Alright brethren, let's go to
1 John chapter 3. My subject is assurance by the
Spirit. Assurance by the Spirit. He says in 1 John 3 verse 19,
And hereby we know that we are of the truth. and shall assure our hearts before
Him. This is something that every
believer wants. This is some that some believers
don't have as much of and dearly want. But we all want assurance. We want assurance. We want our
heart to be assured, our conscience to be assured that we are of
the truth. Do you know how Christ said we
know we are of the truth? He said, everyone that is of
the truth heareth my voice. That's how we know. We hear it
inwardly. We hear it in our conscience.
in our new man. If you look at the text, verse
19, he says, Hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall
assure our hearts before Him. And he says some other things,
but if you look at the very last phrase of verse 24, he comes
back to the original thought. And he says, And hereby we know
that He abideth in us by the Spirit which He hath given us. This is how we know we are of
the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. It's by the
Spirit which He hath given us. This is how we hear the voice
of Christ. We know we're of the truth because
we hear Christ speak in the inner man. It's because Christ has
given us the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. It's because He's
created in us a new heart. And it's because by His irresistible
grace, He makes us hear His voice. He makes us hear it affectionately,
effectually. And when you hear Christ's voice,
that's how we come to believe on Him. Look at John chapter
5, and it can hold your place in John, especially John 14.
We'll be back here, but go to John 5 for now. John chapter
5. He makes us believe on Him when
we hear His voice. John 5.24, Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that heareth my word, that's hearing His voice,
to hear His word. and believeth on him that sent
me. That's what he makes you to do.
He makes you to hear his voice and believe on him that sent
him. That person has everlasting life
and shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death to life. Passed from death to life. He
makes us hear his voice and by hearing his voice he makes us
love our brethren. That's what John told us in 1
John 3. He said, we know we've passed
from death to life because we love the brethren. Look at John
15. John chapter 15 and verse 9,
and I've said to you before that John in our epistle, he's preaching
and declaring to us what he heard Christ preach, especially right
here in chapters 14 and 15. This was before Christ was going
to the cross. And look what Christ said. I'm
showing you here that when you hear His voice, He makes you
obey His commandment to love Brethren, to love others born
of Him. To love Him and those born of
Him. He says in verse 9, As the Father hath loved me, so have
I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If you keep my commandments,
you shall abide in my love. Even as I have kept my Father's
commandments and abide in His love, these things have I spoken
unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might
be full. He says, Hereby we know we are
of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. When we
hear his voice, we know our conscience knows we're of the truth and
our joy is full. We have his joy in our heart. When he said, look down there
at verse John 1512, this is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. And he
says, you are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. If you lay down your life for
me, it won't be the cause that you're my friend, it's going
to manifest you are my friend. You're going to lay down your
life for me because I laid down my life for you when you didn't
consider me a friend. But we lay down our life when
we hear His voice and we do this in love to Christ and in love
to our brethren. He said, whosoever shall lose
his life for my sake and the Gospels shall save it. And this
is His command. That's what we hear. This is
what we're brought to obey when we hear the voice of Christ.
He says, back in 1 John 3, 23, what commandments is He talking
about? It's this one commandment made up of these two parts. And
really there, when you see how vitally connected faith and love
are, we're going to, as we go through this epistle, we're going
to see it is really just one commandment. He says this is
His commandment that we should believe on the name of His Son
Jesus Christ and love one another as He gave us commandment. His voice makes us lay down our
lives for His sake and for the Gospel's sake by doing what? How do we lay down our lives
for His sake and the Gospel's sake? First by believing on Christ,
by trusting Christ. By casting all our care on Him,
trusting He alone is our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption. We're looking nowhere else but
to Him. And this we do in love toward
Him. And doing this is love for our brethren. To lay down your
life for Christ's sake, We saw this last time, but I want you
to remember this. We believe on Christ, and we
love our brethren when we turn from our will and our works and
all our form of inconfidence, and we confess Christ publicly,
and we unite with His people under the gospel. That's believing
on Christ and loving brethren. It's loving Him and our brethren.
