But beloved, this morning, I would ask you to, once again, grab your copy of God's Word and turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 4, that all-familiar book that we have been in for the past 23 weeks. We're going to be focusing particularly on verses 12 through 16 this morning. If you're using the Bible in the chair in front of you, our passage can be found on page 955, so it'll be way toward the back. It's 955. Now as you're turning there, I want to remind you of the purpose behind Peter's writing this letter and especially these five verses to the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. He is writing to these churches who are experiencing fiery trials. They are living under this Roman citizenship. These Romans that these churches are having these bad days on top of bad days on top of bad days. That is the context of this letter. And so some of those bad days were actually caused because they were Christians. There was persecution that was coming their way. There was insult. They were getting fired from their jobs. The society and the culture around them hated Christianity because there was this new Lord that was not the Caesar, and there was this new Savior that was not the father of the household, but they were worshiping Jesus instead and being persecuted for it. And then the flip side to another aspect of their suffering comes from the fact that they are just human beings living in a fallen world and they too, just like us, they experience stressed out marriages. They too just like us feel the tension of government officials. They too just like us have family feuds that are going on that makes Thanksgiving not very Thanksgiving full. They have the same struggles that we had back then and we have them today. They're just wearing tunics and sandals and you know we're wearing jeans and flannels It is the same struggle that they have as being a human being. And so my brothers and sisters, as I read our text this morning, I want you to have this thought in the back of your mind. I want you to put this deep in the back of your mind as Peter is writing this word and these letters to these people. He's writing so that they would be comforted. He is writing so these struggling, suffering, fiery, trial-engaging church members are being pushed and pointed toward Jesus, even while they are suffering for the sake of Jesus, or they are suffering because of the common frailties of this world as a Christian. So all of you here in this room, if you have experienced, if you are experiencing or you will experience any sort of suffering or trial in your life because you're a Christian or because you have a pulse, I want you to know that these verses of comfort and blessing are for you this morning. So church, hear now the word of the Lord from 1 Peter 4 12-16. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you're insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. Church, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you join me in prayer as I ask the Lord to bless our time in his word this morning? Let's pray. King Jesus, we come before you this morning just like the churches did so long ago during Peter's day. We come to you as a people who experience fatigue and anger from difficulties in this life. Some of us come to you this morning scared and bitter, while others of us come to you with callous and indifferent hearts. I ask, Lord, that you would incline your ear to hear us and be with us in these struggles and these hurts as your people, and we ask that you see us. Would you transform our hearts, Holy Spirit, and make us hear the gospel with fresh ears this morning? Would you give us hearts that seek to trust you even when the season feels bleak? Be our comfort, as you promise. Give us your peace, as you have said, and keep us from despising and despairing the blessing of beautiful fellowship with you. I pray these things according to your word, in your promises, and in your name, Jesus, I pray. Amen. Amen. So I forgot what the gift was. I forgot what the occasion and the kid, but one of these gifts that we received, one of my kids received were these glasses and these glasses were incredibly fun because these glasses, what they did was they use these mirrors to flip your world upside down quite literally. You put them on and the floor would become the roof and the roof would become the floor. It was a very fascinating thing to do because it turned the most menial, easy tasks into impossible and difficult things. Now it was fun to put them on and try to navigate the living room without falling over an ottoman or a child or something like that. But it was most fun to watch other people struggle with these things on. And what we would do is we found this way, we found this way to compete with each other as we always do in my household some way. We put these glasses on and we took these six plastic cups. And then we made a base, you know, the three, then the two, and then the one, and we made this pyramid, and we started timing each other to see who could stack the cups up the fastest. Now, the world record for cup stacking is like, you know, for 12 cups is like less than two seconds. We were in the 30 second plus spectrum as we were trying to stack these cups with these glasses that were twisting our perspective and distorting everything. It was so hard because our dexterity seemed to be gone. Our depth perception was, it was smoke. The spatial awareness that we had with our perspective the correct way was absolutely destroyed