The Christian Pilgrimage

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

I was just asking Shane to remind me what church I was at and not today. I saw you laughing at me. Don't judge prematurely. Seven or eight years ago when a priest in Fort Saskatchewan at that church and Shane came for the time and we met and I remember vividly he and I going out to lunch or dinner, was it lunch or dinner?

The Joy of Christian Fellowship and the Wider Body of Christ

And it was very special because I saw in him just this clarity and purpose, but patience and wisdom that God had put in his heart about planting a church. And then he and I were connected from then on and emails, I don't remember all that.

But that was before Zoom existed, I guess, or before COVID. But we visited many times and I always saw in him this maturity of not being rash, not being in a hurry. And I especially saw him relate to his former church wonderfully with respect, honoring his leaders and waiting on them when he was more ready to go than they were ready to let him go.

And it was a beautiful thing. And so it just does my heart good things to see the fruit of this today. And we prayed for you. Our church has prayed for you. And it's an honor to be here truly. So thank you for the weekend, Michael.

He may want to later come and express his gratitude and his perspective on the weekend. But, you know, people always thank us wherever we go for coming. And look, as they say at Chick-fil-A, our pleasure.

It's not a trial. It's not a it's not an effort. It's a joy. It really is to be with God's people. One of the greatest blessings I've told several this weekend. When I know Michael and I don't travel regularly together, but we do periodically travel together.

But he and I both feel this. When you when you're just in your own church and you don't see the wider body of Christ in different places, you don't you don't have an experiential appreciation for the the glory of the church worldwide.

But when you when you do go places you've never been and you do meet believers that are so wonderful, so gracious, so humble, so hungry, whether that's in Eastern Europe or South America or remote Alaska or Fiji Islands or or Canada.

And you meet more the body of Christ. You're meeting people who are automatically family. You know, it's it's astounding because your hearts are knit together and you know your brothers and sisters. And there's a bond that exceeds all earthly, physical, flesh and blood family ties.

It's inexplainable. It's inexpressible, but it is real. So I'm going to speak about that. I'll endeavor to be briefly, I know many of you are weary, but I'll endeavor to be brief. And I'll work at that and God willing, I will be.

But Psalm 84 is the text. I was just thinking as you turn there, you know, I grew up an orphan from the time I was eight years old and but I was raised in church. It was not a gospel preaching church.

But from my earliest memories, church was boring to me. When Saturday afternoon came, I dreaded Sunday. When Sunday night church was over and I'm home, I was glad it was over. Because it was boring. The Bible made no sense.

This church would sing the same two songs every Sunday night. It was a beating. It was just a beating. But you know, after I became a Christian, I love those songs, trust and obey. So here's where I'm going with this.

When I was 19 years old, the Lord saved me. And one of the first things that happened, I realized, I said to myself, wow, this is weird. I want to go to church. And the next morning after I was converted on Saturday night, I was in church and it felt weird.

I thought, do they think I'm weird? You know, it was my home church and I'm back. But so I knew I should, I knew I should go. That's what a believer should do, right? You should go to church. But it began to grow.

I began to enjoy it. I began to, I was a college student. I began to enjoy it more and more. And then I wouldn't miss Wednesday night prayer meetings. And I was there for Sunday school. Is that what you call it here?

Sunday school? Whatever. But you know what I'm talking about. And then I wouldn't miss Sunday morning. And that over 51 years that has consummated, probably I've been in corporate worship around 6 ,000 times.

And I love it to this day. And I've been in three or four thousand prayer meetings. And I love the prayer meetings as much as Sunday worship. From 1979 to 1991, around 200 of those prayer meetings were small prayer meetings like this.

Keith Green is on the piano playing hymns. I'm sitting here. Leonard Ravenhill is going to speak in a moment. Not today. But he's fixing to preach for 30 minutes to an hour. And those meetings would last two and a half hours.

And it was like heaven had come to earth. And so believers grow. My point is this. True Christians, if they love Christ, they will grow to love what Christ loves. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.

