The Lord Our Protector

Transcript

Well, greetings. It’s such a privilege to be here with you this morning. Likewise, Hinson Baptist Church prays for Trinity Church often. In fact, this morning we met at 9 a.m. out in our parking lot once a month this summer. They’ve been meeting outside. So my guess is about 30 minutes ago or so, the guy that was preaching there this morning prayed for Trinity Church, and that’s part of our just normal habit. So it’s a privilege for me to be with you all this morning. Thomas is a good friend, a dear friend, as are many others in this congregation that I’ve had the privilege of working with and getting to know over the years. So thank you for welcoming me to your pulpit. Some of you will know that I have five kids ranging age from 25 down to 13. When I think about them, though, I still often think about them much younger as parents are

wont to do. Most of my kids, their first word, like if you’ve got kids, your kids’ first words probably something like mama or dada. But one of my kids, their very first word was not mama. Actually, none of the kids’ first word was mama. It was not dada. That was most of the kids’ first word, easier to say dada than mama. No, no. One of my kids’ first words was self, self, as in I’ll do it myself. I won’t tell you which kid that was. For any of you who have raised a child, you know, though, there’s probably not a truer expression of human nature. Though we are born the most dependent of all the creatures on the planet, we strive almost from day one towards independence. And once we achieve that independence, we guard it fiercely. We don’t like needing help, especially if we’re a Christian, but I don’t even think

you have to be a Christian. Many of us like to give help. We love to help others. We do not like needing help. My church has a benevolence fund. Maybe Trinity does as well. My members love giving to the benevolence fund. It’s one that we use to help people in times of need when they’ve fallen under some sort of financial pressure or crisis unexpectedly. Oh, people love to give to the benevolence fund. They actively resist receiving from the benevolence fund. I’m sure you’re not like that. Here’s the thing. We all need help, all of us. There’s not one of us here who is self-sufficient. I’ll give you some examples that many of you probably will have experienced. We lack knowledge. We need knowledge. So we have teachers who help us grow in the knowledge that we need. We maybe lack skills or expertise to accomplish a project.

So what do we do? We hire some help. We go out and hire a contractor to do the work for us that we don’t know how to do. We cannot control the future. So what do we do? We go out and we buy insurance. Or we hire a financial advisor who will help us plan for the future. We lack strength. And so what do we do? We call on our friends to help us move that heavy piece of furniture or accomplish some job that is just too big for us by ourselves. We all need help. And we call on, we ask for help all the time. And honestly, those kinds of help we draw on because, well, there’s no shame in needing those kinds of help. But what if the help that we need is with life itself? Where do we turn for help with the very thing that we think we should not need help for?

Where Will You Turn?

In the book of Psalms, there is a collection of psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. It’s a series of 15 psalms written by various authors at various times. But at some point in time, all of these disparate psalms were collected together for use by God’s people as they journeyed from Jerusalem, I mean, from wherever they lived in Israel to Jerusalem for one of the annual festivals. I think it’s an apt image for our own journey through life toward what we hope is the heavenly Jerusalem. Like any journey though, there are dangers, there are evils that threaten us along the way. So, here’s my question for you this morning on your journey to heaven. Where will you turn for help? Turn with me, if you would, to Psalm 121. Psalm 121. Now, I’m going to be reading and preaching from the Christian standard Bible, the CSB.

You might be reading from the ESV or another translation. Don’t let that throw you off. I’ll try to point out a few words or places if you’re not using this particular translation to help you understand where I am. Psalm 121, a song of ascents.

I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip. Your protector will not slumber. Indeed, the protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. The Lord protects you. The Lord is a shelter right by your side. The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going, both now and forever

— Psalm 121

(ESV)

. Our psalm breaks into four equal stanzas, two verses each.

They work almost like stair steps, each pushing the idea of the previous stanza forward and upward. We start with God as creator in those first two verses, and then we move upward and forward to God as our protector. And finally, on the last step, we land with God really as our blessing. That’s not the only structure that helps us organize and understand what’s going on in this particular poem. In the first stanza, verses one and two, our pilgrim asks and answers a question. And then in the next three stanzas, other speakers explain to him what his answer means. At the very center of the psalm there in verse five is the phrase, the Lord protects you, or if you’re using a different translation, maybe the Lord guards you. That word protect or guard is repeated six times in these verses. Here’s the point of Psalm 121.

