If you are memorizing your Bibles, especially those of you with young minds, because the older you get, the more difficult it is to memorize. So let me not only remind you, but stir and exhort you to memorize God's Word. It is a meditational necessity that you memorize. It is of edificational imperative that you memorize because nothing will impact your personal edification, your growth in Christ and your nurturing in grace than memorizing. It's more formidable and effectual than reading Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It's more formidable and effectual than reading Greek. It's more formidable and effectual than reading Calvin or Luther. Memorization is paramount. It's also transformative in its power to sanctify. The Word of God says, Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. All the armor of faith is of the metal. of the memorized Word, whether it's the helmet of salvation, it's the Word of God, which is the power of God unto salvation, the shield of faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and holding the sword of the Spirit, and loins girt about with truth. Memorize. And memorize this text as well. Proverbs 13, verse 12. I'll ask you this rhetorical question. Were you disappointed this week? And the answer to that is no. Tim Pettinger, who is our resident expert in the Webster's Dictionary, reminds me that disappointment, as popularly understood, is not biblically proper. Disappointed? No. Your appointment may have been dissed, but not God's. Listen to this, Job 23, 12, and 13, but he is of one mind. and who can turn him, and whatsoever his soul, not your soul, whatsoever his soul desireth, not your soul's desire, whatsoever his soul desireth, even that he doeth. That's verse 12. But he is of one mind, and who can turn him, and whatsoever his soul desireth, even that he doeth. And, verse 13, he performeth the thing that is what? Appointed. He performeth the thing that is appointed for whom? Me. Now, your appointment may have been dissed this week, but not God's. Now, what is the practical import of this message? For those of you expecting a sermon on the rearing of sons, God led me, I believe, to this text this morning, and I have received providential confirmation of it out of the words of some of your mouths already. coming to God's house, and even before I arrived at God's house this day. Now, you personally may not need this sermon, but I know that someone here needs this sermon greatly. Someone whose heart has been, in their assessment, disappointed. Paul said there abide three graces, faith, love, and hope. We know much more about faith and love than we do hope. And the reason we know more about faith and love is because God writes much more about faith and love. James, the apostle of faith, Paul, the apostle of love, but who the apostle of hope. Paul mentions it perhaps more than anyone, except Solomon. But we know very, very, very little about it. Yet we should know more about it because three abiding graces exist in the church of God. Love, faith, and hope. And Solomon, the wise man, tells us something very interesting about hope in Proverbs 13, verse 12. And you should memorize this text. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Now, I can preach forever on Proverbs 13, 12a. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And I may not get beyond that this morning to the rest of the text, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. You get it just like that, don't you? Or do you? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. What is hope? Dare I say this, but I think we probably misassociate hope with wish and want. And hope is not wish and want. It is neither of those two. Hope is a grace of God. The Holy Scripture is very clear about that, "...now abideth these three, love, Faith and hope, or in Paul's order, faith, hope, and love. So when we think really about what hope is, it's not what we wish for. It's not what we want. It is a grace of God, and we spell it with a capital H. In the same way, we spell the grace of God Faith with a capital F, and Love with a capital F. Hope is an abiding grace of God. Now, were you disappointed this week in your mind? Some obstruction to your plans, some interference with your will, some expectation or desire unmet and unfulfilled. And if that happened, was your heart then made sick? Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Well, let's think about little hope versus big hope, and the sickening of the heart by hope disappointed in human terms, and try to write our thinking Our meditation about hope in relation to the will of God. First of all, back to the question, what is hope? It is a theological grace, and not just abstractly and transcendentally so, it's a theological grace that God posits in your heart, just as he posits faith in your heart and love in your heart. If you are a child of God, born of the Spirit of God, you have faith because God has given you faith. And you have love because the love of God has been shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is given unto you. But if you are a child of God, you have hope, capital H, hope as well. And not just hope about the grand events of the future, such as the great hope and glorious appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or