It's great to be back in Dartmouth and really appreciate the opportunity to come and see you all again. A number of folks mentioned to me at the break that you've been praying for us and sometimes every day. We really do appreciate that. It's a great encouragement to us.
It never ceases to amaze me what the Lord is doing through his people. It helps to answer the question why. In Inverness, we have seen just the Lord working. This past summer, the Lord filled us up to overflowing.
We were averaging about 45 or plus people every Sunday and filling the space. The last few weeks the numbers are off a little bit, but that's normal. But the Lord has continued to add new visitors and people coming all the time. You just see this positive result and you wonder why.
It's because of the people of the Lord in prayer. We need to remember that. We need to call upon the Lord and ask him to do a work that only he can do. Last Sunday I was praying ahead of the meeting and just saying, you would bring people today and encourage people to come.
People have been putting it off and people who might not come and bring someone new. We had a couple. I've never seen them before. I showed up out of the blue.
I don't take those things as random happenstances. I take them as answers to prayer. We bless the Lord for what's going on in Inverness. The Lord has added to our numbers.
He's given us lots of people on the edges. What I like to say is we have a lot of folks that we're involved with in their lives. They're not yet saved. They're not yet coming out.
They're kind of there on the edge, if you will. They're close to us. Some of them don't always, some of them don't come, but sometimes they will listen to a message that we post online. I try to post most of my messages on the website and people will go and listen to those, even though they don't necessarily come out.
We're thankful for what the Lord has done. We've had a lot of support this year from teams from the United States that have come. Through the summer we were able to do a number of projects in the town and just really bless people's lives. I really think in the day in which we live, we're very much in a postmodern candidate.
We're in a candidate that is very different than the one that I grew up in. People don't have a church background so much anymore. They don't know what we're talking about. As you know, Christians are viewed increasingly with hostility in the culture.
We're looked at as bigoted people. There's a lot of negative things out there. I think it's increasingly important that we really demonstrate the proof of a transformed life through the way that we enter other people's lives and love them in the Lord's name and create the opportunities to share with them. We're talking about doing good works, if you will, in our communities and to other people in need, and impacting people's lives in such a way that they will say, why?
Why do you do that? Then we answer the question, why? When you love somebody the way that Christ loves, they will always ask you why. Because people today are usually in it for something.
They want to get something out of it in return. When you're not doing that and you're blessing people, they are really quite blown away by what you're doing. We're thankful the Lord has given us partners such as yourselves. We thank you so much for your partnership with us.
That enable us to reach this town in practical ways and with the gospel. It's getting noticed. We have a good reputation in town. Thank the Lord.
As I mentioned before, we live in a Catholic town and many of our Catholic friends and neighbors are very appreciative of the work that we do in the town. In fact, I had several of them mention that to me this summer. Neighbors. They're very aware of what we're doing in the town.
That's just a very good thing. We can be bold with our faith too. We'll talk a little bit about this for giving you. I will get to the word.
We're going to be in Psalm 130 this morning. We can be bold in our faith and we can share with people and we can take the opportunity. Especially as you've built relationship, I'll share a very quick story with you. This summer, a colleague of mine, another believer of Chasana, his name, he's been preaching up in Cape Breton for 30, 40 years up and down the coast.
He's well known to a lot of people. We were visiting a man in my town one day and it wasn't going well. It wasn't going well at all. This lady comes across from her yard to this gentleman.
He made a very negative comment about us. When she heard that we were representatives of Jesus, she says, I need Jesus. We're in our ears, of course. She's not perking up.
She introduces herself and starts to talk about the fact that she has this daughter that's addicted to drugs, hard addiction. She's been trying to get in contact with a guy named Pierre Chasana. That's the guy he was with me. Pierre lives about an hour up the coast.
We don't often spend time together in our town. What had happened was because of her daughter's addiction, some friends of friends had said to her, look, I know this guy at Pierre and he might be able to help you. Maybe those Christians can help your daughter in some way. She was hoping to contact and the Lord took us there that day.
Then we found out that her daughter was actually in the house and her name is Rhonda. About 30 years of age. Actually, we have people in our church who are related to them and we had literally been praying for Rhonda the week before because she was in hospital in detox in our town. We never met her before.
I was able to share with Roseanne her mother. It's like, man, we've been praying for your daughter. She was so thankful. She's a home now.
Would you like to come meet her? She warned us. She says, I got to warn you. She can be tough.
She can say things. No problem. We go in the house and there's Rhonda and she's sitting there and her husband is there. They've been separated for quite some time because of the drug addiction.
