The preaching of the Word of God comes, again, from 1 Peter 4, this morning. If you'd open your Bibles, 1 Peter 4, if you need the Pew Bible, that's on page 1296. Begin reading in verse 12, and we'll read through verse 19. But let us begin with a word of prayer. Oh, Father, once again, we we bow our heads before you, O Lord, and we lift our hearts. We call upon you in the name of Christ. With the help of your Holy Spirit, so we pray. We ask that you would be with us, O God. Unfold this word to our hearts, bring it to bear upon our souls this morning, may it be to us. A word of encouragement. A word of conviction where needed and of comfort in every place. Build us up in our holy faith, O God, for our hearts and our eyes are upon you. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Beginning in verse 12, this is the word of God. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God, and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good. Amen. Thus saith the Lord. Well, as we began last week looking at this section, Peter, you can see begins this new section with the awareness not only of the great persecution that is faced by God's exiled people in a fallen world, but also of the great fears that they were dealing with in the face of it. And so we mustn't miss that Peter begins pastorally and tenderly with the word beloved. To remind them that though they may be hated by the world, they are loved by God. And that not only far outweighs the world's hatred, but it also guarantees to them that all of their persecutions, all of their sufferings will work in God's hands for their good because that's God's promise to his people. And as we saw before, he begins by addressing their surprise with a reminder that fiery trials are not out of place in the life of a Christian, a life of a Christ follower, but rather they're part and parcel of the blessed and privileged share in Christ's own sufferings. A share which, in God's powerful hands, Peter goes on to point out, gives way to another share, and that is a share in the very glory of Christ when He is revealed. Last time we talked about that surprise and the several things that we can do to prepare for suffering so that we're not caught off guard when it comes and unprepared to honor God in it. Well, now this morning I want to bring verses 12 to 16 together, and I want to look at three things here. There's a lot going on, but I want to highlight three things, I think, that'll get us through the essence of the passage, try and I trust profitably. First of all, how to understand Christian suffering. We touched on that a little bit last time, but digging into that. Secondly, how to respond to Christian suffering. And then as the title is this morning, how to endure Christian suffering like a Christian. So first of all, how do we understand Christian suffering? And again, we're calling it Christian suffering because it's the suffering that goes with being a Christian, a suffering that's inescapable. Suffering for a holy cause, suffering for the sake of Christ, suffering as a Christ follower. So how do we endure Christian suffering? Suffering for Christ's sake can come in all shapes, can't it? It can be in the shape of slander, reproach, reviling, insulting, Peter mentions here, or it can come in the shape of martyrdom. And it's clear, as we've seen from Peter's entire letter, that his audience was facing all kinds. He has spoken to suffering in every chapter, as we've already pointed out before. But no matter the nature of the affliction, Peter shows that the key to a godly response and a godly outcome begins with a godly understanding of it in the first place. So how are we to understand Christian suffering? Well, Peter gives us several helpful insights. First of all, look at verse 12. He calls them, of course, fiery trials. This is meant to take our minds back to chapter one, verses six and seven, which you can turn there as I read. He writes there, now in this life, For a little while it's necessary that you be grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious to God than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ. Peter is making clear then that all the afflictions which God brings upon his people as part and parcel of the Christian life are designed by God to try them to exercise them, not to ruin them, not to crush them, not to punish them in anger, but to try them, to test them in love as a father with his own children. And so the Bible uses this imagery of fire all over the place, and it uses it relative to the people of God to help us understand that our trials are necessary furnaces to test our sincerity, to test our strength, our patience, our trust in God in the face of men's cruelty and persecution. And like gold, he says, all our graces need to be tested for genuineness. All of our graces need to be purified of our draws and fiery trials is what does that. And so that means that we're to understand that our trials are sent by God for our good. Whatever the world or our persecutors intend by them, whatever they hope to stir up by them, whatever they hope to accomplish against us by them, in the end, it doesn't matter. Because Peter says, God sends them to test us and to mature us. Because like gold, which is made better with the fires that engulf it, so our faith in God, our love