Sunday, Aug 4, 2024 AM

Let's go to the

Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father we thank you for the day that you have prepared, the day that you have planned, the day that you have provided to us to gather here to rejoice in your truth.

We ask that you would help us to continue in worship as we bow the knee to our

Lord and Savior, our King Jesus Christ. And the word that you, our

Father, have given to us by your Spirit concerning your Son, that we would behold our

King and bow the knee and follow him. We pray that you would bless us this morning, that you would give us the grace to receive your word with a warm amen in our hearts, that you would have your way in each of us, among us, in all of us.

We ask for these graces looking to our Lord Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts 16.

Acts 16, we'll be reading verses 6 through 15.

Acts 16, verses 6 through 15.

The title of the sermon is, Wait on the Lord. How often do we see in tandem the waiting of the saints and the working of the

Savior in the Scriptures? Just in the book of Acts do we see the waiting of the saints and the working of the

Savior. It's how the book of Acts begins as Jesus tells

His disciples that they will be His witnesses in Judea, in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

And they are tasked to be His witnesses and to go. However, they are to wait.

They have their commission, but then they have the command to wait.

And they are to wait for the gift that was promised, the power from on high.

They are to wait for the Holy Spirit. And so they wait in the upper room in prayer, and they turn their eyes to the

Scriptures, and they do their best to do what they can while they wait for the

Lord to bless them in power. And we find this pattern in the book of Acts, the gathering routine, the patient waiting, the going through the normal repetitions of the church, where they gather and they eat together, and they listen to the preaching of the

Word, they pray for each other and minister to each other, and this happens again and again, and then the

Lord works, and something changes, and then they have new challenges and new instructions and new horizons.

Even in chapters 14 and 15, we find this pattern as Paul and Barnabas and then

Paul and Silas wait. They gather with the church and they spend a long time with the brethren, encouraging them in the

Word of the Lord, and then God moves them on to something new, to something different, new instructions.

Waiting sometimes feels wrong. Waiting can be hard.

Sometimes waiting can feel insignificant or hollow, but sometimes waiting is the work, waiting on the

Lord, looking to Him for His guidance, looking to Him for His power, looking to Him for what

He would have us to do. I invite you to stand with me as we read God's Holy Word, Acts 16, beginning in verse 6, as we see

Paul and Silas waiting upon the Lord. This is the Word of the

Lord, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by His Holy Spirit, through His servant

Luke. Now, when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the

Holy Spirit to preach the Word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the

Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, Now, after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the

Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and the next day came to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony.

And we were staying in that city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made.

And we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now, a certain woman named Lydia heard us.

She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul, and when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying,

If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.

So she persuaded us. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Bad news sells. Bad news is what keeps your thumbs scrolling.

What else is going wrong? The old doom scroll. Black pills are the best -selling tonic in late -stage empires.

We equate defeatism with realism. It's a sense of righteous honor that we would know the enemy and how terrible everything is and how it's not going to get any better.

To know our doom and to stand and face it and to know just how bad it all hurts.

But you know, fearing man is a snare, and fearing death is enslavement.

Scripture teaches us this. And fearing man is a snare in which we flop back and forth like a wounded bird in our anxieties, from fear to fear, from fear to fear.

And fear of death is enslavement, and we feel the hopelessness, which sometimes is expressed in apathy.

What hope do we have? What hope do you have? What hope do you share with your spouse?

What do you say to them about the now and the not yet? What lay on the horizon?

What's yet to come? What do you say to your spouse? What hope do you have? What do you say to your children? What trajectory do you lay out for them?

What hope do you have for the church that Christ is building? What hope do you have for this church?

What do you think will occur next? What will be the trajectory?

What hope do you have for your neighbors, for this state, for this society?

The psalmist says in Psalm 27 verse 13,

I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the

Lord in the land of the living. Now listen to verse 14. Wait on the

Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord. There's your memory verse. Wait on the

Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord. It's not our clarity and our courage affected when we wait upon the

Lord, when we depend upon the Lord's direction, when we depend upon the

Lord's design, when we depend upon the Lord's determination, because we flip the script.

