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Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices. Who

wondrous things has done in whom this world rejoices. With hearts filled

with gratitude for who You are and for what You’ve done, we ask that You

would do another wondrous thing now. Come and speak Your words of love

and encouragement to Your people now. Let us hear Your truth. Let us hear

Your voice. Speak to our hearts and our minds and our souls.

We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

 

 

Two weeks ago today I flew out to Sacramento for the New Wineskins Convocation and when I landed around noon, I realized that I had a little bit of time before I needed to get to my meeting. So, as you might expect, I just went to my hotel room and sat around! Actually, what I did is I hopped in my car and I zipped to the Sierra Madres and I went over to Yosemite Valley and did a quick drive through there and then returned to Sacramento for the start of the meeting.

 

Now, of course, on my return home I had about thirty four pounds I think it was of extra weight in my suitcase for some reason: eight or nine rocks from the Sierras.

 

Speaking of rocks, at 2:30 in the morning I woke up with a familiar constriction on my right side. I find it ironic that I love rocks so much that I’ve started producing them myself!

 

As I lay there in the dark, I went immediately to what happened to me the last time I felt this same pain in this same place: remembering lying on my bed for three or four days in excruciating pain, remembering Dr. Bridge driving me to the hospital and me propping myself up on my elbows and asking him if he could please hit fewer of the bumps on Sagamore Parkway, and then eventually Dr. Pfaff operating on me to extract the kidney stone and all that ensued.

 

Well now it’s 2:31 and I’m wide awake. I began to think about my situation. Here I am 2,153 1/2 miles away from home. I don’t know where the hospital is. There is nobody nearby that I know. At the very least what I have between me and home is a four hour flight. And I imagine myself, at this point, on the flight with the pain kicking in in earnest and me rifling through my briefcase and pulling out a paper clip and marching up to the cockpit and pulling it out and saying, “Land this plane right now or, or else!”

 

That’s one area of my life.

 

In another area of my life, last Wednesday we had one of our cars in the shop for the fourth time in two weeks. Our bills at the end of the fourth visit were already up to $1,250 which we had not planned on, and I was informed that we had another $400 of work that was crucial that we take care of in the next six months. Hum.

 

Another chapter of my life: this past week I had a number of unexpected—all God-ordained, but all unexpected—pastoral needs, ministry concerns, counseling sessions, unexpected twists with the denominational process all come up and all nibbling away at my preparation time for my sermon and for O₂. I watched my Wednesday preparation time push into Thursday, and then I watched my Wednesday and Thursday preparation time push into Friday, and then I watched all of that time push its way into yesterday.

 

At one point in the middle of the week, I found myself on the floor in my office—not pressed there by the burden, but invited there by the burden—to present myself before God and to say, “Help.” And I was on my face, on my knees and I said, “Lord, you be my strength.” For the joy of the Lord is my strength.

 

So what is it for you? What is the thing that weighs you down right now? What’s the burden that presses in and threatens to take your breath away? Your job, your boss, your school plans, your children, your marriage, your future career, the future of a friendship, the future of this church, the state of your health, the state of your soul, the state of your finances, the state of the world?

 

Living in a fallen world—in a world of pain and affliction, of loss and struggle—means that we will be confronted with reasons for concern every day. It’s not as though we go through life sometimes with concerns and sometimes with none. We go through life sometimes with concerns that are more bearable and sometimes with concerns that are less.

 

And into this speaks this passage: Philippians Chapter 4 verses 4 to 7. You’ll find this on page 1830 in your pew Bibles.

 

As we turn to this, let me just ask again: what is the thing that is pressing in, weighing you down, distracting your thoughts, waking you up at night or keeping you from going to sleep at night? What is that thing that you feel on your shoulders?

 

Listen to these words. Philippians 4 verse 4, page 1830:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of Christ, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

 

These are words that have been a source of encouragement to generations of Christian followers.

 

But depending upon where you are and what your circumstances are when you hear these words or maybe even who says them to you, they can sound like, on the one hand, an accusation—a demand that you fix your feelings: don’t feel what you’re feeling; why are you feeling anxious? You’re not allowed to feel that. You’re a Christian. Be chipper! It feels like something we need to muster up. It feels like a wagging finger in our face, sometimes.

