Praise God When You Are Not Enough

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. Claiming that God needs to save us can sound offensive. I should be enough as I am. But what if I’m not enough? What about when I don’t feel strong enough to tackle a hard situation? Or if I realize God protected me from something I couldn’t handle? In today’s passage, we see the good side of when we are not enough. because that is when God pours out so many blessings all we can do is offer praise. Let’s join our services and consider today’s message. Okay. Today we’re going to look at 1 Peter chapter 1 page 18:26. If you have a New Living Translation Bible and if you’re watching the recording or listening to the recording, welcome and glad you have joined us.

So good. So, I mentioned last week that I was out on a canoe trip in the wilderness for 10 days, right? Well, one day we were doing this very long portage and my buddy walks faster than I do and so he was way ahead and I was walking alone and I heard a few whistles from out in the bush. So, I stopped. It was not a sound I recognized. It was not a bird that I could identify. And I wondered if it was an emergency whistle uh from someone in distress, but it was odd. It was an odd location because we were really on a portage that is not often used. I’m like, why would there be a person? What’s going on? So I whistle back and whatever is out there whistles back at me. So then I holler because I think if this is a person in need, do like is is someone in need? What’s going on? So I holler, do you need help? Um there’s silence and then after a bit I don’t know if maybe I whistled but it whistled again. Um but it sound was a little bit different and I thought man I don’t know what to do here because the sound was not at such a specific location that I knew where to walk and walking off a path in the wilderness like that can end badly. I’ll be the guy in need. So um so I thought well maybe it’s my buddy and he’s whistling using an emergency whistle and I’m hearing the echo or something. So, I pick up the pace to catch up with him. And when I get there, he’s fine. He’d not heard a whistle. He didn’t hear me yelling. There was also no canoe at the put in or the takeout that would suggest somebody has gotten lost. Um, so I thought, well, probably wasn’t a person in crisis. Maybe it really was just a bird. Um, so when we get off the wa water, we get back to the the town. I talk to the people who were in charge and I say, “Is anybody missing in the park?” because if so, I have a sense of where they are. Like, no, nobody’s missing. If somebody was missing, uh, we would know and there would be airplanes flying back and forth looking. So, I tell them what I heard, and we’re like, well, I guess it was a bird. Didn’t sound like any bird that I recognized. A week later, I’m telling my friend about it. My friend used to hunt in the wilderness of BC, and he says, “You know, mountain lions or cougars can whistle.” And so I’m like, “What?” He plays me a video on YouTube of a cougar whistling. It was exactly the sound that I heard. Like exactly. Um, and so then I look up, are mountain lions or cougars common in the part of Ontario that I was at? And yes, they are uh there and their population is increasing. So I don’t know for certain that I was playing a whistling game with a cougar or a mountain lion. It may have just been a bird. But maybe not. So, I’m left with a thought. Do I thank God for sparing me from a potentially dangerous encounter with a mountain lion? And my friend tells me, he goes, “You know, when a cougar attacks you, you have to watch for their back legs, their claws, because they’ll jump at you and you’ll think, grab their, you know, their mouth and grab their front claws, but their back legs will come up and eviscerate you.” Lovely thought. So, do I praise God for sparing me from what might have been even if I’m not exactly sure that I understand what might have been? I would say yes. It is appropriate to praise God even for the what-ifs. What might have been? Could that have been? And and then, you know, praise God, I never want to go out there by myself again. So, in today’s passage, we’re looking at the opening of First Peter. There’s a lot of praising God in these first couple verses. And rather than skip over these passages because they seem obvious or redundant, like, of course, we praise Jesus, I thought, let’s lean into this and dig up what Peter is like. Why does Peter spend so much time getting us to think about praising God? because he’s going to land with we are people who are designed. We’re meant to praise the Lord. So with that, let me offer a prayer and uh then we’ll read. Father, as we look at your word, every week you speak to us. Every week you guide our thoughts. Would you do that one more time? Would you show us what you want us to discover in this text? And may it affect how we see life. made affect how we see our days