for Christ, our sincerity, they're all made better in the furnace of our trials. If our faith is true, our fiery trials reveal it and refine it. If our faith is still mixed with dross and whose isn't, then our fiery trials purge it and make it more pure. If our love for God is still plagued by a love for the world, nothing works better to wean us from the vanities of this life than to have it all burned up and the way now made clear before our eyes and hearts to behold the beauty and the glory of the Lord God, the God of our salvation. so that we can let the world go and cling more fully to Him. So the point of calling our sufferings fiery trials is to assure us that as Christians we lose nothing in the furnace but the dross. And that helps us to understand and see what a great advantage it is for us when God calls us to suffer for a holy cause. And that means we need to look at our afflictions not as they are in themselves and as they come from the hands of the hateful how bitter they are, how painful they are, what precious things they take away, what sore things they bring, what comforts they swallow up, what heaviness they lay upon us. We need to not look at our trials in those ways, but rather we need to look at them as they come from the hand of God, how they spring from his love for us, how they're a part of Christ's gift to the church, how they come to sanctify us, and how they give way to the sweet fruits of moving us more and more away from sin and closer and closer to the image of Christ. Because these kind of considerations produce not only the patience that James calls us to in James chapter one but even the rejoicing that Peter will call us to in verse 13. Secondly then he tells us in verse 13 that our sufferings are our sharing in Christ's sufferings. Now it goes without saying that whatever it means to share in Christ's sufferings, whatever that means, there's a radical uniqueness and aloneness to Christ's sufferings that belong to none but Christ. He alone suffered as an atonement for our sins. He alone satisfied divine justice for us by his suffering. He alone bore all our sins in his body on that tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. His wounds alone brought us healing. His suffering alone reconciled us to God because he by himself, Peter says in chapter two, bore our sins, bore our condemnation, removed our guilt, removed the enmity, and made peace between us and God. None could carry the sins. None could carry the wrath. None could carry the reproach, the curse, the condemnation, the hell, the separation from God. which Christ carried for us. To Christ alone be all the glory for his atoning work. So when Peter says that we're to understand our Christian sufferings as a sharing in Christ's sufferings, he's not saying our sufferings are atoning. He's not even saying that our sufferings are penal, but rather that when God calls us to suffer for the sake of Christ in the gospel and to suffer because of our love for Christ and our faith in Christ, it's an abiding and an encouraging testimony to our belonging to Christ in the first place. It's an encouraging and abiding testimony to our being led by God in the way of Christ, to our being brought by the Spirit into the full fruition of Christ's sufferings for us. Because again, this is what Christ says to us. This is what Christ promises us. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you, he said. If they called the master Beelzebub, how much more would they call you Beelzebub? If you would come after me, says Christ, you must bear my cross. To follow me is to take up my badge and my burden. Christ has said to his church repeatedly, to commune with me is to commune with me in suffering. Because while the son of man will one day return in glory, for now I have nowhere to lay my head. I have less of a home on earth than a bird or a fox. I have less of a welcome than Beelzebub, than a criminal, than sinners and outcasts of the earth. That's our Savior. That's the one we follow and love. So these are Christ's promises to us, brothers and sisters. And so we can welcome our sufferings for the sake of Christ, not because we love suffering. No discipline is pleasant for the moment, says Hebrews. So not because we love suffering, but because we love Christ. And because our love for Christ not only lightens his commandments, says John, so that they're not burdensome, but lightens his crosses so they're not bitter. To suffer for Christ's sake is to find fellowship with him because he is never more present with his people than when they're in the furnace. It's to be made conformable to him in his holiness, Hebrews 12, 10, because suffering purges our dross. Suffering weans us from this world. Suffering sharpens our longings for heaven because it becomes more and more clear there's nothing for us here. Furthermore, to suffer for Christ's sake is to be the blessed recipient of those mercies, those comforts, those sweet tokens of God's love that can't be experienced on the mountaintops but are only found in the fiery trials of Christian suffering. But Peter takes us still higher. Look at verse 13 again. He says the greatest blessing of suffering for Christ during our pilgrimage is that it's promised to give way to being glorified with Christ when our pilgrimage ends at his return in glory. Just as Christ's humiliation gave way to his exaltation so our suffering for his sake will give way to our being exalted with him as his people. That's why we're called not only sons but because sons co-heirs. with the Son of God. You see, Christ came down, says the Word of God, to raise us up. He became poor for us that he might make us rich with him. He took on our enmity. He suffered our curse that he might share with us his sonship and eternal life. Paul puts it this way in Galatians 4. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law. so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you're sons, God has sent the spirit of a son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you're no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. And that's why Peter goes on in verse 14 to say that if we're called to suffer for Christ's sake, then we're blessed. The spirit of God rests upon us. The spirit of glory rests upon those who suffer for the sake of Christ. The world seeks to heap shame and reproach, and all God is heaping is glory and praise. In verse 15, Peter says we're not to suffer as evil doers do for doing evil. He's reminding us that the blessings found in suffering are not because of the suffering, as if suffering automatically produces fellowship with Christ, or as if all kinds of suffering are a share in Christ's suffering. On the contrary, the sole reason that Christians find blessing in their sufferings and are miraculously sanctified by their sufferings is because when their suffering is for the sake of Christ and for the sake of their faith those sufferings find a share in Christ's vicarious sufferings and therefore also find a share in the fact that Christ swallowed up the wrath and the curse of God in his suffering for his people so that as Peter says when we suffer for his sake there's nothing left but a blessing. That brings us to the second point in the text. If we properly understand Christian suffering, then it can help us make a proper response. Peter tells us there's two responses that God's people are to make to Christian suffering, joy and praise. Look at verse 13 again. Peter tells us to rejoice. Notice Peter doesn't stop to ask the nature of the suffering. Peter doesn't stop to consider how long we've been enduring it. Or how much this cross has actually cost you or from whose hand we are receiving it. Because none of that matters. None of that matters as the basis for a godly response. It's not true. We can respond in a godly manner if and when. Peter says rejoice. The basis for a godly response to suffering, he says, is knowing, as we've seen through the whole context, that our suffering is for a holy cause. It's for Christ. And therefore, our suffering is a sharing in His suffering. And therefore, that suffering will give way to an equal participation in the glory of Christ. And that, he says, is ground for rejoicing. Not a rejoicing that denies the pain involved, or that ignores the loss suffered, or that stifles emotions and holds back tears. but a sincere rejoicing that arises from faith in what God says about our suffering regardless of what men say. Because God says our sufferings are tokens of his love. God says our sufferings come with his comforts and his peace. God says our sufferings promote the gospel of Christ on earth. God says our sufferings prepare us for heaven and glory. And God says that he puts all our tears in his bottle. He makes up all our temporal losses with eternal recompense and he works an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. By every light and momentary affliction we suffer. And then in verse 16, secondly, Peter tells us we're not to be ashamed. Rejoice and now don't be ashamed but rather glorify God in the name of Christ for whom we suffer. The great temptation even in Christian suffering is to cower in shame. To cower in shame under the reproach, the ridicule, the slander, the laughter of the world or to cower in shame out of fear in the face of the threats people make against Christ followers like Peter did. in the courtyard of the high priest. But here, Peter tells us not to be ashamed. He tells us instead, as he and the apostles did later in Acts chapter five, to consider what an honor it is to be called to suffer for the sake of Christ. Because you see, only then will we be able to glorify God in suffering. Only then. When we are not ashamed but counted in honor to suffer for the sake of Christ, only then will we be enabled to honor God and glorify God in suffering. When we're okay to let our suffering be the death of us as long as Christ is honored. For as Paul says, better to be wronged than to wrong another. Which is what Peter's already taught us. To suffer like Christ, he said in chapter two, you remember. To suffer like Christ is not to return reviling for reviling. Let the world do that. but to humbly entrust oneself to God who judges justly and who will right every wrong done against his people because they are as precious to him as the blood of his own son. And honestly, the point of all of these verses is to remind us of all the reasons why we have no reason to be ashamed to suffer for Christ. Peter teaches us in this text as we've read it together that we are personally sanctified by suffering. We find sweet fellowship with Jesus Christ, the son