 

Other times this same passage can feed like a formula: an easy answer to fix not your feelings, but to fix your circumstances. Just do this and everything will be okay; everything will be fine. Problems? Drop two prayers in the slot and out will come peace that passes understanding.

 

But any one who has been alive for longer than ten minutes knows that feelings are not so easily dismissed, and neither are circumstances so easily changed.

 

This passage is not an accusation and this passage is not a formula. This passage is a wonderful invitation; it’s an important reminder, and it is a sweet word of encouragement for those who are his followers.

 

I think we miss this. The passage is really just about one idea, and the rest of the passage is about the outworking of that idea. Paul starts off and says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Is that it? No. He says, “Don’t be anxious about anything.” Is that it? No. He says, “Present your prayers and petitions to God.” Is that it? No.

 

You’ll find the heart of this passage at the end of Chapter 4 verse 5: four short words. See it? The Lord is near. Everything else is the application and the outworking of that truth: this is what is true and this is what is true always and this is what is true forever: The Lord is near. You are not alone.

 

The Philippian believers are struggling with their growth in their faith. They’re having some conflict among people in the church. They’re struggling with difficulties of persecution coming upon them from the unbelieving world around them. They’re probably feeling painfully the absence of Paul’s strength and encouragement—of his leadership with them. And Paul can’t help them. They send Epaphroditus to him, but there’s no way that he can return with Epaphroditus. He’s writing from 800 miles away where he’s locked up in prison and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him the next day.

 

Paul is not available to help them. Paul cannot come to their aid.

 

But Paul writes and says, “God can and God will.”

 

The expression “The Lord is near” has been understood in three different ways. It can mean that the Lord is close in space—kind of a theological statement about the omnipresence of God: the Lord is not only transcendent, but He is also nearby.

 

Or it can mean close in time—a theological statement about the imminent return of Christ, the Second Coming. The Lord is nearly here; he is about to return to complete his work of salvation and to close out the age. And it’s true that both of those things are encouraging, but I think the best sense of this expression is the most obvious one and this is love language, not theological language: the Lord is not far from you and you are not far from Him; He is near; He is here; He is close at hand; He holds you in His heart; He is eager and available to help you; He is able and ready to come to your aid; God is in the equation; God is in the picture; God is involved in your life.

 

You remember the two boxes, the two ways of making sense. Either this is what’s true: either it’s just me and whatever it is I face in life and there’s a lid on the box and that’s it, so if something’s going to be done about what I face, it’s all up to me. Or, it’s there’s me and there’s every thing I face in life, but the lid is off of the box and the God of the universe is available and present and involved and real and near.

 

This is what Paul is saying when he says that God is near: that the God of the universe, the God of power, who created the universe, who fashioned you, the God who heals the sick and raises the dead, the God who says that He is able to work all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes—that God of power is near, is available to us.

 

And that God of the universe, that God of power, he is also the God of love. God loves you; He cares about you; He is concerned for you; He has you on His mind; He holds you in His heart; He wants the best for you. He is the one who says, “You are precious and honored in My sight and…I love you.” in Isaiah 43.

 

This God who is near is not a long-distance friend who cares but can’t really do anything to change our circumstances, nor is He like a department head who has the power to make things different but doesn’t have enough concern to answer your e-mails.

 

God is near in power and God is near in love, in comfort, in encouragement, in wisdom, and in compassion. God is near.

 

That is what is true always and forever: God is near.

 

The whole rest of the passage is the outworking of that reality.

 

Let’s go on from there: Chapter 4 verse 6:

God is near, so don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

 

In this life, we will face all sorts of challenges, difficulties, losses, struggles.

Of course, we will care about our lives. Of course, we will be concerned about what happens to us.

 

That’s not what Paul is talking about here. That’s not what Paul is telling us as believers not to do. He’s not telling them not to have feelings or not to have concerns. He’s telling them what to do with their feelings and what to do with their concerns.

 

There are some important biblical principles about our feelings that I think would be valuable for us to go over right now. I think many of us are confused about what to do with our feelings. They’re such an important part of who we are, but often they can lead us astray.

