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Josh Kolleh teaches from Psalm 88 about trusting God’s steadfast love through suffering and bringing our burdens honestly to Him.
Bellevue Baptist Church | Young Adults | Memphis, TN
Good evening, everyone. Most of you guys already know who I am, but for those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Josh. I have been the intern in Young Adults for the past couple of years. And tonight will be my last time that I get to actually preach in front of y'all. So it's been kind of a crazy journey. I appreciate all the times you guys have let me be able to speak and develop my style while I've been here. So if you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Psalm 88. We have been in a series in the Psalms where we are looking at God's character in order to fuel our worship, okay? And JP assigned me to talk about God's love. So for me, this is a pretty simple concept to explain. So when we look at God's love, what does scripture say about God's love? Well, first of all, love is who God is, right? 1 John 4 says, God is love. It's not just an action that he does, it's who he is at his being. And not only is God love, it's that he is a being that is self-giving and self-sacrificial, right? Romans 8 lets us know that if he gave us his son, how much more will he not give us all things, right? And so not only that, God is also personal. His love is personal and immeasurable. It's not just this ethereal, oh man, he loves everybody. It's that individually, he loves each and every one of us. Paul says in Ephesians 3 that he wants every Christian to be rooted in love so that they know the heights and depths and widths of God's love. And then finally, God's love is steadfast and inseparable. Right, this Hebrew idea of hesed is that God is love is unfailing, that he will be loyal and that he will never leave you. And Romans 8 lets us know that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ. And so for me, here you go. This is kind of the sermon on the love of God, right? Like this is the character of who he is, but I wanted to dig deeper and look into like what happens when we don't fully experience God's love on an emotional level, right? This is an easy thing for us to understand, right? That God loves us. I don't think anyone here would look at these points and be like, you know what, this is something I don't understand. But sometimes life makes it difficult for us to really resonate with what God says his love is, right? And so we're gonna look at Psalm 88, and this is a Psalm that's written by a guy named Haman, which is probably not a person that you're familiar with, but Haman was the choir master at the temple. And so what he did is if you would go into the temple, you would be hearing him sing and lead the other Levites in song as you were going to God's presence. And what's really fascinating here is that you're gonna see the honest, real emotions that Haman is feeling about life as a worship leader. So let's take a look at this. Psalm 88, this is how it starts. Lord, you are the God who saves me. Day and night, I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you. Turn your ear to my cry. I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I am like one without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have overwhelmed me with all of your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape. My eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, Lord, every day. I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? But I cry to you for help, Lord. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth, I have suffered and been close to death. I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me. Your terrors have destroyed me. All day long, they surrounded me like a flood. They've completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor. Darkness is my closest friend. And so in a sermon about God's love, you probably, this is a really weird and depressing one to do. He kind of ends with darkness is my friend. Like what type of Psalm about God's love is this? But there's this central question that he has. Is your love declared in the grave? And the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because what happens when everything we know about God's love seems to contradict everything we are experiencing. And that is where I wanted us to hit on tonight. Because like I said, the theological idea of God's love is easy to understand, but sometimes it's hard for us to experience, especially when life experiences, teaches us a different thing. Because we all know Psalm 139, where it says, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and that all his thoughts are wonderful towards us. But you might be thinking, man, is God's love really all that wonderful to me? With all the situations that I'm going through? And so one of the things is let's break down and look at some of the things that Haman here says that he's lost. He says that he's lost friends. He's lost loved ones. He's lost family and a sense of belonging. And maybe you're in here and you have this just sense of loneliness where you don't feel connected with people. You might not have a great connection with your family. And even if you come to church, you might just feel like you just don't belong anywhere. Remember, Haman is the choir master at the temple, and he's feeling this way. And he's talking about God honestly about this. Haman has also just lost hope for a better future. As you can see in this, he's saying, hey, I've been dealing with this since I was a youth. All of my life, this is all that I have experienced. So you see that his hope for a future is also just gone. And also his peace and emotional stability is gone. He's just like haywire with his emotions where he's like, hey, I'm staying up all night with grief and tears, and I'm crying out to you. I'm full of troubles. And there's nothing that seems to get rid of it. And some of the other sadder parts you see is that he doesn't have a sense of God's favor on his life. Remember, he's attributing all this. If you look over and over in the Psalms, he's saying like, hey, you have taken all this away. You've taken my friends. You've put me in this place of darkness. You have put me in the pit. So he feels like that God's wrath is just on him. And