This is what Psalm 84 is about. There is no greater Old Testament portion that I think spiritually speaks to us about the glory of the church, the people of God, and our place within that church. So I'm going to speak from Psalm 84 on our Christian pilgrimage.

Because you as a Christian are in Psalm 84. Your journey is set out here. The prescription for what you enjoy and the renewing of your mind, as Romans 12, 1 and 2 says, is here. So let's read it and then I will endeavor to open this up to it and apply it.

With the goal today, here's the goal. That you will go away more convinced than ever of the glory of the church of Jesus Christ. And that you will go away and increasingly grow to love her and serve her and be a true churchman.

And all that that means in your church, because the church is plan A, there's no plan B in God's kingdom. And the church is the only earthly, it's not an organization, the only earthly entity that's eternal.

Nations are temporal, human government and politics is temporal. Praise God for that. All earthly institutions are going to pass away, but the church of Jesus Christ will be forever with Him. So Psalm 84 speaks to us of this great reality.

I'll read from the New King James. Notice the language, how lovely is your tabernacle. O Lord of hosts, my soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself. Where she may lay her young, even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house. They will still be praising you, Selah.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. What does Baca mean, by the way? Anybody know quickly? Trouble.

Tears. Yeah, it's a valley of tears, a valley of trouble. Well, here this says the saints, when they come through a valley of Baca, they turn it into something else. They make it a spring, a picture of life and refreshing.

The rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength, and each one or every one of them appears before God in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. O God, behold our shield and look upon the face of your anointed.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand. I think that King James says a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield.

The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You. Father, take this psalm in these moments and show us what we need to see.

Speak to us what we need to hear and sanctify this psalm. May it be life-giving beginning today for the weeks and months and years ahead for all of us here. For the glory of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

The Christian Life as Pilgrimage and Renewing the Mind

In a very real sense, Psalm 84 is what the Christian life is and what it involves. The Christian journey, the pilgrimage is pictured here. The believer, we know, is on a pilgrimage increasingly with kingdom perspective.

I referenced earlier Romans 12, 1 and 2 about the renewing of the mind. We know how important that is. The end goal of the renewing of the mind is to give us kingdom perspective, eternal perspective, biblical perspective.

Could I have some water? Just even a cup. Thank you. Half a cup. Excuse me. So, thank you very much. So, our minds are renewed to view things not temporally but eternally, not earthly but heavenly. And the renewing of a mind is to wash and change our minds and change our thinking so that our perspective about all things is seen through the lens of Scripture.

So, the believer is on a pilgrimage with a growing, increasing heavenly-mindedness. Now, have you ever heard this ignorant statement? Some people are so heavenly-minded they're no earthly good. Again, ignorant is the adjective I would apply to that.

Because the Christian can only be any earthly good as they are increasingly heavenly-minded. And we are a pilgrim and stranger in this world. In fact, Hebrews 11 about the old saints said they confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers in the earth.

Now, let me stop and ask each of you who are believers here, do you see yourself that way truly? Some of you are engineers, some are ministers, some are housewives, mothers of children, businessmen, whatever your job is.

Your first identity is that you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you are a pilgrim in the earth. That's your identity. Whatever else you do under the sun is under that. Do you see yourself as a pilgrim in the earth?

Do you see yourself on a pilgrim journey in this world? Ours is a quick journey from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, from the womb to the tomb, to the grave to the skies. And it's a quick journey.

You're 20 years old and you turn around and you're 70. Right, brother? I mean, I don't know how old you are. I just know he and I are tracking together pretty close. I can't point at Noah for this to say, right?

But it's true. Life is a vapor. James says that. It is here and it's gone. I was one month older than Keith Green. If he were alive today, he would be 71 like me, but he died at 28. So whether you live into your 70s or 80s or older, or you die in your 20s, life is still a vapor.

It passes so quickly. John Wesley was right. I can quote Wesley. Am I safe to do that here? Wesley said this. This life is only a dressing room for eternity. Life is truly a vapor. And we're on a short journey as a Christian, but it's the best of journeys.

The Christian's journey is the most wonderful road trip there is. Now, many of the Psalms reflect this pilgrim perspective, especially the Psalms of David. Psalm 119 is David's perspective about what?