We believe on Christ and we love our brethren when we cease trying
to save ourselves by our works and we trust Christ alone. And
we begin to tell other needy sinners about Christ who is alone
the salvation of his people. You know, this word about loving
brethren, it's to God's elect. It's to those that are born of
his spirit. That's who the brethren are.
Those who delight in Christ, delight in his gospel, just like
you delight in Christ and follow him and his gospel. But we don't
know who they are. This makes us willing to send
this gospel forth to anybody and declare it to anybody that'll
listen because we're in search of our brethren, our lost brethren.
We want to see them brought to a knowledge of the truth. And
so we believe on Christ and we love one another when we stop
trying to save ourselves from being persecuted because of Christ
and because of His gospel. We're willing now to declare
the truth of Christ and to support His gospel and to preach it ourselves
and promote it in all parts of this world. We want sinners to
hear the Word. Remember what we saw in John
8 where Christ said, I believe it was John 8, when He said,
If you were of God the Father, you would love Me. And everybody
who's born of God the Father, they love Christ. He's the chief
elder brother who we love preeminently above all. We don't boast in
it. We don't look to our love. We
have no confidence in our faith or our love because we see true
perfect faithfulness when we look to Christ and we see perfect
love when we look to Christ. But we do have faith and we do
have love because we've heard Christ's voice speak to us. And here's how we perceive the
love of Christ. Go back to 1 John 3 verse 16. Hereby perceive we the love of
God because He laid down His life for us. He laid down His
life. God came down from heaven's glory
and took the likeness of sinful flesh. made himself of no reputation,
took upon him the form of a servant, and he served God under the law
as a man for his people. He laid down his life from his
birth to his death on the cross. He was laying down his life for
his people. Rejected of men, despised of
men. Why did he do that? Because he
loved his people. Why did he go to the cross and willingly
the spotless Lamb of God present Himself to be made sin for us. Why did He do that? Because He
loved His people and He loved God the Father. We read there
where He said, You keep my commandments as I've kept my Father's commandments. We don't have to keep the commandments
that Christ kept for us. We can't keep the commandments
He kept for us. That's why He came. To fulfill
all the righteousness of the law that we broke. and to put
away that old covenant and bring in the new everlasting covenant
of grace. And that's what He did. He bore
the fierce wrath of God. The curse. He was made a curse
for us because He loved His people. He would rather bear our sins
so that He could bear our curse so that you and I won't have
to bear that curse. He paid the wages of sin which
is death so that we won't have to pay the wages of sin which
is death. That's where we perceive the
love of God toward us. And He didn't just say it, He
did it. He didn't just enter into a covenant,
He fulfilled that covenant with His actions by laying down His
life even on the cursed cross. And so He tells you and me brethren,
we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. And that's
what believers do because we hear His voice. The fruit of
the Spirit that accompanies faith in Christ is love for Christ
and it's love for brethren. And we love those born of the
same Spirit. He said, 1 John 3.11, I want
you to identify them. I want you to see how this message
John is declaring is the same message you heard Christ declare.
Listen to this. He said, this is the message
or the commandment that you heard from the beginning that we should
love one another. Not as Cain who was of that wicked
one and slew his brother and wherefore slew he him because
his own works were evil and his brother's righteous. That's hatred
right there. To see somebody else that's righteous
and your works be wicked and you hate them. This is why folks
don't want to hear the gospel and they don't want to hear the
gospel you delight in and they don't want to believe it because
they hear that you're righteous and they're wicked. And so they
don't want you being righteous either. This is the hatred of
the natural heart. If I'm not righteous by what
I've done, I don't want you being righteous by what another did.
That's the heart, the natural heart. And look at this. And he said, Marvel not, my brethren,
if the world hates you. We know that we've passed from
death to life because we love the brethren. He said, This is
the message we've heard from the beginning that we should
love one another. He said, Marvel not, my brethren, if the world
hates you. We know we've passed from death to life because we
love the brethren. Go to John 15 and look at this.
