In this sermon Pastor Babij teaches on the eighth way to resist the enemy: believe in and hold to the promises of God. Pastor encourages Christians not to live by sight but by faith since living by sight blinds Christians to eternal realities.
Full Transcript:
Let’s read 1 Peter 5:6-11:
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. 8Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. 10After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. 11To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Let’s pray:
Father, as we come before Your word, we know, Lord Father, that Christ is the One who gives us not only entryway into Your presence because He’s the door, but by His spirit, the word of God is illuminated to us. It’s brought to life for us as Your children. I pray, Lord, as that happens, we would give our full attention to it. Lord, that we would not be ignorant of the truth found in the word of God, but we would be very aware of them to the point where we are actually putting them into practice, especially, Lord, this one that we are looking at of resisting the enemy. Specifically, Lord, in the times of trouble, suffering, and trials that he may come against us. I pray, Lord, we would be ready to resist them at that day. Lord, as we do, we know we don’t come in our own strength. We come in the strength of our Lord. As we put on the whole armor of God, as we put on Christ, we are able to stand up against him, and as we do that, he does flee from us. However, he will be back, so, Lord, continue to allow us to grow in the strength of the truth of Scripture. I pray in Christ’s name, Amen.
We have been looking at the discipline of the Christian, especially in the realm of suffering. Peter has dealt with three major subjects in the Epistle of 1 Peter, which is that of salvation, submission, and suffering.
Suffering often brings up the question: why am I going through trials and tribulation? Well, that is not always answered the way we want it to be answered. There was a man in a prisoner camp during World War II outwits. His name was Primo Levi. During World War II, he described the time when huddled in his barracks and parched with thirst where he reached through the window for an icicle to provide some moisture for his mouth.
Before he could crack it to his lips, a guard snaps the icicle away and shoved him back from the window. Shocked by such unkindness, Levi asked the guard, “Why?” The guard responded, “Here, there is no why. You don’t even have the right to ask the question here.”
That’s probably the height of cruelty. However, that is how life seems sometimes. It feels as if we go through difficult times and suffering times with no reasonable answer as to why. It was Carl Sandberg who wrote the shortest poem in English literature:
Born,
Troubled,
Died.
That’s a pretty low view of life, isn’t it? Nonetheless, there’s some truth to it because there is mystery connected to suffering that one may never be able to explain. We need to be reminded that God’s power and wisdom is infinitely beyond ours, so the solution to suffering and doubts it raises are not found in the arguments or in our questions as to why. Rather, it is found in learning to rest and trust in God’s character and power even when we do not get the answers, and even when suffering remains mysterious, overwhelming, and the circumstances defy our understanding.
Thus, holding on to our confidence in the reality of the power, the presences, and the promises of God can really lift our experiences of suffering and hardship to a place that nothing else can. No other answer could adequately bring us there. We simply trust God because of His faithfulness, His character, and who He is in Scripture.
Remember, He is fully aware of the challenges we face. He allows them to come into our life for many purposes. In Christ, God is touched with the feelings of our infirmities. It says in Hebrews 4:15:
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
The trustworthiness of God is one of the lessons learned best in the crucible of suffering without getting an answer to the question, “Why?” Even though God sometimes gets it, He doesn’t always give it. In this explanation of this last area of suffering, in the Epistle of 1 Peter, he gave three exhortations: humility, vigilance, and resistance. We have been looking at resistance and 1 Peter 5:9 says:
But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
Why is there a call to resist the enemy and hold one’s ground? In this passage, it refers to the activity of the devil in trying to destroy a believer’s faith and lead them away from God. It’s to lead them into apostasy and even to deny faith in Jesus Christ. Our enemy is walking up and down the earth to spy out the weaknesses of God’s servants. He is looking for the weak, the careless, the desire, passion-driven, and world-influenced believer.
If one is to resist the enemy, they must be humble under the mighty hand of God. They must be balanced in their mind as they’re growing in Scripture, and they must know something about their personal enemy and the spiritual battle we enter when we become believers. Over the past weeks, we have learned to answer the question on how Christian’s are to resist. Already, we have considered seven ways Christians are to resist the enemy.
