Finding Joy in Trials — James 1

0:00 Let's pray. Father, we come to you now. We thank you for this time that we have to open your word. We ask that you would bless this time. I ask that you would be with me and that you would put words in my mouth and that those here would hear your words and not my feeble and fumbling attempts to convey what's in your word.

0:21 We ask that we would all be blessed by hearing your word today and that we would be encouraged by the things that, your spirit would would have for us. So we ask that you bless this time in his name. Consider it all joy, brethren, when you encounter various trials. Most of you I assume know what verse that is and I want to talk a little bit today. I want to share with you about some things that are going on in my life that I think we all need a reminder of this sometimes.

1:05 We all go through trials every day. It can be the financial struggles, employment struggles, health struggles, and it could be us or it could be a very close loved one who's going through something that therefore affects us. And I'm going through things myself and maybe I needed this more than the rest of you but I know that I need to be reminded of this a lot. And I wanted to share with you like I said some of what's going on in my life that maybe we can all be encouraged by having some reminders brought to our attention. Consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

2:00 That is, of course, from James chapter one. So to give you a little background for those of you who aren't as familiar with what's been going on with me the last several years, I graduated from Bowling Wallace College in 2008, which which is now Bowling Wallace University and we don't need to talk about that and what I think about that. But I graduated in 2008 and during my senior year I began experiencing the consequences of two degenerated discs at the bottom of my spine. I went, I finished my senior year and I went to Miami University in Ohio to pursue my master's degree. It was rough but I got through it.

2:48 The Lord got me through it and I finished that degree. During the time that I was there, also met my wife. When I was considering where to go for graduate school, I had auditioned and applied at a number of different programs and it seemed that the Lord made it very clear to me that I needed to go to Miami because that was the only program into which I was accepted. So, decision was made for me and I took that as from the Lord as saying okay this is where I'm supposed to go. So I got my Master's degree and met my wife at the same time.

3:18 So I guess you can't that's about as good as you can get. My wife and I got engaged right after graduation, shortly after graduation in 2010 and I was I went to the University of South Carolina to work on my doctorate. Same case there, I auditioned and applied at several different schools and that was the only program into which I was accepted. So, thank you Lord, I guess that's where I'm going. That year that I lived in, the first year in South Carolina when we were engaged was a very tough year for a number of reasons.

3:54 I went through some very difficult financial times. The long distance engagement thing was not fun. For those of you who aren't there yet, the younger ones, distance relationship is tough. And that's all I'll say about that. So, twice before you do that.

4:13 But, the Lord brought my wife and I through it and he brought me through my financial stress but that year as far as my school went was very difficult. My back got worse and I reached the conclusion that I needed to take a break from school. It's very difficult for me to play. It exacerbates my condition sitting in that position. So, my wife and I got married in the summer of twenty eleven and she came down to live with me and we decided that for that first year we would try to pursue more diligently medical treatment.

4:52 I had been to a number of different doctors over the couple of years prior to that and hadn't had any success with treatment and we thought we would invest some time and money that we didn't really have, but we wanted to see if I can do anything so that I could finish my degree. It was my career goal and desire since high school to obtain a doctorate and teach at the collegiate level pianists like myself. And, that was my big thing and, music being one of the few things that I'm really good at and passionate about and that was what I wanted to do. It seemed that God had some other plans for me. After spending that second year in South Carolina and not having any success remediating my pain after a number of different kinds of doctors and different treatments and trying this and that, you can't really cure a degenerated disc.

5:53 You can take it out and infuse your spine I guess and there's some other pain management available but none of which seemed to help me at all. So, I started to think that maybe this was something that God had put in my life that I needed. And this was something I needed to learn lessons from. Since find any treatment for my back, we thought, well, okay, I'm not going back to school in the near future to finish. So we thought, well, since I'm not going to school, why would we stay in South Carolina where our family is all here.

