02/23/2025: “Then I saw her face..."

The episode explores God's sovereignty as seen in Genesis 24, emphasizing the significance of prayer, divine providence, and the importance of being equally yoked in marriage. It calls listeners to invite God into their relationship decisions, and examines how faith can protect and bless unions. 

• Discussion of God's providence in everyday circumstances 
• Importance of prayer in decision-making 
• Exploration of being equally yoked spiritually in marriages 
• Encouragement for trusting God's timing and guidance in relationships 

Transcript

God's Sovereignty in Everyday Life

Speaker 1 0:21

Well, good morning church. If you have your Bible with you, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis, chapter 24. Genesis 24. And I want to recognize a guy who will be slightly annoyed that I recognized him. Wes Westerfield has been leading our finance team through all of the transitions over the past three years or so and he has done a fantastic job, not just helping that team, but by being a great partner in ministry and seeing the big picture and the big idea of revitalization. This week our new administration team, or admin team, led by Kelly Work Workman began and we're excited about that work. So that team has taken on the work of the finance team and also a list of other things related to the administration of the church. But Kelly and that team, which Wes is still a part of, will be giving regular updates and communications to the church. But I want to recognize Wes and he's probably not even in here. I think he's out in the hallway. Where is he, wes?

Speaker 1 1:26

We love you, man. Let's go to the Lord in prayer and then we'll go to the Word. Father, god, here, before you and before one another, we freely and gladly declare that we love you. We love you for being the God you are. You're a God of love, you're a God of mercy and truth and justice and perfection, and we love you for loving us before the foundation of the world. And you sent Jesus so that we could be in relationship with you, so we could be your children and sons and daughters of the King. And we thank you and we confess that we have sinned against you. We have not loved you with our whole hearts, we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves, and so we ask that you would have mercy and, with hearts bowed before you, we ask that you would be gracious to us. Thank you for the assurance that, if we confess our sins, you are faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Father, we ask that, as a church, we would know your blessings. We pray that we would see clear evidence that you are at work here. Let us see the evidence in the ways we relate to one another. I pray that we would be a people marked by an obvious sacrificial love for one another. I pray that we would hold loosely, instead of tightly, to those things that you've given to us, remembering that each is a gift from you our time, our money, our homes, our possessions. I pray we would always be willing and ready to share with those in need, to be a blessing to others. Let us not only love only in our thoughts, but in our words, but also in what we do. Help us to be imitators of Jesus Christ in the way that he loved us. And, holy Spirit, would you be our teacher this morning as we go to this word? Amen.

Speaker 1 3:28

Genesis, chapter 24, starting in verse 1. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had put your hand under my thigh that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but you will go to my country, to my kindred, and take a wife for my son, isaac. The servant said to him perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came? Abraham said to him see to it that you did not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred and who spoke to me and swore to me to your offspring I will give this land, he will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine and you must not take my son back there. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning the matter.

Speaker 1 4:35

Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master. And he rose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor, and he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. And he said Lord, god, master of Abraham, please grant success today and show steadfast love to my master, abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw. Let the young woman whom I shall say please let down your jar that I may drink and who shall say drink and I will water your camels. Let her be the one you have appointed for your servant, isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.

Speaker 1 5:17

Before he had finished speaking, behold Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, abraham's brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known, and she went down to the spring and filled her jar up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said please give me a little water to drink from your jar. She said drink, my lord, and she quickly lit down her jaw upon her hand and gave him a drink. This is God's Word.

Speaker 1 5:46

Well, in this chapter we have what amounts to the final words of recorded words of Abraham. They stand really as a grace-filled contrast to what amounts to his first prayer in Genesis 15. In chapter 15, he says to the Lord you have given me no offspring, but now here he says, you shall take a wife for my son from there, you see, god's hand may be hidden, but his effective power in the life of the believer is absolute and undeniable. You see, there's no great miracles in this story. That's something that I don't want us to miss. There's no rearrangement of molecules. There's no healing want us to miss. There's no rearrangement of molecules. There's no healing, no sun standing still, no sea being parted, just bringing about this marriage through the normal, mundane events of life, the delays, the customs, the stresses, the quote, chance meetings.

