Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Let us hear the holy and inspired word of God. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. This concludes the reading and the hearing of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, you have given us your Spirit in order that we may not only understand but make application of the truth of your Word, your living and active Word, to our lives. And so, Father, we pray that this would be no exception to the Christian walk, that today, as we sit under the teaching of your Word, and we consider the truth of your scripture, that you would convict our hearts of sin, that you would inspire and encourage our hearts to be motivated to righteousness, and Father, that we would be quick and able to do all the things that you call us to do and to avoid the things that you tell us not to do. And so, Father, we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you for your Holy Spirit, and we thank you for being our Father. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Well, today we're gonna consider what the Bible has to say about hope. Every one of us has hopes. We hope to attain certain things that we do not presently have. We hope for circumstances to either change or develop sometime in the future. Hope is characterized by an optimistic outlook on the future. Hope says, it hasn't happened yet, but I have a certain degree of confidence that it will. And the stronger that degree of confidence is, the stronger the hope is. And our sermon text from Proverbs 13, 12 is in the form of what is called an antithetical parallelism, meaning it's contrasting the emotions of the experience of hope that's deferred with that hope which is fulfilled. And let it be understood that the word deterred in this verse, we see it there in the first sentence, it can mean two things. Generally, it means that the hope which we possess remains unfulfilled for an indeterminate amount of time because the circumstances have prolonged that fulfillment beyond our expectations. In some cases, that hope deferred means that the hope will be fulfilled at some future point. It's just gonna take longer than what we initially thought would happen. In other cases, hope deferred means that it's never gonna happen. The hope that we were counting upon is proven that it will never happen. But in both cases, It's hope deferred. And when hope is deferred, Solomon says that the heart is made sick. Now, in contrast to the heart being made sick, Solomon says that we enjoy the pleasurable experience when our hopes are actually fulfilled. And he describes this experience as a tree of life. And so we see in this proverb two contrasting sets of parallel terms. But as I've said in the past, as we've looked at the structure of other parallelisms, you cannot have a meaningful parallel if all three sets of terms are in contrast to each other. You must have at least one set of terms that are complementary and correspond to each other. In this case, case of Proverbs 13, 12, the terms that correspond are the terms hope and desire. And this correspondence is more than just a poetic use of synonyms. It's worth noting that the hope we possess is always in anticipation of the desires of our heart. Let me say that again. The hopes that we possess are always in anticipation of having the desires of our heart being met. And so you can say that hope is what flows out of desire. So if I'm a kid whose mom is buying me a Happy Meal and my desire is for the G.I. Joe action figure, my hope is gonna be that the toy inside that Happy Meal is the G.I. Joe and not the Yoda. An example of a much more significant hope is that which flows from my desire to know that all my family members have received the saving grace of Jesus Christ before they pass from this earth. Hope, therefore, flows out of our desires. And the more weighty and significant the desire is, the more weighty and significant the hope is. Now the Hebrew word that's used for desire in verse 12 is a word that's most often used to describe big and weighty and significant desires. Unlike a different Hebrew word that could have been used in Proverbs 13, 12, a different word that generally describes all types of desire from small to large, the Hebrew word that's actually used here is the word that refers to these big, large, significant desires. In fact... This Hebrew word is often used in combination with the word for soul to describe together the desires of the soul. That's how it's used in 1 Kings 11.37, for example. In 1 Kings 11.37, the prophet Ahijah is speaking to Jeroboam and he's speaking God's pronouncement, God's revelation to Jeroboam. And he says, and I will take you and you shall reign over all that your soul desires. You hear that? All that your soul desires and you shall be king of Israel. And that soul desires there is the Hebrew word that's in our text. And so in Jeroboam's case, the things that his soul desired were not small things like a G.I. Joe action figure. Rather, the desires of Jeroboam's soul were much more weightier things, much more things like an entire army of G.I. Josephs who would fight when he says fight. Another example of how this Hebrew word is used can be seen in Isaiah 26, nine. There we read the prophet pouring out his heart. My soul yearns for you in the night. That word yearn is the word we have here for desire. My soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you. And so the Hebrew word that we are reading in this second sentence of Proverbs 13, 12 is a word that's used to describe desires that reach deep within the soul. These are not trivial desires. These are the type of desires that have a real