WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 If it wasn't evident already, I hope it is by now, over the last few weeks, that the Psalms are not thoughts for the day. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:26.899 And I do mean the BBC Thought for the Day. As much as I like the two to three minute measured segment, it's very inclusive, it's very thoughtful, it's very brief, it's to the point, it's well-rounded, it's understanding. 00:00:26.899 --> 00:00:38.899 The Psalms are not thoughts. The Psalms cry and they shout. The Psalms compel. The Psalms in a way are most often alarmist. 00:00:38.899 --> 00:00:49.899 And the Psalms get right to the point. This Psalm included Psalm 31. I never want you to have it in the sheets, but Chris read the whole thing so he won't deal with all of it. 00:00:49.899 --> 00:00:58.899 And it wants its readers to do one thing. Trust the Lord and trust Him now. Trust the Lord and trust Him right now. 00:00:58.899 --> 00:01:12.900 It wants us to get to a place where we can say, into your hand, over the Lord, I commit my spirit, I commit my whole self into the protective hand of God. 00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:24.900 To get us there, it's going to take us through a few stages. The first is that it looks back. The first eight verses are really of remembrance, they're memories. 00:01:24.900 --> 00:01:32.900 Times and events with God. And then in verse 9, the Psalms turns to his present situation. He says, 00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:46.900 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress right now. And then starting in about verse 19, we have really the end. It isn't really the future, but it's what's always the case. 00:01:46.900 --> 00:01:54.900 It turns attention towards the congregation. And we join in, really, into the Psalm fully, as a corporate body. 00:01:55.900 --> 00:02:01.900 So it takes us through the past, it moves through the present, and it looks at what is always the case. 00:02:01.900 --> 00:02:15.900 The past is sort of like a photo album. The first eight verses are really images of God, their times and memories spent with Him, events when He was involved in the Psalmist's life. 00:02:15.900 --> 00:02:22.900 And it really is sort of like looking through a photo album, images of people we know, or we remember. 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:34.900 Times that are long gone, or times that were very recent. And it brings back all of the qualities of those people, and the events and the times that we share with them. 00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:40.900 God is a strong fortress. This is one of the images that the Psalm uses. This is in verse 2. 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:46.900 This is in verse 2. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. 00:02:47.900 --> 00:02:51.900 A strong fortress is about as good as it got in the ancient world. 00:02:51.900 --> 00:03:02.900 So we have all sorts of things now. You can have a nice security detail, you can have an armored car, you can have a safe house, which isn't really fortified at all, it's just secret. 00:03:02.900 --> 00:03:06.900 Right? So you can have some elaborate compound with all types of security. 00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:11.900 But in the ancient Near East, you just had a strong fortress. That was as good as it got. 00:03:11.900 --> 00:03:16.900 And the point of all of those, actually, and a strong fortress particularly, is that it's protected. 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:23.900 It's a place of security. It's a place where the Psalmist can go for refuge. 00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:28.900 God is a strong fortress. But God is also godly. 00:03:28.900 --> 00:03:37.900 Look at verse 1. And the final line, in your righteousness, the liberty. 00:03:37.900 --> 00:03:43.900 And verse 5, you have redeemed me, O Lord, the faithful God. 00:03:43.900 --> 00:03:50.900 And verse 7, I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love. 00:03:50.900 --> 00:03:54.900 God's righteousness, His faithfulness, His steadfast love. 00:03:54.900 --> 00:03:59.900 These are, in a way, the sort of fortresses that we've been made out of. 00:03:59.900 --> 00:04:03.900 So God is a strong fortress. And He's strong because He's righteous. 