Well, good morning to you. And it is a good morning. Yes, it is. I know looking outside, it's hard to believe what's going on down to our southeast. And if you were here in 2004, there's probably a little anxiety that rests upon your soul. If you've been through a hurricane, you know what folks are going through right now. And if you're casual about it, you probably haven't been through one. Okay? That's just kind of the way it works, isn't it? But we certainly want to be in prayer for them. We're going to have a special time at the invitation time for us to be in prayer for those that are our friends that are going through hard times who are continuing to do so over in Texas in the Houston area and then also now in Florida. I couldn't help but have a little thoughts about going back to 2004-2005 with Ivan and Katrina hitting our area and when we sang the song that we're learning about the Lord holding on to us, it's a good reminder that I don't have to hold on to him, he's gonna hold on to me. in times of trials like this, but what are we to do, you know, when you can't do anything? I mean, we have a few that are here today with us that are evacuees, that are wise enough not to stay in harm's way. But what do we do? Paul addresses that in the book of Colossians where we are in our study and we continue on beginning in verse 9 of Colossians chapter 1 and going through verse 11 of how to pray today. This is what we should be doing in a time like this we should pray. When When all depends on God, depend on God alone. And that's what we are being called to do. So Paul kind of addresses that as he is talking to a church that was going to face trials and tribulations, and we are going to face trials and tribulations as part of life that we go through. So what does he say? He says, when I first heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, we did not cease to pray for you. And what was it that he prayed for? And I want to pose to you that there are at least five things that he prays for them and you may could break it down a little bit differently and come up with a different number but I want you to think in terms of five things that are here in the text and I'll draw those out in just a few moments. He says, so I pray for you first of all asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. To be filled to the full with all the knowledge of Christ and all the knowledge of God that you and I might know what His will is and we can't know that intellectually alone it must be spiritual in nature For what purpose, verse 10 tells us, so that you will walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord, in keeping with that which is a prince or princess or son or daughter of God, fully pleasing to Him, so that you will be bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. And then verse 11, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, knowing this so that it might be for all endurance and patience with joy. Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Father, we come in this moment, Lord, with great understanding in our hearts today that there are trials on every hand, whether it be to our friends and neighbors that are to our east or to the west, or Lord, whether it be unto us that this life affords trials and hardships and difficulties. And yet it affords us so great blessings and goodness and tender mercies that come our way. It is in a day like this that Father we want to come before a benevolent loving Heavenly Father to know that you are the one that holds all things in the hallow of your hand. Lord we your children rest the great providence of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ that Lord you watch over our ways and that Lord it is in you that we can trust and know that Father you will provide for us in such a way and for your saints in such a way that we would know the good hand of the Lord that is upon us And so, Father, we ask for your great blessing. We ask for your tender mercies. And now, Lord, as we look at scripture, we ask for your great help and understanding that comes through your Holy Spirit for what we do not know only you can reveal to our hearts. And we trust in you. In Jesus' name, we do pray. Amen. I don't know if you happen to catch the owner of a little bar or a dive just south of Naples, Florida. The name of it is Gators Crossroads. And she was talking about what was getting ready to happen. This was yesterday, apparently, when she made these statements. But she said, being alone is an awful thing, so all of our friends and neighbors are coming here to the bar to wait out the storm. And she said, despite our lack of hurricane shutters and plywood on the windows, This makeshift shelter will be a place where someone who has nowhere else to go to be safe. We're all staying. If need be, we'll make this bar our bed. These benches will be put together and we'll bring mattresses out and cots, pool tables, and we'll sleep anywhere. I thought about that. That's probably not the wisest thing to do. in the face of an impending storm and I couldn't help but think about what happened when I was just a child of a mere, I'm sure I wasn't even born yet, but in 1969 as I was listening to the radio And Hurricane Camille was coming our way. There was a story about the Richelieu Manor apartments in Past Christian, Mississippi. And the story was that there were 23 souls who had decided after their hard work of buttoning down the hatches and putting everything away, they were going to have what they called a hurricane party at their apartments. And some of you who were living at that time might remember, or maybe you've heard stories about how every soul in that building perished that day when