impact upon the lives that we live. And this explains why hope deferred in the first sentence has the effect of making the heart sick. Not every hope that I possess is gonna make my heart sick if it goes unfulfilled. I'm not gonna go into a deep depression if the Happy Meal has a Yoda figure instead of the G.I. Joe figure. But which of us will not experience the painful sickness of our heart when we see our loved ones persistently rejecting the Lord and rebelling against his word? These are the type of weighty and significant desires of the soul that can make our hearts sick. A mother has a deep desire to see her son walking with the Lord, so she hopes, she hopes to see the early evidences of salvation in her young son's life, but that hope is deferred. That same mother begins to hope her son will come to salvation in Christ before he moves out of the house. But again, that hope is deferred. The mother then readjusts her hope, reconfigures her hope. Now she's hoping that he'll be saved before he gets involved with the wrong type of people, marries the wrong type of girl. But then she learns that her hope has been deferred again. So the mother hopes that her son will begin walking with the Lord before his marriage ends in a messy divorce. But her hope is deferred again. And this process repeats itself year after year. And now the mother's 85 years old. She never hears from her son anymore. It seems like the only time he calls her is when he's calling from the county jail, needing somebody to bail her out, him out. Have you ever met a mother like this? I have, I suspect you have as well. And I can attest to you that there is nothing in life that makes her heart more sick than to consider how her hopes have been deferred. She remembers how many times she brought him to church, how many times they've read the Bible in their home, how many times the love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit have been placed before him. She remembers how many times she has fallen to her knees in prayer, interceding on her son's behalf because of this strong, deep desire to know that he is saved, and yet her hope has been one deferment after another. Hope deferred makes a mother's heart sick. A young lady desires to be married. Her friends are getting married. Always a bridesmaid, never the bride, she says to herself. And every time another one of her friends becomes married, her hope is deferred. Her heart becomes just a little more sick. A man has been laid off of his job. His desire is to provide for his family, so he goes to the first job interview that he's given with much hope. And by the 10th interview, his heart is sick. And every time he goes to the mailbox, he sees an envelope from his creditor with the words urgent stamped across it in red letters. His heart becomes even more sick. A wife hopes her husband will begin to be the spiritual leader in a home. A child wishes his parents would stop fighting with each other. The young professional hopes to climb the corporate ladder to become a corporate partner. In 1 Samuel 1, Hannah desired to bear a child, and when this hope had been deferred for several years, her heart became sick. She's described in the Bible as being deeply distressed, and she wept bitterly. In Luke 24, the risen Jesus approached two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they didn't know it was him. Verse 17 says that they were walking, but when Jesus approached them, they stood still and were sad. Their hearts were sick. When Jesus asked them what they were talking about, one of them began to describe the crucifixion, and then he said, but we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel. They had hoped. Their hope was deferred, or at least they thought so. They thought that the death of Jesus was the end of their hope. But you remember the instantaneous joy that filled those disciples' hearts when they finally figured out that it was, in fact, Jesus they were talking to, that he was alive, he was risen, and he was well? They had such an overwhelming sensation of joy that they both ran back to Jerusalem, even though it was night, even though it was dangerous to be on the roads in the dark, they ran back to Jerusalem in order to tell the good news of Jesus' resurrection to the other disciples. And this experience of joy is what's described in the second sentence of Proverbs 13, 12, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Or as it says in Proverbs 13, 19, a desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, sweet to the soul. And that makes perfect sense because those desires, the deep desires emanate from the soul. And when the things we hope for come to pass, then this brings that sweetness to the soul. Imagine how sweet it would be to the soul of that 85-year-old mother to hear her son call her, not to ask her to bail him out of jail, but to tell her that Jesus has bailed him out of hell. Or imagine how sweet it was to the soul of Hannah when she finally conceived and bore Samuel. In fact, you don't have to imagine what that was like. You can know what that was like because we can read that in Hannah's prayer recorded in 1 Samuel 2. Quote, and Hannah prayed and said, my heart exults in the Lord. My strength is exalted in the Lord. I rejoice in your salvation. This is the contrast that's being expressed in Proverbs 13, 12. When the hope that stems from those deep desires of our soul are deterred, then your heart becomes sick. But when those hopes are fulfilled, then your heart exults and rejoices. But so far, this only describes the condition of your heart when your hopes are fulfilled or not fulfilled. The question I imagine that many