Ecclesiastes 6:1-12

I'm going to do something a little different today, which is I'm only going to read the verses as I talk about them rather than reading the whole passage at the beginning. But there should be an outline in your bulletin. I encourage you to follow along on that. There's a quote on the back about what the grace of God means, which has been very encouraging to me. (Located at the bottom of this document.)So please take a look at that. I will tell you the outline has some mistakes in it. I saw them after we printed 400 of them. So anyway, bear with them. They should make a little bit of sense as we carry along there.

So let me pray for us. We are deeply grateful, Father, for this good day, deeply grateful for your kindness. Thank you for this book that you've given us. I pray we will be people who honor you by respecting your book. Let us understand what you expect of us and let us be people who make adjustments by the power of your spirit. Let's be people who do not mock you by hearing what you

said and just walked out. Unchanged. So make it clear to us your message today. And thank you so much for your goodness, kindness, and concern for us. And we pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Listen! There's a billionaire in America whose name is Brian Johnson. In 2007 he started a company called Braintree, and a couple years later he bought another company called Venmo. Then several years later, he sold both of those, and his personal take on that sale was $300 million. And then he started another company. Start up investing in tech companies and biotech companies

and the net worth of Brian Johnson today is $400 billion. Four, $100 billion. I don't often work in those numbers, so I looked it up. That is 400,000 millions is his current net worth. So this man is insanely wealthy. Not the richest man in the world, but extremely close. He's insanely wealthy.

He's 47 years old and Brian Johnson at some point decided. That he wanted

to live forever. And so he began spending 2 million a year on an extremely intense personal health renewal project. He calls it the Blueprint Project. And this man who is 47 believes that his actual physical age is 27. He's trying to get his physical age down to 19 and doing his best through all of this that he's doing now. Let me give you an overview of what he's doing.

He's doing a thing called. Full of statin. Gene therapy means nothing to me other than he goes to Roatan, a little island off the coast of Central America, and pays $25,000 to have some injections done, which is supposed to

improve muscle health, reverse aging, et cetera, $25,000 each time he goes down there to have bit done. He takes 100 supplements a day. He is a person who has a very strict Lifestyle and very strict monitoring of his lifestyle. He's on a 19177 calorie vegan diet every day. He's very careful about that. He has 30 doctors monitoring his health.

30 people looking at him daily scans and blood draws. He's just paying severe, paranoid, unbelievable attention to his health. I told you all that to say, based on Ecclesiastes 6, I'm pretty sure Coheleth is laughing at him. And I'm quite sure that God is grieving for him, that he has invested this time, this money, this focus. He has said to himself, I want to live forever and therefore I'm going to work this hard.

To live forever. Now, friends, let me be very clear about something. Brian Johnson is going to die.

Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment.” End of the discussion. He's going to die. I'm going to die. Unless Jesus comes soon, we will all die. It's guaranteed he's not going to make it. The further thing to point out is that if he lived forever in this person. This body in this world, in this state of sin, he would be forever miserable.

Eternally miserable. It would be a horrible way for this man to live. The further problem is you could also always die in a house fire. You can always die in a car wreck. You could always die in a drive-by shooting. After all this investment, all this struggle that he is putting in. So both Coheleth and God are big fans of living forever. But not in this condition, not in the sinful condition.

397 Ambrose said fools are not free. The weight of sin is heavy. Living in this condition would not be good. And today Coheloth has three comments in Ecclesiastes 6 about what life is like in this world without God. If I'm going to live forever in this world without God, he has three things to say about that.

First, glittering achievements do not produce happiness. v1-6

First of all, verses one to six, he says. Glittering achievements of life do not

I want to begin by reading Ecclesiastes chapter 5. Start at verse 18 and then the 1st 2 verses of chapter 6. 5:18 “Here's what I have seen to be good and fitting. To eat, to drink, to enjoy oneself and all one's laborers in which he toils under the sun during the few years of life which God has given him. For this is his reward. (19) Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth. He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor. This is the gift of God, for he will not often consider the years of his life because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart. So in that passage that we talked about last week, God gives a person a gift of wealth and then the second gift of enjoying the wealth, because those two are not automatic.”

