From Dust to Glory: Expecting Pain on The Journey Home

Transcript

Well, good morning, Saints. It’s a joy to once again open the Word of God with you all. If you have a Bible with you, please open it to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. And if you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be one in the seat right in front of you. And if you don’t have a Bible at home, we would love to give that to you as a gift. We as a church would love for you to have that, to read it, to study it, and to get to know the God of the Bible. Well, today we will be looking at 2 Corinthians. If you’ve been with us the past couple of months, you know that we’ve been studying 1 Corinthians as a church. We just finished up the study of that whole book. And I wanted to do

a one-off sermon on this topic. And it is the topic of suffering, suffering, and trials, and difficulties, and challenges. So why this? Am I just a glutton for punishment and difficult topics? Maybe. But I think that if you’re alive this October day, you know that life in our world is hard, and it’s painful. And there’s a lot going on that creates turmoil in our hearts. And I know from fellowshipping with all of you and from worshipping with all of you every Sunday that a lot of your lives are very, very hard. And a lot of you are processing a lot of stuff. There’s loss. There’s pain. There’s suffering. And so let’s see what the Word of God has to tell us about our suffering, about these trials that so afflict our lives. This morning’s sermon is called From Dust to Glory, Expecting Pain on the Journey Home.

From Dust to Glory

2 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning from verse 7, reads as follows.

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

— 2 Corinthians 12

(ESV)

The British poet William Ernest Henley wrote a famous poem in 1875 titled Invictus, which in Latin means unconquered. Henley struggled with illness most of his life,

battling recurring bouts of tuberculosis from a young age. And during one of his hospitalizations, after just having a leg amputated and dealing with the complications of that procedure, he wrote the following poem, which is now infamous. Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Henley would tragically and ultimately succumb to his illness in his early 50s

and die as a young man. But his poem lives on and has inspired many. These words which speak of triumph and persistence and strength are ones that really resonate with people. The poem tells the sick man, you’ve got this. The poem tells the person facing loss that you’ll be OK. The poem tells the person in the midst of uncertainty that things will ultimately work out. This poem is completely and totally the opposite of what the Apostle Paul tells us in our text today. Where Henley stresses the fact that he won’t give in, he won’t bow his head, he won’t cry, and where Henley even throws a challenge out to God in a few different portions of the poem, he was, after all, an avowed atheist. Paul, on the other hand, admits his weakness in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. He admits the fact that he’s struggling,

and he’s distressed, and he’s uneasy. He cries for help, and he admits his dependence on God. And so there we see a stark contrast between these two. What Paul says here in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 to his Corinthian audience and to us is quite frankly shocking. Saints, power made perfect in weakness. Don’t miss that, friends, in weakness. What the world says is that power is perfected out of weakness, away from weakness. It is when we overcome. It is when we get past the difficulty. It’s when we get past the pain. It’s when the unfortunate circumstance of our life and the trial and the suffering that we presently find ourselves in the midst of is finally over that we grow stronger. But that’s not what Paul says. You see, Paul seems to understand that what we need is not necessarily to get away from the trial,

but that God most likely has exactly what we need in the midst of the trial for us. Like many things in the Christian life, his biblical truth is antithetical to that which the world would have us believe. The biblical claim sounds foolish to the outsider. And why would Paul say it like this? Why is weakness a necessity? Looking at the broader context in the preceding six verses of this chapter, Paul is speaking about the foolishness of being boastful, the foolishness of elevating yourself, of elevating your experience, of drawing attention to yourself. And he’s saying this even in the context of speaking to a miraculous experience, something in which you could boast, something to which you could point that makes you more important, more spiritual, more whatever. And he’s saying in the midst of all of that, it’s foolish to seek out the approval and acceptance of men.

It’s foolish to find something to boast in. It’s foolish to point to the thing in which I find to be strong or mature or boast worthy in the world’s estimation. How he talks to the Corinthians and how he’s talking to us, really, is by getting very personal and showing that God will do whatever he needs to, however he needs to do it, to teach us our need of him and to teach us not to think too highly of ourself, not to have a false view of self. And he’ll show that this can, at times, be a very, very painful process. In Paul’s case, and in many of our cases, I know, this difficult circumstance and these trials that God sends our way forces us to wrestle with the fact, do I rely on God or do I lose my mind when things seem out of control?