of you really want answered is how can I minimize the emotional trauma of the sickness of heart? Or to put it a different way, how can I have more of that sweetness of the soul, that tree of life experience? Or is it even possible? Or do we even have a say in this matter? Are we in a position where we simply have to grin and bear our dashed hopes and broken dreams, resigning ourselves to the fact that we can't change these things? No, actually, that's not what the Bible calls us to. God does not call us to a life of a fatalistic veil of tears, so to speak. God is not a sadistic being who takes pleasure in seeing his children's hearts stricken with deterred hope. If you're a Christian, then God has called you to a life of hope, but hope that's characterized by joy and peace. Consider Romans 15, 13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. So if your life is going to abound in hope, the hope characterized by joy and peace, then we need to be reminded, we need to remind ourselves of the connection between the desires of our soul and the hopes that flow from those desires. And if the things we desire, for those things that we desire are the things which define our hopes. And so to simply answer the question about possessing hope, hope that abounds in joy and peace, we just need to make sure that our desires, your desires, are the same as God's desires. Or to say the same thing a different way, when your will is perfectly aligned with God's will, then the things that you hope for will be the very things that God brings to pass. That's pretty easy, right? On paper, it's really easy on paper, but in the real life, it's a lot more complicated than that. Let me explain. When we consider the will of God, there is a distinction that we have to maintain. There are aspects of God's will that he has revealed to us. And then there are aspects of God's will that he has not revealed to us. And this distinction is often referred to as God's revealed will and God's secret will. And as far as the revealed will of God goes, there are things we can have every assurance of will come to pass because God has told us that they will come to pass. And so setting our hopes on these things is a sure way to attain that tree of life experience spoken of in Proverbs 13, 12. For example, Paul writes in Titus 3, 7 that his hope is for eternal life. His hope is for eternal life. Well, eternal life is something that God has promised everyone who believes in Jesus. And so if you believe in Jesus, then your desire is for eternal life, and that desire should produce hope for eternal life, and you should never have to worry about that hope being deferred because God has already revealed to you that eternal life is something that you presently possess and will fully attain in the future, will be fully realized. But God has not given the same type of clarity of revelation in all matters of life, particularly all matters of our Christian walk. Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children. This means that there are aspects of your life that God has chosen to keep secret from you. He has not told you what your future holds. Will I ever be married? Will I ever find a good paying job? Will my husband ever begin to take leadership in the home? Is the Holy Spirit going to bring the saving grace of Jesus Christ into the heart of my son? These are all questions that God has not revealed the answers to. And there are answers to these questions. Make no mistake about that. There are answers to these questions, but God is the only one who knows them. They are secret. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children. Therefore, if he has not revealed the answer to your question, then you should not presume to know the answer to that question. That seems rather fundamental, but let me repeat it. If God has not revealed the answer to your question, then you should not presume to know the answer to that question. Presuming upon the secret will of God is a sin. You may not think of it as a sin, but it is a sin. Please turn with me to the fourth chapter of the book of James. At the very end of the fourth chapter, James is writing about the man who presumes to know the secret will of God. And it's interesting to see how James identifies this man's attitude and then demonstrates how it's actually a sinful attitude. The conclusion James reaches is that presuming upon the secret will of God is the sin of arrogance and boasting. So look at verse 13 of chapter four. Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. What's James doing here in verse 13? He's calling attention to the man who hopes to be financially profitable in a certain town. But why is this the wrong hope for that man to possess? Let's keep reading. Come now you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist. You are a mist that appears for a little time and then it vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. And so the point James is making is that the man here is presuming to know the secret will of God. His hope is to go into a certain town and be profitable in his business dealings. But God has not revealed to that man that he desires or wills or will even bring to pass these business dealings. And so how does that man know that his hopes are gonna be fulfilled? He doesn't. There's no way of knowing that. The secret things belong to God. What James says a man ought to have said is that if the Lord wills, then I will go and do this or that. But maybe it's not the Lord's will. Maybe God's will is for him to go into a different town. Or maybe God's will is for him to stay only a month or two, not a year. The point is, the man who