and may it call us to be people who praise you, who see your goodness in our day, whether we recognize it always or not. So to your glory, I ask that you teach us. Amen. So 1 Peter chapter 1, I’m going to pick it up with verse three. All praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation and we have a priceless inheritance, an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead. Even though you must endure many trials for a little while, these trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold. Though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. You love him even though you’ve never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressable joy. The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls. This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward. They were told that their messages were not for themselves but for you. And now this good news has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen. So we’re going to stop there. So this section is thick. There’s a lot of theology and a lot of stuff here, but it’s all about praising God for his salvation. Praise him for the gift of the inheritance that is coming. Praise him for his protection. Praise him for the hardship we experience because of what it’s building in us and how it’s making our faith stronger. Praise him for the salvation of our souls. Praise him that we’re the recipients of what the prophets of old wrote about. Praise him. It’s just all wonderful. So, I think part of what Peter is trying to do in this passage is pull our focus away from the daily hardship and struggle that we live with and remind us we’re part of a much bigger story. We’re part of God’s plan to save or bring salvation to his creation. He wants God is removing evil. God is removing rebellion. He’s restoring us back to himself. We are a saved people and praise is an appropriate response to being saved. Praise is also how we remind ourselves God is involved in my life. We are living out being reconciled with him. So that big story helps us then do the hard work of the day-to-day living. Now, I mentioned salvation, and it’s normal to assume that I mean being saved by Jesus so that I can go be with God after I die, or some version of that, which is true, but salvation’s bigger and it encompasses a whole lot more. Salvation shows up wherever and whenever the Lord is acting to make things right. Whenever the Lord is stopping evil, changing uh rebellion, whenever he’s restoring creation, salvation shows up. So for example, I was reading in the Old Testament the story uh just before the ark of the Lord was brought into Jerusalem. So the ark represents the presence of God and uh because of how the story worked, it is at a guy’s home and it’s there for three months and their report is while it’s there for three months his entire household is blessed. And I thought of course because where God’s presence is evil ends and life’s blessings are restored. So when the God’s ark is with your household, the entire house just gets blessed. like yeah and that would be a type of salvation if you you know if your normal living was really hardgoing and suddenly everything’s working and in the New Testament wherever Jesus goes he’s making things right right he heals he restores he exposes sin so that people can change their perspective and can can repent people want to touch his clothing because in touching his presence they’re healed well if I were blind and suddenly could see that would be a type of salvation for me. Or if I were sick and in bed and then I’m brought to Jesus and I’m healed, that would be a type of salvation for me. So salvation’s a big word. One commentator said in this passage about this passage, he said all through the Old Testament, God’s people are always praising God for everything good that happens in their life. like um you know they defeat their enemies. Even if they go into battle as soldiers, the victory was given to God. God was good to us. Let’s praise God. If they had success with a task or if they had success on a quest, they praised God for their success. If they were rescued from enemies that had kidnapped them, they praised God for their success. If somebody arrived with good news at just the right time, what we would call coincidence or happen chance, they praised God for his goodness. When they reviewed their history and they looked at, man, you know, we were bad and God disciplined us and we praise God that he disciplined us and then he rescued us out of his discipline. We praise God for rescuing us. Like they would review their history with all of up ups and downs and they would praise God. They would praise God for the forgiveness he offers when they messed up. Wherever there was goodness in their life, they would stop and give praise to the Lord their God. We’re meant to be a people who give praise to the Lord our God. We give him credit for all the good that comes into our life.