6:36 My wife's from Columbus for those of you, I think most of you know, but you know we thought well let's let's try to move back up to family because we have really good relationships with our family and are blessed that way and so we wanted to come back up here. So we started asking the Lord, you know, should we should we move back to Ohio? And we started looking for jobs in Columbus, trying to see if that's where the Lord would have us. And here here was the big plan. The big plan was that we'd move, move to Columbus.

7:07 I would take job something, some steady full time job and that we would try to find a house and start looking for students and just start teaching. And that was our the extent of our big plan. None of which worked out. We moved to Columbus. The Lord opened up a door for me with a landscaping company.

7:25 I guess foolishly thought at the time that I kind of missed landscaping and so I got back into it. And, it was really great how the Lord did that because when landscaping crossed my mind, thought well, I googled landscaping companies in Columbus and I clicked the first result and lo and behold they were hiring. And I sent an application, we had phone interview and they hired me. I mean and it was wow okay, thank you Lord I guess I guess maybe we'll give this a shot. So we came up to Columbus and my wife was was blessed to take a job with a friend of the family who was a believer.

8:01 He was an American family insurance agent. And she took a position working with him and that was a great thing from the Lord. And we felt the Lord leading that way. And we had moved in with my in laws because we were planning on staying there a couple months and getting a house and doing all that. And it turned out that the housing market in Columbus didn't really jive with our needs.

8:28 And so, the spring and summer and fall came and went. And, in the end of January twenty thirteen, I was laid off from my position landscaping. And so then we were trying to wonder what was, what the Lord wants us to do. We really wanted to try to teach and start studio and do the whole musician thing and it wasn't working out and then I got laid off too. I took a job a month or so later at Chipotle.

9:10 I have lots of stories to tell you all about that if you ever want to hear them. People are very interesting. But, I I I worked there for the summer of two thousand thirteen and in the meantime, I was sending out applications and resumes to all kinds of companies for all kinds of positions and all kinds of different fields and wasn't having any success. And we started wondering, wonder what the housing market in Cleveland is like. Maybe we should look at Cleveland.

9:47 So we thought, you know, we prayed about it, we asked the Lord if maybe he wanted us to move to Cleveland. So we started looking for jobs in the Cleveland area. We started looking at the real estate listings on the interwebs and saw that things looked more promising here in terms of what we were looking for. And let's see. At the end of October, after a very lengthy drawn out application and interview process, I accepted a position for audio craft which was based out of Downtown Cleveland.

10:23 Some of you might be familiar with that. They were the Cleveland's premier audio video hi fi company since technology began in the 1950s and 60s. Huge company, did a lot of high end custom work and I was very excited to take a position there. The pay was good. We thought my wife would be able to stay home and maybe we'd start a family and get a house and this was all going to be great.

10:51 And to make things even better, two days after I accepted that offer my wife got offered a position at Champs Benefits downtown. So, it seemed the Lord was really putting things together and my wife's employer contacted her. She actually had just, she had been submitting resumes and information online to some of the employment websites and they actually reached out to her and offered her a what was then a temporary position. They were starting some new programs, didn't know if they needed additional, full time workers or not. So, she took a position downtown and we felt that the Lord was really leading us here so we moved to Cleveland at the end of October and my brother and I looked at probably a couple dozen houses over the course of two weeks And we found one we liked and, we're getting that ball rolling.

11:51 We moved in with my grandparents by the way, when we moved up here because it was only going to be a couple months, you know. And the Friday before I was to start my new job, I got a phone call that said that AudioCraft was closing. And, needless to say, that was a tough one to take. I had moved up here, I had quit my job, and my wife had put in her notice and we were moving here. And then now I didn't have a job.

12:33 Fall came. I got back on the job hunt, which has been kind of a part time job for the last three years really. And, I took a job at Conrad's at the beginning of December. So, I've never been without a job for more than about a month and for that I know I can really be thankful and praise God for that because I know all of you sitting here know what the job market is like and it's really tough to obtain a job and hold a job and probably some of you have been without a job for a very long time at some point in your past. And that was not something that the Lord was doing with me.

