The Fruit of the Spirit - Part 2
Galatians · Roger Henderson · Jan 5, 2020
Galatians (2018-20), No. 54
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261917264496

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. OK, we're going to continue on in Galatians. Actually, of course, I have my notebook upside down. That always helps. Maybe I teach better that way, maybe. We'll see. OK. Well, last week we started on the fruit of the Spirit. And I decided to do it in two times because I thought there was really enough to talk about, enough to think about. There are nine attributes of the spirit and I covered the first three last week and I want to finish off on those and then talk about The last part of the verse and then try to apply some things as well And then so that will finish out verses 22 and 23 and then we'll go we'll finish up the last through the end of the chapter Next week and then Mike's gonna start in chapter 6 when he returns. In fact, he'll be back next week Come back on Friday, I think so Anyway, it's a good break for Donna and Mike.

I'm happy for them. They're in the warm Hawaii. I assume it's warm there. Okay, so let's get started here. So let's look at, I want to review the first statement in verse 22. It says, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. So let's just look at the first little phrase there So the subject is fruit here. We're going to talk about we're going to be fruit inspectors today, right? We're going to look at fruit and note first of all, it's singular, you know I mentioned last week and I probably in life as a believer have said fruits plural So many times I'm ashamed.

I've said that I probably read it that way. I probably said it that way But boy in studying this passage, it's crucial to understand it is fruit singular that is being spoken of here and that's significant because we're going to talk about a person a person of our Savior and that's if we if we pluralize it it's not going to be him it's going to be something different and the intent I believe of scripture is to this is fruit singular and that's what it is in the original language too okay it modifies fruit of you can say fruit of God if you want to in the general sense fruit of God or fruit of the Holy Spirit tells us the source of this fruit, singular. And then the verb is this wonderful verb that we see for is, most of the time, me.

It's the state in which someone or some things continuously exist. It's in the present tense, continuous action. These fruits continuously exist in the Godhead, if you will. Continuously exist and being supplied by the Holy Spirit. So, being singular, the fruit of the Spirit, as I said, continuously exists.

It describes the attributes which follow. These nine attributes follow. And it's kind of important, you know, I was looking, these attributes are labeled by different people. Some call them virtues. Some call them characteristics. Chafer calls them graces. The nine graces. And they're all good words. They all apply. Each attribute exists simultaneous with the other as I mentioned last week.

It's not like the Lord is telling us Well, let's get love first. I want you guys to really focus on love understand love from God and then we'll go on to Love joy people will just progressively go through them No, he's going to describe to us a person of our Savior and he's going to point out that we can we live the Christian life by faith in our Savior and these attributes come as via the Holy Spirit as we walk by faith. These attributes identify the characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit. Then one last thing I didn't put on there, these attributes, as I said multiple times here, I think this passage and the passage in 1 Corinthians give us a wonderful description of our Savior. Remember in 1 Corinthians 13 it talks about, and I put the word Christ's love is Christ's love is this, Christ's love is kind, it describes Christ's love. Well, this passage, you could put in Christ's love, joy, peace, patience, it's attributes of our Savior.

Okay, so let's look at, and each of these nine attributes are a singular noun, and it's naming a characteristic or an attribute of God. And I like what Schaeffer said, I borrowed this from Schaeffer. Schaeffer says of these fruits, I always like Schaeffer, his writing, you know, he writes like I don't see people write today. He writes very well and he writes with words and expressions which just amaze me. So he starts off, every word of the nine attributes are here used represent a superhuman quality of life.

So we have to start out, God isn't asking us to make our best effort on love, our best effort on joy, our best effort on peace. He's saying, allow my life to live through you with those attributes. And you know, the problem is, and I was talking with Bonnie, I start looking at this and I say, boy, my life doesn't match up to this. And your life outside of Christ does not. It cannot match up to His love, His joy, His peace. But it's hard as you read through it, not to put yourself in view. You say, well I fell down that way. I didn't do it in joy. I failed in peace. And you identify your failures. But he's asking us to focus on the Savior, not upon our failures.

