Practicing the Presence of God: From Desperation To Restoration | Psalm 42

We wrestle with Psalm 42 and the hard question of whether faithful people can be honest about sorrow while holding on to real hope. We trace a path from desperation and isolation to restoration grounded in the empty tomb and the steady love of God.

• thirsting for God as daily dependence, not stored reserves
• permission to pray honestly when God feels distant
• remembering former joy in worship and naming present lack
• talking to yourself with truth instead of listening to fear
• hope defined as patient yet expectant waiting
• examples of David, Elijah and Job asking hard questions
• restoration promised without a tidy timeline
• Oxford beams story as a picture of long-planned provision
• the cross and empty tomb as the ground of ultimate hope
• practical calls to seek God’s presence and respond in faith

Join us as we move from desperation to restoration, learn to preach truth to our souls, and ask for more of God’s presence without shame. If this message steadies you, subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Reading Of Psalm 42

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to the FBC El Daredo Sermon Podcast. My name is Taylor Gere, and I have the privilege of being the pastor here at First Baptist. And I want to thank you for listening into our sermon this week. And I want to tell you this if you're in our area and you don't have a church home, we would love to see you any Sunday morning at First Baptist El Doredo. Would you join me now in listening to our sermon from this week? And yes, be seated. And as you are seated, would you turn now to Psalm 42? Psalm 42. And I'll read it for us this morning, starting in verse 1. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, and while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise and multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mazar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone before me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. And I say to God, my rock, Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy? As with the deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Pray with me once more, Lord Jesus, by your Spirit. Would you speak to our hearts now from your word? We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. I guess the question is simply this: Am I allowed to be a Christian and be sad? That may be the question. Am I allowed to be a Christian and feel cast down or have a uh broken heart? Am I allowed to be a Christian and even wonder what in the world God is up to? What's he doing in life right now? Or why does he feel so distant? Am I allowed to be a Christian and ask these questions? Because if we're being honest, uh we do have a tendency to tell ourselves, but really to tell others that everything is going okay in our lives. You've probably done it a few times this morning. Someone has asked you how you're doing, and you've responded by saying, I'm doing fine. And fine means a hundred thousand different things in your life at the current moment. And it could be fine, it could be better than fine, or honestly, it could be pretty bad. Life could be falling apart at the moment. You answer the question, and yet you still say, I'm doing fine. Because we're pretty good at covering it up and putting on a smiling face and you know, projecting ourselves the way we want others to see us. What I think about the Psalms is this, and I'm thankful for it. The Psalms give us permission as believers to come honestly before the Lord. The Psalms give us permission to come before the Lord and just tell him what is really going on. To ask really hard questions, to state maybe really hard things that we might not say to others, but we can say those things to God. Throughout the Psalms, we see these kinds of statements, we see this honesty, we see the permission to come to God with the truth of our lives. So I want to see three things this morning. Number one is that in desperation I run to the Lord. Number two, from isolation I run to the Lord. And lastly, I just want to see this for restoration I run to the Lord. But verse is this in desperation I run to the Lord. Look with me at verse one. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you. Oh God. We have this word picture here, this illustration, where our author wants to describe what is going on spiritually in his life. And how does he do it? He says this just like a deer is looking and searching and yearning for flowing water that he might quench his thirst, Lord God, that's exactly how I feel in this moment. David Kidner, in his commentary on this, said something uh kind of sounds comical and silly, but then I thought about it and it's a good point. Uh David Kidner says, Notice he says, while the deer looks for this water, he could have said, but he doesn't say as the camel looks for flowing streams. What he means by that is this the camel is so fascinating that it can find a source of water. The camel can drink up to 20 gallons of water, the camel can store that water in its bloodstream, and he can go days or literally can go even weeks before he needs to find another source of water again. I'm gonna tell you, sometimes we're tempted to treat our spiritual