But the text for this morning, again this afternoon, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. That is the text for this morning, or afternoon. After the sermon, we will sing from hymn 44, the stanzas three, four, and five. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, this morning we addressed something about the abundant life in Christ, though we really only scratched the surface of this beautiful reality that we begin to enjoy in this life and for sure in the life to come. We learned this morning that Jesus is both a door to eternal life and he's also a shepherd, a gentle loving shepherd of our lives. This afternoon, we're going to consider what it means to live the abundant life for him, for his glory. And we need to understand as we enter into this theme, who it is that is speaking to us. He is, of course, the eternal son of God. But because he speaks, his sheep will listen. He says this, he says, he has sheep, his sheep hear his voice, he calls us by name and leads us out and we follow. So the sheep of our Lord hear his voice and where he leads us, we will follow. And he continues on in John 10 and says this, He says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them in also. And then he says, and they will also hear my voice. The voice of the shepherd. Now you need to understand that to hear the voice of the shepherd is not a passive action. Sometimes our kids do that, and we have to ask them afterwards, did you hear me? And they say, no, or kind of. And we say, well, the hearing is also leading to obedience. You're supposed to actually follow what we as parents say. And when Jesus says, they will hear my voice, he's saying they are going to be active in their pursuit of me. They're going to follow me. Where I lead them, they shall go. And this leads us to the question of the abundant life. If he has promised us an abundant life, and he is the one speaking to us, calling us into this relationship with him, but calling us into a life of obedience to follow him, what he says we must do, that's understandable. That's Christianity 101. But it's an important question. It's an important question to ask, what does it mean that Christ is giving us this abundant life? Is it just purely for my enjoyment and pleasure, which it is in some sense, but what does it mean in connection to Christ? What does it mean that He is the one calling me and telling me and promising me this abundant life? And this may be particularly important for our youth, maybe there are older members professing their faith, but I'm assuming that most of them will probably be youth, professing their faith in two weeks. What does it mean for you as young people who are about to profess your faith that Christ is calling you to live an abundant life, to taste already in this life something of the abundance that he promises you? What does it mean to follow him now, to live out your days until he takes you into glory as someone who is living out the promises of this life that he's granting you? What does it mean for you? This abundant life was promised you. at baptism. The triune God promises you at baptism an abundant life. And now you're responding to your baptism. You're saying, yes, I want to follow you, Lord Jesus. Where you lead me, there I shall go. And we're gonna consider that this afternoon. We're gonna consider this theme of the life of abundance for Christ under three matters, or under three divisions. First, we are saved for a purpose, so this life that he gave us is to be lived out purposefully. We're gonna look at that. Then we're gonna look at another theme that is connected to that, in that by dying, we live. By dying, we live this life that he's promising us. And in this life, he is also inviting us to suffer for him. So we're gonna look at, if I was to put that into an alliteration, the purpose, the paradox, and the pain of a life of abundance for Christ. The purpose, the paradox, the pain for Christ. We'll begin with the purpose. Paul understood very early on after his conversion that what had happened to him and his whole life and the life of the church was something that God had ordained before the creation of the world. And he speaks about this in Ephesians. In Ephesians 2, verse 8, he says, of course, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And then he goes on in verse 10, he says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good work. That's why he's called you into this relationship, to do good work, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So the works that you are doing have been prepared beforehand, and God has designed it in such a way that you will, by pursuing him, fulfill the commission that he has laid on your life, that you will do the works that he has already ordained for you. He hasn't given you the script. You haven't received the memo. But by pursuing Him, you're living out a purpose that He has for you. I want to share this in a particular way in a story. I was recently back to Papua New Guinea. As some of you know, I was there for 12 years as a missionary. And I was back there again in February, and I was able to I preached the gospel with four national pastors and Reverend DeYoung, if