of God, in suffering. We are made participants in his own suffering, which on God's word will soon give way to a full participation in his glory. While our persecutors will perish under God's judgment, as Peter goes on to say. So in the light that Peter has shed on Christ's suffering, We have no reason to be ashamed to be called to suffer for the sake of Christ and instead every reason to rejoice. To rejoice that God counts us worthy to suffer for his sake. And we have every reason then to endure our suffering as a Christian should in order that God might be glorified in us. Because we know that the Christ who calls us to walk beside him in his sufferings on earth is the same Christ who won't fail to see that we stand beside him in his glory in heaven. That's the promise. And that leads finally to the third point. How do we endure Christian suffering? We've learned last time how to prepare for it. Peter says here now before us we're to be joyful in it. But how do we endure it? How do we bear up under suffering honorably while we wait for the glory promised? Well in essence, We need to bring a heart of submission to our suffering. We need to bring a heart of submission to our suffering. And that means, if it means anything, it means saying with our Savior in John 18, shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? But wait, that cup is from men, that cup is from Pilate, that cup is from wicked people. Christ saw one hand holding that cup, and from that hand he received it. You see in the Garden of Gethsemane Christ prayed for relief from his suffering but only if it was God's will, if it was the Father's will. And then no sooner did he know that it that indeed was God's will for him that he suffer then we find him not only resolved to suffer but content to suffer and even zealously submitting to it in John 18 11. Shall I not drink. And that's what we need to do as well beloved that's what you need to do. That's what we need to do. When God calls us to suffer it's an opportunity to show our love for Christ. It's an opportunity to manifest the graces he has given to us. It's an opportunity to submit ourselves to resign ourselves to deny ourselves to die to self. It's an opportunity to be willing to suffer what God wills as long as God wills and for whatever purpose God wills. It's an opportunity beautifully to melt our wills into the very will of God. Just as our Savior taught us, not my will, but yours be done. And just as our Savior by his spirit stands ready to enable us to do for his glory's sake. We may cry to God in the face of it. We may cry to God in the midst of it. We may cry to God under it. But we must not murmur. We must not complain to God. complain about God. We must not sin to get out of the way of it. And we must not give way to sin in our hearts toward our persecutors because none of that honors God. All of that honors the devil and it works against the very good for which the Lord brought the trial in the first place. So how can we be so quiet and submissive under suffering? I want to close this morning with four directives which I pray you will welcome as food for your souls. where we are all in a suffering condition as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Number one, we need to stop thinking so much about our sufferings when we're going through them. It's almost impossible to endure suffering Christianly, honorably, God glorifyingly, if all we think about is how much we've lost by it, how heavy it is, how long it's been going on, how others can be so cruel, or why others aren't called to suffer what we're called to suffer. Do you see where all that goes? Instead, we should give our thoughts over to those things that will encourage us despite our sufferings. That's the Christian response. Do you remember when Rachel looked at her son and because of the bitterness of her suffering, all she could call him was Benoni, son of my sorrow. That's all you are to me. Interestingly, Jacob had a more godly response, didn't he? Jacob looked at the same son and because of his love for Rachel called him Benjamin, son of my right hand, the son who reminds me of my beloved wife. That's what we need to do. That's what we need to do, beloved. We need to set our minds on God's faithfulness to his people in suffering. How so many of God's promises were made for sufferers. Promises are made for all sorts of conditions, but how many were made for suffering conditions? Hundreds, thousands, the scripture is filled. We need to think on God's presence with his people in suffering. How no furnace of affliction has ever separated God from his people. We need to think on God's work in suffering. How God overrules all of it for good. It can't go wrong in his hands. It can't produce the evil that Satan intends. It can only produce the good for which God called it in the first place. even if by the devil's hands. You see that in Job, don't you? We need to think in those times, in our suffering times, we need to be thinking about God's goodness in suffering, how he perfectly designs suffering, how he perfectly times it, he perfectly measures it, he perfectly uses it. God doesn't make mistakes in your life. So that it accomplishes nothing more or less than what he intended by it, no matter what those who hate you intended by it. Can you not see what a