 

Here are some of the things that the Scriptures teach about feelings.

 

First, feelings are okay. In fact, they’re not just okay, they’re a gift from God. They’re part of how God made us: to have our feelings. Our feelings are important. They can inform us of what’s going on on the inside of us and help us be aware of our interior.

 

Paul isn’t telling us that we can only have positive feelings. This isn’t a Pollyanna passage. When you think about it, God gave us a prayer book—the book of the Psalms where He gave us words that we could use to bring back to Him in all circumstances of our lives. And you notice half of the Psalms are laments—crying out to God, “Where are you? I feel lost. I feel forgotten. I’m ticked at this person.” And the language that God gives us for our prayers is honest, healing language and there isn’t a feeling that God says is off limits for us to bring to Him.

 

But the Scriptures teach us that we need to be careful about where our feelings take us. Our feelings can’t be counted on to tell us what is true. And not everything our feelings tell us to do is, in fact, the right thing to do.

 

And think about it. Ephesians Chapter 4:

Be angry [permission to feel what you feel. We can’t control what rises up in us], but do not sin [don’t let your anger take you into sin].

 

 

I Thessalonians Chapter 4:

Grieve [we can have those feelings], but do not grieve with the despair of those who have no hope [that’s not our situation as followers of Christ. Don’t let your grief take you to despair. Don’t let it lead you astray].

 

So, he’s not telling us not to feel something. We can’t decide what we will feel, but we can decide what we will do with what we feel. And I think the Scriptures teach us through these passages that an important part of what we are called to do with our feelings is to learn to mistrust them—to value them but not to trust them to tell us what is true or to tell us what we should do.

 

When Paul is saying here, “Don’t be anxious about anything;” he isn’t saying, “Don’t have feelings.” He’s saying, “Don’t become unduly concerned about something. Don’t let your concern for something begin to trap you and begin to control you. Don’t become preoccupied by it; don’t let it grip you and control you and burden you, and don’t let it lead you to believe that it’s all up to you to do something about it.”

 

In fact, we can accomplish ridiculously little by our worrying and through our efforts.

 

When you are harassed by care, when your concern is turning into worry, when you begin to give in to that feeling that you are all alone and that’s it’s all up to you and that this is a burden that somehow you and you alone are shouldering, when you’re spiraling down into a pile of anxious self-concern just like someone who does not have God in his or her life, that’s what Paul says we should not be doing. Instead, we should remember The Lord is near: that we’re not alone in facing this and not only are we not alone, but God intends that He would carry the burden for us. He cares for us. He is close to us.

 

This passage is structured around two interesting pairs of phrases, this 4 to 7. And here we encounter the first of these.

 

The first pair of phrases that shapes this passage is the expression “in nothing” that starts verse 6 and then “in everything” which comes a little bit later. This passage literally says, “In nothing be burdened by your concerns. In everything share your prayers and petitions with God.” In nothing fret, in everything pray. In nothing be anxious. In everything be asking—pray.

 

This is a picture of an exchange that Paul invites us to engage in: not to deny our feelings, but to exchange our feelings—our worried sighs and our endless fretting which we’re told in Matthew Chapter 6 verses 33-34 accomplish nothing—to exchange those sighs and that fretting for trusting prayer and petition which we’re told in James Chapter 5 accomplishes much.

 

Paul says, “Pray.” When you’re in a difficult situation, turn to the God who is near and do so with thanksgiving.

 

Well now what can we be thankful for in the midst of a difficult situation?

 

Well, the Scriptures suggest that one thing to be thankful for is the fact of our existence—our creation and the creation that we enjoy. We can be thankful to God for that anytime, in any circumstance. We can also thank God for our salvation—for the amazing gift of Jesus’ death on the cross in our place that we might be right with him. We can thank God for that anytime. But I think that what Paul intends that we would be thankful for—I think he’s hinting back to where he started: Chapter 4 the end of verse 5. The Lord is near. Be thankful. You have reason for gratitude no matter what your situation is because God is with you.

 

He says, “Knowing that, then present your requests to God.”