you know him, Ryan DeYoung. And I was standing beside one of my fellow colleagues, national pastors, he was preaching to his people, maybe 1,000 or 500 to 800 people there that he was preaching to. And it brought tears to my eyes because it's such an amazing story. the man that I was standing beside who was preaching to his own people, he didn't grow up with them, he grew up in the city, in the shanty or slums of the city, but he went back into his village and he was preaching to hundreds, maybe a thousand of them, was the man who was preaching beside me to his own people was a criminal, a gang leader for 16 years. And he was such a criminal that his life was often on the lines and he was in and out of prison, He lost one eye, almost two, and when there were gunshots in the settlement or the slums of the city of Port Moresby, his mom would invariably think that it was her son being shot, and she would go back into prayer. For 16 years, she prayed for her son. Finally, he became attracted to a woman, and he said to her, and somehow she became attracted to him, And he said to her, if you marry me, I'm not going to work a day in my life. How I've done my life so far, I'm gonna continue. I will steal to survive. Don't expect me to work. Not a good choice for a husband, by the way. She still consented to the marriage. And I don't know if she was a Christian, but she became one. And then she invited her husband to an evening fellowship. that we were holding, one of my colleagues were holding in the settlement area. And she said, please come tonight. And he said, well, why would I want to do that? She says, just do it for me. He says, I'll go, but don't expect very much from this. She says, us Christians, what we do here is kind of cute and nice, but it's not really normal. to the outside world, by the way. And so it's laughable. And he just came there kind of laughing at a bunch of people coming together, singing a few songs, and listening to a guy preach for a while. So he decided to sit at the very, very back of the church. When you don't want to listen, you sit very, very far at the back. Not you people, but some people do. And he was actually, it was so far back that it was this kind of, you couldn't even see him. It was dark in the evening. And as he was not trying to listen, the Holy Spirit began to do a work on his heart. And as the preacher was preaching, he began to weep and weep and weep. And he couldn't stop weeping. He went home and that whole night he wept and he prayed and he asked God to forgive him. His whole life was just unraveled before him. He saw it all. The man that he was, the pain that he brought his mom, his dad, his wife. I think they had a child by then. The community. And the Lord saved him. The same spirit that resurrected Jesus from the tomb is the spirit that resurrects our spirit to make us alive in Christ. And that spirit did a wonderful work that night. I asked him before we left Papua New Guinea a year ago to kind of share his story briefly on a video that I was making. And he said it very simply. He said, the Lord saved me. He said, when the Lord saved me, he didn't just save me and leave me alone. The Lord doesn't do that ever. No, he said, the Lord saved me, but he saved me for a purpose. And then he said, my purpose now is to make this Lord known. I want people to know, I want my own people to know that the one who has changed me can change them as well. And he can. No one expected this criminal, this hardened criminal of 16 years, in and out of prison, a gang leader, to turn to Christ, and he's one of our foremost pastors now in Papua New Guinea. That's a miracle. But it's the same miracle that happens all the time. When our hearts turn from the ways of this world to Christ and our affections change to love Christ more and more every day and desire His glory, we realize that Christ is not just saving us and then leaving us alone. No, Christ is saving us for a purpose, each one of us. Paul understood that. Paul understood that. If you have your Bibles open with me, maybe you can just open your Bibles. We're just gonna do a quick tour through Philippians, and I'm gonna tell you tonight, or this afternoon, that Philippians is the handbook to the abundant life. You can quote me on that. Philippians is the handbook to the abundant life in Christ. Paul, by God's Spirit, was able to figure that out. It's not because it was such an easy life for Paul, as we will see, and in fact, it was a very difficult life for Paul. Paul wrote the book of Philippians near the end of his life. He was in prison, maybe in chains. But he wrote it, and he understood something of the abundant life, but he understood in this point that the life had a purpose, and the purpose is found in verse 21. This is your purpose. For to me to live is Christ, and die is gain. That's pretty simple. I'll go back to verse 20. It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not Be it all a shame, but that with full courage now as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. And that verb to honor is to exalt. So Paul is saying, it's not about me. Christ has saved me. I was on the road to Damascus to slaughter Christians, basically. But