Well, please turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. If you're using one of the Pew Bibles, that will be found on page 988. First Thessalonians 5, this is the end of the book of Thessalonians. It's the last section. And here Paul, you'll remember, is giving his final instructions. And since it's been a couple weeks since we're here, let me just remind you that Paul starts this section in verse 12 by addressing the congregation and its elders. And we looked at that already. He then moves on to talk about the congregation and one another. And we've already looked at that. Today, the focus is on your relationship with God. So not with other people, but with God. We might say that this section has to do with the congregation and worship. So verses 16 through 22 all have to do with not our attitude toward one another, but with our attitude toward God. Which, of course, is something that's good that Paul addresses. It's something that must be addressed because As you know, we all live before the watching eyes of God. We live before God. We live quorum deo, is the old Latin phrase, before the face of God. We must live before the face of God. And it's not just that we live in his presence, which we do, we live in the presence of God, but we also live under his authority. He is our authority, and we live under it. And we live with an expectation that we live to give God glory and honor. And so therefore, it matters, doesn't it, how I live in relationship to God. And so in verses 16 through 22, Paul talks about this. Paul talks about what it means to live before God. Now, what I've decided to do is I've decided to take this section, 16 to 22, and divide it in half. So we'll look at part of it next week, and this week I hope for us to look at verses 16, 17, and 18. And if you're looking right now at the page, you're looking at 16, 17, 18, you'll realize it's a short little section, just a short little section. In fact, in my translation, I counted only 22 words. So this morning we're dealing with 22 words. They're short verses, but let me tell you, they sure pack a punch. There's a lot in here in these few verses. So please follow along as I read 1 Thessalonians 5, And again, that'll be verses 16 through 18. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Let's pray. Lord, as your people, we want to live quorum Deo. We want to live before you in a way that pleases you. And so Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it instructs us how we are to live in a way that pleases you. And Lord, we pray that you would make it clear to us this morning. Lord, don't let it be foggy. Lord, don't let us walk away kind of muddled in our thinking and unclear as to what your word tells us. But we pray that through your spirit, we would have a good understanding and then application of your word. We pray that you would help us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So Paul says here, verse 18, this is the will of God for you. Don't you love that? This is the will of God for you. Pastor, what's the will of God? Pastor, what's the will of God for me? What does God want for me? Pastor, I wish you could tell me. I wish you could tell me what is God's will for my life. You want to know what the will of God is? You want to know what God's will is? This is the will of God. Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. Really, live all of life, Coram Deo, before the face of God. It's interesting how often the scriptures speak to the will of God really as being, the will of God as His requirements. It's His expectations for us. It's really how you should live. What is the will of God? It's how you should live. Notice, if you look back to chapter 4, verse 3, Paul said there, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. And then he goes on. But God's will for you is his expectations. It's how you should live. Romans 12.2, Paul says, don't be conformed to the patterns of this world. He says, be transformed by the renewing of your minds that you may know the will of God, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. There's this will of God. It's what He desires of us. It's how we ought to live. 1 Peter 4 talks about not living for fleshly human passions. but for the will of God. God cares about how you live. And so the will of God is His requirements, God's will, God's desire. If you want theological terms here, we're talking about His preceptive will, not His decretive will. If that just confused you, forget about it. But His preceptive will is that you follow His laws. He wants you to follow His commands. He cares about how you live. Brothers and sisters, do you get that? That is God's will. God cares about how you live in your day-to-day, in everything that you do. And here, He gives three commands. You can see they're there. They're commands. They're imperatives. Do this, do this, and do this. And they hit hard. You've got to rejoice always. You've got to pray without ceasing. You have to give thanks in all circumstances. We need these reminders, don't we? We need these reminders. So last week, well, the week before last week, my family went camping. Went to Ricketts Glen. Had a wonderful time. So glad we went. It was a joy to be there. But in the midst of the trip, it was also hard. It was just a lot of hard stuff. I had one child that fell off his bike and scraped his elbow and was bleeding everywhere. Then I think it was the next day, I can't remember anymore, one of the children fell into the fireplace and burned their hands. First degree, it's okay, don't worry. Then I had another child who was in a