Now today in chapter 6 he goes into. People have been given the gift of wealth, but who are clearly disconnected from the God of the universe. And they can't enjoy it. So here's what he says in the 1st 2 verses.

6:1 “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, which is prevalent among men. (2) A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires. Yes, God. Yet God has not

empowered him to eat from them, for a foreigner enjoys them. This is vanity and severe affliction.”

 You became insanely wealthy. And you could not enjoy it. It is futile. It's a severe affliction to have this kind of wealth and to be unable to enjoy it. And it's so easy to say, OK, if I were wealthy, there would be nothing to enjoy. It would be too easy. It's not to have wealth as a gift from God. To enjoy it is a second gift from God. They're not automatic things that go together.

Howard Hughes, died in 1976 at the age of 70. At the time he was arguably the richest man in the world. Hughes Tool Company and the Hughes Aircraft Company and the Spruce Goose and all these investments. His net worth when he died was about 11 billion, which is a crazy amount of money in 1976. And this man was extremely wealthy. But as he aged, he became paranoid of germs. And he began to live in sealed off rooms in his house or in a hotel. And he had these elaborate cleaning rituals. His life was a paranoid mess. The people who served him had to do the same paranoid rituals. And he spent his last years in misery cleaning everything, washing his hands. He had been in a plane wreck because he was a stunt pilot, severe back injury, severe back pain, addicted to morphine. And he spent the last decade or so of his life in real misery.

God had given him the gift of wealth, but it was not accompanied with the ability to enjoy it. This man had a huge struggle. Glittering achievements

and great wealth in themselves does not produce happiness.

I can have a long stretch in my life of brilliant stuff and great impact in doing good stuff, and I'm financially better off this month than last month. I can have long periods like that, but it cannot be accompanied with enjoyment and joy and appreciation for what God is doing. The brilliance of my life can be in stark contrast to the darkness of my soul. The brilliance of my accomplishments can be in stark contrast to the blackness of my depression. They don't go together.

Because the problem is, friends, we can gain a lot and not enjoy it. We can gain a lot and lose it.

I can scrape for decades and get this beautiful house in LA, then it burns down. I can scrape for decades, get a beautiful house in LA. It gets saved from the fires and burned by an arson. I can scrape for decades and have a lawsuit against me and lose it all, scrape for decades and make a stupid decision and lose it all. It's just not guaranteed to stay there. I can scrape for decades

and get it and find out it's just hollow. What was I thinking? I put my ladder against the wrong wall. I've gained all this stuff and I don't enjoy it a bit. Wealth and enjoyment according to Coheleth, which means of course

according to God, are not. Automatically connected. First Corinthians 4:7 “What do you have that you have not received? If you have received it, why do you boast as though you had not received it?” What do you have that God

didn't hand you as a gift? Nothing.

It's all a gift. Deuteronomy 8:18 “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day.” This verse says that God gives you the very ability to earn wealth. And if I say to myself, I got all this stuff because I worked hard and made sacrifice and I'm smart and I got an

education and I built a network, and that's how I got all this stuff. No, I got it because I stuck out my sweaty little hand and God gave it to me. The variability to earn wealth or education. Where did I get the diligence to go to school? Stuck out my hand and God handed it to me.

What do you have that you haven't received? The answer is nothing. It's all  there. Last week the American dream took it on the chin twice. This week the Hebrew dream takes its square on the jaw. What's the Hebrew dream? What's the great life for a Hebrew in the Old Testament, New Testament times, it was plenty. Having all that, you needed more.

There were seven sons. And it was living a long time. If you had those three things, you had the Hebrew dream. And now Coheleth goes after the Hebrew

dream with a vengeance. It's pretty merciless what he does.

Chapter 6. Verses 3 to 6. “If a man fathers 100 children and lives many years,

however many they may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things. He does not even have a proper burial, then I say better than miscarriage than he. For it comes in futility and goes into obscurity, and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun, it never knows anything. He is better off than the man who lived 2000 years, even if the other man lives 1000 years twice and does not enjoy good things. Do not all go to one place, he says, listen. You have. Like 90 more children than the perfect Hebrew life, and you have lived 2000 years instead of say 70 or 80. You have far outstripped the good life in the Hebrew mind. Far outstripped it. But you can't enjoy it. You, you're going to you. You could die unnoticed. Nobody might come to your funeral, even if it was 2000 years and 100 kids. Here's what God's asking us to think about.

