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And a very good evening to you. Thank you for your invitation and for the warmth of your welcome. It is a certainly a pleasure to be with you. I bring you the greetings of some of your fellow believers in Germany and Austria, from which I have just returned, in particular from the good lady Molly Kreith, that was, who now rejoices in the name of Molly Mokros. In her days, she was a member of the Assembly at the Crescent, and some of you may know her and her family. She, in good time, married a certain Bernd Mokros, who was a German, but spent some months here in Belfast and learned a great deal about the Lord and his word while he was in your midst here in this province. And the two of them now together married, work for the Lord in the city of Rothenburg in southern Germany, and are doing a noble work for the Lord, strenuous work for the Lord. They send their greetings, and they could do with your prayers, Bernd and Molly Mokros in particular. Then I have just recently been at a residential conference in Austria with, I suppose, about two hundred and twenty believers. The large majority of them would be comparatively recent converts, hence their zeal, hence their gluttony for work. From Wednesday evening to Sunday morning, I think I had ten sessions of an hour each, you'll say, let alone all the other things that went on. Their enthusiasm for God and his word is a delight to see. Though if I run out of breath tonight and can't think of another word, that's because I've used all my breath up and all the words I have, except for a few oddments, uh, talking to the Austrian believers, and you will excuse me, I know. Rejoice in the Lord then, for the progress of the work of the Lord in what for many years was an exceedingly dark country, but now, by God's grace, in this last fifteen or so years, the gospel has triumphed well and all over the place and continues its triumphal march. Now, shall we begin our evening meditation by reading two famous passages, the first in Isaiah chapter forty. Isaiah chapter forty. Beginning to read there at verse twenty seven. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed away from my God. Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to him that hath no might he increaseth strength. Even the ewes shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. And then let us read our Lord's words on the topic of prayer from Matthew chapter six. Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse five. m And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them, for your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask him. After this manner, therefore, pray you, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forget- forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And may the Lord who spoke those words speak to us here this evening. The origin of these three particular meetings is, as I understand it, as follows. Some while ago, a year or so, I know not how long, I acceded to your gracious invitation and turned up at a youth meeting of a Sunday night in the Bally Hackamore Hall. It was your appointment that I should there speak on worship, and I did my best to speak on that particular topic. Afterwards, like very good school teachers that you are, you patted my curly head and said, not too bad, but really we should like to hear you speak on prayer. Do you see? That's how good school teachers keep people on their toes, you know. They give them a little praise for what they've done while they assign three or four more lessons that they weren't expecting. So I was subdued and agreed in that moment to come along one day and speak on three occasions on the topic of prayer at your request. As the time have drawn near, has drawn near, I've asked myself from time to time why you should ask me to speak upon such a topic. Left to myself, I think I would never have chosen to speak to you on the topic of prayer, for the simple reason I would have supposed that you were the experts and I the apprentice boy, and that you should be speaking to me out of your experience, rather than that I speak to you. That being so, as I say, I fell to asking myself, well, why have they asked me to talk about prayer? Is it that they have recently had such wonderful experience of the Lord through prayer that they are wanting everybody to know about it and to be encouraged to pray so that everybody else may come into similar blessing of prayer. And then I decided that that couldn't be the reason, for if that were the reason, you wouldn't have waited for me to come and talk about it. You'd be talking about it yourself to everybody you could possibly get hold of. And so I asked myself, was it perhaps because in the rough and tumble of life, they have got a little discouraged in prayer, and perhaps lost their way in prayer, as sometimes all of us do. Is it perhaps, I said to myself, that they have asked for things and not received them, and that they have been disturbed because of it. With an inevitable question, why have our prayers not been answered? Is it, I've said to myself, that they have found such verses as in chapter, uh, fifteen verse seven of the Gospel of John? Ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you. And in good faith, they have tried to put that verse into operation and have asked whatever they would, only to find it hasn't been done. Therefore, it has raised very big questions over the validity of such promises. Could it be that they've come across verses like Luke chapter seventeen and verse six? If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this sycamine tree, be rooted up and be planted in the sea, and it would have obeyed you. So summoning up all the faith they possessed, they've addressed their particular sycamine tree and told it to get up and remove and be planted in Belfast loch, and it has simply stayed put. Which instead of helping, has added to their discouragement. Life is a great enough burden by itself, isn't it? And if getting answers to prayers in difficult circumstances depends on having an almost superhuman faith, superhuman efforts to work up prodigious faith, which few, if any, believers can manage, then instead of such prayer offers, eh, taking away life's burdens, they lead to a sense of defeat and failure, a feeling, well, obviously I haven't got faith so much as a grain of mustard seed, as what I told the sycamine tree to do, it would have done, and it didn't. So I stand rebuked and depressed. My faith must be infinitesimal. Well, when I pondered things of that like mine, I said, well, surely the dear believers in Hollywood have not got to those depths of despair and discouragement in their prayer life, but some of us sometimes have. And so I thought, well, perhaps in the brief three weeks that we have together, we might look at some of the difficulties of prayer and why it is that people get discouraged. And one thing it seems to me that will help us begin to sort out such problems, if we have them, is to notice the contexts in which our Lord's promises about prayer are made. For if we do not distinguish the context in which the promises are made, then we are liable to be disappointed. We are told about prayer in the context of children coming to God as Father to ask for their needs, and a thousand and one their needs are. We're told about prayer in the context of ourselves as scholars in the school of God's holiness. And these, by and large, are a different range of promises and call for a different kind of prayer. And then we are told God's gracious promises in prayer in the context of our being fellow workers with God, in the various fields of God's work where God has placed us, where to be efficient servants of the Lord, we must learn to exercise the authority of the Lord Jesus in our work for the Lord. And that, of course, brings with it promises of a very different kind from those we meet in the other two realms. But tonight I want to begin, first topic, our prayers as children coming to a father, and ask us to think first of the reward of prayer. And the reward of prayer, as promised by our blessed Lord in Matthew chapter six. He tells us not to pray as some other people pray who get their reward, but the reward is a very inadequate reward. He tells us how to pray and guarantees that if we pray thus, our Father who sees in secret will reward us, will recompense us. And the very idea of reward for prayer raises the question, doesn't it? Why must we pray at all? Why pray? Presently, our Lord is going to guide us by telling us that our Father knows what things we have need of before we ask him. And that simply enforces the question then. If he knows what we need, and he is the loving God he makes himself out to be. Why doesn't he give us the things we need without waiting for us to pray for them? Why do we have to pray? And what is prayer's reward? In talking to us about this, our Lord warns us against two false attitudes in prayer. The first is that of the hypocrites. Be not, says he, as the hypocrites, verse five. And then in verse seven, in your praying, says he, use not vain repetitions as the Gentiles do. Two wrong attitudes of prayer, that of the hypocrites on the one hand, and of the Gentiles on the other. I think I shall not have to spend much time on the old hypocrites, for I don't think I see many in front of me this evening. Hypocrites. The Greek word, of course, basically means, as you know, a play actor. And these are men whose prayers are play acting. They're doing it to put on a show. They are apparently, as they stand there with their eyes shut, they are doing it ostensibly praying to God. But if you were so un- irreverent as to keep an eye open and watch them, every now and again you'll see one of their eyes open to see who was looking at them. And was Mr. Smith suitably impressed at the knowledge of all the biblical verses that, uh, he has managed to quote, and the intricacies of theology that he has brought in, and all the wonderful technical terms he's been able to muster, and the length at which he's been able to do it, and the pious look upon his face, suitably interlaced with sighs and holy groanings. The old hypocrites. Uh, doing it to be seen of men, standing there in the synagogue, you'll see. As in all Jewish synagogues, before the service proper starts, people gather for their own devotions, and a man will be praying over here, and another will be praying over here, and presently one will stand up somewhere else, and he'll pray, you'll see. There's room for personal exercise. Our Lord had observed in his attendance at the synagogue some that were doing it for mere show. Don't be as the hypocrites. For they have their reward, and the reward is what they went in for. The praise and estimation of men. Oh, what a beautiful prayer he offered. He must be a holy man. They have their reward, and the Greek word means that that's all the reward they're ever going to get anyway. What requests they made