it can be very easy when we are going through hard seasons where it looks like God doesn't love us and it's just his wrath on us. He's also just lost the innocence and joy of his youth. You know, like when you were younger, you got excitement over things like pressing the button on an elevator. You know, these days I don't get as excited about pressing the button on an elevator, right? Because there's just so many different life responsibilities that's happened. And Haman is in the same place where he's like, he just doesn't experience the same joy that he had when he was younger. And that's something that we can all relate to as well. Even sadder, it says that he has no relief despite persistent prayer. He has been praying, he's been praying, he's been praying. He worships, he leads worship, and he just feels no relief, which is why at the end, he just declares, darkness is my only friend. Now imagine if Haman on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday night just went up there and just prayed this out loud in an Americanized version. How would we feel? And what would people tell him, right? If he's like, man, like my life is just full of troubles, we'd be so quick to be like, man, you just need to focus on your blessings. There's so many blessings that you have in your life. Why don't you focus on that? Or if he came and he was like, man, my friends and my family and all that is gone. It's like, well, you have a church family. How can you be so lonely, right? Or if he's like, man, I just don't have peace. This thing is just going, like my mind is just a mess. We would just tell him something like, well, you just need to have more faith. Or like, if he just ends as dark as he is like, man, I think darkness is the only friend I got right now. We'd be like, you shouldn't speak so negatively, right? And what I love is that God has preserved this in his word for us to look at, because instead of entering people's pain, we'd rather correct them, right? And what I love is the very words that we would try to silence, the very words that God has given his people permission to pray. And so for us, we need to be in the same place where we can come to God with our honest questions, our honest wrestlings, with all the things that we feel. Because it'd be so easy to just tell everyone, hey, everything will get better in heaven. But what Haman realizes is, hey, no, I just don't need a God that's gonna sit in heaven and do nothing. I need a very real present help in trouble. And this is something that you see in the Psalms. David said this in Psalm 27, I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, right? Your hope in God is.
not just, hey, everything's gonna be horrible and then I die and then I go to heaven, right? The hope of the gospel is that Christ in you, the hope of glory, that he is with you through everything. And so one of the things that we have to be very careful not to do in life is do this thing called spiritual bypassing. I don't know if you've ever heard of this term before. So I'm gonna give you this definition for what spiritual bypassing is, but it's this. When we use spiritual disciplines, religious activity, and service to God as a means of avoiding or suppressing our emotional wounds, unresolved pain, and inner struggles. Rather than confronting what is happening within us, we immerse ourselves in doing more for God so that we never have to face what is actually happening to us. And so here's what I don't want you to misunderstand. Here's what I'm not trying to say. If you're struggling, if you're suffering, if you have any questions, God, don't serve God. That's not what I'm trying to say. That's not what I'm trying to communicate. But one of the things that I've seen over and over in my like seven years of ministry is that sometimes people will use the excuse of serving God and actually trying to run away from God and run from other people, to run from what's actually going on inside. It's a form of religious escapism because serving constantly is safer than being vulnerable. You wanna fill every moment with doing good so you never have to be quiet with your own thoughts and emotions, right? And as you can see here, Haman doesn't do this. He could just easily keep going with his job as the choir master, sing like everything's okay, that he's not experiencing any of this, but he comes out very, very honestly to God. Because sometimes the most spiritually mature thing that we can do isn't to work harder, but to stop running from what we've been carrying and finally bringing them honestly to the Lord, right? Because Haman believes that he needs a God that's there with him, even in his struggles, which is why he keeps asking the question, shall your love be declared in the grave? And so Haman feels like he's in this pit, this valley. And so if you live in the ancient world, there was just this idea where, where do gods live? Where is their power shown? It's that their power is shown on mountains, right? When you think about the Greek gods or the Canaanite gods, all these different things, is that they live on Mount Olympus. They live in the mountains and their powers are not shown anywhere else or in the valleys. They're regional things. So their love and their power is directed in the regions where they're at. And so there's a little lesson that we can learn from this guy named King Ahab, which is probably a weird person to learn a lesson from because he's a very wicked and evil king, but there's a very important lesson. And it's a story that I never hear a lot, but I actually love this story and I come to a lot, is so Ahab is being attacked by the Syrians. And so he does not have as many soldiers, but God still wants to help Ahab, even though he's evil and wicked. And God goes, hey, just go be brave and go fight them. And so Ahab does, and then he wins the battle. And so then all the kings of the Syrians and the generals and advisors are like, what is going on? How'd they beat us? And then all the advisors are like, oh, well, that was very obvious why. They had the high ground. They were attacking us from the mountains and Yahweh is clearly the God of the mountains. So of course, Yahweh's power would work there. So what we need to do is we need to attack them in the valleys. And if we attack them in the valleys, then they'll be utterly be