 

There is a different word from this word that suggests a request made in a relationship of equality like one king making a request of another, or a familiarity like one friend making a request of another. This verb that’s used here is a word that is instead used as an inferior humbly making a request of a superior: a child making a request of a parent, or a subject a ruler, or a beggar asking for something from a wealthy man.

 

So in a posture of humility, Paul says, “Let your requests be made known.” That’s literally what the Greek says. Not “present your requests,” but “let your requests be made known.”

 

Now that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t know what your concerns are. In that same passage that this hints at, Matthew Chapter 6, that I think Paul is alluding back to here and sort of serves as a backdrop, he says, “God knows what you need even before you ask it.” Instead this “making known your requests” means spreading them out before God confident that they matter to God. It means casting your anxieties upon Him.

 

I Peter Chapter 5 verse 7:

Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.

 

It’s the confidence we have in pushing it all out in front of God and saying, “Here it is. Help!”

 

And literally—it’s interesting—the construction of this passage says not to present your requests “to God” or make your requests known “to God,” but it says “make your requests known in the presence of God.” I love how all over again this reinforces the idea that God is near: He’s right there! You don’t have to go chasing after Him to try to find Him. You don’t have to invoke His presence and conjure Him up somehow. You don’t have to try hard to be a good person to get God to notice you. You don’t have to do it right. The Lord is right there! So, open up your heart to Him.

Now interestingly when you think about this—I love how God does this—laying our requests before God means that we have to let go of our concerns and we have to let go of our control on them and we have to let go of our picture of how it’s all going to unfold in order that we might lay hold of God.

 

And that brings about the very sort of open-handedness that God intends that we would bring to Him that fosters that humility as we come with our needs. We don’t come demanding saying, “It’s got to look like this!” We come before God as the one who is the source of love and all power and say, “Won’t you please, Gracious God, step in?”

 

God doesn’t guarantee that He will meet our specific requests in just the way we might want Him to, but He knows exactly what we need—before we know it, better than we know it—and He has already set about meeting that need.

 

Now I think it’s important that we understand that this is not at all formulaic; this is not confidence in prayer as a device. Prayer is not a crowbar that we apply against God to move Him to respond to us. Prayer, in this context, is not so much a discipline as it is simply a conversation between a lover and the beloved. Prayer is an expression of trust—confidence in God. It is actually entrusting our lives to God. When life gets hard, Paul says, “Remember you are not alone. Trust Him—what He is doing, and trust yourself to Him that He holds you, that He cares for you, that you matter, that He is at work.”

 

That leads to the second pair of phrases that I think sort of shapes this passage.

 

We come to sort of an odd and unexpected part of this passage now. Paul says, “Let your requests be made known in the presence of God.” And now let me back us up to Chapter 4 verse 5. It says:

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

 

Well, what does that have to do with anything? Doesn’t it seem like that just sort of toppled over into the middle of a passage where Paul’s talking about something else? It seems so out of the blue: here, all of a sudden, is this summons to a winsome life.

 

The word generosity (how is it translated in the NIV?—your gentleness), the word “gentleness” has been translated “graciousness,” “amiability,” “kindness,” “forbearance,” “consideration,” “generosity of spirit.” And he says that that is what’s to be communicated to all—not just towards those who share your belief or to those who are kind to you or show love to you or treat you the way you wish to be deserved. Respond that way to everyone.

 

Now here’s the intriguing part; let me see if you can see how these pieces fit together.

 

This particular word refers to someone who is a superior bending over to or condescending to someone who is an inferior. Remember we saw just earlier in our making our requests to God we come as an inferior before a superior.

And he is saying that the typical way that a superior will approach an inferior is to insist upon justice, to demand that things go a certain way, to require payment for wrong-doing. And this is something that says, “No. Do just the opposite of that. Don’t be a letter-of-the-law person. Draw back from that. This is the opposite of pure justice. This is the heart of clemency meaning in this case, I think, that this is talking about someone who feels he is in the right—the superior—treating with grace someone he feels is in the wrong—the inferior.