Where did he get that? I just read this, I want to read
it again. Verse 12. This is my commandment, that
you love one another as I've loved you. John said this is
the commandment we heard from the beginning, that we should
love one another. He got it from Christ. This is my commandment,
that you love one another as I've loved you. Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John said, here's how we perceive
the love of Christ. He laid down his life for us,
the love of God. And look at verse 17. These things
I command you that you love one another. If the world hates you,
you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of
the world, the world would love his own. But because you're not
of the world, but I've chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you. And so John said marvel not if
the world hates you. Marvel not. The world's been
hating Christ and his people since Cain. So don't marvel if
the world hates you. He said if you were of the world,
the world would love his own. You and I once were of the world.
And the world loved us and we loved the world. And we hated
Christ. We hated Christ and we hated
his people. He said he that loves not his
brother abides in death. He's a murderer. And you know
no murderer has life. That was us by nature. That word
is a soul killer. We hated God, we hated Christ,
we hated His people, we hated His gospel, we hated everything
about Him. We were murderers, that's all we were. And when
we were in that state, the world loved us and we loved the world. So who made the difference? Why
does the world not now hate you? Why does the world hate you?
Christ said, because you're not of the world. But I've chosen
you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Look back
at 1 John 3 verse 1. Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the
sons of God. Therefore the world knows us
not, because it knew him not. Christ said, you're my friends
if you do whatever I command you. And this is my commandment,
that you love one another as I've loved you. And we love Him
because He first loved us. He was a friend to us and that's
what brings us to love Him and lay down our life for Him. Not
in any way like He did for us. This is something I think that
causes a lot of folks to have a problem with love of brethren
and us talking about love of brethren. I'm talking about true
believers because we're not talking about the quality or quantity
of our faith or our love. We don't have any love in comparison
to Christ's love for us. that we do love now, and this
is something to remember. This is not lust, which a lot
of people call love, which is that usually what you have when
you first start dating somebody and you think you just head over
heels in love with them. It's not the Greek word philio,
which is a deep love for family. It's not that. This is what the
scripture calls agape, which is spiritual, God-given love
that you don't have unless you're born of the Spirit of God. It's
a love that makes you... whereby He's given you a new
heart and He's caused you now to lay down your will and your
works and your worth because you behold Christ and want Him
to have all the glory and you want your brethren to look to
Him and not to you. And you want everybody that will
hear you to look to Him and not to you. This is a love that only
God gives. It's a love we can't produce.
You go over there to 1 Corinthians 15 where He describes charity. That's the word. That's it. And
He shows you what it is. And He says you can have faith
so that you can remove mountains and not have love. You're nothing. And he said, if I gave my body
to be burned and all my goods to the poor and didn't have love,
that tells us you can do all of that and still not have this
love. See what I'm saying? And that
tells us also that this love is not in just doing that, those
things. This love has to do with bowing
to Christ, professing Him to be the Lord and Savior of you
and of all His people, declaring the truth, confessing the truth
of the gospel, and bowing to the truth of the gospel. That's
what this love has to do with. And whatever else you do for
brethren, whatever else we do for brethren, it's to take off
the burden off of them and to take the distractions off of
them so that they can get back to focusing on Christ too. This
is why when a brother's fallen into sin, this is why Paul said
if you go back to the law and try to use the law to correct
him, you're going to bite and devour one another and you're
going to consume one another. All the laws are filled in this.
love one another. So what does love do? Love bears
the burden of our brethren and tries to restore him in the spirit
of meekness, pointing him to Christ, trying to remove whatever
obstacles in the way and whatever's distracted so he can focus on
the message that's being preached and he can focus on the word
and he can He could be turned back to Christ and you haven't
tried to do anything else to Him. You just want Him to hear
the Word by which God saves His people and corrects His people. And so John tells us now, Hereby
we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before
Him. Our assurance, this is what I
want you to see, our assurance is by Christ's voice. speaking
into the inner man that He's created, keeping us looking only
to Him, keeping us loving one another for His sake, for the
Gospel's sake, keeping our hearts assured that we are of the truth. We don't look to our faith, we
don't look to our love. Hereby we know we're of the truth.
