Well, the New Testament says that verse 10 is a prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus. And following that resurrection, verse 11 says, in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. But verse 9 indicates Jesus had some of that joy before he got to heaven, before the resurrection. Even though life was trying to rob him of that joy, he knew God's presence and he knew the joy that came from that. And David, as a type of Christ, foreshadowed that. He knew some of God's presence and God's joy as well, or as the title of one book that John Piper wrote, it's a subtitle actually, How to Fight for Joy. It's so easy for us to lose that joy, but that's the theme that we're going to be looking at today, how do we learn to enjoy God, or learning how to enjoy God, how to fight for joy. First Catechism says, man's chief end And the word end is just an old English word for goal. So man's chief goal, man's chief purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Now we're, as Reformed people especially, very, very used to talking about man's chief end with reference to God, glorifying Him, but we're not as frequently used to talking about man's chief end with reference to ourselves enjoying Him. But it's really important. In fact, Piper, I think, in his books has demonstrated you cannot fully glorify God if you have not learned how to enjoy God. And so I want us to examine our hearts this morning and ask ourselves the questions, do we enjoy God? Do we enjoy being with Him, communing with Him, praying to Him? Do we enjoy serving Him? And how much do we enjoy God? What are some of the evidences that we enjoy God? Now, some of you may be wondering why I've put some bolts and nails on the table here today, but we've got a couple of concepts in this psalm that are kind of difficult to understand. In fact, some people have thought that they were contradictory. And I want these concepts to be indelibly impressed upon your mind. Let's say that these nails here represent other people and all of the other things in creation that God has made, and this represents you. This is a bolt, represents you, and this magnet represents God. Okay? And what this psalm is talking about is that God in His grace has regenerated us so that we are attracted to Him. This is a 90-pound magnet, so I may have a hard time working with it. But We are attracted to God by his grace, and if we are not regenerated, and if we do not continue in his grace, we're more like this plastic bolt. It doesn't matter how much God may come down, how close he may be to us. We will not be attracted to him. We will not love him. We will certainly not cling to God. It takes a change from within us by the power of the Holy Spirit before we can experience that. And some people are attracted to God almost secondhand. Now, Scripture says that there are a whole host of people that God has drawn to Himself, and the only way we can come to salvation, Jesus said, no man can come to Me unless the Father who was sent Me draws him. And so there's a whole host of people that are drawn to God. Some people, a little bit more loosely, these people up on the top here, these nails are representing people, right? They are very firmly attached directly to God. Now, some people are attached through other people. They do receive God's grace, but it's almost like this magnetism that goes through the bolt and into those other nails. They do it in a secondhand way, and it doesn't take very much for them to have that grace, you know, removed from their lives, and for them to lose the enjoyment of God. Now, there is no way they can lose their salvation, but we're talking in terms of this magnetism here of the enjoyment of God. How is it that we can find joy in the Lord in any situations? Now, even when those who are truly saved, you know, they sin, they fall away from the Lord, they are almost instantly drawn back to the Lord because they cannot stand being away from the presence of God. Just like David, they grieve. They say, Lord, why have you hidden your face from me? And they come back to the Lord very, very quickly. Now, in verse 2, Well, before I get into that, let me just ask the Lord to really impress some of the truths that are in here into our hearts. Father God, I want to ask you to give these men, these women, these children their heart's desire. You have made them to love you. And when they recognize the weakness of their love, they long for more. And I pray that you would give them more of yourself. Fill us all with a magnetic attraction to Your attributes, to Your laws, and to Your purposes. We recognize that we only love because You first loved us. We love each other because of Your love. We love You because of Your love. And as we look at this psalm, I pray that our hearts may well up with a holy admiration for all that You are and for all that You do. Thank You, Lord Jesus. We pray it in His name. Amen. So, there are people who do love the Lord, but they're like this nail down here. It's really, they vacillate, and it's very easy for them to find themselves discouraged, disheartened, even their love waning to the Lord. They're not like those first nails that are attached to the magnet. And if you take a look at verse 2, Well, let's start with verse 11. The psalm references joy. It