The question is not what else could go wrong. The question is not how long will it be, how near is it, our doom.

The question is when we wait upon the Lord and rest upon Him, and lean upon Him, and think of Him first, and think of Him most because we fear the

Lord. The question then becomes, can He lose? And we know the answer to that question.

The answer is no, He cannot lose. Our good

Lord, His character, His authority, our good Lord determines,

He arranges matters in our lives that we should wait on Him because He delights in doing the impossible through the unlikely.

And so He has us time and again to wait upon Him, to depend upon Him. And our passage teaches us that the gospel's map, the gospel's methods, the gospel's might are all depended upon the

Lord. We are compelled in this passage to wait upon the Lord's way, to wait upon the

Lord's work, and to wait upon the Lord's will. This requires humility, requires trust.

We prefer formulas, we prefer metrics, we prefer action steps, and we prefer results.

2 Corinthians 5 -7 feels wrong. We walk by faith and not by sight.

Many times we refuse to walk unless we have it in sight. Perhaps we need to evaluate our

American pragmatism, which is just one species of Adamic pride.

It is so good for us to wait upon the Lord. Waiting is essential for Christians.

It is essential for the saints to wait. How long did the saints wait for the promised seed?

Thousands of years. How long did Jesus Christ, our Savior, wait to be anointed by the

Holy Spirit, to reveal Himself as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and to begin to teach and preach and do powerful miracles?

Thirty years? How long have we waited? How long do we wait for His return?

Do you see that no matter which way we look at it, the saints, we wait.

We wait upon the Lord. Waiting is not inactivity. Waiting is not lethargy.

Jesus has taught us that our vigilance is expressed in our diligence, but waiting is about dependence.

Waiting is not about twiddling our thumbs and grumbling about long lines. Waiting is about dependence and leaning upon the

Lord and letting Him lead and Him direct. We see this in verses 6 through 12 as we see

Paul and Silas waiting on the Lord's way. You notice all the place names that we read through.

Twelve different places in this passage are mentioned. And in such a concentration,

I guess, an interesting term for that might be evangeography. You can use that if you like.

But I like the fact that there is a description of twelve different places, and depending on where Paul and Silas are, they're looking back east, they're looking to their frontier, the west.

They're wondering, should we head off to the south or should we go to the north? Twelve place names, all four directions being considered, and we remember the twelve oxen, three to the north, three to the east, three to the south, and three to the west, that carried the brass sea and the promise that the cleansing of the

Lord would go to all the nations. We have this passage which speaks to the difficulty of these missionaries to know which way to go.

It was a target -rich environment. We could go into Asia and head towards that primary city of Ephesus, or we could go north and go into Bithynia and there find

Byzantium and Nicaea. Where could we go?

They had all of these options in front of them, the challenge of missionaries to know where the

Lord will take them. David Livingston wanted to go to China, and God took him to Africa. William Carey wanted to go to Polynesia, and God took him to India.

Adeniram Johnson went to India, but then God had him go on to Burma. There is both the challenge that we see and the need that we note here in the text that we are to wait upon the

Lord's guidance and His instruction. In verses 6 -8, if we're going to wait on the

Lord's way, I think we're instructed here in verses 6 -8 to trust the

Lord's denials. To trust the Lord's denials.

Look at that again, verses 6 -8. Now, when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the

Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go to Bithynia, but the

Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas.

Just west of the regions of Phrygia and Galatia, there is the city of Antioch at Pisidia.

And just beyond that, just west of that city, there is a crossroads. The crossroads goes northwest or southwest.

So, which direction do they go? It makes a lot of sense to go southwest into Asia, to go there and by way of Colossae and Hierapolis and Laodicea, to make their way to Ephesus, a major city that we know that Paul had a desire to be at.

When Paul did eventually make it to Ephesus and was able to stay, he stayed there for three years, clearly a priority in the heart of the

Apostle Paul. They tried to go into Asia, and God said, No, the Holy Spirit said,

No, you're not going to go into Asia. So leaving the

Via Sebaste, the main highway that traveled all the way down to Ephesus, they try to go north by northwest to Bithynia, I mean

Byzantium, a great city, later to be called Constantinople, now known as in Sebul.