13:17 Was never without a job. It wasn't always great job by how I define a great job but my wife and I have both always we've been employed. So I took that job in December and we were waiting on my wife's company to tell her whether she was going to be kicked out or if she was going to be brought on full time. And they finally got back, what was it, the end of January ish, something like that and they decided to make her full time because she's awesome. And, so, the Lord gave us those jobs and and now we're employed and we and we were able to get back on the job hunt and, praise God the the one house that we had found at the end of our search in October was actually still on the market.

14:08 And obviously price would have come down over the span of six months. And we started all that and, about a month ago the Lord gave us a house. And that's been really huge for us. We actually only lived on our own for nine months after we got married and we've been living with family ever since. Waiting waiting on the Lord.

14:36 We've had plans all along and they just have totally just been thrown out. And I know we've all we've all been there and done that. We we make our plans and the Lord has his way with them. Sometimes he he, honors those and can bless plans that we have and sometimes he says that that's not what he had in mind and so he brings us to something else. And what I wanted to talk about a little bit was some of these things that we go through in life and probably everyone in this room is it's very likely I think that everyone here is going through something right now.

15:23 And it could be a financial thing, could be a health thing or someone, a loved one close to you is going through something. We've all got something. Because if we weren't going through a trial of some kind, how our faith strengthened? And we know that the Lord gives us these trials for a reason and he puts us through things, to produce produce fruit. So, there's a little recap on what's going on with us.

15:57 Suffice it to say, we've had tough time of it. And I know that my attitude has not always been what it should be throughout all of this. I will be the first one to testify that, you know, I don't I don't always respond to these things in the way that that I should. The way that that the scripture says that we should. The way we're told in scripture of how these things are going to happen.

16:45 I I do. And my wife can attest to that as well. I'm not I'm not perfect and I'm still working on how to deal with all of this. In James one, when he he he's discussing this, I have a lot of... I have a good bit of scripture that I want to read through and I'm going to expand on on some things real quickly, we're going to do a good bit of reading here in a minute.

17:18 Just to... I want to read through some of these passages and and leave some of it almost just at face value. And I want us to think about as we're reading through it. More than just a read along but maybe to really think as we're reading through this and put ourselves, substitute our name in it or if you want to think of it that way or or pretend that, you know, really try to embody the fact that the scripture is written for us, for you. Even though it was written to another nation at another time, you can you can put yourself there.

18:00 When James says that we should consider it all joy when we encounter these trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. We know that these trials are from God. We can we can look here in James and and brother Denzel mentioned something, this morning in the breaking of bread in first Peter that I had actually forgotten about. What was that? It was, first Peter one, verse six.

18:32 In this, you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. That the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The trials that we encounter for a little while, our our our trials, and this is so hard to digest and to really believe, but our trials are so petty and small in the grand scheme of things. If we're looking at eternity, what we deal with here is so trivial. But in the moment, and I'll tell you right now what I'm going through right now, I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life because I'm not being the musician, I don't have the career that I thought I was going to have and I'm not doing that now.

19:36 And now I don't know what I'm supposed to do and I'm still waiting for that. But, you know, what is my career? How important is that in relation to eternity? It's in relation to eternity, if we want to scale it down, then it's over the course of your seventy, eighty years, ninety year life, how big is the trial when you cut your finger? It's not really a big deal.

20:05 I mean, it's painful and it's not really a big deal, but in the course of like, you're looking at your life, it doesn't really matter. And it's almost, I feel what's brought to us here in the scripture is that the trials we're going through, it's not that they're not important and it's not that they're not there for a reason, but if if we're looking at eternity and and what these trials are are what God is trying to produce in us through these trials is so much more important than this momentary momentary pain. He says, to count it all joy when you encounter various trials. He doesn't say if. He says, when.

20:47 And something that my mother told me, several years ago, and I'll paraphrase it a little bit and you could change the numbers, but she said something like, 10% of life is the things that happen to you and the other 90% is what you do about it. Or how you deal with it. And maybe it's 2080% or or you know, make up your own numbers. But so much of, and it hit me when she said that, so much of of what what our life is when we when we think about it as a whole, it's not so much the things that are happening, it's how we're responding to it. It's how we're dealing with it.