destroyed. And so what's really interesting here is now Ahab then comes to this valley and a man of God comes to him and says this, the man of God approached and spoke to the king of Israel and said, this is what the Lord says. Since the Aramans have said, Yahweh is a God of mountains, but he is not a God of valleys. Therefore, I will hand over to you all this great multitude and you shall know that I am Yahweh. And so what we can see here, God here declares that he is a God, not just of the mountains, that his love can go even into the darkest places of the valleys, because God's love reaches us in places where we no longer expect to find him. Even someone like Ahab, who is an enemy of God, and God is still showing his love to him and willing to help out Israel, even though he's a Baal worshiper, because God's love goes to places where you will no longer expect to find him. And so I want to kind of look at a couple different valleys that there are in the Bible that we might find ourselves in. The first one I want to look at is the Valley of Dry Bones. And so the context for what's going on here is Israel has been taken into Babylonian captivity. Their hopes and their dreams have been crushed. So I have an image here of what Ezekiel sees. What Ezekiel sees is that he sees this Valley of Dry Bones. And the Bible says that it's very, very dry. And the idea of what this is, is that Israel's hopes and dreams have been completely obliterated. There is no way, right? Just like these bones, it's so dry, there's no way any life can be brought into their hopes and dreams. And so it was the same for Israel, but this is what God has to say about this valley. Says this in Ezekiel 37, he says, "'Then he said to me, "'Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. "'They say our bones are dried up "'and our hope is gone. "'We are cut off. "'Therefore prophesy and say to them, "'this is what the sovereign Lord says, "'my people, I am going to open your graves "'and bring you up for them. "'I will bring you back to the land of Israel.'" And I bring this up because many of us might find us in this valley because God's love reaches into the Valley of Forgotten Hopes and Shattered Dreams. So maybe you feel like your life has been completely and utterly destroyed. Life just has not gone the way that you wanted it to go. When you think of what that little boy or little girl thought that your life was gonna be like right now, this isn't what it matched up and you're just extremely disappointed. But the thing is, is that God doesn't leave us in a valley where our dreams are just shattered and our hopes are gone. What does scripture say, right? He knows the plans that he has for us, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future. And so I kind of have just a stupid example for my own personal life. It's like, for me, one of the things that I always envisioned for myself is when I get to college, I'm gonna just stay on it for a very short period of time and I'm gonna move off campus and just live with three good friends, four of us in an apartment together and I might be able to host some couple guys over and it'll be a good time. And so life didn't actually end up working that way. So for those of you that know me, you've probably heard the story. I lived on the dorm for seven years. So moving off never really got to work out. And I remember I was coming to my final year and even though God had worked in incredible ways and I had seen him write a story better than I could have imagined, a lot of different life circumstances had come where I felt like my dreams and my hopes had been taken away. And I was just kind of thinking back to this, like, man, I never actually got to live off campus and get to do what I wanted to do. So I was very disappointed and a lot of life situations had been hitting me and I started failing some classes, which is kind of like not me. And so I had to do an extra semester. So I was like, well, that kind of sucks. And so what had happened is one of my former roommates is like, hey, my grandma died. We got a bunch of money. We just bought a house. You wanna come live with me? And I was like, yeah. And so when did this happen? And so fun fact, this happened when I first got here in Memphis. And so Tanya had asked me like, hey, you wanna like stay longer? We would love to have you for a year. And I was like, well, I couldn't tell her. I was like, I need to go live my childhood dream. So I was just like, I got classes to finish. So I like went back, remember I was gone for that fall and I came back in January of 25. But I remember it was just such a sweet blessing that the Lord gave me. Because what happened is over that summer, there was four of us that ended up living in that house. And I just got to show them all the shows that I love, all the movies I love. And I got to host over a hundred different people while I was there. And for me, like God had written something way better than I could have imagined in my mind. And it was something that was just so little, but I always like look fondly that like, that was such a little thing that God didn't have to give. And he's like, almost as kind of gave me a little encore there that I ended up loving. And so maybe you're in a place of like, hey, my life is messed up and destroyed because I've troubled my own life. I'm the one that's brought destruction into my own life. That's why I want to look at the valley of ACORN. ACORN just stands for trouble, right? And so maybe you're in a place where like, no, I'm the one that's messed everything up. I'm the one that's hurt people. I'm the one that's betrayed them. I pushed them away. I'm the one that's the problem in my family. Like I've turned to self-destructing coping mechanisms and I've just sinned against God. And the reason my life is a mess right now is because I'm the one that put myself here. And so there's a man named Akin who did the same exact thing where he sinned against God. And what happened in this valley is, this is the valley where he was stoned. I have an image here of what the valley of ACORN looks like because it's a real place. It's like all these people would have been at the top of this valley as they brought destruction onto Akin. And so maybe you feel like you're in this same place where, hey, like, can God's love reach me? Can he transform?