Now, you might pause and say, “Well, God brings some goodness.” Yes. But some of the goodness that happens is because I made good choices or the people around me made good choices or something good happened over there and I got the benefit of it. I’m not sure God was involved there. I think that’s a little bit arrogant. Um, I think uh the world is more broken and more rebellious than we want to acknowledge. The world is more focused on self-interest than we want to admit, including ourselves. And I think the Lord is more involved in every act of success and blessing in our life than sometimes we’re comfortable with admitting. He’s really that involved. So it’s an act of humility to just consider man you know the good that comes into my life may have just come because the Lord offered me goodness and I should respond with praise right so when I realize you know a week after I come off the water I may have been playing or whistling with a mountain lion I better give praise to the Lord for what might have been going on. So the idea that God is merciful to us, that he’s gracious, it’s kind of offensive to our pride. Like we like the idea that we’re basically good people and God should take us as we are if he knows what’s good for him. Like we kind of have this I’m good. How dare someone say I’m not good? But I think that’s more about not wanting to look deeply within our own character and how we behave and why we behave that way. And I’ve run this idea by with a couple of pastors who are good people and they agree, yeah, sin runs much deeper than we want to admit. So to elaborate, like I say, you know, we’re sinners in need of Jesus. And some people would say, well, yes, sin is I did something wrong. I lied. I stole. I hurt someone. But if you’re willing to go deeper at looking at looking at yourself, you know that those behaviors happen because something deep within is out of step with how God made us to be and we know it. It might be that we have desires that are just not helpful for successful living. It might be that we have a deep arrogance that we want to do what we want to do and nobody’s going to tell me otherwise. We may have a deep feeling of incompleteness or emptiness that just drives us to pursue things that aren’t always healthy. And you can find your own word for how you describe your inner story best. But when you reflect on it, you understand that being a sinner starts with there’s something wrong inside and that’s causing me to do bad things, which is different than I do bad things, but I’m basically a good person. In that light, when we realize, boy, something’s really off in us. Like, we’re still, don’t get me wrong, we’re still of incredible value. We have incredible dignity. God loves us. But when we realize there’s something off. Um, and yet the Lord loves us anyway. He loves us beyond what we deserve. We see his goodness and mercy in a whole different light. So verse three, all praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we’ve been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We’re the objects of his mercy. We’re the recipients of his mercy. He looked at us. He looked at what’s deep down in our heart and he said, “Oh, on that issue, they need my help. They need need me to solve this problem because there’s no way they’re going to get out of this on their own.” And I know that’s offensive to our pride, right? Because we have a voice inside that says, “If I have the right opportunity, I can figure this out on my own.” And I was realizing figuring it out on your own is not the same thing as getting out of the situation. Like I understand the things that happened to me that broke part of my character, but to the process of healing and being restored took work that the Lord did. The Lord uh, you know, had to speak truth to things that I thought were truth but actually were lies. The Lord had to create opportunities where I could make different choices and learn uh, the experience of those choices and where they led me. I um, had to have people come into my life to offer me parts that I didn’t get when I was a child. Like the Lord did a whole lot more of my healing than my ability to understand my situation. So, so at this point, you know, we have grounds to praise God. Just to realize most of the goodness, even the growth that comes out that I’ve experienced, the growth in my character has been by God’s goodness to me, Lord. You’ve done good. I praise you. But that’s not enough. The passage goes on and heaps all of the goodness that God has prepared for us. It’s by his great mercy we’ve been born again because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And now we live with great expectation. We have a priceless inheritance. Inheritance comes when there’s death, right? An inheritance that’s kept in heaven for you. It’s pure and undefiled. It’s beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God’s protecting you by his power until you receive that salvation which is ready to be revealed. like it’s not just that he’s offered you his mercy, he’s also growing and changing you. And in the end of the story, there is a phenomenal blessing that he’s bringing towards us. So, we’ve been born again. The only way to describe the change the Lord does in us when he forgives our sins and releases us from the past. when he brings us back into relationship with himself. When he restores our purpose as people is that we’ve been born again, we were dead in sin and now we’re made alive in Jesus. And he promises an eternal life. We have hope, great expectation for all the good that’s coming. Some translations call it a living hope. Um so it’s not like a wish, I hope it happens. It’s a certainty and a promise. And that promise gives you life and energy and enthusiasm. It’s going to work out. The end of my story will not be decay and death. The end of my story after death will be life and full restoration. I have hope because the promise or the certainty of triumph over death.

