Week 11 - Designed: Romans 8:28-30 (Brian Lowe)

Series: Designed
Week: 11
Scripture: Romans 8:28-30; Romans 8:15; Genesis 45:5-8; Genesis 50:20; Job 1:6-12; Job 1:20-22; Acts 2:22-23
Preacher: Brian Lowe

The Pleasures of God by John Piper
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield

Transcript

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Welcome to the sermon podcast of Exodus Church, located in Belmont, North Carolina. For more information about our church and the many ways you can be involved, you can go to our website at exoduschurch.com. Now if you'll take your Bible and turn to Romans 8. Romans 8 is where we are gonna be this morning. We've been in a series called Designed. We've talked about God's design and creation. We made a pivot a few weeks ago to God's redesign in Christ. And we said that in Christ, we are redesigned. We are not revised as if all we needed was a few edits. We're not rebranded as if what we needed was a new outside or a new veneer. We are redesigned in Christ. We are made new. The old is gone, the new has come. We are made righteous. Jesus takes away our sin and gives us his righteousness, but that's just the beginning of God's redesign of us. We are made new and we are made righteous, but there's the second phase of being made like Jesus called sanctification, this process where we are made more and more like Christ, and then ultimately, we will be made fully like Christ, and the theological word for that is glorification. And so today, we're gonna talk about this process known as sanctification, the reality that we are being made like Jesus, specifically, we're gonna talk about what God uses to do that. Now, our passage today is gonna say that God uses everything to do that, that God uses all things, that God is working all things together for good, and the good there is that we would be conformed into the image of Jesus. And so God is using everything, but the things that tend to take our attention is the difficult things. No one ever cries out to God, God, why are you making my life so easy? None of us curl up in a ball weeping that our lives have been simple. It's the difficult seasons that get our attention, it's the difficult seasons that cause us to ask questions like, why do bad things happen to good people? Now, there's a book written on this by a Jewish rabbi with that title, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? It's a horrible book, and it's really not a great question because the Bible tells us there are no good people, except one, there's one good person and he volunteered for a really bad thing, okay? So the question's really not a great question, but we ask it when we're going through difficult seasons. Sometimes we respond to a difficult season with the phrase, well, I guess everything just happens for a reason. Now, if you think about that, that's a really strange thing for someone to say who's not trusting Christ. Like, why would we be that optimistic? Why would we have that kind of optimism? Then, oh, well, I guess everything just happens for a reason. Why would we say something like that if we're not rooted in what the Bible teaches? There's a meme that goes around every once in a while that says everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it's that you're stupid and make bad decisions, like that's a thing, but that's usually not what we're thinking about when we say, well, I guess everything happens for a reason. We're thinking there's gotta be some meaning to my pain. There's gotta be some purpose to what I'm walking through. Now, our passage tells us that everything does indeed happen for a reason, but it's not because it's some random chaos and chance. It's not cold and impersonal, and it's certainly not a guess or a wish. In our passage today, we're gonna see that as believers in Christ, we have something we know, and not know in our head, but know in our gut. Like we know with certainty this thing the Bible says, that in our darkest moments, by the graveside, in the hospital room, we know that there is a good God whose nail-scarred hand is guiding and governing all things. That's what we know, that this nail-scarred hand is guiding and governing everything so that we'll be made more like Him. And my hope today is that we would leave here believing that not just knowing that, but really deep in our heart and gut, believing it so that when difficulty does come, we can say with the Apostle Paul, and we know, we know. So I'm gonna read chapter eight, verses 28 to 30. I'm gonna pray, then we're gonna jump into what God's Word says. Look at verse 28. It says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified. And those whom He justified, He also glorified. Let's pray together. Father God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the parts of Your Word that make us think a little bit, the parts of Your Word that make us ask questions, the parts of Your Word that stretch our intellect. Lord, thank You that though we could be intellectual about these verses, there are things very practical about this passage. There's truth here that grounds us in the midst of pain, in the midst of difficulty, in the midst of all things that we walk through. And Lord, I know, I know that there are people in this room who have walked through all things. There are people in this room who have walked through difficulties and pain and heartache and suffering. And so Lord, I pray that You would give us a great confidence from Your Word today that there is nothing wasted, that there is nothing that is haphazard, there is nothing that is an accident, but that You are working all things together for our good to make us more and more like Jesus. Help us see that in Your Word today. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. So our big idea is this, that God works in all things to make us like Jesus. God works in all things to make us like Jesus. Let's start with God works. We see that in verse 28, it says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Now Paul begins with and we know. Now this know is not simply an intellectual knowledge, though that's the beginning. We have to know it in our head before we believe it in our gut, okay? But it's not simply we intellectually know this. This know idea is an idea of certainty, of understanding, of realization, that we know something deeply, that we know something internally. What do we know in verse 28? That for those who love God, all things work together for good. That's what we know, okay? Now let's look at this phrase, for those who love God. Now this is important. It's important that Paul is speaking with this kind of certainty about those who love God. Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't necessarily apply to those who don't, but we need to understand that this is speaking of those who love God. And what we need to know about that is that we only love God if we are loved by Him. We only love God if we are saved by Him. The Bible tells us that we are not like born loving Him, we are born running from Him. We are born in rebellion to Him. We are born sinning and falling short of the glory of God. We are not born loving God. That's something that God has to do in our heart to change us to make us love Him. And so we're gonna deal with a lot of questions today around free will and sovereignty and all these things about how life works. But those are important questions, but the most important question is this, do you love God? Like the most important question is not how God's sovereignty and our responsibility works. That's not the most important question in the universe. The most important question right now is, have you been changed by Jesus? That's the most important question. Are you a Christian? Because believers have this kind of certainty. Paul says, and we know that for those who love God. So have you been changed? Have you been saved? Have you experienced verse 15 of chapter eight, where it says, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out Abba Father. Have you received the spirit of God that caused your heart to cry out Abba Father? Like have you been changed so that you love God? Now, Paul says, we know something. We know that for those who love God, then it says all things work together for good. Now, some translations will read God works all things, or others will say God works in all things. The ESV, which is the translation that we use here, says all things work together for good. But we should not read that as if all things are just kind of randomly working. We don't read that verse to suggest that all things are just kind of colliding together in such a way that they work out. We read this and understand this to say that God is at work in all things so that they work out for good. We believe that in all things, the good and nail-scarred hand of God is guiding everything. And the passage gives us some examples of what God is at work in. There's some words in this passage we don't just typically use in normal conversation. Like you're not typically sitting across from a friend at the coffee shop, you know, saying, you know, I foreknew something the other day. I mean, we don't use this kind of language. We don't use, you know, I just kind of predestined something yesterday. We don't use this language, so we need to understand what it's saying, because this is part of the way God is at work in all things. Let's talk about the word foreknowledge. When it says in verse 29, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. That word foreknew, some people understand it to mean that God looked forward in time from eternity. God looked forward in all of history, and he saw you or some people doing some good things, and he said, I'm gonna pick those people that do good things. Some people look at it and think, okay, that means God looked forward in history and time, and saw those who would believe, and gave them the ability to believe because he saw that they believed. Well, the problem with all that is that it begins to make what we do a good work that earns God's attention. The problem with all that is that if we think God looks forward and saw some good thing we did and said, oh, I'm gonna like that person because of that good thing, we forget that God also saw all of our bad stuff too, and all of our bad stuff far outweighs any of our good stuff that we've done. And so this word doesn't mean God looks forward in time and sees something good and says, I'm gonna like that person. That's not what it means. It means that God foreloved, that God beforehand set his love on a people, which is really good news if you think about it, because it means that God saw all of our stuff and loved us anyway. That God saw all of our sin, all of our rebellion, all of our wickedness, and chose to set his love on us anyway. Isn't that amazing? That's part of God being at work in all things. Next is this word predestined. Again, we don't use that in conversation typically. This means that God is at work in the history of our lives so that we would hear the gospel and believe. That's