First, we are to resist the adversary in the faith. As I mentioned, the reason why most of the translations record “your faith” instead of “the faith” is because once the body of truth is delivered to the saints, it will not help you stand firm unless it resides in you. Unless you take ownership, unless you understand it, unless you practice, and if you have a rusty Bible sitting on your table, it will not help you against the enemy unless the body of truth resides in you, which is the point of having a transformed mind.
The truth of the word of God and the mind of Christ is being developed in believers, so I can stand firm against the lies that are going to come against me and tempt me to go the other way. In their movies, Hollywood holds up crosses and holds up the Bible to ward off evil spirits and demons. My friends, this is nothing but foolishness.
Remember, you have a personal enemy who is against you, who accuses you, and who has a dubious and a dangerous character. However, he is an enemy who nowhere comes near the power of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Greater He who is in you than he who is in the world.
It doesn’t say to get your enemy to laugh at you. It doesn’t even say to rebuke him or cast him out. In three places, it says to resist him firm in your faith. Christians are to resist the enemy by standing in the body of doctrine and beliefs that have been delivered to the church. Those beliefs become your beliefs, so you would develop strong convictions, which will bring you to a continual, loving trust in God and in Christ. Martin Lloyd-Jones said:
The devil often changes his mind and method. We ought to be aware when he does. Sometimes, he comes to you opposing you violently and condemning you. The next moment, he will come flattering you. Sometimes, he will inflame your passions to drive you with a sin. In the next time, he’ll come in a most subtle and enticing matter. He will achieve the same end before you know anything has happened. Sometimes, he will come and club you over the head in order to make you to do what he wants. The next time, he will employ the sweetest reasonableness. Sometimes, he will attack Scripture. The next time, he’ll be quoting Scripture. One minute, he tells us we are not good enough to be Christians. Another time, he tells us we are so good that we do not even need the death of Christ to save us. One moment, he will come to the Christian and say, “Don’t overdo yourself. Look after your health. Look after your interest. You do what you want to do. Don’t worry about all this Bible stuff.” The next moment, he’ll fill us up with carnival zeal and make us so busy that we ruin our health and perhaps not have any time to read, so we lose our grip on the truth and we don’t know where we are. One moment, he comes and fills us with doubts about the truth and about the faith. The next moment, he drives us to such extremes leaving us terribly unbalanced. One moment, he persuades us to take lack and be at ease. The next moment, he drives us to such a legalistic position that we become afraid to move because we are bound by law. The devil tempts to both extremes. Can we identify when he’s doing that even in our own mist? The enemy attacks the truth by spinning his own philosophies that can be any knowledge that human’s user to explain or articulate ideas and views. With great subtlety, Satan often injects his philosophy into the cesspool of cultural thought. The devil twists and contorts the truth out of its divine pattern. As some have said, a well fabricated lie contains 99% truth, so how you going to know when you’re being lied to?
In other words, there is no other defense to repel this particular attack against you except to take up and wield the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God and the Holy Spirit. That is the author of the truth. If you get to know the word of God, you will be able to detect the lies, all religious systems, philosophies, and worldviews that have been fooled around with by the devil.
Then, the implication is all religious systems, philosophies, and worldviews fall under the power of the evil one. Therefore, they are riddled with false words. In other words, lies masquerading as truth. As I’ve said, you can make a lie sound truer than truth itself. Thus, you’ll begin to slip if you are in doubt of the love of Christ towards you and if you are not established and convinced that He has accomplished eternal salvation for you. If you’re going to resist him, you must guard against slipping and falling in that way.
To resist him in the truth is vital for standing against the enemy. Secondly, we are to resist the adversary by discerning your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies towards sin. Then, fighting against them with the word of God. Thirdly, we are to resist the antagonist by maintaining a sanctified imagination. Fourthly, we are to resist the adversary by putting off sin and putting on righteousness. Then the fifth, sixth, and seventh way to resist the devil is by putting on Christ, warfare praying, and by prayer and fasting.
