Okay, good evening everyone. Welcome to Wednesday night CenterPoint midweek refresh. I'd like to share a brief devotional for us to get us started with prayer from Psalm 31 this evening. Psalm 31. It's fairly lengthy, so I will not read it all. I'll read the first few verses. This is for the director of music, a Psalm of David. This is where David sings. In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge. Let me never be put to shame. Deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me. Come quickly to my rescue. Be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name, lead and guide me. Free me from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit. Redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth. This is God's word. Corrie Ten Boom, in her classic biography, The Hiding Place, tells about living with her family in Nazi-occupied Holland just before World War II. Michelle and I happen to be reading it to our children currently. And as the Third Reich tightened its grip on their world ruthlessly, the Ten Boom's life became more and more sort of confined and oppressed. And Corey's family was a very peace-loving, very open-hearted family. So people are naturally drawn to them, especially down-and-out people there in their neighborhood in Holland. And so the persecuted Jews began to seek them out and to seek asylum in the Ten Boom home. And one by one, they would sort of show up at the Ten Boom doorstep, and Corey's family takes a huge risk to help these oppressed Jews. Death or imprisonment, of course, are the consequences for harboring Jews during those days. But despite all those threats, the Ten Booms developed this covert system to give Jews a hiding place in their home, sort of a safe haven. But all the time there's this looming threat of a Nazi raid that could happen at any moment. So the Timboons construct this hiding place in their home, which is a makeshift wall and a fake trap door entrance, and they can quickly stash Jews in that hiding place if the Nazis show up. And at one point, they hide a great number of these Jews for several days, and their hiding place saves many lives. Well, David cries out for a hiding place too in this psalm. Apparently David is under attack, he's under oppression. This is a psalm of lament. It's one that David is crying out to God in complaint in. And he's trying to reconcile the realities of God's goodness with human suffering. But by choosing to dwell mentally on the things about God that he knows to be true and rehearsing those over and over and over again, he is able to change the way he feels because David at some point is close to despair and he finds his hiding place in the presence of God. And it's not because God has changed his circumstances, it's actually because God has changed his heart, even though his circumstances are still the same. God brings him to the point of surrender, which is best expressed in the phrase, into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my spirit. So this trust in the Lord sustains David despite his being near despair, despite his enemies being out to get him. David goes to that hiding place in the Lord's presence and he learns to give thanks and he learns to trust and he learns to call out to God. Now as I read Corey Ten Boom's book, I assumed of course that the hiding place in the title referred to that makeshift room where they hid the Jews from the Nazis. But the physical room, of course, is just a metaphor for the real hiding place. The psalmist writes, thou shalt hide me in the secret of thy presence. Corrie Ten Boom and her family are eventually taken into custody by the Nazis for harboring Jews. So that relief mission that they were carrying out is finally stopped in its tracks, and they are whisked off to these concentration camps, and they endure brutalities that we can't even imagine. And Corrie is now exposed to evil, and she is vulnerable, and she is unprotected against that evil. Or is she? Well, she may not have had a trap door anymore to escape into, but as it turns out, Corey's real hiding place is the exact same place as the psalmist. She goes to God for her refuge. Not to escape death so much as to be renewed in her life. Her enemies try to snuff out that smoldering wick in her soul, but in the secret place of God's presence that they can never ever get at, God rekindles that fire again and again. And defiantly, Corrie ten Boom renews her will to live day by day, and even to love, despite being in the midst of hell on earth. And the more hellish her surroundings, the more Corrie longed for an inner sense of heaven, and the more the Lord gave her that sense of heaven. So gradually, the gospel teaches Corrie Ten Boom's heart to pray for her enemies, to pray for the Nazis, and to really mean it, and to forgive them for their atrocities the way that Corrie knew increasingly that she had been forgiven. So she learns to do this in the hiding place of her savior's presence, right there in that Nazi concentration camp. But that is a place that every child of God has access to, a hiding place, a refuge, a fortress, right in the midst of whatever our circumstances are. So she commits her spirit into the hands of her God, just like David did thousands of years ago. And that's really what these words in this psalm are best known for. They're the last words out of the mouth of our Lord Jesus just before he died on the cross. It's the ultimate expression of trust and dependence from the most misunderstood man who ever walked the face of the earth. He was absolutely perfect and yet his enemies set a trap for him again and again. And they had him unjustly accused and they had him sentenced to death. Jesus knew that he was absolutely righteous, that he has fulfilled all righteousness, yet he still had to endure the slanders of evil people and the insults of the very ones for whom he is dying. And he knows his purpose is to die for them, and yet he knows the Father's will for him will not involve him coming down off the cross, it will involve him descending into hell, in a very real sense, on the cross for us. And still he says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. So for that awful moment, the father, of course, did not come quickly to save his son. His father did not turn his ear to him, as the psalmist cries out for. And the father forsakes his son so that he would not have to forsake us. So he denied his son refuge for that very dreadful moment so that we could take refuge in him and in his presence for all eternity so that he could come quickly to our rescue and help us in our time of need. Those clouds, those dark clouds envelop Calvary in darkness so that God could cause his face to shine upon us forever. So Jesus' last words were meaningful to many people. Among them were Stephen, one of the first deacons, one of the first disciples. So much so that Stephen made them his own dying words. You remember Stephen as he's crying out, using the very same words, into your hands I commit my spirit. But much more than memorable words to say on our deathbeds, these are really good words to live by. Giving it all up to God every day of our lives is really the only true way to live according to the psalmist and according to Jesus. So can you pray, can I pray, can we pray together into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my spirit. As God's presence, your secret hiding place. Is he your rock, your refuge, your very present help in times of trouble? No matter what that trouble is, we all have different forms of trouble. Love the great hymn, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Save me from guilt and make me pure. Well, let's go to the Lord, our hiding place, our very present help in trouble together. Let's turn our attention first of all to prayers for our missionaries and I'm happy to report that Doug Crock, who's one of the missionaries highlighted tonight, has been able to return to Cuba, where his heart is, where he ministers in the past and has longed to minister. It's great to have Jeremy with us tonight. And is Andrew around to tell us maybe some more about that? I thought I saw him a little bit earlier. Okay, all right. Okay, well why don't we pray just around our tables for the missionaries that the Lord lays on your heart.