Sunday 26 October 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons. Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 26 October 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: When Everything Changes

Scripture Reading: Exodus 1:8-14

 Today's Bible reading is from Exodus chapter one, verses eight to 14, then a new king who did not know about Joseph came to power in Egypt. Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come we must deal shrewdly with them, or they'll become even more numerous. And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor and they built Python and rames as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and work them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields, in all their hard labor.

The Egyptians use them ruthlessly.

Thank you, Wendy. If we could put that first slide up, sir. Last week if you were here, you know, we finished our long series on prayer, and as I shared the purpose of that series, we wanted to embed a vision. We want to create a culture of prayer. I love what Wendy, uh, Wendy Diane prayed earlier we're called to be what?

Doers of the word, not just here as the purpose of that series wasn't for us to get, you know, a lot more information about prayer in our heads. It was to embed a vision so that we would be a people of prayer. That we would live lives of prayer. And so we have a lot of needs to commit to the lo, uh, to the Lord for this church.

So if I could just keep encouraging us, let's keep seeking the Lord in prayer. Now, between now and Christmas, what I'd like to do is to preach a short series from the Book of Exodus. Now, can you actually make out that picture? Can you make that out? That there is Moses on a rock? I'm not quite sure that the Red Sea would've been lifted up so high, but you can make out the picture.

Yeah. Now a couple of the small groups are looking at the first part of Exodus at this, this point in time. So what I thought I'd do is roughly cover the same ground prior to Christmas. And the title of my message today is When Everything Changes. Let's commit this Time to the Lord. Father, we do thank you that we can come as your people.

We thank you that we have your word. The word that is con, contained with your great and precious promises that you're a good God, that you can be trusted, and so Holy Spirit, as the word is open today, speak through me. Speak to us, transform us more into the likeness of our savior, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray.

Amen. I once heard a story about a homeless guy who was well known to a local church here in Perth. He'd often hang around, he'd be in the streets and, you know, after the service, he'd come from outside the building into the cafe, come for a cup of coffee. And one day he, he, he approached the pastor and he said these words, he said, I want to change.

I want my life to be different. I'm, I'm sick and tired of living on the streets. I'm, I'm sick of the same old, same old. I, I need something new in my life. And the pastor said, well, you know, if you're serious about this, let's see how we can help. Let's see what we can do. Come to the church and we'll see what steps we can take.

Now, within a week, they'd actually been able to organize for this man to move into a rental unit that was partially furnished. So this is a good change for this guy in his life. One of the other tasks I had to help him with was learning how to manage his finances. Now, this was a guy who'd been in and out of mental health facilities, so he had, he had some disposable income.

He had a, a disability pension, but the problem was he wasn't any good at managing his money. You know, as soon as the money came in, he'd go down to Miss Mors with his mates and he'd blow it all in a couple of days on the all you can eat buffet. So they needed to help him have new patterns of life. He's living a certain way, he's got the money, but he just doesn't know how to manage it.

One day the pastor, he went to the unit, he had a meal with this man, and he said, you know, the unit was basic, but it was a home. It was a place in which you could live. You could be free, you could have some privacy. He said he had a bed, a coffee table. He had a fridge, a television. He had a place where he could get a, a hot shower.

The pastor thought himself, you know, this has really turned out well for this guy. A few weeks go by and this man comes into the church and he says, pastor, I want out. I want out. And the pastor's like, what? Why? And he goes, I feel caged. I don't wanna live there anymore. I wanna go back to life on the streets.

And of course, this all took the, the pastor by surprise. And he's like, but you know, you've got a a, a nice bed, you've got a hot shower, you've got some privacy, security. Why do you wanna go back to sleeping in the parks? It's cold out there and it's not safe. You could get attacked. This man. He's insisting, he's like, no, I want to go back.

I want to go back to the life that I'm used to. I want to go back to what I know, back to what's comfortable for me. And so the church, they're able to break the lease in this unit and this man went back to life on the streets. Now we're starting this short series on the book of Exodus, and this word Exodus, it means moving on.