when everything got flipped upside down. Now, it was fun to do for a time, but if you had to have these glasses on all of the time, as this is your permanent new vision, you might get used to it, but for a time, it would actually be very dangerous and it would be devastating to your world. I would not recommend driving with these things, but you see these glasses, they serve as this wonderful metaphor, as this great metaphor to show the power of perspective. It's the power of perspective not only when it comes to silly games, but the power of perspective is seen when we think about our lives. And not only our lives, but especially when we are in the midst of suffering and we are in the midst of trials, whatever that trial or suffering may be, your perspective truly, truly matters. So in our passage this morning, what Peter is going to do is Peter is going to give us a perspective check. Peter wants us to put on these Christ-centered, fellowship-focused lenses that will transform the way that we suffer because we are Christians, and it will transform the way that we suffer for the sake of Christ. That is what we're gonna do this morning, and Peter wants us to see that fellowship with Jesus transforms our bad days into blessings. That's our big idea this morning, that Jesus transforms our bad days into blessings. And it's really important to notice this too, church. It's important to notice that though the perspective His toward Jesus, it doesn't take away the bad day itself. Jesus, our fellowship with him doesn't stop the bad things, but it gives us new perspective. So fellowship with Jesus transforms our bad days into blessings. So if you would look at me once again at verses 12 and 13 of our text. My hope is that we are able to be fit with these new lenses that we are able to share in fellowship with Jesus for the sake of seeing and perceiving the rest of our world. So verses 12 and 13, I'm gonna read it one more time. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings. that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Now, the great thing about this is Pastor Peter knows the human condition very well. He knows that when suffering enters into our life, when some fiery trial hits us, as Peter writes, when it comes upon us, he knows that our initial perspective, when we experience those things, will call about our gut reaction to that. So our initial perspective will inform our gut reaction and Peter knows that. Friends, this is a heavy topic as we're thinking about suffering and trials. It took me a very, I struggled with this sermon. The content of it is very simple, but the reality of this is very difficult. And so the question in my mind that I had to ask myself, that I ask you, is how do you prepare your own soul and your own heart for suffering because of your Christianity? How have you taken steps to change and prepare your perspective to suffer? And then on the flip side, how have you prepared your heart and your soul and your mind to endure suffering, not because you're a Christian, but just because you're alive? How do you do that as a Christian? I'm going to tell you up front that Peter is not trying to make sure in this preparing, in this perspective shift, he is not trying to get us to go out and buy, you know, 500 rounds of your favorite ammunition. He's not trying to say, go buy, you know, 50 gallons of water and hold it in your backyard in case something hits the fan. And he's not saying go stock up and get 20,000 rolls of toilet paper. That's not what he's doing in this passage. What he's saying in this passage is this. He wants us to prepare our souls for suffering, and he wants us to do that with fellowship in Christ. He says, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you. When a bad day comes, and our perspective on Christ and this life is distorted, we usually get shocked. We will get surprised when something bad happens if we're not expecting it. If we're astonished by the trials that enter our life, then our reactions, most of the time, more than not, will yield a sinful, impetuous response if we are not prepared and ready for these sufferings and these trials that come. Because Peter says, don't be surprised. I have a perfect example of this. I used to be a court-mandated boot camp instructor, and I worked for the Santa Barbara County Probation Department with gang members between the ages of 12 and 18. Now, one time, it was this beautiful time where we got to take these 10 boys that worked their program, they did the thing so well, they worked the program, they were going to get out, and so we wanted to reward them by taking them down to Universal Studios, which is back in California. We wanted to take them to Universal Studios. And so me and three other guards, we took these 10 boys and we went to Universal Studios and we had the best day ever. We got to go on rides. We had to have really great conversations with each other. We got to do my favorite sport, which is funnel cake eating. It was just an amazing time together. And so, toward the end of that trip, we had time for one more ride and somebody had this idea like, hey, let's go do the haunted house. Now, I don't know if you, I'm terrified of those things. Like I do not like them whatsoever. And so I was trying to get out of it in like a cool way. I'm like, I'll just stay out here and like watch, you know, the bags and like, no. So, but what ended up happening was, We went into this haunted house. I'm, I'm telling you guys, like I'm terrified of these