I probably could have just jumped into Hebrews and prayed the sermon. It might have worked better. But we didn't do that. We got the prayer, now we'll get the Word. Hebrews chapter 3, verse 7 is where we start. Those of you who were here last week know that we were in the third chapter of Hebrews last week, looking at the first six verses. We recognize that Moses had a responsibility before God for his obedience, and Moses lived his life pretty well, this special called man of God for the salvation of God's people, Israel, out of Egypt. And so when we read the first six verses in chapter 3, we found out that Moses did pretty good, according to this writer. And but he was he was not the owner of the house. He was not the builder of the house. He was a part of the house. He was a faithful servant in the house. Jesus. Superior to Moses, because. He was the heir to the house. He was the builder of the house. It was his house. He was not a servant in it. He was owner in it. And when we come to the sixth verse, what I loved about this part of the text, it doesn't tell us much about how this is going to happen. It looks like a comparison and a contrast all the way down. And then when you get to the last verse, "...but Christ is faithful over God's house as a Son, and we are His house." Oh, wow! Now we're through with contrasting. We realize now that this house, the people of God house, where the Son is ruling it, is us. Those who believe, those who trusted in the Lord, those who are born from above, those who are His sons, His children, are ruled, cared for, watched over by the Son. We are His house being led and blessed and provided for by Jesus. I like that. Closing out verse number 6. Here's the text starting at verse 7, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test, saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray," listen to this, "...they always go astray in their hearts. They have not known my ways." Pretty strong word to a people who've followed Him for 40 years in the wilderness journey. God putting up with them all that time. And here He says, they put Me to the test those 40 years. I was provoked with that generation. They always go astray in their heart. They have not known My ways. Then, verse 11, As I swore in my wrath, this is God speaking now, they shall not enter my rest. How many of you understand that all of the older folks or the people that were adult and leaders in the nation of Israel and up, basically every single one of them did not go into the land of promise. They all died in the wilderness. And the reason they died is because of unbelief, as we'll see in verse 19. Unable to enter because of unbelief. Moses made it all the way through. He's the leader. He was faithful in his task, his job. Joshua and Caleb were the only two spies who said, ìWe can go into the land and take it.î God had sent them to spy out the land they were entering, and He knew that if theyíd just obey Him, He would give them what He had promised them. But when they got over there, they looked like grasshoppers compared to those guys. They were huge, giants in the land, big fighters, war! And they were afraid to go. Today is a key word in this text all the way down. Why? Because when I read the Bible and read today, I'm knowing it's talking to me. It's not now talking to those who lived in the rebellion in the wilderness. That's past. I'm reading their story, yes. But when I read the Bible, I don't just listen to it as a word to them, I listen to it as a word to me. Today! When is it today? Whenever God says it's today. So when you get a word from the Lord that says, Today, if you hear My voice, do not harden your hearts. We better pay attention to that. This is introductory, just so we'll get started, alright? Just a little bit of it. Let me read the rest of it, and we'll be ready. Verse 12, take care, brothers, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin lies. Sin deceives. The enemy always works deceptively. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, as it is said today, if you hear His voice. Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. Now what happened when they heard the voice of God telling them they could do it or to go in the land, they got the spies, got it done, wanted somebody to look it over, came back out, gave them a report, and God is standing there and they know that they're supposed to go in and take the land. It's time to go in and possess it. Today you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. What did they do? They hardened their hearts to the point that they said, we can't do it. We can't do it. They're too big, they're too strong, and you know us. Well, I know what I've read about them up to that point. Looked pretty good coming out of Egypt, didn't it? They go to the Red Sea and Our man Moses, Aaron of course, holds a rod up on his behalf, holds it up over the water, and it parts. The wind just kind of blows it up in each direction. And they start across. Everybody coming out of Egypt, no small number. They start across that sea, and I don't know what exactly their thought was like as they got to the middle of it, because it's hard to go either direction now in a hurry. but they're out there and they're looking at it and uh... they still kept going and then of course behind them soon before they all got out of the way comes the armies of egypt well you know the story so we're not going to talk about it except to say that when they eased out on the plus side which was the wilderness side the wilderness side of the sea God said, now it's time for you to put that rod up again, and the water starts coming together. And all those army members from Egypt are out in that seabed, and the water is gushing back into place. God did that. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's that big thing. You ought to remember the big thing. Remember those massive destruction of the enemy. That ought to encourage us! Food to eat right off the ground, didn't like it, didn't have much flavor. Manna. God's provision. And they fussed with God at least ten times, He says. At least all these ten times you have rebelled against Me out here. You didn't have water in one place and you thought you were going to die there. So you fussed at me about water, water, water. Lead us out of here so we can die of thirst." And God, being in charge of everything, just said to Moses, why don't you go to that rock and just stand back and say something to it. No, he didn't start with saying something. He sent him over there and he started with a rod up against the rock in order to get... and when he hit the rock, water gushed out. Somebody said there was a natural spring there, I guess. I don't know. It's a nice one. Whatever it was, it probably was a nice spring there. God can make springs when there are none in the desert, you know. And so, He just provided water for them. Now, later on, when they got agitated with Him again and He has to get water, God tells them to go and speak to the rock. Remember that? Second time was speak to the rock. Well, you know what Moses did, don't you? He's fed up with this bunch. They're the sorriest sheep in the world! I'm tired of first church, I want to go down third church, they're bound to be better. What did he do? He got mad at them and he hit the rock. Without laying out the understanding there, this is God at work and I want you to see how God works. He instructs and then He does. If we obey as He instructs, He provides as He plans to. He didn't lay that out for the people. He didn't explain what was about to happen. He didn't use it as a teaching moment, a humble acknowledgment of God's work. And he didn't go into the land either. He missed the land of promise as far as leading the people in. He did not do it. Joshua was going to do it. all those different times. God did things that only God could do. And when they got time to go and defeat an army that they had not yet faced, and they heard about all the prosperity of growth in that place, they had a couple of guys carrying a post with a great big cluster of grapes hanging on it, so big. Imagine that! I want to see that in the glory of the new that's coming, won't you? That kind of a cluster of grapes. First when I thought about that story, I thought maybe it was big grapes like this. That's probably not the best way to think about grapes. It was probably just a lot of nice grapes, about like that. Edible, good. All of that was there and God was instructing them and they wouldn't do it because they were afraid they couldn't win. They forgot God, and His Word to them is promise to them. Did I finish reading this yet? Okay, let me do it. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned? whose bodies fell in the wilderness, and to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient. So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. It involves a trust in God to obey. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest... Listen to this, "...the promise of entering His rest still stands." Now, let me just tell you, and I won't go back and dig this up, because I had to get it from other sources, but when you look at the rest, the word rest used in this series of verses, and you think about the rest that God has promised, I look back at the beginning when God created everything. Genesis 1 and 2. And we find that there's a day coming. It's day number 7. It was the day of rest, the day when God ceased from His labor. It was God's rest day that Saturday. So when God got everything done, He rested. What does that mean? That means there wasn't anything else to do. He's accomplished what he needs to accomplish, and he's going to, in his accomplishment, his people are going to find rest. He does it in such a way that our rest is tied to the rest of the Creator. Nothing for us to do on his day of rest except to move in and relax. Now I like this because for us, He's done His work for a full creation. And the first day for us is on the day of rest. First day living is into the rest of God. There's a whole lot of stuff you can read about Sabbath days and Sabbath rest. And you can go to the debate between whether or not worship for the church should be on Saturday as a Sabbath or Sunday as Resurrection Sunday, where it began after Jesus had been raised from the dead. And that became the day for the church in most cases to meet for worship. We meet on Sundays, we worship, but we worship every day, don't we? Individually, personally. God is worshipped every day. When the work was done, the rest began. All they had to do was enter into what God had provided. That's the rest that is there at the beginning. What happened to that? Sin contaminated all of that, changed everything. And, of