God's sovereign will: Our position in Christ III

continuing in our series on the will of God, and we'll continue through the end of next month. Believe it or not, then we'll be through with the elective here, but we've got plenty of weeks left. And we're in the third week now of this looking at the unfathomable riches of our position in Christ. So last week we ended with number 22 there having access to God and then so we look at number three and again what we're looking at is this is the sovereign will of God for each believer if you're a believer here this morning this isn't an I hope so truth this isn't a you know yeah if you're really good kind of truth this is truth that is true for every believer across the board whether you're you've just become a believer or whether you've been a believer for half a century or longer. This is true of you. And I would also add one more thing.

Galatians 3.28 says there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Bottom line is all the human distinctions when it comes to these truths go away. No distinction based on any human, superficial distinction we might make. These are true of every believer. Okay,

23. Within the much more care of God. And that phrase much more comes out of Romans 5, 9, and 10. And what you see as you kind of look down the list there, A through I, objects of His love being the first, objects of His intercession being the third. What do you see in those? What are those things describing? His essence. Okay, his essence, alright. And it's true he has his essence, this character, who he fundamentally is.

These aren't things that he has as a sort of an external or superficial thing. These are things that are basic to who he is. But what do you see about them? What happens? Ah! We are the object of His expression of character. See that? We are the object of His expression of character. Now that is amazing. Here is the creator of the universe. He could have done all kinds of things. He said, you know, those people, they just blew it. I'm done with them. I'm just going to focus on the flowers here. But no, instead he says, no, these are the ones who are the object of these expressions of his character.

We, as a part of our position, as a part of God's will, in other words, if you say, what's God's will? Irreversibly, unmistakably, no exceptions, the Lord of the universe, the creator of all that is, and the One who has brought us into the new creation. That One expresses His character to us in these ways. Now, that's something. Think about it as you go through the day, through the week. You get up in the morning, and I don't know about you, but I take a few minutes to wake up. and kind of getting your bearings, but just to kind of ponder in the midst of a moment like that, if you can think clearly enough, in the midst of a moment like that, to ponder and think, you know, the Lord is, I'm within that much more care. I'm within the care where the Lord is expressing His very character towards me, irreversibly, unmistakably. Untouchably. He is indeed carrying out these expressions of His character to us. Objects of His love. How are we objects of His love? We are supposed to love God as He loves us.

You're right. You're quite true. But that's our response to Him. Right? You're absolutely correct. That's our response to Him. But it's a response to a love He's expressing to us, isn't it? How is He expressing that love to us? Okay, yeah. The love was an expression in the past, wasn't it? I'm fond of thinking of Hebrews 12 too. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.

He didn't say, oh man, do I got to do this? Oh shoot, oh no! And it certainly was not something that by itself he was looking forward to. Don't get me wrong. But for the joys that before him he endured the cross, he had a love for us so great that while nobody on earth thought anything of it, he said, I'll do it. Where do I sign, so to speak?

We are objects of His love. And that's in a past tense. How about right now? Right now, at this moment? Are we objects of His love now? Yes. I see heads nodding. Yeah. And how is that? Grace. Okay, grace. And as a matter of fact, that's the next one down. You're right. One of the things that is a part of God's love is indeed the next aspect of His character is expression of grace.

The Lord could say, well look, I'm going to cover the bases for the stuff you did in the past, but boy, anything you do from here on out, you're going to pay. But is that what the Lord does? No. He may indeed leave us with consequences for things for here and now.

But the bottom line is, he isn't sitting there looking at it and saying, I just can't wait until Vern blows it. I'm going to nail him. The Lord isn't doing that. What amazes me, we went through the book of Revelation and the main service and finished that up almost a year and a half ago now. Anyway, when we finished that up, we went through the very last chapter of the last book of the Bible, the very last thing that the Lord said, it says, Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me. It's as if the Lord is saying, I just can't wait to reward you. The Lord is not sitting there saying, man, I just really want to nail that guy Vern.

Instead, He is saying, I want to reward you. His love and care is there. He is an eager anticipation of that time. He longs for us to be in eager anticipation too. Even now, Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and what he said to them. This is John 10.28. The English translation says, you know, I give them life. The Greek tense there carries this idea, I am right now constantly giving them life. Right now constantly giving them life. There's a continuous sense in it.