Camille came through. There's an apocryphal story, meaning it's not true, that there was one survivor and she floated out the third-story window on a mattress, but that indeed has been found to be not true. Actually, everybody who was living in that place died that day. And you and I look at something like that and we think what a foolish thing it would be to not flee in the face of such disaster. And yet we always face those kind of decisions as human beings of whether or not we're going to follow the command of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to come and follow him or to risk the warning refusing to do what Christ has commanded us to do. So it is with the scripture that is here. Paul is praying for the saints of God to do what? To heed the warnings of God and you and I must be wise and we must be prudent and again to the cross as we were asked to do at the very beginning of the service, yet come again to the cross, but realize the cross is not a beautiful place, it's a hard place. Cross is a place upon which Christ Jesus died. And to be a follower of Jesus Christ is exactly that, is it not? It is a place to come and die to ourselves that we might live for Christ and for His glory and for His kingdom. So we're reminded in the scripture to watch out for ourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life. and know that the day of the Lord will come on us suddenly and trap us, Luke 21 records, for it will come upon all who will dwell on the face of the whole earth but you, the saints of God, we the saints of God, we are to stay awake at all times praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place and be able to stand before the Son of Man. So we in our spiritual condition, we're not to run, but we're to do what? We're to stand. And God has given us everything in Christ Jesus whereby we can stand regardless of what the storms may be around us. So I want you to look at the text this morning and kind of have your thoughts around five things. By the way, I'm only going to give you three-fifths of the sermon today. Yay! Alright, thank you. Two-fifths are going to come this evening, so you've got to come back for the rest of the sermon. So, I want you to see that there are five things, at least, that he prays for, for us, and things that we ought to be praying for, for not only ourselves, but for others. Number one, in verse nine, is a wondrous understanding. A wondrous understanding. And then secondly, in the first part of verse 10, a decorous living. Now this is my weak word in the outline, okay? It's a word that means to be in keeping with that which is honorable. It's the word for worthy in the text, that we may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. And then the second part of verse 10 speaks of having a, we are to be praying for a prosperous knowledge, a knowledge that leads to a fruitfulness in the life of the believer. And then fourthly, a glorious strength. And that's the first part of verse 11. And then ultimately a joyous perseverance in the second part of verse 11. So Paul was praying for these saints. We need to be living this way and we need to be praying for others. As Paul said, we did not cease to pray for you, number one, for a wondrous understanding. Look again at verse 9. That you may be filled with the knowledge. And understand again, this word knowledge is this full knowledge. It's a special knowledge. It's a knowledge on steroids, as it were. Knowledge to its fullest extent. Sometimes you and I say things like this, I understand that, and then later we go, boy, did I not understand that. You know, you're training up your children on how to live, and your kid at 12 says what? I understand it, I got it. And you're thinking to yourself, you ain't got it. You don't have a clue because you know that at 35, you ain't got it. And the older you get, the more you and I begin to realize the less that we really know about the complexities of life and relationships and of following the Lord Jesus. So the scripture here is telling us that as a saint of God, there is this continual maturity, this striving that Paul had for the saints of God that we may come to know the full knowledge, the stature of the measure of a mature man in Jesus Christ. So He uses this word of being filled to the full of this supreme knowledge of what? Look what it says, of His will, the will of God. That which God would have you and I to do that is in keeping with His plans, His desires, His want. We know that the scripture says that it's God's desire that none should perish but that all should come to repentance. And so we understand the heart of the fleshly human heart, this sinful heart that dwells within us that is content to do what? All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. That's not what Paul is calling us to do. That's not what God's calling us to do here in these verses, but that is to come to know what is the will of God for my life, that good and perfect and precious will of God. It's what Romans 2, 12, pardon me, 12, 2 has to refer to. He says, do not be conformed to the world or stop being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you by testing may discern, that you may know and discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. This knowledge of God's will, as Colossians 1, 9 says, which is in all spiritual wisdom and all spiritual understanding, how do we come to know it? The text here in Romans 12, 2. In Romans 12 it is very clear it is coming to having a renewed mind is how you and I come to know what that good precious will of God is. That the human mind is set on the things of this world but there is a spiritual mind that is set on the things of God. But you and I realize