Here's this question for us. Would you give some serious thought to what the materialistic lifestyle really yields? Would you give some serious thought to the question of what it's like to try to live in this world without God? Think about the American dream. Think about the Hebrew dream. Think about what good is this if that's all there is, if that's all there is.

I mean, I spent $35,000 buying this used campervan. It’s the nicest thing I've ever owned. And then it's in the shop and the wiring is burned up. And every day I call the shop and he says, I don't know, we're still working on it. Every day. The bill's just going like this. What is that? All there is? Is that all I get?

I scraped up to get this nice van. I knocked myself out. Studied work nights, got a degree. Can't get a job in my field. I'm still working nights at the coffee shop where I was. Is that all I get for this? I buy a used house. It took me 20 years to get the money together. Two years later the foundation cracks and the back half starts sinking. Seriously, is that what I get for all this fight in life?

I have been going to the gym for decades. I'm a health food nut, I'm a health nut and I get hit by a drunken driver and have my leg amputated. Seriously, is that what I get? I pull a guy out of a burning car and he sues me for his back injury. That's life in a world without God. It's life in the world with God. All

this stuff can happen. And so Coheleth is asking. If you're unconnected with God, aren't you just waiting to die? Aren't you just waiting to be deleted?

One guy waited 2000 years without God and had miserable 2 millennia. Then he died and in contrast he said there's a miscarried child who never sees the light of day, goes to the same place as that person. Coheleth says wouldn't it be better just to be miscarried and never see the light and rather than go through all this misery for nothing? Now, friends, please be very, very careful. Coheleth is not being callous about a lost child. I mean, my wife and I never had a miscarried child. We never had a stillborn child. We never had a child of ours die. In fact, I've prayed, Dear God, let me die before my kids, please.

It would be just the worst. Just the worst to lose a child in any of those ways. And Coheleth is not being callous about that. I'm aware there are people in this room who have suffered that. I don't know you personally, but in a room this size, there has to be people who have suffered that. I am very sad for you. That is just the worst. Cohen is not being callous about that.

In fact, I'm convicted of prey. One second, please. Friends.

Father. I don't know. Who's sitting in this room who lost a child or a grandchild? I don't know who's sitting in this room who lost his spouse. But you know, you know the pain of it. You know the sadness of it. And will

you? Will you give your comfort? Will you give your mercy? Thank you for your kindness to us. Let us be people who entrust ourselves, our children, our spouses, our grandchildren to you. We're deeply grateful for your compassion for us, and we're deeply grateful, Father, that we are not people who are disconnected from you. So I entrust all of these people to you and I pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Coheleth says why live 2000 years when it would be better just to be done with it? If there's no God, If there is no God? So I know a lot of old, wealthy, very accomplished people who are flatly miserable, flatly miserable. They're not only miserable, they're carriers. They infect the people around them. And Coheleth says, hey. “What's the use? I mean, you get to the end and there's a funeral and maybe nobody even comes. Maybe it's not even well attended. I think really the final judgment of a life is how many people showed

up at your funeral and what did they say from the platform? Because that's real, that's a real judgment of how I live my life? How did I go about it? It was a very famous saying that Mark Twain is supposed to have said, in which he said. “I didn't attend his funeral. But I sent a nice note saying I approved of it.

Am I going to get a note? Dear Kathy, I'm not going to be there, but I'm really glad it's happening. What's the final result in all this? So if there's no eternal element and if God doesn't exist, I've just got a ring out of this life. Whatever I can get, I've just got to find whatever joy, whatever happens, whatever I get, I spin the wheel of fortune and I might get European vacation or I might go bankrupt. It's hard to know. Hebrew scholar Derry Kidner said this. Cohelleth does not say that humankind has rights which God ignores. It is rather that humankind has needs which God exposes. Some of these, as we saw, are the kind that the temporal world cannot begin to meet since God has put eternity in our hearts, chapter 3 verse one. Others, more limited, are the kind that the world can satisfy a little and for a while, but none with any certainty or depth.

The world itself is made to say to us the only language we will listen to.

