Our Old Covenant reading is from Psalm 73. So if you'll turn with me to Psalm 73, beginning in verse 25. And please stand for the reading of God's Word. Psalm 73, beginning in verse 25. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who desert you for harlotry, but it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all your works." Our New Covenant reading is from 2 Corinthians chapter 4, so you can turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 4, beginning in verse 7. So 2 Corinthians 4, 7. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then, death is working in us, but life in you. And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed and therefore I spoke, we also believe and therefore speak. Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. Therefore, do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and internal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary. but the things which are not seen are eternal. All flesh is as the grass, and all men's glory is like the flower. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Last week we started to look at the rare jewel of Christian contentment. I am reviving an old sermon by a Puritan who lived in the 1600s and he had a series of sermons on the topic of contentment. How to be contented in every circumstance. And the sermons were put together in a book entitled, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Last week we saw his definition of contentment and I'll read it to you. He says, Christian contentment is that inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. And we unpacked that definition and we saw that it's something that's inward, it's in our hearts. We are at peace in our hearts in the midst of what could be terrible circumstances. And we freely submit to those circumstances because we believe the sovereign God of the universe has sent them to us. Directly prescribed them and ordered them and organized them to send them right to you, His child. Not only do we believe that every bit of it comes from Him, we believe that He loves us and He would give to us that which is good for us even though we can't We would have never chosen it. We would have never planned our week that way. We would have never planned our life that way, but we trust and submit to, and even learn, he says, to delight in your wise Father in heaven. He knows what you need, and he's given it to you. And we are at his disposal. He can dispose with us any way he pleases, and however he does it, we are glad. We are glad that He is disposing of us according to His good pleasure, although we may not be real pleased with it at the time. And he says, contentment includes that. Contentment includes the thought that, I don't like this. It's not all good. This is really bad. And it acknowledges that soberly and honestly. It also includes a desire for deliverance. Please, Lord, deliver me from it. And calling out to God, will you deliver me from this affliction? All the while recognizing it's directly from his hand, he could take it away as he pleases. And even using the lawful means to get out of it, to remove that affliction. Use whatever lawful means he's put at your disposal to do that. And contentment can have all that together in a mysterious way. And then he says, contentment does exclude certain things. Contentment excludes grumbling. Grumbling and complaining make God mad, especially when we grumble at Him. Now you can grumble to Him in your prayers. Say, oh God, I'm miserable. Take this away. But you don't grumble about Him. He's displeased with our grumbling and discontentment. He says, contentment also excludes anxiety. just being anxious and upset about all these things. That's not an inner quiet. And he also says, contentment excludes seeking sinful ways of relief. You're allowed to use lawful means to deliver yourself from the affliction, but you don't take up unlawful means of deliverance. Don't look for deliverance in places you should not look for deliverance. And then also he says, Contentment excludes that tumultuous spirit, that unrest of soul where you are just at intention and your heart is tumultuous. And finally, he said it excludes rebellion. You can't shake your fist at God. You can't rebel against him. That is not the way to deal with the affliction. So contentment excludes those things, but it also includes other things, but it is that quiet, gracious frame of spirit that submits to and delights in what God is doing with us even though we don't like it. Now the question is, is it attainable? Can we do that? Can we as Christians be content in horrible circumstances? And the Apostle Paul assures us that he was and he also says he learned it. And so the contention of Jeremiah Burroughs is that we can learn it too. We can learn to be content in whatever circumstances we're in. Philippians chapter 4 verse 11b says this, I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. Notice that word, I have learned. So the Apostle Paul learned this, it was something he got better at, he attained to, just like we learn other things, he learned to be content. He says, I know how to be abased and I know how to abound, I know how to, everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So we can learn contentment, but it is a learning