I live with me. You know, and so therefore I've got this continual tendency of my heart to think in the realm of the physical alone and not always be seeking the will of God. So how do I come to have my mind renewed? And I'm reminded of Titus chapter 3 and verse 5. It's a verse of scripture that most of us know and that is that the Lord has saved us, not because of works by righteousness that we have done, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. So how do we come to have this refreshed, this renewed understanding of the will of God for our lives? It has to begin with the new birth. This regeneration. If you've not been born again, you and I do not have the capacity to understand who God is, nonetheless, the ways of God. I don't know how much you've been watching the news. I'm kind of tired of watching the news. I get a whole lot of anxiety over what people are getting ready to go through. Is it coming our way? Is it going that way? But there are a lot of folks that are asking some real-life questions today, and that is, if God is really a good and gracious God, how could he let something so bad happen to people? And you and I can't take the happenings of a storm or an event like this, or a war, or whether it be cancer in our bodies, we can't take it out of the context of the whole of the human experience. And the whole of the human experience, you and I have a revelation from God in His Word that tells us that when God made Adam and Eve, He put them in a beautiful place, did He not? He did. And God made a simple command on the heart of Adam and on the heart of Eve that was not complicated. Any old fool could understand it, could they not? And it was, you can have everything that I have provided for you except one thing. And in the reality of the human existence, what took place in that garden, it was the same choice that you and I make day in and day out, and that is we continually choose to go our own way. And God had already said to Adam and Eve a warning that the day that you eat of this, the day that you choose to go your way and contrary to my will and way for your lives, you will die. There are consequences always to choices that we make. There are good consequences to choices in responding to the grace and the goodness of God. I've been blessed for 39 years now. My wife and I have been husband and wife. And that was in response to a choice of grace. I was not smart enough and God made my wife dumb enough at that particular moment in time to be in a constant state of prayer saying to the Lord, Lord we do not know how to choose a life partner but we believe under your sovereign hand that you will lead and guide us to come to discern your will for our lives. And God in that has blessed us through a marital relationship that has flowed out blessing after blessing after blessing because of the grace of God. And that came out of a regenerate relationship with Jesus Christ. It came out of a choice to say yes to the goodness and the grace of God. Now, I had one or two other choices of people that probably I could have married. My wife probably had seven or eight hundred guys that had tried to snatch her along the way. I'm almost serious at that point. But folks, you understand what I mean. There are choices that we make for good and there are choices that we make for evil and there are consequences to those choices. And you and I can't look back on the benevolence of God and say, God, why do these bad things happen? Because when sin entered this world, there was a complexity of consequences of evil that are incumbent within all of nature. And you and I are groaning, as Romans tells us, with creation. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us we're groaning with creation, waiting for the redemption of our bodies. All of creation. Some of you stayed in this building back in 2004. Shame on you, shame on you for staying in this building. But you stayed in this building during the storm. And some of you gave testimony you'll never do that again because you heard the creaking and the moving of the building as you did that. Okay? And I want you to know every creak of every building during the storm is a cry out for redemption. Every tree limb that is removed from a tree during this storm is a cry out of creation, saying, we're longing for the Redeemer to return. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. And yet, the New Testament reminds us why God is waiting. God is not slack concerning His promises, the scripture says. But God is gracious. He is willing that none should perish and that we the saints of God would get the message of the gospel to the ends of the earth because God is willing that none should perish but that all should come to repentance in the Lord Jesus Christ. So you and I can't take a storm like this and just pull it out of context. You and I have to put it in the context of the reality that we are sinful men experiencing the consequences of our sin. But you and I can have a renewed understanding of the will of God by being regenerated by but also by being renewed day by day through the Holy Spirit of God. Because you and I don't know what we ought to do as we should, but there is one who has come to live and dwell in us, who translates things for us. He takes the Word of God and he translates it to the human heart, does he not? It comes through the reading of the Scripture, the Word of God, and we're reminded in Scripture time and time again, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We go back to Exodus chapter 6 and he says, I allowed you to wander in the wilderness for 40 years so that you might learn this lesson. Now think about that, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to