Christ has saved me. But now it's my longing, my desire, my intent, my reason for living, my raison d'être, that I live to exalt, that word to honor is to exalt. I live to exalt my Lord. Whether it means to exalt him more I have to lose my life, or I get to keep my life. I'm completely ambivalent to that reality. Most of us are just holding on. I want to hold on to my life for everything I have. And Paul says, you know what? It's bigger than that. Our values need to be bigger than the sum total of our existence here on earth. Our value is Christ's honor. I want to live my life so that either by death or by life, it doesn't matter to me, Lord. but just use my life that it will be purposeful for you. Use my life so that it will exalt your name. For me to live is Christ. And if I know I'm living for Christ, to die is just a benefit, it's a promotion, it's gain. And then he says in verse 22, if I'm to live in the flesh, That means fruitful labor for me. Yet which shall I choose? I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. If I am to live on in the flesh, if I'm gonna keep on living here on this earth, that's gonna mean fruitful labor for me. Some people say, I've heard it said to me, Well, that's the Apostle Paul. Well, that's a missionary. That's a missionary talking to the church that he planted, and of course he's gonna say things like that. You missionaries and you minister types, that's your calling to live a fruitful life for God's people, and partly that's true. But I don't see any qualifications in this text. If you're a missionary or if you're a pastor, this is how you ought to think. Now Paul is writing this to a church. He could very well be writing this to your church in Smithville and saying, you know what? This mindset, this thinking needs to be part of your thinking. All of us, even the children here. That for you to live as Christ and to die as gain, for you to live means fruitful labor for you. And the idea of fruitfulness is that it actually produces something. That your service in Christ, I don't care if you're 20 years old, or 25 years old, or 15 years old, or 50 years old, it doesn't really matter. That in your service for Christ, you should be fruitful. And striving to be fruitful. It's a theme that runs all through scripture. And Jesus pulls that theme out beautifully also in John chapter 15 elsewhere where we're tied to the vine and because we're connected to the vine, we will produce good fruit. If we're connected, if we're not, we're not gonna produce good fruit. In fact, we need to be cut down. We're wasting our breath. Jesus loved that garden theme in his parables, in his stories. because we're called to be fruitful. And I wonder if fruitfulness defines your life. If you were to have someone examine your life this afternoon and say, you know, I'm a broken sinner, I'm weak, but have you seen some fruit from my life in the service of Jesus, in the service of the King, of my shepherd? What would your spouse say to you? What would your dad say to you, or your mom? Yeah, I'm actually seeing quite a bit of fruit and it really excites me. Or would they say, I'm not actually seeing a lot of fruit and it worries me deeply. All who hear the shepherd's voice and the call to live an abundant life will desire in this life to bear fruit for Him. And Paul captures something of the character, all of that fruit. He doesn't get into specifics, you know, you need to do this, you need to go to visit this person, help this person out, love this person, walk with this person. No, he shows a banner. He puts a banner over all that fruitfulness in Galatians 5 verse 22. It's the fruit of the Spirit. That banner should kind of define all of our actions. The banner of love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and faithfulness, and kindness, and goodness, and gentleness, and self-control, that banner. And we should pursue more of that than the things of this world and the things that bring anger, and bitterness, and envy, and jealousy, and malice. Paul says, get rid of that, but live like this. And by living like this, you will bear fruit. You will bear great fruit. That's the purpose we have, to bear fruit for Christ's name. The second thing that we need to unpack this afternoon is this, that the abundant life is also a paradox. Not a pair of ducks, but a paradox. The paradox is this, by dying, we live. By dying, we live. Paradox or opposites. These are not my words. This idea of a paradox. These are Christ. This is what he says a chapter or two later in John. He says in John 12 verse 24, truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. And then Christ adds these words. Whoever loves his life loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12 verse 25. The fruitful life, beloved, that wells up into eternal life is like a dying seed. It has to die. What has to die? Well, you know the answer. The old self, the old nature There's a dying 1,000 deaths of the self so that Christ and His life can be lived in and through you. This is the constant conversion that we do. We talk about it in our catechism in Lord's Day 33. It's a constant, it's a daily conversion. It's a dying 1,000 death to the wants and the