God Makes Old Things New

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Our primary text today is going to be 2 Corinthians 5, 17. 2 Corinthians 5, 17. While you're turning there, to 2 Corinthians 5, 17. In praying over this Sunday, I wanted to, I really felt like the Lord was saying we need some clarity. That as I kept kind of looking to what we were gonna, what we were gonna look at, what scripture we were gonna cover, I was just impressed by the Lord that we just be clear.

We clear about what new life is. We're clear on who we are as people, as believers. But also to make that new life just abundantly clear so that we can remember it, so that we can kinda see it. So it's with that, that I wanna read, we're gonna start in verse 17, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. We're gonna be looking at the verses before it and the verses after it, but we're gonna kinda start there in the middle. It says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Now you might have heard this verse before, and you might have heard it a thousand times, maybe, even. Maybe it's your first time hearing it, but the second part of that verse where it says the oldest passed away, behold, the new has come. If the oldest passed away, behold, the new has come, that is actually a callback to Isaiah 43 and 44.

Isaiah 43 and 44, I wanna read a little bit, just little snippets of those verses, because when it says the oldest passed away, behold, the new has come, it's actually quoting the Old Testament. Without, there's no actual, obviously there's no actual quotes in there. So I want you to see where this is kind of coming from. It's a pretty integral part of the book by Isaiah,

and the callbacks are pretty strong. If you look, and it'll be up here, you can just look up here for a couple of verses. It's Isaiah 43, and it's just 18 and 19. It's not 16 through 19, it's just 18 and 19. And it says, remember not the former things. This is God speaking to his people. He says, remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not proceed it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Let's just look at that last part. I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. In the wilderness, when you start talking about what the wilderness is, okay, you and I, we start thinking about the wilderness and we're like, maybe we're at like Mineral Well State Park or we're, you know, like at Lake Whitney where there's a lot of trees or something. That's not this.

The wilderness was where people died. The wilderness was where people didn't know, they got lost. Israel famously got lost for 40 years. They wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. So when it says, behold, I'm doing a new thing, he's saying I'm making a way in the wilderness. I am cutting through something that seems to be impenetrable. And it's the same thing where it says, I'll make rivers in the desert. Man, these people knew what desert was. Not small time desert. Not sand trap on a golf course desert.

He said, I'm gonna make rivers come in the desert. I'm gonna put something in the middle of something else and it's gonna be like, what is this? What is God doing? And this is what God is saying he's gonna do. He's gonna do something amazing. And skip down to Isaiah 44, three through four. This is what he's talking about. He's a little bit more clear about what he's talking about. He says, for I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. And here's what he means. I will pour my spirit upon your offspring and my blessing on your descendants. They shall go up among the grass like willows by flowing streams.

Look, I realize I've just given you one New Testament verse and then I've showed you all the callbacks, but here's what I want to impress upon you. Here's what 2 Corinthians 5, 17 wants you to see this morning. Here's what we need to know as people that following Jesus Christ is nothing less, nothing less than streams in the desert. It's nothing less than a way in the wilderness. It's nothing less than you being at a point where you don't know the way out, you don't know how you're gonna get water, you don't know, you don't know. You're dead on arrival. There's no way you're getting out of the situation that you're in and when you follow Jesus it is nothing less than streams in the desert. It is nothing less than life where there was once death and more specifically not just life, not just kind of like a flower in the graveyard or something, but actual transformation.

Not just life, lowercase L, but like transformation actually being different, that your old life is remade into a brand new life. Remade in such a way that it takes, and it's so interesting, it takes all that you thought, this is how God gives life, he takes all that you thought was super interesting and significant and important and satisfying and he takes that and he's like, oh, that's cute and he gives us something, he opens us up to things that are infinitely more good, infinitely more satisfying,

infinitely more significant. And when we're talking about Jesus kind of opening us up to new life, when we are a new creation in him, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come, it's taking an old life that wasn't worth anything that we thought was pretty great and it gives us a new life that is eternally significant and worth every, every sacrifice, every single one.