Speaker 1 6:39

Ji Packer said that believers are never in the grip of blind forces like luck or chance. All that happens to them is divinely planned and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey and rejoice. You see, the God of Scripture is not simply a God of miracles who occasionally injects His power into life. God is far greater, because he arranges all of life to suit and affect His providence. This makes all of life a miracle. God is over all. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-controlling. That is the God of the Bible. Anything less is an idolatrous reduction of our imaginations.

God's Sovereignty and Marriage Preparation

Speaker 1 7:28

And so today I want to consider this chapter in three chunks. I want to start with a small bit. It's not small, it's actually quite eternal. But I want us to first consider the sovereignty of God, because we see that all over this chapter and I only want to mention this briefly, but it's odd that we tend to see the sovereignty of God most clearly in the Scripture when there is less interaction with the Lord this chapter, of course, the book of Esther and others. We see the hand of God at work. We see the design of God at play.

Speaker 1 7:59

So the sovereignty of God is the fact that he is Lord over creation. As sovereign, he exercises His rule. The term sovereignty is rarely found in the more recent translations of Scripture, but it represents a very important biblical concept. So we see the control of God over all creation. We see that in many places throughout the Bible. But the sovereignty of God includes at least three things His control over all things, his authority over all things, and mixed into that is His overarching love for His creation. The result of the sovereignty of God in our lives is that we are called to obey His commands, but because God is not distant, he is a personal God. His sovereign control is not impersonal, it's not mechanical, but he is the loving and gracious oversight of the King of creation and the King of redemption In the creation itself. We see it in the parting of the Red Sea, in the sun standing still and, of course, in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. At the same time, god's sovereign lordship is more than just control. It also encompasses His authority what the Lord commands we, as His creation, must do.

Speaker 1 9:24

In the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, exodus 20, the covenant which Moses delivers to Israel after God sovereignly redeemed them from Egypt, god begins by identifying Himself as Lord on the basis of that identification, goes on to utter the Ten Commandments. He said and God spoke all these words I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. So obedience follows or flows from the sovereignty of God. And, what's more, we see the overarching love of God in His sovereignty as Lord. God not only controls everything, whether it's efficaciously or universally, but he also utters commands and words of life and graciously governs the ongoing life of His creation. And as Lord, he has made the sovereign commitment to be quote with those who are His.

Speaker 1 10:27

In our text we see this sovereignty of God in the ordinary, everyday obedience of life. We see it specifically in marriage and in faith. And His love and His providence are all over this chapter and the immediate result is that obedience to God. That's the result of God's sovereignty for us is obedience to what he commands. It's because God is sovereign, lord that we must obey Him. Because he is Lord, his authority is absolute. That means we should not waver in our obedience to God. His lordship transcends all of our loyalties and his authority over us exists in all areas of our life, not just in the areas that we arbitrarily call religious or sacred. That's certainly what we see here.

Speaker 1 11:19

Abraham doesn't want his son taken backwards. He wants Isaac to remain in the land of promise. That's why he sends his servant. And we see in the sovereignty of God that Rebekah had left her house to go to this. Well, before the servant even began to pray, god, in his sovereignty, prepared her to be in the place and time where she needed to be, where the servant would be thousands of miles apart. That's the providence of God. Oh, hey, that's good luck. No, it's the providence of God. It's God preparing this for Isaac. It's God preparing this for Rebekah and Abraham and this servant.

Speaker 1 12:01

And I've had people say well, you know, if God is sovereign, if God is in control and has providential care in our lives, why should we? The shorter answer is that the power of prayer is to first glorify God, but the power is also to change our hearts. But even more, if God is not in control, if God has no providential care, why would we pray to Him at all? You see, the sovereignty of God means that God is in control, and glory to God. He is in control of even the mundane stuff in our life. Secondly and here's the overarching kind of the overarching theme here is this idea of being equally yoked. Look at verse 2. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all, that he had put your hand under my thigh that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, the God of earth.