process and we grow in that and we become better at it. And he compares the learning of contentment, learning to be content in all circumstances to a trade. He says, if you're watching a tradesman in his craft, it can be pretty amazing. How in the world do they do that? I don't know if you've ever seen a glass blower, a person who blows glass. So they're working with melted glass before you, and they'll blow it, and they're sitting there working on it, and then next thing you know, they'll put a little twist on it, put this other thing on, and then it looks like a raccoon. You're like, how in the world do they take that molten glass and make it into a raccoon or a kangaroo or some other thing? And it's pretty amazing to watch. But it just looks like they twist it. And if I was to ask you, could you do that? You would say, I could never do that. But the truth is, you could learn to do that. If you worked hard at it, if you learned the secrets of the trade, if you practiced at it for years and years and years, eventually you could be doing the same thing, taking that molten glass and blowing it into the shape of a penguin or whatever else you wanted to shape it into. So Burroughs says that contentment is like that too. It's like a craft. You have to be trained in it. You have to learn the craft. And so tonight we're going to look at the trade secrets of the craft of Christian contentment. He's going to give certain trade secrets. That if you were in training to do the glassblowing, you would learn their trade secrets, how they do that. And in this case, you're gonna learn the trade secrets of Christian contentment. Because he admits that contentment is mysterious. And when you see it, it's mysterious. You see a person suffering horrible things, and yet they're content, they're at peace. He says that's mysterious, how can that be? And he begins by speaking of a mystery. And one of the mysteries of life is that a Christian is the most, or should be, the most contented person in the universe, and at the same time, the most unsatisfied person in the universe. And that's a mystery. How can the Christian be the most contented person in the universe and the most unsatisfied person in the universe? Unsatisfied, contented. How do those two things go together? He says the unbeliever, the carnal person, the person still in their flesh, thinks that somehow if I just have a little more, then I'll be content. If I just make another $20,000, then I'll be content. If I just get that house, then I'll be content. If I just get that job, then I'll be content. If I just get married, then I'll be content. If I could just have children, then I'll be content. And it's one thing after another. They seek contentment in the world, and they think that the world will satisfy them, but they're never satisfied. He says the Christian thinks very differently, or ought to. The grace-filled Christian says this, if I had ten hundred thousand times as much money as I have now, I would not be satisfied with it. If I had every excellence that is available in this world and it was at my fingertips, I would not be satisfied with that. Nothing in this world can or will ever satisfy my longing soul. Christian says, there's nothing here that can content us. There's nothing here that will ever satisfy you, and as long as I seek my satisfaction there, I will be discontented. See, the Christian has been given a new heart. They have been raised from the dead. And with that resurrection from the dead, with that new birth, they have a soul that is now capable of fellowship with the triune God. They have a soul that now wants to fellowship with the triune God, wants to be a part of the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and be in that fellowship with Him. And nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else here will satisfy. Contentment is only found in God and that's where they seek it. He says, the soul that is capable of God can be filled with nothing else but God. Therefore you will observe that whatever God may give to a gracious heart, whatever gifts, whatever talents, whatever wealth, that heart, the heart of the godly one, is never satisfied with those things unless he can have the God who gave it. He must have the God who gave it. None of that stuff will ever satisfy. So this is the first trade secret. of Christian contentment, that you must value God above all else and know that you will not find satisfaction here in this world. Psalm 73, we read at the beginning, he says, Nothing in this world will ultimately satisfy you. But for the Christian, he finds contentment in having God, even if he has nothing else. If he has everything in the universe without God, it doesn't satisfy him. But if he has God and has bread and water, that is enough. He'll be content with that. The second trade secret for the contented Christian is to add a burden. In the middle of affliction is mainly what he's dealing with when we're struggling with trials and tribulations. He said, it may sound counterintuitive to add another burden. You already got the burden of whatever affliction you're suffering. Why add another burden? He says, that's exactly what you need to do. You need to add the burden of your sin. You need to go and examine your heart for sin. When God sends