We just go in there and we just start chatting with them. I just went up to Rhonda and she was sitting there and I said, Rhonda, I want you to know. I said, you've never met us before. I said, but we've been praying for you.
We're praying for you as an entire church last Sunday. At this point, she's looking at me like, you know, because she thinks we're very weird. Her mother was very thankful. Not a Christian lady, but very thankful that we would think.
As we were there, we just said, you know what, can we pray with you guys? Her husband, who's not a Christian, says, you know what Rhonda? I think we should pray with these men. We gathered in a circle and held hands and just prayed for them.
I just told Rhonda, I said, it's okay. It seems weird to you, but it's okay. We just love you. We can be bold with people and just tell them that we love them and we want to pray with them.
I encourage you. J. Nicholson, some of you have heard of him. He says, you know, when you're going around and meeting people, try this.
He says, just introduce yourself and say I'm a Christian and I believe in the power of prayer, can I pray for you? And see what doors that can open, beloved. We have a short time until the Lord comes. Let us not hold back, but let us share.
We'll talk about that a little bit. Here's we go. But anyway, forgive me. I just want to give you a brief update.
Ministry in Inverness is going, well, please come and visit us. Stay with us. We'd love for you to come and see what's going on. And so thank you for your partnership in the Gospel.
We're going to be in Psalm 130. Before we do that, let's ask for the Lord's help. Father God, we just thank you this morning for who you are. And just thank you, Lord, for the privilege to know you today.
And Lord, just to be together for a few minutes. Oh, God, we don't have a lot of time, but we thank you for your word. Thank you for your truth, Lord. Pray that you would speak to us now, Lord, that you would teach us that we'd hear your voice.
And so are we asked for your blessing and for your help, which we need? And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. And I forgive me.
As you know, those of you who know me, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a bloodwring idiot. Forgive me, I'll try to keep control of my emotions. Psalm 130, let's go there. So I'm 130, a song of a sence.
Out of the depths I called to you, Lord, Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for help. Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities, Lord, who can stand? But with you, there is forgiveness so that you may be revered.
I wait for the Lord, I wait and put my hope in his word. I wait for the Lord more than watching, more than watching, more than watching, more than watching. Four the morning Israel put your hope in the Lord for there is faithful love with the Lord with the Lord and with him is redemption and abundance and he will redeem Israel from all its iniquities. Have you ever had that point in your life or even as a Christian?
You're in deep distress. You're calling out to God and you're wondering, does he hear me? Is he listening? Is he aware of what is going on?
I have for sure been in those places where you're facing something that's very difficult in life and you're really struggling and you're crying out to God from the depths and sometimes we wonder what is going on with all of this? Is the Lord hearing me? Does he care? Sometimes we doubt our standing with the Lord.
We doubt our relationship with him. We doubt what he's doing or not doing in our life. We know the truth of what the word says about our position in Christ but we doubt it in reality because of what's going on. And that's a real thing.
You know, Jesus himself would cry from the cross as we read, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? And that's from Psalm 22, a beautiful psalm, you know, of we say a messianic psalmist on the point to Christ to his sorrows on the cross. He would definitely cry that from the cross as he felt that separation from God as he felt the weight of our sin upon him. And yet we read in another place that in John 1142, Jesus says, I know that you always hear me.
And so we have this kind of under him where the Lord says to his father, I know that you always hear me. Now he's on the cross and he's crying out, why are you abandoned me? Could the Lord have been forsaken? What about myself?
Does God really hear us when we cry? And if so, how will he respond to me? Well, you know, our song is a psalm of a sense. And there's 15 of these psalms in the Psalter.
And the psalm of a sense was used by the people of the Lord as they went up to worship the Lord into the presence of the Lord. And as they would either climb the steps under the temple mounters, they would go up to Jerusalem, they would use these psalms as they prepared themselves to go into God's presence. They were used to go up into the presence. Interesting to me that here in verses one and two, we have this cry of repentance, if you will, coming from the psalmist.
It's a cry of repentance in verse one and two, out of the depth, I call to you, Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for help. There's almost a plea of desperation here, if you will. He's calling from the depths.
As we think of the depths, we might think of Jonah, you know, swallowed by a great fish in the depths of the sea and out of that very deep place. He also cries out to God. From a deep and a dark place, a place of terror, a place of fright. There's a book that came out a few years ago called the Case for Grace by Lee Strobel.