Now, we are going to look at the last on, and the eighth way the believer is to resist the devil is by believing in and holding to the promises of God. If you notice in this passage of Scripture, there is one promise with four parts, or we can say that there’s actually four promises. Maybe there’s more than that in this passage of Scripture.
However, promises are very important, especially during suffering and trials. Your success in spiritual battle will depend on your grasp of the promises that God gives us in the word of God, and faith to trust completely in the One who makes the promise. Really, the important thing about the promise is not the promise itself, but the one who makes it. The one who makes must keep it.
If a person doesn’t keep their word when they promise things, then you write him off because you have heard that promise so many times. However, when God makes a promise, I guarantee that He will accomplish that promise. In fact, the whole Bible attributes the promises of God as being accomplished historically.
Isaiah prophesied seven hundred years before Jesus Christ would come and die across, and that promise was literally kept. Thus, the Lord is going to keep His promises, but satan is really going to attack the promises of God by establishing a good amount of doubt against that promise. Like it says in 2 Peter 3:3-4:
Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, 4and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
They forget the worldwide flood and all the things that changed from then, and they forget history. Today, we’re divorced from history. Not only from Biblical history, but from our own history, which is why we’re repeating what history has already done. It’s become a vicious cycle.
In saying that, there are three things that are in play when a Christian is expressing Biblical faith. First, faith expresses the idea of God’s character. Faith always points to the character of God that He is truthful, He is unchanging, He is all-powerful, He is ever-present, and He is the God who is able and willing.
Also, faith expresses the idea of belief in God’s power. God’s able to pull off what He promises. If He doesn’t have the power to do that, then He cannot accomplish the promise, so we must believe in God’s power, which leads us to the third one. Faith is testing the idea of God’s promises.
Then, faith is believing that the promises of God are true simply because He says they are true, which is based on His character. As it says in Titus 1, He is a God who cannot lie to us. God can’t do some things. He cannot lie to us, so He has to tell us the truth all the time. Though, the truth can be very revealing and very painful at times.
It becomes vitally important for Christians to understand how they are to resist and stand their ground against the enemy, and it answers the question of what all this resisting and stand your ground actually means. While the Christian is to stand their ground firm in their faith, then we are to stand until we become solid, until we become strong, and until we become like an impenetrable wall that cannot be broken.
There are some things in our texts that will aid in our standing firm. Again, 1 Peter 5:9 says:
But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
It’s not simply saying that your brother and I are going through suffering somewhere else in the world, but that they’re going through it and they are accomplishing standing firm in God’s truth. Thus, it is an encouragement to us knowing that what I’m going through is not any different than what my brother and I are going through somewhere else in the world.
As I see them go through it and hear experiences of what they go through, I can stand strong. Also, some of the most motivating stories about continuing on the faith are people who were persecuted in the faith, kept going, and saw the blessings of God in their life. Sometimes their life was taken, but their life was taken in a way where they gave God all the glory and they trusted God.
They believed if it was the Lord’s will for them to leave this earth, then they wanted God’s name to be glorified. They knew death wasn’t the end, but that it was a doorway into the presence of God, which is a promise too. When we die, we don’t die and go to the grave like an animal and decay. Rather, we go into the presence of God. Our body will decay and go to the ground, but our spirit goes into the presence of God awaiting a resurrection of a new body. That’s the hope in the promises that God gives us, and they are true because of who said it.
Because of the fall of the human race through its sin, suffering is a common experience to all people. While we experience suffering in different degrees and in different forms, suffering is a universal human experience. It’s not only for the believers, but anywhere in the world, or in humanity, you will find suffering. Sometimes, it is suffering that we can’t even explain.
Christians are to know that our brothers and sisters in Christ have the same experience all over the world. Suffering Christians are to know something very personal that they are not alone in their suffering even with other believers. All Christians have the same burden to bear while we go through this world.
It’s not easy to live. Life is not a bowl of cherries. There are difficulties, and we all have to go through them. All of us have different things we go through. Nonetheless, all these things can strengthen our faith.
There’s something comforting in knowing that you’re not alone in your suffering with other brothers and sisters all over the world learning the same sort of things by suffering for the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thus, the encouragement to stand strong is that you’re not alone.