affliction, He's getting our attention. And he says, search your heart for sin and confess it. He says, if your burden is in your possession, say God has taken your wealth. You've lost all you had invested and it's lost. He says, go to the Lord and examine yourself. Did you abuse the gifts that God gave? Did you not honor him with that wealth as you should have? And he's taken it away now. He says, and fall down on your face and bewail your injustice. unkindness, your selfishness, your greed, or whatever it was, and your abuse of that which God has now taken away. Examine your heart and confess your sins." And he says, if you will do that, if you will fall down on your face and confess your sins before the Lord, he says, you'll quickly find that the burden of your affliction is lighter than it was before. He says, try it. and you'll find that it'll help your soul get contentment in the midst of your loss. Confess your sins. So we confess our sins in the midst of our affliction. He says sometimes afflictions cause tension in the family. And this is definitely true. So some affliction comes on the family, you're suffering, maybe you lost your wealth, maybe you lost a friend, maybe you lost a child. And in the midst of that loss, there can be tensions and frictions that come between husband and wife. And I've seen divorces occur when there was a loss of a child. And there's lots of blaming, lots of fighting, lots of bickering and quarreling. Two discontented hearts make for double trouble in the midst of the affliction. He says, here's what you do, husband and wife. Try this, come, come, let us go into the secret place. Let us go and humble ourselves before God. Let us go into the chamber and confess our sins and confess how we have abused his mercies. He gives us gifts and we abuse those gifts. Let us confess all our sins and realize that God may have taken these things away from us because we have provoked his wrath against us. And he says, a broken estate and a broken heart go together well. And see, he says, if there will not be more contentment than there was before when you, husband and wife, come together instead of fighting, instead of bickering, instead of quarreling, instead of blaming, confessing your sins to God and looking to Him for consolation. So that's the second trade secret of contentment. Confess your sins. Get quiet. Go to God. Confess your sins. Come clean before Him. And it lightens the burden of your affliction. The third trade secret is to let that affliction drive you back to the throne of God where you should have been all along. Let this affliction drive you back to God. And he points out something and he says, in the scriptures, all the times that I've seen a believer afflicted in the scriptures, every time I read of the affliction upon a Christian, it always makes the godly man better. He says, I've seen lots of places where I've read in the scripture where prosperity made a godly man worse. He said, I find no place in the scripture where affliction makes a godly man worse. Always makes him better. Psalm 119, 67 to 72 says, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Before I was afflicted, I was wandering, I was straying, but now I keep your word. You are good and you do good. Teach me your statutes. The proud, they have forged a lie against me, but I will keep your precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in your law. It's good for me, he says, that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes." And so that's the message of the psalm to us is, yeah, you're afflicted. But let that affliction drive you back to God and His words so you can learn to delight in His statutes. You were going astray, maybe. You confessed those sins, realized we were going astray, we were abusing His mercies, and now we're back on the path. It was good that I was afflicted. Now that I learn your statutes. He says that's what grace can do. Grace can take an affliction and turn it to good. And so the third trade secret is let that affliction drive you back to God and His Word. is to do your duty in the current circumstances. When afflictions come on us and troubles come to us, we often say, I can't do what I need to do. And we just sit down and want to sit in a hole and pity ourselves. We just want to sit down and pity ourselves and say, I can't do that right now. I don't feel like doing anything. And the truth is, you don't feel like doing anything. You're miserable. And you don't want to do anything. And he says, that's the worst thing you can do is self-pity and sit down and refuse to do your duty. So he says, if you confess your sins and you've found that you didn't glorify God in your wealth or whatever He's taken from you, and you start to say, well, what is my duty now? He says, here's a temptation though, beware, watch out for this. It's very tempting to say, oh God, if you will give me back my wealth, then I will honor you with it. Or if you would put me in a different circumstance, then I will honor you in that circumstance. Or if you'll give back and stop afflicting me, then I'll honor you like this. And he says, that is foolishness. That's deceit. Don't fall for that. Don't lie to yourself and say, at some point in the future, I'll start to honor you. He says, that's like a little