So they want to go to this major city and possibly stop by Nicaea, which also has a bright future in Christianity.

This makes sense to go there, but the Holy Spirit prevented them again. The Holy Spirit restrained them.

The Holy Spirit did not permit them. The Holy Spirit denied and withheld these paths from them.

How does that make sense? How does this reconcile with the commission that Christ gave to his apostles? He said,

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

And, of course, he did not leave them orphans, but he sent them into the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who is now telling them,

No, don't go to that nation, and don't go to this nation, don't go to those nations or these nations.

Denials on either side. How to reconcile that?

We know that Ephesus eventually gets the gospel. Paul himself eventually gets there. Why not then?

We know Bithynia gets the gospel because Peter writes the saints in Bithynia in 1

Peter 1. But not Paul. Paul doesn't go there. But the

Lord has his plan, doesn't he? He has his priorities, and he has his personnel, and he gets to decide how to build his own church.

It's his church. He paid for it with his own blood. It's his.

He gets to build it. And he has his priorities, he has his personnel, he has his plan.

The fact that they're getting told no means there's a plan.

That's a signal that there's something specific in mind and there's something good in mind because we know who's saying no, and so there needs to be a trust in the

Lord's denials. Interestingly, we're not told how they were told no. That is left in completely blank.

I mean, Paul's an apostle and Silas is a prophet. Timothy is a godly young man, but we're not told if there's a direct word from God, if there's some sort of vision.

We're not told if there was some sign given to them. Was it an admixture of some kind of circumstances or danger?

We're simply not told in the text how God told them no.

But we are told who tells them no, and that's the point. We have unknown circumstances concerning these denials.

We have unknown circumstances, but we have uncontested sovereignty. Paul and Silas say, yes, sir.

Yes, sir, to the Holy Spirit. You deny us entry here, you deny us entry there. We will continue on and abide by the denials of the

Lord. He says no, we say amen. We trust the Lord. He gets to say.

And this is the way of Jesus Christ as we think about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He said no in His ministry many times.

He said no to miracles when it didn't fit the priority or the politics or the profanity of the region.

He said no to Messianic fervor. He would heal people and they would want to run around and say,

He's Messiah. And He said, why don't you keep a lid on that until you see the full story.

He hasn't died, hasn't been buried, hasn't been raised from the dead. The third day has not ascended to the right hand of the

Father. They didn't have the whole story yet. He said no. He said no to His disciples when they were aggressive and sought their own aggrandizement and even submitted to His Father as His Father denied the

Son's request. If it be your will, let this cup pass from me, but not as I will, but as you will.

He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane. And God said no to the

Son. And the Son said yes to the Father and drank the cup of wrath in our place and for our sake.

And He drank it down to the dregs so that there was nothing left for us except the mercy and the delight and the welcome of God our

Father because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It's not hard to recognize a good thing.

What's hard is to say no to the good thing and say yes to the best thing.

It's not hard to see godly, worthy directions and causes.

It's hard for us to know what is it, Heavenly Father? What is it,

Jesus Christ my King? What is it, Holy Spirit? What is it, God, that you want me to do?

How is it that you want me to proceed? That's difficult.

But it's not difficult because God is a bad communicator. It's not difficult because God is stingy.

It's not difficult because God loves us being confused. It's difficult because we really hate waiting.

Have you been at a traffic light lately? Oh, we hate waiting.

Have you been in line lately? Have you been on hold lately? Have some of you been in the car this morning waiting for others to emerge from the house?

We just don't like waiting. That's what is difficult, to wait upon the

Lord, to depend upon Him, to humble ourselves, and to open up ourselves to what

He wants us to do. That's challenging. That's difficult.

The Lord will sometimes, many times, say no. But in this,

I would have us notice that Paul and Silas and Timothy were trying to head in a good direction and only then got told no.

That's the right posture. That's the right approach. To be trying to do something good.