Secondly, in 1 Peter 5:10, you stand your ground knowing suffering is temporal and salvation is eternal:
After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ.
In that passage, we see several things that suffering is going to be a temporal thing. Even if it’s just temporal for this life, we know there will be no more suffering in the next life. The suffering will be done with. As Revelation tells us, there will be no tears, no death, and the curse will be gone, which is the promise that we hold onto to. So, suffering, as God is promising, will be short. The God of all grace has called you to His eternal glory.
Here’s a contrast being made between the promise, in this verse, and the present state of believers, which is of suffering. It is important for the Christian to know not only the temporary nature suffering, but the fact that deliverance is near.
In 1 Peter 5:10, God is the subject of the sentence. The God of all grace is every kind of grace, which is the God who is all grace, all kind, all mercy, all good, and all blessing. It’s the God who created the heaven and the earth. The God who sent Jesus Christ. It’s our Lord Jesus Christ, which means the God whose gifts are sufficient for every need and every situation. James 1:17 says:
Every good thing given, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
The God of all grace may be rendered the God who, in all things, is good, kind, and shows His love for us without holding back. Every single believer, in Christ Jesus, can claim that that God is only going to give me good things. He’s only going to give you what is good, especially since we don’t know what is good.
Usually, we choose the things that are not good for us, so grace means that God is giving you what you do not deserve. It’s His forgiveness based alone on Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice. Grace is that which God does for mankind through His son, which mankind cannot earn, does not deserve, and cannot merit.
When we are overwhelmed with God’s undeserved grace and goodness, it humbles us, and it makes us immensely grateful to God for forgiving us so much. We should deserve the penalty of sin, which is the eternal wrath of God in hell, but he rescued us from that.
Now, Satan can’t change the character of God, but he sure can try to get you to think about God incorrectly. His goal is to say:
God doesn’t care for you. God is good to others, but he’s not good to you. God has left you alone in your misery. You’re suffering means that God is treating you harshly and punishing you for your sin.
Even when God does discipline us for our sins, which He does, we know the reason is so that we may share in His holiness and grace, and so that we may be stronger in the faith. It is never to destroy His children. Rather, it is always to build them up and to drive out the sin that’s in their life, so they can be more holy, godly, and used by the Holy Spirit.
We must know who God is in His unchanging nature, what God has done, and what he will accomplish by Himself on your behalf. God, whose nature is altogether gracious and kind, called you to belong to Jesus Christ. The same God also called you to share in His eternal glory.
Eternal marks the contrast between their suffering, which is only temporary, and their vindication, which will last for all time. A short little suffering for an eternity of spending time with God in goodness and grace. The comparison falls apart if you try to say that everything happens here on earth.
God himself called you in Jesus Christ, which means that Christians are in union with Christ. Actually, it indicates the means by which God’s eternal glory is shared in union with Christ. Thus, God has called you, and as God, the Father pursues us in His grace, God brings people to Himself in all kinds of different ways. It’s the same message, but different ways.
When we cry out to God for salvation, it is because He first called out to us. God pursues, God seeks, and God finds us. That’s what he does. I often tell people in my testimony:
When I heard the Gospel for the third time, one thing about what was going on in my mind at that time was that I wasn’t looking for God. Then I found out when I trusted Christ, He was looking for me.
That was really overwhelming to me to say that I thought I didn’t need anything. I thought I was doing fine. Yet, God was looking out for me. John 6:44 says:
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.
It’s the Father who has called us to salvation through Christ, and no one can be saved and be made right with God unless they do come to Jesus Christ. In saying all of that, I come full circle again to 1 Peter 5:10 where he addressed the last, but not the least of the ways to resist the adversary.
In other words, resist your adversary in the faithfulness of God’s promises. Stand your ground knowing God faithfully keeps His promises. Ultimately, that our hope stands in His strength and His reliability. Not our hold on him, but His hold on us. He saves and keeps us.
However, believing a promise that is still your future is hard, especially during times of difficulty and trial. There’s a fundamental question that needs to be raised then wrestled with: in this world, is faith or sight better?