Speaker 1 12:59

In our culture, taking an oath, typically you put your hand over your heart or you put your hand on a Bible or something. But in ancient Hebrew culture we find something a little bit different. It's an odd practice that involves Abraham's servant swearing to obey his master's command to find a wife for his son. And we see this same practice again I think it's in chapter 47, where Jacob makes his son Joseph promise to bury him in Canaan, not in Egypt. And it seems strange to us placing your hand under someone else's thigh, but it has a very symbolic purpose. More precisely, it had to do with reproduction and an oath related to family lineage, but in both cases the request is made by a patriarch that's nearing death and in both oaths they deal with family matters. But let's not get caught up in the way the oath was taken. There's many examples of oaths taken throughout history in ways that would seem strange to us, but the point of the oath is that Abraham didn't want Isaac to take a wife from the people of Canaan where they lived.

Speaker 1 14:20

Now the skeptic and the theological liberal takes passages like this and say well, this is proof of racism in the Bible, especially in recent years. Well, that's absolute nonsense and mostly their attempts to try and disprove Scripture or some other foolishness. What's actually going on here? The Canaanites were a depraved people that Abraham was trying to live among and he was struggling at best. Their religious practices are often cited as reasons for God's command for the Israelites to drive them out of the land. The Canaanites worshipped many gods, but the main one was Baal, and one of the most heinous practices was child sacrifice when they worshipped the god Molech. Not only that, their religious practices often included sexual rites and temple prostitution, which they believed promoted fertility and prosperity, and they also engaged in divination and sorcery, seeking to predict the future or gain favor from the gods. So what was going on here? Abraham wanted his son to marry someone who had the same faith, the same blessing of God, the same relationship with God. That Abraham did, that Isaac did. Abraham didn't want a Canaanite to influence Isaac in marriage and with a few of our children married.

Speaker 1 15:42

I understand this clearer than I ever have. Our prayer for all of our children is Lord, send them someone who loves you more than they love them. If you have children, pray that they find a spouse that loves Jesus more than they love them. If you have children, pray that they find a spouse that loves Jesus more than they love them. And that sounds strange. You're like well, no, I want, no, you don't. If they love Jesus, that's going to pour into every other part of their life and don't bring home no scrubs. We deal with that quickly, quickly. The holy hug or the holy elbow. So, as a minister of the gospel, I'm not violent. At home, it's fine, everything's fine, I'm fine. But as a minister of the gospel, as someone, I will stand before the Lord one day and give an account for how my ministry is executed.

Marriage Requirements and Spiritual Beliefs

Speaker 1 16:35

I take marriage very serious, very serious, as do our team of elders. I am not a justice of the peace. I don't marry just anyone. This place is not a venue. It's not a place you can rent out for a wedding, no matter what. If we as a church listen to me, church if we as a church are going to say that we take marriage seriously, we cannot let an emotional response drive our theological convictions. Having said that, I love love and I've done a lot of weddings over the past 15 or so years and I can tell you, so far, every single one of them are still married. The reason is most people, most couples, do more planning for their honeymoon than they do for the first five or ten years of marriage honeymoon than they do for the first five or ten years of marriage. And what do we do? We upend that in our practice. And how do we manage this here at First Baptist Church? Well, I said we're not a venue. Maybe you were in the past, we're not anymore.

Speaker 1 17:49

If a wedding is done here, it's done by an ordained staff member that works here or someone that we can sign off on. You say, well, that sounds controlling Good, because it is For good reason. We're not going to have your cousin, who's a level 10 warlock, come in and do your wedding in this place because you got your good friends. I don't care, go somewhere else, go in a field. If someone is going to marry you here, they're going to love Jesus. If someone's going to preach here, they're going to love Jesus. You laugh about the level 10 warlock, but that's from a true story. I don't know if he was level 10, maybe level 9, but same thing. Let's say, someone wants to get married here, and this has been the experience of several with you since I've been here.

Speaker 1 18:40

The first thing that happens is you get a letter from me. It's actually, it's not a secret thing. It's on our website, it's under weddings. You can read it In that letter I have four requirements, four requirements as a pastor to do your wedding for you. Now everyone goes oh, you have requirements. Yes, this should not be controversial, should it? Here's three of them.