difference it'll make if those kinds of things occupy your thoughts? What a difference. So let's not waste time pouring over our afflictions. Instead, let's spend our time preciously and give ourselves to pouring over God's mercies because then we will find ourselves better able to bear them well, even to the glory of God. Secondly, Always think well of God's ways with you. You've read Hebrews 12 many times, we read it together again this morning. Always think well of God's ways with you. We all know how painful and hurtful it is when your friends take you wrong. When you try to do them good and they were offended by it, hurt by it, angered by it, it really hurts. Well we're just like that. We're just like that. When we look at our afflictions and we take God wrong. When we look at our hardships and get angry with God. That's why God exposes Jonah's sin. I have every right to be angry. He says, do you have a right to be angry, Jonah? You bet I do. No, Jonah, you do not. You do not. Shall I not care for those people, the Lord tells him. When we look at our hardships and we get angry with God, we're taking them wrong. Or when we forget all that God has done for us. and think he doesn't care about us because he took away this or that. Or we forget all the tokens of God's love and God's faithfulness to us and think in a moment of withdrawn comforts that God's suddenly forsaken us. Or we forget how often he's proven to be wiser than us, know better than we what we need. And all of a sudden we think he doesn't care about our family, our job, our life, our reputation. Have we not all looked back and said the Lord knew exactly what he was doing? When we think ill of God and we behave that way in the face of afflictions, all we're doing is giving the devil a foothold to stir up anger, bitterness, and resentment in our hearts against God because we don't deserve such things. That thinking is not good and not helpful. So instead, when God wills that we should suffer for the sake of Christ, let's think better thoughts of him, beloved. Let's think better thoughts of him. Let's think things like this. It may be that the Lord's testing the genuineness and the sincerity of my Christian faith. It may be that I am yet a child and the Lord wants to grow me in grace. It may be that the Lord wants to surface the sins lurking in my heart, that I might see them and repent of them and forgiven of them. It may be that the Lord's exposing my idolatry, showing me what I love more than him. It may be that the Lord wants to grow his graces in me to increase my faith, to grow me in patience, to teach me self-denial. It may be that I have not yet died. to self. It may be that the Lord wants me to see the ugliness of my sin and to remind me I am saved by grace alone. Or it may be that the Lord is preparing me for some great work and this school of affliction is necessary for me to remove my dross that I might be better fitted for the service he has in store. Do you see what a difference again it makes? What a difference it makes if you begin with God's goodness and God's love and God's covenant and then set out to interpret your afflictions. What a difference. But if you begin with your afflictions and then interpret God by them, by how much they hurt, how much they cost, et cetera, et cetera, as we said already, you will always judge God to be a hard master. You will lose the benefit of the suffering that he's chosen for you as a furnace to remove the dross of your sin and pride. You lose. You lose. Because you're judging God from the wrong end. Beloved, the only way to judge rightly is to begin with God. That's what Job chapter 1 and 2 shows us. Thirdly then, look on all your suffering as a participation in Christ's sufferings. And you know what this means. We've looked at this in so many other contexts. It means that they've all been sanctified to you. And what an encouragement. What a comfort. Don't miss this, beloved. The sting and the venom and the poison of sin and wrath have all been taken out when Christ suffered for you. Are you afflicted? Christ was afflicted for you. Are you poor? Christ was poor for you. Are you disgraced and dishonored and reviled by men and even your friends? Christ was disgraced. Christ was dishonored even by his own disciples for you. Are you being slandered by men? Christ was slandered for you. Are you afraid of death? Christ died for you. Do you feel forsaken by God? Christ was forsaken for you. Whatever it is, beloved, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, Christ has already walked that way before you. And when he did, all the wrath and all the curses that was in that way fell on him, who was innocent and spotless and blameless and deserved nothing of the sort. So that believe it or not, as I said before, so I say it again, there is nothing left for you in all those painful hardships, but blessing. Don't miss it. In all your suffering, beloved, see that you rest in Christ's removal of the curse from it so that you can actually draw out the blessing that Christ left in it for you. And finally this morning, in all your suffering, beloved, rest on the exceedingly precious promises of God. There is no suffering on earth that a godly man can be in, but God's given him a promise to carry him through it. Read your Bibles, find those promises, and build