00:04:03.900 --> 00:04:07.900 He's strong because He's faithful. He has steadfast love. 00:04:07.900 --> 00:04:10.900 He's jealous for His people. He's strong. 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:15.900 And in all of these qualities, the psalmist is pulling them up to mind. 00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:20.899 He's calling them to mind. He's calling God to act based upon them. 00:04:20.899 --> 00:04:30.899 There's a final aspect here, but it's really brought out by thinking again about family photo albums, 00:04:30.899 --> 00:04:33.899 and actually non-family photo albums. 00:04:33.899 --> 00:04:41.899 So I really don't know how we acquired this book, but we have a large coffee table book of photos of Barack Obama in his presidency. 00:04:41.899 --> 00:04:49.899 And it's photos taken from his presidential photographer over the course of his time in service. 00:04:49.899 --> 00:04:54.899 And he, yeah, the big glossy pages, right, really nice photographs. 00:04:54.899 --> 00:05:00.899 And I look through those, and I enjoy looking through those, and I admire the person I see. 00:05:00.899 --> 00:05:06.899 I see Barack Obama. I see him with his family. I see him serving the country and so on. 00:05:06.899 --> 00:05:12.899 I'm even impressed in some ways. I think maybe I would like him if I met him. 00:05:12.899 --> 00:05:20.899 But I don't love him. And I don't depend on him in any personal or direct way. 00:05:20.899 --> 00:05:23.899 And it's very different when I open my family photo album. 00:05:23.899 --> 00:05:31.899 Because then I see people that I do know. Yes, I admire him. And sometimes I'm impressed by things in my family photo album. 00:05:31.899 --> 00:05:37.899 But really I see people that I know and I love, right, and that I can depend on, that sort of thing. 00:05:37.899 --> 00:05:45.899 And the psalmist isn't going to leave us just in the Barack Obama photo album. No, it's going to take us into the family photo album. 00:05:45.899 --> 00:05:50.899 Verse 7. I will rejoice and be glad that you have fed the vast love because you have seen my affliction. 00:05:50.899 --> 00:05:58.899 You have known the distress of my soul. You have known the distress of my soul. 00:05:58.899 --> 00:06:05.899 God is not just powerful. He's not just faithful, as if we can say just about those things. 00:06:05.899 --> 00:06:15.899 God knows us in our struggle. He is familiar to us. We can depend upon him. We can love him. And he loves us. 00:06:15.899 --> 00:06:27.899 God knows us. And the greatest way to say this really is, into your hand I commit my spirit. That's a poetic way of saying I trust in the Lord. 00:06:27.899 --> 00:06:32.899 Into your hand, the Lord, I commit my spirit. 00:06:32.899 --> 00:06:37.899 This word commit really is a bit strange or kind of rare to be here. 00:06:37.899 --> 00:06:44.899 There are two examples of this word in the Old Testament actually. One is in 1 Kings 14. 00:06:44.899 --> 00:06:50.899 An Egyptian king has taken away the people of Israel's golden shields. 00:06:50.899 --> 00:06:56.899 Okay, so after battle, then the golden shields have been taken away from the people of Israel's army. 00:06:56.899 --> 00:07:02.899 And so the king at that time, Rehobo, replaces the gold shields with bronze shields. 00:07:02.899 --> 00:07:09.899 And he committed them into the hands of the guards. He committed those shields into the hands of the guards. 00:07:09.899 --> 00:07:15.899 Those shields are now in the protected custody of the guards. 00:07:15.899 --> 00:07:25.899 The other time is Jeremiah 37. And throughout this chapter, Jeremiah has been bringing a prophecy to the people. 00:07:25.899 --> 00:07:34.899 And they don't like it. And they put them in prison. And he goes in the prison. And the prison he's in is actually a sort of a house that's converted into a prison. 00:07:34.899 --> 00:07:44.899 And the rooms he was in sounded pretty, yeah, pretty dingy. They're not a place that, they're damp. They're not a place you want to be in. You don't want to be in prison to begin with. 00:07:44.899 --> 00:07:54.899 But these rooms particularly, he really didn't like it. And he thought actually he was going to die. And so King Zedekiah actually comes and visits him in prison. 