You know, this fits the bill. This fits the Great Commission. This is well within the grand scheme of what we know would please the

Lord, and I'm going to head that direction. But if God says no, praise the

Lord. Trust the Lord's denials goes hand -in -hand with trusting the

Lord's direction. Trusting the

Lord's direction. Verses 9 and 10.

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying,

Come over to Macedonia and help us. After he had seen the vision, immediately, we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the

Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Being told to go can be worse than being told no.

It takes a great deal of courage to follow through when the word is go.

Being told no means I pray more, I wait more, I continue more in what

I have right in front of me, being a good steward in the familiar. But being told to go means that I'm going to have to do something new, something difficult.

There's going to be stretching. There's going to be discomfort. There's going to be risk.

Being told go can be worse than being told no. Now, Paul and Silas and Timothy are heading along this road.

They try to go into Asia. They're told no. They try to go into Bithynia. They're told no. You can see on the map their options were southwest or northwest.

They don't get to go either way, so basically they just head west. And when it says that they came down to Troas, it's because they had a downhill walk.

They're heading down to the sea. They're heading down to the Aegean Sea, to the port city of Troas, which was a major port for the region of Macedonia, a crossing over to Macedonia.

And there Paul has a vision in Troas, a man that is distinctly Macedonian. We don't know how

Paul knew he was Macedonian. Maybe he just had that flair of Macedonia about him.

Macedonia is, of course, Greece. You can't get more Greek than a

Macedonian. And Paul sees him. Here's his plea for help.

And we recognize that this was not Paul's first choice. Paul and Silas had spent their time in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch.

They had spent their time in Phrygia and Galatia. They had tried to go to Asia.

They tried to go to Bithynia. And everything that they were doing was in a region that they were more comfortable with, more familiar with.

But now, in modern terms, they're being told, leave Asia, go to Europe.

They didn't want to go to Europe. They knew that once they crossed the Hellespont, once they sailed across the

Aegean Sea, once they made it over there, even though there would still be some pockets of Jews over there, a whole lot less.

Case in point, when they get to Philippi, there's not even a synagogue, just a group of Jewish women praying by the river.

What has been the formula so far? The formula has been you go into the city, you find the synagogue, you preach

Christ from all the scriptures, and you begin to show that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messiah, the

Son of the living God, who was crucified upon the cross and raised the third day for the salvation of Jews and also for the

Gentiles. That's been the pattern. Going over to Europe, going over to Macedonia, who knows what will happen?

Do you know how much more pagan those people are, how much more Roman those people are, the closer you get to Rome, the more

Roman everything is. This was not their first choice, not their first idea to go into Europe, but it was the

Lord's idea. And even though this was not their direction initially, once it became clear that it was their direction, we read,

Immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the

Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Well, hello,

Dr. Luke. Did you catch the change from the third person plural to the first person plural?

Hello, Dr. Luke. The beloved physician has inserted himself into the story.

He is writing to his patron Theophilus so that he may have an orderly account of all the things he's been instructed in and that he may be more firmly established in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He's written his first volume, The Gospel of Luke, and Luke is writing the book of Acts right now, the

Acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And he's writing, and he inserts himself here in verse 10.

Apparently, Luke was in Troas. Best we can tell, Luke was a citizen of Antioch of Syria.

He was a physician. He was in Troas, and he's a big fan of Philippi.

We'll see more about that later. But Luke meets Paul and Silas and Timothy in Troas.

Isn't this interesting? Think about the ways in which the know and the know, the denial and the denial, shape the direction of the

Lord's affirmation that they should go into Macedonia and preach the gospel there. The fact that God said no to the idea of going into Asia, He said no to the idea of going into Bithynia, led

Paul and Silas and Timothy to Troas where they meet Luke for the very first time, and Luke writes more of the

New Testament than even the Apostle Paul. And they are in trajectory to go across the

Aegean Sea to places like Philippi, letter to the

Philippians. They go to Thessalonica, the letters to the Thessalonians. They go to Athens and Berea, and they go to Corinth, 1 and 2

Corinthians. Isn't this interesting? Because God said no and God said no, the direction that they end up going shapes what we know of Christianity today.

