Prescription for Anxiety — J. Glyn Owen

Our subject this morning is really the title of the book that was written in the United Kingdom a few, quite a number of years ago, entitled Prescription for Anxiety. And we are going to base our meditation upon words that are found in the psalm that we read together a little earlier.

You'll find the words repeated in verse 11, but they appear first of all in verse 7 in Psalm 46. And according to the New International Version, the rendering goes thus,. The Lord Almighty is with us.

The God of Jacob is our fortress. Same in verse 11. The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. We are living in a world that is full of anxiety, full of apprehensiveness and worry, and it is more than probable that many of us who are present here this morning would have to confess that our hearts know something about this.

The Burden of Anxiety in a Troubled World

In some cases, our fears and anxieties arise out of ignorance. Things are not as bad as we think they are. We are imagining things, it may be. And if only we knew a little more, we need not be as harassed and as worried as we are.

But in many cases, it is the most knowledgeable people that worry most. This is one of the outstanding features of this matter of worrying in the 20th century. Time was when the folk who worried were dubbed as largely ignorant, but nowadays the folk who worry most and are most concerned and pessimistic about the future are invariably the most sophisticated and the most knowledgeable.

And in the light of what they know, they are jittery. And they're not backward in sharing with us the reasons for their fears and their anxieties. No reasonable person, therefore, will doubt the overwhelming burden of worry that envelops the world this morning.

It's not only found in one quarter of the world, one part of the world, one segment or section, nor indeed among one segment of any given society. It's fairly general. But it is very evident nowadays among those who know most about political affairs and about what is happening and what can happen in the light of current tendencies.

In our own situation, there are so many things that cause us to worry. One of the challenging features of our day and age, speaking here now in Canada and in North America, perhaps in the Western world, and indeed more general than that too, but one of the most sad features is the breakup of family life.

And the family, the home, has ceased to be in our day the kind of haven of peace and a renewal that it was meant to be in the will of God and has been. When we left Westminster Chapel in London, one of the aging beacons there, and you know when you get on in years you have a knack of repeating things.

My good friend was very often repeating certain things. He was very far on in years and had been quite a politician in his time and had spent probably years of his of his life sitting in the House of Commons.

I remember him referring to one particular man in public affairs in Britain who got involved in challenging certain things that were going on in society. I shall not refer to details. For a period of years, he was the butt of attack from the newspaper, from the media, from every quarter conceivable.

They poked fun at him, they dragged him through the mud, they dragged his name through the mire, they charged him with this and they charged him with that. But one thing was evident. Whenever he came to the House of Commons and stood up, he was full of optimism and of grace and of charm.

And he really caused the people to wonder, how can this man come up smiling every day? And it was every day. When everybody seems to be opposed to him, with just a few exceptions, it was following the death of his wife that the secret came out.

He said in public that he had lost not only a wife who had been a partner, but a wife who had been a faithful partner and a helpmate, and had been responsible for the healing of his wounds at the end of every day.

And he said, however lacerated in spirit I might have been when I got home at the end of the day, my wounds were always healed before I went out the next morning. What a testimony to a partner. You see, we don't know very much of that today.

The institution of the home has been attacked, and when we are lacerated, and when we are wounded, we have to go home to some scrabbles and scraps, and we quarrel, and we know very little of this, the meaning and the fulfillment of the divine institution of family life.

Over and above this, of course, there are worries that emerge in most of our homes in the bringing up of children, in the education of our children, finding a job for them when they've been educated, and so forth.

There is the growing unruliness of society. It's not safe to go out at night, whether you travel by subway, or whether you walk on the street, or whether you drive in your own car. Somebody was telling me about something that happened in the 401 the other day, and he was traveling quite happily in the right direction, and here is somebody who's really gone nuts, coming in the wrong direction.

Of course he was drunk. But in a world such as this, you never know what's happening next. And when once that kind of thing happens to you, your nerves tend to be frayed. You really don't feel safe or secure anywhere.

Then there are our national and international problems. The advent of this nuclear age has catapulted us into a situation which is a thousandfold more menacing than anything our forefathers knew. Atomic and nuclear stations can break down.