You wanna line something up and you wanna say, well, is following Jesus worth this? Is it worth this sacrifice? The answer is yes every time. I don't care what you line up. It never stops. That line never quits. It's always worth following Jesus. And so today I wanna kind of look in the verses around first, second Corinthians five, 17, the verses around that and we're gonna just do a deep dive on kind of what this new life is. What are we talking about? We say new life, you know, what does it mean? And we're gonna talk about how this new life, it saves us from selfishness, it upends how we view other people, it ignites a kingdom calling and it sets our sights on an eternal hope. I wanna talk about each of these as we go so it's okay if you didn't get that list. We'll go through them slow. Look with me in second Corinthians five, 14 through 15.

And this is just a couple of verses before what we read about, therefore if anyone is in Christ he's a new creation. It says for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, okay, so this is, we're about to get to the meat here. We've concluded this and follow along here that one has died for all, therefore all have died, okay. The one that has died for all is the Lord Jesus Christ and it says therefore all have died which is kind of peculiar so we'll keep reading. Verse 15, and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Realized we're doing a lot of pronoun gaming there like it's him and for whom and all of that, okay.

Once, one has died for all, therefore all have died, verse 14. What it's trying to tell us is that Jesus has sacrificed himself on behalf of other people, okay. I realize that's very plain spoken, right, but that's just a way to kind of talk about that. Jesus died in people's place and his death saved them from dying. I realize in this verse it says therefore all have died. It's kind of a long story. Anyway, we've representatively died in Jesus so when Jesus died he died for us. Does that make sense, okay. I know it's a little weird, okay. But look at 15 it says and he died for all of that. Those who live, us, the people for whom he died, for people he died in the place of might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Right, the reason it gives us a reason that Jesus saved us from dying. And it wasn't because he really liked us

or thought we would make great Christians or we were better than other people or any other lie like that, no, no. He did it so that we could have a new life to live for the cause of Christ. He died for us to be able to have a life that we live for the cause of Christ. We live for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ did not save us to live for any other thing because whenever you stack up any other thing what else are you gonna live for? Well really the only alternative to living for the cause of Christ is living for yourself. Now you could say, you could dress it up like my career, well that's still yourself. My family, that's still you. Your legacy, that's still you. It's still selfishness. However you window dress it, it's still selfishness. The alternative of living for the cause of Christ is living for yourself. And the new life in a particular way that I'm saying here, new life saves us

from our own selfishness. This new life is a deliverance for us from our own selfishness. Because the old life that we live, man, I mean the old life, we used to think it was pretty great. Otherwise we wouldn't have lived it, okay? I was talking with Josh and Melissa Wood maybe last Sunday, maybe Sunday before. And I didn't tell them how I was gonna tell the story. And I said, hey, man, isn't kids great? Aren't kids great? Alistair's what, nine months old? 10 months old? Off by one, okay, you guys saw that L. 10 months old. And I said, man, isn't having kids great? And I said, I kinda leaned in, I was like, do you even remember what life was like before kids? And they're like, no.

Which is wild because it was only 10 months ago. And I mean, come on, it's been 10 months, but it's only been 10 months. But that is the effect that children have on people, right, on parents, is that they kinda forget what life was like before that. It's just so different. It's so significant for another life to be put into your hands and you're like, oh, okay. I can remember this distinctly. So my wife, obviously, she's pregnant with our first child and she's experiencing it much differently than I'm experiencing it. She's experiencing a baby growing inside of her. She can feel the baby kick and she can all this stuff. And so I'm dumb, okay, I'm dumb. I'm 25 years old, I have no idea what fatherhood is about to be like or how my life is about to change or anything and I'm sure people were trying to tell me how much it was gonna be different. But then, man, I remember bringing our son home

from the hospital. And in the hospital, it's still kind of quasi-weird, right? It's still like, I mean, I can see my son and I'm like, oh, this is cool, right? But then when you get home, it's less cool. It's more scary, right? Way more scary. Because you're like, oh, now we have to feed him? Like, I mean, just, it's like, now we have to actually like take care and our life is never gonna be the same. Like, it doesn't, all that stuff did not occur to me. I was, you know, I was young and dumb. But it is such a pivotal moment. It's such a turn. And it's, I'm talking about children in particular, but the same thing is true for marriage, right? Before marriage, you're concerned with your own happiness. After marriage, you're concerned with the happiness of somebody else.