passions of this world for the greatest value, for the greatest want, which is to be with Christ and in His service. This dying and living is a daily reality. In fact, without dying, there is no living. Paul says in Romans, he says, if we have died to sin, which is the dying, how can we live in it? We were buried with Christ in baptism. We were raised with Christ through his resurrection. The dying and the rising, the dying of the old nature, the sin, the sinful man, a sinful woman is coming in Christ to a new man, a new woman. For the old is gone, the new has come. That's what Paul wants us to realize here. Paul, Paul understood that. Paul was not probably like most teenage boys. It seems. Struggling with girls and their identity and trying to be macho and cool and all those things. I don't get that from Paul. Maybe some of you guys aren't like that either. I don't know. What I get from Paul is that he put a lot of confidence in the flesh. And that confidence in the flesh was intellectual. This is what we find in chapter three then, this dying and rising. He speaks about the dying and rising with reconnection to the Jews who were involved with circumcision that he called the mutilators of the flesh, verse three. He says, for we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. And then he says this. This is where I think he was, you know, a class above most people. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. And some people would look at Paul, I talked about this this morning, this counterfeit life or this idea that you can live a life of godliness without power. Some people would look at Paul and say, man, he is the model follower of God. Look at his pedigree. Look at his education. Look at his teacher. He was taught by Gamaliel. You don't get much better than that. Paul says, if anyone has reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. If the flesh is worth living, if the flesh in itself can bring life, Paul is saying, look at my flesh, look at what I have done, look at my intellect, I deserve to be honored for all of that, if the flesh can bring life, but it can't. You could be a brain surgeon, an astrophysicist, you could be a very intelligent person, and all of that is flesh if Christ does not redeem it. And if it doesn't die, as a pursuit of excellence. This is what Paul says, verse seven. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that comes through faith in Christ. I count it all as rubbish. And the Greek word there is more graphic. It's dung. All those things that I have built my life upon, that brought me status, that brought me influence, that people respected me about, all those things that I was building on this edifice of me, just me and what I have done. He says, I count that all as rubbish in order that I can gain Christ. But if he didn't count this as rubbish, he could not have gained Christ. That's the point. A lot of people stay here because they don't want to lose this. We hunger after status. Some of our youth, some of our older members are fixated on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook just to receive the glory, the praise, the accommodation, the recognition, the likes of men and women. And we're not prepared to let go of that to say, I want something better. I want something greater. Paul says, put that to death. That is seeking after self-interest. By dying to that, you will begin to enjoy the life that Christ has for you. And it is indeed a life of abundance if this dies. Because if it doesn't die, you cannot begin to appreciate and enjoy what Christ has for you in living a life of purpose for Him. That's the dying. My last point is the pain. This is a bit different than the pain that I talked about this morning. The pain that I talked about this morning is going through the valley of the shadow of death, is facing loss and grief because of illness, and sickness and death. The pain that Paul is focusing on here in this living this abundant life already now in this life is the pain of pursuing Christ, but in the pursuit of Christ and in the exaltation of Christ and in the witness of Christ, when you feel opposition, that pain is what he addresses. Some of you know Keith and Kristen Giddy. They use one of their lines in one of their songs, they talk about the West and our slothful ease, our slothful ease. And if you all know what a sloth is, and then you combine that with ease, we have a very, very slow moving vehicle here. A slothful ease. But the slothful ease, when it invades the church of Jesus Christ, is that we get this idea that we can try to find in our walk with Christ the path of least resistance and still make it into heaven. Kind of like just join the collector's lane and everybody's going in the same direction so we're all gonna end up in the same place. And we begin to live our life calculating what would be the life most comfortable to us. And it filters into our conversations. It filters into this kind of, this aura of an American dream that the best life lived now is the most comfortable life with the most toys. So if you have the most comfort and the most toys, you win. Or maybe you lose. If Paul was speaking to us this afternoon, he would say, Maybe