hammock and fell out on her head and then couldn't remember things she was supposed to remember. So we decided to take her to the hospital, which, when you're in the middle of the backwoods of Pennsylvania, is not nearby, okay? So that was our camping trip. We had this rainstorm move through, and it was just, I've never experienced a thunder lightning storm like this. I mean, nonstop lightning all around us, and we're in this flimsy little tent. You can imagine what that's like, which means packing up everything, you know, in the, it's all wet and, and sticky, and we're packing everything up to go home. We didn't have cell phone service, and that's when we discover on the way home that the car in the shop is going to need new brakes, new brake lines, and the computer in the shop actually is really broken. Okay, so that's my week, right? Happy vacation. I get home, it's Saturday. This is past Saturday. I'm thinking about, okay, next week I'm going to be doing First Thessalonians. What is the next bit of First Thessalonians? I crack open my Bible, and here's what it says. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Be thankful in all circumstances. I need this sermon, all right? And can't we all relate? We need this kind of reminder of how we ought to live, how we ought to respond. So we do want to look at these instructions this morning, but before we do, we should talk about who this is addressed to. So I want to first go there. Who is this addressed to? Because I think for the most part, we tend to look at these instructions very Very individualistically. It's addressed to me. It's addressed in the singular. So this passage is kind of, hey, Craig, rejoice. Craig, pray. Craig, make sure you give thanks. But some commentators have pointed out that Paul here is addressing this not to a lone wolf Christian who's out there by himself and he needs to know how Christians should live. Paul is addressing this to the corporate church. So this is addressed to a plural entity, to a plural congregation, and these commandments are most specifically to be tied to our corporate gathering, to our Sunday morning worship service. And I have to agree that that does seem to be what's going on here. I mean, we do realize that this letter is addressed to a church as a whole, right? I mean, the letter is addressed to a congregation. Also, Each of the verbs that you find here in verses 16 and 17 and 18, each of these commands, We don't see it in the English, but it actually is a plural. It's not a singular. So it's not kind of a singular you rejoice. It's actually a corporate you rejoice. You all rejoice. Or where I came from in Hazleton, they had this word use. I don't know if that happens down here. Use. So for them it would be, yous all rejoice now. That's how they would say it. Yous rejoice. Yous guys rejoice. But it's this plural. It's clearly addressed to a group. And then everything around these verses is also addressed to the church gathered. You'll see verse 12 refers to brothers, right? That's plural. Verse 14 refers to brothers. Verse 20 is obviously even talking about Sunday morning gatherings when it talks about not despising prophecies. If you look at verse 26, greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. That's going to be a fun one to preach on. But that's got to be when people are coming together, right? Verse 27 even says, I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers. So it's very clearly addressed to a corporate body of Christ and even particularly to our Sunday morning worship gatherings. Now that being said, I want to balance those statements because I believe there also is an individual aspect to these verses. And that's because these commands, you're told to do them always, without ceasing, in all circumstances. And so these commands therefore must trickle over from your Sunday morning into the entirety of the week. So it's not just rejoice on Sunday morning, it's rejoice on Sunday morning and then always rejoice. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And so as we look at these commands, what that means is I'll have us look at them with two different applications. There'll be the corporate gathering application, as well as the individual Monday to Saturday application. And I want to tell you that up front. There's something else I want to tell you up front. And that's this, that each of these commands can only be done by the Christian who knows that God is sovereign and God is good. Each of these commands can only be done by the Christian who knows that God is sovereign and God is good. God's sovereignty means he's sovereign, he's truly in charge. And we can only do these commands if we can rest in that. If we can rest in the fact that God is on the throne, God is sovereign, God is in charge. In the same way, it's because God is good. that we can do these commands. It's because God is good, He's compassionate, He's caring, He's loving, He's gracious, He's merciful. You know, if He was just sovereign, and was just kind of this nasty, autocratic dictator, it would be really hard to rejoice in His will. But that's not who we have as a God, do we? He's sovereign, but He's also, He's good. It's delightful to rejoice in Him. And so we need to remember that God is sovereign and good. Well, let's go ahead, shall we, and look at these three commands that we have in verses 16, 17, and 18. Well, first, verse 16, rejoice always. Rejoice always. Now, on the surface, someone might think, well, I know what that means. It means, you know, be happy, smile, laugh, enjoy life. It's kind of like something you'd see in