The sermon you are about to hear was recorded at Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, Florida. For additional sermons and more information, visit our website at truegraceofgod.org. Our text for this morning is Psalm number 90. Psalm number 90. You'll find that on page 496 of the Bible that is provided for you. Begins there, continues over to the next page. I encourage you to get a copy of the scripture and look at Psalm number 90 with me. I want to read it and then we'll just spend a few minutes together meditating on it to see how the Lord inspired this man of God, Moses, in his old age to pray. And we stand now at the very early days of this new year, and certainly we need again. To learn how, to pray, to pray, to give ourselves over to God in prayer. And this Psalm, Psalm number 90, instructs us on how we can do this. And so that's what we want to focus upon this morning. Follow along with me as I read from Psalm number 90, that is entitled, A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood. They're like a dream like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers. But we're brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath were dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you. Our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. Years of our life or 70 or even by reason of strength 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone. And we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, oh Lord, How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. The Protestant reformer, John Calvin, opens up his magnum opus, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, with this sentence. He says, nearly all the wisdom that we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Knowing God, and knowing yourself, Calvin says, is that which comprises true, sound wisdom. In this Psalm, we see Moses possessing that kind of sound, saving wisdom. Because in the prayer, he shows us that he knows God. And he articulates many important things about God. And He also shows us that He's very much self-aware because of the things that He confesses, the things that He describes being true of Himself and of His people. And out of His awareness of who God is, and His awareness of who He Himself is, He prays. And what we learn in this prayer is that a right understanding of God And a right understanding of ourselves leads us to fervent effectual prayer. That's what I want us to see this morning from Psalm number 90. To see what it teaches us about God, what it teaches us about ourselves, and then how it directs us and instructs us to pray. So follow along with me. We can go through the psalm and see the various ways that Moses addresses God. And over everything that he says about God, I believe we could put this heading, that God is supreme. God is supreme. He's praying to Moses because he has confidence in the supremacy of God. And then the specific things that he says about Moses underscore this. Look at verse 1 for example. We see he refers to God as our sovereign refuge. Lord, you have been our dwelling place. And here he addresses God by the title of Lord. It's one of the most common ways of addressing the living God in the Old Testament. That simply means master. ruler, the one who is sovereign. He describes him as a refuge, a refuge in whom his people dwell, a refuge from a storm. If you've ever been caught in a storm and you just wanted a place where you could hide out until it passes, That's something of the imagery here. God's often regarded in this way by his people. We see David using this language repeatedly, both in his life as well as in the Psalm, Psalm number 18, or in 2 Samuel 22, at a trying time of his life. We see God's people seeking protection from God, describing that as seeking to hide under the shadow of His wings, as in Psalm 17 and Psalm 36. Well, this relationship of God being a refuge for His people is a relationship that has always been true of God and His people. Moses knows this. He's experienced this. And so at the very outset of his prayer, he acknowledges that this is what God has been for His people in all generations. In all generations. In other words, forever. From the beginning. There's never been a time that God has had a people that He has not been a refuge for them. To know God savingly is to be joined to Him through the bonds of love and faith. Specifically, the bonds of love and faith that are found in Jesus Christ. And Jesus describes this kind of relationship in John 15 as abiding in Him. Being safe in Him. Being secure in Him. The apostle Paul reminds Christians, those who are trusting the Lord Jesus as he's been given to us and revealed to us in scripture, Paul says that our life is hidden with Christ in God in Colossians chapter three. To know God, to belong to him savingly is to know him as your sovereign refuge. to be given the privilege to consider Him to be for you at all times. To be able to rest assured that He has an unbreakable love for you. That He will never forsake you. He will never wash His hands of you. He will never quit on you or get frustrated with you. But He will always be your refuge, your protector, your defender. This is why the Apostle Paul, knowing this, can write as he does in Romans chapter 8. If God is for us, who can be against