And as you mentioned, we're objects of His grace. Grace for salvation, grace for security, grace for service, grace for instruction are kind of the four points that are brought up here. Objects of His grace. The Lord is indeed gracious. Have you ever seen, you know, people sometimes will keep tally of things, they'll go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and they'll kind of keep tabs on things. Imagine if each one of us had a little computer screen on our foreheads that kept track of the stuff that we did that was wrong, and just kind of read out to everybody, and we could tell, and the Lord was just waiting until the time he could catch you on your tally, you know. And the Lord's not doing that, is he? The Lord is not doing that.

As a matter of fact, what a lot of Christians forget, God's number one concern is not sin. God's number one concern is He wants fellowship with you. And the only reason He cares about sin at all is because He wants it out of the way. He doesn't want that disrupting the fellowship.

And that's a real neat thing, and that's a key aspect of this grace. God is not primarily interested in sin. It's not that he simply says, boys will be boys. But the point being, that's not his top priority. His priority is his fellowship with us. And that's why he wants the sin to just be out of the way. He doesn't want that disrupting things. Objects of his power.

Does that mean when I walk in here this morning, I go and flash lightning bolts out of my fingertips? What's it mean? They have something to do with Xcel energy. What's this talking about? Objects of this power. Let's look at, when we look at the word power, The Greek word there, it's often translated power, really has to do with ability. The word often translated power is dunamis, which a lot of people are fond of making the connection, we have the Greek word coming into the English with the word dynamite. But they didn't have dynamite in biblical times, so I'm sure it's not dynamite.

So there is this ability that we have, this spiritual enabling. And God is the source for this spiritual enabling. Would you equate that to the same power that Christ was raised from the grave? That's exactly what scripture does. It's resurrection power. Okay? It's resurrection power. So we have that same power. That's right. And that's exactly what scripture points to. It's the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. That's the power that's at work in you. That kind of power. object of his faithfulness. Now let's look at the opposite. What would unfaithfulness be? Turning his back on us. How else would you see unfaithfulness? Taking away his salvation after he gave it to us. Oh man! come into us and say, you know, I really wanted to save you, but you're just disgusting, you know.

I changed my mind. I just, this is just, this is beyond any, you know, thing anybody could fathom here. So I've changed my mind. You know, I take it back. You're done. He doesn't do that, does he? Boy, that's good. It has to do with, as we mentioned earlier, his essence, his character. His very character is constancy. The Old Testament is saying, I, the Lord, do not change.

The New Testament, Hebrews 13.8, the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Lord is not fickle. He is faithful. And part of that faithfulness is the Lord doesn't go, oops. As human beings, we can make mistakes. As human beings, we have that capacity. The Lord doesn't go, oh boy, did I blow it there. What am I going to do with Vern this time? Sorry Vern, next time I won't let that happen.

The Lord's faithfulness refers to His constancy, including His infinity. in his understanding of what's going on. God is never up there wringing his hands, pacing the floor of heaven, wondering what on earth he's going to do with us creatures down here. God is never at his wits end. As human beings we can most certainly get there, but God is never at his wits end.

Objects of his peace One of the things that we saw in the description of heaven, it's interesting, in the heavenly scene in Revelation, as we were going through it, there's 150 verses on the heavenly scene. And one of the things you see is evidence of great power. At the same time, John describes a sea of glass. And in the midst of this infinite power is this calm and peace. pictured by this sea of glass. There's not a ripple in it. This immense piece as well.

What's the opposite of peace? I think it's a good way to look at the contrast. What's the opposite of peace? Chaos, okay? I think it's just chaotic. Just totally out of control, okay? What else? What else comes to mind? What's that? War, embattlement, conflict. And we think of war oftentimes in an external sense, but there's really battles at all kinds of levels, aren't there?

And some of the battles, I mean, most of us, most of the time, don't see war face-to-face unless you happen to have the news channel turned on constantly. But the truth is that kind of embattlement can take place all the time and it's part of the human condition. God's character is not at war with itself. There is immense peace because while God is absolutely holy, He is also absolutely loving and gracious and absolutely willing to take the price for all of man's fallings.