Apparently the Lord knows what He is doing. I would have us also note that the

Roman Empire was not a wonderful place to live.

The Roman Empire wasn't more just than the American Empire. The Roman Empire wasn't more fiscally responsible than the

American Empire. It wasn't a place that had more freedoms and better health care than the

American Empire. And in every category that you could possibly list, the

Roman Empire was way worse. It was not a just place.

It was not a godly place. It was not a wonderful place in which to live. It was a place full of darkness, a place that was under the judgment of God.

And so He was sending forth His Gospel to turn the entire empire upside down and bring many to faith in Jesus Christ.

I state this because when the Macedonian man in the vision calls out to Paul the

Apostle, come over and help us, I want you to see in the text what the help was.

Verse 9 concludes, come over to Macedonia and help us. And what did

Paul and Silas and Luke and Timothy conclude from that? The end of verse 10.

Concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the Gospel to them. That's the help.

That's the help. Everywhere Christians went, of course, they were concerned about the poor.

Everywhere Christians went, they did help one another. Everywhere Christians went, they were concerned to pray for each other's health and the disasters that they would face and to care for the prisoners and so on and so forth.

But that was not the help. That was the love from the people being transformed by the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. The help was the preaching of the Gospel. And so they were called to go across the

Aegean Sea and to preach the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ to these people and to compel them, to call upon them to repent of their sins, to repent of their idolatry, to repent of their self -righteousness, and to trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ alone for their salvation and receive the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the

Holy Spirit. The Lord is our shepherd.

He is king over all kings. He builds His church. So we are to wait on Him.

We think of that passage in James chapter 4. Come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.

For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.

But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does it not, to him it is sin.

Let us trust in the Lord's direction.

When we think about the situation of Paul and Silas and Luke and Timothy in this passage, trying to find out what the will of the

Lord is, we're reading this description of how it occurred.

And I wonder if some of us live our lives making this a prescription for how we ought to live and behave.

Let me put it a different way. Are you waiting around for a special mandate to obey

God? Are you waiting around for a special mandate to go do something for Jesus Christ?

Are you waiting for a vision? Are you waiting for some special sign, some whisper in your heart or confluence of circumstances that looks just right?

You know, in the beginning of the book of Acts, when it was the 11 and not the 12, and they recognized that the absence of Judas Iscariot needed to be addressed, his betrayal, they prayed to the

Lord to bless their decision and they looked at two different candidates who had known

Jesus in His earthly ministry and they cast lots to determine that Matthias would be the 12th of the 12.

And do you know that that's the last time that the casting of lots is recorded for us in the

Scriptures? Because you know what happens in the very next chapter? The Holy Spirit shows up.

And they don't cast lots anymore because that is done. The new covenant arrives in full force with the advent of the

Holy Spirit and they just don't cast lots anymore. They pray and seek guidance. And you know what we're reading in the

New Testament? We're reading about how Jesus Christ is building the foundation of His church, as we're told in Ephesians 2,

Him being the cornerstone and the apostles and the prophets being the foundation of His church and He's laying up the foundation of His church in the waning shadows of the old covenant.

And do you know, we ought not envy Paul and Silas on the road trying to figure out where they're supposed to go without an infrastructure of Christians and support and without a full completed

Bible trying to figure out God's will. Do you think they had it better? Do you think you would prefer waiting around for a vision?

I don't think so. In fact, Peter says we have the prophetic word, more sure, and we should look to the

Scriptures and find there the light of Jesus Christ. Let me encourage you that we should not be waiting around for some special mandate.

Don't wait around for a special title or commission from a church to do

God's will and obey His instructions. Do not wait around for some special mystical, spiritual experience before you obey

Jesus and do what He tells you to do. Don't wait around for some sort of special mandate.

Have a Scriptural mandate. Take up the Word of God. Take up the

Word of God and follow Jesus Christ. How often do we resist the simple, basic, clear instructions of Jesus Christ that are right here for us in God's Word?

Opting rather for some special complicated dispensation. I'm waiting for a sign from God to forgive that person who hurt me.