You know that. I know that. With possibly catastrophic consequences beyond anything that most of us have imagined. And here it is the knowledgeable that fear most. Or still nuclear weapons can decimate and destroy a whole civilization in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

It can be done. Many of us are thinking nowadays about the horrors of nuclear war. Somewhere in the back of most of our minds, I suppose, there is the question, will it come? Will it happen? And if it will, will it be soon?

With five nuclear, seven nuclear submarines on either side of the American, Canada, Pacific, and the Atlantic, whose bombs can reach every city in Canada and in America in a few moments. It's no wonder that we feel our nerves a little frayed.

And as for that kind of war, you know, the books are telling us that the good news is that you will be destroyed. If you die in a nuclear war, that is the good news. The bad news is if you don't, if you have to live with the consequences, with the fruit, if you have to come back to consciousness and face the kind of thing that will have to be faced following a nuclear holocaust, that's the bad news.

Now these are not my terms. These terms are written into the literature on the subject today, and you can find it anywhere. I was flabbergasted to read the other day that for every man, woman, and child in the world, now take this, for every man, woman, and child in the whole wide world, there is today the equivalent of 10 ,000 tons of TNT in the world.

You can't have all that destructive matter in this little planet of ours and expect peace to continue. I also read something else, and this frightened me a little more than anything. I read of the military high-ups on this North American continent simulating the kind of thing that they may have to face over the next 10 years.

And because of the amount of destructive material in the world, they found that they were unable to unleash their atomic weapons to kill the enemy without destroying a large fraction of their own people as well at the same time.

All this is in simulating situations that may arise, and when they found it necessary to unleash atomic bombs, they could only do so by destroying a vast multitude of their own people at the same time.

You see what's happening? Causes of concern, causes of anxiety. One could go on, and I don't want to pursue that, but let's face the fact we do not come to this text this morning without recognizing that we are living in an age when there are reasons for anxiety.

The Lord of Hosts Is the Answer to Fear

But there is an answer too. The Lord of hosts, says the psalmist, is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge or our fortress. The answer to fear and anxiety lies in the assurance that there is one whom we can speak of as the Lord of hosts and the God of Jacob.

And if only we can be on his side, if only we can make sure that he and we are working together in harmony and in fellowship, that we are on his side doing his will, living as he called upon us to live, serving as he called upon us to serve, doing what he's called upon us to do, then we have nothing to worry about.

Let me explain. First of all, I would like you to look at the psalmist's twofold designation of God. The Lord Almighty or the Lord of hosts, the God of Jacob. The conviction that quelled the fears of this ancient songster and gave him a sure anchorage in the storm that had overtaken him has to do with the nature of God in the first place and then with being rightly related to God so that God is with him.

And he was sure of that. Let's look at these. First of all, God is the Lord of hosts, the Lord Almighty. In this designation, the psalmist attaches to the covenant name of God, translated here, Lord. He's attaching to that a word meaning hosts and thus signifying the all-mightiness of the covenant God, utter adequacy of the one who has entered into covenant with his own, his total sufficiency to meet any exigency.

In order to fulfill his promises and complete his purposes. This language becomes popular with the prophets. But the question is, how did this particular aspect of God's nature help quell the quivering fears of the psalmist?

And how can it do so for us? Well, the answer lies in the fact that he is Lord of hosts and he's God of Jacob. Look at the first, the Lord of hosts. It's interesting to follow that word through in the scriptures.

I'm not going to do it exhaustively this morning. That would not be possible. But I want you to notice that it is used quite often in the Old Testament of armies. It's used, for example, in one Samuel 1745, David said to the Philistine, You come against me with the sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of hosts.

Or as the NIV says, the God of the armies of Israel. The references to armies, the host and the command. Then again, in other places, the same word is used of the host, the starry hosts, the stellar system, the planets, the constellations.

Bildad the Shuhite asks Job, for example, he makes a statement first and then he asks the question, Dominion and all belong to God, says Bildad. He establishes order in the heights of the heaven. And then he goes on, can his forces in the heavens, and the word is hosts, can his forces, that's how the NIV translates it, be numbered upon whom does his light not shine.

The same Hebrew word is translated force, as translated forces. Can his forces be numbered is the word that we are considering, meaning the elsewhere translated hosts. Isaiah seems to use the same word in the same sense.

In the famous chapter 14 verse 26, Isaiah says, lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these things? He brings out the starry hosts one by one, and he calls them each by name. Because of his great power and his mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

And in chapter 45 and verse 12, he's got a similar thought. It is I, says the Lord, who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens, I marshaled their starry hosts.