Okay, now he goes on. It's an exact description of the life of Christ. Thirdly, Christ's likeness is never gained by the energy of the flesh. That's kind of a side comment he made there. And then fourthly, these virtues, attributes, graces are not found in human nature. You're not going to find them in a course on being a good Christian by some authors. They are singular fruit of the Spirit. They're a package deal. We get the package deal as we walk by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a package situation and these attributes come out of us by our faith alone.

Okay, let's do a little review here last week. We looked at I looked and I nothing I mentioned last week and I looked at the nine graces and I thought nine attributes nine characteristics and I thought well somebody out there must have Tried to to label different sets of them. I don't see a pattern here. So I think this was constable that did this constable labeled the first three love joy peace as God word attributes and Thought that was pretty good, so I want to just go through and and just briefly in fact we covered peace again today in Sunday school So this is my it'll be my go-around on peace.

We covered that briefly in in first Peter Okay, love. I mean this is this is called the this is a supreme from first Christ It's a supreme gift among all gifts the gift of love. It's just so much to be said, but it's agape in the original it's God's love not man's love and It springs from the value and preciousness of the object.

You know, like in John 3.16, God so loved the world. It was because of his love for the world. He praised great value in his creation that he gave his only begotten son. So love, this love is supernatural. It's wholly divine.

Agape love is not man's love. It's not the best love we can give. You know, I think of the best love Humanly speaking is a mother's love for a child. I mean, I just you know, I've experienced that personally watching Bonnie and other other moms. I just that's an incredible love but That's not this is God's love not man's love not that that love can't be from God as you know as the believing mom certainly Okay, what else to say about love?

And it can only occur, you know in this context it can only occur as we walk by walk by the Spirit Okay, joy As I mentioned before, joy is not happiness. You know, many times we try to, in our minds, we kind of equate joy and happiness, but that's just not, scripture does not talk about. happiness directly. He doesn't say that you can't be happy. He doesn't say Christians have to be down the dumps and say, oh yeah, I'm saved for eternity. I'm just making it through this life. Never be joyful. Never be happy.

But it points out that joy is another one of those nine attributes that comes from God. Some have said it's celestial joy, passing through the believer. I like the one that says the joy the Lord is my strength That's from the Old Testament for Nehemiah as a song. I think like that the joy of the Lord is my strength. It's it's his Attribute that is transmitted by the power of the Holy Spirit to the believer then peace or Renee and This this aspect of peace there is the peace with God and the peace of God come to divisions We talked about that today a little bit in Sunday school Think the focus here is on the the rest of the believer the peace of God that resides in the believer because of who he is And there's several really cool things statements in scripture the peace of God which passes all understanding and Then Christ said my peace I give to you incredible once again where you see these nine attributes or attributes of God and that the believer can avail himself of as he walks by faith. Okay, so now I want to go through the other six. I'm going to use the division from last week. So here's my little division from Constable.

So we talked about the God-word attributes. The other two are other. He kind of had these hyphenated words, other-word and self-word. I'm not sure I can say that real good, but anyway. Patience, kindness, and goodness are attributes, I think, that talk about our interpersonal relationship, being patient with people, being kind to people, and goodness. And then we get down to self-worth, and that's more faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So let's look at the first three here, or the middle three.

Patience. I love this word, macrothumia. I think that's my pronunciation of that word. Really in the in the original or actually in the King James uses a lot. I like the word long-suffering It really describes a wonderful characteristic of our God. He's long-suffering and it's the idea of It's a quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation. It doesn't hastily retaliate or punish It's to have a long fuse, you know, you talk about people, you know people different people you kind of realize some people are You'll say, he has a short fuse, and you kind of may gingerly walk around that person because you're afraid he's going to blow up or something like that. He's going to get mad at you or whatever. But that attribute from God is he's patient. He's long-suffering. He takes a long approach.