my situation, because I'm the one that's messed up my own life. And what's really cool here, if we look at the Psalm, Psalm 107 says this about that. Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God's commands and despised the plans of the Most High. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love. Some became fools to their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress. He sent out His Word and healed them. He rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love. And so we can see here that your failures and sins don't have to have the last words on your life. What does it say here? These are people that have rebelled against God's Word. They're in utter darkness, because they're the ones that sin. They're the fools, because they've committed iniquities. And what does it say? They cried to the Lord, and the Lord is the one that saved them. Because even your failures, even your sins, does not have to be your final resting ground. Because this is what God says in Hosea 2, I will make the Valley of Acre, the Valley of Trouble, a door of hope. Because what God's love does is that it reaches into the places of our greatest failures, and it opens a door of hope. Right? Because this is what the message of the gospel is. The gospel is that we we need to be saved from ourselves, right? We need to be saved from ourselves, and that is why God's love can even save us from our own failures, from our own sins, right? And so one of the final valleys I want us to look at is the Valley of Barakah. And so I'm going to tell you what Barakah means in just a second, but this is a valley if you just feel that you're completely helpless and just stuck in life. No matter what you do, no matter what outcome you do, you're listening to all the podcasts, you're doing all the right things, and you just feel stuck. There's nothing that you can do to change your situation. You just keep going to the same cycles over and over and over again, and you're just completely powerless. And so where this valley comes from the Bible is from 2 Chronicles chapter 20. And so there's this guy named Jehoshaphat, and what was going on in his situation is that all of the enemies of Israel had gathered together to attack Jehoshaphat. And Jehoshaphat goes, I can't win. There is literally no way for us to win. So what he does is he calls the community together into a fast and just to pray for God, because this army is vastly coming to this valley. And so this is a prayer that I've often used so many times in my life when I have no idea what to pray. And it's just this, for we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. And so we can see here in this place of utter helplessness and no power to change anything, Jehoshaphat just goes and is completely honest of like, there is nothing that I can do. I have no power to do this. I'm completely dependent on you. And so we can see here when we find ourselves where we feel like we can't change anything, we need to do the same thing that Jehoshaphat does and pray. Because I know I have found myself in places where I'm like just so emotionally like drained, and I'm like, I don't even know the words to pray. I don't even know what to say. But thankfully this is where Romans 8 comes in again and says that the Spirit intercedes for us on our behalf on groanings that cannot be uttered. And he intercedes for us on our behalf what we should pray. So even when you feel like you don't know what to pray, you don't know what to say, right? You have the Holy Spirit inside of you that is praying to God the things that you should pray. And I know I've always found it when I'm like drained, it's like I'm like afraid that I might like pray the wrong things, right? So if I don't like come up with like the right exact prayer, so if I just like pray, God, I need a door. God's gonna like make my situation worse. So I like endure more. If I pray for more patience, well, this season's gonna go longer. So I need to like make sure I get like the right prayer prayed so I get the right outcome. And I started to realize like I'm just coming to God in fear at that point, which is not what God wants. I'm just treating God like a trickster God, like Loki or something. Like, ooh, it's like this cursed monkey's paw that if I like give the wrong prayer, my life is gonna get worse. But what's the beautiful thing about coming to God is that he knows the request of your prayers and the intentions behind it, even if it's imperfectly prayed. Like I'll use this example of St. Augustine. Augustine, he's the one that like comes up and popularized the idea of original sin. And he was a great theologian that influenced a lot. And so throughout his life, his mom consistently prayed this prayer that he would not go to Rome. Because Augustine was not a Christian and he was not living a good lifestyle. He was living with a woman that he was not married to, he was not following the ways of God, and his mother deeply cared for his soul and prayed for him every day. And she desperately prayed to God, don't let him go to Rome. Because she knew if he went to Rome, he would get—he would just be so in the world that he would be completely lost. And here's what happened is God didn't answer that prayer and Augustine goes to Rome. But here's the thing, him