Christ said, He that's of the truth hears my voice. He hears my voice. Now, I want
to move forward now. Let's see what we hear and how
this voice is our assurance. I just have three points. I'll
be very brief. First of all, we know and are
assured we're of the truth because God is greater than our hearts. He's greater than our conscience.
Look here in verse 20, 1 John 3, 20. If our heart condemn us,
God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Now some
people take this passage and they use it to really scare people. And there is an element of truth
to this that if a man's heart condemns him and he's not He
goes on with this condemning heart and he just tries to silence
it and he just ignores it and he goes on in life to the end
that way, then what they say is if you think your heart's
condemned you, God's greater than your heart. You're going
to stand before Him and He knows all things. He knows things you
don't even know. So don't think you can escape
that condemning conscience. God knows everything. And that's
true. But John is speaking to believers
here that he is desiring will be assured and have assurance. And the if here, when you talk
about a believer, the if could be translated when. Because when
we hear these things about believing on Christ and loving our brethren
and in deed and in truth. Often we are condemned in our
conscience. We hear about loving brethren in deed and truth and
we think, I don't think I've done that. And all of us, all
of us feel that way. When you compare Christ, how
He laid down His life for us and He says, now we ought to
lay down our lives for one another this way and you think, I've
never done that. I don't care who you are. If
you're the most benevolent, loving brother there is, who's made
your brethren look at you and think he's given everything,
I guarantee you that brother still feels in his heart, I've
never given anything like Christ has given for me. And if or when
we're condemned in our conscience, brethren, at this, by this, hereby
know we are of the truth. How? How? Because our conscience condemns
us. That's how. Because our conscience
condemns us. If our heart condemns us, God
is greater than our heart and knows all things. By the very
fact that our conscience condemns us, we know we are of the truth. Because you wouldn't care if
you weren't of the truth. If you weren't of the truth,
and I'm talking about I'm talking about one who is eventually turned
to Christ and he's comforted by Christ. You wouldn't have
that condemning conscience if you weren't hearing Christ's
voice and needed to hear it. A lot of times we hear the gospel
and I've said this to you before, we're bad about this. I am, you
are. You know, if it's a blessing
to us, the Lord did it. But if it's If our conscience
is condemned, oh, the preacher is meddling. The preacher is
preaching to me. I am preaching to you. I am always
preaching to you. Just know that. Yes, I am. Is it true? Is it according to
God's Word? If we're His and Spirit of God
is in us, Christ is speaking to us and He's the one that's
condemning us in our conscience. And if our heart's condemning
us, it's God our Father who loves His child and who is chastening
His child. If I'm His, that's the chastening,
correcting of the Lord God my Father. Whom the Lord loveth,
He chasteneth. That means he doesn't love everybody,
he doesn't chase everybody. There is such a thing as just
a guilty conscience. You can have, we see it in script,
men would have a guilty conscience, but no further than having a
guilty conscience. But if we're his, he's going
to prick us in our conscience and he's going to do something.
He's going to have an end. And that's him doing that. Look
at John 15. I said we'd go back and forth.