presumes to know the secret will of God is out of line. He's in sin. That man has elevated his own plans for the future above God's plans for the future. And James therefore properly exposes this as a sin of arrogant boasting. Verse 16, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. And the right thing to do is to submit your plans, your desires, your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations to the will of God. And that's the point that James is making here. Everything about you, everything about you needs to be in submission to God and his will. The best example of this type of submission to God's secret will is when Jesus, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, expressed His desire for the cup of wrath to be removed from Him. In His humanity, Jesus was agonizing over the imminent manifestation of God's wrath being poured out upon His innocent body, His soul, being crushed for our iniquities, being wounded for our transgressions, oppressing Him, afflicting Him, putting Him to grief. His soul was only hours away from being poured out to death. His sweats, we're told, became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. And in his sinless human nature, Jesus knelt down in the garden and he prayed, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. This is a picture of what it looks like to submit your desires and hopes to the Lord. This is a picture of what it looks like to submit your will to God's will. Had Jesus simply hoped that he could avoid the cross, then that hope would have been deferred. As a result, Jesus would have experienced a sick heart. And if we apply what James says at the end of chapter four, Jesus would have been guilty of the sin of arrogant boasting. But that's not the hope that Jesus had. His hope was for whatever God the Father's will was for his life. And so Jesus, his hope was not deferred. Even though we do see Jesus experiencing emotional agony while praying in the garden, this was not the result of deferred hope. Don't be confused. That was not the sickness of heart that Solomon is writing about in Proverbs 13, 12. And so for the man who's looking for a job, as he's walking into the 10th job interview, his hope needs to be submitted to the Lord. Therefore, his hope ought to be something like, I know that the Lord desires for me to provide for my family, and so I know that the Lord wants me to be employed. What I don't know is whether that employment will come from this company or a different company. So if the Lord wills that this be the job that I secure, then I hope that he makes that clear for me during the interview. That's a good hope. That hope is consistent with the instruction that James is giving and the example that Jesus left. Therefore, that hope really cannot be deferred. It cannot be deferred because it's a hope that has been submitted to the will of God. And so whatever the outcome of the job interview is, this man is either going to rejoice that God has opened the door to a new job, or he's going to rejoice that God has closed that particular door and is steering him in a different direction. Consequently, this man is not going to experience a sickness of heart if he walks out of that job interview and they say to him, thanks, but no thanks, we'll call you. When a young lady desires to be married, her hope needs to be submitted to the Lord. This means that her hope will sound something like, if the Lord wills for me to be married, or if this is an appropriate timing for me to be married, The mother who longs for her son to be saved needs to qualify her hope with, if it be the Lord's will. Now I know that some of you are thinking, how in the world can I possibly do that? How can I possibly live that way? I don't have that type of control over my desires. If my desires are what fuel my hopes, I can't just turn off my desires like a light switch. I can't turn them off and on. I can't force myself to say, if it be the Lord's will. I mean, supposedly I could say that with my mouth, but can I really believe that in my heart? Can I really live that in my life? You remember what I read earlier from Romans 15, 13? The answer to this question that was just raised is answered back in Romans 15, 13. There's your answer. And so, yes. You absolutely are correct when you say that you don't have the necessary control of your desires and your hopes to genuinely submit them to God. So long as you're trying to accomplish this, to govern yourself in your own strength, you are going to fail. But if you are in Christ, then God has filled you with the Holy Spirit and he has equipped you, therefore, to walk in the power of the Spirit. And it's in his power that you can submit your will to God's will. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that you may abound in hope, the Apostle Paul says. And just because you walk in the power of the Spirit does not mean that life is gonna be easy, that all these problems just go away. If our sinless Savior experienced trials and suffering, we should not think it's strange if we also experience trials and suffering. but the experience of the heart which is sick by deferred hope is a form of emotional pain that we can all but eliminate from our lives to the very extent that we are able to submit our desires and hopes to the will of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's not gonna be easy submitting these things to God. It's gonna take work. Paul described the work required to establish our hopes in God's will rather than your will in 1 Timothy 4.10. For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hopes set on the living God. Let me read that again. For to this