for particular things, we're not told, of course, but I doubt whether they got them either. Their whole exercise was a play acting. We don't ourselves need that exhortation, do we? Well, some of us brethren might perhaps need to reread the warning from time to time, mightn't we? Best in the holiest moments of the church, when we got up to address the Father at the Lord's Supper, maybe. They're sneaked into our hearts. Now, what will the brethren think of that? That was a spectacular prayer, wasn't it? No man can be praying with one eye on God and the other on the congregation for the reward he's going to get. Incidentally, as I say it, I must remind you that in another sense, when you pray in public, my good brethren, you must have one eye upon the congregation as well as upon the Lord, and that is you must pray in terms that they can understand, you'll see. You mustn't, uh, be carried away with such obscure language that nobody in the congregation knows what on earth you're talking about. But that doesn't profit them, and our prayers are meant to profit the congregation. Not for to get their acclaim and esteem and the reward of their praise, but that as we pray to God, our prayers may edify our brothers and sisters. That also is a command of the Lord. But let's pass from the hypocrites to the Gentiles. Their trouble is more deep-seated. It rises not from vanity in their hearts, but from their false concept of what God is like. For they think, so says our Lord, that they shall be heard for their much speaking. So they use empty repetitions, constantly saying the same thing and pleading with God, and supposing that it is by the constant repetition of their prayer that eventually they will prevail upon God to give them what they ask. You know, there lies a danger for us, doesn't there? Because there are certain promises given to prayer that encourage us to persist in praying. We shall, God willing, be thinking of that kind of promise next week, when we are told that it is the persistence of our prayers that will count. Suffice it to say tonight that we mustn't misunderstand either the context of that promise or what it means. It does not mean that when we come to the Father, he's not prepared to listen to us if we only ask once, but that, uh, is so long as we really put the pressure on God and keep up asking and asking and asking and asking and asking and asking and asking, at last God will consider the length and persistence of our prayers and give us what we ask. Why would that be wrong? Well, it would be wrong from that very idea that as children before a father, we have to bring pressure to bear upon God before he will give us what we really need and what we ask for. Ponder that a moment, the very concept that God who knows in advance, as our Lord Jesus said, he knows what we have need of. Yet he wouldn't consider giving it to us unless we not only ask, but keep on asking, and in the end bring such pressure to bear upon him by our prayers that he feels obliged to give in and therefore grants our request. Oh, if that were true, life would be hideous, wouldn't it? Just you imagine a God who's supposed to be all-loving and knows what we need, but wouldn't give it unless we twisted his arm by our endless asking. Such a God would be a hideous monster. He would be less than noble human parents, wouldn't he? What parent, if a child came in at tea time and said, mummy, I'm hungry, please can I have something to eat, would say to the child, certainly not, unless you stand there and ask a thousand times, and then I would consider giving it. And the child that bothers its parents so much that in the man mother for sheer weariness gives in to the child is not a happy child, and she's not a happy mother either, is she? No, if God had to be pestered by endless prayers into giving us this or that, then heaven itself wouldn't be worth going to. Or we should come to the conclusion that we knew better than God, and our happiness depended on our taking the initiative and driving God to give us good things that of himself he had no intention to give. And it isn't true, is it? Oh, let not our prayer life contradict what we believe about God in the gospel. Sit back, my brother and sister, this evening, and just ponder anew what the Almighty can do if with his love he befriend thee. Think what he has already given you without being asked. It wasn't at your request, was it, that God sent his son into the world that we might live by him? Wasn't your suggestion, was it, that he would allow his son to be sawn, crowned, and staked to a cross and bear your sin in his body? Wasn't your suggestion, was it, that in raising him from the dead, he raised you too and gave you life and seated you at his own right hand in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus? Wasn't your idea that he planned a whole eternity of bliss and promises to put into your hand a share of universal government with Christ? That wasn't our idea. All these things he gave unasked. Of his own will, says James, he brought us forth unasked. Out of the sheer goodness of his heart, determining to bless us, he conceived these majestic and gigantic blessings, and all of his own will, he gave them to us. What will he not bestow then? Who freely gave this mighty gift, unbought, unmerited, unheeded, and unsought. What will he not bestow? There would have been a strange change in his character, wouldn't there? If after all that, these other little things that pertain to life, our health, our