life that way. That if I can just uh uh find, maybe, maybe if I can go to the house of the Lord with the people of God, or maybe I can uh I will open my Bible in this moment, I will spend time with him, and then when I close it, I can let him know, hey, I'll see you around the bin next time I kind of find myself needing you. In days, in weeks, in months, when I need you again, God, I will return. But that's not what our uh writer says in this moment. As the deer pants for flowing streams, moment by moment, day by day, that deer may have found water this morning, but it's the afternoon now, and once again he needs to find water again, and it's all that's on its mind, it's all that's on its heart, and if he does not find these flowing streams, it will be catastrophic for him. He is yearning for the water, and so verse 2 he says, This is exactly how my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before him? Just as the deer is looking for the flowing streams again and again and again, that's what my soul needs. I need my daily bread in this moment, not yesterday's bread, not even this morning's bread. I need the flowing streams, and I need them now to be in the presence of God. Now, verse 3, my tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? This is a broken situation. God, uh, I have been here longing for you, and it has led me all day long and all night long to be in tears. I am so heartbroken over this situation, so heartbroken that in this moment I feel so distant to the presence of God, or God feels so distant from me, and I long to be in your presence again, but here I am, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. And if it weren't bad enough, what I am feeling in my own heart, now I've got my enemies around me, as he says in verse 3, and they're looking at me and they're saying this, where is your God? You seem so downcast, you're calling out to God, you feel distant from him, and this is the God you tell us about? It sounds like your God's the kind of God that when times get tough, He is He nowhere to be found, and they're starting to ridicule the author here about his faith that he's holding in God. Why are you putting your faith in this God? Where is he right now when you need him the most? And so, verse one through three, what we have is this writer is sitting here in desperation, and what does he do? He runs to the Lord, he calls out to the Lord to let him know I am a desperate man in this moment. I just want to ask you a couple questions, and I want you to think about these as you see verse one through three. I want to know in your life, do you long for the presence of God? Now don't answer too quickly because obviously our quick answer is yes, of course. No, no, I want to ask it. Do you long for the presence of God? To the point where continually, day after day, moment after moment, like the deer longs for the spring of water, you are longing for the presence of God and the movement of God in such a way in your life that anything less than the true presence of God in your life, you can't settle for less than that. Nothing else will do because you've tasted the real thing and nothing less will satisfy you. Do you long for the presence of God? And when you are away from the presence of God, do you miss being in the presence of God? Do you miss being with God? Do you miss the closeness of God? I want to tell you something, church family, and I don't want to offend or disappoint, but do you know you are never the first group of people? You're never the first ones to hear any sermon I preach. Did you know that? You're never the first ones. Because every sermon, I have to do something first. I've got to preach that sermon to myself. I'm always the first one to get the sermon because I've got to hear it for myself, and the sermon has to work on my heart, and Psalm 42 has to work on my heart. So I had to ask myself these same questions this week. You say, Well, you're the you're the preacher. Of course, you've got a good answer to this question. No, no, I've got to tell you, I had to ask myself these questions, and and I just promise you the Lord has such a sense of humor because he put me in this convicting passage, and then he canceled church last week, and I had to, I had to sit with it for a whole nother week, a whole nother week of conviction over Psalm 42, asking myself, do I long for the presence of God? Do I settle for anything less than the move of God in my heart and my life? Because sometimes we're we're tempted to settle for less. We say things like, I've seen it before, uh, God is my co-pilot. I'm not mad at that statement. I know what people are getting at, but I need more than a co-pilot. God doesn't sit beside me, and sometimes I can take the rein, sometimes he can know. I need more than that. I need more than a than a God that just uh uh you know I run to maybe at certain times in life, or or a God that that I'll show up certainly during uh the hard times. I think about it like this if a if a husband tells his wife and says, Sweetie, you are the the uh you are the number one woman in my world. You are number one in my life. On the surface, that sounds good, but then the wife might have two questions. First, who's number two? And secondly, what is the distance between one