Speaker 1 19:06

First one First expectation Both a man and woman are believers in Jesus Christ. Why? That's our text today, isn't it? And I'm not going to set a marriage up for failure even before it starts. I have said no to performing more marriages than I've actually done. The second expectation is that sexual intimacy will be reserved until after you're married. If you're going to take God's marriage seriously, you must take God's commands of sexual fidelity seriously even before you get married.

Speaker 1 19:44

I sat with a young man and woman once and the guy said the line to me well, why would I buy the cow when the milk's free? I looked at her and I said he just called you a cow Run. You think I married him? No, it's a scrub. Ten years from now he's going to be an even lazier scrub. Hit the road, jack Fathers. That's our job, isn't it? Weed out the scrubs. If you don't have the backbone to do it, send them to my office and I'll do it for you.

Speaker 1 20:19

Expectation three receive premarital counseling. Why do we do this? Because my goal is to help you have the hard conversations before you say I do. Have you ever made exceptions to this? Yeah, not requirement one, there's no exceptions to that but two or three. If a couple is living together and can't separate due to creating real hardship, go get the marriage license today and we'll do the thing today, and that's been the experience for some of you in this room. We can do a quick ceremony so that you can honor God and each other in your marriage and your life before you even get started. And later on, if you want to have a bigger event with family and friends, we can basically reenact the thing and we'll do it for everybody. Well, let's do it right now. The point is, if you are in Christ, make sure you honor Christ in your union. Before it's even a union, amen somebody. But the first one's not negotiable.

Speaker 1 21:18

The Bible teaches in various ways that believers should not marry unbelievers. In the old testament, israelites were prohibited from marrying non-israelites. Later on, in the covenant of law don't marry into a different religious system. In the new testament, paul taught that believers should not be unequally yoked to unbelievers, and that's from 2 Corinthians. It's generally been understood by Christians to prohibit marriage between believers and unbelievers. Now you might be thinking I'm going to you, say. Some of you listening right now say Goulet, I'm going to marry whoever I want. Well, go for it. But if you're not in Christ, I'm not going to marry you. I'm not going to set you up for failure before you even begin. Women for generations have thought if only I can marry Him. Then I can change Him, I can fix Him. Does that work? Probably not. You can't fix him, but Jesus can. All you're doing is setting yourself up for heartache.

Speaker 1 22:26

In both the Old and the New Testament, the reason for prohibiting is largely to protect and preserve the faith of the believer. The commands are meant to keep an unbelieving spouse from influencing a believing spouse to compromise his or her relationship with God, and we see this with the kings in the Old Testament. I mean, religious viewpoints are so fundamental to your worldview. They influence almost everything that you do. They impact our behavior, our morality, our political perspective, social interaction. They also cause significant friction when spouses don't agree on how to raise children. Well, I want my child to be a level 10 warlock. I want my child to go to church. I mean, I remember talking to one man who said he was under the impression that his dad always thought his mom was a religious simpleton and his mom always thought his dad was just a God-rejecting fool and they would never have said this to each other. But he said that was the inferences from their worldviews. That's why God calls us to marry those who are in Christ, if we are in Christ. That's why we do all that we can do here to preserve and honor marriage.

Speaker 1 23:38

Now there's many who come to Christ after marriage, even after many years of marriage, and maybe you find yourself in that situation where you're a believer but your spouse isn't. What do you do in that situation? Let me tell you what you should do. You should love your spouse with all that you are. You should your spouse with all that you are. You should love God with all that you are. You should be consistent in your walk with Christ.

Speaker 1 24:02

You see, the good news is that Scripture provides clear instruction to those who are married to unbelievers, and this is because many people were coming to know Christ and they were married to somebody who would reject Christ. Paul said this is from 1 Corinthians 7, if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him, for the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children will be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. Now he doesn't really tell us how to navigate the day-to-day stuff in this kind of marriage, but he does say to the ministry potential in unequally yoked situations. And some believe by saying the unbelieving husband is made holy. It does not mean that he enjoys salvation vicariously through the believing wife, but rather the proximity to his wife's Christ-centered living creates great opportunities for godly influence. Listen to me every time a wife models godliness to her husband, that's another moment. He's not being influenced by the godlessness that desires to lay claim on his soul. He's made holy quotes because he is set apart from the world and he's more likely to receive the gospel and because the decision to remain intact in the marriage, in the family, the children in that marriage, have greater opportunity for exposure to the influence of biblical truth.