You know, before kids, a lot of us, really, our biggest plans were about things we wanted. Right, before kids, we were just, we weren't thinking about like legacy. Like legacy was what old people talked about. No offense. I talk about legacy all the time. So I'm saying no offense to myself too. But the reason, the reason this is so great, the reason that being safe from yourself is just so great is because selfishness only offers brokenness.

Selfishness only breaks you. Like, you ever thought about like, why doesn't God always let us do the thing we want? Because the thing you want will kill you. That's why. You might not like die in an instant right then. I'm not talking about skydiving. I'm talking about just chasing your own significance, chasing your own self-importance. Things that you only want to do. Things that only benefit you. You're not living for anything else. You're not trying to be a benefit to anybody else. You don't really care about them compared to you. And that life only leads to brokenness. I realize that life is celebrated by athletic stars and movie stars and people that have a YouTube channel. I mean, I get it. Like, selfishness or like making your life the best, I get, I get that our world is putting that out all the time and the little tiny bit that gets out is like, hey, why don't we live for other people?

It just doesn't really have the same magnitude in our culture. We are kind of blindsided by all of this. So why doesn't God let us go after what we want? Because it would hurt us. It would not only hurt us, it would hurt those we love. It would not only hurt us and the ones we love, the ruin of it really would not ever end. Ever, ever. The selfishness when left to our own selfishness, that's the worst position to be in. And so here's a question I wanna pose to us just today, just as we're looking at this new life, is like selfishness is always something that you need to kind of keep beating back. It's like the tide, right? It always kind of rolls in eventually. And with each new opportunity that comes, each new change that happens, we do have this really active choice, like right in front of us. Are we gonna go after ourselves? And are we gonna be selfish about this,

or are we gonna serve other people? Are we gonna pray? Are we gonna let Jesus confront our selfishness, or are we just gonna take a big bite of whatever we want to? That's really our choice. And I think for some of you, you're actually, I mean, you're at the threshold, right, of making a choice, making big choices. I don't know. There's a lot of things to kind of choose from. We live in a big kind of a choice-oriented society. And so I just wanna ask, even as those choices are coming up, it's just like, what? Are you asking Jesus to confront your selfishness at all? Because if you aren't, I can almost guarantee that you are being run by it. If you are not praying and actively fighting against that selfishness, that selfish ambition, that putting yourself first, that more, more, more, more is better, and if you're not just putting it before the Lord and saying, Lord, what do you want me to do?

I just feel like I'm gonna make the selfish choice here. Help me. Help me make the choice that you want me to make. That we would no longer live for ourselves, but for Him, who for their sake died and was raised. We exchange our selfishness for His purposes. And this also affects how we see people. So first thing, it saves us from our selfishness. The next thing we're gonna see, it talks about how we view others. So look at verse 16. Second Corinthians 5, 16. It says, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer. So this, it's just talking about how we see people, how you see people. You're either gonna see people according to the flesh, or you're gonna see people as something different. And this new life upends how we view other people. C.S. Lewis has this really great quote

in The Weight of Glory. It discusses how people are essentially spiritual beings who will live forever. And here's what he says. And the whole big long quote on this is great. I'll just read this little part. He says, there are no ordinary people. Let's just sit on that for a minute. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. It is with immortals. It is immortals with whom we joke with, we work with, we marry, we snub, we exploit immoral horrors or everlasting splendors. C.S. Lewis is trying to help people understand, the person in front of you at the grocery line, the guy who cuts you off, the guy who, when you're in the long line, the guy or girl who, they speed past, they get all the way to the front of the line, they put their blinker on, that guy, that girl, okay? The one you hate or the one you are. God bless you.

Moment, moment. That person is immortal. That person's gonna live forever. That person slinging coffee for you, living forever. Those kids on your kid's soccer team, baseball team, living forever, every single one of them. The Lord has made three things eternal. God has worded in souls. Copyright Dan Hay. Okay, we had a deacon here, Dan Hay, who would always say that, and it's just a really, really good reminder. Man, we don't deal with mortals. We deal with immortals.