Here's what the world says to us. This is no place to rest. This is no place to find rest.

So the chapter will wind down to a depressing and uncertain finish well suited for the state of humanity on its own, apart from God. So in chapter one to six, he's saying, listen, there's no guaranteed connection between glittering accomplishment and enjoyment. Those two are not automatically coupled then

he says.

Secondly, verses 7 and 9. Life is a constant motion, anthill endlessly and meaninglessly busy.

Chapter 6, Verses 7 to 9 Coheleth says this to us all. A man's labor is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage does the wise man have over the fool? What advantage does the poor man have knowing how to walk before living? What the eye sees is better than what the soul desires. This too is futility and striving after the wind.

Theologically for us as believers. There is more to work than eating. As believers. To work is to imitate God. He's a worker. It's to serve other people. It's to have a place to share our faith. It's to do what God made us good at and

to enjoy. I mean, there's other reasons theologically when you know Christ to

work. But apart from knowing Christ, he says we just work to eat. If I'm climbing a corporate ladder in Singapore or following my goats on Mount Elgon in Kenya, I'm just working to eat. I've got mouths to feed. My own kids, my spouse, my parents. Perhaps I've got mouths to feed. And so I'm just striving for that. There's no ultimate eternal advantage for a person who doesn't know Christ. I'm just fighting to go to death. I'm going to. Gone after all that board, all those boardrooms or all those chasing a lost goat, I'm just gonna be gone.

So he also says to us in verse 8, listen, the wise person has more pain than the foolish person. Why? Because she knows more, and the more you know, the more pain in life. The more you see, the more pain in life. A medically trained person. Is helping somebody, The person says my back hurts. The medically trained person knows a lot more, which is that your back hurts because you have a massive metastasized tumor. They know more, it's more

pain. The counseling trained person knows more that the couple comes in and says we're not getting along. The counselor helps them and realizes the reason they're not getting along is they both have deeply ingrained childhood promises that they're not willing to give up. They know too much.

I know my car won't start. The mechanic plugs in a cord and says, yeah, it's because the entire wiring system is burned up. They know more. And the more I know, the more pain I experience in all of that. More knowledge, more pain. Verse eight, death levels the playing field for every person. In the end, it levels the playing field. The wise person and the fool, they're going to die. Strong in the weak die rich and the poor die well known and absolutely unknown.

They will die. Death levels the playing field for all of us. He's talking about this contrast between the rich and the poor. You have a street savvy kid who got kicked out of the house at 13 and he's made his way in the world for 10 years. He slept in cars, he slept in post offices. He's just scraped along. He's Street savvy.

And then you have a trust fund baby who doesn't even know how to change a car tire. They're both going to die. I mean, I put my money on the street, kid, as far as survival, but they're both going to die in the end.

Verse 9, “What I see in my life right now, which means that which I have, what I see in my life right now is better than what my soul desires, meaning that which I don't have.” He's talking to us about the fact that we are wanting machines. I have stuff, but what my mind and heart seem to go to is the stuff that I don't have. If I sat down and wrote everything I have, it would take a week, friends, because of God's generosity. But if I sat down and wrote everything I wanted. Might take a week. We're just wanting machines. The stuff that I have loses its glitter and the stuff that I don't have seems so shiny. I've got a perfectly serviceable car and then I ride in my buddy's new pickup. I come home and say, honey, I need a new pickup. I didn't know I needed a

new pickup until I wrote in it. And then wow, wow, this is amazing. And so we become, we become these wanting machines.

If I'm an unregulated wanting machine, I will be miserable. It's not wrong to want but. It is wrong not to regulate my wanting because I can be very, very good about wanting. And Coheleth says here, it's missed, it's vapor, it's chasing after wind. It's like sending me outside with a gunny sack saying, Dave, bring me a bag of wind. That's what it is. If my wanting is unregulated, Derek Kidner, the trouble is that to arrive. In any intimate and satisfying

sense is beyond our power.

Whatever we achieve will melt away as vanity and chasing wind, whether it's a poor person's self help or a rich person's success. His conclusion? Without God, life is a constant motion human anthill. It is endlessly busy, endlessly meaningless. You might as well live in an Ant pile with 300,000 other ants who are going every direction and nobody knows why. You might as well live in that ant hill as living life.

