I'm going to read to you from Luke's gospel from the 24th chapter. One of my favorite stories in all of God's word. This is Luke chapter 24 verses 13 through 31. Hear now the word of God. And behold, Two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem, about three score furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communication are these, that ye have one to another as ye walk, and are sad? And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel, and beside all this, Today is the third day since these things were done, yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre and found it even so as the women had said. But him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went, and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it's toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and break, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, Their eyes were opened and they knew him and he vanished out of their sight. The word of the Lord. You may be seated. Friends, brothers and sisters, I want to say first of all, I want to bring greetings from all the saints in Ohio on behalf of my wife, Andrea, and the rest of the Cusills and all the saints there. We bring you greetings. I was just with Peter and Alice in Gatlinburg. I feel the urge to say Gatlinburg, Tennessee, just this past week. So enjoyed some time of fellowshipping with them and the other elders. But it's a joy to be back in Texas. I wish my family could have come with me to spend time with you and get to meet some of you. But when I have opportunity to bring God's Word to another congregation, it's a little bit of a challenge because, as I said earlier, you are not my sheep, so to speak, I don't know all the things that are going on in your congregation. And so sometimes elders end up bringing what they call like a traveling sermon, you know, just one of these generic, it's like the general epistles that are just written to all the churches instead of one in particular. And so that's what I pray that the Lord has put in my heart today to bring to you something I pray will be edifying to you and helpful. So I have a family of 10 children, nine of whom are still at home. We decided long ago that we were going to educate our children in our own home. That's a daunting decision for any parent. And one of the things that I learned early on that was helpful to me, we were at a a homeschool conference, and I heard a man named Andrew Pudua. Any of you ever heard of Andrew Pudua? You know that name? He's an educator, and I heard him say something about, if you want your children to be good readers and to love to read, he said, the best thing you can do is read to them a lot. Read aloud to them. Any of you parents ever heard this counsel? So I said, that's something I know I can do. I know how to read. I can read aloud. So what do I read? Well obviously we read God's Word, that's the centerpiece, the focus of our education of our children, our discipleship of our children. But I wanted some other good materials and so I heard about this company called Lamplighter Publishing. You all know Lamplighter Publishing? And so we got a bunch of Lamplighter books because they teach character and, you know, point children back to the scriptures. And one of the best books that we've read as a family, it's a big, thick one about that big, is called The Hidden Hand. Anybody know that book? Wonderful story. I see some smiles over here in the Cisneros family. So The Hidden Hand. about this little girl named Capitola. It's a wonderful story. I'm not here to sell lamplighter books, but it's a story of this young girl who comes to understand the hidden hand of God and how all these things that are happening in her life that are so inexplicable, she looks back later and realizes this is the hand of God. He's working invisibly in ways that I can't see. And this is one of the reasons that our family loves this story so much, because we all, We all as Christians experience these things. These things are happening and we think, why are these things happening? I do not understand the circumstances that the Lord has brought into my life. Does anyone, has this happened to anybody besides me? Like you just end up literally scratching your head going, what is God doing? I do not, I don't understand it. Hebrews 11.1 says, now faith is the assurance or the substance of things hoped for, the conviction or the evidence of things not seen, right? Of things not seen. It's believing in things not seen. And in America today, October 2021, of all times in American history, we need faith to believe God's promises. Much of what we see can be discouraging and frustrating to us. had no less than a Marxist takeover of our federal government. We have these planned riots, civil government eroding, the beginning of the fall of our republic. I mean, it's serious stuff. Even if you don't buy into all the hysteria on the news, there are things happening that are grave, grave things happening. in a country that was founded as a Christian republic. If you go back not maybe 300 years, go back 400, 450 years, that is where our nation was founded. There were biological weapons being foisted upon us. There are things that are unimaginable happening. And as Christians, we have to say, what is God doing? Has anybody else asked this question? I find myself asking this question a lot. So God's doing something in our