Most would answer the question with sight since you can see with your own eyes. However, Jesus warned people who wanted a sign. He warned them about just seeing. In fact, people saw Jesus and still rejected Him. They saw the power and the miracles. Yet, they still rejected him.
People need to see to be convinced, but believing your senses alone have some serious weaknesses. Believe it or not, sight is limited. It can only see one direction. While looking at the front of your house, you cannot see the back or sides. Now, somebody can come alongside of you and tell you that your house has sides and a back. However, how do you know until you see it with your own eyes?
Sight looks at evidences, former opinions, and then draws conclusions with just observable realities and nothing further. More importantly, sight cannot make sense of the world. Can you make sense of suffering and wars just by looking? Can you make sense of needless injustices? In this world, we really can’t make sense of it just by looking and observing.
Thus, sight can’t make sense of the world. The reason being that it must exclude the invisible God from the picture. To answer the question from a Biblical perspective: faith is better than sight. Faith can look around corners. It can look further than sight. Faith sees the invisible power of God. Faith sees beyond the difficulties and counts on God. Faith does not operate on what is perceived whether good or evil, but on the basis of who God is, what God is doing, and what God says He’s going to do.
While we’re in this world, if it is true that the things that are unseen are more permanent than the things that are seen, and if we rely solely on sight, then in the end, sight would be discouraged over and over again because you’ll never see what you really want to see. In Hebrews, it says that faith is believing who God is and what He said. Once I believe God is and what God’s doing, then it moves me to a place that I could never be moved just by sight.
Habakkuk 2:4 is a well-known passage in the Bible, and it is mentioned in several other places because it’s such an important principle in the Christian life. In fact, you cannot live the Christian life without this principle. It says:
Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith.
The righteous shall live by faith. Once the prophet Habakkuk understood the Biblical principle of living by faith, his response was to worship God. His response wasn’t, “Lord, why didn’t you answer my question.” Rather, he understood that a righteous man learns to live by faith because God can be trusted. The prophet Habakkuk is called to faith in God’s promises. In turn, he gives one of the greatest statements of faith in Habakkuk 3:17-18:
Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
18Yet I will exult in the LORD,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
That is an odd ending, but it’s not odd if you understand that the righteous shall live by faith. In other words, he understood it. Meaning, the just shall live by faith. If everything goes wrong and all hell breaks loose, then as a believer, I will operate on the basis of faith, not sight. I will trust in Your character. I will trust in Your work. I will trust in Your promises, and I will do it with joy that causes me to worship You if nothing’s going right.
See, that’s what faith does. Faith is not about this moment or this immediate circumstance, but faith is about what God is doing elsewhere as well. Sight only looks right in front of us and around us, but it cannot see into the future unless they believe the promises of God by faith. That is the difference between living and living by faith.
Six hundred years later, Jerusalem, the same city Habakkuk had once lamented over the evil around him, which the Babylonians later destroyed, had been rebuilt just as God had promised. By the time of Jesus’ birth, Jerusalem was a bustling city under the thumb of the Roman Empire, which was not much different than the Babylonian Empire. The timing was right for God’s plan to burst on the scene.
When faith looks at the Cross, it sees more than terrible evil. Faith sees God at work and believes His promise. Faith sees why Christ came into the world. Faith reckons that if God has said, in Christ, that he will save His people from their sins, then that is exactly what He will do, which is exactly what he has done.
He will accomplish it by means of the perfect life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, God’s plan of the greater Exodus is focused in on the Cross and it is centered in on the person of Jesus Christ.
Bottom line, in this world, faith is better than sight. Faith will bring me right to the end of my life trusting in the promises of God. In the character of God, what he has done in the past, what He has accomplished, and what He said he will do in the future will happen. I will be there to experience it, and then when I’m in His presence, I will have sight. I will see Him as He is. Even now, God is limited a bit to our understanding, but I will see him as he is.
That is the hope that we have that no one can take away. Satan cannot rob that from us. That’s something we have forever. Also, Apostle Paul took the words of the prophet Habakkuk and said in Romans 1:16-17:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
The principal hasn’t changed. The righteous have always lived by faith. God’s people have always operated on the basis of faith in God’s word and character, and it will be so until Christ returns. So, we must learn to live that way.