21:28 It's what we're doing with it. We can have the attitudes when we are tested. When our faith is tested. When we have trials brought into our lives. We can...

21:40 It's so easy to have an attitude of rebellion or defiance. It's so easy. I know for me... Because what's the first thing you do? You know, you have a bad attitude about it.

21:53 Maybe some of some of the more mature Christians, are are better at that than me, but that's the first thing that happens. That's the human nature that kicks in first. Is that I'm, I get a bad attitude about it and I have to work to overcome that. It's easy to... It's easy for me to lose heart.

22:18 Do we do we start questioning the Lord's care for us? If if we're in Hebrews one, if... Or James one, if you flip back a page or two to Hebrews 12 and verse five, and have you forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives.

23:05 It could be it could be discipline. And what we have to do is get past the momentary pain of it. And and it's it's this work to get through it and see what what God's purpose is in it. When our faith is exercised by these trials, rather than... When we allow our faith to be exercised through these trials, than allowing our faith to be hindered.

23:38 When we are able to look to God and accept what's going on, we're able to look to him and ask for wisdom in dealing with what he's put before us, rather than just saying, woe is me, and we have our bad attitude, and we let our faith slide. It takes a lot of work. It does. It takes me a lot of work. It's hard for me to do this.

24:02 I want to flip back to, Job for his minute. Actually, a few minutes. We know the story of Job very well, and so I I don't really need to read the first couple chapters. What I want to read, and something I want us to really pay attention to as we read. I'm going to read starting in chapter 38, when after all this discourse between Job and his friends, God finally speaks.

24:42 God pipes up. And God's speaking to Job, But I want us to think as if God is speaking to us. For those of us that are going through something, those of us who have been put in a trial, those of us who are going through a time of testing, let's put our name in here and think about what God is saying to us. When we start to wonder what God's doing and if we ever have that lapse of judgment and we start to wonder, does God really have this handled? Does he really have our best interests in mind?

25:21 And we can, we know from our teaching and from what we as Christians know and what we've read in scripture, yeah, we know God's got it covered and everything and and we can kind of just brush it off. But let's... I want to look at at chapter 38 here. Because there's... God says a lot here about himself.

25:43 I will be reading out of the New American Standard. Job 38. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man and I will ask you and you instruct me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

26:07 Tell me if you have understanding. Who set its measurements since you know? Who stretched the line on it? On what were its basis sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone?

26:19 When the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who enclosed the sea with doors when bursting forth it went out from the womb. When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band. And I placed boundaries on it and I set a bolt and doors and I said, thus far you shall come but no farther and here shall your proud waves stop. Have you ever in your life commanded the morning and caused the dawn to know its place that it might take hold of the ends of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it?

26:55 It is changed like clay under the seal and they stand forth like a garment. And from their wicked... From the wicked, their light is withheld and the uplifted arm is broken. Have you entered into the springs of the sea or have you walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

27:16 Have you understood the expanse of the earth? Tell me if you know all this. Where is the way to the dwelling of light and darkness? Where is its place that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? You know for you were born then and the number of your days is great.

27:38 Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or have you seen the storehouses of the hail which I have reserved for the time of distress for the day of war and battle? Where is the way that the light is divided or the east wind scattered on the earth? Who has cleft the channel for the flood or away for the thunderbolt to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and the desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout? Has the rain a father or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb has come the ice and the frost of heavens?

28:13 Who has given it birth? Water becomes hard like a stone, and the surface of the deep is imprisoned. Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season and guide the bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens or fix their rule over the earth?

28:34 Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that an abundance of water may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings that they may go and say to you, here we are. Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or has given understanding to the mind? Who can count the clouds by wisdom or tip the water jars of the heavens when the dust hardens into a mass and the clods stick together. I wanna skip over to chapter 40 and pick up in verse six.