we're losing. That maybe the pursuit of comfort is not actually a pursuit that God's people should engage in, though God blesses us. Verse one, verse 29, I'm going back again. Chapter one, verse 29 of Philippians says this. It says, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, You should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. It has been granted to you. If you receive a grant from the government, that's a benefit. If students are going to university and they need to get money to enroll, to pay for institution, and the university gives you a grant of some amount of money, you receive that grant as a blessing. You say, thank you, that's gonna help me pay for my institution, for this institution, that's gonna help me pay for my enrollment. When Christ says it has been granted to you, this is the gift, that you not only get to believe in Christ, but you also get to suffer for him We need to put up our ears and say, well, what do you mean? Why is that granted to us? Why would the church of Jesus Christ need suffering as a gift? The suffering. as a gift is an invitation. It's an invitation to be united with Christ. There is this, since Christ ascended and sent out his church into this world, there's this constant theme that through suffering and through persecution, the church does not grow weaker, but stronger. And any of you who have read history, you know, you know what Tertullian said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It doesn't actually weaken the church when she is thrown into the crucible. It actually strengthens the church. What weakens the church is this life of slothful ease, of pursuing comfort, of taking the road of least resistance until you reach the doors of heaven. That weakens the church. Paul understood this, and it became his pursuit. And Paul was not saying, pick me, I wanna be a martyr. You never pick martyrdom for the sake of martyrdom. No, Paul says, pick me, let me serve at whatever the cost. And here's why, here's why. Verse 10 of chapter three. You're getting a whole survey of the book now. Verse nine, he says, to be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. This is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Verse 10, that I may know him. That's my passion. And the power of his resurrection, because that brings life. And here it comes. and may share in, or may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. And that by means possible, I may attain the resurrection of the dead. For me to know Christ is not to avoid the cross. For you to know Jesus well is, of course, not to avoid the cross. You young people who are about to profess your faith, for you to know Jesus well is not at the avoidance of the cross. In fact, for us to know Jesus well, Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me. Begin to understand that there's a death warrant on your head. You're carrying it around because you have my name on your forehead. I am a Christian and the world will hate you because of it. So you pick up your cross, and you follow Christ, and Paul says, and this is a good thing, because by following Christ into his death, into the suffering, into that point of contact with the world that hates you, in love, but they'll hate you still, you begin to understand something of what I did for you. And your love for me will grow, not weaken. What Paul is speaking to us this afternoon about through God's Word is that he is calling us for the unity to be found in Christ, this unity in his life and in his death and resurrection to be completely united, whatever the cost. A lot of people say, I couldn't go overseas. I couldn't serve in the Middle Eastern country. I couldn't leave my family here. I couldn't go to be a missionary. It takes a special type of person to be a missionary. And I'd like to tell those people that it's wrong to say that. It doesn't take a special type of person to do anything. There are really no special type of missionaries or pastors or teachers who go overseas or serve in difficult countries like India or Syria. It needs a lot more Christians in Turkey if you're wanting a place to share the gospel. Iran, churches growing there. It doesn't take a special type of person. It takes a Christ-like person. Someone who loves Christ more than their life, who says, my life is hid in Christ. I want to know Christ. I want to share in His sufferings. I want to be united with Christ. And whatever Christ is to me, it is this, that whatever happens to my body is nothing compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing this my Lord and my Savior and dwelling in His presence eternally with Him. That's what I want. But if we do not have a theology of suffering, if we do not have an understanding that Christ is calling us into a relationship that means that we'll have to pick up our cross, we will avoid any cost to self in the pursuit of making Christ known in this world. And it gets very hard to be a witness in Canada and the dark clouds of cultural Marxism and identity politics and all this stuff that's coming from Ottawa being forced down into our laps and telling us that Christians are anti-social and anti-society, and we're gonna face it in this