going to Rome, he becomes the voice of the Emperor, realizes all this thing is meaningless, and he meets this preacher by the name of Ambrose who ends up saving him. You see, Monica thought that him going to Rome would be the thing that brought him away from Christ, but really him going to Rome was what it took for him to come to Christ. Because God knew the intention behind Monica's prayer all along. She just wanted to see her son saved. And God wasn't like, oh, he—she didn't pray that one exact right prayer, like, because God knew the intention behind it. It's the same with Abraham in Genesis 19. Abraham really just wants a lot to be saved, but then he goes to this complex thing of, hey, if there's 50 people in Sodom and Gomorrah, don't destroy it. Okay, what about 40, 30, 20, 10? And notice, there wasn't 10 good people in Sodom and Gomorrah, and it gets destroyed. But the beautiful thing about God is, even though Abraham never prayed it, God knew the intention behind Abraham's prayer. And what does he do? He saves Lot, even though Abraham never actually got around to praying that prayer. Because God knows what we need. That's why it's like your Father in heaven knows the things that you need, so go to him. You don't need to come up with all the things because God knows how to give you the things that you're actually praying for, even if it's not in the ways that it looks like. And so the other thing that we can see here in the story, when you feel completely helpless, and this is a lesson that I've been reminded of recently, is that you need a community behind you. Jehoshaphat comes and he assembles all of Israel to come on fast, because there's nothing that he did. He knows that he needs everyone praying and everyone coming alongside him, because we weren't meant to do it alone, especially if you're in a place that you feel helpless and there's nothing that can change, you desperately need people around you. It's the same thing that Moses needed, right? If you remember in Exodus 17, Moses, as long as he had his hands lifted up, Israel would win the battle. But even someone that had the vigor of Moses got tired. And so what did he need? He needed two friends that held his hands up and sat him down. And in the same way, we need people in our lives that can hold our hands up when we're tiring. Because we need that, right? We need to come to God and we need the people that are around us. And we see Jehoshaphat, here's what happens. Here's how this battle is won. It's really interesting. So these three large armies come into this valley, and so all Jehoshaphat can do is get all of the worship leaders to sing songs, and they just pray, and they just sing, Your love endures forever. And they just sing that over and over and over. What happens is the army just ends up taking itself out, and they didn't even have to do anything. Because one of the beautiful things that God does is God loves and meets us in battles we cannot win, and circumstances we cannot escape. And there are times in my life where I've found where everything has been going completely wrong, and the only thing I can do is to come to God and just worship. Even though everything is completely going wrong, it doesn't make any sense to worship. It's just I break down, I get on my knees, and I'm just worshiping. And those are the sweetest times that God can really have you in. Because one of the cool things is this Valley of Barakah. I told you what I was gonna tell you what it means. It literally means the Valley of Blessing. So this this valley where you feel utterly helpless, utterly powerless, utterly stuck, that's really the place where you're in position to feel God the most. Right? Paul puts it like this, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. He says this in 2nd Corinthians 12. It's like, therefore I will rejoice all the more in needs, in imprisonments, in wants, in weaknesses, because then
The power of God may rest upon me, so I will boast gladly of all of these things. And so when you find yourself where it feels like that nothing is going right and there's nothing that you can do to change it, God also says, don't despise these days. And Zechariah says, don't despise the day of small things. Because it's truly in these days where God works in us and shapes us into the person that he wants us to be in order to have this relationship with him so we can fulfill the calling that he has in our lives. And so Haman here, right, if we go back to Psalm 88, he asked the question, shall your love be declared in the grave? Because he feels like darkness is his only friend. And a psalm that all of us knows really well, Psalm 23, this is what it has to say. Even though I walk to the darkest valley, I will fear no evil. Why? For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Because God's love reaches even where darkness and death seems to have the final word. Because what was the question, Haman, shall your love be declared in the grave? And the answer to this that we as Christians all know of, yes, his love is declared in the grave. Because we don't have a God that mutually, we don't have a God that merely reaches down into our suffering. His love has entered into our suffering. He didn't stay on the mountaintops, what we suffered in the valleys, but he came into