But I think that you have the most comprehensive use of it in such places as Genesis chapter 2, and the opening word, the opening verse. But the NIV rendering of Genesis 2 -1 goes thus,. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and their vast array.

Now the words vast array come from the Hebrew word elsewhere translated hosts. What does this mean? It means this, that the Lord is the creator of the ends of the earth, and of all things on the earth, and in the heavens, and behind the heavens, and in the starry firmament.

He's the Lord of all. He's the Lord of the hosts. There isn't an army but that he masters it. There isn't a constellation but that he's responsible for it. There isn't anything in outer space but that he is Lord of it.

There is nothing that can emerge from anywhere but that he is Lord of it, and Lord over it. But that's where we must begin. We conclude from that brief excursus that the reference to God as Jehovah of hosts or as the Lord Almighty is all-inclusive.

The word encompasses every created thing or person, angelic or human. It includes the stars and the galaxies in space, as well as the armed forces of men on earth. And the Russian forces is the Lord God Almighty.

I couldn't live if I didn't believe that. He who commands the American forces is the Lord of the heaven. And if you don't believe that, you might as well shut shop. He has sovereign control, and there is no army that can move without his permission.

Of course, the pointed question is this. This man could say the Lord of hosts is with us, but can you and I say that he is with us? Now that's where the rub comes in. See, are we walking with him? Do you know him by name?

Do you talk to him? Are you on speaking terms with him? Would you know if he were with you? Would you know if he were not with you? Do you know God? Know him enough to recognize his presence? If the Lord of hosts is with us, then the major cause for fear is gone.

The God of Jacob and Transforming Grace

But that's not everything the psalmist has to say. I want you to notice the second designation of God as the God of Jacob. Now, if you know your Old Testament, and if you know anything about Jacob, you really, you really should have a question mark about the propriety of this designation.

Why on earth does God let himself be known as the God of Jacob? There's nothing in Jacob to be proud of. I wouldn't want my name linked up to Jacob, would you? You wouldn't if you knew him. But God is known as the God of Jacob.

Why God of Jacob? If he desired to stress the covenant bond between God and his people, would it not have been better to refer to the God of Abraham? Because it was Abram, it is with Abram that God began anew.

He made his promises to Abraham. Abraham was the recipient of the promises. After all, Abram was the father of the nation. Well, why not refer to him as the God of Abraham? That would make sense. Or, if you want to change that, if there was any reason for changing that, why not speak of him as the God of Isaac, the miracle child?

Because the promises that God made to Abram could not be fulfilled until there was a first child. And Sarah was barren, and she was past age, and could not possibly, humanly speaking, bring forth a child.

But God made a promise that she would. And my, he kept them on the string for a long, long, long, long time. And it became more, and more, and more impossible, until you say at the end, it will never happen.

But it did happen, you see. And little Isaac was born. Now, surely this would be meaningful to speak of God as the God of Isaac, the God of the miracle child, the God who kept his first promise that made all the other promises possible.

Surely there would be meaning to that. But here he comes in, and he speaks of God as the God of Jacob. Why do that? Now, I have to tell you some things about Jacob that I have no delight in telling you.

You say, why then are you going to say them? Because it's necessary for the exposition of my text. It is necessary for us to remind one another of the kind of man Jacob was. We do not gloat as if we were better than he, but we take the testimony of Scripture.

He was a supplanter from his birth. He was a swindler from the womb. The son of Isaac and Rebekah was a crooked, grasping cheek of a fellow from the time he was a young boy. If you think that those terms are going too far, let me remind you of holy where Isaiah in chapter 41 and verse 14 speaks of him, thou worm, Jacob.

The Holy Spirit speaks of him as a worm. You wouldn't like anyone to call you a worm of a man or a worm of a woman, somebody who lives underground in the darkness and slithers his way around quietly, you know.

You wouldn't like that, would you? This was a worm of a man. The man who could cheat his father, his twin brother, and his uncle as Jacob did is utterly perverted, and this man was totally perverted. Nevertheless, the God who entered into covenant with Abraham reiterated his intentions to Isaac.