says, in your presence is fullness of joy. And if your cup of enjoyment is full, it means you cannot have any more joy. You cannot conceive of enjoying God any more than you are presently enjoying Him. Now, I can conceive of enjoying God a whole lot more than I enjoy Him right now. I'm sure when I get to heaven, It's just going to be unbelievable the pleasures that I have in God's presence, and that makes sense because it says, in your presence is fullness of joy. But even now, God enables us to experience some of His presence and to make us long for more and more of His presence, and because of that we can have joy right now. Verse 2 in the New American Standard Bible says, I have no good besides you. I have no good besides you. David's life was totally wrapped up in God. God was his whole desire. Now here's the question. How is that statement consistent with some of the things that are said in verses 1 through 3? If God is enough, why does He ask for more? Why does He even make prayer requests? That's the question we're wanting to address. If God is our exclusive enjoyment in life, is it wrong for us to enjoy other things like buying new clothing and eating chocolate cake and having friends and getting married. Okay, that's the question. If God is our exclusive enjoyment, is it okay to enjoy other things? And I want to show, first of all, how it is totally consistent with praying for things, verse 1, and enjoying the good gifts of life, verse 2. And then I'm going to show how it's not only consistent, it's the only way it can happen. It is necessarily so. In verse 2, David is saying that he is so strongly attached to God that God is the only good that he clings to. OK, he's like this first bolt here. He is the only good that he clings to. Now, he doesn't need any of these other nails. You can pull a nail off and he still clings to God. He is the only. Excuse me. He doesn't need those other nails, but. He can enjoy them. God has, by His grace, given David an extra capacity to enjoy the good things of life. Okay? It's by regeneration that God, because He is clinging to God, that he can enjoy creation without those things becoming idols in his life. Now, an ascetic is a person who has a hard time believing this. He thinks that if you're enjoying life too much, if you have too many things attached to you, it's going to pull you away from the Lord. And so they will constantly fast, they will wear poor clothing, they will not get married, they will go off in the desert, they'll pull all kinds of things away because they want to be exclusively tied to the Lord. And I think they're missing the fact that it's not the focus on the things, it's the focus on God that makes all of the difference. God's regeneration of our hearts, the magnetic alignment, so to speak, actually does the opposite. It gives us a greater, a fuller capacity to enjoy life. And so, just as the magnetic force of this magnet is going down through the bolt and into the other nails that are on here. In the same way, God's magnetic force in our lives allows other things to be used totally in service to God. There's no contradiction whatsoever there. Now, God does not and we do not need any of these things in order to be attached to God. You can have a bunch, you can have none, and you're still going to be totally attached to God. Okay, that's the point of the illustration there. But God delights in giving us a stewardship. The more attached we are to God as stewards, the more God can entrust us with the things of this world. Okay, that's the whole point of stewardship. Because we are 100% sold out to our Creator, He can enable us to be stewards of His creation. And yet what happens if we begin to lose our love for the Lord, our devotion to Him, it's like God's grace is turned off in our lives and we begin to lose the enjoyment of the things that are in creation as well. And if you want a good book to illustrate how that happens, it's the book of Ecclesiastes that Rodney preached through some months ago. In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon backslid from the Lord, and he tried all kinds of things to regain happiness. So let's say that this bolt is now not you, it's Solomon. And Solomon is over here, and he tried wine, he tried women, he tried song, it gave him a headache, it gave him a heartache. He tried materialism, he tried building projects, he tried wisdom, he put all kinds of things. In fact, scripture says he enjoyed everything that most people long for and do not have the opportunity to experience. And yet there was no magnetic attraction that he had to any of these things in life. In fact, the scripture indicates eventually he grew to hate life. He said he couldn't find, he couldn't connect with life, he couldn't connect with the things that were down here below. And I'm going to read a scripture from Ecclesiastes 2.17 that shows that apart from our attachment to God, these things become less and less important to us. He says, therefore, I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was grievous to me, for all was vanity and grasping for the wind. then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled unto the sun." So that's what happens when our first attraction is not to God, and Solomon emphasized that point