00:07:54.899 --> 00:08:00.899 And he says, Jeremiah, tell me more about the prophecies. What's going to happen? And so they talk about this. 00:08:00.899 --> 00:08:09.899 And at the end of the meeting, Jeremiah stops him and says, listen, I don't think I'm going to make it if I stay in this prison. Is there somewhere else I can go? 00:08:09.899 --> 00:08:16.899 And the king says, yes. So he puts him in the court of the guard. He puts him in the court of the guard to another prison, guard location. 00:08:16.899 --> 00:08:23.899 But he didn't just put him there. King Zedekiah committed Jeremiah to the court of the guard. He committed him there. 00:08:23.899 --> 00:08:33.899 He was, yes, really imprisoned. But he was really in custody, in the protective power of the hand of the guards. 00:08:33.899 --> 00:08:47.899 And that is what verse 5 is telling us. Into your hand, O Lord, I commit my spirit to go into the protective power of the hand of God. 00:08:47.899 --> 00:08:54.899 One thing about it is going into the custody of the Lord. 00:08:54.899 --> 00:09:01.899 So these are memories. We're looking back. We're remembering God, who he is, what he's done, and so on. 00:09:01.899 --> 00:09:09.899 And it may not be clear based on the verses that you read. You might think, well, I would say you passed those words there. 00:09:09.899 --> 00:09:13.899 But if you get to verse 7, it becomes a little more clear. Right? 00:09:13.899 --> 00:09:21.899 You have seen my attention. You have known. Verse 8, you have not come bitterly into the hand. You have set my feet in the broad place. 00:09:21.899 --> 00:09:26.899 And in verse 9, we get into the present moment. 00:09:26.899 --> 00:09:31.899 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eyes wait to fill grief. 00:09:31.899 --> 00:09:38.899 Okay? So now the psalm is turning us to the present moment. And the psalm is distressed. 00:09:38.899 --> 00:09:45.899 And what sort of distress is he talking about? Right? Is he on the run from enemies? We will see that. That's certainly a part of it. 00:09:45.899 --> 00:09:52.899 Is he downcast with sorrow? Yes, that too. But really, it's much more than that. 00:09:52.899 --> 00:10:00.899 In verses 9, only 9 and 10, really, we get a whole scope of this distress that the psalmist is going through. 00:10:00.899 --> 00:10:12.899 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eyes wasted from grief. My soul and my body also. 00:10:12.899 --> 00:10:19.899 Is this good as a body also? For my life is spent with sorrow and my years with sight. 00:10:19.899 --> 00:10:28.899 My strength fails because of my iniquity. There is also a level of guilt going on. There is a spiritual kind of long-doing aspect. 00:10:28.899 --> 00:10:31.899 And my bones waste away. 00:10:31.899 --> 00:10:44.899 What sort of distress is he talking about? Tired, guilt, grief, shame, danger, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, if you want to make those distinctions. 00:10:44.899 --> 00:10:46.899 It's a little bit of everything. 00:10:46.899 --> 00:10:50.899 So what sort of distress is the psalm talking about? Every sort. 00:10:50.899 --> 00:10:56.899 What kind of problems can we and should we come to God with? Every problem. Every problem. 00:10:56.899 --> 00:11:03.899 It's the times and it's not just the external things in life. It's the internal things in life. 00:11:03.899 --> 00:11:11.899 It's the things that are our fault. The things that aren't our fault. The things that we think, is that really my fault? Is that what it is? Maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know. 00:11:11.899 --> 00:11:21.899 It's all of these. All these problems. All the distress. Sorrow, grief, sight, physical ailments we bring to God. 00:11:21.899 --> 00:11:26.899 And now we have a slightly different hand or a slightly different image of the hand. 00:11:26.899 --> 00:11:30.899 If you look at verse 14. 00:11:30.899 --> 00:11:39.899 But I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. My times are in your hand. 00:11:39.899 --> 00:11:44.899 This is an absolutely wonderful line. My times are in your hand. 00:11:44.899 --> 00:11:53.899 It's not just the final time either. It's my final power. It's not just that. It is that. It's not just that. 00:11:53.899 --> 00:11:59.899 But it's all of my times. All of my times are in your hand. 00:11:59.899 --> 00:12:04.899 One commentator from a long time ago said this. 00:12:04.899 --> 00:12:12.899 Having no power to secure myself, I commit my soul and consequently my whole person into your hands, 00:12:12.899 --> 00:12:19.899 as confidently relying both on your almighty power and wisdom and fatherly care over me, 00:12:19.899 --> 00:12:28.899 and additionally as willingly resigning myself to be disposed of by you as you are pleased. 