what the word predestined means. It means that God is at work in history. Certainly God has been at work in human history to get to the cross of Jesus. Can you imagine all the things? Think about all the things that had to happen to get Jesus on a Roman cross. Think about all the things that had to happen to get us to the cross. God was predestinating all of that. And then think about your life. Think about you hearing the gospel and believing. Think about all that had to happen for you to get to that moment where someone would say, hey, do you know Jesus? Think about all that had to happen to get you to a point where you would say, you know, I'm a sinner in need of a savior. God, and this idea of predestined is that God is at work in all of human history, not just to get us to the cross, but to get you to the gospel. And so think about this. When you share the gospel with a friend or a neighbor, that's part of God at work in all of human history to get to the gospel to that person. And so you're a part of what God's doing in all the world to share the gospel when you do so. It's amazing. Then it says that we are called. This word called used in 28 and in 30. This is the idea of God calling us from death to life. So there's two ways the Bible uses the concept of calling. One is in the preaching of the gospel, that when we share the gospel, when you teach the gospel, when you preach the gospel, there's this calling that's going out, this general call that goes out to all. And then there's this call from death to life that happens when somebody is a believer. When God reaches into that dead heart we had and brings it to life, that's calling. That's God calling us from death to life. Like Jesus said to Lazarus, Lazarus come forth and he walked out of the grave. This is God calling us from death to life. One of my favorite things that happens every year at EKE, and I don't know if we're gonna do it again next year because that's a minute, okay? But when the kids sing the song, he called my name and I walked out of the grave. You guys remember that? When the kids are jumping and screaming and yelling and having no idea what they're saying? Like it's amazing to see those children rejoicing in God's internal call to bring them to life. That's what we're talking about. And so what the Bible is saying is that God is at work in eternity past, in history, and in you to get you to Jesus. That's what it's talking about here. And so God is at work. And what is he at work in? He's at work in all things, verse 28. It says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. Now, when we say God works in all things, we mean all things, all things. Let me give you a few stories to illustrate that. First one is the story of Joseph. So the story of Joseph shows up in Genesis 37 to 50. Joseph is the youngest in his family and his father likes him a little bit too much, probably gives him a coat of many colors. And Joseph kind of tends to live into that with his brothers. In fact, he tells his brothers, hey guys, I had this great dream. You all were worshiping me. Now, I don't know if you know about family or not, if you've ever had a brother, but if you tell your older brother, hey, you're gonna worship me, that's not gonna go well for you. Well, these guys take it to another level. They throw him in a pit, they sell him into slavery. They tell their dad that he's dead. Now that's dysfunction 101, right? That's just a lot of bad things happening right there. So God gets Joseph from that pit into slavery in Egypt. He gets to Egypt, he gets to Pharaoh's house, no, Potiphar's house. And he gets to the like second in command of Potiphar's house and he's ruling his house and doing all these things for him. And his wife sees Joseph and makes an advance toward him. Well, Joseph runs away and he's like, no, I can't do this to God or to this man. And he runs away and she tells a lie that he had made an advance to her. Well, Joseph goes to prison. And throughout the story, there's this phrase, and the Lord was with him, and the Lord was with him, and the Lord was with him. Well, in prison, the Lord was with him and he interprets a dream for a couple of his cellmates. And he says, hey, look, when you get to Pharaoh, you tell him I can interpret dreams because I'm not here, I shouldn't be here, okay? Well, the guy gets to Pharaoh, he forgets about Joseph for a while. And then he remembers. Pharaoh has a dream that needs to be interpreted. He says, oh, I know a guy. He goes and finds Joseph. He brings him before Pharaoh. Joseph interprets his dream for him. I'm skipping a lot, okay? Joseph interprets his dream for him. And the dream is that there's gonna be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and the famine's gonna be so great, nobody's gonna remember the plenty. And so Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of getting the kingdom ready for the famine. Well, he does that and does a great job. Well, the famine comes, his family, which is in the region, begins suffering the effects of the famine. And so they come to Egypt to get grain. Well, they don't notice Joseph. They don't recognize him. I mean, why would they? Why would they expect that they would be talking to this ruler of Egypt and it'd be their brother? Well, a few things happen, and finally Joseph reveals himself to them, and he says this to them."Now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here." Now, Joseph is acknowledging that what they did was wrong, right? He's just saying, hey, don't worry about it, and here's