jobs, our homes, big things in eh eh for us, but little things in compared with God's eternal purposes, if in those things we had to twist God's arm, else he wouldn't give them. And says our Lord, don't be like those Gentiles and think that by your much asking you shall get, for the Lord knows what things you have need of, so you don't even have to, um, pray long prayers to inform God. For he knows already. You say half a minute, preacher. Uh, that isn't true. You do have to inform God, for Philippians four and verse six says that with suitable thanksgivings, we are to let our requests be made known to God. Well, surely we do. But why is that? Because God didn't know, had been asleep a little while, and hadn't observed the difficulty we were in, and so needed to be woken up and informed and brought up to the modern news. Well, no, of course not. To put it that way is to see how absurd it is. We are to inform him, as mother who likes to see a child come, and the child is full of its need. He's just fallen over on the road, and his shins are barked, and he's feeling shot, and he comes to tell mum. Mum had already seen it as she looked out of the bedroom window anyway, but uh, it's it's it's taking the load off the child, isn't it? If the child can come out and pour out its heart before mother. So then we don't even ask, uh, we don't even ask in order to inform God. Well, you say that all presents a very big problem. For if God knows in advance what I have need of, why do I have to ask? Why doesn't he give it automatically? Ah. The best I can do is to think of an analogy once more with Mother and Johnny. Johnny likes ice cream, and Mother knows Johnny likes ice cream and is of the view that a little ice cream every now and again is a good thing for Johnny. In the fridge at this very moment, she has several packets of ice cream colored blue, red, and sky blue pink. And these are designed for Johnny, for she knows the time when Johnny will come asking, please, mum, can he have some ice cream, you see? Well, it may be that he doesn't ask, and go come tea time, she gives him the ice. Seen it as she looked out of the bedroom window anyway, but uh, it's it's it's taking the load off the child, isn't it? If the child can come out and pour out its heart before mother. So then we don't even ask, uh, we don't even ask in order to inform God. Well, you say that all presents a very big problem. For if God knows in advance what I have need of, why do I have to ask? Why doesn't he give it automatically? Ah. The best I can do is to think of an analogy once more with Mother and Johnny. Johnny likes ice cream, and Mother knows Johnny likes ice cream and is of the view that a little ice cream every now and again is a good thing for Johnny. In the fridge at this very moment, she has several packets of ice cream colored blue, red, and sky blue pink. And these are designed for Johnny, for she knows the time when Johnny will come asking, please, mum, can he have some ice cream, you see? Well, it may be that he doesn't ask, and go come tea time, she gives him the ice cream. Or it may be that, uh, Johnny comes and asks halfway through the afternoon for some ice cream, and Mother, who's, uh, already made provision for that possibility, she knows Johnny, um, decides whether it is good for Johnny at that particular hour of the day to have ice cream or not. And deciding that it is good, she's delighted to give Johnny his ice cream. Yeah? And what is all happening? Why doesn't she, um, always take the initiative and not wait for John to ask? Well, she says she wants the boy to come and ask her. For in asking mum for ice cream, and eventually being given the ice cream, Johnny is getting a great deal more reward than ice cream, isn't he? Ponder it a moment. Along with the ice cream, he is collecting an impression of that lovely lady who is his mother. He's building up in his childish mind a sense that what a mother is. She's a somebody that cares for Johnny, and when Johnny feels he needs something and comes to ask, well, if she approves, she gives it. In fact, she'd anticipated his need, and there it was in the fridge. What a woman she is. And the infant is learning something of what a mother is. It'll stick with him in life, and long after he's lost the taste for ice cream and prefers smoked salmon, he will still remember that charming lady, now silver-haired and all bent, and his heart will go out in gratitude to the lady for the marvelous mum she was. And he began to learn it as he came and asked for ice cream. Of course, Johnny's asking for ice cream do not always meet with success as far as Johnny is concerned. Sometimes mother says no, and then, of course, in that five minutes, she's the worst woman on earth that ever was ever invented. If he knew swear words, he'd use them, and he stamps the fore and blares his eyes out and denounces mum, and if he were feeling free to do it, might kick her shins. This woman that has ice cream in the fridge and doesn't give it. Yes, but as the hours and years go by, he learns a bit more about this. She loved him so that when he asked for something that wouldn't have been good for him, she was prepared not to give it, in spite of all the misimpressions that Johnny received. That's a strong love, isn't it? I must be careful what I say, haven't got the slightest experience, but then they who stand on the touchline, you know, and sometimes you do see a mother here or there tired with the day's tasks, being asked for the hundred and