You've never had a chance to read it, I would highly recommend it. In the book, Lee highlights the, I don't know, five or six stories of how the Lord just did amazing things in people's lives. Just incredible stories of God's grace, the Case for Grace, it's called. In this book, he highlights the story of a man called Cody Huff.
Cody was a man who lived in the southwestern United States in Las Vegas. He was a nurse by trade. He had a good job. He was well-educated.
Cody, you know, he wanted stuff. He wanted more toys than his salary combined. He began to sell drugs, hard drugs. He never used them.
He just sold them. He was doing this on the side as well as being a nurse. He's selling drugs. Take a long story short, he gets to the point where one day he decides to try those drugs and very shortly thereafter, addiction followed and he lost his job, he lost his family, he lost his relationships, he lost everything.
We fast forward a few years and we find Cody behind, you know, in the back alleys behind the restaurants where the trash bins are and he's in one of those dumpsters. The thought came to him. He says, Cody, the reason you're in the trash can is because you are trash. That's why.
Here's what he would say. This is a quote. He says, I'm eating out of garbage cans. I'm sleeping in the dirt.
I'm filthy and I stink and I'm starving to death. There's no way out. Oh God, there's no future. There is no hope.
It's his quote. Now he wasn't a believer. He wasn't crying out to God for an answer. He was crying out to God to blame him.
But I want to share that story with you to highlight the depths. This is about as low as you can go. And even as Christians sometimes we might not be in this exact situation, but we go through deep waters and we cry out to God from the depths. Have you ever been there?
The Apostle Paul was. We read in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 that he was so low that he despaired even of life. We don't know what the situation was. He doesn't tell us.
He says, but we were burdened beyond measure. Trouble which came to us in Asia. We were burdened beyond measure above strength so that we despaired even of life. Paul knew even as the apostle of God what it was to cry out to God from the depths.
A place of despair, a place of a terrible situation. And here's Paul struggling with the same thing. It's common for us. We go through these at times.
That's why I love the Psalms. Because in the Psalms we see this expressed many times as the Psalmist cries out to God and doesn't understand what's going on. That's a normal human experience. There was a time when I was a younger Christian where I struggled with this and I felt I couldn't ever even be honest with God about those kinds of things because that wouldn't be right.
But you know God knows our hearts. And we can't hide anything from him anyway. And one thing we certainly learn from the Psalms is what we want to do is articulate this expression in the presence of the Lord as we go up to him. Not apart from him as Cody did.
And so we're there. And we can go up towards the Lord even in the midst of distress. That's what the psalmist is doing. He's ascending up to the presence of the Lord in the midst of his distress.
And so we come to verses 3 and 4. He says, Lord, if you kept an account of inequities, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness so that you may be revered. We began with a cry of repentance and now we have a cry of forgiveness.
God has hurt. God has hurt him. You know, Cody, this man Cody Hough that we're talking about, he kind of got to the point where one day he was begging for money in the supermarket parking lot. Just hoping to get a few dollars to get some drugs.
And that particular day, a Christian lady was there in a car that he knocked on her window. And she didn't give him any money, but she gave him an invitation to church. And the reason she did that is that her church in Las Vegas, they had a ministry to homeless people. And on Saturdays they would bring them in, give them a clean change of clothes, let them shower, give them a hot meal and share the gospel.
It was really practical ministry to homeless drug addicts. And so she said, I'd like you to come. We have this going on Saturday. And please come and we'll have something for you there.
And so, you know, he figured, well, you know, I'll hopefully get something out of it. So he went, he wasn't really interested in spiritual things, but he shows up at this church. And as he's there, there's a young woman in the church, a younger lady who just saw him and just felt a burden of the Lord to go give him a hug. And she's getting up to him, picture this right now.
Here's a homeless guy, a drug addict who lives in trash cans, how he smells, has a head of bath and he can't even remember when. And he's like revolted, he's like, get away from me, just get away from me, do not come near me because he's very self-conscious of his condition. And so he's pushing her away and she just insists. Just, no, I thought just the Lord wants me to give you a hug.
And as she does that, the love of God breaks through. And he gets this notion that he can be loved. And here's what he says. As he hears the message of the gospel that day, he says, Jesus cannot love me because I'm homeless.
He cannot love me. I'm an addict. I'm a bad man. He can't love me.
I'm beyond the grace of God. And you know, sometimes that even as a Christian, I can get to that place. And my struggle with sin and my struggle with the trials of life, the difficulties of life, I can say, well, maybe I've gone too far this time. Maybe I'm beyond the grace of God.