The Inescapability of Trials

Looking deeper, we’ll see in our study that trials, pain, and suffering, these things are all part and parcel with the Christian life. Friend, there is no Christian life apart from trials. Friend, there is no Christian life apart from trials. It’s a great advertisement when you’re sharing the gospel, right? Jesus died for you, but this is gonna be rough. There is no Christian life free of trials. There is no Christian life that doesn’t have suffering. There is no Christian life in which the man or woman of God doesn’t take up their cross and follow after Jesus. Let’s look a little bit closer at what it means to expect pain on the journey home. Considering this weighty topic and looking at our text, I want us to look at just two truths, the first of them being the inescapability of trials and suffering, and the second one is the sufficiency of Christ’s grace.

Look with me once again at verse seven, at the inescapability of trials and suffering. So, to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Now, some of you know, and speaking with me, speaking with Katia, that this is a particularly personal topic for our family. This is something that we’ve processed a lot. This is something that we’ve thought of a lot. Everything from years of illness in my life, years of illness in my wife’s life, to losing friends, to attending many more funerals than we would like to have attended, to us being unable to have children for many years, various trials in our lives, spiritual turmoil, anxiety, depression, work problems, and so on and so forth. This topic is very near and dear to our hearts.

And you see, it’s really easy to zero in on any one of those things and to ask, why, God? You said that having children is a good thing. You said that rejoicing in this and this and this gift is a good thing. Why would you take these things away? Why would you keep these things from us? But beyond our family, I know from speaking with many of you and from doing life with you, that this is a pressing topic for your families as well. I know about the many people in our church who struggle with chronic illness. I know about the many people who’ve lost someone, very near, very dear. I know about the many people who have to watch their children suffer with illness. I know the many sleepless nights due to financial worries, and so on and so forth. And before I say anything else, I wanna say, beloved,

God cares for you. God is not indifferent to your suffering. God loves you, and God knows when you’re awake at night, crying and worrying, and your suffering and your trial will never be wasted. Trials, pain, difficult circumstances, you and I both know that these things abound in the world in which we live. Every single one of us lives in weakness to varying degrees, and we constantly try to find a way out of it. We experience hardships. We experience distresses. And there are seasons of life when even knowing all of the right things, even knowing all of the passages that pertain to my specific circumstance, even knowing the truths that I know about the nature and the character of God, about Christian joy, about contentment, regardless of circumstance, but when you’re in the thick of it, man, it’s awful. Yeah, you can know all the right things,

and you can recite Bible passages ad nauseum, and it hurts. It’s crippling, it’s terrifying, it’s discouraging. In trials, even when understood correctly, even when understood that this is from the Lord, they’re not fun, they’re not enjoyable. It’s important to know about trials and suffering that when Paul gives us these four characteristics in verse 10, these insults, these hardships, these persecutions, these calamities, these things aren’t pointing to sinful behavior. These are things that come from outside. These aren’t necessarily punishment for something that you and I have done. Paul isn’t referring to my bad choices and my sins as the thing where Christ’s power is perfected. Now, I will say in every situation when we’re going through something, it’s probably a good idea to analyze our lives, to see what’s going on in my heart, to see how I’m processing things. I’m not saying that we should just be dismissive,

but when God sends hardships our way and when you see a brother or sister going through something difficult, our first instinct shouldn’t be, where did they sin? What happened? Because that’s not always the case. What Paul is showing us is these things all come from outside, and these aren’t stemming out of what he’s doing in his life. In Paul’s case, the suffering which he experienced is only known as a thorn in the flesh, and this thorn in the flesh is something that we Christians have come to kind of use as a phrase to describe suffering and to describe difficulty. Now, in Paul’s case, no one knows what the thorn was. The text doesn’t tell us, and this is really the only passage where he speaks about the thorn in the flesh. Many have guessed as to what it could have been, but no one knows for sure.

Some writers, some scholars say that maybe it was a physical ailment. Maybe it was something debilitating that made his life challenging, that made doing ministry and travel very difficult. Others say it was a person that was sent into his life to torment him, somebody that was sent into his life to challenge his ministry, to make him miserable, and it’s possible that when we think about what Paul’s thorn in the flesh might have been, that these different theories and these different ideas about what it could have been have something to do with the fact that virtually every single person that’s ever called themselves a Christian can relate to Paul in their own way, when they assume that his thorn might have just been similar to theirs, and this may have happened providentially as a grace of the Holy Spirit to each of us

and to every Christian who would read this letter for 2,000 years, knowing that my thorn in the flesh might just have been the thing that Paul struggled with, and maybe if Paul spoke about a hyper-specific thing being a thorn in the flesh, we wouldn’t be able to say, well, I have a thorn in the flesh, too, and so the Spirit cares for us by keeping this broad and instead of zeroing in on the very thing that was vexing Paul’s life to continuously point to Jesus. The word used for thorn obviously speaks as a very sharp object. This can also be translated as stake, a stake in the flesh. Paul is describing something that’s not fatal, not something that’s just taking him out of commission, but rather a constant, a sharp, a vexing affliction, a slow torture of sorts. It’s not killing him, but man, it’s making life difficult.