Trust the Lord

The one thing that I want you to take away with you today, trust the Lord. Trust the Lord and he will protect you all the way to heaven. Trust the Lord and he will protect you all the way to heaven. Now, we’re going to look at this in two parts. First, trust the Lord, and then your protector. It’s a very, very simple outline. Trust the Lord, your protector. But I’ll warn you now, that second point, your protector, has three sub-points. Be really clear. I’ll use alliteration. You won’t get lost. I’ll let you know when we get there. All right, so first, trust the Lord. Trust the Lord, not idols. Look again at verses 1 and 2. I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Our pilgrim has left Meshach and Kedar.

We heard about that in the previous psalm as this journey towards Jerusalem begins. He’s on his way, but he’s still a long way off. Somewhere along the way, he realizes he needs help. And so we’re told he lifts his eyes toward the mountains of Israel, and he wonders, where will my help come from? Now we’re not told why he needs help. On a long journey in the Middle East, there are all sorts of reasons you might need help. You know, the blazing sun, treacherous roads, bandits along the way. There are all sorts of things that might have prompted his question and his need. I think it’s important that it’s left unspecified, because left open like that, it kind of invites us in as fellow pilgrims to make his question our question. Where will my help come from? Now, as his gaze lifts towards the mountains, what would he have seen?

Well, as Portlanders, right, we know exactly what he would have seen. Mystic beauty, awe, and grandeur. I mean, I moved here a little over 12 years ago, and it still takes my breath away. Every time Mount Hood looms into view, my kids are deeply annoyed with me. Because if they’re in the car with me, and we’re driving around, 12 years later, I’m still saying, look, kids, look. And they’re not really that little kids anymore. Mount Hood! Mount Hood! Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dad, we’ve seen it. We’ve seen it. Oh, but it’s incredible. I’ve lived in other places. I’ve lived in a lot of other places. Not many places get views like that. Maybe this is what’s going on. Maybe he looks up, and it just takes his breath away. But perhaps his gaze was not inspiring. Perhaps his gaze on those mountains was actually provoking. Maybe the mountains are prompting his question, not answering it.

Perhaps those mountains and his goal of Mount Zion for the annual festival that he’s heading to, perhaps they are still a long way off. And he’s discouraged. He’s weary. And he knows he needs help to get there. I think there are a lot of us that feel that way these days, right? These last two years have taken a lot out of us. And we find ourselves weary with the journey and wondering, how am I going to make it? I think just as likely as weariness, though, what he’s seeing when he looks at those majestic mountain peaks off in the distance, what he’s seeing is smoke curling towards the heavens. Where would that smoke have been coming from? Well, it would have been the smoke of the altars, the shrines, the high places where Israel offered their sacrifices to the local gods. When Israel came into Palestine, they were told to destroy the high places.

But they didn’t. They actually adopted the high places. When our pilgrim looked toward the mountains, yes, somewhere in there was Mount Zion and the temple of Yahweh. But he was also confronted with the evidence of all of his alternatives, all of those high places, those shrines, to the idols of the land, to Baal, to Ashtoreth, to Molech. You know, all of those idols made promises. They promised to make his crops grow. They promised to make his animals healthy. They promised to make his wife fertile. They promised to help him with life itself. If only he would sacrifice to them. If only he would participate in their worship. The pilgrim’s answer to where does his help come from is unequivocal. His help does not come from the mountains with their idols. His help doesn’t even come from the earthly Mount Zion. His help comes from beyond the mountains, from the one who made the mountains of heaven

and earth, the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. I wonder if you can relate to our pilgrim at this point. We all need help with this life. There’s no shame in that. The temptation is always to look to the mountains, right? To look to the idols that the mountains represent rather than to the Lord. Now, our idols have much easier names, more familiar names than Israel’s idols. We’ve got the idols of wealth, of success, of our own abilities, idols of sex and entertainment, the idols of other people’s estimation of us. But though we call them by more familiar and secular names, we look to them for the same reason that ancient Israel was tempted to look to the idols. We look to them because of our pride. We look to them because, honestly, we do feel shame in needing help with life. And the thing about our idols is they promise to help us without wounding our pride or