And if everybody's living forever, man, you don't talk to ordinary people. This might sound like I'm being dramatic. After all, I am quoting C.S. Lewis. But the people around you, they are eternal, and when you don't see them as such, when you just treat them like something else, you're the one distorting reality. You have to play kind of mental games. You have to kind of augment what's true to not treat people like they are eternal. To see people as eternal, it gives weight to conversation. It sets you in the proper mindset to care, to love, to listen. It reminds you that your choices with those people, that of all those people, have eternal meaning and consequence. You are being called into something more significant, not something less. You are being called into this thing where, if you aren't considering your actions, I mean, I just want you to think about it today,

like, what was today? What was this morning? Let's just think about this morning. With whom did you interact and how did you interact? I mean, I was driving here and there was a train. And man, let me just tell you, when I'm trying to drive here and be on time, there's a train. It makes me do one of two things. I either turn the worship music up louder and just kind of start screaming and yelling at, just because I have to concentrate on something besides that eternally slow train in front of me. Or I'm thinking about how I hate being here.

I hate all these people around me. I hate that guy. Driving the train, maybe this is too honest, but I don't have that filter on. I'm not listening to what the Lord is saying. I'm not waltzing into what the Lord wants me to view this thing as. I'm only viewing it as a selfish thing. And when you view people and it's selfish, man, they're just pawns in your game. They're not real people. Consider your own interactions. Consider your own relationships. And so 2nd Corinthians 5, 17, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The oldest passed away, behold, the new has come. This is not rhetoric. This is not flowery language. This isn't Paul being dramatic. It's in Christ, our new life completely upends our old normal life. Look at verses 18 and 19. 2nd Corinthians 5, 18 and 19 says, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us

the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. There are two things that are going on here that I want you to see. Number one is that we get a glimpse of the bigger picture, which is reconciliation. Big banner, big idea, lot of things happening. Reconciliation, okay? This is what Jesus accomplished on the cross. He made a way for us to be reconciled in. Because of Jesus, our sins, our trespasses are not counted against us. Because of Jesus, God receives repentant sinners with open arms. God is able, because of the cross of Christ, that made a way for God to receive people, sinners, enemies, as His children. God is reconciling people to Himself, okay? But lest we think that whole kingdom program, lest we think that reconciliation machine

that is happening, right, God is just continuing to reconcile people, lest we think that ends with us, this new life ignites a kingdom calling. It ignites a kingdom calling. You see it there with a ministry of reconciliation, right? He gave us, end of 18, He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. 19, and the end of that, entrusting to us with the message of reconciliation, that this new life that we have does not end with us. It pushes us into other people's lives. And this is not a to-do list that God hands to us because we follow Jesus somehow. It wasn't because, oh, okay, yeah, now you're a Christian now, now you gotta do this. Pay your taxes. It is something that God ignites in you. Look at the next verse, verse 20, 2 Corinthians 5, 20. It says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God, making His appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ,

be reconciled to God. I want you to look at the middle part with that. God, making His appeal through us. This isn't God providing logic to us. This isn't God saying, oh, you see how this makes sense? Okay, well then convince other people it makes sense. No, no, this is God personally making His appeal through us. How? It's because the old has passed away and the new has come. That includes your heart, your motivation, how you see people. That is being made new on the inside and a new heart is coming. Before, before that happened, you just saw people as pawns in your game. You saw people as tools for your own advancement. You saw people as obstacles like I did when I was waiting for the train. All these people are in my way and that's all you can see in your old life whenever you are subject to selfishness. That's all that people are. It's just stuff in your way or stuff you can use or stuff to ignore.

This new life, it gives you a compassionate heart, a desire to reconcile. Look, I know some of you became, most of you I believe became Christians when you were very young. But something that does happen to people, right, is that whenever they become a Christian and if they're kind of aware of the differences, one of the things that they almost always say when they come to Christ as adults, one of the things they always say is, I really care for people now. That sounds silly almost. I mean, it's like, did you not care about people before? The conversation usually goes, no, no, no, I just care, I really care about people now. Like, I mean, I would watch something on, I would watch something happen and I'd walk with a friend, they had cancer or they lost a parent or whatever. I kind of, I cared about them, right? I helped them out. They had feelings, right? But something has changed.