Did not have to revise his plans one iota when this guy came out of the womb, this Jacob, the supplanter, the cheat. God says, I can cope with him too, and little by little he sets the wheels of providence are going until at last I'm concentrating, I'm bringing the whole thing into a nutshell, until at last when the wheels of providence have wrought and God has visited him in Bethel and in Peniel, out of the cheat comes a prince with God.

See, our God is not only able to deal with the hosts outside of us, but with the heart inside of us. He did it for Jacob, a cheat, a swindler, the worm. Indeed, I suppose of all the statements of Scripture that really challenge one, this is one that challenges me.

You know, what about you? God loved Jacob, loved Jacob. He hated Esau, a sportsman, a man who loved to go out with his friends and shoot game and come back home, jovial and happy and easygoing. He never quarreled with Esau.

Esau didn't believe anything so much enough as to bother to quarrel with you. Esau was all easygoing. Wherever you met Esau, you get on with Esau, all right? But Jacob, so different. He never knew what was going on in his mind, what scheme was being fabricated.

But God loved Jacob. How can God love worms like that? I don't know, but I know he loved me too. Now, I am not here concerned with the details, but only with the principle involved. God had no need to revise his plans when he came to Jacob because he was able to cope with a heart of Jacob and the fallen nature and perverted nature of Jacob, just as he's able to be the Lord of the hosts of the universe.

The Lord of the hosts is the Lord of the heart. These two designations of God, therefore, bring together the infinite power and indestructible grace of God. Now, the psalmist said, the Lord of hosts is with us.

And the God of Jacob is our fortress. Not just a place to hide in, but a fortress is a place where there are resources to build up again. God is a fortress where Jacob can not only come and get rid of his sin, but build himself up as a man anew, a prince with God, a fortress.

Because of the knowledge of God that the psalmist could dare say this kind of thing. We're not afraid, he says. It's because of a faith such as that that Psalm 46 came to birth. Whether he sang it first or wrote it first, I do not know, but this is where it came from.

He knew God to be this kind of God. And he will only sing or write a psalm such as this whose knowledge of God is of this same order. Now, that brings me to say this. This twofold designation of God corresponds to the unchanging and universal needs of men.

All our problems and therefore all our fears arise either from the hosts around us or the heart inside of us. But if we may know God to be this kind of God and be related to him as the psalmist was related to him, here is a place where we may have peace in prospect of whatever comes.

Anxiety from the World Around Us

Prescription for anxiety. Let me repeat a few things about the terror arising from the hosts outside of us. I suppose that we are more afraid than our forefathers were of certain things because certain things have not come into existence in their day, such as nuclear power.

But there is another factor too. Many of our forefathers, not all of them, but many of them, probably most of them, didn't know the next continent said by name. Oh, they may have read. They knew there were certain continents.

But you see, you and I don't only know the continents of the world, but they all come into our dwelling places, our homes, our apartments. A box brings them in and we have all the troubles of the world not only taking place around us, but they're all coming in and they're happening in our kitchen or in our living room or in our den or whatever, sometimes in our bedrooms before we go to sleep.

The world comes crashing into our living rooms. The war in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the war between Iraq and Iran. We have some Iraqis here, pray for them, and we have some Iranians here, pray for them. They have people back home at war.

The devastation in Lebanon and Beirut. We've seen these things. We've seen them. There they are. And I've been sitting in my easy chair and looking at it and seeing all this hideous thing taking place before my eyes.

It's right there. I can almost put my hand on that bloody mess I see on the screen and touch it, and it comes so near. And you can see these big belly little children in places like Abyssinia and in other parts of the world and in India, and they come into your home and you see them and you see the starving look of these poor pallid cheeks.

Some of our fathers might have known about them, but they didn't come into their kitchens. They might have read about them, but they never saw what you and I see. I have seen the dark side of the moon sitting in my study, haven't you?

It's incredible, but it's true. But you see, you can't take all this in. You can't be bombarded by all these facts without being a bit afraid. If you're not afraid, your thinking processes are not functioning as they ought.

If you're not afraid, your imagination has been switched off somewhere. If your imagination and your mind are functioning as they ought, and your conscience, you and I ought to be afraid. Humanly speaking, some of these things we see are positively nauseating, and we could go on.

But, but, but, you see, the psalmist got the answer. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. The hosts of heaven and earth have struck terror into the hearts of thinking people, so that life has become a terror to multitudes.