Speaker 1 25:31

I love how John Piper said it once. He said if you want to know if you married the right person, look on the marriage certificate. If their name is on it, you did. You can't change the person that you're married to, even when we want to. We can only work on becoming the person that you're married to, even when we want to. We can only work on becoming the person that God has called us to become. We should all be working to become the person that God wants us to become, and that's not psychobabble, it's an appeal to the grace and mercy of God. And so for some women in spiritually unbalanced marriages, it's difficult for them to understand how they can honor God and His design in their marriage. But I think a wife's spiritual maturity or a husband, if he's in this situation, it shows forth when he encourages, she encourages her husband toward faith in the same gentle and affirming way that she would share Christ with any other person that they might encounter. With the Gospel. Every wife should study God's character, every husband should study God's character and allow the example of Christ, of His mercy, of His grace, to permeate every single thought, with a particular awareness for the interaction with their unbelieving spouse. And I think that through the work of the Holy Spirit all marriages can be truly redeemed in both structure and function. But we take marriage very seriously at First Baptist Church.

Speaker 1 27:05

Third and final, let's not miss the reward of faith that we see here, faith's reward in verse 10. Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master, and he rose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. This single verse, of course, encompasses thousands of miles and several months, I'm sure. But this servant, with this sizable entourage, had to make a grand impression with Isaac's future wife. So he traveled north and then he went east, to Abraham's homeland, and of course he reaches his destination and he does the most simple thing he kneels down to pray In verse 12, lord, god of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to your master Abraham. Behold, I'm standing by the spring of water and the daughters of men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say please let down your jar that I may drink, and who shall say drink and I will water your camels, let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant, isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.

Divine Providence and Marriage Guidance

Speaker 1 28:15

Now, I said earlier, there's no miracle here, there's no rearrangement of anything here, there's no healing or anything like that. But God brings about the events of this chapter through the normal events of life. She's just going to get water, you see, whether it's the stresses of travel, or the delays, or the customs, the quote, chance meetings as we understand them, what is noticeable about this is that it's a very ordinary circumstance, isn't it? This unnamed servant the very first person in the Bible, as far as I can find that asked God for guidance at a very critical juncture. He didn't ask for a sign from God. Rather, he sought guidance in a regular way. Now I want us to have this profound conviction as well in our lives. God's divine providence is in charge of our everyday humdrum affairs. When you get up tomorrow morning and it's Monday and you're like I gotta work and you gotta do the thing, and then you gotta over here and this thing and you gotta get to, god is in control of those circumstances. So we need to be careful.

Speaker 1 29:21

One man I knew several years ago would always think Satan was attacking him. Satan was in every shadow and around every corner and every mild inconvenience Satan was attacking him, he would get a flat tire. That's spiritual warfare. His roof would leak. That's Satan attacking me today. Not necessarily God could allow you to get a flat tire, couldn't he? And it could be God saying slow down For a very specific reason. So let's not think Satan is hiding in every shadow meaning to do us harm. These inconveniences we experience could very well be God working in our stubborn hearts, and I know this from vast personal experience. In those times of inconvenience, what should we do? We should stop and say, lord, protect me and teach me what I need to learn, instead of saying Lord, satan's attacking me again. It may be the Lord trying to get your attention. Verse 15,.

Speaker 1 30:28

Before he had finished speaking, behold Rebekah, who was born of Bethuel, son of Milcah, wife of Nahor, abraham's brother, came to water the jar. The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up Before he finished speaking. There she was Then. I saw her face. Now I'm a believer. A bunch of old hippies in here Without a trace. No doubt in my mind he wasn't in love, but he's going to bring her back for Isaac. She's beautiful virgin, willing to serve and give and be used by God for His glory. You see, the wells in the Middle East at the time were basically like big bowls that were dug down into the earth, and most of them had stairs leading down to the level of the water, and so what the young girl did is significant.