why."For God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land for two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest, and God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God sent me here." So Joseph is reasoning that God used the evil intentions of his brothers to get him to a place to preserve the people of God. That's what Joseph is saying. Well, years go by and the people of God move to Egypt. That's how we get the beginning of Exodus, okay? They move to Egypt, and Joseph's father dies, and that's when his brother thinks, okay, here it comes. He's gonna take vengeance on us now. No, he doubles down on what he said. In Genesis 50, he responds to them, and he says this."As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today." Notice, you meant evil, God meant good. Joseph is saying here, you had evil intent, God had good intent. What we see is that God is using even the evil intentions of his brothers for the good of God's purposes and God's people. It's what we see from Joseph. Another story in the Bible, Job. So the book of Job's just an amazing story of God's sovereignty over suffering. Job was known as a man who was blameless and upright. He feared God, he turned away from evil. Well, one day it says that the evil one came before the presence of God, and God says to Satan, where have you been? He says, I've been roaming about to and fro on the earth. Well, God says to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? Now, I'm imagining one day Job reading the book of Job and seeing that going, excuse me, what? Like, what, this happened? And God's like, yeah, and Job like, well, okay, all right. I mean, what's he gonna say at that point, right? But imagine this moment, God says, have you considered my servant Job? And Satan says, well, he trusts you because he has all these things. And so then God says, well, you can strike him in these ways, and God gives him the parameters and the permission to strike Job, and he does. Satan uses weather, he uses invading armies, and Job loses all of his property and his children. It's horrendous. And this is how Job responds in chapter one. It says, then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground in worship. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Now we have this information Job doesn't have, and we would wanna say, hey, no, no, God didn't do that. Satan did that, Job. But then verse 22 says this, in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. And so what we see in the life of Job is that God uses even the evil ones' activity in our lives for his purposes, for God's purposes. So when the Bible says all things, it means all things. Finally, in Jesus. In Peter's first sermon on the day of Pentecost, we see how the plan of God interfaces with the intent of sinful men. Peter's preaching, he says,"'Men of Israel, hear these words."'Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God"'with mighty works and wonders and signs"'that God did through him in your midst,"'as you yourselves know, this Jesus,"'delivered up according to the definite plan"'and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed"'by the hands of lawless men.'" And so what Peter does is he sets these two realities next to one another, the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and the responsibility of these sinful men. And even in the life of Jesus, what we see is that God is using the evil, sinful intentions of people to accomplish his purposes. And so when the Bible says all things, it means all things, that God is using everything in your life. There is nothing accidental, haphazard, or out of his sovereign rule and reign. One writer said it this way,"'If there is one single molecule in this universe"'running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty,"'then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God"'will ever be fulfilled.'" When we say all things, when the Bible says all things, the Bible means all things. Now listen, this is not chaos, this is not impersonal. This nail-scarred hands of Jesus guide and govern all things. Now, I know, I know that creates questions. It creates questions about our pain. Like, do you mean that God has intention in my pain? Do you mean that this is part of God's plan for me? Like, there are hard questions when we talk about things like that. But I would rather deal with the hard questions about a difficult life with a sovereign God than the hard questions about why we would worship a God who is not. Why would we worship a God who is kind of trying to figure everything out? Why would we worship that being? Our God's not that. Our God rules and reigns. And the nail-scarred hand governs and guides our lives. In his book, The Pleasures of God, John Piper sets kind of two stories side by side. The first one is about the son of one of his deacons. He writes this."'The son of one of our former deacons was run over by a motorboat. He lived, but his knees were badly damaged and there were superficial nicks on his chest and neck from the propeller. When his father testified in a deacon meeting, he said his main comfort and lesson was the sovereignty of God. He said this, God has his purposes for the life of my son and for the whole family. This will turn out for the good of all of us as we trust in him. God could have taken my son with another half inch, but he said to the blade, this far and no farther.'" And we hear a story like that, we're like, praise God. He continues with a story about his mother. Piper says, "'God does not always