 

So here’s how I think all of these pieces fit together. The root of this word is the idea of yielding, of giving in, instead of pushing forward and demanding and insisting. The idea is that Paul is calling us to withhold from holding someone else responsible for the circumstances of our lives. Do you see that? Instead of our being like the servant in Matthew 18 who’s forgiven by God and then turns around and grabs another servant by the throat and says, “Pay up!”—instead it’s saying, “No, don’t approach the people that God has placed around you as though your life is their responsibility, as though your happiness or your peace or your contentment or things going the right way is all up to them. Don’t go lay hold of them and throttle them and insist that they pay or they make it happen. Keep from insisting that someone else who is in the wrong would fix it or pay for it.”

 

Paul says, “Just as I challenge you not to look to yourself to make life right for you, don’t be anxious about anything: don’t carry that burden. So I am saying don’t look to the people around you to make life right for you. Instead, be gracious.”

 

He says, “Let your requests be made know to God in humility and let your graciousness be known to others in humility.” Isn’t that cool?

 

Chapter 4 verse 7. Now here’s where we come to the second outworking. If we are confident that the Lord is really near—and the first way that’s going to show up in a practical way in our lives is with a graciousness that is not defined by how a person is treating us because we’re not looking to those people in an act of idolatry as the source of life or hope for us. The second place it will show up is in a peace that begins to pervade our interior. Paul says, “Bring your requests to God and the peace of Christ, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

 

Here is the second promised outcome: His peace powerfully at work in your thoughts and in your feelings. Now I think that Paul is describing here in part a feeling of calm—of quiet; but I think there’s something else that he’s getting at here even behind that feeling. I think he’s talking about an easing off of the tight grip that we hold on life on the inside. I think he’s talking about our ceasing striving, our beginning to release control into the hands of God. So this is not so much a feeling of calm as it is a posture of relinquishment, of trusting, of letting go, of ceasing that striving. It’s a stillness that comes in. It’s the same confidence that Moses expressed in Exodus 14:14 knowing: The Lord himself will fight for you. You need only to be still.

 

Zephaniah Chapter 3 verse 17 says: He will quiet you with His love.

 

So this peace is not a peace that comes and goes with circumstances, or comes and goes with our sense of having things in control, or our getting what we want from other people. It is grounded in confidence in a person who is near, who is present always.

 

Jesus says in John Chapter 14: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Trust in me.

 

Last night when I tucked the girls in, I sang to them as I do every night when I tuck them in. And the last line of the last song that I sing to them has these words:

All is well.

Safely rest.

God is nigh. (The word nigh means near)

 

God is near. He is near you in love and compassion and power. He is near you in care and delight. So, all is well regardless of the circumstances and you can safely rest.

 

It says that this peace will guard our hearts and minds. The picture is of a Roman garrison that’s stationed in the town, but here’s something interesting that I want you to notice. This word when it’s used—guard is a different word from protect; this is a word that’s used most often to describe a prison guard trying to keep a prisoner in his jail cell. So this is not so much a picture of trying to protect our hearts and minds from what will come in from outside—difficult things will happen to us. Instead this is God saying He will secure—when we keep looking to Him—He will secure what He is producing in us on the inside. He will keep it there—that peace, that joy, that graciousness—graciousness in our dealings with others and peace in our approach to the world and joy in our approach to life.

 

And then we come to the beginning of the passage which I think is the final outworking of the central truth of this passage. Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: rejoice!” This reiterates the same thing in Chapter 3 verse 1 which reiterates the same thing in Chapter 2 verses 17 and 18. Paul is calling the people of God to joy, to joyfully embrace things: all of life. This is not a superficial cheerfulness that Paul calls the people of God to. This doesn’t mean ignoring difficult circumstances or acting as though our difficult circumstances are, in fact, easy—none of which would be honest or true.

 

There is actually another word in Greek for the feeling of joy. This isn’t so much feeling joyful all the time. What the Scriptures teach, in fact, is that you can feel a lot of different things alongside joy. You can feel sadness and be joyful. You can feel concern and be joyful. You can feel frustration and be joyful. You can feel happiness and be joyful—all at the same time.

 

Instead, this joy that we are invited into is not so much a feeling of happiness as it is this. This is the definition I arrived at a number of years ago and I found that as I’ve lived with it and it really seems to work well with what the Scriptures are calling us to: a settled confidence in the goodness of God no matter what. Joy is a settled confidence in the goodness of God no matter what.