Huh?

The Bible. How many verses in Psalm 119?

Huh?

176. How many of those are about the Bible? 171 of them at least. The precepts, commandments, statues, ordinances of the Lord. So that's David's perspective about the Bible. Psalm 73 and Psalm 1, David, his perspective about the contrast between the righteous and the wicked.

So, Psalm 84 is the perspective of the Christian on his journey as a pilgrim. So here I want us to see briefly the perspective and the pilgrimage and the promises of the believer who is a part of the body of Jesus Christ.

What God has promised each and every one of us. What's true of us. And what's for us in our pilgrimage. So, my major points are really perspective and passion and God's promises. Alright, so let's begin with perspective.

The Loveliness of the Church and the Beauty of Worship

Verse 1 starts at how lovely. This isn't an adjective and an adverb. But the psalmist doesn't say how important is your tabernacle, though it was. How majestic, how orderly, how well built. No, he says lovely.

How lovely is your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts. The loveliness of the church of God. R .B. Kuyper called the church the glorious body of Christ. And Christians, I went from seeing the church as boring and unattractive to seeing the loveliness of it because I became a part.

The perspective got into my heart and I began to love the worship and the preaching and however weak it was, however imperfect it was. And I was all in because the things of the kingdom were in my heart now for the first time.

Most all of the psalms express perspective and passion because the psalms have a wide range of showing human experience and emotion. They show the need of daily mercy and grace and how to pray and how to praise God and how to trust Him.

But here, David begins with perspective. The loveliness of the tabernacle of God. The beauty and the delightfulness of the courts of the Lord and the house of God. And of course in the New Testament, this Old Testament imagery and typology is fulfilled in what in the New Testament?

The church, right? Ephesians 2 says, We are the habitation of God through the Spirit. The church, says 1 Peter 2, is the spiritual house of God made with living stones, the true living temple of God with Christ as the chief cornerstone of that living temple.

So the perspective of the psalmist and of ours should be that the church is the most lovely place a Christian can ever be in. There have been many times I've been too tired to feel like going to prayer meeting or times that I was sick and I couldn't and I would miss it.

But when I was tempted to not go to prayer meeting, often times I would say to myself, you know, if I go, I'll be glad I went. If I go, God will have something for me. If I go, He will encourage me somehow.

I know I'm doing the right thing to go, so I'm going to go and I'm going to trust Him to feed me and encourage me. And inevitably it would happen over and over again. I would drive home feeling I'm so glad I went.

I'm so glad. Because there was beauty there. There was glory there. There was encouragement there. There was love there. There was peace there.

There was joy there.

That's the beauty of meeting with the people of God. But one test a person can test himself with is this. Do I enjoy being with other believers? Do I enjoy it all? Even if I don't understand it all, do I enjoy the ministry of the Word?

Do I gravitate to want to enjoy these people who are Christians? If all that is a stranger to you and you don't enjoy anything about church, that may be the worst news you could have about yourself. It means that you're a stranger to grace, the saving grace of God.

Well, the perspectives of the psalmist, the courts of the Lord are lovely. And that's how the Christian sees the church. Now also you have perspective in verse 10. Skip on down to verse 10. This is perspective.

For a day in your course is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be in church with the people of God than on a cruise for a month through the most beautiful part of Alaska. I would rather be with the people of God in a conference like we had this weekend than something the world has to offer.

And he says in verse 10, a day in your course is better. So here's a descriptive word. Moves from lovely to better. It's better. Can't you testify if you know Christ today that your life is far better than when you were lost?

Isn't that right? You know it's right if you're a Christian. All is better in God's house with His people. I mean, you were dead and now you're alive. You were lost and now you're found. You went from being an enemy of God to a friend of God.

You went from being a child of the devil to a child of God. Hell bound to heaven bound. I would say all that's better, wouldn't you? Everything about the Christian is better. The hardest days for a Christian are better than the best days for a wicked lost person.

A broke believer is better off than the wealthiest infidel because you have riches in Christ that the wealthiest unbeliever in Canada knows nothing of. You're rich and they aren't. They have nothing. Eternal.