provoking our shame. When we turn to the idols of our wealth or our success, our abilities, in order to help us with this life, we’re able to say at the end of the day, we did it. It’s my wealth, my ability, my success. I did it myself. When we turn to the idols of our relationships, maybe our popularity or the esteem that people hold us in, we’re able to tell ourselves, I’m worthy. See what people think of me? I’m clearly a good person. I’m worthy of the help I’m receiving. When we turn to the idols of pleasure or entertainment or substances that numb our anxiety about this life, we can tell ourselves, my life is hard, and I deserve this. I deserve this escape. I deserve this numbing. Here’s the thing. Idols make big promises, but they never deliver. Nothing in this life can guarantee this life.

Money’s lost. Success and fame are fleeting. Pleasure is merely a distraction that quickly ends and needs to be repeated. Trusting in idols, ancient or modern, not only never gives what it promises it’s going to give, it actually leaves us feeling even more ashamed than when we started. Ashamed for our failure to achieve what they promise. This is the way idols work, right? Idols say, look, if you’ll just worship me, if you’ll give yourself to me, whether it’s wealth and success or sex and pleasure, if you’ll just give yourself to me, the idol says, I’ll make you happy, and then it doesn’t, and what does the idol say? Yeah, you didn’t try hard enough. You didn’t do it enough. You weren’t good enough. You got to do it some more. You got to try some more. See, when the idol doesn’t deliver, it’s always your fault, not the idol’s.

And so you’re left just feeling ashamed for even trying in the first place. Friends, do you know what your idols are? Do you know what you’re tempted to look to, to help you through this life when life gets hard? It’s that thing that you feel like you can’t live without. It’s that thing that when it’s threatened, you get really angry really quickly. It’s that thing that you really don’t want to talk to your spouse about. If you don’t know what your idol is, it’s going to be really difficult to turn away from it. So I would just encourage you today, reflect a little bit on what you’re tempted to turn to instead of turning to the Lord. Invite a friend into that conversation. Invite your spouse into that conversation. You know who really knows who your idols are? Your kids know what your idols are, if you’re willing to ask them.

If we are to find life in this life, if we’re to reach the blessing of heaven itself, we’re going to need help. And the good news is that there is help to be found. The psalmist tells us, my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Help comes from the creator, not from the creation. Commenting on this psalm, John Calvin observed, when people shall have long wearied themselves in hunting after remedies, now in one quarter, now in another, they will at length find for from experience that there is no assured help but in God alone. It’s only when we come to an end of ourselves that we turn to the Lord. It’s only when we come to an end of ourselves that the mountains with their false promises can no longer deceive us. It’s only when we come to an end of ourselves and recognize that our need for the help that

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Your Protector

only the Lord can give is not a cause for shame, because the maker of heaven and earth made us, and he made us to find our help in him. How exactly does God help us then on this pilgrim journey? Well, that’s what the next three stanzas answer, and it all boils down to this. When you trust the Lord instead of idols, then second, the Lord becomes your protector. He becomes your protector. Look there at verse three, he will not allow your foot to slip. Your protector will not slumber. Indeed, the protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. The Lord protects you. The Lord is a shelter right by your side. The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going both now and forever.

All of a sudden, the voice in the psalm in this poem changes. It began in the first person, right? I lift my eyes, where does my help come from? But now all of a sudden, we’re in the second person. Now, maybe the pilgrim’s talking to himself and referring to himself in the second person. He will not allow your foot to slumber, your protector. But just as likely, maybe some of his traveling companions are now speaking to him. We don’t know which it is. The psalm doesn’t tell us. But either way, we get this quick three-point sermon on how the Lord protects those who trust him. And first, we’re told that the Lord will protect you from falling. It’s the first F. The Lord protects you from falling. Look again in verse 3. He will not allow your foot to slip. Your protector will not slumber.