your life upon them again. Beloved, this is the way to be content, to endure suffering as long as God would have it, to reach for the promises, put all your faith in the promises of God, to plead the promises back to God in prayer. Lord, you said, I don't deserve this, but you said. And as you do that, remember that while there are promises of deliverance from your suffering, which shall surely come, there are many, many more promises of God's grace, God's presence, and God's blessing in the midst of your suffering. God likes to go down into Egypt with his people. God likes to appear as that fourth man with those three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. Remember, they knew God could deliver them. Our God can keep us from this. But if he does not, they said, we still will not bow. Why? Because even there, the Lord can meet us. Even there, the Lord can rescue us. Even there in the flames, the Lord can take care of us and keep his word to us. And so it's these promises of God's grace and presence and blessing in the midst of your suffering, it's these that you need to build upon most of all. Because you may not know when or how the Lord will deliver you. Indeed, the Lord may wait to deliver you at death, which is a glorious deliverance. You've got to leave that with God. You may never be vindicated. You may never be out from under oppression and persecution until the day you die. Such is the case for so many of our brethren even still. You may not know when or how the Lord will deliver you but you do know when and whether he will be with you in suffering, give you grace for suffering, and bless you in the spite of suffering and that is in all suffering. That you know. The Lord is with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. And so that's where you've got to rest. That's where you've got to find contentment. It can't be found any other place. If you're waiting to be content when the trouble is removed, you're never going to be content. Because after that trouble will come another and yet another and yet another until you're finally humbled and you're ready to sit still in a furnace. And then the Lord brings deliverance. We've got to find contentment in suffering, in hardship, under the cross, carrying the armor. And the beauty of the passages, that's where God puts the grace of endurance. In the suffering, through the suffering, because of the suffering. That's why suffering people grow in Christ. That's why suffering people find a communion in Christ that others don't seem to understand. Because Christ meets in that place, meets his people in that place in special, special ways. Whatever Christ, whatever God takes away by your suffering, he'll make it up some other way, sweetly here and gloriously and comparably hereafter in the life to come. So there you have it, brothers and sisters. I pray the Lord brings these helps home to your hearts and fixes them on your minds so that when God calls you to go through a trial greater than your strength can bear, you will remember to live by faith in his strength, in his promises, in his steadfast love for you, which ordains all your sufferings for your growth and grace, because God has never, ever called his people to suffer without a holy, loving, gracious purpose in it. In that, says Peter, you can rejoice. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, We bless you this morning for your holy word that speaks so pointedly to our hearts needs. Oh God, do you not know us all? We stand before you today naked and exposed. We cannot hide. You know our pains, our fears, our heartaches, our brokenness. You know what it is that ails us, troubles us. Oh God, you know what it is we're hiding and behind that which we hide, you know it all. But oh God, you also know our longing and our desires to be more like Christ. You know how many times we have prayed to be a stronger Christian. How many times we have prayed to be more holy, to have greater fellowship with Christ. How we have prayed so often to be more conformed, better conformed to Jesus, to be more pure gold, to be more like Christ. Oh Lord, what is all this that we suffer? What is all this that we bear? But the answers to our prayers, we thank you for them. Forgive us for we have been discontent and murmuring forgive us or we have not responded well. Thank you for reminding us of how we are to understand them in order to respond Christianly and endure as a Christian should. And so we pray father that we would never be ashamed either of Christ's sufferings or to suffer with him when he calls. We pray, O Lord, that where we find ourselves suffering for our own sins, that you would grant that grace and forgiveness that is promised in the gospel. That even there, O Lord, when we are cast down by your chastisements because of our own evil doing, yet even there we remain sons that are being disciplined and not pagans or heathens. We are being disciplined as sons, which means even then we shall be raised up yet again. Even then it shall be for our good and our betterment. Even then, we are still being made like Christ by it. What a joy, what an encouragement, Father. What an encouragement, O Lord. Thank you today. Lift our hearts, O God. Comfort us with these things. Bless us, one and all, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.