We struggle with that. Our acceptance with God and Cody did. He was beyond forgiveness. But the Psalmist says, Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities who could stand, that's true.
If God were to hold our sins against us, and by the way, here's the negative part of the message that we don't like to hear. We're all sinners this morning. All mankind, all have sinned, all have fallen short of God's glory. And I don't know what your issue is.
And you don't know what mine has been. But here's the truth of the matter that every one of us men, women and children have sinned against God. And we stand condemned. If you kept an account, Lord, who could stand?
We have no standing with God because of our sin. But there's forgiveness with you that you may be revered. Praise the Lord. This is the good news.
Yes, God is holy. Yes, he will judge, but our God is the God of love and of grace and mercy. He's calling people to himself in grace. We can find forgiveness with the Lord.
And because of that, he could be revered. That's good news. And Cody found that truth that day as he heard the gospel. It was shortly thereafter that he would fall to his knees in the park and receive Christ as his Savior.
And he could join with this psalmist. There is forgiveness with the Lord. He found forgiveness. Do we realize our condition?
Are you here this morning? Thinking that you can make your acceptance with God because you're a good person or because you go to church or because you do good work or you give in the offering plate, I'm telling you that will not get you standing with God. Cody Hough found grace and forgiveness. And the Lord in his particular case gave him immediate deliverance from a hard drug addiction.
And I know that doesn't happen for everybody, but it did for Cody. God heard him. And God hears us and we cry to him and distress us his children. We are never forsaken.
We are never out of his earshot. He knows exactly what's going on. He's intimately aware of it. And he cares deeply for what's going on.
But you know what, friends, as we understand the forgiveness of God, that leads us into worship. We started with that glorious truth that John shared about the truth of the cross, of the work of Christ. And that leads us into worship because there is forgiveness with you. You may be revered.
We worship the Lord because of who he is, because of what he has done. Let's move on to verses five and six. I wait for the Lord. I wait and put my hope in his word.
I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. Here we have a cry of patience. We started with a cry of repentance.
Then we had the cry of forgiveness. Now we have a cry of patience. We're resting in God's mercy and grace. And as I think of this patience, this waiting on the Lord, which can be so hard for us, because I don't know about you, but when I'm asking the Lord for an answer, like I want the answer, like, no.
Or really soon from now, like not three weeks from now or six months from now. Patience, I waited on the Lord. Think of King David, for those of you that know your Old Testament. Think of David.
Here's a man who when he was a young man was brought in in front of his family and anointed as king by Samuel. And from there, what happens? I mean, he's anointed by God as king. For years, he would not see that come to pass.
He would become a servant of Saul. And eventually, he would be chasing hunted for years and years and years on the run. Chasing through the mountains, living in caves in the desert. Never realizing his potential.
He knew the Lord. He knew what God had said about him. And there were several times when Saul, King Saul, was put within his power to take his life. There was a time when David was in a cave and Saul happened to come into the same cave and David could have stabbed him right there and gotten rid of his problem.
Many times, and David refused repeatedly to take the matters into his own hands, saying, I will not lift my hand against God's king. Yes, the Lord has anointed me. I will leave that with him and in his time and in his way. In the meantime, I will have to live a life of difficulty.
The Christian life is a dangerous life in terms of our, as we face the world, increasingly so in the days in which we live. It is not an easy thing to be identified with Christ in 2018. We face ridicule for sure and increasingly persecution. It just keeps going in that door.
This is the dangerous life. This is not the easy life. The easy life is to go with the crowd. The dead fish and the river just flows down the river.
That is easy. No resistance. When we identify with Christ and we stand for what he stands for, well, that is an entirely different matter. The world is constantly trying to force the church into conformity with its ways.
And we stand against that. And even though we do so with love and grace, they hate us for it. This is the dangerous life. David's life, even though he knows the Lord, he's faithful to the Lord, he's waiting on the Lord, he's called into a life of living on the run for many years.
Nonetheless he waits. He's patient. And we need to be careful to not take matters into our own hands as we deal with our difficulties in life but to wait on the Lord, to understand that he is a forgiving God, to understand that he hears us, to understand that he has promised us that he will never leave us, he will never forsake us. And even though it might seem very dark at this very moment, I'm going to trust in him no matter what that he's going to do something here and leave it with him and be faithful to him as David was.
And we need to wait on the Lord for every situation in life without rushing into it. I don't know about you but oftentimes I think I can handle this. I don't really need to bring this before the Lord. I know what to do here.