When we realize what’s coming, God is worthy to be praised. It’s this big story of what’s going on. So now we can look at our present life with different eyes. It’s just a different framework. I am part of the people that God is saving. So remember these folks in First Peter, they’re experiencing hardship and uh more and more they’re being excluded from life and their society because of their belief and obedience to Jesus. and they’re trying to follow Jesus and it just makes their life harder. So, how do they respond? How do they think about it? Well, you get to verse seven. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It’s being tested as fire tests and purifies gold. Though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So, when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. So the things that you fight with, the things you wrestle against, as frustrating as they are, are being used by God to refine your faith. So you say you trust the Lord and you follow him. Good. Will you do it when it’s a little bit harder today? When it would be just a little bit easier to walk away, will you will you continue to to trust? Um, will you become a little bit more determined to rest in the God when it’s harder? When the pressure increases, will your spirit grow a little bit more determined to trust and follow? You know the song we sang last week, even if the chorus, I know you’re able, I know you can save through the fire with more your mighty hand, but even if you don’t, my hope is in you alone. God is strengthening my faith when things are frustrating when I get challenged because this passage says your faith is more valuable than gold to God which is a bizarre idea. Like gold is our foundation for understanding wealth. It’s what undermines our dollar. So the more gold you have, the more wealth you have, the easier you can be financially free. You got lots of gold. You’ve got lots of wealth. And God says, this passage says, “Your faith in the Lord is so much more valuable than your your faith in God’s eyes is so much more valuable than all the gold would be to your eyes.” Like, it’s just so your faith is so valuable to the Lord. So, I pondered why why why? Um, and I thought maybe it’s because the it’s our faith is about the heart of the whole creation story. So by comparison, the heart of your marriage to your spouse is about expressing oneness with your spouse. you know, to have your thinking align with each other, to have your values align and complement each other. The way you work together, to have your gifts complement each other, your affection and your appreciation for each other, those at the heart of your marriage, right? It’s not really that you share a house. It’s it’s the coming together. Well, your faith, your trust, your obedience to Jesus, to the Lord, uh that’s at the heart of the oneness we were meant to experience with God the Father. So, it’s of the highest value. It’s the most important part. And so, for God to say, I want to develop your faith because it’s the center of what is most beautiful. It’s the center of how this was all supposed to work. gold. Let’s work on your faith. And so the things in life that happen that are hard and frustrating where we have to make a conscious choice to trust God, God says, “Yes, that’s developing our our relationship. That’s developing our oneness.” So then wrestling in trial is worthy of praise. God gets praised by our obedience. And then one final thought. I know that sometimes we experience pain or or hurt or um disappointment so painfully that we can’t overcome it, right? A pain that we see will drive people away from the Lord. It doesn’t build our faith. It in fact feels like it destroys our faith. So verse 5 says, “Through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation which is ready to be revealed on the last day.” I thought, what does that mean? Because um when God protects us, it does not mean that he keeps us from suffering or persecution because that’s exactly what the people that Peter was writing to were experiencing. So that’s not it. And we know people, we all know people who experience something and they fall away from God. Uh a broken heart, uh bad behavior from other Christians, ongoing disappointment. So I thought, what is this passage trying to say? Like what is God actually protecting us from? And I think uh where where I landed was that as we grow in our faith, there are still some temptations that are so strong we would give into them. And we would give into them and we’d give into them and we’d give into them and that would slowly walk us away from our faith. And I think God protects us from those kind of temptations that truly would overpower us. And sometimes that protection is as simple as when the opportunity arrives, you’re not in the headsp space to give into that temptation. Right? Does that make sense? Like I know guys who um uh if the opportunity was presented to them, like if a pretty girl showed up and started flirting with them, even if they’re married, there are sometimes they’re in a headsp space that they’d walk away from their marriage and give into the pretty girl. But those opportunities never show up when they’re in that headsp space. But when they’re deeply in love with their wife and they’re feeling very connected with your their wife, that’s when some girl will flirt with them and he’d be like, “I’m not I don’t want that.” It’s like, “Yeah, I think that’s God protecting us in the moment from what would lead us astray.” Um, but I don’t think we can go about it blindly. Like I don’t think you can just run your own life and like oh God will protect me from whatever is going to hurt me that will pull me away. Uhuh. I think actually sometimes when we run ahead and we’re like just God will protect me. That’s when temptation hits and it rattles us and we go running back to God. I think what God is protecting us it’s from those moments we actually would be overpowered. which means we’re back to humility that God uh as I stay close to God. There’s a humility that says, “Lord, I actually still need your help to keep me on this path and not lose my faith.” Um because there is an evil one and that evil one is working to destroy what God does. Which is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Please deliver me from the evil one.” And I think that comment by Jesus is exactly what verse 5 in this passage is getting at. The Lord does protect you by his power so that you make it to the fullness of salvation. So we can protect God. We can praise God for those moments even when we’re looking back and go, “Wait, he protected me. There was temptation. I would have but I was not in the headsp space.” or when I was in the headsp space, I was protected with it. Yep. God is deeply involved in walking with us because he wants us to get to the day where salvation is revealed and all is restored. He wants us part of his people.