You don't have to wait around for a sign. You've got lots of Scripture verses. I'm waiting around to know whether I should be at church.

You don't need a vision from God to tell you that you have verses to tell you that.

You know, there are things in this Bible, there are things in God's Holy Word that you would never, ever think of even in your most mystically religious mountaintop moments.

Things like, put others' interests ahead of your own. It never would have occurred to you if it wasn't for the

Word of God and the Spirit working through it to form you into the image of Jesus Christ.

Trust the Lord's direction. Trust the Lord's denials. These are the ways that we wait on the

Lord's way. Also, trust the Lord's destination. When the

Lord says no to this and no to that, we say yes, Lord, and amen. And when He says go, we say yes and amen.

And when we end up where the Lord wants us to be, make the most of His name in the place that He has you, knowing that He has a plan.

Did you know that Jesus Christ only ever called Christians to live day by day? Day by day.

Trusting the Lord daily. And we have Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke sailing from Troas to the coast of Macedonia to the port city of Neapolis.

It's a 125, 150 mile long journey by boat as they sail the

Hellespot in the northern Aegean. And the region of Thrace is just to the north.

And thus, Samothrace, the mountain of Thrace, is an island that sharply juts out of the north

Aegean 5 ,250 feet in the air. Can't miss it. And so they sail past Samothrace and make it to Macedonia.

The fact they did it in two days means that God gave them a very favorable wind. God prepared a vision and He prepared a wind and He prepared a city.

And by the way of the sea, by the Via Ignatia, they come and they arrive in the foremost city of that area,

Philippi. And there we read they stay for a long time. And we see from the following verses what provisions the

Lord had arranged for their success while they were there. Was there a synagogue? No, but there was a group of women who prayed by the river on the

Sabbath day. And one of them believed in God and one of them would believe upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. And she, a woman of great means, was able to support the missionary team in Philippi for a long time.

Look how it all worked out. And do you know that if we follow this missionary journey of Paul, the second missionary journey of Paul, and how he goes from Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, and then he has to bypass

Asia. He wants to go to Ephesus, but he bypasses Asia and goes to Troas and Neapolis and Philippi and Thessalonica and he goes to Berea and Athens and Corinth.

Do you know, as you look at your map, this shallow half circle is all oriented around one city.

It's the city of Ephesus. And do you know that God has him evangelize the entire radius of the great influence of Ephesus before he goes to Ephesus.

Isn't that interesting? Thomas Watson, the Puritan, said that Providence is the

Hebrew word best read backwards. And so as we look backwards in our lives, what do you see?

As you look backwards into your life, what do you see?

I pray that your reflection about how the Lord has brought you along is full of thanksgiving.

Wonder after wonder at God's grace and God's provision. How God brought you through difficulty after difficulty, relational challenge after relational challenge, problem after problem, and that you would see how the

Lord has helped you. That every time you reflect upon your life, you're touching your

Ebenezer. Thus far, the Lord has helped us. That as you look back upon your life and you reflect on the

Lord's providence, that you're filled with thanksgiving and praise. I pray that it's not something where you look back and you are full of the if -onlys and the what -ifs, filled with bitterness and complaining, resentment and sadness.

Let me encourage you that you should trust the Lord's destination.

Thus far, the Lord has brought you. This is where He has you. Think of all the

Lord has done for you. Give Him praise. Give Him glory. Give Him honor.

Wait upon the Lord. Wait upon the Lord's way when He says no, when

He says go, and as He leads you to reflect on how far He has brought you.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the time that You've given us in Your Word. I cannot reflect upon my own life without seeing just how carefully and fully and wonderfully

You have been gracious. And not just for me. Lord, You have us together in Christ, and we see and rejoice in our

Christian community, in our church, with our brothers and sisters in Christ as we share what the

Lord has done. We see time and again Your generosity. We see time and again how well

You lead, how well You guide, how wise You are when You say no, how generous

You are to provide when You say go. And so, Lord, we pray that You would help us to trust

You in these things, to depend upon You, and to wait upon You. In Jesus' name we pray.