fifth time for the ice cream that she'd said no, in the end giving in for the sake of peace. God will never do that, will he? He loves us so much that he is prepared to endure for the time being our disappointments and our resentments. But he doesn't give what we ask. Ten thousand years from now, my brother and sister, we shall bless him for it. And discover the depths of that love of God that had our good and solely our good as its aim and its object. What then is the reward of prayer? It's not the actual particular things we get merely, is it? The reward of prayer is God himself. We're invited to come and ask, lest we received all gifts from God and they came automatically and we neither valued them in the end or him. We come to ask because God is a person who, in giving, wants us to know him as a person. And when we come and ask whether he gives or not, we discover what as a person he is like, and that is the supreme reward of prayer. So, as we bring our study to a close, shall we not think of that aspect of prayer that is so prominent in the Old Testament? In our older versions, it is described as waiting upon the Lord. They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, shall change their strength, says the prophets. These words were spoken, as you know, as a word of comfort for the Israelite exiles in Babylon. They had gone to Babylon under the chastisement of God, but with the gracious prophet promises of the big prophets ringing in their ears, that one day God would have mercy on them and would restore them to their land, to their homes, to their temple, to their city of Jerusalem. There would be a virtual paradise on earth when God restored the divinic throne and all those wonders God would give them. Times would come when the very Gentile kings and queens would bring them back to their land and be their servants. And thus encouraged they had waited down the years, the godly among them. But as the years went by, the question arose naturally. Why do we have to wait so long? Why doesn't God fulfill his promises? What's gone wrong with the promises? The seventy years that Jeremiah talked of, of God's discipline of his people, the seventy years have expired, and only a tiny few have gone back, and they're in deep trouble. It's nothing like the paradise we were pro- promised way back there in Israel. It's worse there than it is here, with all the enemies and shortages of food and the difficulties. Why does God wait? Why doesn't he fulfill his promises, all those glorious promises? And the answer that God makes through the prophets is this: Yes, I, I shall one day. You can rest upon it. I shall one day fulfill all those glorious promises and more than fulfill them. But for the time being, I'm asking you to wait. They who wait on the Lord. The Hebrew means to hope in the Lord. But if we put it so, then great emphasis would be put upon the verb hope. Hope means not getting it now. Hope means hoping for something we see not. Hope means, therefore, still trusting God and being prepared to wait until it is God's good time. Many Israelites faced with that advice found it difficult to take. They found it after all their prayers regularly in the synagogue, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, their hope, as it is still, this time here in Moscow, this year here in Berlin, next year in Jerusalem. Ah, but after the passing of many years, that kind of hope seemed to be sh- to be sickeningly unreal. And some of them decided that God had forgotten about them. Why sayest thou, O Israel, my case, my judgment, that is my case, is passed away from my God, and that the Lord, um, has, uh, forgotten me. He doesn't notice my way and where I'm going. He can't possibly see the difficulty of the road I'm plodding along. And as for the case that I have presented before him, well, it's passed away from him. He's no longer interested and isn't taking any notice. Prayed so many times and he hasn't answered. And the prophet replies, but that is an impossibility, you know. For he that keeps Israel doesn't get weary. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. He forgets nothing. And delay in answering of our prayers and our hopes forces us back on the character of God, doesn't it? That prayer that you've asked so many times, my brother and sister, and God hasn't answered it, and you think he's either not heard or forgotten, forces you, doesn't it, to reconsider. What is this God like I pray to? Is it so that he doesn't forget? He never gets weary? And he knows exactly where I am and all I suffer and all I hope and all my disappointments. He knows it right this very moment. And why doesn't he give it? Why does he ask me to wait? And the answer comes back. Why? Because those who wait on the Lord change their strength. Notice that. They that wait on the Lord shall renew, the Hebrew is change, their strength, like a person takes off a worn out garment and puts on a new one, shall change their strength, not their circumstances. The change strength comes while the difficult circumstances remain. The change strength comes while the requests and the prayers appear still not to be answered. It is in those circumstances that those that wait on God and hope in him still, find that he changes not their circumstances, but their strength. So that the waiting is doing God's work and making us stronger rather than our circumstances easier. Forgive me for talking of things I don't know, but this bit I did know. Oh, how I would have rejoiced if