us? It's a rhetorical question. You might have all kinds of people coming against you right now. You might have all kinds of challenges that are overwhelming you, and you look at them and you think, there's no way, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. Brother, sister, God is your refuge. He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? You can go to Him. You can pour your heart out to Him. You can confess how you don't see things working out in any way and know that He is still your refuge. In your doubts. In your uncertainties. In your confusions. Moses goes on in his prayer. He speaks of the eternality of God. He's not only our sovereign refuge. He's eternally that. Verse two, he's without beginning or end from everlasting. To everlasting. You're God. And he points to mountains as an example. Before the mountains ever came. You've been God. Even the staunchest evolutionists have to finally admit that mountains came from somewhere. And yet God was before the mountains. He's the eternal one. In verse four, he speaks of the timelessness of God. He's above time. Listen to what Moses is trying to do here to confess something about God. A thousand years in your sight, but as yesterday. Thousand years yesterday. What's he doing? He's comparing numbers. which is a helpful thing to do sometime to try to gain a sense of the magnitude of an issue. For example, I did this this week, anticipating this sermon. The recent budget that the president proposed to Congress includes a line item in it of $300 billion that is designated annually to cut deficit spending. That sounds incredible, doesn't it? $300 billion every year to cut deficit spending. That's amazing. It sounds impressive. Until you begin to compare it to what Congress actually spent in 2024. In 2024, Congress spent $6.75 trillion, trillion dollars. And get this, $1.83 trillion of those dollars we don't have. They just printed more. It's called deficit spending. Our national debt currently stands at more than $36 trillion. And in fact, over the last year, that debt increased at a rate of and continues to increase at a rate of $8.5 billion per day. So when you compare that to the 300 billion that we are supposed to applaud has been set aside for cutting deficit spending. You say, well, yeah, in 35 days, we've already spent that. It seems impressive until you begin to compare it, and when you compare it, you can gain a perspective that brings reality into better focus. The point of Moses's comparison is to help expand our minds to contemplate how great God is. To us, a thousand years is a long time. But to God, it's no more than a day. Now think about that for a minute. Now again, Moses isn't being literal here. He's trying to expand our ability to comprehend something that's of a magnitude we typically do not think about. But if we were to take the comparison at face value, then 250 days for us or a little more than eight months. Would be about one minute to God. Eight months. To you. One minute to God. One hour to God would be longer than most of you have been alive. Over 41 years, nearly 42 years. So what this means is that in God's accounting of time, none of us here is more than just a few hours old. Seems like a long time, doesn't it? Not from God's perspective. Have you been praying for something a long time? I've been praying for six months. I've been praying for a year. Have you ever prayed for anything for five years? How long is that to God? A couple of minutes. What Moses is doing is trying to get us to back up and to begin to contemplate how big God is. how super above everything that we know and experience He is. In other words, He's impressing upon us the reality that God is timeless. He's eternal. What that means is God doesn't operate on our timetable. He has an eternal perspective. He's working from eternity to eternity. And if you're going to seek him and find refuge in him and hope in him, you need to remember this about him. The what seems urgent to you. Is not urgent to God. He's not in a hurry. And he's never late. He always operates in just the right way. Just the right time. Because He is eternal, some of the things that seem unusually long for us, it's just a fleeting moment for Him. And if we time-bound creatures can be reminded of this about our God, It will help us to live patiently, trusting Him, knowing that He sees what we cannot see. He's working infallibly to accomplish purposes that He's determined from before the foundation of the world to bring to pass and that He will most certainly bring to pass. Moses reminds himself about God in his prayer in this way. And he also acknowledges not just his eternality. But in verses three, five, and six, he speaks of God as the source of life. The source of life. He's the one who ordains the days of our lives. You see this language here, we sang it from this psalm. He says, return, or he returns man to dust. Return, oh man, to dust. What is this a reference to? It's a reference to the account of creation that we have in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. God revealed that to Moses and he wrote it down for us in the book of Genesis about how he created mankind. Let me just remind you in Genesis 2, 7, this is what we read. The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature from dust. God