29:10 Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm and said, now gird up your loins like a man. I will ask you and you instruct me. Will you really annul my judgment? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Or do you have an arm like God and can you thunder with a voice like his?

29:29 Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity and clothe yourself with honor and majesty. Pour out the overflowings of your anger and look on everyone who is proud and make him low. Look on everyone who is proud and humble him and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them in the dust together. Bind them in the hidden place.

29:47 Then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you. He goes on and and and we know that god gives examples, further examples of animals and nature of all this. But God is is is really forthcoming here I think. When he's when he's talking to Job and his friends, when he's talking to us here and we're wondering what's going on in our lives and how how he's he's going to fix this because we think it's broken. When I read through this, and I was I was preparing preparing for this, and I and I read through this portion, and I tried to read it in a fresh way.

30:51 And I tried to read it like God was talking to me. And it worked. Why, why, what is my problem? What is my problem? Why do I make such a big deal out of what I'm going through?

31:13 Why do I struggle so much with it? When we read this and if we're to consider who God is, when we consider who He is, what He's done, the power He has, and the control that He has, it's the control. The amount of control He has over what's going on. The amount of control he has over my life. The control that he has for a good thing.

31:41 It's a good thing he has control over it because left to my own devices, I I I I can't I can't do it myself. And that was what he was bringing out here, at the beginning of chapter 40. You know, if we can do all these things, then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you. And I know I can't do all these things, so obviously I can't save myself. So we need God to do it.

32:50 Is not life more than food and the body than clothing? Look at the birds of the air that they do not sow, neither do they reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his lifespan? And why are you anxious about clothing?

33:15 Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil nor do they spin. Yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so erased the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, Will he not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? Is our faith too small?

33:43 Is my faith too small? Is that the reason I struggle so much? Maybe. And maybe that's why this seems this trial is dragging on. If I would let my faith grow a little, if I would let my faith be exercised and my faith could grow and I had more faith, maybe we could be done with this one and move on to the next one.

34:08 Flip over a few pages to Matthew ten twenty nine. Are not... Jesus is still speaking here. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

34:30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore, do not fear. You are you are of more value than many sparrows. Our faith is tested. We have not so much in this country but our faith is tested by persecution.

34:55 We have our we all have our sickness, the sufferings, the sorrows of life. Those that the things that the trials that happen directly to us or like I mentioned earlier, things that are happening to a very close loved one that therefore become your trials because of how close this person is to you. We have all heard the saying that a smooth sailor, smooth sea doesn't make a skillful sailor. Charles Kettering, who was an industrialist said, problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but problems.

35:33 Good news weakens me. And it's aptly said, and for a man who didn't profess to be a Christian as far as I know, but can we say the same things? I mean we should be able to say that and then some. As Christians, as believers who have the power of God, who have the spirit of God, we are embodied with the spirit of God and are given grace to overcome, grace to endure everything that God gives us. He doesn't give us more than his grace.

36:10 However much grace he's given us, that's he gives us enough to work through our trial. Paul's Paul had had a thorn. Paul had had a physical infirmity, and he pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away, and God just said, no, I've given you enough grace to deal with it. We have to let patience have its perfect work. Flipping back over to James, that's, verse four.

36:49 And let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. So we have to let God's testing, let God's plan, let it go. And we have to have the patience to let it work itself out. We can become impatient. We all do.

37:15 I do. We become impatient. We do whatever we can to try to shorten this trial. If an illness, you know, we can run and get an antibiotic to solve our runny nose. I don't really like to do that.

37:30 That's another topic. But just as an example, okay, can... There's things we can do in life to try to shorten whatever trial we're going through. Whether it's an illness or whether it's something else. But there can be negative ramifications of doing that.

37:50 Where we are messing up God's whole plan, God's whole purpose for bringing this trial into our life and God's got it measured out how long it's going to last. And we mess it up by taking things into our own hands and fixing it. If we do that, we might have to undergo a longer version of this same trial later. We have to let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. Now, James points out here that, okay, we could be patient but we lack wisdom in our lives.