Indeed, the protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. Verse 3 is almost a prayer. You could translate it literally, may he not allow your foot to slip. May your protector not slumber. But then it’s quickly followed by kind of the answer and the assurance of that prayer. No, of course he’s not going to do that. The protector of Israel will never slumber or sleep. He’s like a shepherd leading his flock or a watchman on the city walls. He is constantly looking out for his people. But unlike human shepherds and watchmen who do need to sleep at night, who do need to take naps, the Lord never gets sleepy. He never needs to take a break. He never needs to take a nap. Now, I think this is intentional here because Baal was notorious for falling asleep and needing to be awakened. You can read a great example of that in 1 Kings chapter 18.

But unlike Baal, the Lord’s watchful care over us is unceasing. And that care is devoted to one thing, right? To keep our feet from slipping. You know, young people don’t need to worry about slipping and falling. That’s like an old people problem. And now that I’m 55, almost 56, I think about that sometimes, right? I think about, I really, I don’t want to slip. I don’t want to fall. I’ve got to think about how I make my way down these stairs or on this particular path. A couple of years ago, I took my family to the Grand Canyon for spring break. And it was a marvelous trip. And the morning that we were supposed to hike down to the bottom of the canyon and back up, overnight it had snowed. It was gorgeous. And you could look down into the Grand Canyon and you could see the snow line below you,

right? Where it finally got too warm and the snow had evaporated. Well, this was our day to do the hike, so off we go, right? Now my younger adult kids, I was gratified actually to watch them be careful. Like even a young person is going to be quite careful on an icy trail into the Grand Canyon with its steep drop-offs. I on the other hand waited a few hours for it to warm up a little bit, for it to be a little less treacherous. And I made it down just fine. But of course, on the way back, I’m cocky. I’m thinking, yeah, I did this. And on the very last switchback, there was still ice up there at the top. The very last switchback, I fall, totally skin my elbow, my knee. The falling that’s in view here is not the falling of a skinned knee or a skinned elbow.

No, the slip in view here is about life itself. Life is precarious like that icy trail I went down. Prosperity, health, safety, relationships, your plans, they can all come crashing down in a moment and without warning. You all know something about that here. Throughout the Old Testament, this image of slipping or falling is a metaphor, not for falling down and skinning your knee, but a metaphor for falling irretrievably under God’s judgment. Now that judgment might be temporal, the loss of prosperity, the loss of position or place. But mainly in the Old Testament, that falling is a spiritual falling, the unexpected fall into God’s judgment, the fall that sin and unbelief bring. The Lord told Moses in Deuteronomy 32, vengeance belongs to me, I will repay. In time, their foot will slip for their day of disaster is near and their doom is coming quickly. But here we’re told that for those who trust in the Lord, he promises to protect us from

slipping, from falling into and under his judgment. How does the Lord accomplish that promise? Well, by being the good shepherd who watches over his sheep. In the person of Jesus Christ, God became man. And as the good shepherd, he laid down his life for his sheep. He took our judgment that we deserved on himself, on the cross. This is the good news of the gospel, that the Lord himself became a man so that he might fall under God’s judgment, that we might not have to fall under that judgment. And if you’re not a Christian, if you’re not a believer, this is what we want you to understand about Christianity, that Jesus Christ took the fall for you if you will trust in him. We’d love to talk to you more about that. I’m sure anybody that you saw up here on the platform this morning would love to talk to

you about what would it look like to trust in Christ, to have fallen under God’s judgment on your behalf. But what we also want you to know is that the good news of the gospel doesn’t stop with his death for us. No, Jesus got up from the dead and he ascended to heaven. And now from the throne of heaven himself, he continues to be our good shepherd. He continues to lead us by his word and by his spirit into good paths. He continues to call us back to himself when we stray away. He continues to pick us up when we fall into sin. And though Jesus is fully human, he is fully divine. Our protector does not slumber or sleep, but he ever lives to intercede for us, watching over us and watching out for us. Maybe as a believer, you’re here this morning and you’re struggling with the fact that you

continue to fall into sin. Here’s what I need you to understand. The mark of a Christian is not that he or she doesn’t sin anymore. But the mark of a Christian is that though he or she may fall into sin, both grievous and severe, the Christian perseveres in faith. The Christian may find that his repentance from sin is delayed a long time. But though delayed, that repentance will finally come for the true believer. Why? Is it because of the sincerity of your faith? Is it because of the conviction that you finally fall under? Is it because finally you find in yourself the resources to turn away from that sin that you fell into and come back to the Lord? No. Though the Lord may use some of those things, no. Here’s the reason that we are confident that though a Christian fall into grievous sin,