over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes. He says that the only way that we can truly enjoy the great things of life and the simple things of life is if our attraction is totally to God, if God is our main delight. And in that book of Ecclesiastes, he said, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. And when we do that, we can find delight in the things of creation. When we can say with Jesus, I delight to do Your will, O my God, whatever God's will is that He commands us to do, Then God gives us a capacity to be able to enjoy all of the things that he has put into our hands. Now, sometimes God challenges us. He puts pain into our lives to test, do you really have a steward's heart? And when we do have a steward's heart, many times he will return those things into our lives. But that's what this psalm is talking about. And there's two key phrases in the book of Ecclesiastes that I think help you to understand the book. Two key phrases are life under the sun and life under heaven. And those are not synonyms, those are opposites. The first phrase, life under the sun, is looking at life only from a physical perspective. That's the highest thing in your worldview, in your system, is the physical sun. He says when that happens, all of life is meaningless. All of life eventually becomes miserable. And the second phrase is life under heaven, which is under the throne room of God, and he says that everything in life becomes meaningful when you live your life as under God's throne. You're obeying Him. You're living in communion with Him, and you're delighting in the things that He has for you. And so, with Jesus, we should be able to say, Even with the difficult things that come our way, for the joy that was set before me, I will embrace the cross, Lord. I will embrace whatever it is you want me to do for the joy that is set before me. And I know this day that you have some challenges for me, perhaps some angry people that I'm going to have to deal with. You've got some other challenges that are there, but I thank you for the privilege of tasting of your grace that is sufficient for everything I'm going to face this day. Now, some people think it really is ridiculous to think that we can rejoice in challenges, we can rejoice in painful things, but I want you to listen to what Jesus said in Luke 6. Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets." James 1 says, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the trying of your faith produces patience. In Acts 5 verse 31 it says, So in effect what had happened is that they had nothing. Everything was being taken away from them. They didn't have the comforts of life. In fact, they had a lot of discomfort, and yet because they were tightly connected to the Lord, they could rejoice in the midst of that pain. And you see it again near the end of the book of Acts. Paul and Silas were able to rejoice, to sing praises in that jail, even though they had been severely beaten. And our reaction internally tends to be, yeah, right. That might be okay for the apostles, but I've tried it. It doesn't work for me. But let me tell you something, can this bolt by itself attract anything? It cannot. It is only God's power that can enable us to be attracted to anything. The key to enjoyment is not what happens to us externally. It's not how many things from creation we may have. The key to life is always, am I in regular deep communion with the Lord who loves me? So we've seen under points, well, let me give you an example of the under heaven in Ecclesiastes 2, 24 through 26. Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw was from the hand of God. For who can eat or who can have enjoyment more than I? For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in his sight, but, and now comes a major contrast, to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting that he may give to him who is good before God. This also was vanity and grasping for the wind." So there's vanity for the sinner, and there is enjoyment for the believer who receives his gifts from God's hand and seeks to use them to serve his God. So that's the contrast that is given. And immediately after those verses, chapter 3 talks about everything in creation having meaning and purpose. So we've seen under points A and B that learning to enjoy God exclusively is consistent with asking for more things, that's verse 1, and enjoying the good gifts of God, that's verse 2. And then point C says it's consistent with enjoying God's people. Now by now that should be obvious based on the illustration that we've given here. But I want you to notice how he words this in verse 3, it's pretty interesting. He says, To the saints who are on the earth, they are the excellent ones in whom is all, not 20 percent, but in whom is all my delight. Is that a contradiction? How can all David's delight be in the righteous saints of God whom he has attracted to himself and all his delight be in God? I think with a magnet you can see how that really is a possibility. Down through history, though, there have been many people who have thought you absolutely cannot do this, and they have abandoned people, going off into monasteries, and some went so far as to being hermits almost their entire lives, living total solitary lives out in the desert. I had one friend