John 15 and look at verse 1. Christ said, I'm the true vine,
my father's the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth
not fruit he taketh away. That doesn't mean that there's
some in his people that are not truly his. If there's some taken
away, they're not his. to begin with. They weren't vitally
in communion with the vine to begin with. But here's what he
does with those who are. Every branch that beareth fruit,
he purgeth it. that it may bring forth more
fruit. Have you ever seen a good gardener who is working on the
plants and purging a plant and doing things to a plant to make
it bear more fruit? It looked like it would kill
that plant sometimes, the things you have to do to a plant. It
looks like it would really, really hurt the plant, but it's the
best thing you can do for it. And a lot of times, our Heavenly
Father, He always knows what His people need. And when we
start looking, we hear these things, and we start looking
to our faith, or we start looking to our love, or to ourselves
in some way, or anything else that takes us off of Christ,
when we start looking to somewhere besides Christ, He's able to
speak into your conscience and bring you to see that you've
fallen short. You're not obeying the Lord Jesus
Christ and He'll turn you back to Christ. And it's very painful
sometimes when He does it. But what a blessing it is that
He would do that to us and condemn us in our conscience and turn
us back to Christ so that we can't fall away. Isn't that a
blessing? That's a blessing. And hereby
we know that we're of the truth. and shall assure our hearts before
him, for if our heart condemn us, or when our heart condemn
us, just know, God's greater than our heart. He knows all
things. He knows them that are His, and
He's going to correct them that are His, and He's going to keep
His people. Now here's another thing, another way He assures
our hearts is by purging our conscience. Purging our conscience,
clearing our conscience. He says in verse 21, Beloved,
if our heart condemn us not, Then have we confidence toward
God. Now notice that, if He does purge
our conscience, our confidence is not toward us. That's what
He purges our conscience from, dead works, so that our confidence
is toward God. It's in God alone. Look, and
whatsoever we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments
and we do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this
is His commandment that we should believe on the name of His Son
Jesus Christ and love one another as He gave us commandment. If
we hear these things concerning faith in Christ and love to our
brethren and our heart condemns us not, we have peace in our
heart, we're comforted, so that all our confidence is in God.
When I hear these things, what's been comforting my heart in hearing
these things is I didn't believe before and there's no way I could
make myself believe. And I didn't love my brethren
or Christ or this gospel before. And so knowing I do, it's only
of Him that I do it. And that's a great comfort to
me because it was not there before. It has to be of God I couldn't
produce it. I couldn't produce faith and
love. So you're comforted and it's because you're in communion
with Christ. You're in union, a co-union with
Christ. Communion is a co-union. Look
down there. He says in verse 24, He that
keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him. That's
communion. When you dwell in Christ and
Christ dwells in you. It's a co-munion. A common union
there. Look back at John 15. What's
he saying here when he says we keep his commandments? We do
it by believing on him, by loving our brethren, and it's by Christ
that we do it. And it's because we're in Christ
and we abide in Him. It's communion. Look here, John
15, 3. Now you're clean through the word which I've spoken to
you. You're clean. You have a clear conscience now.
Your conscience has been purged. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can you except
you abide in me. I'm the vine, you're the branches.
He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth
much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. So he says here,
he says back in our text, he says, If our heart condemns us not,
then we have confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we
receive of Him because we keep His commandments. By pure conscience,
by purged conscience, we have boldness at His throne of grace. We have boldness to approach
of Him. You know your children. If your children have done something
wrong and they are pricked in their conscience and they know
they disobeyed you, they don't have boldness coming and talking
to you. Especially if you're questioning them about what's
happening. They don't have boldness coming and talking to you. They
don't feel confident to come and ask you anything because
they want to avoid you. But when we're the believer,
when your conscience is purged, you have boldness to come to
the throne of God. He said in Hebrews 10.8, where
remission of our sins is, there's no more offering for sins. And
when He's purged our conscience, He says, having therefore, brethren,
boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Having
boldness to come to the holiest of holies, to come to God our
Father through the blood of Christ. He says, and by a new and living
way, that is through Christ Jesus our Lord, and having a high priest
over the house of God, what do we do? Let us draw near with
a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled
from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. We can come to God. We have boldness
to come to Him. So John says there, if our conscience
condemns us not, if our conscience condemns us not, then we have confidence toward
God. We have boldness to come to Him. And He says, and whatsoever
we ask, we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and
do those things that are pleasing in His sight. What does that
mean? It simply means we're in communion with Him. We're in
communion with Him. Our performance of His commandments,
believing on Christ, loving our brethren, our performance of
His commandments in no way merits Him answering our prayer. That's
not what we're talking about here. It doesn't merit that. But God approves of whatever
is done in faith from a heart of love with a view to Christ's
glory. He approves of that. And He shows
His approval by granting our desires. Look over at John 14. Where did John get that from?
