I'm going to read the first 18 verses, verses one through 18 of Psalm 69, and then we'll all bow together before the Lord and pray. So welcome everybody. Let's go right into it. Psalm 69, to the chief musician set to the lilies, a Psalm of David. Save me, O God, For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail while I wait for my God. Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. They are mighty who would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully. Though I have stolen nothing, I still must restore it. O God, You know my foolishness, and my sins are not hidden from You. Let not those who wait for you, O Lord Yahweh of hosts, be ashamed because of me. Let not those who seek you be confounded because of me, O God of Israel. Because for your sake I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers and an alien to my mother's children. because zeal for your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that became my reproach. I also made sackcloth my garment. I became a byword to them. Those who sit in the gate speak against me, and I am the song of drunkards. But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Yahweh, in the acceptable time. O God, in the multitude of your mercy, hear me in the truth of your salvation. Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me and out of the deep waters. Let not the flood water overflow me, nor let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut its mouth on me. Hear me, O Yahweh, for your loving kindness is good. Turn to me according to the multitude of your tender mercies, and do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in trouble. Hear me speedily. Draw near to my soul and redeem it. Deliver me because of my enemies. Let us pray. Thank you, Lord God, that this psalm, this great word demonstrates the closeness that you have to those who are your own, the closeness that you maintain to those who love you and who are your own elect, your own redeemed, your own children. We learn that the psalmist Lord goes through life and without any proper cause has enemies, people that hate him and want to destroy him, powerful people. And he acknowledges his own foolishness. We're all foolish. He acknowledges his own sins. We all have sins. None of our foolishness, none of our sins are hidden from you. It's all laid open before you. We don't justify ourselves before you. But the psalmist here recognizes that those who are against him, they have no cause for it. And so it brings trouble and hardship into his life. And he does what we all should do. And thank you that he does what we all can do, which is turn to you and trust in you. We even see our Lord Jesus in these words as our Lord Jesus, though our Lord Jesus knew no sin of his own, of course. But I know that when he cleansed the temple, His disciples remembered this psalm and the words, because zeal for your house has eaten me up and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. And so we see you in here, our Lord Jesus Christ, which doesn't surprise us at all. But we thank you, Lord, that you are always with us, that you are faithful that You, Lord God, are there for us to cry out to You and You hear us. What a great comfort. What a great blessing. As we think about so many times Almighty Yahweh, our dear Heavenly Father, as we think about so many times, Lord, in the name of Jesus, the greatest thing that we have because we have You is that we have You. You, you are the prize. You are the reward that we have you. Not like the things that you may do for us or the things that you may give us, though you are very good to us and very gracious and very generous, and we thank you for it all. But Lord, if we had nothing, we have you. And so we have everything because we have you. You're the prize. You are the reward. You are our Holy Father. You are our great Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, the Word which became flesh and dwelt among us, our Redeemer, our Savior, the one mediator between God and men, our advocate. You laid down your life and shed your blood and died for our sins, satisfied the justice, the just requirement of the law in your death because of sin, not your own, mine, ours. And then you destroyed the power of death in rising from the dead. And salvation isn't found anywhere else or in anyone else, only in you. You ascended back to heaven after your resurrection and you sent the Holy Spirit to your children. And we thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the gift of you in us. Hallelujah. And we pray that you would fill us with your spirit. Help us to not walk like fools. Help us to not walk like the old men that we were before we met you. And we battle with it. We struggle with it. We battle and we struggle with it, Lord, because we believe and we love you. And yet we still occupy this flesh and live in this world. And so the war, the battle in us goes on. But we pray, Lord God, that you would help us, Lord God, to grow in holiness and in obedience and in the fear of you. But thank you. You are God, our father. You are the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed son of God. You are the Holy Spirit. The three are one. There's nothing like you. There's no one like you. You are God almighty, almighty Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai. And there is none other. Hallelujah. We have you. Thank you, God. And thank you, Lord, for the word. Thank you for the scriptures. Thank you for this great revelation that we call the Bible that shows us you. Thank you for the church. Thank you that you said you would build your church, and so you are. And thank you that we have a place by your grace in your church. Help us to cherish your church. Help us to cherish your church and help us to cherish our churches. For you formed your church into congregations with elders and deacons and a ministry to carry forth. You plant us in places and you Call us to confess your name and declare your name and to preach the gospel to every creature and to baptize new believers and to make disciples by teaching your word. Oh Lord, thank you for the church, your bride, your body. Help us to take it seriously. Help us to take seriously what you've designed the church to be and help us to be good stewards of it and faithful to it. I pray that our church, Fellowship Bible Church, our little, tiny little place in your kingdom, we pray, Lord God, that you would help us to always remember we're part of something much, much bigger than just our church. And I also pray, Lord God, that we'd be faithful to what it is that you've called us to be and called us to do and help us to each gladly give ourselves to it. We are grateful for your salvation. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your mercy. We thank you for your love that nothing can separate us from. We thank you for your power. We thank you for your protection and your peace and your comfort and your patience with us. Hallelujah. Oh, we bless you, Lord. We worship you. We love you. You're worthy to be adored. You're worthy to be studied. You're worthy to be declared and you're worthy to be praised. You are great and greatly to be praised. Hallelujah. We pray tonight, Lord God, for your church throughout the world. We pray for our own ministry here, but Lord, we pray for churches everywhere across this state of New Jersey, in this nation, the United States of America, and all over the world. There are many places, Lord, where your church suffers much more than we do. And I pray for the suffering, the persecuted believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you would remember them tonight, Lord God, as I know you never take your eyes off of them. But we pray for them, that you'd strengthen them, help them, encourage them, men and women whose shoes I'm not worthy to tie or untie. May they be strong, Lord God, to persevere in their hardships and name the name of Jesus Christ with joy and enthusiasm. We pray that if it is your will, you'd protect them and relieve them from their struggles and help them to be blessed and have great joy. But Lord God, if it is your will in the suffering, give them joy in the suffering, Lord God, even as your word says to rejoice and be exceedingly glad. That's a work that only you can do. And we pray you do it for the glory of your own name and for the joy of your children whom you love. Thank you, Lord. We do pray for the government of the land. You establish governments, you establish kings and thrones, and you raise them up and you take them down. You make no promises to raise up people in the various layers of governance, Lord God, who are favorable to us. But we pray for those to whom you have granted power that they would fear you. We pray for the President of the United States. We pray for the Senators and the Congressmen. We pray for the Governor of New Jersey and the Governor-Elect. We pray for the Senators and Congressmen at the state level. We pray for the freeholders in our county. We pray for the mayor and the council people here in Woodbridge and all the surrounding towns. that all who govern would govern in the fear of the Lord. I pray, Lord God, that men and women in government would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved and be strengthened by you to boldly wield their power in a way that is just and right and consistent with your own words. We pray they'd get saved and be led by your spirit and by the truth of your word. That's what we care about more than anything. Let it be so that we care about that more than anything. And forgive us if we care about more than that. I pray for all of my dear brothers and sisters, Lord, that you would help us, Lord, to be filled with the knowledge of your will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we would guard our hearts and walk worthy of the calling in which we've been called, that you would fill us with boldness in the Holy Spirit to confess our faith and declare Jesus, help our words not fall to the ground, but to land on good soil and produce fruit that glorifies and honors you. I pray that you would strengthen and comfort all of my dear brothers and sisters, that we would love one another, that we would love you, that we would care for one another and be patient with one another and help one another and forgive one another. Help us to be faithful to you and use our gifts given through the Holy Spirit to benefit one another and to glorify and honor you. Oh Lord, please come to us and fill us anew and afresh and use us for your glory, Lord God. Please forgive us of our sins. Like the psalmist said, you know my foolishness, oh God. And our sins are not hidden from you. My sins are not hidden from you. Please forgive us, Lord God, of our sins and help us, Lord God, to forgive one another and bear with one another and be patient with one another. That your people might be known by their love for you and their love for one another. Thank you for how patient and gracious and loving you are. We lift up to you, Lord, some of our brethren who need a special touch from you. And it may just seem like it's the same people that we're praying for, but that's because the needs are ongoing and you sustain people. And thank you for hearing us, Lord. We don't pray repeatedly, Lord God, because we think you forgot us or something. That's not why. And we don't pray repeatedly for people because we think, if we just ask again and again and again, like vain repetitions. But you did teach us, Lord God, that parable about the persistent widow who went before the unrighteous judge. And so we do come to you, Lord, that way that you showed us there. And we continue to pray for Ron, our brother. We pray for April, our sister. We lift up to you Brian Buniak, our brother, and Ryan Halliday, our brother. I lift up to you Dan Dyken, Lord God, and Ed Plants, who struggles with things, Lord God. And Lord There are others in our midst, or friends that we have, or family members that we have, who just need Lord God's special help, special touch from you. We think of Michelle Warrick, our sister, Lord God. People who need comforting because they're downcast. People who need healing because they're ill. people who need provision because they're weak. We lift up all to you and pray for your help. And I pray that all ourselves would reach out to you for help and prayer. Above all, I pray for strengthening of heart and strengthening of faith. That whether your answer is yes or no or not yet, in all things you would receive glory. Your grace is sufficient and your will is always perfect. Let your will be done. We trust in you. We trust in you and we wait on you. To you, to you, whom all glory belongs, we bless you and we praise you in your church. And we give you thanks and praise for your great salvation. You are Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, Almighty, hallelujah. And we bless you, our Holy Father, and we praise you tonight, and pray these things together in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, everybody, amen, and praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Thank you, thank you for praying together like this here tonight. Um, let me say this, uh, for the sake of all of you who are here now, listen to this please, and also those of you who are listening online, because one announcement that I made on Sunday, uh, making a change to, we typically have the Bible study on Thursday night that appears here online, as well as here in person. We're actually not going to have Thursday night this week. There is a women's fellowship event on Friday night, and the building needs to be freed up for some preparations for that. So there's a special event. So if you're one of the women of our church and you want to come to the women's fellowship, you should come here on Friday night at 7 o'clock. And then the men's fellowship is the next morning, Saturday morning at 9 o'clock, OK? So no Thursday night, right? So the next time we'll be online here will be Sunday morning for our service, OK? All right, everybody. Grace to you all. Grace to you all and peace to you all in the name of God our Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in all of the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit. Good night, everybody.