I think anxious or being self-centered would be another. Ah, yes. Internal anxiety. Internal anxiety. Let's think about that a minute. What kinds of things disturb our internal peace? What kinds of things are inclined to make us anxious? Sin. Sin, yeah. There is an anxiety in sin. Where does that anxiety come from? The flesh. The flesh is constantly at war with the spirit. There is a spiritual conflict. What else?

Not understanding that we can rest by faith in what the Lord has done and who he has made us. We get anxious. How about the future? Ever get anxious about the future? At times we say, well, Lord, I want this future. And the Lord says, no, I have this other future.

And the uncertainty and the tension between those two can be something that disturbs the peace. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we'll get really cranked up trying to solve all sorts of things. No way we can even touch it. Objects of His comfort. And let me add to this.

You've got 2 Thessalonians 2.16. Let me add to that 2 Corinthians chapter 1. The word comfort there is about every fifth word. And I'm not certain of the statistics, but the point being it's very common. 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

God of all comfort. Objects of His personal care. cast all your care upon him for he cares for you. Okay? Objects of his intercession. This is one thing, you know, a lot of times as Christians we will be exhorted, implored to pray and certainly scripture does call us to that. But what we often forget is the Lord himself is interceding. The Lord himself is interceding and that's not just an incidental bonus, that's part of his character. That's part of the rest of the character of His love for us.

We looked at this His inheritance, Ephesians 1.18, and it's real interesting. His inheritance. You and me. His inheritance. Isn't that amazing? What? Me? You know? Yeah. His inheritance. That's just phenomenal. There is a heavenly association also that's brought up here.

And it's headed by this Ephesians 2.6 and this is a lot of the elements of our positional truth where we've been identified with Christ.

And so you see these four are headed up by the term partners. Partners with Christ in. We're partners with Christ in because we are in Christ in the first place. You see that? We're partners with Christ in because we're in Christ in the first place. Partners with Christ in life. And by the way, I'd say this partnership is an interesting thing. God has called us into a partnership.

He says, I'm glad we're partners. I'm going to do the whole thing. There was a fellow that I met years ago, I think his name was Ben Isham, and he was deaf. And Ben said, this is about three stages in my spiritual growth. He says, first I said, Lord, you know, you tell me what to do, and boy, I'm glad to do it. And he says, then I got to a place where he says, no, Lord, you and me can work alongside each other. What are we going to do together here? And finally he said, I came to a place and I said, Lord, what do you want to do? I've got to get out of the way. And that's an interesting thing about this partnership. The Lord says, here we are, we're partners. That's the greatest thing. He says, I've come here to do it all. I've come here to do it all. An amazing partnership.

Christ is our life is the lesson there in Colossians 3.4. In our position.

Ephesians 2.6 is kind of the capstone, if you will, of the positional truths.

There are five. I hold up five fingers and Mike teases me. He says, I can't hold up one of those. But five fingers, okay, and five positional truths. We have been crucified with Him, buried with Him, raised, ascended, and seated. And this is really just kind of pointing to the capstone. But there are all five. Partners with Christ in service. And especially, you notice, where do all those references come from? You see that? From Paul, yes, and writing to... Who's he writing to there? What do you notice? Yes, he's writing to the church at Corinth each time. Isn't that interesting?

Partners with Christ in service. Partners with Christ in suffering. Now that's one you want to sign up for, right? Partners with Christ in suffering. It's interesting, a goodly number of the folks that you see on the television that get piped in that are the televangelist type or whatever, a goodly number of them don't seem to get this idea. A lot of them are teaching some kind of prosperity doctrine. Some kind of, you know, if you're a Christian, boy, you're going to be, you know, extracted from every possible discomfort.

And that's not what it says. As a matter of fact, there's a whole bunch of verses behind that. Do you notice that? A lot of references. This is a truth and it is not because God is some sort of a divine sadist. It is because he has a definite purpose in it. Definite purpose.

To the point that, and it isn't referenced here, but I'll call upon it, James chapter 1 verse 2. He says, you know, Hi, my name's James. And then he says the next thing, and it's quickly translated, you know, Rejoice when you encounter various trials. But let me emphasize the Greek. You must esteem it ultimate joy. You must esteem it ultimate joy when you encounter various trials.