 

The Lord is near. He loves you. His power is available to you: a settled confidence in the goodness of God no matter what.

 

So it’s not tied to circumstances. Think of Paul’s circumstances. He’s in prison. He could lose his life at any time. Think of the Philippians’ circumstances. They are discouraged by their faith. They’re frustrated by their relationships. They’re suffering persecution. But Paul says, “Rejoice all the time!” He’s not saying, “Be chipper.” He’s saying, “Have a settled confidence in the goodness of God now and in the next set of circumstances you face and in the next one and in the next one.”

 

Karl Barth said, “In Philippians, ‘rejoice’ is a continuous, defiant ‘nevertheless.’”

Our circumstances tell us we are sinking. Our feelings tell us that we are burdened and it’s all up to us. “Rejoice,” we can say together as the people of God, “nevertheless.” The Lord is near. And He is. He’s involved. I can trust Him. I can shed this burden off of me and onto Him. I don’t need to insist that this burden be met by someone else. I can take it off of them and put it onto Him.

 

When we are confident that the Lord is near, a graciousness will characterize our approach to others, peace will characterize our approach to our difficulties, and joy will characterize our approach to life. And think about what that means. That means that as you and I venture out of this place and out from our Christian community out into the world, the presence of joy in our lives is the most tangible expression of the reality of the central truth of this passage. When we are joyful, we are saying again and again and again, “The Lord is near. The Lord is near. The Lord is near.” Joy is one of the most important, distinguishing characteristics of the People of God, and if we don’t communicate that in our approach to life then we fail faithfully to represent the hope of the presence of God in our lives as we go into this world. And that can have some interesting and sometimes detrimental results.

 

This a clip from the movie Amistad in which some prisoners from Africa are brought into a prison in New England and then as they’re in prison, a group of Christian abolitionists approach them for the first time and this is what happens:

Fala [in Mende]: Who are they do you think?
(The abolitionists kneel to pray.)
Joseph Cinque [in Mende]: Looks like they are going to be sick.
Abolitionists (singing Amazing Grace): Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound…
Fala [in Mende]: They're entertainers!
Abolitionists (still singing) ... that saved a wretch like me...
Joseph Cinque [in Mende]: But why do they look so miserable?

 

Someone once said, “If you have the joy of the Lord in your heart, kindly inform your face.”

 

Let me wrap this up.

 

At 2:32 in the morning the Lord brought to mind this passage which coincidentally I was preaching on, and as I lay there I thought about the fact that there’s really not anything I can do to control what’s about to happen. I can’t stop this. I can’t change the situation. I can’t beam myself back home. But the Lord is just as present to me here as He is in West Lafayette, and I don’t know all the people here, but He does. I don’t know where the hospital is, but He does. I don’t know what will see me through this, but He does. And at 2:33 I was back asleep.

 

And I came home still carrying one extra rock. I think you’ve heard me say before, “But this too will pass.” And it already has, actually. Thank you for your prayers.

 

I’d like to conclude this time with a short, pastoral prayer where I will be privileged to pray for you. Would you bring back to mind that burden, that concern that was on your heart as we began this passage?

 

Lord, here’s what’s true. There is a whole line-up of concerns that we

face. Some of them feel more manageable, others of them feel out of our

control. Some of them threaten to undo us, but this is what is truer still:

You are near. God of love, the God of power, You stand in our circumstances

and You order them to Your loving ends. You meet us with Your strength

and Your power and Your encouragement and Your comfort. So we will

choose not to cling to anything as though it were up to us, and we will

choose to release our grip on others as though it were up to them.

And instead with every one of these things often and often again with

hearts filled with joy that You are with us, we will come and in

humility spread before You the things that we face that You already

know full well and invite Your wondrous works, Your gracious

participation, yet again. Lord, let Your peace guard the trust that

You are forming in our hearts—a love relationship with You that You

are forming in our hearts—the love and joy and peace and patience

the fruit of which You are forming within us and let us rejoice. Let our joy

be not in our circumstances but in the Lord of heaven—in the One who

stands with us, by us, in them. The Lord is near. You’re so close to us.

Our hearts will trust in You. Our hearts will trust.