The Bible speaks about this betterness. David said your steadfast love is better than life. Better. Fellowship gets better the more we press in on it. The more we lay hold of it. The Word of God gets better the more we read it and prayerfully pray over it feeding us.

Preaching. However, you know, to the hungry even the bitter things are sweet sometimes. An average sermon can encourage you if you're hungry. This is all about viewing things with reality and true perspective.

The Bible says a little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of the wicked. That's perspective. Beloved, our perspective is important. When you take your eye off the Lord when you're discouraged and you look at the waves and the discouragement, fear is going to start coming.

You look at the nation and how hard it's getting. And you focus on the earthly, the political and you will not be encouraged. But you focus on the things of God and the kingdom primarily. And you feed your soul and you keep yourself in the things of God.

You keep yourself as Jude says in the love of God. Meaning, you keep yourself under the realities where the love of God will be real and that love will fill your heart. And you experience it. We're to keep ourselves in the love of God, Jude said.

And you do that, you will grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and you will grow with encouragement. David sees the people of God and his place among them as lovely and all important. The kingdom of God, the Gospel, the Word of God, the people of God, the worship of God are more glorious than everything the world has to offer.

It's astounding one of the inner circle of the apostolic group. Paul said with probably tears in his eyes and a tremble in his voice and heart, Demas has forsaken me having loved this present world. How sad.

How sad. And every professing Christian must guard themselves and keep themselves fresh in the things of God lest their heart drift seeing everything from kingdom perspective. So I will ask you, how much does the perspective of the kingdom of God govern your life, your decisions, and your priorities?

Examine yourselves, brethren, today in light of God's Word. How much does a biblical perspective and a kingdom perspective as seen in Psalm 84, how much does that govern your life increasingly in your decisions and your priorities?

It ought to. Well, then, not only perspective, but the second thing we see in this psalm is the passion. Look at verse 2. We move from perspective, which is seeing things rightly. And I mentioned several verses throughout the psalm that is perspective.

Hungering and Thirsting for God and His House

Passion is about feeling these things. Now, Michael and I both this week had kind of alluded to emotions, right? And feelings. Here, David is, he may be the greatest example of passionate feeling about the things of God.

And here he says, my soul longs. What beatitude does this remind you of? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. And you know, if you've heard before, it's an acute hungering and an acute thirst. David is hungry and thirsting.

And his soul is so acute longing that he feels like he's just going to faint from it. It's overwhelming him. What's he hungering for? The courts of the Lord. But, end of verse 2, not just the church. He's hungering for God.

He said in Psalm 42, as the deer pants for the water brooks, my soul thirsts for the living God. One of the greatest things to pray for in your life as a Christian is spiritual hunger and thirst. Lord, increase my desire.

You pray that, you're praying a perfect biblical prayer. Increase my desire for Your Word. I came to Canada in 2003 to be with a man of God for a week in Winnipeg. And I came just realizing how inconsistent I was at quality reading.

And no matter what I tried, I couldn't make myself be consistent. And I realized that I had lost fresh appetite. And so I was with this man and I observed in his life this deep consistency of being in the Scriptures.

I had known him a while and it was observable. And so, I flew back home to Dallas and I realized I couldn't just try harder. I began to pray, Lord, give me hunger for Your Word. Give me desire for it.

Make me like it. Because you know what? You'll always do what you like. How many of you dread eating food? You eat because you not only need it, you like it. Some of you like it a lot. Okay, look. What if you had an appetite like that for the Bible?

You're going to go read. And what happened to me was just so encouraging. I would just start praying that every day. Every day I prayed it.

And one morning,.

Reading came alive and it ministered deeply to me and it led me to real prayer. It was like a morning breakfast buffet. And you know what? The next morning, I was looking forward to reading my Bible. So this spiritual desire is our soul should long and faint with desire for the courts of the Lord, the things of God, and the living God.

In verse 5, look at it. It says, Blesses the man whose strength is in you, whose heart... This is a heart issue. It's not just spiritual disciplines. It's not just duty. It's a heart issue in whose heart are the ways to Zion.