country, and the question is, what is he doing? It's hard for us to see. I was listening to Greg Bonson on the way down here. Brennan and I were talking about Greg Bonson, and he makes a statement that atheists claim they can only believe in things that they see, and this is not true. Atheists have faith. They see miracles happen. This happened in the time of Christ, right? Atheists always say, if I could see a miracle, then I'd believe it. I'd believe in God. But that's a false statement, because many people in the scripture saw miracles happen, and what did they do? They didn't fall on their knees and worship Jesus. They said, we've got to kill this guy. That's the ungodly, that's the unbelievers' response to seeing miracles. So the point I want to bring to you this morning from God's word is that it's a very strange thing that our faith, the faith that each of us share, our faith in Jesus Christ, is a faith that's based almost entirely on things that we cannot see and have never seen. So here's a little laundry list. Presbyterians have to give lists of things. Here are some things that we have not seen that we would like to see. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, our ultimate home, the new heavens and the new earth, the great cloud of witnesses, angels, demons, God's plan for us, our true enemies, our ultimate victory in Christ, and the regeneration of a sinner's heart. Anybody seen any of those things? We've never seen them. So let me just go to the scriptures and talk about some of these things. God the Father, 1 Timothy 1.17, Paul says, now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be glory and honor forever and ever. It's Paul acknowledging our Father is invisible. Jesus said in John 6, 46, not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. 1 Peter 1, I forgot to read my text. Let me go back and read you this short text from 1 Peter. Chapter 1 verses 8 and 9, though you have not seen him, you love him. Is that true of all of us? Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. So we don't see him, we have not seen him, In the Gospel, the 14th chapter, Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father and it's enough for us. Remember what Jesus said to him? Philip, have I been with you so long and you still don't know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Well, have any of us seen Jesus the Son? Some people saw him. We read about Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. Obviously many others, hundreds of people saw him during his earthly ministry. In Joshua 5, we read the story of the pre-incarnate Christ. I'll read this to you from Joshua chapter 5. When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked. And behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for our adversaries? And he said, No. That's a great answer. No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped. and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so." Clearly a manifestation of Christ pre-incarnate. How about the Holy Spirit? Jesus, before he went to the Father, he said, I'm going to send you another comforter. Not a comforter. Jesus was a comforter. He said, I'm going to send you another comforter. John 14, 16, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper, another comforter to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. So that's evident, we've not seen the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. The Holy Spirit dwells in us, but we can't see him. I don't know if this is strange for any of you, but I'm kind of a mathematical guy. I like things that fit neatly into boxes and compartments and things that I can't see to believe in things I can't see. Sometimes if you're more mature in the faith or you have a childlike faith, maybe for you children, you just say, that's not a big deal for me. My mom and dad told me, God's word told me that these things are true and I believe it. And that is correct and it's wonderful and it's a blessing that you believe that. But sometimes the older we get, we get smart in dumb ways, and our brains go bad ways, and we say, well, wait a minute now. I'm older and I'm smarter now. I should know better than to believe in things I can't see. Right? I wake up. There's my wife. I see her. I can kiss my wife good morning. I know she's there. I can see her. I can hold her hand. But God, this is why for unbelievers, we go down, they go, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, You know, have you ever seen this God? No. And yet you believe in him. And you can see where the mockery and the scorn would come from if their eyes had been blinded. Our eyes would be blinded, too, right? Lest we look down our nose at these people and say, what's wrong with these people? We'd be the same way. Many of us were. I was until age 21. All right, so these people are crazy. You know, they think they see things that aren't there, or they see invisible things. But we can. We can. Amen? and we should want to. How about our heavenly home? 1 Corinthians 2.9, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. That's what we all long for, right? Colossians, Paul told the Colossians, set your affection on things above, have your eyes set on heavenly things. This is where all of God's elect, this is where all of us are going to spend eternity. I mean, the time we're here is a little sliver. We're going to spend eternity in this new heavens