The word being used here is very accurate. Doesn’t a thorn in the flesh, something kind of stuck in your skin make you sort of wince with pain? It tightens you up, it’s uncomfortable, it’s tense, and doesn’t the constant pain and discomfort feel so much more challenging in a way than something that kind of just knocks you out? Like, we know that with a thorn in the flesh, with the discomfort, I can keep moving forward, I can continue, but man, it’s just this constant hurt. Thomas actually encouraged me once when talking to me and said, brother, we walk with a limp sometimes through certain seasons of life. It’s this thing that hurts just bad enough that we constantly know it’s there. And so it seems that the word weakness is really quite perfect to describe this. Because if we had the strength or the power to do so,

every single one of us would just pull it out. You get rid of it, you change it. You fix the illness, you get the right medicine, you get the job that pays more money, you fix the circumstance, you change things around, and the affliction is gone. We wanna be in control, we wanna be able to handle these things. I didn’t blow it, I’m in charge. I’m not weak, but in God’s providence, it’s precisely in the weakness, in laying down my supposed strength and giving up this false self sense of control that I can finally understand that my boasting is not in the fact that I’ve gotten rid of the challenge in my own life, and not that I’ve mastered my fate,

but it’s in Christ’s power. This can’t happen if I feel like I’m in control. Christ’s power is just far enough at bay if I’m in control, because I got this. On paper, this picture of Christianity doesn’t sound all that impressive, does it? The way in which we function, the way in which we are to be in this world looks like a human being who’s kind of depleted, who’s broken, who’s weak, who’s struggling, who’s limping through life. Scripture has a couple more things to say about this depleted, weak human being. Matthew chapter five, beginning from verse 38, Jesus says, you’ve heard it said that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,

let him take your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. And from our study in 1 Corinthians chapter four, verses 12 and 13,

and we labor, working with our hands, when revile, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

— 1 Corinthians 4

(ESV)

Not exactly the upper crust of society, the well-to-do, not very impressive at all. It really flies in the face of the notion that as a Christian, you will be healthy. You will be wealthy. You will be generally set for this life. Everything is gonna be okay. But some might think, well, surely God doesn’t want his people to suffer. This just sounds crazy.

Surely God doesn’t just want me to be in pain. God doesn’t just want me to, you know, always be hurting a little bit. This has to be coming from someone other than God. This has to be demonic. This has to be from outside of God. It can’t be God doing this. And one thing that’s very, very important for us to understand is that when an affliction comes your way, it may well be Satan sending it. And we see this. We see this in our text, that this is a messenger of Satan. But who is ultimately in control of, not only the circumstance, but also of Satan? God will use it for good. This is true for every single problem the power of darkness has ever caused you. We see this with Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

We see this in Romans 8, 28. And we know for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. We know this because Acts chapter two, verse 23, speaking of the crucifixion of Jesus, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and you killed by the hands of lawless men. We see this with Job in his suffering. We see this with Satan sifting Peter like wheat. In all these instances, evil may be meant, but God will always do good for his children. Amen? Amen. Brothers and sisters, we need to get this in our heads because when you’re in the thick of it, and when you’re stuck, and when you feel like you can’t move and you just look around and you say, when does this end? God always means it for good.

It may not feel like it in the moment. You may not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may be dark for a while. God always means it for good. So are these afflictions from God or from the devil? Possibly both. Satan wants you to suffer. God wants you to grow in holiness. Satan wants self-reliance and pride. God wants for his son to be glorified in you. Satan will throw all kinds of evil your way, but God, dear brother or sister, will never, ever abandon you. Because God is sovereign, because God is in control, we can rest assured that he will checkmate every single one of Satan’s moves. God’s blessings often come to us in the appearance of adversity. You see, we think that God is blessing us when things go the way that we want, when things go quote, unquote, right,

but God will use adversity to bless you. There is blessing in suffering unjustly for the sake of Christ. There is blessing in going through trials and pain and difficulty and challenges and adversity and honoring Jesus in the process. James 1, verses two through four, ”’

Count it all joy, my brothers, “‘when you meet trials of various kinds, “‘for you know that the testing of your faith “‘produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness “‘have its full effect, that you may be perfect “‘and complete, lacking in nothing.

