name.
The house
of God
on earth
his temple
the congregation
of his
people
his church
if Jesus
Christ is
your king
you will
delight
to praise
him
in his
house
in this
life
in preparation
for the
life to
come.
So dear
servants
of King
Jesus
enter his
house
with joy
with gladness
and proclaim
his life
transforming
grace
together
with his
people
now
and
forevermore.
Let's
pray.
Oh
Father
we praise
you.
We thank
you that
you welcome
us into
your presence
that we
can know
you
that you're
a God
who changes
us
who transforms
us
that we
can taste
in our
soul
the joy
of heaven
even though
our bodies
suffer
and are
wasting
away.
Please make
this real
to your
people Lord
please press
this upon
our lives
by your
grace
for your
glory we
ask.
Amen.