and new earth. That's amazing. It's going to be our eternal home forever and ever and ever. When I was a little kid, I used to sit, some of you young children might do this, you ever sit in church? I know you never get bored in church, but I used to. And I'd sit there and I'd think about forever. And I'd think God was there before that, and before that, and what, how did he get there before, God was before that, you know, you keep going back in time, and in eternity, we're gonna be together forever, after that, after that, after that. We're gonna spend eternity there, and yet we've never seen it. We all put some time and planning into when we're gonna move, right? You're gonna move into a new home, what's it like? Do they have hardwood floors? What's the yard like? What's the climate like? We think of all these things and yet we're gonna spend eternity in heaven and we've never, never seen it. We can't see that we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, Hebrews 12.1. our loved ones who have died and preceded us to go be with Christ. Wouldn't it be encouraging if we could see them? Have you ever wished you could see your parents, your grandparents, those you've loved who have gone to be with the Lord before you? What we see is, we see the gravestone. We see the empty chair at the table. Those are things we can see with our eyes. But it takes faith to see that those people are with the Lord. There's a song that Stephen Curtis Chapman wrote when his daughter died in a tragic accident, and at the same time, a friend of their son had died in a skateboarding accident. So he wrote this song called Michael and Maria. Any of you know this song? And there's a line in there that says, he's singing to these beloved children that have gone to be with the Lord, and he says, we never really knew how much we loved you till we lost you. I know we didn't really lose you. It just looks that way from here. With our eyes, that's what we see when our loved ones pass. They're gone. There's the chair where they used to sit at the table. There's their bedroom where I used to tuck them into bed every night, and now they're gone. They're not really gone. We haven't really lost them, but it looks that way to us. We can't see angels. Now, this is where it gets a little weird. We're Reformed people, and we have libraries of scholarly things, right, Bryn? We love our libraries. I have this library at home. But angels, sometimes in the back of our mind, we go, that's a little weird. But clearly, it's in the Bible, right? Have you read about angels in the Bible? Psalm 34.7, the angel of the Lord encamps round about them that fear him and delivers them. We read that story of Elisha praying, Lord, open his eyes. And then when the Lord opened his eyes, his servant can see, oh my, yeah, we're going to win this battle. There's angels around us. This isn't fake Hallmark stuff like those kind of angels. There are these incredibly powerful angelic beings. By the way, in the Bible, and again, our culture perverts and corrupts almost everything in the Bible. When you think of angels, you think of the things in the Hallmark store, right? With the fluttering wings. Every time in the Bible when an angel shows up, what usually is the response? terror. An angel came and they were terrified. The angel came to Mary and she was terrified. The angel came to Joseph and he was terrified. So whatever these angels are, it's not something where you're going to go, oh, let's fly away together. It's like people fall on their faces and the angel has to say, it's OK. I'm a messenger of God. The word angel means a messenger. I come from God. Fear not. Fear not, I bring you good tidings. But the angel always has to start with fear not. So these are real beings, these angels. Elisha's servant couldn't see him. And ironically, what did Elisha pray for the people that were trying to attack them? He said, Lord, blind these people so that they cannot see. Pray that my servant can see, but I pray these other people couldn't see. And then he's able to lead them off to where he wants to take them. You know the story of Balaam's donkey. Let me read this briefly, part of this passage. Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab. But God's anger was kindled because he went. And the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as his adversary. Sometimes you're messing with an angel of God and you don't know it. That's a bad position to be in. Now he was riding on the donkey and his two servants were with him and the donkey, this is the funny part, the donkey saw the angel of the Lord. The donkey saw the angel but Balaam didn't. The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand and the donkey turned aside out of the road and went into the field and Balaam struck the donkey three times. Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam How prevalent is this motif in the Bible of blindness and having your eyes opened? We could take a long time going through a bunch of other examples. Saul on the road to Damascus, the brightness of the glory of Christ blinds him for three days and it's not until Ananias prays for him that the scales fall from his eyes. So the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword. Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, I have sinned, for I did not know that you stood in the road against me. He's saying the very natural thing you and I would have said, I didn't see it. How could I have known I didn't see it? And sometimes when we see angels, we don't recognize them. You know the passage from Hebrews 13.2, Okay, here's another thing we don't see. We don't see God's plan. When I worked for this, the last corporation I worked for, I joined this new team. And we had a big team meeting because our manager wanted to get us all on the same page. And we spent two days in an off-site meeting. Anybody ever do off-site meetings with your team? So we all got in this room. And there's jars of candy on the table and drinks. And we're going to spend two days. And we're going to talk about the plan for our team. And he had the whiteboards up and flip charts. And we spent hours and hours. to know what the plan was. And we drew it out. And at the end, our masterpiece after those two days was our team at this bank drew out our plan for our team. And it was all up there. And he said, everyone, get out your phone and take a picture. And we all had a picture. And I mean, he wanted us to know the plan of what we were trying to accomplish. Not a bad objective, right? Many of you parents may talk to your children, here's the plan for our family, here's how I believe God is gonna use us this year, here's the things we want to accomplish for God's glory, and you lay out a plan. Well, you've all heard people say to you, God has a wonderful plan for your life. In Jeremiah 29, 11, a scripture familiar to many of us, I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope So wouldn't it be great if we could see God's plan for us? And I would suggest the answer is, Rochelle knows the answer, the answer is no, it would not be good if we could see, I want to see God's plan, Lord, if you could just tell me what's coming, if you could show me the whole picture, that would make it so much easier, but God in his infinite wisdom obviously chooses not to show us his plan for us. I don't always quote a lot of songs, but there's another, there's a Christian songwriter named Andrew Peterson. And Andrew Peterson had a friend who, husband and wife, the wife is due to have a baby. She went into the hospital to have a baby, delivered the baby, and the mother unexpectedly died in childbirth. There was no indication this was going to happen. And so of course the whole, the church is called, people are rushing there, Andrew Peterson goes there, and the husband who just lost his wife is just weeping, and he looks at Andrew Peterson and says, God is always good. So Andrew Peterson wrote this song called Always Good. Let me just read you one stanza from this. And this is about God's plan for us and how we wish we could see it, He said, it's so hard to know what you're doing. He's speaking to God. It's so hard to know what you're doing. Why won't you tell it all plain? Anybody ever want to say that to God? Job said this. Would you just tell it all plain? What is going on here? Doesn't make sense to me. And you know what happened to Job? He said, I've got to put my hand over my mouth. I've spoken too soon. I cannot contend with the Almighty. So Andrew Peterson sings, it's so hard to know what you're doing. Why won't you tell it all plain? But you said you'd come back on the third day, and Peter missed it again and again. So maybe the answer surrounds us and we don't have eyes to see. In other words, even if God told us, OK, Andy, Let me explain this to you. My wife, I lost my wife to brain cancer four and a half years ago. I was here in Houston for some, and I met some of you then when we were suffering through that. She was going through treatment. And it's like, God, what are you doing here? I don't understand where this is going. Why are you doing this? Tell it all plain. I want to understand this. And to this day, four and a half years later, I still don't understand it. You lost a grandson recently, right? And you think, what is God doing here? Help me understand. I still, to this day, I can't say, yeah, I can make sense of it all now. But God, in his wisdom, this is one of those things that he doesn't share with us. How about Joseph? You all know the story of Joseph in the Bible, sold as a slave, sent to Egypt, falsely accused, put in prison. He has a little glimpse of hope when the cup bearer is going back and he tells the cup bearer the meaning of his dream. He says, hey, when you get back to Pharaoh, remind him I'm down here. Maybe you could get me out of here too. And the cup bearer completely forgets about it. So there's Joseph languishing in prison, not for seven days or weeks or months, but for years, he's sitting in a prison. This is a real guy. This is not like a Bible myth. This is a real man, a man of God, What must be going through his head when he's sitting in prison? Could he see what was gonna happen? Could he see what was coming in the next few years? No. If he knew he was gonna end up as the prime minister of Egypt, would have been a little different story. But there he is, languishing in prison. We can't see our enemies. Some of you, we were talking, the Duncans and I were talking this morning about how every family and every church and every denomination, there's always messy stuff, right? And you think, you know, it's bad enough to wrestle with the people outside the church, but when there's wrestling internally, that's when it really is painful, right? When there's conflict. And we tend to look at these people