— James 1

(ESV)

’” Consider Romans five, “‘Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, “‘knowing that suffering produces endurance, “‘and endurance produces character, “‘and character produces hope, “‘and hope does not put us to shame, “‘because God’s love has been poured “‘into our hearts through the Holy Spirit “‘who has been given to us.’” Consider first Peter two, “‘For this is a gracious thing, “‘when mindful of God, one endures sorrows

“‘while suffering unjustly.’” Friends, I don’t mean to just bombard you with scripture over and over, but I want us to understand this in a very serious way. This isn’t a one-off where Paul is just this weird guy who has a weird understanding of why we suffer and how we suffer. This is all throughout the Bible. God uses sufferings to purify his people. God uses trials to make Jesus known in our lives. God takes things away so that we might run to him. This is a painful process. I’m not making light of it, but this is the way that the Christian life works. Self-reliance will kill you. Clinging to God will keep you alive.

This theme is present all throughout scripture. As difficult as it is, we must learn to go through life in such a way as to see suffering as a gift from God. Yes, a gift from God, one that shapes us, one that molds us, one that works in our hearts and conforms our minds and our hearts to the mind of Christ. That’s what Paul is pointing to here. The word that he uses here translated as given is the same one that is constantly used in the New Testament to signify a gift being given. Something being bestowed upon someone. This is something that’s used to honor someone such as the ring being given to the prodigal son. With this in mind, Paul comes to see his thorn in the flesh as a gift from God and continues to walk with a limp. The thorn contributed to his sanctification

and he says if that’s what it takes, if the thought of embracing trials and sufferings and being okay with them seemed radical, how about the thought of learning to see them as a gift? And believe me, this is no easy process. I’m somewhere over here in the beginning of that process of learning to see my trials and my suffering as a gift. But the trials that God allows into your life and possibly sends your way are blessings precisely because they draw you closer to Christ. And in being closer to Christ, you get to experience his grace in a way that you otherwise would not have. And you, Christian, you can attest to this, I’m sure. In those moments when it seems like everything’s being taken away from you, those times in prayer and those times in fellowship with the Lord and the vulnerability with which

The Sufficiency of Grace

we talk to brothers and sisters, it’s different. The ego is stripped away. And in seeing Jesus as sufficient, that’s where we start to understand how good God is. This brings us to our second point, the sufficiency of Christ’s grace. Let’s reread verses eight through 10 as we look at this point.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

— 2 Corinthians 12

(ESV)

When Paul asks for this affliction to be removed, God simply says, no, that’s not my plan for you.

He tells Paul that he will make him a showcase of his power. Why is that? How come this is how it went for Paul? What does this tell us more broadly about trials and asking for them to be removed or for the circumstance to be changed, asking for the Lord to intervene and change things? Paul pleaded. He says, I pled with the Lord. He begged for the thorn to leave him. I think it’s significant that Paul pleaded with God three times, just like Jesus pleaded for the cup to pass him by three times when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Please, Lord, I can’t, I’m done, please. The cup didn’t pass from Jesus and the thorn didn’t depart from Paul. Paul received a very specific answer from the Lord. He’s told that Christ’s power reaches its perfection in weakness. We need to be wise in discerning God’s answers.

No doesn’t mean he hasn’t heard us. No doesn’t mean he’s refused us. An answered prayer is not necessarily the one that gives us the answer that we want. If we ask the Lord for something and we get something else, that doesn’t mean like, oh, I guess he didn’t hear me, I have to keep praying. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is wait. God sometimes says no in love in order to give us something better. So I ask you, saint, in the middle of your struggle, would you rather have the absence of the thorn or the abundance of divine grace? Would you rather have comfort and clarity about your situation or the assurance that God is doing something bigger and that he loves you?

So why do we go through these difficulties? You may be asking yourself, well, why can’t I find a job? Why am I sick? Why am I in pain? Why am I trapped in this difficult marriage? Why was my car stolen? Why can’t I have children? Why am I depressed? Why can’t I have friends? Why did I lose my child? Why does nothing seem to work out in my life? Satan wants you to suffer. That’s his purpose. But God wants to humble you. He wants to take away self-reliance and potentially your comfort. God regards humility as more important than comfort, as more important than freedom from pain. God wants to glorify Jesus in your life. God wants you to come to the point where upon hearing Jesus’ words to Paul, you can respond to your present circumstance by saying, yes, your grace is sufficient. And the difficulty with trusting God

in the midst of it is real. Each of us has a proclivity for self-reliance and when you’re feeling the pain to say, okay, well, I’m just gonna start trusting God now, it’s a challenge. I’m not meaning to say just do it. I know it’s a challenge. However, weakness in the Christian life provides a platform for God to display his strength as opposed to us displaying ours. When we trust God in our trials, we’re inviting Christ and all his power to take up residence in our lives. And likewise, when we fail to trust God in the midst of our trials, essentially what we’re doing is we push Christ away and we say, I don’t want your power. You’re an unwelcome guest. I wanna handle this on my own. I’ve got this. Our weakness is an opportunity for God’s power, for his strength to make a home in our hearts.