So the believer, when they really get converted, God plants in them these seeds of kingdom perspective and those seeds begin to blossom into desire and passion and longing. Brethren, fan the flames of that.

You always have to fan the flames. They'll try to go out and you won't always feel the same, but you fan the flames through faithfulness in church, being at the prayer meeting, true fellowship. But more than anything, it's crying out to God for fresh new desires for Him.

He will hear you. You keep praying that, He will hear you. He will renew you. Now the hymnody of the church, you know what I mean by the hymnody, right? Anybody not know? Don't be embarrassed. I mean the hymns of the church historically, the hymn writers, the hymns of the church show the loveliness of the church and the longing passion.

Let me just mention a few. You recognize any of these stanzas? Glorious things of Thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God. Glorious things. He whose word cannot be broken, form Thee for His own abode. Christ has made the sure foundation, Christ the heading cornerstone, chosen of the Lord and precious, binding all the church in one.

The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is His new creation by water and the word. The hill of Zion yields. We're marching to Zion, you know that one? The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets before we reach the heavenly fields.

You ought to start praying every Sunday. Lord, just give me a token for good this morning. Lord, just give me some sweet morsel that will thrill my soul and energize me and encourage me. It's your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, isn't it?

The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets before we reach the heavenly fields or walk the golden streets because we're marching to Zion. Beautiful, beautiful Zion we are. So, Timothy Dwight, 200 years ago, as a young boy, he learned the alphabet well and remembered it well.

In one lesson, one brief homeschool lesson, he learned the alphabet well. I think it took me to the fifth grade maybe. He was reading the Bible on his own at four years old. He graduated Yale College at 17 and he became the eighth president of Yale College.

And he was the president for 23 years until the end of his life. He was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards. And Timothy Dwight loved the church. And he wrote in the 18th century these words, I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of thine abode, the church, our blessed Redeemer, saved with His own precious blood.

I love thy church, O God, her walls before thee stand dear as the apple of thine eye engraven on thy hand. For her my tears shall fall. For her my prayers ascend. To her my cares and toils be given till toils and cares shall end.

Brethren, look, you're a small church. Despise not the day of small things. Our church went from 15 and 11 of those were the other elder and my children, 15. And we just stayed faithful. We just worshiped.

The simplicity of New Testament worship, the Word of God, the singing the songs of God, the fellowship, the love of the brethren, the breaking bread together. We just kept going and going and going and the Lord had people within our city and the county.

He was going to save. He had sheep that were hungry and needy. They were under hirelings and they needed to be with Providence Chapel. And we went from 20 to 40 to 60 to 80 to 120 to 150 to 180 to 220.

COVID. You were there by COVID, right? I can't remember. He knows I can't remember. He and Karen moved from Kentucky to Denton and in COVID. When COVID started, the church started growing more. Because churches were shutting down and weren't reopening and hungry sheep who wanted to worship.

They were showing up. And we went from 120. OK, yeah. And yeah, now we have 275 300 on Sunday morning. Brethren, be not weary and well-doing. The numbers don't matter as much as the growth of the kingdom.

Let nothing deter you from the kingdom perspective of the things of God and the body of Jesus Christ and a passion for her. Any Christian who doesn't love the church truly and deeply doesn't love the primary thing Jesus loves.

Your love for the church both universally and your church ought to be growing steadily. Increase even imperceptibly. You ought to be able to look back from a year ago and say, you know, I love worship more than I did a year ago.

Grow, grow in your love for the church. Now that's that's perspective and passion. Where are you in this journey?

Brethren,.

If it's a struggle for you and you're here in body week in and week out, but your heart, these things aren't real, go to the brother in the church. Go to the sister in the church you trust the most and share and pray.

They'll keep confidence. If you trust them, you can ask them for that. But we must be real and transparent with one another about these matters. We need help in this pilgrim journey. There's no telling how much brothers over the decades have helped me onward and I wouldn't have made it.