and go, that's the enemy. But we all know, here's what the scripture says. Paul told the Ephesians, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. These are things we can't see. This is what we're wrestling against, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. That's what we wrestle against. We wrestle against things we can't see. I just had, this wasn't in my notes, but how many people know the movie It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart? You watch that movie at Christmas when Clarence the angel is wrestling with those policemen and they're trying to wrestle him and then all of a sudden Clarence disappears. and they're like wrestling nothing. That's the picture I get here. You're wrestling with things that aren't tangible. You can't get your arms around and you can't see them. That's a frustrating battle to try to fight when you're fighting an enemy that you cannot see. And that's what each of us is doing. I try to remind my wife and me and our children every week we are in battle. As Christians, it's not the floaty, all is going to be well life. If someone told you that, tell them they've lied to you. That is not the life of the follower of Christ. Christ said, they hated me, they're going to hate you. They persecuted me, they're going to persecute you. Take up your cross and follow me. So the life of the Christian is one of wrestling. We're in battle, and yet we're battling entities that we cannot see. So if you ever feel frustrated, like, you know, the odds are all against me, how am I going to do this? You're right. You can't, you can't and I can't win that battle. Only by God's supernatural provision, by his grace and by his sovereign intervening can we win that battle. That is not a battle we can win. We should be thanking God for fighting enemies that we aren't even aware are there. You ever think about that? The devil is attacking us and spiritual forces are at war with us, and God protects us from many things that we didn't even pray against. We didn't even know that God is hedging us all about. And we're completely unaware of it. Sometimes we notice and we go, wow, God really protected me there. That car was coming at me 60 miles an hour, and just barely, you know, some things we see and we go, wow, God protected me. But God protects us from spiritual things that we don't see. I just spent three days with, among other men, Dr. Phil Kaiser. Some of you may know Dr. Kaiser, and he was really helping us think through spiritual warfare. And he's written a lot of helpful things about this, that there are things happening that we don't see. Okay, a couple last things I wanna talk about. that are invisible, our victory. So it's yucky to think about spiritual forces fighting against us, but it's not yucky. It's joyous to think about the victory we have in Christ. We are seated in heavenly places. Here's a couple scriptures Paul told the Ephesians in chapter 2. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And interesting, this is past tense, he's saying this is already done. We, you and I, are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. That's some good news, but we can't see it. It doesn't feel like that some of the time to us, but that is the truth. It's right there in God's Word. Colossians 1.13, he's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. We are members of the kingdom of the victorious King Jesus. All right, the final thing that I want to mention, and there are, I'm sure, others. The final thing we can't see is the regeneration of a sinner's heart. Let me share one more scripture. In the book of Acts, Ananias answered. This is when Saul had been converted and God told Ananias to go lay hands on the apostle Paul. Ananias answered, Lord, I've heard from many men about this man, how much evil he's done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name. But the Lord said to him, the Lord said to Ananias, go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings. and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. I don't know physically what that means spiritually, but clearly Saul was physically blind, and he was able to see again. And obviously it's a word picture, too, of his eyes being opened to the glory of Christ. He goes from being a God-hating, Christ-persecuting man to being a Christ-loving man who spent the rest of his life, as you know, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. His eyes were opened. Things that he could not see before He's now able to see. So, we need to wrap up. What do we make of all this? By very definition, the things we cannot see are invisible to us, but we need to see them. As followers of Christ, we need the Holy Spirit to do the impossible thing, which is to allow us to see things that are invisible. We should ask him. We should be asking him every time we pick up our Bibles. I try to remind myself of this. When you pick it up to read, stop and pray and acknowledge the Lord. Lord, there are things in here the devil would not like me to understand. May your Holy Spirit open my eyes and make my heart ready that I would understand the things I'm about to read. We need that. We need the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Word of God for us. The 119th Psalm, which I've always attributed to David, but good men that I trust have taught that this is Ezra's Psalm. So whoever wrote this, Ezra or David or someone