God has great purpose in it. This is a part of our position in Christ, a part of who we are in Christ, a part of the unfathomable riches Heavenly citizens. We saw that as we went through the book of Philippians. And it's interesting in chapter 1, he's talking to the Philippians and he says in our English translations, it says, you know, behave worthy of Christ. And it sounds like, you know, just behave yourself. But the word translated behave, it means behave as citizens. behave as citizens palata uomai and if you want to just say oh my that's fine but palata uomai is the word there and it means to behave as citizens so he's not calling you to just behave yourself it's a calling based on the citizenship all right of the family and household of God What's the difference here that you're of the family and household? What difference does that make?

Okay, there's a good connection there. You're of the family and household because of the adoption. There's a connection there. Good. What else do you see? Ah, this is a good family to be associated with. Yes, you've got that right. Okay, an extended family. What do you mean by that? that we are God's extended family. Okay. Extended family in the sense that it's a big family. Yeah, big family. The one thing that is interesting is He doesn't seem to imply any distance of relationship though. Isn't that something? No distance of relationship.

One of the things I refer back to our study in Revelation, one of the things we looked at is is we laid out the reasons why I think it's pretty clear the 24 elders in Revelation picture the raptured church and some have asked, well why 24? And we could go into the details of that. It comes out of David's appointment of the priests in which all the priests took turns. There wasn't any hierarchy so every single one took turn in being directly representing the priest to David, to the king.

So they had personal contact. But one of the key things about that is that instead of having this big mass which might imply from a human standpoint a lack of closeness, one of the things that it pictures is the ability to have closeness, the ability to have intimacy in spite of the numbers.

And here's I think one of the things that comes out of this We are looking at the Lord who will reign as we come back with Him, who will reign on earth for a thousand years, on the old earth as King. But we won't be one of the subjects. We'll be part of the family in reigning with Him. Part of the royal family. You don't get treated the same. You're not just one of the subjects. I'm sure it'll be good to be there. But we won't just be one of the subjects. will be seated with him.

That's a part of the family. That's up close. You can look at it like God is the father of the church. Yes, exactly. Exactly what he tells the church at Galatia and Rome. And by the way, it's interesting. Those two books are the places where he brings that up and those are the two books where he deals with legalism. And it's real interesting. Legalism puts me at a distance. Grace puts me in the family. It puts me in the family. I'm not constantly working for intimacy. The intimacy and closeness is there.

Light in the Lord. Now, one of the things that's key there, and we've talked about it already, We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son, the kingdom of light. And there's all kinds of things we could point to about light. Let's think of some of them. What are the benefits of light? I notice we like to have some in here. Seeing is good. Seeing is good. And why is seeing a good thing? If we couldn't see it would be bad. Yeah, that would be bad. We'd be bumping into things, stumbling into things. I'll just give a little interesting example.

Nancy and I have been married for over 30 years and one of the things that's quite clear is that I'm more of a morning person, inclined to wake up typically a couple hours earlier than she does. Most of the time that's what I find. It's usually a male thing. And it's interesting, the Lord seems to pair up people that are opposites in that regard. But what it turns out is that every morning I get up and I, you know, it's the funniest thing, Nancy laughs at me, but I am just horrified of waking her up, you know, the thought of waking her up. And she says, honey, if you wake me up, if you wake me up, she says, I'll wake up and go right back to sleep.

Don't worry about it. But I just, I somehow I got to fix my mind. I'm just horrified. You know, I'll cut my leg off before I wake her up. So anyway, in the morning here, I'm getting up, you know, I'm groping around, you know, and you kind of get sort of oriented to things in the darkness. But you know, it's not perfect. Occasionally something gets left at the foot of the bed or something like that, you know, and I'll make more noise than I really intended, which was none.

So anyway, light's a good thing. You can see where you're headed. You can see where you're going. You can see what's around you, okay? Light is part of the way that we're oriented. Light is part of the reason we can read this stuff. There's all sorts of other things we could look about light. We look for warmth. Both the trees and the grass that's outside are growing because of light. And we're able to have the energy that we're doing here because of light.

And the Lord's kind of built the world that way. And the new creation will be even more so. No night there. So the introduction to light that we have now, because now we experience light and darkness, the introduction to light will give us the contrast, but the reality is it's light that's going to matter eternally, and we will be light in the Lord. In the Lord we will have light.