and two? She might say, I don't want to be number one, I want to be your life. I think sometimes we put God at the top of the list of things, and we're proud of ourselves for doing that. When in reality, God is in and over and above all things, and we see everything else that could possibly be on the list through the lens of that relationship with God, who is sovereign over all things. He is not one thing among many, he is the thing that we ought to long for, that we ought to need, that we ought to desire, so that we desire to live life in the presence of God, to the point where we realize that nothing less will do. In desperation, we run to the Lord, but secondly, from isolation we run to the Lord. Look with me at verse 4. These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude-keeping festivals. What we have here, if you look at the heading, you see that this is uh a song, a meditation of the sons of Korah. We see in the book of Numbers, Korah is a uh Levitical priest. Really, we could, we could, in our terms, he's a worship leader. He's the worship pastor. And these are the sons of Korah from that Levitical line who also help lead worship for the people of God. Now, what we see in verse 6 is that this worship leader is saying, God, I remember you as I am in the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mazar. What we know of that is that is in the very north of Israel. In fact, I remember being there right beside this large peak beside Mount Hermon, and you could look out and you could look over into Syria. That's how northern Israel we were at that moment. Our author, this worship leader, is there in the north. Now let me tell you, Jerusalem is in the south of Israel. So he's in the north. The temple where he used to lead this festival, lead this procession, is in the south. What am I getting at? He's far from home. And he remembers the time that he was leading the parade into the festival. He remembers the time he was picking out the songs they would sing, and remembers the time he was he was uh leading the tune as they would all worship, and he remembers this, and he remembers being with the people of God at the temple of God, and right now instead, he is in lonely isolation in the north of Israel, and all he can do is think about the former days. I wonder if you've ever done this in your life where you've taken inventory of your spiritual life, and then you say, Remember when? Remember when things felt so close between me and the Lord? Remember that time in life when it just felt like I couldn't wait to get to the kitchen table in the morning and open my Bible? Uh do you remember? Maybe you think back to days in youth group and uh summer camp, and you remember those times where worship felt so fresh and real that in that uh worship center at that moment you just felt like you could reach out and touch the Lord. Like he was. Do you remember? You think about those times in your life where your spiritual life felt so vibrant and fresh, and God was meeting with me, and I was I was seeing new things, and he was opening my eyes to his word, and when when worship would happen among the people of God, I would be so locked in. I remember those seasons of freshness in my life, and then you look at now, and now I just I'm at a place where you might say, I just feel distant. You remember what used to be, but then we turn to verse five, and it's interesting. The writer, this son of Korah, says this, Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? And our first response is to say, you know why? We've spent four verses telling you why. Because I'm up here all alone. The people of God are down there worshiping their hearts out. I'm far from home. I feel distant from the Lord. My enemies look at me and say, Where is your God? I'm the laughing stock of the region. They ridicule me. That's why my soul is cast down. And then what does he do? He says this: hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Well, what's your response to this as you feel these things, the weight of all this? He just says this hope in God. And there is part of us that wants to say, Well, I wish I had thought about that. If I can just hope in God, wouldn't that be easy? Wouldn't that be nice? And we're tempted to be sarcastic and come at him with that kind of thing, but in reality, there's something deeper there. The great preacher Martin Lloyd Jones says this that at some point we've got to stop listening to ourselves and start talking to ourselves. We've got to stop listening to the lies and accusations of our own heart or the lies and accusations of the evil one, or even the lies and accusations of those outside of us. And we've got to start talking to ourselves and reminding ourselves what is true. Not telling ourselves that the situation is any different than it is. No. I'll tell myself right now, if I'm the author, I'm still in a tough situation, I'm still far from home, my enemies are still right outside the door, but I can still tell myself what is true. Hope in God. He is my salvation, he is my God, and I shall again praise him. This is a picture of hope in the midst of suffering. That even in the circumstance, the the truth, what is true in my life, has not changed, and I still have something to hope in. What is hope? We've