00:12:28.899 --> 00:12:33.899 This in a way is how we talk about conversion. I give my whole self over to God. 00:12:33.899 --> 00:12:40.899 Don't keep anything back from God. Go to Him fully independent of all aspects of our lives. 00:12:40.899 --> 00:12:45.899 We give over to the Lord. And it's an ongoing thing. 00:12:45.899 --> 00:12:48.899 Really, it's easier to be all in. It's easier to go all in. 00:12:48.899 --> 00:12:53.899 It's easier to entrust all of our times and our whole self to God. 00:12:53.899 --> 00:12:56.899 One of my colleagues is a swirmer. 00:12:56.899 --> 00:13:00.899 He swam across the English Channel several times. 00:13:00.899 --> 00:13:04.899 He's even gone there and back. Back again. 00:13:04.899 --> 00:13:08.899 And he likes to do this thing where anyone is welcome. 00:13:08.899 --> 00:13:12.899 And at 6am, he goes into the wrong foot river scene in Windsor. 00:13:12.899 --> 00:13:16.899 And you walk in and you go waist deep for 30 seconds. 00:13:16.899 --> 00:13:19.899 And you go neck deep for 30 seconds. 00:13:19.899 --> 00:13:23.899 And then you go all the way under and you go for a 10 minute swim. 00:13:23.899 --> 00:13:30.899 And when it's, you know, the 20th of January, this is a really unpleasant situation to be in. 00:13:30.899 --> 00:13:33.899 But what's the best part about that progression? 00:13:33.899 --> 00:13:35.899 What's the best part? 00:13:35.899 --> 00:13:36.899 When your head is all the way in. 00:13:36.899 --> 00:13:42.899 And you know, even if it's kind of a chilly day or the wind is biting and you're in a lake or in the ocean or something like that. 00:13:42.899 --> 00:13:45.899 You just have to go sort of head on earth. 00:13:45.899 --> 00:13:46.899 And then you're going to be okay. 00:13:46.899 --> 00:13:48.899 And then you get used to the water. 00:13:48.899 --> 00:13:49.899 Right? 00:13:49.899 --> 00:13:51.899 It's easier to go all in. 00:13:51.899 --> 00:13:53.899 It's easier to go all in. 00:13:53.899 --> 00:13:56.899 And now, that initial go in made it really difficult. 00:13:56.899 --> 00:13:57.899 Right? 00:13:57.899 --> 00:14:01.899 God, as we know, God brings some people into the kingdom kicking and screaming. 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:09.899 But in terms of the Christian life, we can relinquish everything to God. 00:14:09.899 --> 00:14:14.899 And in a way, it just relieves us totally of these things. 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:15.899 We depend totally on God. 00:14:15.899 --> 00:14:20.899 Into your hand I commit, my spirit, my times are in your hand. 00:14:20.899 --> 00:14:25.899 So we've seen the past. 00:14:25.899 --> 00:14:27.899 We've seen the present. 00:14:27.899 --> 00:14:29.899 And we've experienced the present. 00:14:29.899 --> 00:14:33.899 And now we're going to sort of break out into what's always the case. 00:14:33.899 --> 00:14:36.899 What's always the case. 00:14:36.899 --> 00:14:38.899 God was faithful. 00:14:38.899 --> 00:14:39.899 God is faithful. 00:14:39.899 --> 00:14:41.899 God will always be faithful. 00:14:41.899 --> 00:14:43.899 That is the scope of the song. 00:14:46.899 --> 00:14:48.899 And I've seen it's not a problem today. 00:14:48.899 --> 00:14:50.899 It's really not a problem today. 00:14:50.899 --> 00:14:57.899 Now, if you didn't like the photo album illustration, you probably won't like this one either. 00:14:57.899 --> 00:15:01.899 But it's, it's, it's, it's, the song is kind of like God's radio. 00:15:01.899 --> 00:15:02.899 The song is like God's radio. 00:15:02.899 --> 00:15:04.899 And what it's doing is it's playing us the hits. 00:15:04.899 --> 00:15:06.899 It's playing us what we ought to listen to. 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:10.899 It's playing us what God defines as good music. 00:15:10.899 --> 00:15:11.899 Right? 00:15:11.899 --> 00:15:13.899 And that's not always happy, clapping things. 00:15:13.899 --> 00:15:14.899 It's not always the pop hits. 00:15:14.899 --> 00:15:15.899 Right? 00:15:15.899 --> 00:15:20.899 It's, it's, it's really, really difficult stuff sometimes. 