course, God knew it would. His plan is never out of His understanding. And so He's going to redeem a people. He's going to have a people. He's going to bring a people to Himself. But it's going to be changed by sin's influence in the human race. Adam is going to mess it up. by disobeying what God had instructed. And when disobedience comes, that was the problem with the wilderness. They refused to obey because they refused to believe. Surely God doesn't mean that you can't eat of that tree of knowledge. Serpent shows up, you know, works on Eve, and then Adam jumps right in. Surely God doesn't want you to do without. This is where you learn what is right and wrong. This is how you're able to make proper decisions about what to do and how to live. Oh man, you talk about messing up something that was good. Walking with God in the cool of the day. I don't know of a better phrase in Scripture than that one. That one I'd love to have. Wouldn't you? I'd like to get back to that. walking with God in the cool of the day no fear no shame absolutely exposed to God and to one another with no shame or fear or pain probably the first dancers Adam and Eve I mean let's celebrate again celebrate again think about it no sickness in the body, no cells and rebellion, nothing. None of that is there until sin enters and contaminates and it took a long time to get it working in a lot of people. Years roll by. They live long. It took them a long time for the evil that came inside the physical bodies to finally make a difference and bring death, younger, younger, younger death. What a day that was. In the cool of the day with God, the serpent says, God made you for Himself. He really wants you to enjoy all this. He just doesn't let you eat it because He doesn't want you to know what He knows. Deceitfulness of sin. Doesn't want you to know what He knows. And so they ate. She took it, ate it, didn't die, didn't feel bad, didn't hurt anything. And you talk about tasting good, man, that tasted good. He comes along and shares in it. God comes to walk in the cool of the day. And they've already been affected by what has happened. Now they have sewed some leaves together and made them some simple clothes, because they're naked and exposed. It's not beautiful anymore. The beauty possible in intimacy is marred by the evil deception that comes with sin. And they hid from God, which is really bizarre. Rest was over. Adam and Eve were expelled from that place and sin contaminated their offspring and started its journey in the human race. So even that we today can acknowledge and know it's true that we have Adam's blood marring us, sin contaminates the whole. Then there is the rest that comes at the end. I'm looking for a consummation. How about you? What is that? That is a second coming. When the king who found me at a little old altar in a little country church in Decca Prairie when he found me is coming back to get me. Coming back to get you, coming back to bring you to full, complete, victorious salvation. What a day that's going to be. In that consummation, we're going to receive an inheritance that is undefiled waiting for us, provided by Jesus. No contamination, no defilement, nothing. We're moving in to a place of perfection. having been fully redeemed, transformed, glorified with the Master. Finally home, it's rest. Rest like we can only think about, sing about, consider Sabbath rest, a Sabbath rest that's wait. And we're talking about a real Sabbath, a final Sabbath, a Sabbath that lasts in a time when there is no time. Let me give you one other suggestion. When I read these texts, I think this is possible. I think part of the rest that we get happens, surprisingly, while we're yet not in perfected state, but in this world between His ascension and His coming, where we're gathering in Jesus' name and we find ourselves from time to time sitting in a place with God's people where He has shown up. And you find yourself at rest in a place of imperfection. You ever been at rest in the presence of the Lord with God's people? I know people have told me through the years, and it took us a long time, Grace and I did a lot of camping. And in camping, I loved sitting by a stream of water and just watching the water roll by, listening to the wind as the trees, leaves flutter. listening to a bird, trying to figure out what kind of bird it is. I'm a real good bird watcher. I can recognize a crow by its sound, pretty much. And, you know, you're going to recognize mockingbirds because this year out here, when it was time for them to start looking for a mate, that dude sang those same songs over and over and over and over and over again for three months. I mean, he never quit. It didn't matter what time you got here. It's going to be dark. He's singing. He quit singing, and I'm assuming, hopefully, that he's okay and found a mate. And I'm hoping that his mate was not a crow. That wouldn't be what he wanted. See, God works it out pretty good. But there are times when in the presence of the Lord, when our minds aren't focused on a truth that just erupted in our mind somehow as the preacher preached it, or somebody had declared something to you about it, and now it just came alive to you, when rest just comes. And you just have to sit there for a while and think about it. Wouldn't it be good if we could find just a little rest in the rhythm of serving