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Sheltered Along the Way

if they are a true believer, they will ultimately repent. The conviction is that Christ protects his people. Having died for us, he will not allow us to finally or fully fall away from him. He’s watching out for you. Now we don’t want to presume upon that, but we do want to rest our faith in that. Well, not only does he protect us from falling. Second, the Lord protects us from fainting. He protects us from fainting. And how does he do that? By sheltering us along the way. Look at verses five and six. The Lord protects you. The Lord is a shelter right by your side. The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night. Verses five and six recall the kind of blazing heat and freezing nights of Israel in the wilderness or our pilgrim along his journey to Jerusalem. But just as Moses reminded the Israelites that God led them all the way through the

wilderness, providing food for them and water for them in a barren land, so the pilgrim’s friends remind him that the Lord is right by him every step of the way. I’m reminded of Psalm 91, the one who lives under the protection of the Most High, dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. He will cover you with his feathers. He will take refuge under his wings. His faithfulness will be a protective shield. I think it’s easy to think that since God is so busy running the universe and saving sinners that he doesn’t have time for the smaller problems of your daily life, the small details, the small troubles and trials that you come into. Or maybe you think that God will take care of you, yep, so long as you’re good, so long as you don’t mess up. Friends, that’s not true. God didn’t save Israel from Egypt and then tell them, good luck getting to the promised

land. I’ll meet you there if you can make it. No, he was with them every step of the way. Having saved them, he led them all the way to the promised land. He gave them the pillar of clouds, shading them by day, the pillar of fire, warmth and light by night. He sheltered them. He fed them. He protected them. And Christian, if you’re trusting in Christ, he is doing the same thing for you right now. He will keep you from being overwhelmed by the troubles and trials of this life. It doesn’t mean, this promise, that he’s a shelter right by your side, that the sun and moon will not strike you. It doesn’t mean that trials and tribulations won’t come into your life. No, the wilderness was still a very real wilderness for Israel. This journey for this pilgrim is still a hard journey. Trials and difficulties are real, but so is the shelter and protection that God gives

his people. John Calvin writes, although God’s people may be subject in common with others to the miseries of human life, yet his shadow is always at their side to shield them from thereby receiving any harm. Christian, are you abiding in the shelter that is Jesus Christ as you travel through this life? You know, he extends that shelter to us in so many different ways through different means, but not least of those means is the local church itself and the fellowship of the saints that we enjoy in the preaching of God’s word, where we’re reminded of God’s truths for us, in the celebration of the ordinances, which we’ll do later today. The gospel is made real again and again and again to us. You know, in John’s vision of those who were rescued from the great tribulation in Revelation chapter 7, John actually alludes to our psalm, Psalm 121.

He refers to those who’ve washed the robes in the blood of the lamb and were told that they will no longer hunger. They will no longer thirst. The sun will no longer strike them, nor will any scorching heat, for the lamb who is at the center of the throne will shepherd them. He will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Friends, that’s not just a promise for the future, that’s a promise for right now. Not long after my family moved to Portland, one of my children became very, very ill, disease that was not fatal, but very often lethal. It was the worst trial my family had ever been through, and there was no end in sight. And I found myself many times during that trial, kind of on the brink emotionally, you know, in terms of my faith, just wondering, how am I going to keep going?

How am I going to keep pastoring this church that doesn’t even like me right now while my family is going through this terrible trial? And the way the Lord sheltered us was primarily through that local church, Hinson Baptist Church, and Thomas can attest to this because he was there at the time, that at that particular moment wasn’t sure that they really even liked me. But the Lord used that church, faithful prayers of the saints, the encouragement and the support of the elders, the constant reminder of the gospel and the word, to carry us through that trial that brought us to the very, very brink. The Lord is with you. The Lord is a shelter at your right side, but not because of some, I don’t know, supernatural or miraculous or really, like, spectacular thing that’s going to happen. No, brothers and sisters, just look around.