learn one lesson. And you and I get a little bit agitated with God when we go a week without understanding things. Do we not? And for 40 years they wandered in the wilderness to learn one lesson, and that was you cannot live by what you know, you must live by the Word of God. You and I must live by the Word of God. If we're going to have a renewed mind and renewed thinking and come to know the will of God so that we might do the will of God, we must be in the Word of God. Asking the Holy Spirit to revive our flesh and to renew our minds and to set our hearts aright. Prone to wander we sing, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Why do we even sing those words? Because they're true. And I can tell you what, my wife would slap me in the face if I said that to her. Prone to leave you, wife I love. And yet we know the reality of our flesh that we have a tendency to depart from the living God. Oh, how can we go without a moment of time in the living Word of God that breathes life into our soul and reveals to our hearts the precious will of God which is good and acceptable and perfect to the Saint of God. You and I must remember as Jesus was, or as the scripture was referring to the relationship between husband and wife. And Paul said, I have a hard time with this illustration. As I'm talking about husband and wife, I'm also talking about Christ and His church, and it's as if these two illustrations get on top of one another. In Ephesians chapter 5, he says to husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And then he goes on, that he, and we always ask the question, who's the he here? Is the he the husband toward the wife, or is it Christ toward the church? And I want to propose to you it's both, okay? But notice what it says as I read it. It says, Husband, love your wife as Christ loved the church, gave himself for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the word. You see, you and I are renewed in our minds and understanding the will of God as we allow our husband Christ to wash our souls by the water of the Word of God. You know, I don't know, how's your devotion life right now? I mean, think about it. Just be honest in your own soul. You don't have to say it out loud, but on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being it's fantastic. I mean, it's as if I could see Jesus Christ sitting right beside me during my devotion. Whoo! I'm excited. Christ is with me. Man, it's the pits. It's dead and dull. It's as if there is no spiritual life in me whatsoever. Where are you at? And I would dare say that most of us live on the bottom half of 50% than we do on the top half of 50%. And yet the reality of it is you and I are cleansed and renewed day by day by the Holy Spirit when by the washing of the water of the Word. I grew up in a day when, and I hope my 93-year-old mother doesn't hear this, when my mom and dad did not enforce brushing your teeth. They just didn't enforce that. As a matter of fact, most of the time we didn't use toothpaste in our day. We used baking soda, which has no cavity protection in it whatsoever. And I don't know if you've ever put baking soda in your mouth, but it tastes... I mean, it just tastes bad. And so as a kid, I just didn't do it. And you know, because I didn't like it, I just didn't do it. And I want you to know, I don't know how many teeth I still have in my head, but I think, I don't know how many to start out with, 32, counting wisdom teeth, I think there's 28, and I think I've got 39 fillings in my teeth. Okay, I had so many cavities growing up, And finally, when I had enough sense to know for myself, listen, that's not good for you, you know what I do? I brush my teeth too often. Have you ever had a dentist tell you you brush your teeth too often? I have, okay? You're brushing your teeth too often. You say, why is that? Because it's good for me. You and I look at our spiritual devotion time with the Lord and oftentimes it's something that's hard because when we come before the mirror of the Word of God we see ourselves for the reality of where we stand with God and it's not always a pleasant moment. And so we avoid it. Or maybe it's not so enlivening as we think that it ought to be and therefore we neglect that. You know, it's been said that sin will keep you from the Scripture or the Scripture will help keep you from sin. And there's a lot of truth in that. And oftentimes we will run from the Scripture because there's sin in our lives. And yet, it is when we come before the precious Word of God that God reveals to us our help. It is Christ Himself, the Glorious One. When you and I come before God and His Word and He reveals to us the greatness of who He is, the sin in our life becomes so ugly, so undesirable, so easy to let go, so easy to say no to. So there's a warning that you and I need to understand. The scripture reminds us in Hebrews chapter 10, you have need for endurance. Hebrews 10, 36-39, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while the coming one will come and he will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith and if he shrinks If he shrinks back, then my soul will have no pleasure in him." Now wait a minute, that's a downer word, is it not? It says that you need to endure so that having done the will of God you'll receive the promise, but if you faint, if you shrink back, the Lord will have no pleasure in him. But verse 39 goes on, and this is what it says, but you are not of those who shrink You are not of those who shrink back. You're not of those who are destroyed, but you are those who have faith and persevere for your souls. And I want to exhort you today to know the will of God, to pursue the will of God with all of your heart