Jesus? Wouldn't it be good if God would just show up in your life and touch you, and when it was time to run out, you wasn't ready to run out? So you'd just sit there for a while. Somebody would say, come on, it's time to go. I said, you wait for me, I'll be out there. when He gets through with me. I've got to sit here just a little bit and listen, sing a little song under my breath and know that God is here. Because sometimes we can come to church, I've done this so much as a pastor, come to church, I'm worn out. I used to, particularly when we used to preach three times a week, it was always going, we were preaching all the time. And I was glad I was young. Because now, in the overall challenge of just getting the Word out and wanting to get it out right, you get tired and then you think, oh, it would be nice to get home, prop the feet up, eat a hamburger, or maybe something better. I want Him to mess with me a little bit so that someday in this service, in this place on Sunday, He will have so worked in me a place that I couldn't get up and leave. But I just needed to stay a little while and acknowledge Him and listen for His voice. What I really believe is that it would take that funny, crazy upsetness away from me pretty fast. What do you think? I wouldn't be asking, was that a sorry sermon? Because he showed up. Grace never tells me it's a sorry sermon. She has certain things she says that I know wasn't the best sermon in the world. But then you just have to take it. You ask for it, right? I've experienced that a little bit more in continuing prayer meetings than in any other place, but sometimes they too distract rather than give you freedom to just wait on the Lord. So we'll talk about this some more, but there's the beginning in creation where there is rest. God, is it there for you? You could have had it, Adam, come on in and walk with me. There's rest at the end, I mean really rest, Sabbath rest, the eschatological conclusion, victorious rest in the Sabbath. that we have. I'm still going to read the text. That's about all I'm going to do, a little bit more. Where did I stop, Grace Ellen? Am I at four? Okay. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands. In other words, those who are born again are going to receive the rest that's been promised all along. Do you know that the same gospel we're hearing was heard by those in the wilderness? Hang on. Let me read this. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, it's still there, still available, let us fear lest any... How are we going to be resting when we're fearing, you know? Let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. Listen to this next phrase. For good news came to us just as to them. I thought the good news was the gospel. Who's going to... Yeah, it is the gospel. They had this marvelous picture of the people coming out of the land of bondage. You always called it a paradigm for salvation in a gathering of the church. But then, The good news is this land is yours. Your job is to walk with me, obey me, go with me. I'm with you. And He would have gone right in, led them into the land of promise and overcome their enemies and made it possible for them to get rid of those enemies out of the country they were taking. They didn't do that either. They were supposed to drive all those out who were not them. Because God knew what they would do if they stayed. They would accept them, receive them, change what they did, and become a different people. God does demand some things along the way. For good news came to us just as to them, this writer says, and he's writing this in about year 60-65 in the first century A.D. A long way from the wilderness people. And he's recognizing that it applies. It applies to them now. And we, as we read it, can say it applies to us. And the problem, they didn't benefit in receiving the good news that was theirs because they were not united by faith with those who listened. You've got to listen if you're going to receive. You have to listen in order to obey. You have to listen in order to have faith. Faith comes by hearing. For we who have believed enter the rest, as he has said, for I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day, here it is, in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and again in this passage he said, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains for some to enter in, And those who formerly received the good news fail to enter because of disobedience. Again, the appoints a certain day. Today, saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Now remember, if it belongs to David in the psalm, that's where it comes from. Then when David was king, which is going to be Down the roadways, He's going to say this, He's going to hear said this same thing. God is going to say to His people again, David the king, you've got to obey, if, if, as I swore in my wrath, He said, they shall not enter my rest. If you hear His voice, then watch your heart. set it in the wilderness, they didn't. Set it to David later, it didn't get kept by the people of God then either. They kept wandering off on their own, and you know where they finally ended up, in exile. So you had all those things there. And when we hear the Word saying to us today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, the message we can listen to, we can obey. We can look at our heart before God and say, Lord, I repent, I turn to you, forgive me my heart. It's getting hard. Now, hard hearts are hard to deal with. Hardened heart, have a hardened heart is a passive term. It's just, it happens. Things start happening and the hardness begins. If your heart continues to harden, continues to harden, you go from the hardening of a heart to a disobedience, to an apostasy. In other words, you'll end up in rebellion against God. When the heart gets hard enough, People rebel against God. You ever seen a rebel against God anywhere? One who wasn't ready to be converted? One who wasn't going to pay any attention to what you said? Didn't for years? Didn't care, he said. There's a lot of solemnity in a statement like this. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. At the same time, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest. That's hard. Because by the time Hebrews is written, many human beings have rebelled against God, and there will be no more today for them. Once you miss the today that affects your time and your life, and you hear His voice, and you haven't come, there remains no more today. Today is gone for you, because you have died and left, and there is no salvation. I'm not sure how we come to the point where we believe that God is going to save every single individual who is on the earth, because what we do sometimes with universal salvation, we get to the point where we think that God is a good God, and He is, and so He's gonna think like I think, and He's not. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. But if we'll walk with Him, we'll learn His thoughts. And it'll give us a little more compulsion to touch the lives of people we care about. It'll waken us up a little more. about telling the truth to the sinner because we know he's not going to go to heaven just because he's an American. He's not going to go to heaven because he reads the Bible. He's not going to go to heaven because of any of those things. He's going to go and be with God because he's redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God. There's not one single person in the whole world ever who has been saved with a true salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. None! No matter how much accumulation of information or wealth or whatever else just doesn't stay. Since therefore it remains, I'm reading now verse 6 and 4, for some to enter in and those who formerly received the good news fail to enter because of disobedience. Again, he appoints a certain day. Today, he says. He did it through David long afterward in the word already quoted. Today if you'll hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Said it again and again and again. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest is also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter the rest. I always thought that was an interesting phrase, strive to enter rest. Strive to enter the rest so that that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. And then he talks about the word of God, which I want to talk about next week. Rest. The thing we're looking for since we became Christians, whether we were six years old or 12 or 40 or 70, we were looking for the home. When you read through Hebrews, you get all this about rest and repeated phrases and the rest that is ours yet there available to people who believe, still a rest remaining. But you can't harden your heart. You can't neglect the great salvation. That was our first warning in the previous chapter too. Second warning is a warning against unbelief. You must believe and trust in Him. So you get the rest of the creation, the rest at the end, the rest time to time in the middle. Then when you get over to chapter 11, you actually hear a word about a people who were looking for a city. And God starts, the scripture starts telling us, inspiring us in the 11th chapter, that faith chapter in Hebrews, that God has prepared them a city. The builder and maker is God. Now, that takes us a little farther into the conclusion of what has been provided, doesn't it? New heaven, new earth, and a holy city coming down, coming down. Holy city coming down. Somebody said, you sure you think that's, is that heaven? No, heaven is going to be still where it is, but it's not the final destination, looks like to me, is in the whole of that creation. New heaven, new earth, holy city, made of people like us with the city. Oh, that fits with what we just saw last week in verse 6, doesn't it? Of chapter 3. You are the house. See, in Hebrews, he writes to them and tells them, You are the house. Jesus the Son is the ruler of the house. Now you move a little farther into the finished product. This is going to leave this sitting down here in a little cabin on the creek. I mean, there it sits. But when you get to home, you've got a brand new, spacious heaven. You saw the numbers on it. I won't go over those again. You got this glorious earth, and you got a city you've never seen before, heavenly Jerusalem, city of God, made up of His own saints, us included. We're His house, headed for the city. And then we can say, we're the city. He's the king, the ruler, the giver. That's enough for today. That's a lot to think about, isn't it? I love the idea of God's... I know that God's rest is so different from anything we might call rest, so much more thoroughly rest. Yeah. Tell you