else in the 119th Psalm said, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. How many would like to behold wondrous things out of God's law? We need to pray with Ezra. Help me, Lord, open my eyes. Help me to see these things. I fly into Chicago a lot. I flew down here yesterday, but it was a clear day, but I fly into Chicago a lot, and a lot of times it's cloudy. I do business in Chicago, so I get in the plane, I fly an hour from Ohio, and as I know I'm getting, the pilot says, folks, we're beginning our descent into the Chicago area. And I look down, and all you see is clouds. And Chicago is a cool city to fly into, because you have Lake Michigan, and everything is right there on the lake. And then suddenly, it always happens. You get low enough, and the clouds part, and there's the city of Chicago. And you go, it's kind of like, how could I not have seen it? That's a huge city. It's right there. And this is what happens when God opens our eyes to see these things. One minute, it's not there, and you can't see it. And the next minute, there it is, clear as can be. It's beautiful. Illustration. Paul describes us in 1 Corinthians as seeing through a glass darkly. So when we're in the clouds, you know, I'm not a pilot, but I hear pilots talk about flying by the instruments. When you can't physically see the runway, you've got to trust your instrument panel. And that's what the scripture is. When we're fighting through battles in life, when we're being persecuted, when we're struggling, when we're grieving, and we say, Lord, what are you doing? I know you're doing something. Your hidden hand is at work here, but it is invisible to me. Help me to see it. Help me to see it. Help me to fly by the instruments. A quick word to husbands. As I see there are husbands in the congregation. Our wives are gifts to us from God to help us be that instrument panel. They help us to see things. And I can't tell you how many times I've been married to two godly women. that each of them has been able to help me see things that I am just completely blind to. Don't raise your hands on this one, men. But you know what I'm talking about, right? I'm a pretty smart guy. Like I can, for crying out loud, I can see things. But there's things that are right there, and I just cannot see them. And I'm learning to go to my wife and say, what are you seeing here? Because I don't understand what's going on. And she'll point something out, and I'll say, How do you know that? I don't see that shit. It's obvious. It's right there. How can you not see it? I'm like, I don't know. I didn't see it. Never even would have occurred to me to think of looking there. but our wives can help us. And this is not just funny, you know, men are from Mars and women are from Venus stuff. This is God putting a man and a woman together. There's a book about that, you know, if you haven't read that book, probably not recommended. But, you know, this book is recommended and it said it's good for a man not to be alone and so God gives us wives so that we can help see these things. What a blessing to have, Why does it have vision that we don't have? So in closing, my prayer for us and for you is that the Holy Spirit would indeed open our eyes, that he would illuminate these things to understand his word and to help us to love this God that we've never seen. None of us would love him had he not loved us first, clearly, but even as we belong to him, we need to seek him, we need to pray to ask him, that he would strengthen our faith to believe that Jesus really has gone to prepare a place for us. Wow, the Duncans were so hospitable. What a beautiful, but the best accommodations I've ever had when I'm away from home. That they knew I was coming and they had prepared a place, but with all due respect, brother, that ain't nothing, right? Jesus Christ has gone to prepare a place for you. That's gonna be good. I mean, I'm being silly, like the understatement of the year, whatever he has gone to prepare in my father's house are many rooms. I have gone to prepare a place for you. So whatever is going on in our life, may we be encouraged, even though we can't see it, that he has gone to prepare a place for us. May we have our gaze on that place. It's hard to gaze on something you cannot see, but Paul tells the Colossians to do just that. May he part those clouds so that we can see more clearly, to see those things that are invisible. So let's pray. Our Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you that you have chosen to reveal yourself, not only generally, as we look about and see the things you have made. In the past two weeks, I've seen the Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, flown over a large part of the country to get here from Ohio to Texas. But I thank you, Father, that that you give us eyes to see things that we would not otherwise see. Father, it is difficult for us, and you know our weakness, you know our infirmities, you know our, we are very finite and limited and tainted by our sin, and it's difficult for us to see the things that we need to see. I pray that you would open our eyes, that you would help us to see these things, things we cannot yet see. Give us faith. We believe, but I pray that you would help our unbelief. Help us to see the things that you want us to see, that we might, know you better, and love you more fully as you so deserve. This we ask in Christ's name, amen.