I wouldn't be here today had they not helped me. This is the pilgrim's way and path. This is what a true Christian does. He or she longs for the things of God. Now, let me hurry on. Here in this psalm, it speaks of the pilgrimage in verses 5 -7.

And it's quite remarkable what he says. The believer in this journey, their strength is in the Lord. Verse 5, their heart is set on pilgrimage. Remember Jesus talked about He set His face towards Jerusalem like a flint.

And He said, from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers what? Violence. And the violent take it by force. Spiritual violence. That you'll let nothing in this world deter you from following your Master.

From staying vitally connected to the people of God. Vitally connected. Don't ever let your heart drift through discouragement or private sin where you get isolated and you become a lone ranger and you'll start drifting.

Beware, brethren. Beware of forsaking the assembly of the saints together. That leads to apostasy. That leads to your soul being in great danger. Well, verse 6 says, as they pass through the valley of Baca, this picture suffering, hardship.

We talked about that this weekend. But the believer on this journey is able to turn the times of trouble and sorrow by the Holy Spirit. As they trust Him, it becomes a spring of life for them. They make it a spring.

Life's lowest points become springs of grace to keep you persevering. John Bunyan said, perseverance is keeping one hand to the plow while you wipe the tears out of your eyes with the other hand. They go, verse 7, from strength to strength.

And every one of them appears before God and Zion. You're going to make it if you're a true Christian. You're going to appear before God and Zion on that great and majestic final day. Christians are ever longing, ever singing, ever praising, ever marching on.

Perseverance Through the Valley of Baca

Now, I'm going to begin to wind this up. When I was in school, I ran track. Do you have that here? Track? I ran track. I wasn't fast. But I was in a small school, so there were only 40 people in my class, so if you could run at all, you were...

Anyway,.

But they put me on the mile relay. And it was a gut... Anybody ever run track like that on the mile relay? It's a gut race, isn't it? It's a gut race. At least it was for me. And I was on the third leg, and it was so hard, and I'd get around the corner, and I'm seeing the fastest guy in front of me, and I see the finish line.

And I would say, okay, I'm almost there. I can make it. I'll get to him. And I'll hand the baton to him even if I collapse. I'm going to make it. I was motivated. I was motivated to make it. Brethren, there's a pilgrimage we're on.

And the finish line is before us. And you have others on your team. You're handing the baton off. They to you, you to them. You're in this together. And you're in it with other sister churches you've never met.

Our heart's desire are on and on and on. Now look at verse 11. This is a glorious promise. One of my favorites. I love to quote this to single people who want to get married and it doesn't seem to be time yet.

But they think it's time. For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. Here it is. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Do you have a longing for something that hasn't come to fruition?

No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. You keep trudging on in the kingdom, in the church, laying hold of the things of God. And He will give to you all that's needed for life and godliness.

Now verse 12, I'm closing with this. And what a promise this is. It's one of the forgotten Beatitudes. Every place the Bible says blessed is, that's a Beatitude. We think about it in Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount.

But every place the Bible says blessed is the one, blessed is the man, that's a Beatitude. The blessedness of the one on this journey who just keeps trusting the Lord. Keep trusting the Lord. Lord, teach me to trust You one foot in front of the other one day at a time.

Teach me what faith is and work it in my heart. Keep me in Your ways. I don't want to drift. I don't want to get off track. I don't want to chase tangents. I don't want to be misled by eloquent teachers who can speak wonderfully heresy.

I don't want to be led astray by men who are persuasive minds who can talk about this perfectionism or this legalism or this social justice or this new fangled ideas that are coming down the pike all the time in the body of Christ.

Ignore them all. Be very careful and protective of who and what you listen to. Stay close to your elders. Stay close to one another. And you keep trusting the Lord and grow in grace and knowledge and grow in faith.

And you will be kept and preserved safely in the Kingdom of God. And you will be among those who appear before God in Zion. You will be. Brethren, I encourage you to memorize this psalm and begin to get it in your heart and pray through it.

And you keep praying through it until it's real to you. And you keep praying the things in it that are most real to you. This perspective. This pilgrimage. These promises are ours because we are marching to Zion.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Let's pray.

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