a cafe, you know, smile, laugh, drink coffee, right? It's just kind of be happy with life. Don't be a downer. Be positive. Don't be sad. Don't be mad. Be happy. Everybody be happy. We have this image of one of those photo spreads in Better Homes and Garden magazine where they've got this gorgeous table set for dinner. Everything's just gorgeous and the food looks amazing. Then there's these people who are gathered around and they're all dressed nice and they've got that glass of wine and they're smiling and happy. Is that the kind of happiness we're looking for? Or is it when you go into your favorite clothing store, and there's the big picture with the models on it, and there they are, and they're on that dock on the lake, and they've got the shirt slung over the shoulder, and they're just so happy. They've got their group of friends around them, and they're laughing. Is that what God's looking for here? Hey, make sure you're always just really happy. Well, I think you guys know enough to know that that's, of course, not the idea. The biblical idea of joy is actually not related to circumstances. Not related to circumstances. It's also not conditioned by my feelings and how I feel. You know, true biblical joy is not something that I can turn on and off like a water faucet. And that's because true biblical joy is something that's planted in you by the Holy Spirit. It's something that's planted in you by the Holy Spirit. It's actually one of the fruit of the Spirit, isn't it? Love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth. And so it's not just that you're optimistic all the time. You're just one of those upbeat people that seem to be happy all the time. You know, you're on some kind of emotional high. But instead, you have this real and solid and permanent reason to rejoice. You see, biblical joy is grounded in the gospel. That's your reason that you have to rejoice. It's grounded in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. So I've got this true joy down in my heart because I have the love of Jesus in my H-E-A-R-T, right? And I've got this real joy that just bubbles up. 1 Peter 1 says that I know Jesus, I know this Savior, And it fills me with joy. Here's what he says, 1 Peter 1 verse 8. Though you have not seen him, you've not seen Jesus, you love him. Is that true of us? Right? We've not physically seen him, but we love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him. What happens? And you rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. That's kind of joy we're talking about here. It's not a generic rejoicing. It's not rejoicing in good circumstances or rejoicing in winning the lottery or rejoicing because the weather is beautiful or rejoicing because I found that special someone who just loves me. It's rejoicing in the Lord. Now, I know verse 16 doesn't say, rejoice always in the Lord, but that's got to be what Paul has in mind. It can remind you of Philippians 4. We read it earlier in our service, which is definitely clearer because it says, rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Our rejoicing is rejoicing in the Lord. This idea of rejoicing in the Lord is It's something you see so often in scripture. Where do we find our joy? Where do we find our rejoicing? It's in the Lord. I mean, if you go to Psalms, you see it all over the place. If you would, flip with me to Psalm 95. So turn back to Psalm 95. And boy, there's just so many different Psalms we could have gone to, isn't there? But look how Psalm 95 starts. The psalmist says, oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. There's this rejoicing in the Lord. Or we've already seen from our call to worship this morning, Psalm 100, flip there. Psalm 100 says, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness, joy, gladness. Come into his presence with singing. It's interesting to notice, so often rejoicing in the Lord is done through singing. How do I rejoice in the Lord? I do it through singing. You see it here in Psalm 100. You see it in Psalm 95. Or look at Psalm 92. Psalm 92, the first four verses. It's good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. And so what do I do? At the works of your hands, I sing for joy. What's this connection between rejoicing and making music? I'm not saying rejoicing always means making music, but so often it does. I think one of the best ways that we express a heart that's full of joy is to sing it out. God has designed us. We love to sing out with things that give us joy. So we make this joyful noise unto the Lord. Brothers and sisters, let's not be a congregation that's ashamed to sing out, right? If we love this God and the work He's done, we should just rejoice at singing joyfully to our God. In college, my wife and I had a friend, a dear friend, but when she sang, she was absolutely tone deaf. Tone deaf means like she couldn't get her notes, you know what I mean? But one of the things we loved about this friend, and she was very open about this. This isn't news to her or anything. One of the things we loved about her is that you'd go to chapel or something and you'd stand next to her. And she would sing, or whatever you call it. But she would do it. And she would even say, she's like, well, I'm just making a joyful noise to the Lord, right? But it's because her heart wanted to just overflow with singing. And we want to be those that just overflow, expressing our joy to the Lord. Now, of course, we do also want to remember that we also approach God with awe and humility. Because he is a God that deserves our reverential awe. But let's not be ashamed to also make a joyful