Vitally united to the Father, Son, and Spirit. One of the things that's interesting as we go through the book of Ephesians particularly, we're going to see the relationship to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in several different places in the book of Ephesians. And the reason he keeps bringing it up is we are vitally united with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is a tendency, because we oftentimes think of the Lord as wholly other, so completely other, but this is a teaching clearly in scripture. We are vitally united to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yes. First time when 5 says that God is light. Ah, you're referring to 29. Yeah. God's very character. Anything that's light is reflected back to Him. Yeah. It's His essence. Yep. Yep. Exactly. We have that closeness with Him. Have you ever experienced or heard others speak of feeling so distant from the Lord. One way or another we've kind of crossed that path.

What this is telling us is that we are vitally united with the Lord. There is a union there that is not changeable. We can feel differently, but it If we're believers, it has no basis in fact. Furthermore, it's important for us to make a distinction, and not enough Christians make the distinction, we have a relationship with the Lord that is untouchable. That's what this is talking about. The fellowship is the only point that's at issue.

In our condition, that is from time to time, our fellowship with the Lord can vary. But our relationship with Him is unchanging. And we have been given that relationship with Him. And have been made vitally united with Him by His doing. Therefore the undoing of it is not ours to do. And He promises He'll never do. 31, which is on the number 4 there, the last page.

Blessed were the firstfruits and the earnest of the Spirit. Several different points of this. Born of the Spirit. We are born into new life and born into a family because of the Holy Spirit's doing. This is what Jesus is trying to get across in Nicodemus. baptized by means of the Spirit. And what that means is we've been placed, okay? Baptized just means placed into, and typically by immersion is the idea.

Placed into, and the example I like to draw from, because basically it's a completely secular example that gets the point across. The Romans would prepare their swords by getting the sword in just the right shape they wanted it, and before the final sharpening, taking it and heating it up very hot and then plunging it quickly into water to do a case-hardening of the outside of the sword. And when they would shove that hot sword into the water, it would case-harden it and come out forever changed. Completely changed because of that being placed into.

And it's the Holy Spirit that places us into the body of Christ. That's the baptism of the Spirit. getting all shaky and jumping around or anything else. The baptism of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit placing you into the body of Christ. Ever to be different, just in the same way that sword coming out of the water now with that case hardening or surface hardening treatment is always to be different after that.

Indwelt by the Spirit. Look at the number of verses that say that we are indwelt by the Spirit. One of the things that's interesting in our era, we've developed a number of songs that are pleading to the Holy Spirit about coming back, you know? Fall afresh on me and different things like that, you know? And the only thing is it kind of loses sight of the fact that the Holy Spirit never left, you know? You find me a verse that said He left, you know? The repeated and comforting assurance that we have is that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We'll study this later because we'll get there in Ephesians. We can grieve Him. We can quench the Spirit. He's not leaving. It's like company in the house. You can really offend them, but they're not going to go. A little better than that, but you get the idea.

The next one we've talked about before here, and we're going to bring it up again as we go through Ephesians, is sealed with the Spirit. We talked about the importance of sealing. The sealing was an identification of who does this belong to. It is a protection. You may not open this legally. And it's a possession. Those are the three main ideas that come out of sealing. and anointed with the Spirit. It's interesting. Common among some of Christendom is the idea of getting anointed, or somebody saying, well, that was anointed, or this was anointed. It's interesting.

If you look in the New Testament, the anointing of the believer, and it's believers that are anointed, is always past tense. It's always a past tense statement. As a believer, you don't get anointed. other than the anointing you had when you became a believer. It's a past tense deal.

And that's one of the reasons why we bring it up here as permanent, untouchable, irrevocable, irreversible, uncorruptible position in the Lord. Glorified. How glorious are you this morning? In what ways are we glorified as believers? We kind of tend to use the word glorious in different ways. We tend to use it with military battles or even if somebody wins a football season championship or something of that sort. We use glory in different ways.

What's this talking about? If we're glorified in Christ, that doesn't mean we're glorified. Yes, you're right. Let's think through what that means. If we're glorified, what's he talking about there? He's talking about his predestination. If you think about glorified, a few different aspects we need to look at here. Scripture talks about some of them. Let's think about in the past.

When was Christ glorified? Starting with His resurrection. His resurrection and then what? His ascension and His seeding. So He was glorified in those things. that was attributed to him. Now, what's our relationship to those events? We were identified with him, therefore we experienced glorification in those ways too.