created mankind in his own image and then in Chapter 3 of Genesis. After Adam and Eve sinned, this is what God says by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for your dust and to dust you shall return. What's Moses saying here? What's Moses thinking of God here? God's the giver of life. He's the one that takes life. He brought us from the dust, and at His appointed time, He will return us to the dust. Our times are in His hands. All time is in His hands. Again, you look at verses 5 and 6. What's Moses say here in his prayer? He says God sweeps away years. In verse five, as with a flood, you see floodwaters that just wipe out everything in their path. And that's what God does with time. Verse six says these years, the things that we build our lives by. They're like a dream. Like grass that grows in the morning and the evening, it fades and withers. God's eternal. He's timeless and he's got our times in his hand. So Moses describes God in this way as eternal and the source of life as our sovereign refuge. And he goes on in verses seven and eight and speaks of God as holy and omniscient, the judge who's holy and omniscient. You see these words attributed to God, anger, wrath, and words attributed to us that God takes note of, iniquities, sins. We don't know exactly the context out of which this prayer came for Moses, but it was in his latter years, because the history of Moses goes like this. 40 years, he was in Pharaoh's court, raised from a child. 40 years, he was consigned to a wilderness to tend sheep in the backside of some mountain nobody knows about. And it was when he was 80 that God sent him down to Egypt. And from 80 to 120, he led the people in the wilderness before they entered the promised land. It's in that last segment of his life from which this prayer arises. The people were in the wilderness. They weren't in the promised land. Why not? Because of sin. because they didn't take God at his word. They thought they knew better when the spies were sent in to look over the land of promise and the majority report came back. They're giants there. We don't stand a chance. In the same way, brothers and sisters. We too are living in the wilderness. In a world that has been broken by sin, a world that is under the judgment of God because of sin. A world where our language includes vocabulary like cancer and hurricanes, theft, divorce, death. Why? Because of sin. And none of us complete innocence before God. Why? Because we all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. Even when we're outwardly seen to be upright and righteous. God knows our secret sins, Moses praise. The sins of attitude. The sins of thought that never cross our lips. The sins of desires that are. Unlawful. So while we might fool each other, You might even fool yourself for a while. When we come to God, we come to him as the one who knows and who is holy and before whom one day we must all stand to give an account. In other words, we must come before him in humility. Without any pretenses. That we have earned our standing before him. We must come confessing what he says is true about us. And about his grace and his love and his mercy that he provides for people like us in his son, the Lord Jesus. God is holy. We must never let the truth of his holiness or sovereignty or his eternality drive us away from God, make us shrink back. Moses didn't. Why not? Because of what Moses also knew about God that he goes on to confess in verses 13 and 14. The God is merciful and loving. He says return O Lord in verse 13 and there the name of God is not ruler and master here Lord as you see it in your English Bibles is all caps. Which is a signal to us that this is the covenant name of God. Yahweh. Return Yahweh. He believes that God has pity that he's willing to condescend, and that's why he prays the way he does in verse 14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. God is the God of steadfast love. That's another covenant word. It's a word that is reserved for the people of God to whom he's committed himself. A love that will never dry out. A love that will never be recalled. A love that comes from the heart of our covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. Where did Moses get this understanding of God? How did Moses come to learn about God? Well, he'd been given the story of creation by God. God had spoken to him. And so he knew from God's instructions to him that God created everything out of nothing. He knew that God was working for his own glory, for his own purposes. He had received the record of God's mighty acts of grace and power in the days of Noah. And then after that, in the age of the patriarchs, he knew how God had judged the whole world for sin and preserved one family, Noah's family, in that ark in order to keep his purposes alive. He learned the story of Abraham and the promise that God made to Abraham after choosing him to make of him a mighty nation. He had personally witnessed the power of God in Egypt when he went down to Pharaoh and he couldn't even speak well. And God used him to declare judgment upon that haughty king and his nation and bring them to their knees through 10 plagues. And he had experienced the grace of God in that last plague, when the firstborn of all of the households of Egypt were taken. and the households of Israel were spared because there was the blood of a lamb. Over their doors. Moses knew God. Because God had revealed himself to Moses. Just before the Israelites were led into the promised land by Joshua. In Deuteronomy 8. Moses said this to the Israelites. This which God had revealed to him in Deuteronomy 1815. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from among your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. In Acts 3 verse 22, we have a record of Peter citing Moses' words and saying, Jesus is this prophet. God revealed to Moses, as the covenant making covenant keeping God that he was going to do something that would result in the salvation of his people that there was a greater than Moses coming. And when he showed up. That we should all submit to him and hear him. Moses took to heart the things that God had revealed about himself. And he turned those truths into elements of his prayer. Brothers and sisters, this is how we should pray. We're being given instruction in this example of prayer. When we come to God, we must come to him as he really is, as he revealed himself to be. And how has God revealed himself to be? What's the apex of God's self-revelation? It's Jesus Christ. It's the son of his love that came into the world as a real man in order to make God known to us. You see what this means? It means that we can know more about God than Moses could know. Moses received everything God told him, it was all true. But Moses was looking through types and shadows in a distance. And the reality has been revealed in its fullness to us. Jesus said, if you've seen me, You've seen the father. He came and made God known to us. This is why he teaches us to pray in his name, because in Christ we see our God as he really is. Mighty. And merciful. Sovereign. And full of sympathy. Righteous. and yet reconciled in his son, the Lord Jesus. So in Christ, we come to God as our father, knowing he welcomes us in his family and that Christ has completely satisfied all the demands that God's law has against us. by taking our sins upon himself and enduring God's just wrath against our lawlessness and by securing righteousness through never having sinned so that in him we can be counted righteous before our God. Because of Christ through faith in him. We can know everything Moses knew about God and more. Because we have God fully revealed to us in Christ. Well, Moses's prayer was shaped by a right understanding of God. But it was also shaped by a right understanding of himself and of the people for whom and with whom he prayed. And not only do we see that God is supreme in this prayer, we see that as people, we're dependent. We're needy. We need shelter and protection. That's why he says, God, you're our refuge, our place of habitation. We need provision that can only come from God. Our lives are fleeting. They're temporary. We're but dust. We're creatures. We're fashioned together with elements from this world. And so in verses 5 and 6, in verse 10, we see the emphasis upon our temporariness. Even the longest life is soon over. The analogies that we find in this prayer to our own lives. Like a dream. Like grass. Dream lasts for moments and you wake up and it's over and you forget about it. Grass grows up, it soon withers. If it's not first cut down. I love what Charles Spurgeon said about that verse. He put it like this. Here's the history of grass. Sown, grown, blown, mown, gone. And the history of man, he adds, is not much more. James says our life is a vapor. It's a mist. It's here for a moment, then vanishes. Life is fleeting. It's very healthy to walk through a cemetery from time to time. Because the markers of the graves there are over people who had lives just like you and me. But who've returned to the dust just like you and I will one day. When you read the headstones over these graves. Ask yourself who remembers them. Who's going to remember you? Who's going to remember me? in a generation, two generations. Even the greatest people who have walked the earth are forgotten within a matter of years. You don't think that's true? Ask Fernando III of Castile. You know who he is? He's one of the greatest leaders that Spain has ever known. A 13th century leader responsible for reclaiming regions of Spain that the Muslim invaders had taken. And he's regarded as perhaps the greatest military leader that that nation has ever seen. He died over 800 years ago. We don't know him. I can bring this closer to home. Do you know the name of your great great grandfather? You might know his name, you might have had that written down somewhere and handed down to you. But do you know the name of his friends? You know, his interests? You know, his dreams, his goals? This is the way of life. And just as this is true for those who've gone before us, brothers, sisters, friends, it's going to be true for us as well. Our lives are fleeting. Temporary. So we approach God. Independence with an awareness of our insignificance as creatures. But in verse eight, Moses goes even further in self-awareness. acknowledging our sinfulness. You've said our iniquities before you are secret sins in the light of your presence. We've all sinned against God. We've all sinned against him in many ways. Openly. And secretly. Respectably. And scandalously. It's at this very point that many