noise to the Lord as we gather together on Sunday mornings. But the command here is not just, hey, on Sunday morning, rejoice in the Lord. It says rejoice in the Lord always. So you don't leave your fruit of the Spirit here. in the pew to be picked up next week. You don't kind of take your joy, slip it under your pew. It's a Sunday thing, right? No, you take it with you for the rest of the week. That doesn't mean, and I want to make this clear, it doesn't mean you can never experience grief. It doesn't mean you can never experience sadness. There's plenty of passages of scripture that show us that grief and sadness and weeping are a part of life. They're good. They're often appropriate. But here's the thing, even through that, you have joy. Even in your grief, you have joy. Paul was able to say that even through persecution, he could rejoice. Why? Because he knew in his heart that gospel truths were still true. He knew, even in that moment of weeping and grief, he knew that God is still at work, and that gives him joy. even joy in the midst of weeping. You see, the only reason we can rejoice always is because we know that we have a God who is sovereign and who is good. And we can rejoice. We have a God who's sovereign. He's ordained all things whatsoever comes to pass. He's absolutely sovereign. And all that he does is good. We all know Romans 8, 28, right? In all things, God works for the good of those who love him. And so we always have cause for rejoicing because our God is at work. And even more, our God is at work in us and with us. I mean, think of Christmastime, the word joy gets thrown around all the time. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Our God is with us and that gives us great joy. There's this good news of great joy that shall be for all the people because Emmanuel has come. So brothers and sisters, we have reason to rejoice. Let's have that joy of the good news of what our Savior has done bubble up from deep down in our hearts. Now listen, if you want that joy, it's not going to just come by sitting there. It's not going to just come by sitting there. You've got to dwell on your Savior. You've got to think on who your God is. You ever have a good cup of coffee and you savor it? Some of you are like, no, I can't stand coffee. But you get the picture. You savor it. You just enjoy it, sip by sip. You don't just down the thing. Well, you need to savor God. If you want to find joy in God, you need to savor Him. You need to delight in Him. You need to spend time with Him. So I encourage you, savor Him and rejoice in Him. Well, secondly, Verse 17, the command there is pray without ceasing. All across the epistles you find commands like this, to pray continually, pray without ceasing. Paul often says, you know, I always pray for you, I always remember you in my prayers. Now, does this mean that we must, we're always walking around participating in active prayer? You know, I'm just, throughout my day, I'm just praying, praying, praying. Well, depending on what you mean by that, but pretty much the answer is no. What's going on here is Paul is using hyperbole to make a point. Remember hyperbole? High school English class. Hyperbole, exaggeration in order to make a point. We use hyperbole a lot. So we might say, oh no, when mom finds out, she's going to kill me. Now do you really think she's going to kill you? Like, yeah. No, you know she's not going to kill you. You're making a point. You're exaggerating. That's hyperbole. Or you say, oh man, it was so hot in there. It was like 1,000 degrees. Well, it wasn't actually 1,000 degrees, because if you'd been in there and it was 1,000 degrees, you wouldn't have survived. It's hyperbole. So hyperbole, exaggeration to make a point. And Paul does this all the time. He doesn't all the time do this. Paul does this a lot. Chapter 1, verse 2, Paul says this, We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. Now, if Paul actually is like praying out loud non-stop, how's he able to write this letter? Or how's he able to do all those things that we see him doing in the book of Acts? So obviously this always, this unceasing, is hyperbole. And Paul's point is that you should be praying with great abundance. You should be praying a lot. Prayer should be woven in to every single of the different parts of your life. So, you should be praying in abundance. Now, don't let this explanation kind of make you feel like you're off the hook. You know, I don't have to pray all the time. Because Paul's point here is that you don't pray enough. You don't pray enough. You need to be encouraged to pray more. And so, can you? Can you be a person who prays more? What about the corporate? Let's start with the corporate life of the church. Here we are gathered together on a Sunday morning, or we could say on a Wednesday night. How involved are you in the prayer? Do you have an attitude of prayer with God throughout the worship service? Maybe even as the piano prelude is being played, you're prayerfully saying, God, I want to come before you. I'm preparing my heart for worship. Or when someone in the service leads out in prayer, Do you pray along with them or do you take that as an opportunity to doze and take a nap? I visited a church last week where during the pastoral prayer, the person across the aisle from me used, teenage girl, used that as an opportunity to check her phone, you know, scrolling through social media. And you're all thinking, Craig, how did you know that? Right? So sometimes we don't pray. when prayer is happening. And we want to be people who pray when prayer is happening. Think