stop the blade. On December 16th, 1974, he did not save my mother's life. She was riding with my father on a touring bus heading toward Bethlehem in Israel. A van with lumber tied on the roof, swerved out of its lane and hit the bus head on. The lumber came through the windows and killed my mother instantly.'" He writes this, "'what was my comfort in those days? There were many. She suffered little. I had her for 28 years as the best mother imaginable. She had known my wife and one of my children. She was now in heaven with Jesus. Her life was rich with good deeds and its good effects would last long after she was gone. And underneath all these comforts, supporting all my unanswered questions and calming my heart, there was the confidence that God is in control and God is good.'" He says, "'I took no comfort from the prospect that God could not control the flight of a four by four. For me, there was no consolation and haphazardness nor in giving Satan the upper hand. As I knelt by my bed and wept, having received the dreaded phone call from my brother-in-law, I never doubted that God was sovereign over this accident and that God was good. He said, I do not need to explain everything. That he reigns and that he loves is enough for now. Listen, there are people in this church that have been through significant pain, significant loss, significant suffering. And in those moments, I would rather deal with the hard questions about a difficult life with a sovereign God than the hard questions about why we will worship a God who is not.'" God is at work in all things. And when the Bible says all things, it means all things. And these all things have a purpose. They make us like Jesus, which is our next point. They make us like Jesus. Look at verse 28. All things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. Now, what is his purpose? We see that in verse 29. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Now, this purpose and the good that all things are working toward is that we, God's people, would be conformed into the image of Jesus. We don't yet look like Jesus as we ought, and so God is using all things, joy and pain, pleasure and suffering, all those things. God is using all things to conform us to the image of Jesus so that we look more and more like him. Now, this work of conforming us to the image of Jesus is this work of sanctification. One writer said this about sanctification. This is from the book, Lies Christians Believe. This is by Rosaria Butterfield. It's an excellent book. I would encourage you to read it. In it, she talks about sanctification and how God worked to take her from being a non-Christian lesbian woman to a woman who followed Christ, got married and had children, and is now a grandmother who lives in Durham, okay? She writes this about sanctification."'Sanctification is the work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die to sin and live to righteousness.'" And so God is using all things so that we are renewed after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die to sin and to live to righteousness, which means we look more and more like Jesus. So God is using all of this. He's using everything in our lives to make us more and more like him. Now, we cooperate with him in some way, okay? God's using all, and this is the mystery of sanctification to me. God is using all things to do it, and then we cooperate with him. She continues,"'Sanctification does not mean that I'm a passive recipient of grace, no true believer is. Sanctification is a gift of God's grace, but only when we participate in our own sanctification are we renewed in the image of God.'" And so in some mysterious way, God is working all things, and we are participating with him in this. Our time with Jesus in his word and prayer, our time trusting him through joy and pain, our obedience to Jesus when we want to and when we don't, our submitting our lives to the will and way of Jesus. God is at work in all things, and us submitting ourselves to Jesus participates with him and are being made more and more like Jesus. I have a little dog. She's not little anymore. She's about 60 pounds. She's a golden lab, a yellow lab, and she is all energy all the time, okay? And we put a little collar on her to send her out in the yard so she can do her business. And when I'm trying to put that collar on her, sometimes she sits still, and most of the time she does not, right? And so I'll sit, and she's doing her thing. I'm like, sit. And when she sits, I can easily put the collar on and she can go out and do her business. Part of our work of sanctification is to sit and let God do his work in us. That analogy breaks down so quickly, doesn't it? So quickly, but it's the best I got. All right, fourth thing. Not only are we made like Jesus, God is using all things to make us like Jesus. One day we will be with Jesus, which is what verse 30 gets to. We're gonna talk about glorification later in this series. I'm really excited about that sermon because I love the thought of it. Verse 30, those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. Paul is using past tense here, not because the action happened in the past, but because the action is certain. There is a certainty about verse 30. And those whom he predestined are gonna be called, those who are called are gonna be justified, those who are justified are gonna be glorified. There is a certainty about what's happening, and one day we will be with Jesus. Because Jesus has saved us. Last weekend in Columbia, Cheryl was speaking