things. So I strategically thought, all right, I'll put guard number one in the very front and then we'll put the two other guards right here in the middle. And then I'll, I'll take out, I'll be the caboose. Like I'll take up the end. And so everything that's going to happen to these suckers, like it's going to happen to them first and not to me. And so I'm preparing, I'm ready. I'm like, I'm not getting scared in this thing. And so we're going through and it's working. Like all these things, you know, dropping from the roof, these people are jumping out at you and you know, all these other people in front of me are scared and yelling and crying. And I'm like, this is working Lord. Thank you so much. And so as we're going, I got comfortable. I thought my plan was going to work. And then out of this dark corner, this like, demon looking thing pops out of this corner. It's got, you know, black face paint, this fake blood all over and it pops out of the corner and it starts hissing at me. And so in this moment I'm like, okay, what would a godly man do that is trying to set an example for these young men that are struggling? And so what I naturally do is I kind of lean back a little bit and I give it a left jab. And so But the thing is before we went in, I told these boys, I was like, boys, when we walk into this place, it's going to be dark and I don't want you to punch each other. I don't want you to vandalize anything. If you try to run away, what I'm going to do is I want to put you in handcuffs. I'm going to marinate you with pepper spray and we're going to take a very slow walk back to the car. I turn around and I pop this demon in a box in the face. And it turns out it's just this poor 20 something year old making minimum wage, trying to scare people. And the lights come on. The person's like, oh, he punched me in the face. And then, you know, these security guards come out and they escort me out of the ride. Like, so you can imagine, you can imagine the laughs that were had at my expense. After getting out of this, I'm trying to set this good example for all these kids. And that's what ends up happening. I went into that haunted house thinking that I had prepared in such a way that I wouldn't have to endure any sort of ghostly or ghoulish experiences. But I got surprised. I wasn't ready and I immediately reacted, truly, I immediately reacted in an aggressive and a sinful way, a very sinful way. I suffered the consequence in that moment of being a brawler as someone who neglected their fellowship with Jesus, and I just had this gut reaction. I should have been not harboring my own pride and said, I'm not going on that thing, or I could have done a thousand different things to do in that situation. While it is funny at the same time, it's actually very devastating because it reveals something about my heart. My gut reaction was to toss a fist at something. And so in this, we see that God's grace, Peter explicitly warns us against suffering as anything that is not a Christian. If you look at verse 15 with me, he has this whole list of things that we should not suffer as, but we should suffer as in fellowship with Christ. He says, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a meddler. Our trials and our suffering, they can actually expose an arrogance and our mistrust of God by trying to handle our suffering on our own. We are basically functional atheists when we say, Lord, you are the Lord. I love you. I will do whatever you say, but when suffering happens, I'm actually going to take it from here. I'm going to be the own Lord of my life because I actually don't trust you. You act like a murderer because you don't think that God will do justice on your behalf. What you do is you throw a fist or you put out some anger or you become violent and angry because you don't think that God will take care of you or that he will supply justice. You become a thief because you don't think God will be your nurturing, caring, loving shepherd that he says he will be. So what you would do is you would steal, you would lie, you would manipulate, you would hoard things in order to build up your resources because you don't think that God will take care of you in the same way that he takes care of the sparrows that fly around. We are evildoers because we don't see the merit. We don't trust the fact that righteousness, holiness, compassion, and love are the most beautiful, virtuous things that we can do as human beings. What we start to think is that's for people that get taken advantage of. People that follow those things. They're just going to get taken advantage of. They're going to be doormats. That is like the worst thing for us to hear as Americans that they're getting taken advantage of it and they're just doormats. Friends, when we see these things, when Peter says, don't be meddlers or busybodies, what is he telling us? He's saying that through gossip, through criticism, through our negative view of everything, what we do when we become gossips and meddlers and busybodies is we like to look at other people. It's much easier to judge someone else than it is to turn that focus in on yourself. It's much easier to say look at so and so or look what he's wearing or not wearing or she did or she didn't do when in fact the very sin that you're accusing other people of is harbored in your very chest and you are letting it grow uncontrollably because you're too scared to look at it. When we do these things, these untrusting reactions due to foolish perceptions, they don't