talked before, we probably watered down that term because of all the things we say we hope for. But I like what Alan Ross, one writer, says as he's talking about this passage. He says, Hope is waiting patiently but expectantly. I like those two words. Patiently but expectantly. That I will, even in this circumstance, even in your circumstance right now, uh, you will wait patiently for the Lord. And I know his fulfillment, his redemption, I know his turnaround will come. But I'll be patient. It may take five minutes, it may take five months, five years, five decades, it may take until the other side of eternity when Christ Jesus makes all things new and I dwell with him, but I know God will see me through. I will be patient, but I am expectant that God has not left the throne. And I may feel distant right now, but God has not abandoned me. I may feel like I'm a little far from home, or maybe even far from the Lord, but I know I still have a Father that loves me. This is hope in the midst of this. And now we've got to remind ourselves in the midst of the trials, we've got to remind ourselves of that truth. And here's the other thing we've got to do it often. We've got to do it day by day, sometimes even moment by moment. We remind ourselves of what is true because we so often forget what is true. I want you to look at something. Look at verse 5. Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Hope in God. Look down at verse 11. Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. He's got to tell himself the same thing he told himself just about five verses before. But let's take it a step further. Many believe that Psalm 42 and 43 were originally one psalm. If you don't believe me, look at the end of verse, chapter 43 in verse 5. What does he say? Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. This is a psalm writer. This is in the inspired word of God. This is a worship leader, a son of Korah, and he too has to remind himself day after day, moment by moment, that That my situation hadn't changed, my trial hadn't changed, I'm as broken as I've ever been. And yet, what is still true in this moment, whether I feel it or not, and Lord help me to feel it, even when I don't feel it, but what is true is this that I will again praise the Lord, and He's still my salvation and my God. And I just wonder if you're here and you're in a situation right now where it just feels like the Lord might as well be on the other side of the door and and and you're not able to get in the room and you feel sometimes on the outside looking in, and and God, do you hear my prayers? Do you hear me in this moment? Do you have the blueprint of my life? Because right now I feel like I'm getting tossed and turned in every direction. Maybe you just remind yourself, even in this moment of what is true, that my God has not abandoned me. Verse 6 My soul is cast down within me, and therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon and from Mount Mazar. What I love is that in this moment up north, he remembers these things, even as he's far from home. But I think it's important for him, and it's important for us as you think about maybe these moments, and he remembers leading worship and the festivals and the worship, and as we think of our own lives, of maybe times of just spiritual closeness to God. And we think about those moments, and now maybe we feel a little bit further from that. What we do is we don't remember those things in such sorrow as if we say that was then and this is now and it will never be that again. No, no. We remember that the God who was on the throne then is still on the throne now and will be on the throne tomorrow, and so what was then can be again because my father's still there. And nothing's changed. And God's on the throne. And this is what he says, and I will yet praise him. Verse 7: deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. Let me translate that in my translation, the the Taylor Guerin version. Things are really bad right now. I'm really broken right now. The waters are rising, the waterfalls are hitting me. Verse 8. But by day the Lord commands his steadfast love. And at night his song is with me. A prayer to the God of my life. Even now, God, you have not abandoned me. Now, verse 9. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy? That's interesting, isn't it? Because I read that again. This is the psalmist, this son of Korah. This is what he says. He looks to God and he says, Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go about mourning the oppression of my enemy? And I just asked the question can he say that? Is he allowed to ask that of the Lord? I mean, this writer of scripture, is he allowed to actually ask that question? And again, the Psalms and all of Scripture reminds me, absolutely yes. David, a man after God's own heart, what does he say in Psalm 22? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I think of Elijah in 1 Kings 18. This literally a mountaintop moment on Mount Carmel. Fire comes down from the Lord. The prophets of Baal, this false God, are defeated. It's this beautiful mountaintop spiritual moment. That's 1 Kings 18. You go to 1 Kings 19. What happened? Elijah's running to the wilderness. He's hiding under a tree because Jezebel's after him and he looks up to the Lord and he's just in sorrow and is wondering: is this just the end of my life? And he's absolutely cast down in this moment. And this is Elijah. I think of Job. As he faces more suffering than maybe you and I could ever imagine. I hope than you and I could ever imagine. What does he do? He's very faithful throughout, but there is a moment where he just says, I curse the day I was born. And this is Job, the great man of God who we talked about accurately, that he perseveres during suffering, and yet still, I curse the day I was born. What I think about Job and Elijah and David, what I think about this son of Korah here that strikes me is this that when they are asking these hard questions, why have you forsaken me? Why have you forgotten me? God, why are you doing this? Why have you sent me here? They are asking these questions, but what are they doing? They are asking them of who? Of God. They are going to God with their struggles. They're not going to those around him and saying, you were probably right all along. God uh wasn't who I thought he was. They're not cursing the name of the Lord. They are running to the Lord in absolute desperation, laying out their heart before him, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And here's why they do it. It's just simply because of this. And I want you to hear this for you. I remember when a professor told this to me. He says, hey, God knows what you're thinking anyway. You might as well just tell them. If you want to sugarcoat your prayers and make them sound fancy before the Lord, you can do that. But guess what? God knows what you're really thinking and feeling. You might as well say it to him. That's what David, Elijah, Job, the son of Korah do. They have uh the their questions for God, and they bring them to God. And when they do it, they leave changed. I want to see one last point. For restoration, I run to the Lord. Verse 11, the Psalm ends right here. Why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Now, to make this point perfect, for restoration I run to the Lord. I would imagine there would need to be a verse 12 of Psalm 42 that says this. And after he prayed that, this son of Korah was taken down to Jerusalem, where he was able to once again lead worship in the sanctuary. All of his enemies that were ridiculing him were put to open shame. And his story ends happily ever after. We don't get that verse. And so what business do we have making a point like this for restoration? I run to the Lord. The fact that this son of Korah, all throughout, in verse 5 and verse 11, if you go to Psalm 43 in verse 5, he knows this to be true. Once we we've said it once, we'll say it again, that in light of current circumstances, I know this, that I will yet again praise the Lord. Because why? Because he is my salvation and my God. He's saying this. That I'm in the midst of it. I don't know how it's gonna end. I don't know where it's gonna end. I certainly don't know when it's going to end, but I know at the end, my Savior will sustain me. My Savior will see me through. As we've said, if it's five months, five years, five decades, on the other side of eternity, my savior will see me through. Is that the truth that you preach to yourself day in and day out in good times and hard times, that that God has not left the throne? Because here's what I want you to know. And I've seen it to be true. That at your lowest moment, in the deepest, darkest pit of your life, whether that low moment was caused by anything outside of your control, things very much in your control, whether your your own sin led you to that moment, as maybe sin has taken you further than you ever wanted to go and deeper than you ever thought possible, and you realize I don't have the sin, the sin has me, and you are in that deep, dark place, and you feel as if you are so low, and you feel as if that life cannot get any more difficult than it is now, and everything is breaking around me and falling apart. When you arrive at that kind of rock bottom, I just want to tell you the bottom is solid. And there stands there a savior. Jesus Christ the righteous. I remember this story. About a century ago at um New College, at Oxford University. One of the colleges there they call New College, even though it was established in the 14th century. New College at Oxford, they had a uh the great hall there, and you can imagine this great hall with the long tables going down the length of the hall, and at front they would have running perpendicular high table where faculty and esteemed guests would sit for the meal. At this large great hall at New College in Oxford, they discovered that the uh the wooden beams that ran along the top uh they would need to be replaced soon. They were actually rotting from the inside out. It was actually an infestation of beetles, which happens often there. And these beams were rotting, and it had gotten to the point where they must be replaced, and they must be replaced soon because these beams will not be able to hold the weight of the great hall very long. But this building was built a certain way, it would require a certain type of wood, a certain uh strength to these beams, and so we've got to find just the right thing so that we can replace these beams. One