When I started following Jesus, it's more, I cared not just that they were having a bad time or having a good time, whatever. No, no, no, I cared for their eternal soul. I cared not only what was happening to them, but I cared how God was forming their heart in that process. I didn't just care that they were having a good week or a bad week. I cared that God was using that good week or bad week to make them into his likeness, to reveal himself to them. When people call me or talk to me and ask me to pray for somebody, pray for somebody else, had that happened this week, hey, so, you know, Drew, my coworker has found out she has cancer. And something I will always say on that, and I believe this to my core, part of my prayer is for that, like obviously, I don't want the person to have cancer. We pray for the cancer to leave the person, obviously. Okay, we are praying for that.

But what are we also praying on the same level, at the same pace? We're praying, God, would you use that cancer to reveal yourself to everybody involved? Would you help the person, not only the person who has cancer, but the person that are taking care of that person that has cancer, the kids that are affected by that cancer? We pray for all of those people to see your glory in the midst of somebody having cancer. And do you know what kind of crazy, sadistic, weird prayer that would be if it were untrue? But it's true. It's true.

That's what we get to live in. We don't have to look at cancer and go like, oh, I'm just glad it's not me. We don't have to look at like job loss and go, oh, I mean, that's bad, but, hmm. I mean, I'm glad it wouldn't be. That we can look at people that are going through that and say, you know what? If somebody's going through that, the Lord is working. The Lord is doing something in that situation. The Lord wants to speak to somebody. The Lord's gonna reveal himself. The Lord is working something out that we can't see, and we can trust him for that. I think back to the year 2023. The year 2023 was a very difficult year for our church. We had, every deacon,

every deacon except for one had a family member die or get gravely ill. I lost my stepdad that year. We had multiple medical emergencies just among our leadership that year. We had people lose sons that year. People lose dads, stepdads. People receive a cancer diagnosis that year. This is all just among our leadership. Okay, now, anybody looking from the outside, I kind of talk to them about it. Anybody looking from the outside would look at that and go, do you guys do something wrong? First of all, it's a super callous thing to say. So, I would not laugh and be like, no, stop it. I'd be like, shut up. But, when they would just kind of look at me, and I could tell, I could tell. Like, for some people, they'd look at that and they'd go, man, I'm just, that's horrible. I'm so glad that's not me. And some people would be able to look at that and go, man, that's horrible, it's awful.

Man, I know the Lord's doing something in the midst of that. And it doesn't erase it. It doesn't make the pain better. It doesn't, somehow, like, we're supposed to prance around like everything's fine after that. That's not the point of that, but it is to say that our hope cuts all the way through like a stream in the desert, like a way in the wilderness, whenever we receive the diagnosis, whenever we have the job lost, whenever we lose the family member, whenever we lose, when we lose on that level, it is not the end. We aren't stuck in the wilderness or the desert. We aren't there. We're gonna feel it, man. It's gonna be hard. But the Lord says, we are new creations, and because of that, He is making a way through and we can trust that. Then not just trust that to like, you know, stitch it on a pillow or hang it as wall art in our house. We can actually like trust it when we're going through it.

We can trust it to encourage each other with it. We can hang our lives on it. Everything that we hold dear, we can hang on that. God is igniting something in us. God has ignited something in us. God is fanning that thing into flame. This new, compassionate heart, this desire to see people that are going through it, because nobody's not going through it, these people that are going through it, to be reconciled to God. How are they gonna do that? The Lord God in heaven, He ran through all the list of all the things that would be a really good idea. I swear to you, He did. He considered every option, and you know what the best option He came up with? You know the thing that He really wants to do? He wants to take people that are reconciled and make them ministers of reconciliation. That's not just like a good idea. That's not giving you a to-do list. That is a holy mandate that He gives you a heart for.