It means the way out. It means moving forward, a departure, something new. And yet, as you look at the, the story of Exodus, it's a book we've read. It's a story. We know as much as we see that God is at work, you know he's trying to do something new, to move the people on and forward, there's always this pull on the people to say, we want to go back.

We want to go back to what we know, back to what we're familiar with. We want to go back to Egypt and we can read this and think, well, why on earth would they want to do that? You know, what's wrong with these people? They were slaves in Egypt. It was terrible there. They were treated horribly. Why would someone want to go back to something so bad when God wants to move them on and out into something new and something so much better now?

Do you get that? The Israelites, were human just like us. They're just like us. We're just like them. God offers a way out. He holds out his hand and we just want to go back. You ever had that experience? Yeah. God gives us a direction for something new. He wants to move us on and forward. He holds out his hand and we're like, sorry, God.

I want to go back to what I know, to what's comfortable. Now, what about you? Maybe you're sitting here today and you're saying, I'm in a rut. Or maybe you feel like you're in a hole. Do you need a way out? Maybe it's a place you find yourself in. Maybe it's an attitude or a habit, you know, patterns of life that you just can't seem to break free of things you can't kick, and you're saying, God, I'm sick of this.

I'm tired of living this way. I want out. Do you believe that God is able to find a way out for you? Do you believe that? Yeah. That's what I'd like for us to consider as we look at this short series. Now the Book of Exodus begins with these words. It says, these are the names of the sons of Israel who went down to Egypt with Jacob, each with his own family.

Now, what you don't see in most English translations is the opening word in the Hebrew text, and that word is the little word and is this tiny little word. Now, if you've ever done some teaching, I've done some teaching in, in grammar. The word and is, what is it a verb? Is it an adjective? It's a conjunction.

A conjunction is something that joins, you know, a couple of things together. And what this word is, is doing here. It's joining the story of Genesis with a story that's about to unfold before us in the pages of Exodus. It's actually this little word that's saying this is you are meant to see with this little word and that there's a continuity between Genesis and Exodus.

And these opening words that we see in chapter one of Exodus, they're almost identical to what we see in Genesis chapter 46, verse eight. These are the names of the Sons of Israel, Jacob and his descendants who went to Egypt, the Sons of Israel, go down to Egypt and Genesis. You read the book of Genesis, it ends on this high note through Joseph.

You've got the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They're in Egypt, but they're prospering. They're fruitful, they're wealthy, you know, they've become secure, they're powerful. That's how Genesis ends. It ends on this really high note for Joseph, but as we know their path to prosperity, it's not a path that any of us here would choose.

Yeah. If you wanna be powerful, secure, and wealthy and fruitful, you would not choose the path that God had for Joseph. Okay, so we know the story. He sold into slavery. He ends up in prison because of his integrity. He's a man of integrity. He fears the Lord. He'd much rather go to to prison unjustly than sleep with his master's wife.

But I like what we see. When you read the book of Genesis, we're told that God is with him. There's a couple of, couple of, you know, little, little markers in the, the Genesis text. Joseph is suffering. He's languishing in prison, and the author of Genesis says, but God was with Joseph, God is with him. He's not abandoned.

And God gives him this capacity to interpret dreams. And through this gift, he becomes the right hand man to Pharaoh. He's the right hand man to the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world. And it's through this that he's able to not only save this nation from family, he's also able to secure a house for his family line.

And so what what we think is we come to the end of Genesis. We are looking at all that's happened. We are looking at where they've landed at the end of the Book of Genesis, and we are thinking, yes, God is good. He's preserved his people through famine and God has blessed him. He's blessed him and he's blessed his family line.

God is good. And despite everything Joseph, you know, has been through to get to that point, we can see how the hand of God is upon all of these things. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Yeah, but that's where Genesis ends. It ends on this high note, and then if you look at the next verses or verses six and seven in Exodus, we see.

Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. They multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Can you get the picture here? There's a lot of Hebrew people. There's a lot of them. 70 of them go down to Egypt.

Now they fill the entire land. This is wonderful. This is a fulfillment of a promise that God made to Abraham. God said he would do it, and it's taking place. It's happening. They're being blessed. They're fruitful. They've multiplied. Now think back to Genesis chapter 15, Abram, that's his name still. Then he's childless.