country. But if we keep trying to hide and say, well, we just gotta avoid this and try to live life without suffering, the Lord is saying, well, no, actually. The suffering is exactly where I want you to be. So you come and you draw closer and closer and closer to me. If you have a chance, I don't know if you've read his biography. There's a few biographies on him. It's Adoniram Judson, 1800s, 19th century missionary to Myanmar. Burma in the former days. He had this line, I have it somewhere in my notes here. He had this line that to be devoted is to be devoted for life. And he went to Myanmar, Burma, and he had to bury two wives. He was married one, she died, he buried the next one. He had to bury seven children in a country full of pagans. And he would not count it a suffering. He said, this is for Christ's glory. Christ called me into service. I'm devoted for life. There was once a There was once a young man, or an older man, I think, who wanted to become a member of the church, and he says, can I become a member? He had been taught the faith, and said, okay, you can become a member of the church, and maybe we should be doing this now, or I think we'll be doing it in about 20 years from now. But maybe we should start asking this question. And maybe you do, elders, I don't know. You can answer this question. That when we interview our young people, we should ask them the first question that you need to answer, is this, are you ready right now to die for Christ? Right now. And if they say no, as this man said to Adoniram Judson, he said, I'm not ready to die. He says, I can't let you become a member. I can't baptize you, you can't profess your faith, I'm sorry. The man was like, why? It's Christ or nothing. This man went home, true story. This man went home. The whole night he couldn't sleep. He was so burdened by what just happened and so sorrowful and he prayed and he wept and he came back to Adoniram Justin at four o'clock in the morning. I'm ready to die for him, please baptize me. He knew very well, he was one of the first converts, he knew very well that if he put Christ on his lips, his own family would kill him. And I don't think he lived that much longer after his profession of faith. It's the question that we all have to answer. It's the question that unites us to Christ. Are you ready herewith to die for Christ? In the meantime, are you ready to live a life of abundance for me?" And Paul finishes, and I'm just going to finish with this as well. Paul understood that this life of abundance in Christ did not mean a lot of plenty. This is what he gets to in the last verses, and I'm just gonna finish this off because I wanna draw a connection finally with you between the abundant life and the life of contentment. So whether you're gonna die tonight or not for Christ's sake, that's in God's divine plan in Providence. He dictates that. But we know that he has given us and can give us a spirit of contentment to live our life in such a way that whether we have lots or little, we are still living the abundant life for him. And this is what he gets to in verse 10. He says this, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need. I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I think having come back to Canada, I've realized that we are probably one of the most discontented societies in the world. We share this with the European countries, some of them in the Western European continent, and in America and Australia, very discontented people. And as a result, social anxiety, Depression, a lot of things begins to rise in such nations. We live in such a discontented time, and yet we're so abundantly blessed. Paul says, putting all that aside, Paul says, I know what it is to be in need. He was in prison. He was in need. I have learned in whatever circumstance I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger and abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. all things." And this is not a kind of a carte blanche for, I want to be an athlete so I could do all things through Him who strengthens me. I want to get 100% on this test so I can do all things who strengthens me. This text is abused often. No, this text is saying, when you are united with Christ, and you live the purpose-driven life that He has purposed for you, when you are willing to suffer for His name's sake, and when you suffer, the spirit of contentment will fill you up, so that whether you're in prison or not in prison, whether you're well-fed or hungry, you will say, I'm content. I'm content. Because I know, I know I have my Savior. And He's walking with me. He's here with me. He supplies my needs. He knows what I need even before I ask. I am content. And the life of abundance that we begin to experience already in this life is living in that same spirit. It's living the Psalm 23. that the Lord, as a shepherd, will supply our needs, He will carry us through the valley, He'll prepare a table before us, and ultimately, it's to the goal that one day we will leave this life, which is still no more than a constant death, and be reunited with our Savior, to live in an abundance of His blessing that we cannot possibly imagine on this side. of eternity. Amen.