the earnest expectation of the whole creation in hope, waiting for the adoption to wit, the glorification of the body. Not just hope for the grand events, but you have capital hope about other things, though you may not be able to articulate exactly what those things are or what your hope means. But if you have hope, If you have Christ, you have hope, and if you have hope, it's something given to you by God. You just have to be very careful understanding the difference between divinely given hope versus self-engendered hope. Now, hope, as a capital H, grace of God, has to do not with your wishing, or your wanting, nor even your certain expectation. Wishing and wanting are the human aspects of hope. You want this very badly, you wish for this very passionately, and so you hope, lowercase h-o-p-e, you hope that you get what you want and wish for. And when you don't get what you want and wish for, all of a sudden, in the cliché, your hopes are dashed. That's human hope, and it is to be disappointed, discouraged, deterred, and unfulfilled. But divine hope, capital H Hope, is not that way, yet we as Christians often confuse the two. Faith is not hope. Here's the essential difference between faith and hope. Faith is grounded in the explicit declaration and revelation of God's Word. Don't we believe this, that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God? Faith is a grace that comes from God to our heart, but it's also a grace that is nurtured and edified as we study to show ourselves approved unto God. And by the way, if you would increase your faith, If you would have faith, even as a mustard seed that would move mountains, you ought to hide the Word of God in your heart. Because as the Word of God Christ Himself has been born into your heart, you've been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed. Jesus Christ Himself, the very Word of God incarnated, as it were, in your bosom. If you would have great faith, then you must nurture the child Christ in your heart by the Word. Nurture the Word by the Word, that the inward man may grow in wisdom and grace and knowledge and stature. If you would have the faith of God grow in your heart, the water and sun that rain upon and warm it are the Word of God. If you would be robust in faith, study your Bibles, and you'll move mountains. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, but hope is not so specific as faith. Faith rests on the certain, clear, revealed revelation of God. If it's in here, I can have faith in God's Word. But hope, as it were, is written with invisible ink, not visible. Hope as a grace doesn't rest in specific revelation. Hope rests not upon the revelation of God, especially as it relates to our day-to-day lives. Hope doesn't rest on the revelation of God. Hope rests on the nature of God, especially His goodness. It's not wrong for you to hope that your children will be saved, but you can't have faith, ultimately, with certainty that your children may be saved. Oh, well, what about train up a child in the way he should go? Well, can you have certain faith that you will train up the child in the way he should go? If you have a perfect expectation of your parenting skills and graces, then so be it. But if you think you are not mightier than David, boast not. about the future of your children. You see, unless your child's name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, which exists in the secret will of God, you cannot know the destiny of your child. But you can hope for it. It is a noble and good grace that rests in the good nature of God. In fact, hope is like an anchor for your soul. Hope is a heavy thing. It's fallen all the way from heaven to earth. It's hooked, as it were, our lives in this storm-tossed, wave- and wind-driven world. And by hope, we're tethered to God's very throne, tethered to His nature, and tethered to His goodness. But I think some of us have been operating in a hope that is not a godly hope. I think we've been operating in a hope that is a human hope this week. Were you disappointed? Were you disappointed this week by some wrong expectation, by some wrong hope that you had? What happened that discouraged your soul, that discouraged your mind? What happened that, in a human phrase, dashed your hopes this week? By the way, for those of you interested in these things, the Greek word for hope is elpis, where you get the word elpis, so there you go. You need to find elpis. Capital E. Were you disappointed this week? Maybe you were disappointed in your whole life. I know people whose lives have been ruined by disappointment. Ruined because their hopes have been dashed. I know people who are parentally bitter. I know people who have a mark of unhappiness on them. You can hear it in their voice, you can see it in their facial expressions. They're just old grouches, because life hasn't gone just the way they want to. And I submit it has something to do with hope. In fact, if you want to Freudianize this text, Solomon said, hope deferred makes the heart sick. You know what it means to be sick to your stomach? Not physical nauseation. but emotional nauseation. Absolutely, this makes me sick because of something that happened. Well, when your hopes are dashed, that's what can happen to you. And let me