He's concerned, he's worried, he's crying out to God. He says, God, you haven't given me a child. God, I've got no heir. So my servant Zer, he's gonna inherit my entire estate. What does God say? God says, no, this man is not going to be your heir. You will have a son, and there's this wonderful picture. God says, I want you to step outside, and he says to Abram, I want you to look up.

And he does. He says, look up at the sky and count the stars. If indeed you can count them, so shall your offspring be. That's very interesting. Think about this. Abrams, an old man, Sarah, his wife is barren. This promise is outlandish. Are you kidding me? God? Do you think this is gonna happen? Is that Abram's response?

Look at verse six. It says, Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. It sounds outlandish. It sounds foolish, but Abraham says, or Abraham says, yes Lord, I believe, I believe you will do what you said you will do. And this is what we're seeing coming to pass in these opening verses of Exodus.

There's something else we see in Genesis chapter 15. God gives Abraham this promise of offspring. Then he tells him to do something that might seem a little bit strange to us in the 21st century. He says, Abraham, I want you to get a heifer, a goat, and a ram along with a dove and a young pigeon. And no, he's not starting a zoo.

God tells him, cut them in half and place the pieces opposite one another. Now, this seems strange to us, but Abraham, he's seen all this before, back in the ancient near Eastern world, this is what people did when they made a covenant. What you do is you get these animals, you kill them, and you cut the bodies in two.

And then the two parties in agreement to this covenant, they would hold each other's hand and pass between the pieces. Okay? This is symbolizing that an oath has been made, and here's the catch. Failure to keep your side of the oath meant it'll be your dead body cut in two, and I would walk between the pieces.

That's what it's symbolizing. I would walk between the pieces of your dead carcass if you don't live up to your end of the bargain. That's what's happening here. It's signifying that this covenant that's being made, you've gotta take this seriously. This is not fun and games, if you don't stand up to your end of the covenant, it's your dead body cut in half and I'm gonna pass between.

And so Abram, he prepares the animals. The writer of Genesis then says that a thickened, dreadful darkness came upon him and he fell into a deep sleep. And in this deep sleep, God explains that his descendants. He's gonna have descendants. It's a promise, but they're gonna be strangers in a country not their own.

And they're gonna be enslaved and mistreated there. And then what happens is God passes between the pieces, not Abraham and God, just, God, don't miss this. What we see here is a foundation that's gonna go all the way throughout the pages of scripture. God is the one who passed through. God doesn't enter into this covenant with Abraham as equals where he's saying, look, Abraham, you carry out your part and I'll carry out mine.

No, God goes through on his own, and it's God's way of saying, this promise that I have made, I will keep it for my name's sake, the fulfillment of this promise. It doesn't depend upon you, Abraham. It depends upon me and me alone, and I am going to do it and God does. Amen. That's what's happening here in Genesis 15.

Now, think about this in our own lives, Jesus said, never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. And Jesus keeps that promise. Amen. Amen. Jesus keeps that promise. And what we see at the cross is that he passes through on his own. Do you know what this means? It means that if you mess up, if you are unfaithful, Jesus is not gonna leave you.

He's not gonna forsake you. He's not gonna say, Jamie, I've had enough of you. It's too much. He is faithful. He doesn't abandon us. God passes through these pieces in Genesis 15. It's a, it's it, he's symbolic. It's symbolizing that he will keep his promise. Abraham will have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

And that's exactly what we see here in the opening scenes of Exodus. You've got this large family goes down to Egypt, and over time they become this huge nation. Now we can look at this, the first six, seven verses of Exodus, and we can say, yes, God is good. God is faithful. He's keeping his word, he's blessing his people.

Praise the Lord. That's what's happening here in these first six, seven verses, and then something happens that changes everything. Everything changes. Verse eight. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt. Have you ever had one of those moments where everything changes, just one event, one single thing, and everything changes, diagnosis, a job loss?