Third thing he says, life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, paraphrasing verses 10-12)   here's his third comment about life that comes out of verses 1011 and 12.

Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. This is

Macbeth paraphrasing Coheleth. Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in about 1606. Cohelith wrote this in about 19, about nine, 35935 BC. Here's what he says to

us. I want to read you verses 11-12. “Whatever exists has already been named. And it is known what man is, for he cannot dispute with him who is stronger than he is. For there are many words which increase futility. And when it is, what is an advantage to a man? For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life?

He will spend them like a shadow, for who could tell a man what will be after him under the sun? I'm a person who says if I don't have God, my life is just. Sound and fury signifying nothing. He starts out by saying, first of all, this is not defeatism. This is not saying let's all give up. This is realism, let's be connected with what is real, he says. First of all, I can talk and talk and talk, but it's all missed. It's all an enigma. I don't fix anything by talking. Coheleth is basically dismissing all the fine speeches of man that says we're doing

good. 

Unbelievable things that happened across the world. 1933 is the middle of the depression. 1939 World War 2 is going to start. Go to 1945. Every day in every way everything is getting better and better. I don't think so. They revised the Humanist manifesto 3 times to address new stuff, and every time Coheleth is laughing.

Every time Cohelith is saying to them, hey, revise away, you're insane, but you might as well feel like you have some impact on the insanity. Revise a way. He's dismissing all of that. Verse 10. There's nothing we can do to alter how the world was made, or to alter how we ourselves were made, or to alter how

we're going to end.

This is all fixed by God. It's all taken care of. It's all done. You might have a really clever name for the platypus, but Adam took care of that millennia ago. He already named it. You may think the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea should be changed around. It's fixed. God took care of that. There's all these things that are created that are made. There's really nothing to be done about it.

Some people are stronger than you, some people are weaker than you, he says. But you're about where you're going to be. I mean, you can lift some weights and maybe move up the ladder a little bit, but you're going to get old and move down the ladder. You're about where you're going to be on your strength. There's nothing you can say to undo anything. You can talk for 60 miles an hour for years and not undo anything. Words are not going to help. Apart from God, we have no idea what's coming.

What will happen this afternoon? I have no idea. Tomorrow I have no idea. I did a little research if your grandparent died in 1985. That's 40 years ago. If your grandparent died 40 years ago, here's what they didn't see coming.

The worldwide Internet, mobile broadband devices, GPS for civilian use, hybrid cars, 3D printing, end of the Cold War, dissolution of the USSR, rise of globalization, cloning of sheep, artificial intelligence and businessman Donald

Trump becoming president twice. They didn't know that was coming. That's 40 years, what's coming in our lifetimes, what's coming. We have no idea what's happening this afternoon. We know we've planned this afternoon, but we're not sure exactly what is coming this afternoon. We don't know about tomorrow. Whether atheist or theist or pantheist or pantheist or polytheist, agnostic, you have no idea what's coming this afternoon.

God knows, but we don't have any idea. And the temptation in that is to sort of get contentious with God. We're going to put our first in the face of God and say, I don't like this. I don't like the way my life is going, I don't like what you've done. Sort of cop an attitude, like Job, cop an attitude and spend these 40 chapters saying, well, I've been a righteous person, why did God do this?

And then God shows up in chapters 404142 and Job says, I put my hand on my mouth. He says in paraphrase. I didn't know what I was talking about.

I heard about you from the hearing of the year, but now I see you, and I put my hand on my mouth. Or as is written in Isaiah 45, woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker. I cannot accuse God of what's going on in

my life or what happened to me.

Core idea, friends.

The accurate assessment of life on couples from God is that life is a

tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing uncoupled from God. But if I connected to God, it's completely different. It's completely different in terms of hope and eternity. It's precisely the same in terms of your car breaking down or your foundation cracking. It's all the same. We just have a resource in Capital R, God himself, to help us with all this struggle going on.

And so I want to, in conclusion, ask you to think about this question. Brian Johnson can't live forever, $2,000,000 a year. I don't care. It's not going to work. He cannot live forever. But God says there is a way to live forever,

and it doesn't cost 2 million a year. It's free. It's free. It costs Jesus a crazy amount.