00:15:20.899 --> 00:15:22.899 And sometimes it's not where we are at all. 00:15:22.899 --> 00:15:25.899 It's where God thinks we need to be. 00:15:25.899 --> 00:15:27.899 And that's sometimes when we, it's the same thing. 00:15:27.899 --> 00:15:30.899 We come into church, I don't really feel like singing a happy song right now. 00:15:30.899 --> 00:15:32.899 But we sing a happy song. 00:15:32.899 --> 00:15:38.899 And that's training us, that's, that's getting us into the mindset of what we need to experience in the life of God. 00:15:38.899 --> 00:15:40.899 Or the other way around. 00:15:40.899 --> 00:15:43.899 I'm not really feeling that kind of thing when I am. 00:15:43.899 --> 00:15:45.899 So in here it is. 00:15:45.899 --> 00:15:57.899 And it's, it is the way that God gets us to be in effect and to understand the church where everyone is at some point throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout their lives. 00:15:57.899 --> 00:15:59.899 It's an immersive experience. 00:15:59.899 --> 00:16:08.899 Now in the last few verses of the Psalms, the Psalms, the Psalms starts to bring up these, these qualities of God, right? 00:16:08.899 --> 00:16:12.899 The kind of stones that are used to put together the fortress. 00:16:12.899 --> 00:16:14.899 How abundant is your goodness. 00:16:14.899 --> 00:16:19.899 The Lord has blessed it for just wonderfully showing his steadfast love to me. 00:16:19.899 --> 00:16:22.899 This is God's character, right? 00:16:22.899 --> 00:16:28.899 So we don't like to talk about attributes, but he's, he's, yeah, the, you know, personal God. 00:16:28.899 --> 00:16:31.899 And this is who he is. 00:16:31.899 --> 00:16:40.899 Now, let me finish on this, on this note of kind of what is difficult to do in Christian life. 00:16:40.899 --> 00:16:51.899 I think one of the most difficult things is when we're crying out to God, when we want to respond to anything, and we don't seem to be able to know the response. 00:16:51.899 --> 00:16:56.899 We say things like, I prize the Lord for mercy, but I don't know if he heard me. 00:16:56.899 --> 00:16:58.899 Those sorts of things. 00:16:58.899 --> 00:17:08.900 Well, it's remarkable that so many of the Psalms are laments like this, and so many of them are associated or attributed to David. 00:17:08.900 --> 00:17:10.900 David is the anointed one, right? 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:15.900 David is the person in the Bible who's now responsible for all of God's people. 00:17:15.900 --> 00:17:20.900 He's directly chosen by God. 00:17:20.900 --> 00:17:27.900 He has probably one chapter that we heard about this morning in the Bible dedicated to how he's gone wrong. 00:17:27.900 --> 00:17:37.900 And I mean only one chapter, and the rest is, is, is, is pretty incredibly positive. 00:17:37.900 --> 00:17:48.900 The king of Israel, God's chosen one, and anointed one, responsible for the people, responsible to the body of God's law to them. 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:54.900 And he's saying things like, be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. 00:17:54.900 --> 00:17:57.900 My strength failed because of my anointing. 00:17:57.900 --> 00:17:59.900 My bones wasted away. 00:17:59.900 --> 00:18:02.900 My years were spent with sighing. 00:18:02.900 --> 00:18:05.900 The circumstances don't fit. 00:18:05.900 --> 00:18:08.900 They don't fit with David the anointed one. 00:18:08.900 --> 00:18:15.900 And of course, this, this, this, this, of course, is even, even more true for Christ. 00:18:15.900 --> 00:18:18.900 And you may have bumped this immediately into your hand, O Lord, I commit my spirit. 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:20.900 That's Luke 23. 00:18:20.900 --> 00:18:27.900 Jesus cries out once on the cross, into your hand, O Lord, I commit my spirit. 00:18:27.900 --> 00:18:31.900 I entrust myself entirely to the Father. 00:18:31.900 --> 00:18:32.900 Right? 00:18:32.900 --> 00:18:33.900 And David has done things wrong. 00:18:33.900 --> 00:18:38.900 David can say, my life is in distress, even if it kind of doesn't match or doesn't seem like it. 00:18:38.900 --> 00:18:44.900 It ought to go for the anointed one of Israel to have so many songs of lament as if life should be that hard. 00:18:44.900 --> 00:18:48.900 But Christ, on the scale of innocence, absolutely not. 00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:53.900 Finding himself on the cross, into your hand, O Lord, I commit my spirit. 