When we suffer, when we go through trials, when we are engaged in spiritual warfare, the Lord will use it to strengthen our faith and bolster our faith to know that God himself will be our protector, defender, and deliverer. His promises will enable us to resist the enemy by learning and leaning on the promises of God in faith and by faith.
If God himself called you to share in His eternal glory, God promises to perform four actions on behalf of all true believers on the day of their vindication. There are four future, active verbs all relating in meaning and marked in a very significant way that God cares for His people. At the end of 1 Peter 5:10, God is personally responsible for what he says here:
will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
First, God will himself outfit us and perfect us. Literally, it means to restore, put something in order, or mend something that has been torn. For instance, a fisherman mends their nets, which is the word used in Mark 1:19. Also, it means repairing and recommissioning a damaged ship.
In other words, God will himself renew your strength and repair the damage done by your suffering, faltering, and stumbling by making you fit for service, His presence, and glory. God will fix everything for you again, and He promises to do that. For instance, God is sculpting us and chipping away at everything that does not look like a Christian. Suffering leads us to make God our all and prepare us for glory.
Secondly, He will confirm us, which means to strengthen, to make firm, to establish, and fix again. These are very similar things, which is why people say it is one promise. It denotes the action of God in keeping Christians firm and steady in their faith. As we walk by faith, God is keeping us in the faith. You will not be like a twig in the wind. You will be like a mighty oak. You shall not be shaken by alarms, tripwires or the flaming darts of the enemy. You will stand firm because God is helping you do that.
Thirdly, He promises to strengthen us. Simply, it means to make strong. In the whole New Testament, this word occurs only here, and it denotes the idea of God giving them strength to bear all their suffering without wavering in their faith. God causes you to be psychologically and mentally balanced, and spiritually strong in your will, in your thoughts, and in your convictions. He’s helping you to do that.
Lastly, God promises to establish us firmly and make a solid foundation that will not cave. In other words, our life is not built on the sand where when the winds come, and the waves come, it blows our house down. Rather, our life is built on a strong foundation where when the winds come, and the waves come, nothing gets knocked off its foundation because God has established you. God makes sure that you are firmly rooted in the strong foundation of trust and confidence in Him.
He causes you not to be moved at all in your faith in Christ, and to be so equipped not just after suffering, but while you’re going through it. He equips you for the little time of suffering. Then, you will be ready for your eternal inheritance and glory while you are with God. Of course, Habakkuk broke out in worship, so Peter breaks out in doxology and worship in 1 Peter 5:11
To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
There’s nothing else you can say after that. All you can do is bow and worship God:
Thank you, Lord. Thank You that You have done this. I don’t have to keep the plates spinning. You do it for me. You, Yourself, are involved very intimately in my life to take me from point A to B, which is right into Your presence.
That is what the Scripture teaches us so that we may go out to that world and live our life not based on sight, but on faith in Him. Let’s pray:
Lord Jesus, thank You for the word of God. I must admit, it is a tremendous inspiration to be able to read the words of Scripture and be encouraged by them in this day in which we live. Lord, You answered the question to the why of suffering by reminding us of who You are and what Your promises are. Lord, I thank You for being the God who will do what You say You’re going to do, and we can trust You fully. You’re not going to take a left turn on us. You’re not going to leave us in the dust or in the dark, but You’re going to keep us firmly established upon what You have done. I pray, Lord, help us to be faithful. Help us to be people who genuinely live by faith because this is what all the saints have done, and they have made it. Now, those who have died are in Your presence, and those who are still here on earth, Lord, will someday be in Your presence. We are in Your presence anyway, but I mean, Lord, as long as we’re in this body, we have to live by faith. Someday, we’ll see You and that’s going to be a glorious day. We look forward to that day, Lord. I pray, Lord, for You to enable us by these passages of Scripture, to be encouraged, and to press-on no matter what, and live our life with our heart, mind, and soul for the Lord, Jesus Christ. I pray this in Your great name, Amen.