So this passage dances on this subject of being people who praise the Lord. Praise reminds us that we are part of a bigger story. God is saving his creation, removing evil, stopping rebellion. We’re a saved people. And salvation’s more than life after death. Wherever the Lord is making things right, people experience some type some part of salvation. And all through the Old Testament, God’s people gave praise to God for all of the goodness in their life. But the idea of needing God’s salvation, needing his mercy, is offensive, if we think of ourselves as basically good people. But with humility, we’re more likely to recognize there is something deep within me that is off. And I really need God’s help there. And Peter reminds us, we’re the recipients of God’s mercy. And he deserves praise for that. And in that light, our trials and our difficulties get perspective. These things are helping us develop our faith which is of more value to God than gold is to us because trust and obedience and faith is the heart of the relationship that is supposed to be the center of what it means to be human. And when things and while things can be truly hard, the Lord is still actively involved protecting us from what would cause us to lose our faith. And in humility, we just have to walk gently with God. So it’s all praise. So in your day, in your week, take time to praise. When you sit down over dinner, before you eat, give praise for a couple of the things in your day that you saw God did. When you uh see yourself taking steps of trust and obedience when it’s difficult, stop and give praise because that’s developing your oneness with God. When you’re doom scrolling, give praise that God is active working in this planet and he wants to restore this place. And in those moments when you realize you’re okay, it’ll all be okay. In the end, life ends with life, not death. You give praise. The Lord is present and active doing good in your life. So, I realize that’s a big thick passage. What catches your attention? What sparks interest or how do you respond to that? Today, I put myself in the position of those to whom this was written. Mhm. that feeling of being broken and abandoned and everything’s gone wrong. And I just thought, isn’t that kind of like being chronically ill? You know, everything you hope for is all dashed and you’re always under the weather and you’re always feeling the effects of your illness. And I’ve had experiences where Joanne has come alongside me and just tucked me back into bed, says, you know, I’ll take care of all of this stuff. Here’s your breakfast. Here’s your book. I’ll fluff your pillow. I’ll check on you in 20 minutes. And leans in, gives me a peck on the cheek, and says, “I love you.” And that feeling of it’s going to be okay. I can just rest. I can just heal. must have been very much what these people experienced when they read these first verses. Praise to God for his mercy. We’ve been born again. God did this. There’s an inheritance that he gives us. God is protecting you. God has a future for you. It’s like layer upon layer upon layer of love. And it’s not just when we’re not feeling right. It’s always Yeah. But they finally can kind of relax and say, “You know what? We’re not doing it wrong. It’s going to be okay. God’s got this.” And that feeling of we’ve done something wrong. We’re the cause of all of this. Yeah. Yeah. It’s no, no, no. This is happening, but God is with you through it. And what a relief that would be. Yeah. I love it. There was a time when I was younger when the fact that we are sinners was emphasized a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. And and and you’ve talked before that it was emphasized in a way that actually didn’t make it clear what we were what what was about. No, but I didn’t like that. And I kind of accepted the idea that we are inherently good. We sin, but really we’re good. I’ve come to realize that the fact that we’re sinners is the reality of things. And like you know, you’re saying primarily we’re not responsible for our sin. That it’s we are sinful and therefore we sin. And we can’t fix that. Only God can fix that. It’s God that sanctifies us and it’s God that works in the life to counteract the effects of sin. We can’t attain salvation through logic. It’s God who saves and in reality he doesn’t need our help. Yeah.