Maybe it's the death of a spouse. Something happens that changes and impacts everything you know, and your world is never the same again. That's exactly what's happening here in verse eight of chapter one of Exodus. Things will never be the same for Abraham's descendants. What we see here, and we don't need to skim past it too quickly, is a seismic shift.

There's this new Pharaoh, he doesn't care about Joseph. He knows nothing about Joseph. He knows nothing about the role he played in rescuing Egypt from famine. And even if he did, he wouldn't care. All he sees, all he knows is that these Hebrew people, there's far too many of them, they could outnumber us.

They could be a threat. And he says, look, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they'll become even more numerous. And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country. See what he says, we must deal with them. Shrewdly, not fairly, not justly.

We need to be crafty in how we handle them. Why? You know, because we have a way of life that we want to protect. We've got a standard of living that we've come to enjoy, and if these people rise up, mount against, decide against us, or even if they leave, then we could lose everything that we know and enjoy.

Do you see what he's doing? He's using paranoia to justify how they should treat this group of people. Okay. Can I tell you, this is not some new political tool. Do you see much of this happening around the world in which we currently live? This is what's happening in Exodus chapter one, and so Pharaoh makes this decision.

We're gonna put these people under our thumb. We're gonna subjugate them in verse 11, we read, so they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built ham and rames as store cities for Pharaoh. Can you see how everything's changed for the descendants of Abraham? Can you see everything's changed?

It's not the same. This new king, he cares nothing for what Joseph did in his eyes. These Hebrew people, they were a threat and so he enslaves them. And I like the irony you see in his verse. He, he makes them build store cities, which is the very thing that saved Egypt under Joseph. There's an irony there.

In his mind, he's thinking, well, we're gonna work these people hard. We're gonna make life so difficult for them that they won't even have the strength to have children. Those guys are gonna get home at night and they're gonna be so exhausted. They'll collapse into bed, and the women, they'll be so worn down, their bodies they won't be able to produce, will mistreat them, and this way their numbers will decrease.

That's his, that's his strategy. And guess what? It doesn't work. Verse 12, but. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. God's still fulfilling his promise to Abraham, despite the suffering. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. Stop and think for a moment about this word dread.

In Hebrew, this word speaks of loathing and it speaks of fear. This whole situation, everything that's happening now is driven by fear. The Egyptians, they look at these people and they say, look, you know, you are different. You are not like us. You are not like us. We're afraid of you. And they look at these people and they say, you know, Hey, hey, we, we, we we're gonna, we're gonna dread you.

It's an attitude of their hearts. They begin to hate them in their hearts, and these hate festers to the point where it's gonna shape the way they're gonna act toward them. And in the end, they committed great horrific evil against them. But it all began with fear and loathing and dread in their hearts.

Now there's an interesting line in the film avatar, and if you've seen it, it's, it's an interesting line. I love this line. I didn't like the film, but this line just stood out to me. The situation is, is you've got humans that've gone to this planet to steal the natural resources. This planet is resource rich.

They go and they do what humans do best. They, they rape, pillage, and plunder. And one of the characters says this, when people are sitting on things you want, you make them your enemy, then you are justified in taking it. And what we see in this film is the demonization of those who would stand up to save their planet.

And this is what often happens. One group of people, they dehumanize or demonize another group, and from there you can justify anything. If you dehumanize another group of people, you can justify anything against them. This is what we saw in the Holocaust. Those Jews there, rats. Rats get exterminated.

That's what we saw in the North Atlantic slave trade. It happened in Rwanda. Yeah. Had many wonderful students that were born in 1994 out of the ashes of the genocide in Rwanda. Beautiful people, they wouldn't talk about which tribe they're from. Why? Because the, the whole genesis of the conflict in Rwanda was which side of the tribal line you're on.

'cause that other tribe, they're cockroaches. That's how they call them. You demonize them, you dehumanize, you justify anything. We saw it in Sudan. It's a situation that's ongoing in the Middle East. If you dehumanize your enemy, you can justify even murder. That's what's happening here in these opening scenes in Exodus, and it's all motivated by fear, by loathing, by hatred.