But the psalmist knew the answer. A terror arising from the tendencies within us. Oh yes, it's true to say that not all man's troubles come from outside. The stars and the constellations may frighten us by their mystery and immensity.

The creation that surrounds us, personal and impersonal, can make us dimly pessimistic about the future. The military potential of friendly and unfriendly nations. All this. But there is a cause of dire trouble which is much nearer home.

It lies in our own hearts. Though life has changed much in the intervening years since this psalmist wrote his song, and since Jacob lived in the Old Testament days, there is no evidence that the type illustrated by Jacob is anywhere near becoming extinct.

On the contrary, it is most prevalent in our own day and age, even right here in North America, in Canada, in Toronto. There are people who come from the womb to grab and to cheat and to make everything their own, careless of anything that happens to anybody else but number one.

And they would build up their own little empire and let everybody else go to hell and to smithereens. Only they can have their pot of gold. We live in an age like that. An age that has got drunk on ammon and on gold.

Brothers and sisters, we become insensitive to it. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of boys and girls dying of hunger today because we are worshipping gold. Oh yes, we still have Jacob's with us.

We still have Cheats with us grasping. Oh, listen, the God of hosts can change the heart of Jacob. I see Zacchaeus coming out from this first interview with the Lord Jesus. If I've stolen anything from anybody, if I've been extortionate in my business and I've rubbed too far and I've been too sour and too thoughtless, I give back fourfold.

And the half of my goods I give to the poor anyway. I want to get rid of it now. See what's happening? The heart has been changed. That's not Jacob, that's in the New Testament. But it is as true right here today as ever.

The Lord of the hosts outside is the Lord of the heart inside. He who controls the hosts can change the heart and he can change yours. As you see, so very well so far I have largely been thinking of people outside of ourselves, haven't I?

I've been speaking in the third person. You know there's a little bit of Jacob in all of us, in all of us, in all of us, in all of us. There's a little bit of the Cheat in all of us. He's able to deal with that too.

Charles Wesley and the Plague of the Heart

England was mystified when Charles Wesley of all people wrote his hymn in which he said this, just and holy is thy name. Nobody was upset by that or worried but with this, speaking of himself particularly, I am all unrighteousness, vile and full of sin.

I am thou art full of truth and grace. Charles Wesley, the impeccable man, the man against whom nobody could point a finger, the darling of the home, the boy who never said no when he should say yes and never said yes when he should say no.

This marvelous product of the most marvelous of homes perhaps of his day and yet he says vile and full of sin I am. Have you discovered the plague of your heart my friend or are you able to sleep through as you read the scriptures?

Knowing God Personally and Finding Refuge

I come to the end. There's the answer objectively. We have a God who is Lord of hosts and God of Jacob but now coming a little nearer home, the answer lies in this. Somehow or other the objective God outside of me has got to be so related with me or I have got to become so related to him that I can say what the psalmists say that God the Lord of hosts is with us and we for our part are in the fortress where we can be renewed and re-energized and changed and have resources to live the different life as Jacob.

Now you see that's where the pint rubs, that's where the shoe pinches. Now I've no doubt that many of us this morning have a view of God which is quite consistent with both these two main affirmations but listen my friend.

Are you right with God? Is he with you? Do you walk through the days and the years in the consciousness that God is with you? Now you say to me, you've left us now. One thing, how could the psalmist know that God was with him?

How can I know that God is with me? Well let me tell you the psalmist wasn't dreaming. This was no hallucination and if you had gone through the experience he probably went through. Now there are differences here, differences of understanding but I take it, I take the generally accepted view of the authorship of this psalm that it was sung first of all after a great deliverance of the city of Jerusalem.

185 ,000 Assyrian troops had marshaled around the city of Jerusalem and the king and the prophet and the leaders within the city they were like birds in a cage and they couldn't move. There was no way out and nobody could come in, only the enemy.

They went to sleep one night and they woke up the next morning, you read it in the book of kings, and 185 ,000 corpses were astrew the pathways and the highways around the city of Jerusalem. What had happened to them?

No human hand had touched them, no army had been in combat with them, no man from anywhere could have withstood them, but something had happened. What had happened? The God of Jacob had come down and the Lord of the hosts had said to his unwilling armies, stop, turn back, and they wouldn't, and he made corpses of them.