end we toil and strive, for we have our hopes set on the living God. But the good news is that it's the Holy Spirit who empowered Paul, and it's the Holy Spirit that empowers you to perform this toil and this strife. He's the one who equips you for the task. And the benefits that come to those who do toil and strive in the power of the Holy Spirit is what Solomon described as that joyful tree of life experience that's sweet to the soul. Now let me kind of wrap all this up with a few words of caution, of warning. If you and I fail to maintain the hope that's explicitly set upon God, And if we don't live in recognition that God has absolute sovereign authority over all the affairs of his creation, then we will unwittingly encourage the wrong type of hope, the wrong type of behavior in others as thereby they establish hopes which are not consistent with God's will and therefore will be deterred. Let me cut through that clutter and give you a few examples. We know that Jesus is gonna return to earth a second time. God has revealed this to us in his word, and therefore we can confidently and securely place our hope in the second coming of Jesus Christ. And this hope is actually encouraged for us in the scriptures, such as Hebrews 10.23. But when prophecy preachers set dates on Christ's second coming, guess what happens? They create a hope within God's people that goes beyond God's revealed will and presumes to know his secret will. God never told us when Jesus is gonna return. He only told us that he will return. In fact, God has explicitly revealed that nobody knows the day or hour of Christ's return. But when prophecy preachers think they know the day and the hour, and they convince a bunch of other people into hoping that Jesus is just around the corner, then that hope is going to be deferred. And when it's deferred, those people's heart are gonna be made sick. You don't have to look too far into the history books to see how much emotional and spiritual damage has been done by date setters. There are plenty of people alive today walking around on this late great planet Earth who can tell you about the misplaced hopes that have come from, or I should say the emotional trauma that's come from hope deferred. because they listened to some prophecy preacher who presumed to know the secret will of God. Having hope in the second coming of Jesus is not the problem. It's presuming to know the timing that's the problem. Therefore, this is a rather obvious example of how God's people need to be careful not to set their hopes on the things that presume to know the secret will of God. But let's consider another example that's maybe not so obvious. Consider the husband who tells his wife, by this time next year, we'll have enough money saved up to go on vacation to Europe. But in God's providence, unexpected things happen to this couple. The transmission goes out in the car. The husband's hours get cut at work. And so the year rolls around and the husband says to his wife, wow, I really didn't anticipate those things. I guess we'll have to postpone the European vacation for one more year. And within the next year, the husband's employer goes out of business. The couple was forced to spend all their vacation money on paying the mortgage. Because of the way that the husband handled the desire, remember the role of desire, because of the way the husband handled the desire to go on a European vacation, he presumed to know the secret will of God when he misled his wife into the false hope that they would be there in a year. And that hope was deferred. And then he made the same mistake again. One more year, and that hope was deferred. How much better wouldn't it have been for him to say to his wife, we both wanna go on vacation to Europe. From my best estimates, it's gonna cost $12,000. Let's begin to save that money and then let's, if it's the Lord's will, he will provide for us and he will allow us to save the money that's necessary to go on vacation, right? This, directs the couple's hope into the provisions of God and the will of God rather than on a presumption of knowing what those things are, his will. Christians must be careful not to create hopes in other people that presume upon the secret will of God. That's the point. Christians must be careful not to create hopes in other people, much less themselves, that presume upon the secret will of God. This is particularly true for Christians who are in leadership positions, whether that be church leaders, political leaders, employers, husbands, parents. You must be careful in how you influence other people's desires. You need to be careful not to influence those desires into a hope that presumes upon the secret will of God. is you'll be setting them up for emotional pain. You'll be setting them up for a hope that's deferred, which will create in them a thick heart. The sad reality is that we do this far more often to other people than what we are even aware of. It happens all the time. It happens with thoughtless statements that we don't even understand the impact of. We walk away leaving an emotional bombshell for people. Consider the question so many people ask a young child. What are you gonna be when you grow up? How's a kid supposed to answer that question? The only correct answer to that question is, I don't know. I'm only 10 years old and God hasn't revealed his secret will to me yet. But when you ask a 10-year-old what he's gonna be when he grows up, you are reinforcing the idea that he is in control of his future. You're basically saying to that kid, you can be anything you want to be, but what's your plan? What are you gonna be when you grow up? If you're