Was free to us, John 14-6 Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth. And the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. It's your only option. He says I'm the way, I'm the single route to God, the single path to God. You know the famous saying that says God's on top of a mountain and there's a whole bunch of ridges that go up to the top. And I can take any way up that I want. I can take Jesus or I can take Mohammed. I can take Buddha. I can take it. Animal sacrifice. I can take whatever I want. I can take any. Ridge I want to the top and Jesus says that is a lie of Satan. There's only one way to God. Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except by me. Now friends, I made a decision a long time ago which has been extremely helpful to me. I decided to believe everything Jesus believes. So if Jesus believes he's the only way to God,

then I believe that as well. He believes in Satan. Therefore I do. He believes in the creation of the world by God, therefore I do. He believes in His own return to get us, therefore I do. He believes in the indwelling Holy Spirit there.

Therefore I do everything that he believes, I've decided to believe. He believes He's returning for us, so I do too. He believes in new heaven and earth. I do too. I'm trying to say to myself, if Jesus believed in it, I will also. And he believed he was the only way to the father. And therefore that's what I believe. I'm inviting you to think about what you believe, he said. Secondly, I'm the truth. He's the embodiment of truth, the perfect teller of truth. He's the being who has a perfect understanding of what is true, what is truth? It's an accurate description of what actually exists. It's an accurate description of what is real, and Jesus says he is the accurate description of everything that is real whatever Jesus believes? I also believe he is the perfect understanding of reality.

Now friends, reality does not know or does not care what I believe. If I say I do not believe in Volkswagens, Volkswagens don't care. They don't know. They don't care. Either Volkswagens exist or they don't. It's completely uncoupled

from what I believe if I say I don't believe in the existence of God.

What have I changed? Either God exists or he doesn't. What I believe has no impact on the existence of God, no impact on the existence of Volkswagens. I don't control stuff by what I believe. I've had many people say to me I don't believe in the existence of God. What I really want to say is he's going to

be just depressed when he finds out, which is a joke in himself because he's omniscient. He already knows you don't believe in him.

But what I do say to them is this. What you believe does not impact reality, and God still believes in you.

I don't change anything by what I believe, I only fight to believe what is actually true. And Jesus is the perfect truth teller, so I want to believe what he believes #3 He says I am the life. Jesus naturally possesses life in himself. To be Jesus is to have the trait of living. 

He's the creator of physical life, BIOS, biological life. He's a creative agent in Genesis, and he's the creator of spiritual life. He's the one who paid the price on the cross for my sin so that he could create for me spiritual life. I couldn't do it myself, but he himself is the agent who did it. I believe what Jesus believes. He believes He is the source of life and therefore that's what I believe as well. As a believer in Jerusalem 450 AD, his name was nothing but

nothing. But the help sent from heaven is able to save us. Jesus said I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Without Jesus, life is a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing with Jesus.

Is actual life, actual meaning, actual hope, actual joy, actual eternity? And so the key issue is, am I taking, am I tackling this world in which we live with Jesus or without him? That's the key issue.

Now, I don't know all of you, here, some of you I do know. I know that you have embraced Jesus, that you've said yes, He is the way, the truth and the life. If you have not, I would love to speak to you. I would love to speak to you right after this service and just have a conversation about what Jesus says about himself and about the question of how do I spend eternity with him and the question of how do I have a meaningful life in this very challenging world. Please come talk to me. I would love to speak to you. Let me pray for us.

My father, thank you for Coheleth. He's a little depressing some days, Father, but he's helping us. And so I pray we would be people who learn from what you had him write these millennia ago. Guidance, as we think about our life in this world. Guidance as we think about our relationship with you and guide us as we think about what we're going to believe. Deeply grateful that you spoke to us, Deeply grateful that we're not in this difficult world without your book. So we praise you in Christ name, Amen.

“Grace is the absolute and unforced favor gained by Christ’s death and resurrection, allowing God to be completely for us and endlessly in love with us, apart from anything we must prove.

Grace is an actual reality, a way of life in which we no longer strive for acceptance. We mature, heal. and are released into His intentions by trusting that all the power of Jesus is fused in us, creating an entirely new person,”