kid. It's like a little kid who's standing on a hilltop and he sees, oh, there's a hilltop over there. I bet if I get to that hilltop, then I can touch the clouds. And so they go down to the valley and they come back up a hill and they say, oh, can't touch the clouds here either. But if I get on that hilltop over there, then I'll be able to touch the clouds." He says, that's the folly of saying, one day I'll honor you, Lord. One day I'll start to do my duty. If you would do this for me, then I'll do my duty. He says, no, you do your duty right now in the circumstances you're in. But the temptation is to say, I'm afflicted. I can't do what I need to do. He says, that's a lie. You're to do it right now. And interestingly, one thing that spirals people down, they have an affliction, a real affliction, a real trouble, and one thing that spirals them down into depression is they refuse to do their duty. I say, and this sounds crazy, but I can't do the dishes today. My day's been too hard. So they don't do the dishes. Then they feel guilty because it's piled up, it's a big mess. I can't do the laundry today. My day's been too hard." Now they feel guilty about that because one more duty goes undone. And then next thing you know, nothing is getting done and they're just in the depths of depression and they spiral down. And so he says, no, don't do that. Sometimes it's as easy, you know, it's as simple as just do the ironing, do the laundry, go to work, show up at the office and do your work. So in affliction, he says, do your duty now. God calls you not to obey at some future circumstances that will be better, but do your duty now, lest you spiral down into depression. So the fourth trade secret is to do your duty now, in the current circumstances, as difficult as they are. The fifth trade secret of Christian contentment is to make God's sovereign will your own. When you became a Christian, you said this to God, your will be done. That's what it means, at root, to be a Christian is your will be done. No longer is it my will, it's to die to my will, it's to die to my selfish interests. I want your will to be done. So thy will be done and we start obeying God's commandments. You surrender your life to Christ and ask for his will to be done. And that's true for Christians. We're supposed to want to do his commands. He says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And we say, yes, we will. He says, have no other gods before me. And we say, we will have no other gods, you alone. And we do those. He says, honor your mother and father. Say, we will, thy will be done. We want to do your commandments. But he says, it's more than that. It's not just obedience to his commands. It's obedience to His sovereign will. His providential will is the will that sent this affliction. So we want to do the commanding will of God. We want to do what He tells us to do, but we also make His providential will our will. Burroughs says this, it's by this that a gracious heart gets contentment. He melts His will into God's will. God, you want this for me? You want me to suffer this? You want this trouble for me? I want it too. Your will is my will. They are melded together. He says, if God has, if God gives the glory, as my will melts into him, his will, hey, I get glory, if he gets glory. If it satisfies God, then I'm satisfied. God is wise and holy and good, and I should want what he wants, and he wants this for me right now. He says this is the art of a Christian's contentment. He melts his will into the sovereign will of God, and he says this to God, oh Lord, you choose my inheritance. You choose my inheritance. The sixth trade secret is gratitude. Contentment and gratitude do go closely together, don't they? To be grateful for all of God's blessing, even the smallest of blessings. Every good thing that you enjoy comes from the hand of God. Give Him thanks for it. And see it all as a token of God's love, every bit of it. Did you have meat today? If you did, be thankful. He gave you meat. Did you have bread today? He gave you bread. Did you have some vegetables? He gave you vegetables. Thank Him and acknowledge that, you know what? This was a token of your love, God. Here I am drinking a glass of tea, and it is a token of your love to me. Every single thing. Cultivate, He says, cultivate that habit of giving thanks for the smallest of things. No grumbling, no complaining. Oh, I have meat. Oh, I wear clothes this day. I am not naked. I have clothes. and you give thanks, and everything in your life that you enjoy lawfully, every lawful pleasure that you have, see it all as a gift from the loving God. He has said, here, I love you. Take this token of my love. He says in that mindset, that attitude of gratitude, even for the small things, is the sixth trade secret of the Christian. who is contented. And he points out, he says, sometimes we don't have a lot. Here in this country, we all have a lot compared to the rest of the world. But sometimes you may not have a lot. And he says, what would you rather have? What would you rather have? Would you rather have $1 as a down payment and an inheritance of a million dollars? Or would you rather have $50,000 right now? So someone comes to you and you know they've got it. They've got all the money they need and they're trillionaires, whatever. And they say to you, here, I'm gonna give you a dollar, but it's a down payment that you will get an inheritance eventually of all my estate. Or I can give you $50,000 right now. Which do you choose? If you're smart, you choose the dollar. and the inheritance that comes with it. He says, and that's what God is doing for you with every little gift he gives you. Every little token of his love is a down payment of an eternal inheritance that you have. There's an eternal inheritance waiting for you. And every little gift you enjoy is just a token of that eternal inheritance that the Lord has provided for you. And so, be grateful for the one dollar. And then remember, there's a big inheritance coming. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. The seventh trade secret is that the afflictions also come from the same love that sent Jesus Christ to die for your sins. The same God who sends the afflictions is the same God who sent Jesus Christ to atone for your sins. Same love. The same love that sent Him for you is the same love that sends your trouble. He says for the unbeliever, for those who are still on their sins and rebellion, every affliction is actually a foretaste of hell. When they're struck, when they suffer, it's just the beginning of their sorrows. It's just a forerunner of the eternal sorrows that are likely to come if they don't repent. But he says for the Christian, All those things that come to Him, all those afflictions that come are from the love of God. The truth is that the afflictions of God's people come from the same eternal love that sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for their sins, for the believer. For the unbeliever, that's not true. Those afflictions are just a foretaste of eternal torment for them. But for the believer, we can see the afflictions and say, God loves us in Christ. And so we find satisfaction in that. It comes from the same God who loved us and sent His Son. And also when we look at Christ, we say, did He not suffer? Didn't He? Wasn't His name blasphemed? Wasn't He mocked? Wasn't He disgraced? Wasn't He dishonored? Didn't He suffer all kinds of affliction? Are you in pain and suffering? Did He not suffer? Are you mocked? Have you lost all your friends? Did He not have all desert Him? So all those troubles that you experience in Christ are sanctified. He suffered them all, and He didn't suffer them for His own sake, He suffered them for your sake, so that all your troubles could be sanctified to you. And then the eighth trade secret. Puritan sermons were long, had lots of points. I actually shortened this a little bit. But the eighth trade secret is this. Let your loss be made up to you in God. Remember, if we're enjoying all these gifts rightly that you have, all the things you have rightly, if you're enjoying them properly, then you give thanks to God constantly. I am really enjoying this new car. Praise the Lord, He's provided it for me. I'm really enjoying this cup of Coke. Praise the Lord, he provided it for me. So you're constantly referring back to God. Every token of his love he gives to you, if you're doing that, he says, when that's all taken away, where do you go? He says, if you've been practicing giving thanks to God, when it all turns, is taken away, all those tokens of love seem to be gone, you go directly to him and you give thanks to him for the fact that you're still breathing and you still have life. He puts it this way, and I think it's helpful. He says, was that creature, that enjoyment, anything to you but a conduit, a pipe that conveyed God's goodness to you? Well, God has cut off the pipe. And now he says, come to me, the fountain. Come to me, the fountain, and drink immediately from my fountain. All those gifts were just conduits. They were pipes bringing the fresh water of God to us. Now He says, no more. You don't get the pipe. You come directly to the fountain and drink. And so we find our contentment in God alone. He says, if we do this, if we'll find our contentment in God alone, when all the stuff is taken away, we have a taste of heaven. Because in heaven, God is all in all. We don't need this stuff anymore. We don't need all these gifts anymore. We have Him. And He is all in all. That's the happiness of heaven, to have God to be your all in all. He speaks of God. God is contented in His three Persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are perfectly contented with one another in that fellowship that they enjoy eternally together. And if you have God as your portion, shouldn't you be content with Him? He calls us to directly go to Him. When He takes away all the gifts, He takes away all the tokens of His love, we go directly to Him. And then the ninth trade secret is that you are heir of everything. Trust in the promises of God as your inheritance. If you were the heir of a great estate and you were riding over your estate, you'd say, oh, this field is my inheritance. Oh, this orchard, it's my inheritance. Oh, and this fine house, that's my inheritance too. He says, Christians, as you read this word, as you read this word of God, whenever you come across a promise, you lay your hand on that promise and you say, this is my inheritance. This promise is part of my inheritance. God has promised