and all your life. I see our young people sitting up in the balcony and I think, man, all of the world is set against you and telling you, do not believe the things of God. I mean, everything you read, everything you hear, and everything you say, do not believe the Word of God. And I want to remind you, the Word of God has stood true for more than four millennia, for more than 4,000 years. Every word of God has proven itself to be true. Jesus Christ was real. He died on a real cross. He was buried in a real tomb. And three days later, He rose again. in a real body. He so proved it by sitting down and having breakfast, bacon and eggs with the disciples on the seaside to say, this is a real body. Come and touch me, know that I'm real. And he ascended into heaven and he promised, I'm coming back again someday. So you've got to listen to what God says. You and I have to heed what the Word of God has to tell us. Yes, we have need for a wondrous understanding. of the will of God for our lives. That's what we need to be praying for one another. And I realize right now I'm not even going to get through three-fifths of the sermon, okay? I want to lead us to secondly, a decorous living, that is a worthy living. Verse 10, he says, so that, so as to, I want you to know the will of God so that you might live the will of God. I want you to know what God says so that you might do what He says. So as to walk how? In a manner worthy of the Lord. What does that manner worthy of the Lord look like? Notice how He qualifies it. It is fully pleasing to Him. It pleases God in all things. It is marked by His character. It is marked by what is proper in Christ Jesus. That's how we are to live, as saints of God. And you and I resist that term saint, and I've been trying to say it more and more of late, because God continually calls his children saints in the scripture. And you are, if you have been born again of the Spirit of God, you are a saint in Christ Jesus. You know how that word, there's another translation for that word saint, and it's this, holy ones. You and I might resist that one even more. But as children of God, we are to walk in holiness, are we not? We are. And we're commanded by the Lord to be holy, how? Even as He is holy. And you and I, we recall at a statement like that and we say, Oh God, what do you mean I am to live in that manner of holiness? I'm not capable of doing that. You may say, Pastor, have you finally turned the corner on your holiness? I have come to understand the truth of holiness and that is from what is revealed to us in Hebrews chapter 12. And in Hebrews chapter 12 we're reminded that our holiness is none less than Jesus Christ in us. That's where our holiness comes from. That's where our worthy living comes from, Christ in me, the hope of glory, as Paul says to the church at Colossae. You and I need to be reminded today, you and I have no hope to be perfect as he is perfect apart from Christ in us, Christ living in me. That's the reason for coming to know Christ and his will through his word by his spirit that we might do that which is pleasing unto the Lord. You and I and our flesh can do nothing better than what we've done in the past. You and I can't improve a better me or a better you. He didn't call us to do that. He called us to die to our old life that we might live unto Christ. So how do we do that? Here in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 10 he says, and put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Now who's the new self? The new self is done less than Christ himself. Paul uses this metaphor again and again, he shared it with the Galatians, he said it to the Ephesians, to put off what? The old man and put on the new man. It's like putting off the old dirty clothes to put on the righteous robes of Christlikeness. And it's not a better, improved us. It is Christ himself. It is something that we do by faith. You and I have to put off the old man. That means we have to die to what I want. I don't know about you, but I want certain things. And I ask God for certain things. And there are times that when you and I ask God for certain things and God doesn't come through on certain things, what do we have a tendency to do? We have a tendency to get upset with God and say, God, why did you deprive me of that which was good in my life? And we've already asked God for His what? Will to be done. His good and pleasing and perfect will. And in the sovereign will of God, He is moving all of heaven and earth in behalf of His children, knowing that God is working all things to the counsel of His will. He's doing good in our behalf. I can time and time again look back on six years ago and my bicycle accident and the broken hip and all that I went through and say, God, why did you do that? And the reality is I will not know all the reason why until after it's all been accounted for when I get to glory. I won't be able to see the impact of what I might have done had God not said, I'm going to put a thorn in your flesh. Mm-hmm. Oh God, thank you for that thorn. Well son, this is where you would have gone without that. Then it will be what? Oh God, thank you for that thorn. You and I need to understand the reality of what the scripture is telling us here to come to know, to put on the new man which is Christ Jesus because we have a tendency to hang on to the old man. I've got to get to closing, okay? Most of us know these verses. We're very familiar with Galatians chapter 2 verses 22 and 23 where it says the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and gentleness and goodness, faith on the self-control, all those good things. And occasionally we'll go back to verses 16 through 19 and look at them. Those are the