And if you don't, man worry. First John 4:20 says, if anyone says I love God and hates His brother, He's a liar. Not mistaken? Not having a bad day, a liar. For He who does not love His brother, whom He has seen, cannot love God, whom He has not seen. In this new life, Jesus has given us this glimpse of the bigger picture of reconciliation. God is opening a door and holding it open so that people, sinners, can be reconciled. The same kind of sinner you were, same kind of sinner I am, God is holding that door open and saying, I wanna reconcile people to myself. These eternal souls that we mingle with every day. In Christ, we should be painfully aware that our life is short, that we have a limited timeframe. It says in Hebrews, today is the day of salvation. Today is the opportunity for repentance, now. That's why it says in that verse, be reconciled to God. We implore you, as ambassadors for Jesus Christ,

be reconciled to God. This new life, it doesn't just come with benefits, it comes with a calling. It ignites our hearts actually with this kingdom calling and that makes anything outside of eternity feel small. Last verse that I wanna look at, 2 Corinthians 5 21, it says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

It says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so Jesus became sin for you and me. He's on the cross and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus became sin for us. Why? So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This new life, it sets our sights on an eternal hope. That you and I might become the righteousness of God.

Colossians 3, one through two kind of carries this same thing. It says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Sometimes, sometimes we read that verse and we just think, okay, I can't think about these things, I gotta think about these things. It becomes a rule almost instantly. Does that make sense? It becomes something, okay, if I do this I'm bad, if I do this I'm good. Okay, what that is talking about is saying that Jesus has made a way for you to cast your eyes and your heart and your whole life to be cast upon in eternal hope of righteousness, of being made into the Lord's image, of being on this journey with him where other people are being reconciled to God. This is when we set our sights on things that are above.

We start to deal with reality. If we keep our sights on things that are on earth, it will continue to trick us. We will continue to spin. We will continue to kind of loop back into selfishness deeper and deeper and deeper. But here we have an open invitation to deal in eternity. Because in Christ, we are set free from our old life. We are set free from selfishness. We are free to view people differently. We are free to have this kingdom call and this ignited heart that goes along with it. And in Christ, God wants to remake you into the righteousness of God. God wants to take the core parts of you that identify you, that you like, that you think are really cool, and he wants to say, I got something better.

I got something better, better than you think, better than you can imagine. I've got a different thing for you. Countless stories, countless stories of people working a job, going down this trail, down this career path. Their whole life was kind of pointed in this direction, and that direction was ultimately selfish. It was to make a lot of money, to be famous, to whatever, right? Fulfill kind of these things. I wanna do these things because I think these things are gonna make me happy. Period. That's it. And inevitably, when they start following Christ and when they actually say, okay, I'm gonna do what the Lord wants me to do, it's when you replace the dream in front of it, all the actions change too.

In other words, your life isn't going to look the same, not because you're going through this behavior modification, not because you're doing good things and not doing bad things, but it's because the dream in front of you has been replaced. Do you understand the power of that? If all your hope is to make money and then that is replaced, to all your hope is to see people reconciled to God, you think that's gonna change your weekend plans? Yeah. You think it's gonna change how you spend money? Yeah. You think that's gonna change how you think about retirement? Yeah, it should. It does. If Jesus has changed you, we don't need to get nervous. We don't need to make the mistake of, this is something that we have to live up to, that we have to look good for. That's not what this is for. This is for us to understand that Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, has made your life different,

has put a new dream in front of you, has upended everything from how you see people to how you raise your kids, to how you spend money, to how you vacation in the summer, to all these things. He's changed all that by giving you a new dream. That dream is that you are fundamentally at your core, you are a minister of reconciliation. Behold, the old has passed and the new has come. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you for being our new, our new life, our new hope. Thank you for doing all of these things in us, for us, for our benefit. Things that we normally would be nervous about, or afraid of, or feel like we have to live up to you, but Lord, you've delivered us from that. You've lived up to it for us. You've made a way. You've made a way in the wilderness. You've made streams in the desert. Lord, help us to see that, trust you, follow you in that. Help us to walk into the thing that looks terrible,

into the thing that looks like wilderness, or it looks like pain, or it looks like struggle. Help us to willfully walk into that knowing, trusting that you're gonna come through on the other side. Trusting that you have a plan in the midst of it. Lord, I pray that you would encourage our hearts today, as it is difficult to do this consistently, as it's difficult to remember the joy of our salvation. Lord, remind us of these things.

Help us to throw in even more with you on these things. Help us to cooperate even more in this new life that you are inviting us into, that you are making, building in us. It's your name that we pray.