talk to you about how you get in trouble when you falsify hope. You falsify hope when your hope is little H hope and not big H hope. When hope means your wishes and your wants, here is the sin you're committing. First of all, you're committing the sin of a selfish desire and want. You know that all sin is rooted in selfishness. It's when we think or act in the interest of I. And when hope can be disappointed and make the heart sick, it's because our thinking and action have to do with me. That's why I'm upset. Because my hopes were focused upon my wants and my wishes. And so the root of that is selfishness and covetousness as well. But it's worse than selfishness and covetousness. a willful and presumptive interference with the sovereign will of God. And here, dear Christian, you need be very, very careful, because the destiny and events of your life are not to be determined by your wishes and wants. They are not to be determined by your wills. And those of us who have Calvinistic leanings, think about what a terrible sin that is, when we would be so presumptuous to say, today I'm going to do this, or tomorrow I'm going to go to this city or that city, stay there for about a year, maybe two, I'm going to buy this, sell this, prosper here, progress there, do this, do that." Or that you ought to say, if God wills it, we shall live. If God wills it, we shall do this or that. But dear friend, you can will it, as Dr. Timothy George says, wiggle your willer. all you will. And your wiggling will, wiggle though it may, will ultimately arrive in misery. Because your will doesn't determine what happens in your life. If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. Solomon warned, "'Boast not thyself.'" Now, even the most cautious Christian, who understands that the sovereign will of God is greater than his will, and is very cautious in what he plans and how he plans, and how he says that even the most cautious Christian is liable to fall into a boastful expectation of uncertainty And yet, because he's presumptuous thinking that this is going to be and I can do it, and God says no, that person is liable, vulnerable to a sickened heart, disappointed hope, because he's presumed upon the will of God. And here's another aspect to this sin. It's one thing to presume upon the sovereign will of God and another sin altogether to boast against the secret will of God. When James says, you know not what shall be on tomorrow, he's talking about the sovereign will of God as well, but also the secret will of God, not the will of God disclosed to us on the pages of his holy book or disclosed to us in the providential history of time. With all history behind us and now us in this present moment, knowing how the providence of God is unfolded, the secret will of God is right out here, right out here in the region of the unknown. And when we boast, when we have sure expectation of what we will do here and what we will do there, Not only are we risking, violating, and aggravating, and grieving the sovereign will of God, but we're presuming upon the secret will of God, which is a sin. Now, his secret will is always one with his ethical will, always one with his sovereign will, but his secret will is never one with the intentions of our wills. That's a sin. to presume upon the secret will of God. In fact, we're better off not knowing the future. There's a thunderstorm going on. The father told the son, son, go out there and give me some wood for the fire. It's getting cold. He said, well, dad, I'm scared to go outside. He said, son, go on outside, get that wood, bring it. He said, now, daddy, I'm really afraid. Son, go on out there, the Lord's out there." The little boy walked over to the door, opened the door, said, Lord, would you hand me that wood? If you knew what was just outside the door, if you knew what was just in the next moment of time, you'd be going to the door and say, Lord, I know you're there. I hope you're there. What happened this week that disappoints you? Maybe this morning, maybe your whole life is kind of soured. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Now, there's another element to this text. It's not just a matter of disappointment where the heart is sickened by a falsely expected or anticipated hope. The Hebrew word for deferred As you can hear, it doesn't mean always detoured or stopped, so that God just says, absolutely no. The word deferred means exactly that—delayed. But a little more than that, actually, the Hebrew word carries with it the idea of elongation. It's an oh no. Here, perhaps, my hope is noble. Maybe I'm not presuming upon the secret and sovereign will of God. There's something for which I nobly quest that is good, and yet God says, deferred, elongated, wait. Not now. Now, when God says, not now, that could mean never. It at least means maybe. And it certainly means wait. So here we see a second practical instruction for you relative to hope as it relates to the will of God. First of all, Deference, that's what I've been talking about, deferring to the will of God. If Jesus prayed, Father, not my will in relation to the cross, you ought to be able to pray that same prayer in relation to the little problems you have in life. Not my will, but thine, your secret will, your sovereign will, your best will for me. Deference. But the second practical grace is one we do not like, and that is patience. Hope stretched out. Hope stretched out. Now that, too, Solomon says, will make your heart sick. Hope deferred, as in delayed, makes the heart It surely is hope which has heard the answer, no, makes the heart sick. So, let me ask you in this situation, when God says, wait, when God says not only exercise deference, but also patience, what's wrong here? Is it God with the problem? Oh, there's something wrong with hope. Maybe so, if it's little h, hope, if it's your wishes and wants. But if it's a noble quest, with a capital H deposited in your spirit by God, there's nothing wrong with God, and there's surely nothing wrong with hope in that case. Therefore, the problem has to be where? Where? Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Now, here's a loving and gracious slap in the face to you. Not that, but a loving and gracious rebuke. If your hope is wrong because it was your wishes and wants, presuming upon your will, ignoring rightly the sovereign and secret will of God, be rebuked. Be rebuked. Boast not thyself of tomorrow. You ought to say, if the Lord will. And you ought to remember the Lord's sovereign will in every dimension of your life. By the way, that's one of the sterling graces of believing in the doctrine of predestination. Because you can always trust beneath the shadow of your Father's wings. But if you've been presumptive, Undeferential to God's sovereign and secret will be rebuked, dear brother or dear sister, for that sin." And if you have been noble in your hope, resting on the goodness of God and questing for the goodness of God in your life, and it's taking too long, It's stretching you out in time as well, and that's making your heart sick. Well, here's another rebuke as well. In the one case, you're rebuked for the sin of presumption and lack of deference to God's will. In this case, you are rebuked for impatience, for impatience, You see, it's not hope that's sick, it's not God that's sick, it's your heart that's sick. Now, hope deferred makes the heart sick. There are psychological, emotional, and spiritual dimensions to the deferment of hope. Think about the psychological dimension of the deferment of hope. When Solomon says, hope deferred makes the heart sick, maybe he knew someone whom he had met that day who had a, quote, disappointment, unquote, in life, and he had observed them, and they were very sad. They didn't feel like going out to dinner. They wanted to go to their room, turn off the light, maybe go to bed. They were just whipped and tired. Or maybe they were really angry. about life. Perhaps Solomon didn't know Freud or Jung or Skinner, but he could see some behavioral manifestations that were improper. He said, well, that person got disappointed, and look at them. They're mad, or they're sad, or they're fretting. They're having some psychological effects from disappointment. Christians are not invulnerable to that, are we? Well, you tell me. If God says, no, what about your mind? If God says, wait, what about your mind? Particularly, your worried mind. Your fretting mind. your gray, speculative mind, your darkly clouded, depressed mind. Can't you awaken to the reality that the God who has said, wait, is a God who knows what is best for your life? He is of one mind. and who can turn him, and whatsoever his soul desireth, that he doeth, and you can be sure that he will not only perform the thing appointed for you, but that all things, even things that you don't see how they could possibly fall under the category of all things, all things, Work together for good to them who love God and who are called according to His. It doesn't have to do merely with the election. It has to do with August 12th, January 4th, 2005. It has to do with your whole life and everything in it. All things work together for good. to them that love God and who are the call according to His purpose. But when hope is deferred, when God says no or wait, then we just go into our hee-haw mode of blue despair, agony on me, deep, dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Blue despair. Agony on me. How spiritual. How spiritual. Not just psychological is the sickening of the heart by deferred hope, but emotional too. We are emotional creatures. You know that. And these little Things that float about in our minds when hope is deferred by no or wait, really are born here, in the emotional life, and they flutter up into the mental world. Emotions, emotions, emotions, emotions, emotions triggered by disappointment. I've already mentioned some of these—anger, poutiness, fear is another one, by the way. Well, what is a Christian supposed to experience emotionally in every circumstance of life? I was disappointed this week. As you know, I enjoy art. And as I was exploring a website on art, I was looking, I wanted a new painting. And something that looked like an original but wasn't. And I came across this beautiful, majestic, but very dark, almost as black Matthew and Danny as your shirt, very dark painting by Rembrandt. And you know what it was? It was huge picture of, quote, the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. And Jansen, that boat, is riding up on a wave. The mast is loose. Peter and James and