But we want to wait patiently on the Lord. And he says, it's like waiting for the morning and he repeats this twice. Like watchman waiting for the morning. There's an eager anticipation.
It's not like a, oh well, the Lord will get around to it someday. Oh no, it's like I'm expecting. I'm living with expectation. Eager expectation, he's going to do something here.
Even though it might take a while, he's going to do it. And these watchman were waiting for the morning. You know what you read in the book of Acts, right? When Paul was shipwrecked.
You might remember that. You remember trying to keep the ship afloat and they're just wishing for the morning. Hoping that the daylight comes. I remember some of you may know the Baglow Brothers over in Charlottown.
They were fishermen and two or three years ago they were fishing tuna. And the tuna kind of moved off shore over to our way over in Cape Rotten. And so they headed out from P.E.I. early in the darkness and had it straight across from Abu.
And I was talking to Aaron and he says, man, I'm telling you man, like the winds. He says, once we got past East Point, he says, we were wishing for daylight. Because you know, it's a lot easier to navigate. It's a lot easier to deal with things in the daylight.
I used to hunt dogs. You know, I go out at three to three o'clock in the morning. I would set up my decoys. I would have everything just perfect, you know.
And I'd be in there with my gun and my coffee. And I'm just waiting for that first ray of light so I can shoot a duck. That's the idea here. Eager anticipation, waiting for the morning, expecting that God is going to do something.
And look what it leads to in verses seven and eight. Israel, put your hope in the Lord for there is faithful love with the Lord. And with him is redemption and abundance and he will redeem Israel from all its iniquities. God hears us friends.
God forgives. He forgives all who come to him. You know, the Lord Jesus never turned anyone away. He never came to him for forgiveness.
God is merciful and long suffering to all who come to him by faith. But God also redeems. And that's what we see here. God delivered Cody Ha from a life of terrible hard drug addiction.
You know, today that man Cody, he's a pastor in Las Vegas and he runs a ministry to homeless drug addicts on the streets of Las Vegas. That is redemption. That is God taking someone who had no hope and turning everything around. And for us, especially, you know the Lord, how much more will the Lord not do something in our life as we cry out to him?
And we think about the reduction, redemption that he brings. I remember the first year we were in Inverness, we met on Sunday nights for the first year at the fire hall. And, you know, we struggled with a lot of alcoholism in our town. It's a big problem.
And there's a man walking down the street, his name is Michael, and he's kind of well known in town. And one of our guys yells across the street, hey, Michael, you want to come in here and get happy? Well, he thought, he thought, oh, they got drinks over there. So we were about half an hour before we were going to start.
He comes over and he finds out it's a bunch of Christians. Anyways, I'm sharing with him a little bit about the love of God. He was like, Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark. And he was kind of half drunk that night.
He says, you have no idea who I am. You have no idea what I have done. I've been to prison. And at this point, I've got a big smile on my face because I just couldn't help.
I'm just waiting for my chance to speak. And he's kind of looking at me. He's smiling. And I said, Michael, it doesn't matter.
I've got news for you, friend. I don't care how many times you've been in prison or I don't care what you've done. I said, there's forgiveness in Christ. And you can be forgiven too.
There's hope. There's redemption with the Lord. There's nobody beyond the grace of God. And here he has this cry of hope.
And he's saying, Israel, put your hope in the Lord. There's faithful love with him. And he's got redemption in abundance. And he's going to redeem Israel from all of its inequities.
You know, there's the hope for us. You know, take Israel, right? A nation who knew the Lord was entrusted with the Word of God, had the very presence of God with him. And what do they do?
They turn against him and against him and against him and against him constantly for hundreds of years. It's a terrible story. And I'm not here pointing fingers of that nation. That nation reflects our hearts as the people of God who know the Lord consistently turn away from him.
And God would bring them into judgment. But look at what the prophet says. He will yet redeem Israel from all its inequities. If that is true for a nation like that who rejects the Lord who disobeys who rebels, then I have hope.
You have hope as well. No matter where you are in your life, whether Christian or not this morning, there's hope for you in Christ. It's seen in the life of Cody Hoff. It's seen in the nation of Israel.
And we look forward to that day when the Scriptures proclaim that when the Lord Jesus returns, all Israel shall be saved as they see the one whom they have pierced. And they mourn for him. We do not need to fear that God is unaware of our situation. We can stop being afraid.
We can stop wondering, does God hear me? Oh, yes, he does. No matter what we've done, no matter how desperate our situation, we can count on God's faithful love. Jesus certainly bore the penalty of our sin on that cross.