people hesitate, begin to get uncomfortable. They don't want to deal with the reality of sin. Not just sin out there, but sin in here. And if you don't come to terms with that, you will miss out on the grace of God. Because here's the truth. God only shows grace to sinners. He only has real grace for real sinners. Do you know yourself to be a real sinner? I'm not asking if you confessed in a generic way, yeah, you know, we've all sinned and I know I'm a sinner. But do you know yourself to be a specific sinner? Have you allowed yourself to honestly come to terms with the way sin has affected your desires, your attitudes, your thoughts, your actions, your choices. Have you ever prayed and asked God just to show you yourself, to really hold up his word in front of you in such a way that it's like a mirror and you see yourself the way you really are? If so, I know it's painful. But it's so hopeful. Because Jesus said it's not those who are healthy that need a doctor. It's those who are sick. I didn't come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance. Do you know that you are a sinner against this God? That you really have sinned specifically, wickedly, personally, publicly, secretly? If so, there's good news for you. you're exactly the kind of people that Jesus Christ came to save. So trust Jesus Christ. If you've never trusted him before, and God is convicting you of your sin right now, trust him right now. God sent Christ into the world for sinners. And he delights in saving sinners. And he saves every sinner who turns from sin, confesses sin, doesn't pretend to be anything less than what the Bible says he truly is. and receives Jesus Christ as Lord. So receive Christ. Take Christ. God sent him into the world for sinners like you and me. And he is yours if you will trust him. Whenever a person refuses to see himself as the Bible portrays us, it's tragic. It's tragic. The fear sometimes overwhelms because the thought is, if I admit this, I won't be able to show my face. I can't even comprehend what it would be like to admit the truth. Oh, but until you do, you will never, ever taste the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And you may be able to patch up your life and go forward and do OK, but you will miss out on the whole point and purpose of life. You will miss out on real forgiveness. You'll miss out on being reconciled to your creator. If you believe this. Trust Christ, brothers and sisters, may we never forget it. May we never lose sight of the reality of what God has saved us from, because as forgiven sinners, we still need mercy and grace every day. Why? Because we're not yet perfected and we too are dependent. We're needy. Because Moses understood the truth about God and the truth about himself, he was in position to pray the way that he did and to make specific requests. These requests that we see toward the end of the prayer in verses 12 through 17 specifically. This is how we should look to God and seek him for that which only he can supply. What does he pray for? Well, we could lump everything that he says under two broad categories. First, for divine wisdom and discernment. See that in verse 12, in light of the truth about who God is, who we are. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Number our days. to understand the brevity of life, to understand the uncertainty of life, to understand the certainty of death, that our life will come to an end. Moses prays that he might get a heart of wisdom by learning the truth of how short life really is. It's a truth that is easy to forget and to ignore. I love what Randy Alcorn does in trying to help us understand this in his book, The Treasure Principle. He says, consider eternity as an infinite line with no beginning, no end. And consider your life as a dot on the line. What are you living for? The dot or the line? how often we fall into the temptation of living for the dot and thinking this is it. And if we don't get it now here, then we're never going to have it. No, the dot is significant. But the dot is significant only because it is a part of this line that has no beginning and no end. Given the option, which one should you live for the dot or the line? Surely you should live for the line, live for eternity. Well, you can't do that if you don't have eternal life. And where is eternal life found? In Jesus Christ. He is eternal life. He prayed that in John 17 before he was arrested and then crucified. He said to his father, this is eternal life to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Do you know eternal life in Christ? Have you experienced eternal life in Christ? Not just the assurance of eternity to come, but that quality of eternal life here and now that sets you free from being managed by these earthly time-bound realities. So that you can use them and enjoy them and recognize that they can't give you what you ultimately need, but you have what you ultimately need. in the eternal Son of God. Friend, if you don't have this eternal life, then again, you need that more than you need your next breath. You need Jesus Christ, and Christ is available to you. He's set before you. He invites you to trust him, to receive him, and he will accept you if you trust him. You might be thinking, well, it can't be that easy. Don't I have to go to a class or sign