many years ago who told me that he thought he could serve God much better by being single and that being married would draw his heart away from the Lord. And he appealed to 1 Corinthians chapter 7 to say that. And in part, it was sour grapes because he wasn't able to get the gal that he had hoped to get. But what he was doing is he was using a passage in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul was speaking to a very specific, very short time period where he said, it's better not to be married. And he was ignoring verse 2 that says, let each man have his own wife and each man, each woman have her own husband. And he's ignoring the norm that God gave in Genesis 2 that it is not good for a man to be alone. But he did highlight a verse in there that many times we do discover that our families can draw our hearts away from the Lord. We're so busy with our families. that we don't pray or we have things that can draw our hearts away and they can become idols. 1 Corinthians 7.33 says he who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. People can make idols out of their husbands, their wives, their children, and other things to a point where we're not even concerned about pleasing the Lord. We're so concerned about pleasing other people that we miss the focus. And so what's happening in their lives is their focus is so much on the individuals that God has put into their trust that they really lose their grip upon the Lord. Now, as I've mentioned before, there are two ways you can be attracted to the Lord. The first is directly, and the other is indirectly. And when we are attracted to the Lord only through our relationships with other people, it's so easy to have our enjoyment of the Lord knocked off, isn't it? The only thing that holds people like this is the Lord's grace, and when they are attached to the Lord, it doesn't matter what is there, what is not there, they're still going to have their enjoyment of God. This is the thing that I'm going to be praying for each of you, that you would have that kind of a grip upon God that will enable you to enjoy Him no matter what. Now, in your outlines I've given another illustration along these lines. that many people have used down through the years. It's a triangle. And in a marriage, two people have covenanted together, but the further away they get from God, the further away they get from each other. As you go down that triangle, the edge. And the closer to God that they get, the closer to each other they become as well. So I think it is fully consistent for David to say in verse 2, I have no good apart from you, and yet to say in verse 3 that all his delight is in God's saints. Or you could paraphrase it. I have no magnetic power apart from you, but your magnetic power attaches me, connects me to all of the saints. Okay, that's in effect what he is saying. 1 John 4 20 words it this way. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? Everyone who loves Him who begot also loves Him who was begotten by Him." So in other words, he's saying, don't deceive yourselves into thinking you really love God if you can't stand being around God's people, okay? If people whom God cherishes and loves are people whom you do not love and cherish, then there's something wrong. There's something wrong with the magnetism in our lives. And so this morning, you may need to confess idolatry because your focus may have been exclusively on pleasing your children or keeping your children or some other thing. It's very easy for people to become idols in our lives. Now, verse 4 may be one of the reasons why the magnetic power is so weak in your life because it indicates that an exclusive enjoyment of God is impossible where there is any form of idolatry. Where there is idolatry, it's like God turns off any ability of us to enjoy Him. Verse 4 says, their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer nor take up their names on my lips. And there are a lot of different forms of idolatry that we can have, but the most common ones people don't think of as idols. And I want you to turn with me to Mark chapter 10 again, and I know I have read this thing over and over again to the point that you're probably sick of it, but I'm going to keep reading it because it's something you need to be reminded of. And we're going to begin reading at verse 28. Mark chapter 10, beginning to read at verse 28. 28, then Peter began to say to him, see, we have left all and followed you. So Jesus answered and said, assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the gospels. And so he's saying, leaving is necessary, that's the first thing. And when we're regenerated, he says, nobody can be my disciple unless he forsakes all, even his own life, picks up his cross and follows after me. So that's the first part. But he says, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time? And then he lists the very things that have been given up. So, we've given up all of these different nails, but God, when we are attracted to Him, gives all of those things back to us. Not all necessarily, sometimes He will remove them. But He gives these things into our lives, and then He adds that little word with persecutions. He tests us to make sure that we have a steward's heart, and in the age to come, eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first. So when we're thinking of ourselves first in terms of our relationships to everything else in creation, when God says, I'm going to put you last, you're not going to enjoy life. When we put God first and we put ourselves last, then God says we can enjoy life. I think that's basically where the illustration is on that. Now in terms of that idolatry of verse 4, Psalm 16 verse 4, their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god. We've already seen in Mark 10 how anything can become an idol, including our houses. And people say, how can my house become an idol? Oh yeah, houses many times will draw people's hearts away from the Lord as a poor stewardship trust. Husbands, wives, children, anything can draw us away from the Lord and make us lose our magnetic power of the Lord and be miserable. So he says, their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another God. What we want is we want to enjoy life 100-fold like Mark 10 says. And he's not saying we'll have a hundred children or a hundred houses or a hundred wives or anything like that, but it will be a hundred times better when we are solidly committed to the Lord as stewards in our relationship to all of the people and all of the things that are in our life. Point two, now in verses five through six, we see once we do that, once we give up ownership, we become stewards. We learn to be content and happy no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. And we know in verse one, he had some needs. He said, preserve me, O God, for in you I put my trust. But just like Paul, he had learned how to abound. He had learned how to suffer want. Verses five through six, despite his needs, he says, you, O Lord, are the portion of my inheritance in my cup. You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance." And when he's talking about lines, he's talking about a surveyor's line that is mapping out what your territory is. He's saying, Lord, what You've entrusted me with, the stewardship, in fact, every circumstance this day that You've entrusted me with, I accept. I cheerfully accept that. Godliness with contentment is great gain, says Paul. When you've come to the place where you're contented with your circumstances, God says you're a steward. Now, you should never, there's one thing you should never be contented with. You could be contented without those nails, but there's one thing you should never be contented with, and that is not having God's presence in your life. In fact, in Psalm 13, David cries out, and he is not contented at all because he cannot see God's face. He cannot experience His pleasure. He says, where are you, Lord? I long for you." And there are other psalms that talk about him longing for God in a dry and weary land. Point three, if this enjoyment is to reach its fullest potential, it must be personally experienced and not just be theoretical. And all through the psalm you see the personal character, but verses 7 through 8, I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel. My heart also instructs me in the night seasons." So he's talking about God opening up the eyes of His understanding, giving His counsel, speaking to Him. Now, I believe we have no more prophetic revelation, in other words, no more inspired, inerrant revelation outside of the prophetic scriptures. But God does speak to us very powerfully and really through those Scriptures. In fact, Jesus promised this in John 14 verse 23, "'If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.'" Wow, that's pretty close. That's pretty personal what He is promising there. The triune God making his home with us. He's talking about a personal relationship and he says That is true of anyone who is willing to keep God's Word to do his will Let me read that again. John 14 23 if anyone loves me I He will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." Now earlier in verse 21 he said, he who is my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. And that word manifest means that this is an experience, it's not just a theoretical concept inside of our heads. And he says, that's the heritage of all who love Him without any exceptions. Now, there's not an audible voice that we hear, at least not usually, but God converses with us nonetheless. There have been times where I have read the words of the Bible and all it is is theology for me. And there are other times where I've read exactly the same words. And it is almost as if God is in that room audibly speaking to me. Now, He's not audibly speaking, but I can sense the presence of the power of God working in my heart through those same Scriptures. And this is why David cried in Psalm 13, how long will you hide your face from me? And in Psalm 22, why are you so far from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear. So he was not just content with speaking to God, he wanted God to be speaking to his heart. Psalm 16 goes on to say, I want you to notice it's not just the last two verses where he's in heaven that speak of this joy, predicting Christ's joy in heaven. He's experiencing this joy right now. I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." So we need to ask ourselves, is God at your right hand? Do you set the Lord always before you? Do you experience your heart burning