And I think one of the examples is of in the days of Noah, God waiting. I think it was over a hundred years, right? It took to build the ark. He waited a hundred years, and only, and you say, a hundred years, and only Noah and his family were saved. It doesn't seem, wow, why did he wait so long? Couldn't he determine that and, you know, couldn't he have Noah speed up and take a crash course in building arks and get it done in, you know, fifty years? I don't know, but anyway, it took a hundred years.

But, so God is long-suffering, God is patient. God withholds His wrath in the present. A couple of verses, we're not going to go into them. to the unbelieving mankind, to the heavens and earth. And then I like this one here. The results of God's long-suffering. It says, and we'll be covering this down the road here later in the year in 2 Peter. The Lord is not slow about his promises, as some count slowness, but is patient or long-suffering toward you, not wishing for any of you to perish, but for all to come to repentance. God is a very patient God.

And we count upon that because we're very slow in catching on sometimes. OK. So let's go. I have a slide, too, for this. So I tried to keep it. I said, boy, you know, we got nine attributes. I don't want to, you know, I could be here. Oh, Roger's on five. Boy, maybe I'll get to six here and I'll be able to wake up. You know, it can get repetitive, right? Or another attribute. OK. OK. OK. Wake up. OK. But patience has a couple more cool verses here. And this verse is kind of cool. This verse actually in Colossians combines multiple, multiple attributes.

In Colossians 3.12 it says, So as to those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on, I like this, this is the idea, to abide. How do I put on something? The actual original language is putting on a coat. You put a coat on. Well the idea, how do we put on something?

Well, you know, most of the, almost all the things God asks us to do stem out of our faith. Scripture uses a variety of words for that and one of those words is to abide and I know this is one of house favorite words And I loved it. I got I became a fan of that too Wow Abiding the Lord it sounds it actually gives you another insight in that we're going to see this more in detail in a bit but put on put on the heart of compassion kindness humility gentleness and patience a couple of other guys we're going to cover shortly here, but this verse has a few of those all lined up together and Abide abide in Christ and by doing that you his compassion his kindness his humility his gentleness his patience. I Implore you to constantly remind yourself that these are things don't go home today and says Roger says I gotta be more patient Of course, he isn't too patient talk to money But don't try don't try please don't try trust and Put your faith in the Savior and allow the Holy Spirit to live these things through your life. A couple of other cool verses. In Colossians 1, 10, and 11, it says, So that you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit, kind of speaking of the list, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience."

So what we see is that scripture will describe this aspect of God and then it will encourage the believer by faith or by some other action or the words, make this attribute of God your attribute. Take this attribute and make it your attribute. Not work on your attribute and then say, I'm doing pretty well, I'm getting closer God, I'm getting closer. It's God's attribute that is available to you by the power of the Holy Spirit. Okay, last verse in this patience.

1st Timothy 1.16 So that in me, as foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. And the title of this was How does the world see long-suffering? And they see it, they can see it through believers, and they shouldn't see it through believers, because that's his characteristic that we get by the Holy Spirit. Okay, so that's patience.

Now, kindness. Zodiaty says here, it's the grace which pervades the whole nature, the mellowing, that all would be harsh and austere. So the source again is God God's kindness it says in in Titus there the kindness of God our Savior It talks about in Ephesians about how he wants to showcase He wants to that he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, so that's the source and then our walk in that in in him were commanded to be kind to one another and Here again clothed or put on Put on put on kindness by faith allow kindness to come out of you through the Holy Spirit So all these attributes God's attribute that we're to to avail ourselves of Okay kindness and then the last one in this section goodness Describes a moral quality which being good in his character is beneficial in effect.

I didn't actually realize how neat this is. The beneficial effect is key here. Goodness produces a beneficial effect. So let's see that. The source is God. And this is a story I don't have a lot of folks here from. I know maybe Cheryl and if Russ was around, a few people from my work.

There was a guy named Jim Hazen. And he was a believer. He's gone to be with the Lord. But he was kind of a interesting guy. He liked to kind of play with you a little bit. So he would walk by you and greet you in the morning. He said, well, how are you doing, Roger? And I said, I'm doing good. He said, Roger, you realize only God is good. He would say that almost every day. Maybe Dave can remember that. I mean, he would just, he'd come back with that so many times, it made me think.