produce the blessing of suffering as if we were in fellowship with Christ. What they do is when we suffer as a murderer, we suffer the consequence of being a murderer or a thief or a meddler or fill in the blank for whatever your sin of choice is right now in your life. When we focus on those things, when we have fellowship with those things that will kill us and there is no blessing to come out of that. My friends, it would not be a wasted experience for you to sit down with someone that you trust and love and to truly ask them, how do I respond when I'm in a trial? How do I respond when I am suffering? This will be good for you because it might show you something that you don't see. And one of the best things we like to do for ourselves is we love to lie to ourselves. We can lie to other people, but the best person to lie to is yourself because you justify away the things that you do that are actually evil, but you call what is evil good. And so it's good to get this other perspective, this humbling perspective to hear from someone else. How do I respond? How do I react when these things happen? Now when persecution comes our way, we can at times be unprepared and so we can get angry. We can become critical. We can clam up. We can throw money at something to keep our hands clean. We can blame shift. We can do all of these things. But friends, this is not to beat you up. This is Peter's warning against these things to say, if you cling to these, if you love these, and if you trust these, they will produce this suffering within you that will not produce the suffering and fellowship that you have with Jesus. Peter helps us fight against these foolish reactions by pointing us back to Jesus. And he says in verse 12, that you are acting as though something strange were happening to you. You know, the, the highlight, the, the, the main focus word in that sentence is that word strange thing. It's the word for stranger or foreigner. You're acting as if suffering, when it comes into your life, when a trial enters into your, into your sphere, into your bubble, you're thinking that there's this weird uninvited dinner guest that just showed up. And what am I supposed to do with them? Peter records for us that our fellowship with Jesus is the prescription for a foolish perspective while we are having a bad day. He says it in verse 13. He says, but rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Now, spending so much time in the book of 1 Peter, I have absolutely grown to love and respect Peter's form of writing. He is an absolute genius. In verses 12 and 13, what you see is they actually run parallel to each other in a contrasting way. Verse 12 says this is the negative way, this is the foolish perspective. Verse 13, this is the positive perspective. But they run according to each other, they mirror each other. And so when our bad days come, we see that verse 13, we don't look at them like they're a stranger, but he's saying it's not strange. This is opportunity for you, Christian, to engage in the sufferings of Christ. And in that suffering, you are able to rejoice. Beloved, your bad day can be a bad day. It can be full of tears. It can be full of mourning. It can be full of pain, as many of them are. But Peter says that we are to rejoice even in those things because we're sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Now, That feels nice to put onto a coffee mug, but what does that actually mean? Because suffering is suffering. I don't care if it's my suffering or Jesus' suffering. Suffering hurts. And so I don't understand when I was reading this passage at first glance, and maybe you feel the same way, how is joy produced out of suffering? It doesn't matter if it's Jesus's suffering. How am I supposed to rejoice when I feel like I'm getting slammed into the ground and mocked in my life? How is it that sharing in Jesus's suffering is going to somehow produce joy within me? It comes from when Peter speaks about these things. Peter's understanding of Christ's suffering and his connection to trials that actually produced joy in our lives, this is not something that he just pulled out of thin air to be provocative in his preaching. But when he says these things, he is being informed by the entire Old Testament and by the entire New Testament. He says these things as a statement of fact because his perception, his perspective on life and suffering and trials have been so informed by the scriptures that he can say with confidence, my brothers and my sisters, as you endure suffering, no matter what it may be, you are engaging in the sufferings of Christ and in that you can rejoice. We see it in Isaiah chapter 53. I'm sure Isaiah 53 is ping-ponging through his head. This is one of the four suffering servant passages in the book of Isaiah. This was filling Peter's mind, I'm sure, as he said this. Isaiah 53 says, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Listen to this. But surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, afflicted and damned. Hebrews 12 2-3 says the same thing. This was also filling Peter's mind as these Christians are suffering. He is thinking this and telling them there is joy to be found because you are in union and fellowship with Christ. Looking to Jesus, Hebrews 12 says, the founder and perfecter of our faith. who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. You see, the difference of our suffering and Jesus's suffering is Jesus's suffering accomplished something. Jesus's suffering did something. Our suffering, sadly