So that's a past tense experience. Now, one of the things that you may have found out, I certainly have, is that this body that we've got has problems. It seems to have more of them for every day that goes by. things that don't work, things that start to hurt, or things I can't feel. Whatever it is, these bodies are not always cooperative. What's wrong? I mean, aren't these things pretty marvelous? They are marvelous, but what's the problem here? Oh, okay. Is that the end?

We haven't received our heavenly body yet. I'm glad you told me that. These bodies are not what we're stuck with, right? So what's happening spiritually, we're already a part of the new creation. It's a done deal. You, right now, if you're a believer here this morning, you're already a part of the new creation. There's one part of us that isn't. And that's the completion aspect of this glorified. We've been positionally glorified with the Lord, but we're awaiting these new bodies, which is really good, because this one I've got isn't doing so well. Now, then we have complete in Him, which we'll see as we go on through Colossians. Complete in Him.

Ever feel incomplete? I got to confess, as Nancy goes out of town for a while, I feel incomplete. I'll tell her and she can hardly believe it. I feel like I just kind of stand up against the wall, beating my head against the wall and cleaning the drool up. It's kind of come apart at the seams.

But what this is telling us is spiritually, we are complete. There is no, you know, look Christian, you know, watch your P's and Q's, watch your step, and do everything right, because you're not complete yet. He's not saying, okay, I've done so much for you, but we've got to carry it out in front here, keep going. What he's saying is, you're positionally already complete.

There is nothing about your being in Christ that is inadequate. He has blessed you with, not most, not 90%, not even 99.99%, with every spiritual blessing. He has blessed you with every spiritual blessing. You are complete in Him. And that's the final point there. Possessing every spiritual blessing,

34. Every spiritual blessing. And as you look through this list, this is where we come back to the will of God. It is important as believers are looking for what's the will of God, to recognize what aspects of God's will are already in place. Because if we're going around looking for what we already have, it's spiritually silly. Have you ever had an experience like that or seen somebody, they walk around the house looking for their sunglasses and they're parked on top of their head, you know? Yeah, yeah. That kind of experience happens to us as human beings. We don't use what we have.

Hedy Green was a lady who, maybe you've heard the name, last century, she, lived just miserly, I was going to say, I'm not sure, is there a miserous? Anyway, she lived very miserly and she accumulated, and this was a time when the value of it was much more than now, she accumulated a hundred million dollars in personal assets, none of that debt to my knowledge, but her son died because she insisted on finding a free clinic before she would take him in. and because she didn't want to spend any of the money. Here's someone who is not recognizing what they've got and so in the process losing what they have. She lost her son because she didn't act on what she already had but she didn't want to acknowledge that she had that money and therefore enjoy the benefits and save her son. So her son died as a result of scrambling around town looking for a free clinic. And all these are free. We've already been through God's free clinic. Nobody has to die looking for blessings. You've got them all.

As we proceed through this, we'll next be looking at God's moral will. Up till now, everything that we've looked at has been sovereign will of God, things that you absolutely and unchangeably and uncorruptably have, or things that God has set in motion. We don't have to say, Lord, please put your Holy Spirit in my heart. Lord, please accept me. Those aren't an issue. We don't have to ask the Lord for what we already most certainly have. Suppose I were to say, oh Lord, please make it so I never have any more hassles in life. Guess what? That ain't going to happen either.

In knowing these things, we don't have to waste our time asking for exemption from something that certainly is going to take place, or asking the Lord to give us something we already have. So as we'll proceed next through the moral will of God, and then finally the individual will of God, We'll look at things that are more in the nature of things that we as a believer have some decision of will about, and some important distinctions there. I would submit to you that what a lot of Christians get in their minds is the will of God is a mistaken perception, and that they're looking for the yellow brick road. And which path, whether it's a green Chevy or a yellow Chevy, or whether it's Denver or Aurora, those kinds of decisions, for the most part, are not God's primary concern, as we'll see.

So anyway, with that, let's pray. Enough for today. Lord, thank you ever so much for these marvelous blessings that we have. Thank you for the things that we cannot change. Thank you for the things that we do not have to earn. Thank you for your blessings so immense that you will take eternity to reveal them to us. And we just give you praise. We give you thanks. And we ask that you would open the eyes of our hearts to see these things. In Jesus' name, amen.