And as this passage makes clear, our responsibility is to be thankful. Yeah. I like the practice of Celtic Christianity that morning, noon, and night they give thanks for everything. Yeah. And it wasn’t a solemn thing. It was just joyful gratefulness for everything, even the simplest things. I try to do that, but life gets in the way a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m not good at it. It’s just life gets in the way. And I ask for forgiveness for that. But I see so many things to be grateful for. What we go through in life is nothing compared to what we have to be grateful for. Yep. That’s good. Thank you. Yeah, there’s a whole lot of praise that I haven’t been faithful in and appreciate that sermon, Curtis, but I also want to reflect back on what Barry said earlier on in the service, which is a little different topic, but uh I still feel compelled to say something about it. all men and women are made in God’s image. And as I reflected on what he’d said, I thought we tend to think that um there are people who are right and there are people who are wrong. For example, the Russians are wrong, Ukrainians are right. Right? But Putin was made in God’s image. That’s a scary thought. But Russians were made in God’s image. Every fighter, regardless of the side they’re on, was made in God’s image. In Canada, immigrants were made in God’s image. Street people living in tents were made in God’s image. And anyone else we place in a different category than the category we are in is still made in God’s image. And so those all those thoughts went flying through my mind as I was thinking about what Barry had said earlier. So that’s a real challenge, isn’t it? Uh, but I know it’s a little off topic, but uh I just felt I needed to say that my buddy uh says, you know, he was talking to someone on an airplane. Did I tell you the story? From Russia um when a couple years ago he was on an airplane and and as he listened to her, it was clear that we were the bad guys. In her mind, Russia was the right side and North America were the bad guys. And it was just interesting to for him to kind of hear how like just because we just break things down into simple categories and life is more nuanced than that. Well, anyway, that’s a different story. How does the backdrop relate to this? We are like a beautiful bouquet of flowers in a world that has become hostile to us that is cold and where more and more we are kicked out and rejected. we are this and we’ll talk in the future about how we are all different types of flowers which is part of why we have trouble with each other. So the thing that was brought to mind for me this morning was a little bit of the journey I have been on with God this week and for the last couple of weeks. And part of that journey, a big part of that journey has been coming to the discovery of how much I have built the way I operate in the world on my own shame, which is super fun to unpack. And part of that this week has been realizing how grateful I am that God can work with that. There’s this fun thing that kids do where they take apart your potted plants sometimes and they get covered head to toe in dirt. And I am that kid like 95% of the time. Covered head to toe in dirt. There’s dirt everywhere. And I’m trying to scoop it back up into the plant. And his response is, “Okay, out to the garden. You go where there’s other dirt. You do the dirt things. And when you’re ready, then we’ll come back in and we’ll wash.” And so it’s unpacking that uh the way I respond to people in those panic shame situations is right because I’m also that person has been really fascinating

and it’s made me question a lot of how I relate to my family and my job and and how to not change what God has made good, but how to submit that what I’m afraid of, he’s got. Yeah. Yeah. And so there was this moment this week where I got into that shame spiral because my cat was dying. And I knew that my two options were you drain the bank account or the cat dies. And those are the two options. And I was in that moment of I can’t make the right choice because everything is wrong. Yeah. And then there was this moment of did you pray about it? No.

And so I did. And in the morning he wasn’t fine, but everything was better. And that day was a good day, which shouldn’t have been. And it was great. So yeah, I’m still that little kid covered in dirt. But I’m in the midst of being cleaned. That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. Yeah. Well said. Let me offer a prayer and uh we’ll close with a song.

Father, we praise you for the goodness you bring into our life. We praise you for your mercy. We praise you for your grace, your help. We praise you for the incredible renewal, the incredible promise of what is to come when all is revealed. Lord, we praise you that um we praise you for when you protect us even when we barely or sort of can sort of see it. And Father, when trials come and we make steps to be obedient, we make steps to trust and be faithful, may our steps bring you praise. Um because this is right and this is what we were meant for. We love you. Amen. Thank you for listening to our podcast today. New Life Ministries is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You are invited to join our service in person or over Zoom. Please use the contact us link to send an email to the church office and request the address or Zoom link. If you would like to use these podcasts as part of your home church or local church gathering, you are free to do so. We do request that you let us know. If there is any other way that we can help you in your ministry, please send us an email.