And we pose that question at the beginning today of his cry to the Lord, why have you forsaken me? Has he hung there? Has he felt that separation from God? Has he felt that aloneness for the first time in his existence?
One who is one with a father. One who has existed with the Father from eternity past. Who always does what pleases the Father. The one whom the Father says, this is my beloved son.
Hear him. The apple of God's eye. He's hanging there on the cross. And the Scriptures use incredible language and say that God made him to be sin.
Who knew knows him? That we might become the righteousness of God. You're here this morning and you're thinking to yourself, Mark, I can't be forgiven. You don't understand what I've done in my life.
I've got good news for you. Yes, you can. Because Jesus took your place on that cross. He took my place.
And I'm not standing before you today having confidence in hope in the Lord because I'm a good person. It's not like God looked down from heaven and said, oh, there's Mark. Isn't he such a nice guy? He's doing lots of things for me.
I think he's worthy of salvation. No. I am a sinner like everyone else. And it doesn't matter.
But because Jesus took my place and God punished him in my place and he did that willingly by the way. He wasn't forced to do that. He paid the penalty. It's like this.
And I noticed a lot of police last night on the Lawrence Town Road. That's obviously a place you got to watch your speed, right? And I'm doing a hundred down there and the cops pull me over and they give me a $300 fine. And I go before the judge and I can't pay it.
And just at that very moment, I'm like, I'm sorry, your honor. I can't pay the fine. John Wells walks in the door and he says, I'll pay that for that guy. That's what Jesus does for us on the cross.
He pays the penalty for our sin. The Bible says that the result of sin is death. Separation from God. But Jesus takes that on himself as he does that.
He feels that separation that alone is from God. It's God makes him to become sin for us as he punishes his own son so that we can go free by faith. And we say, Lord, I'm sorry for what I've done. I repent.
I turn to you. I turn to you. And in that moment, we receive the forgiveness of God, the redemption of God, the joy and the peace of God forevermore, a child of God. And that doesn't mean that from that point forward, our life will just be perfect and rosy.
No, it's a dangerous life. It's a life of faith and of struggle, but it's a life with the Lord, of his peace, of his joy of knowing that my sins are forgiven, that there's hope for me. And you know, in that very song that we quoted, you know, that Jesus quotes Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You keep reading down that song.
And it says this, it said, you answered me and I will praise you. And three days later, Jesus dies on that cross. He goes into the grave, is payment for sin and God accepts that sacrifice and he raises them from the dead on the third day. And today he's with the Father success in every way, the payment of sin for you and for me.
We have hope. God hears, God forgives, God redeems us. And as the Lord's people, when we face those struggles in life and we're dealing with sin in our life and we're dealing with the temptations of life, the trials of life that the Lord allows us to walk through with him, he is there. He hears.
He forgives, he redeems. We hope in him because of that. Because of what Jesus did for me and for you on that cross, we never have to be in that position to say, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because he never will.
That's his promise. You know, relationships in this life, as good as they can be. And as we hope for them to be permanent, we know that they aren't always permanent sometimes human relationships break down. That's a sad testimony of our experience.
But Jesus says, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. And that is one we can count on for now and for all of eternity. May the Lord encourage us today to call upon his name. Father, we bless you this morning for who you are.
You are a God who hears. You are God who forgives. You are God who redeems. Lord, we bless you.
Lord, for the mercy that you have shown us. Lord, we thank you that you have provided an answer for the problem of the sin in our life. Lord, for the hopeless and despair we feel. And even as your children, Lord, at times we struggle.
Oh, God, you know very well. But Lord, your word says to cast all care on you because you care for us. And so, Father, I just pray that you would unburden hearts this morning. Lord, that if there is anyone here that doesn't know you, oh, God, that they would just see this glorious truth, that Lord, they can be forgiven and restored.
Lord, and I pray for your people that we have encouraged. Oh, God, to know that you hear us, to wait patiently for you, to know that you are at work, and to know that you are good in our lives. Lord, we bless you. That you have given us so much hope.
Lord, there is a future hope. Lord, even for Israel, we thank you for that. And for each one of us here today. So, Lord, help us to live in the joy of the Lord today, which is our strength, though, God.
And give us grace, Lord, for we need you. Lord, we bless you. And thank you for our time together. Lord, we also want to thank you now for our time of fellowship we can enjoy.
And for the food that you have provided, Lord, all that you bless us with, Lord, we give you thanks. And we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. So, as we may as...