Look around at the people next to you and recognize the body of Christ. Recognize the presence of the Lord to shelter you through the trials that you face. For those who trust him, the Lord protects you from falling. He protects you from fainting by sheltering you along the way. But third and finally, he protects you from failing, from failing to reach the goal. And how does he do that? How does he protect you from failing to reach the goal of heaven? He does it by keeping you from all harm, literally all evil. Look at verse 7. The Lord will protect you from all harm. He will protect your life. The Lord will protect your coming and going both now and forever. Verses 7 and 8 are the climax of this psalm. The promise is not that a believer will never experience harm in this life.

The promise is that God will protect him from the evil that is in that harm. He will preserve our life through every trial, through every trouble, through every danger. Isn’t that the great truth of the book of Revelation? As you read through the book of Revelation, what we see is that the believers go through serious tribulation, but that tribulation will not ultimately harm them. We may come into all manner of trials and troubles in this life, just like a ship at sea might come into a great storm, but just as all the water in the ocean cannot sink a ship unless it gets into the ship, so all the trials and troubles of this life cannot sink your fellowship with the Lord, for the Lord promises to keep those trials and troubles and the evil of them from getting into you. How does he do that?

He does it by filling us with himself. The last line of Psalm 121 is a reference to the blessing that Moses promised the people of Israel if they were faithful to the Lord. You see there in verse 8, the Lord will protect your coming and going both now and forever. Well, in Deuteronomy 28, here’s what Moses says to the people of Israel if they are faithful. You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. Your offspring will be blessed in your land’s produce and the offspring of your livestock, including the young of your herds and the newborn of your flocks. Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The blessing of the old covenant was that God would dwell in their midst so long as they were faithful, and because God was in their midst, they would experience all the

blessings of God. But of course, we know the story. Israel was not faithful, but Jesus, the true Israel, was faithful, and the fullness of God dwells in him. And Christian, by faith, you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, and the fullness of the Spirit of God dwells in you so fully that the evil that would do eternal harm to you simply cannot get in. The Lord protects us from evil by giving us himself, by giving us his Spirit, and filling us with him. And having given us himself, can anything then separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus? Paul asks, can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things, Paul says, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present

nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Did you catch that? Nor any other created thing. Christian, all the harms of this life, all the harms of this world are merely created things. The worst they can do is touch your mortal life. But in Christ, they cannot touch your immortal soul. A few months ago, I had to perform a funeral of a woman in my church that had become very dear to me. She and her husband had arrived at Hinson, oh, about six years earlier. And they arrived with lives that were badly broken by addiction to alcohol and other drugs, by broken marriages and fractured relationships. Their lives were a mess, and they knew it. But for some reason, really the Holy Spirit, probably some other secondary means that the

Holy Spirit used, they showed up in church one day, and they started listening. And way back in each of their backgrounds was some memories of teaching. They’d grown up in the Catholic church and had left that a long time ago. But all of a sudden now, the Lord gave them ears to hear. They found in the gospel, this husband and wife, they found in the gospel what they needed to heal their broken lives. And they put their faith in Christ. And this lovely couple, broken and battered by this world, was clearly born again. They were each born again. We had the pleasure of baptizing them and bringing them into membership. And for the last five years, they’ve just been a joy to have in our congregation. But about a year ago, the consequences of some of those earlier decisions and the brokenness of their lives, well, caught up with her.

She was diagnosed with cancer, and it moved very quickly. When she came in to talk to me about this, with tears in her eyes, she asked me, her name’s Thanna, she asked me, Michael, is the gospel true? Is it really true? And I said to her, Thanna, it is true, because you know even better than I know that though your body is broken, the Lord has already healed your soul. And she said, oh, I know that. I know that, because I’m not the same person that I was. Christian, where will your help come from? Your help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. The harms of this life may touch your body, but they cannot touch your soul. There is no shame in needing help. We were made to need help. So trust in the Lord, and he will protect you all the way to heaven.

Would you pray with me?