Suffering with Jesus, dear saint, is better than comfort without him. Is Jesus enough for you, friend? Or do you feel like you need something else? If God takes your health away, your family, your friends, is Jesus enough? Is his grace sufficient for you, for every aspect of your life, for every trial? These are questions we need to be wrestling with because when we hit an unexpected trial and we try to process all this stuff in the thick of it, it’s very difficult to think objectively. Is Jesus enough? Earlier, I read a poem from William Ernest Henley, which was really an anthem of self-reliance. A few decades after he wrote his poem, a Christian sister named Dorothea Day wrote a poem in response to his. His was titled Invictus, which means unconquered. She titled her poem Conquered, and it reads this way. Out of the light that dazzles me,

bright as the sun from pole to pole, I thank the God I know to be for Christ, the conqueror of my soul. Since his the sway of circumstance, I would not wince or cry aloud. Under the rule which men call chance, my head with joy is humbly bowed. Beyond this place of sin and tears, that life with him and his the aid, that despite the menace of the years keeps and will keep me unafraid. I have no fear, though straight the gate, he cleared from punishment the scroll. Christ is the master of my fate. Christ is the captain of my soul.

Conquered by Christ

Saints, this kind of conviction only comes as the realization of Christ’s power, and we can’t see it when we feel powerful. It sucks, I know. I know. But his grace is working in our lives when things are being taken away. And we can’t come to this point of seeing him as being in control and good and powerful and mighty if we feel like I just need to do one more thing and I’ll fix it. Rather than ask a fourth time for the removal of the thorn, Paul says that he will boast in his weakness. The pain is still there. The difficulty is still there. But now an understanding that exceeds the circumstance. Now he boasts in his weakness. What a change. Friends, if we only knew the sufficiency of God’s grace and the inexhaustible energy of Christ’s power, this is what leads us to this kind of response

to our trials. Oh, what marvelous beauty is to be found in the grace of Jesus, amen? What a comfort. What true, lasting peace. In any circumstance, to know that he is with me, to know that he is freely pouring out his grace, to know that he understands my pain, that he understands my struggle, like we read in Hebrews four, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need. I know some of you are presently going through something difficult. You’re suffering loss, pain, affliction. You feel overwhelmed, burdened, depressed. Well, God has a word for you, dear brother or sister. My grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in weakness. There’s plenty to cover you, plenty. Let me just mention, if you’re in the middle of a heavy season, lean on Jesus but also lean on his people. We seem to think that we should hide and I know that’s my response. It’s just like, this sucks. I just don’t, I don’t wanna see anybody. I don’t wanna talk to anybody. I just wanna sit in a dark room by myself. Lean on his people. Ask for prayer, ask for help. Invite people in and just, you know, ugly cry in front of people. It’s okay.

It’s okay. We need each other. Story is told of Charles Spurgeon who was a man well acquainted with trials and suffering and struggling with depression most of his life, really. Story reads, one evening he was riding home after a heavy day’s work. He felt very wearied and very depressed when suddenly as a lightning flash, the scriptures, the scripture came to mind, my grace is sufficient for thee. And Spurgeon writes the following, I reached home and looked it up in the original and at last it came to me in this way, my grace is sufficient for thee. And I said, I should think it is Lord and burst out laughing. I never fully understood what the holy laughter of Abraham was until then. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish being very thirsty was troubled about drinking the river dry.

And Father Thames said, drink away little fish, my stream is sufficient for thee. Or it seemed as a mouse in the granaries of Egypt after the seven years of plenty, fearing it might die of famine, Joseph might say, cheer up little mouse, my granaries are sufficient for thee. Again, I imagined a man swept away up yonder in a lofty mountain saying to himself, I breathe so many cubic feet of air, I fear I shall exhaust the oxygen in the atmosphere. But the earth might say, breathe away, oh man, and fill thy lungs ever, my atmosphere is sufficient for thee. Oh brethren, be great believers. Little faith will bring your souls to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your souls.

Brother, sister, Jesus’ grace is sufficient for you. May we be a church that embodies that reality. Let’s limp together. Let’s lean on Jesus. Let’s lean on each other. He is good. Amen? Amen. Would you bow your heads and pray with me? Friends, I’ll give you just a moment just to process what’s going on in your life, what God has allowed for you to go through and what he’s leading you through. And then I’ll close us in just a moment.