at a women's conference on suffering, actually, and I was in the back sitting next to Mart Larson, and she was preaching, and she talked about, one day we're gonna see Jesus, and everybody erupt with an amen. And Mark starts elbowing me, hey, she got an amen, pressure's on. Like, when you're preaching, you gotta get at least one amen. And then she got another one, and so then Mark starts kind of tallying, like, how are we gonna do this? And we're having a laugh in the back, and all those things. And the next night, I was teaching through the book of Titus, and talked about how we are waiting on the blessed appearing of our Savior, and I got an amen, okay? Believe it or not, I got an amen. Thank you for laughing. The eight o'clock was like, yeah, I don't know why you did that, I don't know. So I get an amen, and we're talking after, and kind of, you know, laughing it up about that whole thing. And I said, hey, did you guys notice, like, what they amened? Like, of all the good doctrine we affirm, did you notice what they amened? I said, they amened that we're gonna be with Him. Not something we get in this life, but that we're gonna be with Jesus. We're being made like Jesus, and we're gonna be with Jesus. And we'll talk about that more later in this series. So God is working all things to make us like Jesus. The nail-scarred hand is guiding and governing all of our lives so that we will be like Him. And so my question for you today is simply this. Do you know this? Not, not do you know this, not do you intellectually ascribe to this, but do you know this? So that in your darkest moment, in your most significant loss at the graveside, in the hospital room, when you get that phone call you never want to receive, do you know, do you know deep in your gut that the nail-scarred hand guides and governs your life? And that the nail-scarred hand is using everything, all things, all things, so that you'll be more like Jesus. Do you know this? Do you know this today? Because we live in a world with a lot of all things. We live in a world of pain, hurt, disappointment, death. We live in a world of all things. And so we need something better than, well, I guess everything works out for a reason. We need something better than that. And as believers in Christ, we have something better. We don't just guess, we know. We know that God is at work in all things. We know there is nothing wasted. We know that there is a point to our pain. We know there is a purpose to our problems. We know this. So do you know this? So that when those things come, because they're gonna, so when they come, you can say, we know, we know. God's at work in all this. The nail scarred hand is guiding and governing my life. I don't have to be afraid. I don't have to worry. I don't have to be anxious. I don't have to fret or fear. Because we know, we know. So follower of Jesus, do you know? Do you know this? Do you know that life is not random? That pain is not accidental? Do you know that God is at work? And do you trust him? Long time ago, Cheryl was, when she was little, living in Texas with her parents, they were riding home in the midst of a big Texas thunderstorm. If you know anything about Texas, you know that everything's bigger and better in Texas, right, including thunderstorms. They are massive. I was there one time, and there was hail coming down, baseball-size hail, huge, massive, Texas-size hail coming down out of this thunderstorm. Well, this was one of those kind of thunderstorms they were riding home in. And Cheryl's mom looked back at Cheryl in the back seat and said, hey, sweetie, are you scared? And she said, no, daddy's driving. It's gonna be okay. That's the kind of childlike faith that says we know. Like in the midst of hurt, pain, difficulty, suffering, in the midst of all that, we know, we know. That for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those he prorogued, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn of many brothers. We know this so we can endure this. We know this is true so we can endure what comes. And my prayer for us is that we would not know this, but that we would know this deep in our gut as we follow him. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your goodness to us, your love for us. Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you that you hold all things together and that you work all things for our good. That there is nothing in our life that you are not working in to make us more and more like you. And Lord, one day we'll be with you and we'll be like you, and we eagerly await that day, but between now and then, we want to honor you with our lives and be shaped by you so that we are made more like you. So would you work in us? Lord, thank you that you are working all around us. Would you help us as we submit ourselves to that work, as we place ourselves in your hands, as we surrender ourselves to your work and trust you to do what you have promised will happen? Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord, in these things. And Lord, from our friends who do not yet love you, from our friends who have not yet trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior, Lord, would you work today? Would you make today the day you have predestined them to be saved? Would you make today the day that you call them from death to life? Would you make today the day that they are justified forever? Would you do that? Call people from death to life today by your sovereign hand. And in your name, we pray these things. In the name of Christ, amen.