I'd be careful about saying good. Who is good? Well, it's only God is truly good. And he's right. But he would just kind of zap that with you every time. So you're afraid to say, I'm okay. Change it to okay or something that wouldn't get a response from him.

Anyway, God is the only one that can truly benefit us. So His goodness benefits us. And He's the source of that. God's goodness to us. God's works. And this is one that we often quote. He works every circumstances in our lives for the good. And that's His good and His glory. But I like what Brother Hal added to this. The primary benefit of God's goodness in this is to be conformed to His image.

So it means goodness is not always going to look. It's not going to always look and feel good. I'm not good at it. Look and feel comfortable or nice. It may be tough. It may be a tough experience. But He wants to benefit us. He wants to conform us to His Son. God identified us with his with Christ so we can conduct our lives in good and beneficial works Remember he it's his works. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works Which he is ordained beforehand that we should walk in them And then lastly our father chastens us For our own profit and benefit, you know, there's a whole discussion in scripture about how the yes, you know Chasing is not pleasant, but it's beneficial. So goodness is out of goodness flows a beneficial effect.

So that's those three. So let's look at the final three here are self-worth attributes, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Okay, you're still awake. Most eyes are open here, I see. Good work. Good work. Okay. All right. And there's some cool things in these two. So let's start off with faithfulness.

Faithfulness is a quality which renders a person trustworthy and steadfast. The source? Lasting faithfulness, trustworthiness, is from God. Like I said, the source is always God, and you find scripture supporting that. The Lord's loving kindness, a beautiful verse, the Lord's loving kindness is indeed never ceasing, for his compassion never fails. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. His faithfulness is way beyond what we humanly can be faithful in. So more four verses here. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able.

And it goes on, it says he will provide the way of escape. That's kind of a cool verse. In fact, we're planning, we're thinking about doing Corinthians after Galatians. That's our thought right now. I like this verse because you think well, what's so what's the way of escape?

There must be a zero get out of jail free card here this Lord pass out those I go down that Mike and Mike and Roger are passing out Cards here, and you go. I'll get through that trial. I just get one of those cards But if you look carefully at the context of that and it's no surprise The way of escape it's our Savior. It's our trust and dependence upon him as a way of escape through those difficulties and And then lastly, we see that faithfulness is a characteristic that scripture talks about that should be apparent, urging bond slaves to be subject to their own masters and everything, to be well-pleasing, but to show all good faithfulness, or all good faith, so that they may adorn the doctrine of God and our Savior in every respect.

Okay, so that's faithfulness. Gentleness. This is an interesting one. I think the King James has it as meekness. I've always had the little phrase, meekness is not weakness. That's something you learn. I don't know where I learned that from, but I heard it growing up as a believer. I actually didn't grow up as a believer. I became a believer at some point.

Gentleness or meekness is inner quality and strength and power whose source is Christ and is focused on others. And I like this. Here's some things gentleness is not. It's not weakness in character, passivity, pride, arrogance, self-assertiveness, or self-interest. And here's Paul talking. by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Christ had that meekness and gentleness. I who am meek when face to face with you, but bold towards you when absent. Paul seemed to have that. People sort of complained about that. Well, Paul, when you're here in person, you're not too impressive. Boy, when you send me a letter, you have those zingers in there that really, you know. Anyway.

1 Peter 3.15 says, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks to give an account for the hope that is in you with gentleness or meekness and reverence. And then lastly, Ephesians, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with all humility and gentleness, with patience. So there you combine multiple attributes. Gentleman with patience.

And then of course there's other attributes that are kind of tacked on around this that aren't specifically declared to be a fruit. Okay. And then also here's this verse again that we see gentleness shows up in this list of kindness, humility, gentleness, patience in Colossians 3.12. Okay. I don't want to upgrade, I don't think. Not the time to upgrade. Okay. Let's go on.