John, they're not sitting in the sailboat out on the deep blue sea. They are in stark panic on that ship. terrified, dark clouds, thunder and lightning. And I start looking for Jesus in the picture. And you know what? Rembrandt was so wise in creating that vortices of fury and darkness of terror upon that canvas that he did not put the Savior on the ship, Jessica, or even walking on the water. Where was Jesus, by the way? He was asleep. The King James Version says, asleep on a pillow. Now that doesn't mean that God sleeps, for those of you who are new to the faith. It does mean that in the incarnation of Christ, there was a physical There was a physical reality to the ingotting of man and the enmanning of God. And that ought to be great encouragement to you wherever you are, mentally and emotionally, because you have a high priest who is touched by the feelings of your infirmities. And because he is very God of very God and very man of very man, he is able to succor you. to not merely sympathize, but to empathize with the very lowest of human experience. His visage is more marred than all the sons of men. And you can come boldly unto the throne of grace and touch the Savior with the feeling of your infirmities And he knows because he has been here. He was in all points tested. Not just morally tempted, but experientially tested. He was in all points tested, just as you are. There's no test you face, which he has not faced. And there's no test you face, which he failed. He is the mighty God who is able to sustain you in grace and power when your mind is fluttering, and your emotions stirring. When you're on the Sea of Galilee, the dark wind, wave, cloud, thunder, and lightning, and all the other fishermen with you, what do we do? What do we do? He's asleep on a pillow. It's the repose of sovereign grace. It's the repose of sufficiency. Christ composed on the wild wave and in the face of the boisterous wind. Rembrandt was wise not to paint him, but he was there. He's within. the ship, and within the storm, and within immediate grasp of the disciples, they run to him and say, Lord, save us, we're perishing. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Mind, worries, emotions. But as you know, if you know a little Hebrew or theology, the heart in the Word of God is not the mind. And the emotions in the world of God is not the heart. In fact, please discover this or recover this. The mind is tethered to the heart, and the emotions are tethered to the heart. The heart is the root of the matter. Keep thy heart. Guard thy heart. With all diligence, for out of it are your emotions, out of it are your worries, and out of it are the very issues of life." Now, if your heart is sick, and it's not just a heart of worry, and not just a heart of emotional disequilibrium, but if your heart is sick, because of little-age hope deferred, God saying, wait, or God saying, no, that's ultimately a spiritual matter, isn't it? It's ultimately a spiritual matter. Now, you tell me, if God disappointed you this week, was it God? Well, of course. Then why in your worry, why in your fretting, are you implicitly questioning God? Why are you complaining against the Almighty, whose sovereign disposition of the affairs of your life, which is all wise and all for your best, why would you bicker against the Almighty. It sounds as if you're listening to Job's wife. Why don't you just curse God and die? And you know what? You ain't seen nothing yet. You ain't seen nothing yet. You think this is disappointment. One day, you'll walk through the valley of the shadow of death. If not your own valley, your loved one's valley. One day, your heart will be broken so heavily by your child, you don't know how you will ever be able to bear it. One day, Judas will kiss you. One day, some test or trial will come that will be so dark, so difficult, that it will eclipse the moons of all your other night's burdens. What then? If you can't get through this little narrow passage in life, what then when the real burden really comes? I'll tell you something else about the disappointment you're going through. The cliché says hindsight is 20-20. I promise you, and you may not relate to it in mind, in heart or faith now, but I promise you, if you're God's child and you are undergoing adversity, I guarantee you, when you get a little bit further down the road, and by the way, this Hebrew word for deferred has not only the idea of elongation, but also the idea of a road and a path. When you get just a little longer down the road, and you look back, you will see the goodness and the wisdom of God in the burden of that moment. I guarantee you. You've heard me use this illustration before, the idea of the bottom of a Persian rug. Well, earth is just the bottom of a Persian rug. It's all frayed. It doesn't look like it fits. There's no form, there's no pattern to it. How ugly. How unpleasing to the eye and the experience. Life is the bottom of a Persian rug, but if you can see it from above, it is curiously wrought with the finest needlework. and the handiest craftsmanship. The very spindle of the Almighty is turning in weaving the threads of your life, and while you think they are frayed, they are in fact perfectly woven together. Your life is not coming unraveled, it's a tapestry You just happen to be feeling the point of the needle right now. You see? You see? Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But, the rest of the text reads, when the desire cometh, it's a tree of life. I'm going to finish the sermon. Let me comb my hair. Ready? But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. The desire. Ask of the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart. Now, Rachel, my dear, that does not mean that if you want a new car, that if you desire a new car and you ask God for it, that you'll get a new car. Though, Grady, I think that would be a great idea. Maybe not new, but It doesn't mean that. God doesn't give you the car. He gives you the desires. See the difference? And if you're praying to God to give you the right desires, then your wants and wishes will change. If you're sick in heart because hope has been deferred, Well, maybe the problem is your desires. Maybe they weren't for the glory and honor of God. Maybe they weren't capital H, Hope. Maybe you're thinking on earthly things and not on heavenly things. But when the desire cometh, the holy passions of the soul, the noble quests of the unerring night of the heart, When the pure motives, whatsoever things are true, honest, just, of good report, when those become the nuggets for which your soul digs, then ask of the Lord, and He will give thee the desires. And you know what? No good thing Will the Lord withhold from him that walketh uprightly?" A verse I think of all the time, and I take great comfort in this, and let me encourage all you parents to take great comfort in this. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, know ye not also that your heavenly Father knows how to give good gifts to you? I'm sure that the Hendrickses know how to give good gifts to Jamie and Jerry. Take heart. That parental glory which God is sharing with you is an evidence of His parental faithfulness to you. Another verse I think about often, if you being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, listen, how much more shall your father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? I take heart in that as well, that if I know how to give something good to my children, not only does God know how to give good things to me, but God knows how and desires to give me the Holy Spirit. And I'll just say as an editorial but important aspect of this sermon, the greatest need we have in this church and the greatest need you have in your home and in your life is God the Holy Spirit. And let's take heart that God will give it to us. No good thing will the Lord withhold from them that walk uprightly. Would you give your child a scorpion if he asked for an egg? Would you give him a stone if he asked for a fish? Well, of course not. And do you think God's handed you a stone? Has thrown a stone at you? Do you think God's stung you? Like a scorpion, I tell you, nay, nay, nay. No good thing will the Lord uphold from him that walks uprightly. But when the desire come, listen, it shall be a tree of life. Now, what tree are you under, really? When hope is deferred and it makes the heart sick, some of us sit down with Adam and Eve under the tree of disobedience. And we don't like what has happened to us. We don't like hope, no, or hope, wait. We just want it now. And we're angry at God and going to persist in that anger and disobedience. Maybe we get on a ship with Jonah and sail far away from the Lord and sit down under the tree of unhappiness. Remember, Jonah, who sat down under the gourd tree, is very upset, because things hadn't just gone the way that he would have had them go. I wanted God to kill those people. Or maybe you're with Elijah in the tree of pouting fear. Remember, Elijah sat down under the juniper. Oh, Lord, just kill me. Just kill me. The Lord comes and says, what are you doing here, Elijah? It's not that the Lord didn't know, the Lord knew exactly what Elijah was doing. Here this great prophet, and those of you who think, you know, I'll never do this, well, if you're greater than Elijah, come preach. Sitting down there under the juniper, pouting, and not just pouting, pouting in worrisome fear. There are all kinds of trees you can be under when hope is deferred. The tree of disobedience, the tree of rebellion, the tree of pouting, the tree of fear. What tree are you under? Well, if your heart is right with God in the moment of disappointment, you're under the tree of lie. You see? The fruit may not be there of your desire, of your hope, but the tree is, the leaves are, and I assure you the river is flowing, and that God is walking in the midst of the garden. Let's stand together. Here's a verse of Scripture you should memorize. Hope deferred maketh the heart six, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Our Father, teach us to hope righteously in deference to the will of God and in patience. Teach us to hope righteously, and that we will not ground our hope in our wishes and wants, but that we'll ground our hope in the sovereign and secretive will of God, and learn to pray, Father, not my will, but Thine. And Father, cultivate us with Hope, capital H, that our hearts may indeed be well-watered gardens where the tree of life blooms and yields godly hope that is anchored in Christ Jesus. And we pray this in His name.