The psalmist knew that God was with him, you see, he'd manifested himself. Well you say, well we've got nothing like that, God doesn't seem to do anything like that today. Well now wait a moment, what is the meaning of Christmas?

That's not the full answer, but let me ask this first. The New Testament tells us that the meaning of Christmas is this, that one was born who earned for himself and deserved in himself the designation Immanuel, God with.

And he came down and he walked alongside of men and women in all their tragic conditions and situations and fears, and he took their burdens upon himself, their sicknesses, their sorrows, their diseases, a matter of their eternal destiny.

He even took their sins upon himself, and when he had died upon the tree of Calvary to bear away the sins of the world, he was buried in a tomb. He rose again from the dead, and then he ascended to the Father.

Ah, there you are, you see, I can hear somebody saying, he came down, he lived long ago, he did something all right, we believe that, but there's nothing here that is comparable to what happened outside the city of Jerusalem that makes us sure that God is with us.

Wait a moment, my friend, haven't you read about Pentecost? Our blessed Lord Jesus ascended from the earth in a body that was glorified in the process, and he entered into the presence of God in heaven, and the Father and the Son came forth again down into this earth onto our planet, not now in a body of human flesh, but in the Spirit.

And on the day of Pentecost, God came down not to be touched by the hand or to be seen by the eye, but to be experienced in the soul. You say, is there any evidence of this? Read Acts chapter 2. Read the book of Acts and see what happened.

Because God by the Spirit had come down to inhabit his body, the church, what did happen? I'll tell you what happened. The power of Rome was turned upside down. The whole Roman empire was turned upside down, generally speaking.

The gospel invaded even the palace in Rome, and men and women were transformed, and they were changed, and Jacob's became Israel's, and Cheats became Christians. How? Because God had come to live in human hearts by the Holy Spirit.

That's the story of the church. Moving into Gentile territory as well as Jewish, going into Greece as well as into Rome until, blessed be the name of God, he came to England, in distant England, across the Atlantic, and he came here.

God is with his people, my friends, where the Spirit is, and the Spirit is where his fruit is. And I am finding the fruit of the Spirit around me today. To me one of the most precious things in life is to discover that in this very day and age in these very days, in these very weeks, God is laying his hand upon men and women of the lineage and stock of Jacob and changing them.

And he's showing the infinity of his capacity to deal with all the hosts that are marshaled against them outside, inside, and he brings into birth new creatures. And they know, and those who see, and those who hear, know that God is with his people.

A Call to Reconciliation and Salvation

Are you right with God? Have you made your peace with him? Have you opened your heart and your life to receive the incoming influences of his lordly, sovereign power and grace? Have you come like Jacob, perhaps unwillingly, by the scruff of your neck maybe, in a baffled experience, probably in the middle of the night, trying to sleep on a stone that was a pillow?

Do you know anything of God coming after you and putting his hand upon you and showing you that there was a ladder into his presence? And then letting you go there, from there you go back, you make some kind of a profession maybe, and you go back to live the same kind of life for many years.

You're still the cheat you were before, though you've had an experience of God. But the mills of God that grind slowly, grind ultimately to the kind of powder from which he can make his own statue in the hearts of men.

And he brings you back to a place called Peniel, and he walks with you and he talks with you. Oh dear men and women, this is the answer. And you see the point is, this is not only the answer for those of us gathered here this morning.

We need to know it to take it out to the world. The world is languishing. The world doesn't know there is such a God as this. And the world doesn't know that there is a possibility of the Jacobs of our day being transformed and becoming associated with a God of covenant, that they may know him and serve him forever and ever, in this life and in the next.

I conclude, if you're not right with God this morning, this is a day of salvation. I bid you, men, women, young, old, don't leave this sanctuary until you know that God is with you. Call upon him, cry to him, kneel before him if needs be, but call upon him until he will give the tangible evidence of his presence in your heart and his peace in your soul and his hope in your bosom.

And however conscious you may be of your unworthiness and of the evil praise of your nature, you can look to him to make a prince of you or a princess. Let us pray. Shall we spend a moment quietly before God?

Something tells me that perhaps the Lord is very near to some of us this morning. This is a day of salvation, and it may be that God is visiting us today to do something new. I don't know. But if he's speaking to you, if he's touching your conscience and your mind and your will and challenging you to do something, let me say to you what the Virgin Mary said to those who were in charge of the wedding in Cana of Galilee.