about prayer. Prayer is I mean, it's this wonderful tool we've been given. It's our lifeline to God. John Piper, in his book on missions, says this. He uses this image. He says, in this world, we're in enemy territory. This is the enemy's ground, and God sends us out as soldiers into the enemy territory. But God has given us walkie-talkies. He's given us this way of having immediate and direct contact with our commanding officer. That's what prayer is, immediate and direct contact with our commanding officer. And why then would we not take advantage of that? Why would we not take advantage of the tool of prayer? I would encourage you, please, come on a Wednesday night. I mean, if you're a soldier out there and there's a battle going on, and then the soldiers are going to regroup, right, and carry one another's burdens, don't you want to be a part of that? And you have this opportunity to, with your fellow soldiers, talk to the commanding officer and take your prayers to him. But we also want to let prayer spill over into the rest of our week, into our Monday, Tuesday, and so forth. We want to be those that pray continually, and I think one of the things that means is we don't just pray at prescribed times. You know, I do my five minutes in the morning. But we pray throughout the day. It doesn't have to be formal. It can be those little prayers that are under your breath. You know, Lord, I'm getting anxious about this. Would you please help me? Lord, this temptation is strong. Would you give me the strength to resist it? Or something comes to mind. Would you help so-and-so? Their surgery is today. Would you please help that to go well? These short prayers and we just keep going to God. We keep going to God throughout the day. That's praying without ceasing. It's like the parable of the persistent widow. Just keep going to God. Keep going to God. You pray without ceasing. Now, do you know why we can do this? Why we can just go to God again and again in prayer? We can do it because we have a God who's sovereign and who's good. He's sovereign and He's good. In pagan religions, in Paul's day, they would pray to the gods in hopes that by praying they could somehow earn the benevolent favor of the gods. Maybe my prayers will earn some benevolence from the gods. But for the Christian, his prayer begins with confidence. He starts with confidence. He's confident that he has a heavenly father who desires to do him good. He's a good god. And this father, when you're asking for a fish, is not going to give you a serpent, because he's good. He loves to give good things to his children. And he's also able. He's sovereign. He has all things at his disposal. That's why we can go to him continually in prayer. One thing that's going to help with that, by the way, is not compartmentalizing your day so that, well, there's the God part of my day, and then there's the rest. I need to remember that God's there, right, with me all the time. He's omnipresent, He's there with me, and He's there to be talked to. So go to Him in prayer. And then finally, verse 18, Paul says, give thanks in all circumstances. Give thanks in all circumstances. When the brakes give out in your car, When you're running a child to the emergency room in the middle of your vacation, when that unexpected bill comes in the mail, when you get the diagnosis and they tell you it's cancer, when again and again, day after day, the other kids are teasing you at school, when mom and dad don't let you do the thing you had really hoped you could do, do you find it easy to give thanks? Is that when you want to give thanks? Are those the moments in which you just find yourself having this thankful heart? But Paul says, give thanks in all circumstances. Now, I want you to notice, he actually doesn't say give thanks for all circumstances. There are certain things it would be wrong to give thanks for. We don't thank God for genocide or suicide. We don't thank God for famine or starvation. We don't thank God for abuse or violence. We don't thank God for those things. But, make sure you hear this, in those circumstances we can still be thankful. We can be thankful for what God is doing through those circumstances. Now isn't that crazy? But here's the truth, even in those circumstances, there are things for which we can be thankful. There are things for which we can be thankful. Sure, I'm running my daughter to the emergency room, but I'm thankful it's not worse. I'm thankful that we have a hospital that we can take her to. I'm thankful that I have this daughter. Or, sure, the brakes stopped working on my car, but I'm so thankful that the brakes stopped working on my car when I went to start it on my way to work, and not when I was going downhill at 65 miles per hour. Right? There's so much to be thankful for. But as a Christian, it's more than that, isn't it? I mean, anybody can do that. Take a bad circumstance and say, well, there's things we can still be thankful for, which we should do. But as a Christian, I have so much more to be thankful for because I always have spiritual truths to be thankful about. My God is sovereign and he loves me. I am thankful. He's made me a part of the family of God. I'm thankful. Jesus Christ died to wash away my sins. I'm thankful. His Holy Spirit lives in me. He's conforming me into the image of Christ. I'm thankful. There's no tribulation or persecution or distress or famine or danger that can separate me from the love of Christ. I'm thankful. I'm guaranteed a future inheritance in heaven with God. I'm thankful. I don't hold those things in front of myself often enough. I