Self-control, temperance. With strength, literally with strength, to be self-controlled in every area of our lives. And really, in some ways, this is from Chafer. Chafer says we don't really need to declare that God is self-controlled. He is by His very nature. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be self-controlled.

2nd Peter, a lot in Peter today. It's funny. I'm noticing it because we started that class 2nd Peter 1 4 to 6 for by these he is granted to us his precious and magnificent promises So that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature. Oh Yeah, okay, I was wondering where my word was Okay, so that's the first part then there's a comma and he says in your faith. I supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance. So self-control is one of those virtues that come by faith. Temperance of self-control is required, and this is one that's required of elders, bishops, it talks about in Titus and other places.

Alright, so that's the last one of that group. So now let's cover the last little part of this verse here. We've got to address this. So we've talked about, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law. It seems like, why even put that in there? Why do you have it in there? So the Interlinear kind of flips it around a little bit. It has, there is not a law against such a thing. So the point is, there is no principle of law in existence against such things. Why would there be a violation of the law to quote, to talk about God's character, His essence? There shouldn't be.

One of the such things, I think it's pretty obvious from the context, it's the nine attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. The deeds of the flesh are certainly against God's law. There are 14 of those that Mike went through, and many of those are against God's law and against man's law in some cases. But the attributes of the fruit of the Spirit are the very character of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, a law is not required.

It says in 1 Timothy 1.9, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, or you could say for a righteous God, right? Law doesn't make sense, but for those who are lawless and rebellious.

Okay, so that kind of ties off the end of that verse. Let's just talk here about maybe some other things that might have occurred to you. And we actually kind of addressed this maybe a little bit already. So what does the singular fruit of the Spirit represent? And I've kind of already said it probably multiple times here, but it doesn't hurt to, you know, repetition can be productive sometimes.

So this is a really cool verse. John 16, 14. He, the Holy Spirit, will glorify me For he will take of mine, and will disclose it to you." So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is one of being a conduit, right? It connects two things. It provides a flow of something, information, you know, in the physical sense it could be electrical stuff, it could be water, a number of things. So it says, He, the Holy Spirit, first of all, will glorify me.

So the Holy Spirit is going to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, This glorify is to magnify, extol, praise, and so he's going to extol who is our love, joy, peace, etc. The Holy Spirit, and here's the conduit part, where it says, he takes of mine and discloses it to you. So there's got to be something, he's the in-between guy. He takes of mine, Christ is speaking here in John, he takes of mine and discloses it to you, the believer. So that's the job of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit will take or receive of who Christ is, and the Holy Spirit will then disclose who He is to you.

So the singular fruit represents the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who He is, what He is. So that's just so crucial because you can, you know, some folks have gotten Often I think often a traffic the Holy Spirit has some other mission They think but his mission is to glorify Christ and to be a conduit for who he is That's his myth. That's his ministry and the verse we're studying the fruits of the Spirit show that you know over and over again Okay, so that answers one question. So now let's look at a picture. I found this picture It's cool.

You type in the internet lion branches, and boom, there you go. Somebody has taken the time to draw this picture for me. So I'm so happy they did that, because I didn't want to draw the picture. Imagine doing that in PowerPoint. I mean, I've done something like that. I made Courtney like, you can draw pictures in PowerPoint, but after three or four hours, and you're exhausted. Why did I do this? And your pictures aren't nearly that good. So hopefully, you know, I don't have to worry about copyright here. I'm not. Anyway, okay. So let's look at it. Maybe Bob can do that too. Alright, so we have three parts that are labeled here.

We have the vine, the branches, and the fruit. And that's going to be described in John 15, 4 through 5. So first of all, the vine, in the context of John 15, 4 and 5, is Christ. It speaks of Christ as a vine. It speaks of believers as a branches. And the branches are connected They're connected to the, you know, you see the arc there?