person suggested, why don't you go at least ask the uh groundskeeper about uh what is possible here on the campus in the forest of the campus? So this they went to this groundskeeper, and the the groundskeeper's first response was this I was wondering when you'd come ask me about it. This groundskeeper let him know that within the forest beside the campus, they had reserved these this specific group of trees specifically to be used for when new beams were needed at the new college great hall. He actually said this, that this was something uh that had that one groundskeeper had passed to the next. When a new groundskeeper would take over, the the one leaving would say, This group of trees, do not touch it. They will be used for the beams. And that was passed from groundskeeper to groundskeeper to groundskeeper. They told the same story, reserve the trees, these are for the beams, groundskeeper to groundskeeper to groundskeeper, all the way back from the very moment the first groundskeeper planted those trees for that moment, for that job, for those beams in 1379. Reserved those trees, these will be used for the beams. I I wonder this morning if there's anyone in here and you've ever felt the beams, the scaffolding, the the support of your life feeling like it was rotting from the inside out, feeling the the beams and supports, the scaffolding of your life feeling so broken, and you found yourself in a position where I just feel like I can't carry on in this moment because life for me has has become this thing, this place where where I just feel so distant from the Lord. I feel like I've made a mess of things, I've made so many mistakes, or these circumstances have come upon me. It just feels like the beams, the scaffolding of my life is crumbling underneath me, and it just feels like the structure might fall to the ground. And I wonder if you know this this morning. That long before you arrived at that moment, there is a redeemer who had in place the plan for your restoration. That long before you arrived to your season of grief and brokenness, there was a savior long before, who did what only he could do, and a plan was in place for you. Because I think about this, that the greatest need of all of us is really the fact that we need a savior because we are so broken in our own sin. And I think about this fact that in the depth of my sin and brokenness and despair, when I was at my lowest, when again the the beams of my soul were rotting out and really had rotted out because of my own sinfulness long before I arrived at that moment, before the salvation uh before the foundation of the world, Christ's salvation plan was put in place. That Christ Jesus would go to the cross for me before I was even thought of, at least earthly speaking. Christ Jesus would take my sins upon himself. He did it, I believe it. That Christ Jesus would go to the grave, into the tomb. I remember preacher said that Christ didn't get up on Sunday morning, he got up early Sunday morning. And early Sunday morning, Christ Jesus walked out of the grave, defeating sin and death. The plan was in place from the foundation of the world. In time Christ did what I could not do, and now there is an empty tomb. And I just remind myself of that. That at my deepest place of sorrow, as I long for streams of water, as life feels overwhelming, out of my control, beyond what I can handle, I do remember there is an empty tomb. And that tells me something. That whether the Lord comes through for me in this moment, tomorrow, next week, or whether I don't see maybe earthly healing until the other side of eternity, I know an empty tomb tells me that all is well ultimately. Because Christ Jesus has made all things well. Pray with me. Lord Jesus. Thank you for the truth of your gospel. Thank you that you have made all things well. All things you are making all things new. You have done what I could not do. And so, Lord, would we desperately long for your presence? And Lord, will we do so knowing that you will see us through. And that as a father loves a child, so you love it when we long for your presence and want to be in your presence, and you stand ready to meet with us. And so, Lord, let us not be afraid to ask for more. More of you, a deeper relationship with you, a deeper closeness with you. Because, Lord, you stand ready. And in those moments, Lord, where we're tempted, we're tempted to think that the trial is too big, we're too far gone. Would we preach to ourselves again and again that in you there is hope, and we can trust in that and we can believe in that. And if there's just anyone that needs that encouragement this morning, would they know that with all their heart? That in you there is hope. There's someone for the first time that needs to taste that hope this morning, Lord. I'd love nothing more than to talk to them about having a relationship with Jesus. If there's someone that wants to join our church family, wants to talk about baptism, wants to just come down and pray together, Lord. Let it be so, Lord. However you desire us to respond, maybe it's just praying right where we're at. Maybe it's just singing along and worshiping as we sing, Lord. But however we need to respond, let us do so now. In Christ's name. Amen. Would you stand now as we sing together?