don't think about those things. We have so much to be thankful for. In our corporate gatherings and as well in our daily Monday through Sunday, we have so many things we can give thanks for. And brothers and sisters, we've got to do it. We've got to give thanks. As I was studying, one of the commentaries I read by William Hendrickson, he said this. When a person prays without giving thanks, he has clipped the wings of prayer so that it cannot rise. Because if you pray and don't have thanksgiving, you've clipped the wings of prayer, you've made the wings unable to work and your prayers can't rise. I thought about that for a while, I was trying to figure out what he's talking about, what does he mean by that, but then it kind of clicked for me. What are our prayers if they're simply supplication? If they're simply, we ask, and we ask, and we ask, and we never give thanks. Well, in some ways, my prayers simply become this registry of what Craig wants. Craig wants this, Craig wants this, Craig wants this. And I come to God as though I'm greater than him and can demand what he should give me. Here's what you need to give me, God. And those prayers don't rise to him because they come from the wrong heart. I've got the wrong heart. I don't have this heart of thankfulness. I've failed to see that God is God, and he's the one that gives every good gift. Every blessing comes from his hand, comes from above, from the hand of this sovereign, omnipotent God. And so I want to be one who is thankful. And when I'm thankful, I come to him with a heart that says, God, you're the one in control. You give all good things. Here's my supplications. Lord, I leave it in your hands because you're the one who's sovereign and you can do these things." And then my prayers rise up. They have wings and they go to the ear of God. Well, I want to be someone who practices more thanksgiving. I think you do too. So how can you practice more thanksgiving? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to try to do. The next time I'm tempted to grumble. be a really good practice to make myself recite. And actually, I have a wonderful wife who's really good at making me do this. I'm going to recite those things I should be thankful for. You're grumbling about this circumstance. Craig, see the bigger picture. You have so much to be thankful for. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. It's God's will. It's not Paul's will. It's not Silas and Timothy's will. It's God's will. And it's God's will that you do it always, without ceasing, not just when you feel like it, but that you do it in all circumstances. Now, verse 18 says it's the will of God. Do you see these three little words? It's the will of God in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? the will of God in Christ Jesus. It might mean that God expresses will to us through the ministry of Jesus Christ. You know, we can learn God's will by listening to the voice of Jesus. And certainly, we could find passages in which Jesus does tell us these things to rejoice always or to pray continually. But I'm not sure that's what's going on here. That little phrase, in Christ Jesus, may actually mean you can only do this. You can only do God's will if you are in Christ Jesus. You can only do God's will if you're in Christ Jesus. God has a will for you that can only be accomplished if you're one of those that are in Jesus Christ. Otherwise, you can try. You can try to do it. You can try to self-reform. You can try to make yourself a joyful person. You can try to clock more time in prayer or be more thanksgiving. But it's not going to get you far. You can't do it on your own. You need to be in Christ Jesus. You need His Holy Spirit working in you. You need His Holy Spirit helping you. Guys, the reasons we can't follow these commands is, I'm sorry, the reason we can follow these commands is we have God's Spirit to help us. And if you don't have God's Spirit to help you, this can't be you. You can't know true joy. You can't know true fellowship in prayer and thanksgiving with God. You can't. And so I encourage you, turn to him, turn to Christ. And for the rest of us, part of part of our praying without ceasing is going to be, Lord, help me. Lord, help me. I'm in Christ Jesus. And I need you to help me. I need you to help me to rejoice. I need you to help me to be thankful. I need you to help me to pray. And so look to Jesus. You know, Jesus, he's he's good. and he is sovereign. Jesus is good and he's sovereign. And what that means is because he's good, he wants to help you. He wants to help you rejoice always, pray continually, be thankful in all circumstances. And because he's sovereign, he's able. He's able to help you do that. So look to Jesus. Let's pray. Lord God, you know that we want to live Quorum Deo, we want to live every day before the face of God. And we thank you, God, you are one who is sovereign and who is good. And Lord, we pray, therefore, that you would help your people. Help us to rejoice, to rejoice always, not just happy feelings, but that true joy that comes from gospel truths. Lord, would you help us to be people of prayer, who throughout the day, every day, are mindful of your presence and are talking to you and taking our cares to you and knowing your sustaining response. And then, Lord, we also pray that you would give us Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving in all circumstances, because we know that you're good and you're doing all things right and you're doing all things well. Lord, work that in your people. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.