They're connected, you know, in the physical sense, a branch grows out of the vine, right? It grows out of the trunk of the tree. But in the example, it's going to ask you to realize that that connection to the vine may not be going on. It implores you that it does stay connected, but it may not be. In the physical sense, that branch is produced by the vine. It just shoots right out of there, right? Then the branch provides a position for the fruit to develop.

The fruit in our context is going to be love, joy, peace, the nine attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. What I'm trying to show here, this is going to be another way to look at these nine fruits of the Spirit. What are we to do? How are we to interact? What's the interaction between the vine, the believer, and the fruit? How does that play out? That's what John 15 is going to tell us. So hopefully this picture was helpful. How can the singular fruit of the Spirit manifest in the believer's life? I'm not reading that right. How can the singular fruit of the Spirit be manifest in the life of the believer?

First of all, let me read the verse. It says, Abide in me, abide in Christ, and I in you, Christ in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. Wonderful verse, probably memorized it. So it starts out with abide in me.

Let's see here. It's impossible for the fruit of the Spirit to be manifest in the believer's life unless, as the verse says, we abide in Him. So there has to be that connection. In the physical sense, like I said, the branch actually is there. Unless you break it off, it's there.

But in the example that is being here, Connectivity between the branch and the vine can be disrupted so and our abiding is how you maintain that contact abide in Christ Abide means to remain to be at home Abiding Christ is a moment-by-moment fellowship with Christ Having Christ as a source of our life is by faith with Christ as our object so that what keeps the the vine and the branch plugged into another is this abiding operation.

And that's another way to say walk. Think about this. Scripture approaches this interaction with God in several ways. It talks about abiding, it talks about walking, several, and there's others. That's not all of them. But abiding and walking are two major... walk by the Spirit, abide in me, are in my mind equivalent ideas. But it's another way to look at what the operation is to be.

Okay, so let's go on to the next verse. John 5, John 15, 5. So now Christ said, I am the vine, Christ is the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. So we are the branches plugged into the vine by faith, The fruit is determined by the essence of the vine, not by the branch, just the conduit. So now we have another conduit situation. Don't we love conduits, Courtney? You have lots of conduits, and I have conduits, we all have conduits. Anyway, but here, the believer, you know, I'm going to get myself confused here, careful. Okay, the point here is that God desires to live through the believer, right? So in this analogy, He desires to produce the fruit, right?

So we're the branch. Here's a vine, there's a branch, and here's a fruit. We're a conduit to allow the fruit to become visible, to be pushed forth. So we're a conduit. The branch is a conduit, just like the Holy Spirit is a conduit between Christ and us. The fruit is independent of the environment, life circumstances.

So I was thinking about this one. You know, the trials of life, you know, in life we say, well, and I say it myself to the Lord, I had more time, I had more money, I had less responsibilities, I had, if this didn't happen, if that didn't happen, I would be able to do this much more for you. Of all the things, but God says you're a conduit. You're a conduit for my glory and my grace.

Just be available. Yes, you have to make money. Yes, you have to have the time. Yes, all this has to happen. But that's not your worry. I will produce my fruit, my life through you. And that's really key. That He wants to produce His life through us regardless of the circumstances. In fact, many times the circumstances are really not that good and it glorifies Him because people see that. So the results. Abide in the vine, Christ, then much fruit. Not abiding in the vine, abiding in self, trusting in self. You can do nothing. You're powerless to produce fruit. No fruit. It's a bad crop. Okay, so last thought here, which is another verse in John. And so this is cool.

The end result of this, my Father is glorified by this, by you abiding in Him, the fruit being produced, that you bear much fruit. Bearing of fruit is revealed to glorify Christ. Much fruit means the glory of Christ will be manifested more fully moment by moment.

And Christ can only be seen as we walk by faith. So I'm kind of mixing my pictures here. So we start out walking, walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. They come down and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and so on. So this is another picture of how Christ wants to live through us as we abide in him.

So next week, we'll finish up the chapter. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your marvelous grace. We thank you for your word, which shows us the truths about our life with you and how you desire for us to walk by faith and trust you. In Christ's name, amen.