deeds of the flesh. And he goes through a whole litany of ugly, immoral things that we can do. But at the end of verse 21 he says this, and we usually skip this. He says, and I warn you, as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom God and the reason why we we do that is because we look at the list above and we say I've done some of those things since I've been saved I struggle with a couple of those now and again in my life but it says those who continually do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God so it can't be talking about me and preacher don't scare me today That is not what God called you to do. Well, yeah, he has. Did you see that fool guy standing outside of his car with the wind meter in and he was doing the wind? I saw that this morning. I thought, what a foolish guy you are standing out there. He's called a weatherman. And he was doing this and I'm thinking, that's a foolish thing. But I was thinking, I'm not about to do that. There was a lot of warning in what that man did. Don't be so idiot like this that a tree comes by and kills you. So it's part of my job to warn us. And the warning is this. I think why we so often struggle with that is because we have a tendency to want to live as close to the edge of sin as we can get by with. And you know what God says? There's a warning in that. There ought to be a warning in your heart and in your soul that says, does that mean I'm really not His? Could be. It could be. And there ought to be a gut-wrenching feeling in our hearts when we think, Lord, I want to give up these things, but I don't want to give up that thing. I want to live just as close to the edge of sin as I can get by with without getting in trouble. And you see, that's not the heart of a holy one. That's not the heart of a saint of God. And so I want to ask you this morning, where's your heart at? Is it running toward the Savior? Or is it running away from Him? Is it getting as close to Him and wanting to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? Or is it saying, no, I kind of like the old ways. I kind of like the old man. The Scripture says, put off the old man that you might put on the Lord Jesus Christ. This isn't something you and I can do physically. It's something that you and I can do only by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It may be that this morning you need to come and envelop yourself with Christ. To say, Lord, I'm tired of running away from you. I'm running to you this morning. I want to be anchored in Christ Jesus to know that my life is safe and secure in the Lord Jesus Christ. That I could sing that song gloriously, thanking you, Lord, for holding on to me, knowing that I can't hold on to you. And we invite you to come by faith this morning to Christ Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life. But I also want to ask for we the saints of God, those who have come into the fold of God's grace, to enter into a time of prayer this morning as we have our invitation. There's no way I can read the whole of John Piper's prayer that he prayed yesterday on his radio program But he said, O Lord, God, mighty and merciful, we're asking you today for mercy. This is in light of the hurricanes. Mercy amid the manifestation of your great might. We're asking for Jesus' sake, not because we're deserving of anything better than calamity. We know that we have sinned. We have exchanged the high treasure of your glory for trinkets. We have not loved you with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. We have sown the wind and we have reaped the whirlwind. We are pleading for mercy. We make no demands for you are God and we are not. We are bent low in submission to your just and sovereign power. Indeed, we're prostrate before you in the unstoppable wind of your justice and wisdom. And we know that you are a great God and whatever you please, you do. You bring forth the wind from its storehouses. You have commanded and raised the mighty wind and lifted up the waves of the sea. The floods have lifted up for you, O Lord. You sweep us away as with a flood and you can kill and you can make alive. You wound and you healed and there is none that can deliver out of your hand. This is how you and I ought to be praying. We are like a dream, like a dust swept off the street in a torrent. But you, O God, are mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea. It is our peril and our hope that you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted. So Lord, do not sleep through this storm. Let not the flood water sweep over us and swallow us up. Rise up. Rise up and do what only you can do amid the winds. Rebuke them as you have done in the past when they have done your wise will. cause them to cease and make a holy calm for you are God and all things are your servants. Father we come thanking you that you are the one that commands the winds. Lord in times like this we pray but Lord it is a prayer to a prayer answering God who is able to reveal your will to us that we, your saints, your children, might do your will. And we pray, Lord, even in the midst of the storms that are hitting the Gulf Coast over these last weeks and what we do not know in the future, that out of your mighty hand you might show mercy to us. Thank you that in Christ Jesus you have given us grace that we can run And know that our lives and our eternities are safe and secure in the one who is everlasting love, in the Lord Jesus Christ. So help us now to be a people who pray together with one another. For ourselves, yes, but also for others that they might be saved. And then, Father, may this be an open altar for one to come to faith in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.