gonna have that conversation with a 10-year-old kid, then how much better wouldn't it be to speak to him about things like, I can't wait to see what plans God has for your life. You might even go on to ask him what special gifts and talents the Lord has equipped him with. Those gifts and talents will likely reflect what type of work God's preparing him to accomplish in life. Here's another example of a foolish question that's commonly asked. It's the question some adults ask the single people. You're an attractive person, why aren't you married yet? Sometimes the person who's foolish enough to ask this question will conclude the conversation with a statement like, well, I'm sure God has some young lady picked out for you. What somebody needs to say to this person is, oh really? You're sure God told you that? Because the Bible tells me that not everybody's gonna get married. The Bible tells me that it's a very honorable position and virtuous calling to remain single. And so how is it that you know that God has some young lady picked out for me? Then there's a story I was told about the unmarried man who, every time he went to a wedding, some old person would come up to him and say to him, pointing at the groom, you're next, as if this was an encouragement. And this young man took it upon himself that every time he would go to the funeral, he'd sit next to those same old people and point at the coffin and say, you're next. The caution that I want all of us to hear is that we need to be careful not to cause our brothers and sisters to stumble. We all struggle with keeping our own desires and our own will and submission to God. And this is often evidence in the things that we hope for, the wrong things that we hope for. And too often our desires, even our righteous desires, manifest themselves as hope that presumes upon the secret will of God. the equivalent of what James the Apostle was writing about when he says, tomorrow I will go and do such and such, when we really ought to be saying, if it is the Lord's will, then tomorrow I will go and do such and such. Like Jesus in Gethsemane, you must submit all your desires and hopes to the will of God. You must submit all of your desires and hopes to the will of God. And when you do this, you will experience a lot less emotional heartache and a lot more sweetness to your soul. But this type of living can only be accomplished in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. You must be walking in the Spirit if you're going to have your thoughts and your will and your words and your attitude and your behavior and your hope all in submission to God. It really comes back to what we read in Romans 15, 13. You must be filled with God. You must be, in order to properly abound in hope, you must be filled by God, the Holy Spirit. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are a glorious God, and you have a magnificent, magnificent creation. Not only did you create this creation, not only did you create man within this creation, but you continue to orchestrate and govern the affairs of your creation. You are involved. And as your plan unfolds, we see in history how magnificent that plan is. We see your grace. We see your love. We see your wisdom. We see your justice. We see all your attributes, even from the things that are made in this world. And Father, we should have every degree of confidence that you will continue to unfold your plan exactly in the order and manner in which you have ordained. But Father, we so often take it upon ourselves to presume that we know what your plan is. And we thereby make plans, our own plans. We establish our hopes and anticipation for what we think you are going to do. Sometimes we happen to get it correct. not because of any wisdom of us, but just because that's the way things happen sometimes. But Father, so often we fail to anticipate what your plans are in our life, and as a result, our hopes are dashed, our heart becomes sick, our hope is deferred, and we begin to experience an emotional trauma. And Father, you have not called us to a life of emotional trauma, but rather you have called us to a life which abounds in hope, a hope which is consistent with your will and which submits itself to your will. So Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would equip each one of us to be mindful of our own walk, of our own desires, May we process those desires according to your revealed will. May we understand what are righteous desires, what are unrighteous desires. May we avoid and rid ourselves of the unrighteous desires and maybe in the power of the Holy Spirit, pursue those which are righteous. And Lord, when we do, we pray that we would submit even these righteous desires to your will, not knowing what your plans are for us specifically, We place our hope, therefore, in you, that you have our future determined, and that you will determine whether we go on vacation or what job we get or whether we become married or or all the various concerns and desires that we hold within our heart. And Father, when we can walk in Your will, when we can submit ourselves to You, then we enjoy a wonderful peace that surpasses all understanding. We have this pleasant sweetness within our soul, and we have this tree of life experience that Solomon is writing about. And so Father, we so much desire to be in step with you, and we so much desire to know your will. And so may we be very careful students of what you have revealed, and may we be very careful not to presume upon what you have not revealed. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material here within, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.