my parents from time to time had heard my request and said I needn't go to school. Because my school, I have you know, wasn't the delightful place, you know, that modern schools are, with delightful teachers that abound on every hand. My school was full of old dragons who kept not her beating sticks in vain and seemed to rejoice in using them at every possible moment and impossible as well. And there were big louts at my school, bigger boys, and I was only a little titch of a fellow, and rag us they did and put us through endless misery. It was that kind of school where ragging was the done thing, and if you blurted it out to the teacher, who betide you both from the teacher and the boys when they got hold of you. Next, Dorsey. How I would have loved if my parents had heard my prayers and said I didn't have to go to school. They made me go. And now I can see, as you could, what a weakling I had been, worse than I am now. If my parents had heard my prayers and took away the difficulties and let me stay in the cuddly warmth of the nursery, playing with my toys, rather than sending me out to face that bad old world of school. It was while the circumstances were difficult that the strength was changed from that of an infant to a growing boy, and as the years have gone by, please God, from a raw juvenile to somewhere near perhaps one of these days, a mature adult. God has such designs for us. Oh, ponder it, my brother. Hear the exhortation of your father this evening. They that wait upon the Lord. Lift up your eyes on high, he says, and see who has created these that bringeth out their hosts by number. He calleth them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking. It's a difficult exhortation to do in Belfast as neat. I think it's difficult also in Hollywood. But I should think ninety percent of the night sky is dark and dim with clouds and rain, and when it's bright, the city lights obscure the stars anyway, don't they? What unfortunates we are. But to go out and do what God tells us to do, lift up our eyes on high and consider the stars and the planets, their millions upon millions, in the quiet moments of a night, to stand and be overawed at God's wondrous display. Ask you to go and do it, my brother. To take your eyes for a little while off your circumstances, my sister, and survey the quiet infinities of space and the immeasurable numbers of the stars, and say to yourself who it is that keeps all that up and calls their name. Is it true that at this moment, this very moment, he knows me, counts the hairs of my head, knows the throbbing of my heart, and perhaps the throbbing of my head as well? Is it true that for me he designed salvation and eternal life? Is it true that he's designed a future for me, that I shall share universal dominion with his son? I, this little bit of clay, designed of God to rule the ages and the great eternities along with Christ. Then is it so that at this very moment, he's asking me to wait and hope, while the thing I asked for doesn't appear to be given, so that my strength will grow and will change. And instead of the circumstances being different, I shall get more power to cope with them and learn to rise up with wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, and walk and not fade. For you see, I do need to learn the lesson, don't I? For if life's responsibilities and its difficulties seem large now, bigger things are ahead, my brother, my sister. I wonder with what consternation you would hear your reward from Christ if he gave you a whole galaxy to look after tomorrow. And as for judging a few angels, it's good, it's bad enough to judge the grocer, isn't it? What? Uh... We desperately need our strength changed, and the changes that are being worked are changes are going to last eternally. Here comes new courage. Here comes healing and balm as we learn to do what God says. Survey the wonders of his creation, the marvels of the night sky. Let its grandures put life's difficulties in their true proportion and remind us of our eternal destiny. And so find new strength, new courage, new hope to face tomorrow's difficulties until such time as the Lord is pleased to answer our prayers, either here or when the Lord Jesus comes. They then that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength in discovering God. They have their great reward. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, we thank thee for these moments of meditation. We confess before thee we are so often like children, clamoring for things. And we bless thee for a father's heart that knows what we have need of, and in thy goodness will give it. We do bless thee that we do not live in a universe that's impersonal or automatic. We thank thee for all that thou art so great, we may come and make request of thee and not be repulsed. Help us in all our requests, we pray, to be brought nearer to thyself, that whether thou dost give or not, we may find that true and eternal reward that is fellowship with thee and knowledge of thee. In these closing moments, we bring to thee tomorrow and its difficulties. Thou knowest, Lord, our, our weakness. Grant, Lord, that in waiting upon thee, we may find new strength and new courage to cope again, or to cope for the first time with difficulties that thy grace permits and thy wisdom allows, that we may find the truth of thy word, that we shall change our strength, and thus be made more ready for the responsibilities of eternity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.