00:18:53.900 --> 00:18:57.900 He cries and he has heard him. 00:18:57.900 --> 00:19:02.900 And why does Christ cry out into your hand, I commit my spirit, O Lord? 00:19:02.900 --> 00:19:04.900 Well, I think for two, at least two things. 00:19:04.900 --> 00:19:06.900 The first is that he's obeying God. 00:19:06.900 --> 00:19:13.900 He's on the cross because he loves the Father and he's obeying what the Father would have to do. 00:19:13.900 --> 00:19:17.900 And, of course, secondly, because he loves us. 00:19:17.900 --> 00:19:18.900 And God has love him. 00:19:18.900 --> 00:19:19.900 The Father has love there. 00:19:19.900 --> 00:19:21.900 Because the Father loves us. 00:19:21.900 --> 00:19:28.900 And Christ is going the way that the Christian life will go on this side of heaven. 00:19:28.900 --> 00:19:29.900 He is the first fruit. 00:19:29.900 --> 00:19:33.900 And the first fruit, of course, when someone runs outside, if I said go outside and get the first fruit, 00:19:33.900 --> 00:19:37.900 you would run outside and you would get the first sample from the harvest. 00:19:37.900 --> 00:19:38.900 A sample. 00:19:38.900 --> 00:19:40.900 You get the first sample of the harvest. 00:19:40.900 --> 00:19:44.900 You run back in and say, this is what the crop is going to look like this year. 00:19:44.900 --> 00:19:46.900 This is what we should expect. 00:19:46.900 --> 00:19:48.900 This is how it's going to go. 00:19:48.900 --> 00:19:50.900 And the life of Christ is like that. 00:19:50.900 --> 00:19:53.900 It's the first fruits. 00:19:53.900 --> 00:19:54.900 But not just in the suffering. 00:19:54.900 --> 00:19:55.900 Not just in his death. 00:19:55.900 --> 00:19:57.900 It's when God responds. 00:19:57.900 --> 00:20:00.900 And God responds in the resurrection. 00:20:00.900 --> 00:20:05.900 And what's, I think, referred to most as the first fruits is the resurrection of Christ. 00:20:05.900 --> 00:20:07.900 And he's brought back in new life. 00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:09.900 And he's raised from the dead. 00:20:09.900 --> 00:20:12.900 And that's what we expect. 00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:19.900 And so we don't cry out, oh Lord have mercy upon me. 00:20:19.900 --> 00:20:26.900 Or I cry to the Lord in distress and I don't know if he heard my crying. 00:20:26.900 --> 00:20:34.900 We cry out and say, I cry to the Lord and maybe, I'm not really sure when or how it's going to do something. 00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:36.900 That's something that we can't say. 00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:40.900 And I don't really know what his response is going to do. 00:20:40.900 --> 00:20:42.900 But not, I don't know if he's going to respond. 00:20:42.900 --> 00:20:44.900 God will respond. 00:20:44.900 --> 00:20:46.900 He will respond. 00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:48.900 And sometimes, God responds now. 00:20:48.900 --> 00:20:50.900 Sometimes we can see it, we can name it. 00:20:50.900 --> 00:20:52.900 It comes quickly. 00:20:52.900 --> 00:20:54.900 And other times it takes a long time. 00:20:54.900 --> 00:21:01.900 And sometimes, and the ultimate guarantee we have is that God will answer all of these things in a life's calendar. 00:21:01.900 --> 00:21:07.900 And at the throne of God, we will have a perspective back on life. 00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:11.900 Now, that's the perspective where we look back on all those times when God did respond. 00:21:11.900 --> 00:21:13.900 We'll look at it and wonder. 00:21:13.900 --> 00:21:17.900 And all of those times when God didn't respond or it didn't seem like he responded, 00:21:17.900 --> 00:21:20.900 but not in the way that he thought or not in the way that he wanted him to respond, 00:21:20.900 --> 00:21:23.900 will look so, so wonderful. 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:27.900 Both of those will look wonderful from the throne. 00:21:27.900 --> 00:21:29.900 And we will be able to say, 00:21:29.900 --> 00:21:35.900 Blessed be the Lord, for he has wonderfully shown his steadfast love to me. 00:21:35.900 --> 00:21:39.900 Let's pray. 00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:55.900 Let's pray. 00:21:55.900 --> 00:21:59.900 Let's pray. 00:21:59.900 --> 00:22:03.900 Let's pray.