about my grandfather before, because my grandfather took a nap every day. And the pallet on which he took the nap was stretched out at the front of the porch, not on the edge of the porch, up front, on the north side of a north-south running porch. right up against where his head would be, right up against the room that was off the porch right there. At the corner and then over a few feet was a door going into that room off the porch. He went in and then another door going into the main part of the house off the porch. And he'd lay there and rest no matter who was there. And he had such a short rest, I wondered how in the world did he get rested? Well, as a kid, you know, you're not slowing down enough to even think about it. Who wants to rest? But he was rested after a short 20-minute nap most of the time. And he had rolled it up, put it away, and go about his business. The Lord gave me a little visit this week. I was in the hospital and I ran up to the surgery area. to visit with Vernon. If you've ever been in there and you get a chance to meet Vernon behind the desk, he's handling, he's paid help, and he's worked for the hospital probably 30 years, and he's been doing this with people coming in for surgeries for a long time. Vernon lives in Decker Prairie, and I have to get a Decker Prairie fix every now and then to go talk to somebody that breathes that air down there where I came from. And so I went up to see him. He's doing fine. Vernon, his wife's a third cousin, I think, to me. We went to school together. And it's fun to talk to. And it was a lady sitting beside him that I had met before, but I couldn't figure out where. And she didn't know me because she heard him say my name. She didn't know. What was that name again? I said, I'm Dan Shiel. She said, Shiel. My husband, she said, was the pastor of Salem Lutheran Church and gave me the years. Well, I knew when she said who her husband was. I already knew all about it. Dr. Blumhorst. good German pastor who, uh, he really shook our neighborhood up out in Decker Prairie. But she said to me, she said, I know, I know who you are. And she said, uh, my husband and I came out to visit every once in a while. My grandmother was in bed for 10 years, a little over, without knowing anybody or being able to do anything. Kept her at home. And she was in that room where that door outside went in. So I was talking to this, and this lady's got a great story, too, because her husband died out in California after they had planted a church out there. He had a close friend whose wife had just died, and the two of them got together, and they're back here in the local church, just retirees, but part of the St. Mark's Church, married to another pastor. She's a glutton for punishment. Anyway, they went to visit, she said, at that house. And it was the sweetest deal. She said, we came in up the porch, and we turned right, and they took us through a door. I said, I don't know where that door is. You went to see my grandmother. Ida. Oh, Ida, Ida, she said. Sure. I said, she was in that room 10 years. And I remember those visits. I said, in fact, I remember your husband's visit by Harley. He rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle out on those sand roads to see my grandmother. And the story got back to the church and the town before he got back home. They didn't think much of him riding a Harley back in those days. She said, don't talk about that. Talk about other things. Talk about family or something. But it reminded me of that rest that my grandfather always had that I could never find in a nap. I have to admit, that has changed a little bit. If I can get just a little nap, it helps sometimes. Really, what I'd like to have is about a two-hour nap if I could sleep that long, but I can't. So, however long we get it, we get it. Think on these things. Think about His coming again. Think about the rest that makes it possible for us to bear witness to Jesus without fear, without a sense of not being a part of what's going on, but right in the middle. of God at work. Meditate on these scriptures again. See what you think about those repeated statements, as I swore in my wrath, they will not enter my rest. Or, when you hear my voice, when you hear the voice, answer, respond, trust. Let us pray. Father, I want to thank you. It's been a good day today just to be in Your presence, just to be able to love You a little bit and respond to Your love for us. And I want to thank You for every child of God in this room. Help us, Lord, to live our life realizing that there's always that danger of sin creating a little sidetrack along the way, the deceitfulness of sin. And help us, Lord, to just rise in the morning and offer our prayers to You and receive Your Word into us and go about the business of speaking words of peace and rest and life to those we meet. Father, help us to do what You have us to do this week, to respond to what the Holy Spirit says. to say yes to His come, to say thanks to His work. Your will be done, Lord. And give us some times when we get to kneel in Your presence for a while and find rest, because You've started something in us and we can't leave yet. Do it for us at home, a place where we can meditate on the truth of Your Word and think on the outcome of its working. Thank you for every life here today, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.