Speaker 1 31:29

Verse 18 drink my lord. She quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink when she had finished giving drinks, she said I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking. You see, we tend to think of like the wishing well well, where you pull up the bucket and you dump it out. But this she likely had a big jar on her shoulder and had to walk down into the well and fill it back up. That's a lot of trips to water the camels and this whole crew. We see God's providential answer to this servant's prayer was, without a doubt. There could be no mistake here and of course I commend to you the balance of the chapter.

Speaker 1 32:08

We see the marriage later. Joy was everywhere. In that event, the marriage was immediate. Rebekah would replace, as it were, sarah in her home, her tent. Rebekah would become the new matriarch of Israel and, of note, if you look in verse 67, isaac brought her into the tent of his mother, sarah, and he married her Becca. So she became his wife and he loved her and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. The first time in the Bible that I could see and this is quite beautiful that marital love is mentioned. He loved her.

Speaker 1 32:45

God provides and controls in these grand arenas, whether it's history or nature and the lives of individual people, but His providential control of life is illustrated in almost every narrative in the Bible. You say well, what do we learn from this? What can we take away from this? Well, we're going to see this theme repeated again in Genesis. It's not that we're to lay out our criteria and then demand that God meets it. I don't think that's a lesson here. It's this it's that God's providential care, his heart for His children is a day-in, day-out providence that perpetuates the promises of Scripture found in the golden chain, if you will, in Romans, chapter 8.

Speaker 1 33:28

What does it say? And we know that in all things, god works for the good of those who love him, those who have been called according to his purpose and we tend to stop there, but it just keeps getting better For those God foreknew. He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined he also called those he called. He also justified. Those he justified he also glorified. Our lives are not ruled by chance, but by God. Trust God, not luck. God is always faithful to his children. Our challenge is to be faithful to him, isn't it? God does not help those who help themselves. God helps those who entrust themselves completely to him. Let me say that again God does not help those that help themselves. It doesn't say that in the Bible, but what we see is that God helps those who entrust themselves completely to him, just like Abraham did, just like this unnamed servant did. So let me end this way.

Trusting God's Providence in Life

Speaker 1 34:46

And I don't know if this happens anymore. Maybe it does. I mean in the great north woods of New Hampshire. Maybe you would go to prison for it now, but I remember sitting maybe you've done this. You sit on the tailgate of dad's truck while he drives around the neighborhood. Anyone ever do that? Sit on the tailgate while you're driving? Okay, so there's some people in here who have If you haven't, you haven't lived yet. Do that? Sit on the tailgate while you're driving? Okay, so there's some people in here who have If you haven't, you haven't lived yet.

Speaker 1 35:12

I mean, as a kid, it felt like you were flying. It felt like freedom. It was great, and it was great because we could enjoy it. It was great because we trusted our dad to keep us safe and it wasn't even a thought in our mind that we would ever be in any danger. We didn't know where we were going, because usually with my dad, I'd be up somewhere causing trouble and he'd pull up with a truck. He's like, get in. And so I'd just sit on the tailgate and we were going somewhere. We didn't know where our trip would end, but we held on and we trusted, and typically we're looking back and we're only seeing where we've been. I, typically we're looking back and we're only seeing where we've been.

Speaker 1 35:50

I pray that we as a church could recover childlike trust in the providence of God. Do you trust God with your life? It doesn't mean we become careless. It doesn't mean we're without concern, but if God is ultimately in control, the outcome of our lives is in his hand. Thankfully, if God is for you, his control of all things will ultimately and eternally benefit you. Let's pray together before we sing our final song. Let's pray together before we sing our final song.

Speaker 1 36:28

Lord, god, help us to see your plan, not just for marriage, not just for sexual purity and fidelity, but for our lives, for our church, for our families. Help us to honor you with our marriages. Help us to honor you with our marriages. Help us to honor you with our lives. Lord and Father, we seek conviction of sin where it's necessary. Help us all to search our own hearts, lord. Help us to heal from hurt where it exists. Cleanse us from unrighteousness that we might carry. But, father, in all of this, help us to trust you much more deeply where it exists. Cleanse us from unrighteousness that we might carry. But, father, in all of this, help us to trust you much more deeply tomorrow than we do today. We ask all this through Jesus, amen.