to say, is actually caused by our own hands. Now, I'm not saying that something terrible that happens in your life is your fault, but what I'm saying is that sin has entered into this world and it started back in the garden with Adam and Eve. Corruption became apparent and went through everything. It went through our DNA and our molecules. It went through our minds and our souls. Sin pervaded in nature as well. And sin's corruption and destruction and the suffering that comes from it was caused by sin. This was not the original design for things. This is why we lament. This is why we get sad when bad things happen because that's not the original design that God had for us. What happens is this suffering that we feel, we have all contributed to the suffering of others. Our parents before us and their parents before them, their sin has contributed to our suffering today. So there is this sense where this general suffering and these general trials that we experience are caused by us as human beings. Because it was not the original design. But here is the gospel. Here is the good news that Jesus Christ himself, the second person of the Trinity said, I am going to enter into the suffering of these people. I am going to take on flesh and brokenness. I am going to see how their mind works. I'm going to breathe in their dust. I am going to suffer at their hands so they don't have to suffer for eternity. That is what Jesus did for us. So His suffering, He walks into our suffering. He takes on our suffering. And then He lives perfectly. He doesn't punch actors in the face when He gets scared or angry. Jesus lived perfectly in every single circumstance that He experienced. He did that because in our failure, we could not pull ourselves out of the mire, but he himself could. And in that, Jesus lived this perfect life, even in the midst of suffering, yet he went to the cross as the ultimate purveyor of suffering. He went to the cross as the very one who caused all the suffering, and when he went to the cross, the very one who came to die and to save us, we are the ones that killed him. Could you imagine trying to help somebody like Romans said this morning? It's one thing to die for someone that's a good person. It's another thing to sacrifice and give yourself to somebody that's trying to kill you. You would never do that. You would never give yourself for somebody that's being hostile toward you. Yet Jesus came and he suffered in our place because, and he suffered at our hands, though he's the one trying to save us. And it was on that cross where Jesus suffered as the cause of all suffering on our behalf. He took on the immense suffering of, yes, dying on the cross is very painful, but he took hell on himself. He took the wrath of God. He took the judgment that you deserve for every little single sin that you've ever committed. Jesus says, I am going to stand in your place and I'm going to take that for you. I'm going to suffer for you. When Jesus did so, he suffered on your behalf so you did not have to suffer eternally. 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, Paul, the apostle, he writes this. He says, so we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. This perspective, this new lens that we put on to see our suffering and to experience our suffering, We see it through the lens of fellowship with Jesus. And that changes the way that we suffer because it can actually bring about rejoicing in us. Now remember again, like I said, because you're a Christian does not mean that suffering ceases, but rather it means as you suffer, you are in fellowship with the one that suffered on your behalf so that you do not have to suffer forever. In these verses, in 1 Peter 4, 12 through 16, I picked up five blessings in these things. Five blessings that come from rejoicing in suffering as we are in fellowship with Jesus. So if it's hard for you to make that connection between suffering and rejoicing, listen to these five blessings that come from fellowship with Jesus as we experience suffering. The first one is actually found in verse 12. Peter starts this whole passage, the very first word in this passage is he calls you a name. He calls you beloved. Peter calls you beloved and he calls you beloved in the midst of suffering. Now if Jesus had not come and suffered and died and resurrected and ascended and currently rules and we wait for his return even now, if he had not done that, We would not be called beloved, but we would be called condemned. We would be called hated, but now our status has changed. So when the world screams at you, I hate you. When people around you persecute you for being a Christian, when they want to make you feel ashamed for the faith that you have, you can know that yes, the world screams at you, but God calls you by another name. He calls you beloved instead. Second, there is rejoicing in this suffering because we experience Jesus in a whole new way in our trials. We do so with this future hope of knowing that this will not last forever. We know that as we suffer, we are in union with Christ because we are joining in His suffering. That means that you are connected with Him in His suffering and you are connected with Him in His glory as well. In a real sense, there is actually assurance of salvation that comes from suffering. I know it sounds contrary, but there is an assurance of salvation that comes from saying, I am suffering for the sake of Christ. Oh, I am with Christ. My soul is bound to him and I am suffering because I