when you come into His presence? Do you experience God working in you, working through you in His Scriptures? This is what David longed for more and more. Now, I think I experience this a lot, but I would like to experience it much more, and all of us are going to experience it in the ultimate sense when we get to heaven. But he wants us pressing more and more into that right now. And then finally, learn to anticipate. This is the role of hope, and it's a very, very… hope is so important for our Christian life. Learn to anticipate the incredible joys of the future just like Jesus did. Hebrews says that for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross. Now, let's just think about this idea of hope. Some of the most important memories, us looking backward, are times that we were actually looking forward to them, just like Joel looks forward to going to Minnesota every year, and kids look forward to unwrapping birthday presents. It's an anticipation, there's an excitement that is in there. And I think a family needs to have some of these things that they can be looking forward to, because it helps our enjoyment right now. The future can impact us right now. Well, the same is true in our relationship with God. God is excited about the gift of heaven that he's going to be giving to you. He can hardly wait till you die and you take the wrapping paper off this splendid gift and you see what he has for you. It says, precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. He says, I can hardly wait to see the glee, the pleasure in your eyes when you die and you see this wrapping paper come off and you say, wow, heaven is incredible. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints. That is the time par excellence when we finally enter into the things that we've been excitedly looking forward to. And He wants us to have that excitement, that anticipation right now. The thought of heaven does bring joy to me. In fact, the older I get, the more joy the thought of heaven brings to me. And it brought joy to Jesus. And as we meditate upon the incredible joys of heaven, It enlivens our walk with the Lord right now. Now let's read verses 9 through 11, which are applied to Christ in the New Testament. But I just want to point out, David enters into resurrection joys through Christ. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope, for you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Now, I cannot even begin to do justice to those verses. They probably deserve a sermon all on their own. But I want to quote from the Puritan writer, Thomas Brooks, and I've included the quote at the bottom of your outlines. He said about this verse, mark for quality there are pleasures. For quantity, fullness. For dignity, at God's right hand. For eternity, forevermore. And millions of years multiplied by millions make not up one minute to this eternity of joy that the saints shall have in heaven. Isn't that great? When you start meditating upon that, It can give you some joy even in the midst of your pains and sorrows today. Spurgeon said the glorified soul shall be forever bathing in the rivers of pleasure. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. But God wants us to learn how to enter into a little bit of that enjoyment right now. He wants us to have our cup of joy full to overflowing. Now, my capacity for joy is about this shallow. You know, when we get to heaven, it's going to be a whole lot deeper. But he still wants us to have that joy full to overflowing. So if you think you need even one more dollar in order to be happy, you're never going to be happy. because your focus is not on God. Your focus is on how many nails that you still need before you can be happy. If you think you need any more changes in your job to be happy, you're never gonna be happy. If you think you need any more changes in your family to be happy, you're not gonna be happy. This is the key. The key is clinging to the Lord God Almighty who loves you and cares for you. So leave your idols behind. And God in His perfect timing will restore some of the things that you've left behind as a stewardship trust, no longer as an idolatry thing. Enjoy Him so much you are content in whatever circumstance that He may put you in, no matter how painful it may be. Learn to enjoy God personally and learn to enjoy the anticipation of what He has prepared for you in the future. Enjoy God and He will be glorified. Amen. Father, it is our desire to enjoy you. And we know there's all kinds of things that rob us of that enjoyment, things that creep into our lives, sins that are not repented of, bad attitudes toward you. And we pray that you would just cleanse those away from us and enable us to enter into the joy of the Lord. In Nehemiah, you commanded the people to stop mourning for the joy of the Lord is your strength, you said. And we need that strength, Father. We need that enjoyment. And so we pray that you would help us to cling to you, even as you cling to us. We love you, but we want to grow in our love for you so much more. We rejoice in what you have done for us, but we want to enter into that joy much more fully. And so we pray that you would manifest your presence in our lives and fill our hearts with gladness. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.