The Egyptians came to dread the Israelites in verse 14. We read. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor and brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields in all their harsh labor. The Egyptians work them ruthlessly. That's the first strategy we're gonna enslave. These people make their lives so difficult, they won't have the strength to have children.

Doesn't work. So it's time for a different strategy. In verse 15, king comes up with a new plan. He says, he says to the Hebrew midwives. Whose names were Shira and Pua. Now, that's interesting. History remembers these people, but it doesn't name the Pharaoh. Isn't that interesting? That's a wonderful legacy.

He says, when you're helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him. But if it is a girl, let her live. Hard labor doesn't work. Perhaps in infanticide will. Because you can't keep growing as a people if there's only one gender, right? It's what they call gender side, not genocide.

Gender side, wipe out the males. The women will have to intermarry with Egyptians. We end this line, we end this race. That's what's happening. So the question is, what are they gonna do? Verse 17 tells us, these Hebrew midwives, they defy the king. Now understand, this is Pharaoh. He's the most powerful ruler in the world.

And yet these lowly Hebrew women, they, you know, they refuse to obey his command. This could cost them their lives. They're trying to preserve life, and they could lose their own life in the process. And they basically say, we fear God even more than we fear you. We may fear you, but we fear God even more.

And God honors that and we read. So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. You see this pattern, every strategy of Pharaoh is failing. God keeps blessing and multiplying and because, because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. So strategy number one and two have failed the Hebrew people, they just keep growing.

So it's time to up the ante, time to really. Go full mental verse 22. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people. Okay? The order's now out of the hands of the Hebrew midwives. It's now in the hands of his people. He says, every Hebrew boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.

He's basically saying, we can't trust these Hebrew midwives, so we'll do it ourselves. If you see a Hebrew baby boy, throw him into the river. Let him drown. Okay. It's not a crime, it's a command. That's what's happening here. What started with fear and loathing in the heart has ended up as open season on the Hebrew people.

That's what's, that's the very end of chapter one of the book of Exodus. It's heavy stuff. Yeah. Now we can, we can gloss over this. 'cause we know the Sunday school stories. We know how it all ends. God's got a plan. These people had to live through this. Right now, think about the progression here, the start of chapter one, we're thinking, yes, God's doing it.

He's fulfilling his promise to Abraham, his descendants are fruitful, they're multiplying. But by the end of the chapter, we're thinking, God, where are you God? Where are you in the midst of all this darkness? Have you forgotten about your people? God, can't you see what they're going through? Do you see the problem here?

Now, maybe you're here and you're in this place right now. Maybe something's come upon you in your life and you're wondering, God, do you even see what's happening? God, do you? Do you know God? Do you care? God? Are you even there? Do you know? We believe and we've experienced that God is faithful. Amen. We've experienced that.

God is true to his word and he keeps his promises. Yet the reality is the road to these promises is often shrouded in darkness. Yeah. That's right. Isn't that true? One day everything's great. We can taste and see that the Lord is good, and then suddenly just like that, something turns, something unforeseen, something out of the blue and we are left lost, you know, feeling lost and forgotten.

I've been there. I think we've all been there. Yeah. Let me, let me speak into this. The essence of the Christian faith is not certainty, it's trust.

It's not certainty, the essence of our Christian faith, it's trust. You know, for us, we might like to think we've got it all figured out, that we can somehow walk with God and we can know step by step how everything's gonna play out and happen. But that's not the essence of faith. The essence of faith is trust.

We trust that God is good even when our circumstances don't seem to align with that belief. And we trust that God is at work, even when we can't comprehend what he's doing, our faith is tested, it's sharpened, it's strengthened in times of darkness, times when we're saying, Lord, what are you doing? God, are you good?

God, are you there? And we've gotta bring it back to not walking by sight, but walking by faith. And the essence of faith is what? Trust. Lord, we trust you. There's a great story from the life of Cory Tambo. Now for those who dunno, Cory was from a Dutch family that sheltered and hid Jewish people during the Second World War.