look like him and sound like him and love what he loves and I love in the same way that he loves. So there is an assurance that comes in our affliction. That's the second blessing. The third is found in verse 13. The further that we fall into the depth and the darkness of trials and persecution, there is a greater glory that is going to be revealed to us and in us. 2nd Corinthians again, it says this for God who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ that means that you will see Jesus from a whole different perspective in your suffering. You will experience Jesus in a whole different way than sitting down to your morning coffee and your Bible and your devotionals. You will see Jesus in a whole different way as you are waiting for the results of a biopsy. you will see jesus in a whole different way church as you experience suffering because he is there with you the glory of christ is being revealed in a whole different way The fourth blessing that we see that Peter talks about in this passage that comes from us having bad days is this special presence of the Holy Spirit that we have. It says that the Holy Spirit will be with us and the rest of God will be upon us as we are going through these bad days. And as this passage tells us, the Holy Spirit will minister His glory and His rest and His presence to us in the moment of our suffering. You don't have the strength right now to endure the hardest thing that is yet to come. You don't have it right now in this moment. But church, this passage tells you that the Holy Spirit will be with you when that moment comes. He will give you the grace. He will not abandon you. So though you feel something away about Jesus right now, it will be different when you are in the midst of suffering and trials. So don't fear, but know the God of grace, his spirit will be with you. In the fifth one, verse 16, as we suffer and experience trials and insults, the Lord calls us not to keep our mouths shut. He calls us to not be ashamed, but He tells us to proclaim and to tell of these things. He tells us to promote the gospel and share about the very Jesus that we are suffering at his hand. If you remember, back in Acts chapter 7, there was a man named Stephen who was being persecuted, and he was ripped out by a mob after he was proclaiming Jesus. And instead of saying, sorry, I shouldn't have done that, I didn't know that this was a non-gospel corridor, They all got him together. This angry mob got him together and said, we are going to kill you if you won't shut your mouth. And he gave one of the most beautiful sermons that you will ever read or hear in the history of the church in Acts chapter 7. I would encourage you to read it. And so what he's doing in that moment is he is proclaiming the Christ that he's being persecuted for. And as he's proclaiming this Christ, there is a Pharisee there that is listening to all this. That Pharisee is named Saul. He's the main persecutor and killer of Christians and imprisoning them. And he's listening to this sermon and he says, let this man be condemned. And after Stephen was beaten to death by having rocks crush his skull and his chest and his legs, all these people that killed Stephen went and they laid their tunics at the feet of Paul or the feet of Saul and said, we did a good thing. And he said, you did a great thing. Stephen died. And in that moment, that message of the gospel that he proclaimed that he was not ashamed of, it started seeping into that Pharisee's heart. And two chapters later, you see that Saul becomes Paul on the road to Damascus. The very one that wrote over 10 books of the New Testament, he heard this sermon of the man that he was killing. Stephen didn't get to see and enjoy the fruit of that in this life, but his message that he proclaimed entered into Saul's heart and he became Paul, the gospel purveyor and church planter and not the church persecutor. Friends, these are five blessings that we get to engage in and experience as we suffer with Christ, as we experience these trials because we are in fellowship with him. So I would encourage you, it's not just about you and Jesus, it's also about you and each other. This is the body of Christ. We are one and unified with one another, though we are so diverse in this room. We need to know each other. We need to get into each other's lives and hear the messy things and hear the good things that we would rejoice with each other and walk alongside one another as we endure suffering. because there is a grace that comes with suffering together as well. So church, remember this, that fellowship with Jesus transforms our bad days into blessings. Let me pray for us. Lord, it's so hard at times to wrap our minds around what it means to suffer, what it means to experience trials, what it means to love you, even in the midst of feeling like we are broken down and beaten, yet we are not destroyed. So, Father, I pray that you would give us your Spirit. I pray that these blessings would be true about us and for us. I pray, Lord, that you would build a unity in this congregation, that we wouldn't look at each other as obscure or apart from each other, and we only come to each other at 10 o'clock on Sunday. But, Lord, would you build up a family in this room? Would you build up a unity and an intimacy that only comes by the Spirit, so when joys are high, we may rejoice with each other, and when suffering comes, we may rejoice in the fellowship of Christ as your church, as your beloved. We pray these things in your name. Amen.