up for something? No. Believe, and you'll be saved. Believe. Everyone who believes has eternal life. And if you'll trust Christ, that life will be yours. Well, after praying for divine wisdom, Moses closes out his prayer by asking for divine blessing and favor. Again, look at these last several verses. He says in verse 13, return, O Lord. Do you see the O Lord there? It's in all capital letters, O Lord Yahweh. Again, I pointed it out earlier. O covenant keeping God, have pity on your servants. Verse 14, satisfy us with what? With your steadfast love so that we might rejoice and be glad. He looks to God, the God who's made promises. And he stands on those promises and he says, promise keeping God come. Pity us. Show us favor. Working us to do what we can't do for ourselves. Make us joyful and glad. Look at verse 16. Show us your work and show your power to our children. And in verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us. Establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is a fervent prayer, a plea for God's blessing and favor to rest upon his people and the people who will come after we who are his people today. Moses is not just thinking about himself and his generation. He's thinking about future generations. Brothers and sisters, do you think about future generations? Do you pray for future generations? Do you have a multi-generational view of your life right now? Whatever stage of life you're in? Do you think about your children, your children's children, and their children? That's the perspective of the Bible. Psalm 78. We see it with David. Listen to what he prays here or what he promises here. He says, I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old things that have things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but Tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might and the wonders that He has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children, and that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn. And arise and tell them to their children. Did you keep up with all the generations there? Our fathers? Telling us? to tell our children that they can tell their children that the children not yet born can learn. David's going to be long dead before those last generations arise. And that's going to be true of you and me as well. Do you pray? Thinking about the work of God continuing on long after you're gone? Do you think about that for this church? Praise God for all that He's done in the 40 plus years of this church. But what about the next 40 years? What about the next 80 years? Do we want the power of God to be made known to our children and children's children and those who will come after us? Do we want them to go higher and further and to manifest more of the glory of God, not just in southwest Florida, but beyond than what we have been capable of doing. Moses knows we got to work. That's why he asked God to bless it. But he asked him to establish our work to make it useful, profitable, to sustain it. Right thoughts about ourselves and about God focus our prayers so that we might pray fervently and effectually. We should learn then and meditate on the truth of God's greatness and supremacy. We should think honestly and regularly about our own temporariness, our dependency. We should humbly confess our sins to the Lord and look to his provision of mercy and grace and forgiveness that are found in Jesus Christ. And we should plead with God for wisdom and discernment here and now and for blessing and favor for ourselves and for those who will come after us. Again, if you're not in Christ, then your prayer needs to be, Lord, have mercy on me. I'm a sinner. That should be your prayer at the beginning of this new year. May God enable you to pray it right now. Mercy me. Give me Christ. I trust Christ. Brothers and sisters, we should consider everything that God has revealed Christ to be, all that he is for us, all that he has done for us. And we should rest in him, take refuge in him, find wisdom and hope and joy in him, and then determined to live our lives for him. Steward all that he has given to us for his sake. Determined. to seek his blessing in the labors of your hand now and in what will come after you when you're long gone, that God would establish his work and expand his work far beyond anything that we have lived to see thus far. Pray that God will help us all to be completely satisfied with him as our covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, who has steadfast, unbreakable love for us as his children. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for this prayer of Moses, the man of God. We thank you for what you taught him over the course of his life, difficult life, a life that at points looked like it was over before you even began to reveal the purposes that you had for him. And we ask you to help us to pray as he prayed, that we would pray even better than he prayed because we have more revelation than he had. Teach us to set our hope upon the Lord Jesus. to live for him in his glory. God, help us as a church to do that. Help us to think biblically as stewards of the grace that you've showered upon us here and use us in this day, in the days to come, and in the days past our own existence here. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.