She wrote this book, the Hiding Place. Now in 1944, her family was betrayed. Some people, you know, basically sold them out. Said, Hey, these guys, they're sheltering Jews. The Gestapo came, they raided the house, they were caught, and as punishment, they were sent to Ravens Brook concentration camp. Now, despite the unspeakable darkness and suffering, both COR and her sister, Betsy, held onto their faith.

It's an amazing story. Cory tells of how she was able to smuggle a small Bible into a barracks and each night the women, they would come, they would gather around, they sit by a bunk, and they would read scripture and pray. They were bringing light into a place, you know, that had only darkness hope, where there was only hopelessness.

Betsy, her sister, would often say, there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deepest Still. That's amazing. Okay. And understood. Understand they, they knew what it meant to be in a pit. They were in a literal pit of evil. Betsy never made it out of that camp alive Before her death, she told Cory, we must tell them that there is no darkness.

That is light cannot penetrate. And that is something that Cory 10 Boom held onto after the war. She traveled the world sharing the message of forgiveness, and she'd also speak, which is interesting. She would speak about the sovereignty of God. Now I find that remarkable, given all that she went through, all that she experienced, there's even, and you can, you can see it online.

There's even this famous encounter of her meeting, uh, and, and forgiving one of the guards from that concentration camp. It's a powerful story. You know, she's been sharing of God's love, God's forgiveness, his sovereignty. And after that, meeting up walks a guy who said, do you remember me? And she said, I knew exactly who he was, but she pretends initially not to know.

One of the concentration camp guards and he says, I'm now a believer in Jesus Christ. Will you forgive me? And there's a powerful audio clip of her sharing in tears. I cannot forgive him, but through God I can. It's a gift that God gave her to forgive. It's a powerful, powerful testimony, but as I think about her life, reflect on her story, it makes me wonder, how do you carry all this?

How do you carry all that stuff? You've been through all that stuff you've seen. And how do you maintain your faith in the midst of such unspeakable horror, and how do you, how do you even begin to make sense of it all? When she was 10 years old, Cory was at a train station with her father. She's just this little girl.

She's overhearing some adults and they're talking about sex. And so she turned to her father and said, Papa, what's, and she names this sex act. Now her father, Casper, was very clever in how he, how he responded to this. He was waiting for the train. He's holding his very heavy suitcase. So what he does is he sets it down and he says to Cory, I want you to come pick up this suitcase and carry it for me.

So along comes a little 10-year-old Cory and she, you know, grabs the handle and she's trying really hard to lift it. It's just too heavy for her. And she said, Papa, it's too heavy. I can't lift it. And so he took the handle, picked it up and said, Cory, in the same way, what you've asked me is too heavy for you to carry right now.

You can't carry it, but I'm strong enough. I'll carry it for you. Things will happen in life that are beyond our ability to comprehend things that will crush us if we try to understand why. Lord, why did this happen? God, why did you, you know, allow this? We're not called to understand why some things happen.

What we're called to do is trust in our Heavenly Father who's strong enough to carry these things for us. Things that we cannot carry, but he can. Maybe that's the first lesson we need to learn in terms of finding a way out and moving forward. We need to learn to trust God in the darkness, and we need to learn to lean on him when things you know don't make sense.

That's what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. So we come to the, the end of Exodus chapter 21. Everything has changed for God's people, absolutely everything. And yet, as we know behind the scenes, God is making a way for the deliverance of his people. We need to trust that he's doing the same in our lives.

Amen. That despite all we're going through, despite what we don't understand, that God behind the scenes is at work. That he is good and that he can bring about deliverance and a way forward. Let's pray.

Father, we just thank you that you are good. It's who you are. You're a good, good father, and we are loved by you. It's who we are. Father, despite our circumstances. Despite the things we've been through, things at times we struggle to understand, help us to come back to the essence of our faith. It's trust.

It's trusting in who you are, that you are a God who wants to move his people forward to bring deliverance. Help us to come to terms with the fact that that deliverance often comes through pathways that are shrouded in darkness. But through it all, your word is a, a lamp. And to our feet, it's a light to our path.

We can look to you. And so Father, we do that. We look to you now. We bring everything before you entrust it to you. In Jesus' precious name, amen.