John 14.12. John 14.12. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that believeth on me, there's his commandment, to believe on
him. He that believeth on me, the
works that I do, shall he do also. And greater works than
these shall he do, because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever
you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may
be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in
my name, I will do it. Look at verse 20. Look at verse
20. He says, At that day you shall
know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. You're going to have some assurance.
And look at this, He that hath my commandments, and keepeth
them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself
to him. Judah said unto him, not Iscariot,
he said, Lord, how is it that thou will manifest thyself unto
us and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto
him, if a man love me, he will keep my words, and my father
will love him, and we will come unto him, and we'll make our
abode with him. That's what John is saying. He's
saying we have boldness to come to the throne, and when our conscience
is purged, We have boldness to come to the throne of grace,
and whatever we ask, we receive because we're in communion with
Christ. We're trusting Christ, we're
believing on Christ, we're loving our brethren, and whatever we
ask, we'll receive. And here's the thing about that.
When you're in that state, and your conscience is pure, and
you're coming to the Father, trusting Christ and loving your
brethren, It's not a blank checkbook that God's given you. Just ask
whatever and He'll give it to you. When you're in that state,
you don't want anything but what the Father wants. You come wanting
His will to be done. That's what you come asking for.
You come asking for Christ to receive all the glory. That's
what God's pleased with. That's what He's willing to grant
to you. You come wanting to see your
needy brethren taken care of and you come wanting to, you're
praying for that brother, that sister that you love that can't
see Christ right now and they're the one who's in that former
state where their conscience is condemned and they're being
chastened by the Lord and you want the Father, you want them
to hear the Father and that's what you're praying for, you're
begging God, Lord, Lord, bring them to bow to your will. Bring
them to see Christ and be restored in faith and love. And that's
what the Father's pleased to give. It's only when we're in
that other condition And we're not in communion with Him because
we're looking away from Him to ourselves or whatever that we're
asking things that He's not willing to grant. But when He's given
you a pure conscience and you see Christ as your only hope
and you love Him, you ask only what He's willing to give. And
here's the last thing. He assures us that we're of the
truth, gives us this assurance by God the Holy Spirit. That's
how all of this is done in our heart. Look at verse 24. 1 John
3, 24. And he that keepeth his commandments
dwelleth in him, and he in him. This is how we keep his commandments.
This is not why he dwells in us, it's how we keep his commandments.
He dwells in us and we dwell in him. And hereby we know that
he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. by the
Spirit which He hath given us. Go back to John and look at chapter
14, verse 15. He said, If you love me, keep
my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give
you another comforter that He may abide with you forever, even
the Spirit of truth. whom the world cannot receive
because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but you know him,
for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave
you comfortless. I will come to you. I will come
to you. And he said there in verse 20,
And at that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you
in me, and I in you. You see that? It's all through
the Spirit. This is how we have true assurance,
brethren. It's not by looking to ourselves
and trying to find a certain amount of confidence in the things
we've done and having faith in our faith and faith in our love
and all this. Ultimately, the way you have
assurance is Christ Jesus, God our Father, speaking through
the Spirit of God And sometimes he condemns your conscience.
He pricks you in your conscience to turn you, to chase you. Sometimes
he purges that conscience. If he pricks you in the conscience,
he's going to purge that conscience eventually. You're going to be
brought to see him, trust him, and he's going to be your all
in all. And you're going to feel like
you never knew him until today. And you're going to have a new
love for your brethren. This is what we saw Sunday. This
is how we walk in the Spirit. This is how we walk in newness
of life, the Spirit of God. If that old dead flesh needs
to be mortified, the Spirit's going to do it. And He's going
to point you to Christ and He's going to speak and say, you're
a child of God. And He's going to present your
petitions to the Father. And He's going to make you to
know everything's working together for your good. You're the call.
You're the call. All of this is according to God's
eternal purpose. You love Him because He first
loved you. And this is how we know. This
is how we are persuaded in our heart that we're His. It's all
of the Lord. I pray that helps you. Amen.