38:59 We never see at first hand what God's purpose is. We see that, oh, we have this problem in our life and that's a bummer. But, if we want to get through this, if we want our faith to be exercised, if we want to grow from this, we have to try to find out from God why it's happening. And we all lack the wisdom to do this. So, what James is pointing out here is that we can ask God and he will tell us.

39:29 Not necessarily today or tomorrow, but he's put this trial in our lives. And if we are seeking after him and clinging to him and trying to figure out what it is we're trying to be taught during this time, he will give us the wisdom, he'll give us the grace to bear through it and he will show us what we need to change in our lives or how we need to grow. There's conditions on that though. There's conditions on that whole asking God for wisdom and and God gives generously. He says in verse six, let him ask in faith that the man who is lacking in wisdom and how to deal with this.

40:13 He says, let him ask God without any doubting. For the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. So, we have to be careful here because God will grant us the grace and the wisdom to work through this trial and to grow by it. But we have to believe and have the faith that he loves and cares and that he's putting us through this for a reason.

40:50 We have to cling to the truths that we know. Truths being that we know that God is good. We know that God is good all the time. And I'll be pulling a little bit out of verse 17 a little bit later. But if we have doubts, if we're asking God for this wisdom to deal with this situation, and we have these doubts, if we aren't clinging and holding on to that faith, and and one minute we're very pessimistic about what's going on.

41:22 The next minute we're optimistic and we're flopping back and forth between these. God's not honored by that. We have to adapt the attitude, and I'm speaking to myself here as much as I'm speaking to anybody else. This is what I need to do. It's this maintaining an attitude that God's got it.

41:44 And I need to have the faith that he's got my best interests in mind. He really does. And he's doing this because he's trying to do something for me. And I have to let him do it. I have to let the spirit do it.

42:00 James gives some illustrations, in the next couple verses, regarding financial trials. And it's of note that he mentions that the poor man has a financial trial and the rich man has a financial trial as well because the rich man has to have the grace to let go of his earthly wealth. So it's tough from both ends. It's tough to not have enough money but it's tough to have too much too as a Christian and not to place too much value in the things we have. We don't need to go into all of that for right now but we'll skip through and get to verse 12 of James one.

42:47 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. The crown of life, I'll go out on a limb here and say that that's not referring to, salvation per se, but maybe the the crown is the victor's wreath and it's it's the reward for the one who completes. The reward for one who finishes the race. The one who has stood up under the trial and is rewarded for it.

44:40 There's a truth we have to cling to. Father of lights here could mean either the father here could mean either the creator or the source. But we can think of the heavenly bodies, all of the stars and the constellations that provide light. But those change. Those change in different seasons and those lights change But we know that God does not change like those lights.

45:15 He created those lights but he's not like them. He's the one who supplies the life and who supplies the light. He supplies the guidance and direction. And it can be the light... I don't understand my own notes here.

45:39 He can supply the spiritual light that we need to get through the the challenge that we're facing through. He provides. He is the source of the spiritual light. And that's to where we need to obtain it. That's from where we need to obtain it.

45:57 God's gifts are as perfect as himself. Let's think about that. Father, we thank you once again for this time. We pray that you would allow us to dwell on these words that you would empower us with the grace that we need to make it through the trials that you put in our lives that are for our benefit. We pray that we would be able to see your work, that you would grant us the wisdom, that we would have the strength of faith to ask you for the wisdom that we need to see what it is you're doing in our lives because we can't see it on our own and we make our plans and they are not what you have in mind and and we need you in our lives.

46:43 We need you to direct our lives and we need the grace and the wisdom to see it and to obey it and to follow you. We ask that you would be with us as we deal with the trials that you put in our lives. And we need to cling to the truths that we know. Cling to the faith that we have and know that you love us deeply and that you only put us through these things to strengthen us that we may develop character more like your son. We ask that you would bless us as we go and that we would be able to ponder these things this week and in the days to come.

47:21 In his name we ask, amen.