our darkness and valleys so that light could overcome darkness. Right, he was the man of sorrows that was acquainted with all of our griefs. And he was crowned not with the crown of gold, but with the crown of thorns. And what's the significance of that? Remember, when God looked at creation and called everything good, one of the things that wasn't good was thorns and thistles. Remember, this is not a product of God's good creation. This was a product that was of the curse that came after God created everything. So Jesus is crowned with our failures and our shame because the crowns of thorns is showing you that something has terribly gone wrong with our world. So the creator of the world was crowned with the brokenness that he came to redeem. And so when he went to that cross, one of the things that he cried out was, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so what's beautiful about this is throughout Jesus's life, he only ever refers to God as Father. But on the cross, he gives up that title of Father and cries out, my God, my God, so that we would never have to go throughout life without calling God Father. Right, he took the penalty for our sins from the wrath that God pours onto us so that we can have a relationship with Christ, so that we can be adopted into his family. And so when his body was laid into the tomb, darkness didn't over veil because his love is declared in the grave. And so he came back and he rose from the dead. And because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that our valleys are not the end of the story, right? He's the God who reaches into the places where we no longer expect to find him. He is the God who brings life where our hopes and dreams have been buried. He is the God who makes a Doria of hope out of the places of our deepest failure and shame. He is the God who meets us when we are helpless, powerless, and have nowhere left to turn. And he is the God who entered the darkest valleys of all and emerged victorious over death of self. But here's what I don't want you to misunderstand. The resurrection does not mean that the valleys in your life will disappear tomorrow. So some of you after this night is over are gonna go back to the same circumstances that you were already in. The same loneliness, the same grief, the same unanswered prayers, the same battles you cannot seem to win. And I cannot promise you when those circumstances will change. But I can tell you this. The cross is proof that God loves us even when our circumstances seem to say otherwise. And the resurrection is proof that our circumstances will not have the final world. Because God is making all things new and Psalm 88 doesn't have the final word that darkness is our only friend. Because this is one of the promises that we have. Psalm 186 says this, is those that reap in tears shall reap in joy. And so wherever you find yourself in, God's love can reach you in the darkest of whatever you're going through. I don't know what each and every one of you are going through, but I do know this, that God is willing to meet you there. And it doesn't have the final word because one day God is making all things new. At this point I'm gonna call the band to come back up here and they're gonna lead us into a time of worship. And so before we get into this time of worship, one of the things I want to say is maybe you haven't started your relationship with Christ yet. Maybe you haven't like come to the place where you've confessed your sins to God and received forgiveness. If that's you today, come talk to me, JD, JP. Come to someone in the back and come talk to us and we would love to tell you how you can start your relationship with Christ. But for those of us who are believers, one of the beauties of the cross is that we still need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day, even no matter what we're going through. To remind us of the love that he has for all of us because he can transform us even in the midst of our suffering. And it's a reminder that evil and darkness don't have the final day, even if we're not living in heaven yet. And so as we go into this final song, I'm gonna pray this out before we do that, but as we go into the final song, wherever you're at, whatever is going on inside, I want to just drop all of the distractions, all of that, and bring whatever it is you're going through to God. As we sing this final song, this is the most important thing that we're gonna do tonight, just sing your heart out to God. Whatever you're going through, just worship. As we sing about the name that is above all names, just bring it to him. Father, I just want to pray over this room right now, God. I don't know what everyone is going through, God, but I do know that you are a God that loves them all and loves them immeasurably. Lord, no matter what valley that they're in, Lord, would you please let them know the heights and widths and depths of your love. Help them to be rooted in your love. Please let no one here feel like that they need to leave without talking to someone with their burdens. Help them to be able to find the community that they need so they're not doing life on their own. God, help us all to just have a fresh experience you as we worship you now. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.