this to me. I claim this as my inheritance. Just as that heir would walk around his estate and claim, this is my inheritance. He says, and you live off those promises. You make those promises your own. So that's the ninth trade secret is to grab onto the promises of God and hold onto the promises of God and do not let them go. He has an extensive discussion of Psalm 91 We won't have time to get into that, but I encourage you to go look at it. It's in chapter 2. Psalm 91 says this, and it's quite fitting for our time. That is your promise, heirs of Christ. He will protect you from the pestilence. He will protect you from the plague. Hold on to that promise. Cling to that promise. But the unbelieving heart says, but what if it does come near my house? What if the plague does come? Don't Christians sometimes die of the pestilence? Doesn't it afflict them sometimes too? He says, yes. And when that happens, You've got a few things to think about here, don't you? This is your promise. He says there's at least four things to think about if the plague does come near your house, because God has made a promise. Are you claiming that promise? And for us today, we should be claiming that promise. You should be praying that prayer. Oh, Lord, do not let the plague come near my house. Do not let this pestilence. You've given me a promise. Claim it. This is my inheritance. No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling. And so we claim that promise. But he says, what if it comes? Could be that maybe it comes because you did not believe the promise. Could be that it comes because God decides to chastise you with the plague. He can do that. He can chastise us with the pestilence. Possibly it comes because God is preparing you for some greater work and has something better in store for you. And this plague will make you useful at some later date. Could be that God is just mysteriously doing something and you have no idea what He's doing and you just trust Him. He says, but we have these promises and we should claim them, we should live according to them. live according to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." So, he says, grab those inheritance. Grab those promises of your inheritance and claim them. Then the final trade secret of Christian contentment is to look at all of this trouble, all of these afflictions in light of the glory of Heaven. That's why we read 2 Corinthians 4, 16-18, It says, we don't lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day for our light affliction. And the Apostle Paul, what he calls light afflictions were pretty hard. It says, our light afflictions, which is but for a moment, is working for us far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory while we do not look at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen. He says it's like when a sailor comes into harbor. He's been in the midst of storms and trials and he's out on the ocean, the waves have been crashing over the ship, the mast is broken or bent and there's all kinds of holes in the ship and they're bailing the water out and then as they're coming in, he sees land and he sees a certain landmark. And he finds peace and contentment. He goes, ah, land is close. Land is within reach. And he finds contentment in the midst of the storm. He says, Christians, you should do the same thing. In the midst of all the storms that batter you and tear your ship and threaten to destroy you and tear your ship apart, there is a haven of rest ahead, a safe haven, heaven. And you know, the storms of life are nothing compared to that haven of rest. So, the tenth trade secret is to see all your troubles and lie to the glories of heaven. Nothing can compare with Him. And you will see Him and have that great vision. Well, those are the ten trade secrets. of Christian contentment. And we have to, by God's grace, develop these habits, learn to think this way, and practice these things if we would have Christian contentment. And he says also, and I'll close with this, these are habits, they're practices that we develop in the small everyday life, the small afflictions of everyday life, the gifts of everyday life, so that when the big affliction comes, these habits sustain us through those great and terrible trials that come. So let us pray. Oh Lord, you're the one who has given us all these promises in your word. You're the one who promises through the Lord Jesus Christ to bring us safely into that heavenly harbor. There we will find peace, full joy, fullness of joy forevermore. And so whatever afflictions may come, we pray, Lord, that you would enable us to apply these trade secrets, to learn to be contented, to value your presence above all else, to let these afflictions drive us to you, that we would do our duty when the trouble comes, and that we would make your sovereign will our will, and we would live lives of gratitude, constantly thanking you for everything, realizing that you love us. And the same love that sent the Lord Jesus has sent these troubles, too. Teach us, Lord, to not depend on the gifts, but to depend directly on you and seek grace at the fountain. And we trust your promises and ask you to enable us to live contented lives, quiet lives of peace and contentment. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.