Psalm 62 | Subversive Spirituality

Listen to this week’s sermon, Subversive Spirituality preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Psalm 62.

Transcript

Welcome And Psalm 62 Read

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Nadia Chong 0:20

Good morning. Please join me for the prayer of illumination. Guide us, O God, by your word and spirit, that in your light we may see light. In your truth, find freedom, and in your will discover your peace through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Today's scripture is going to be from Psalm 62. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. My fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leading wall, a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. On God rest my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Those of lowest state are but a breath. Those of high estate are a delusion. In the balances they go up. They are together lighter than a breath. Put no trust in extortion, set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belong steadfast love.

Subversive Spirituality And Hurry Sickness

Nadia Chong 2:10

For you will render to a man according to his work. This is God's word.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 2:17

Well, today we continue with week two of our Summer in the Psalms series called Subversive Spirituality. And really what we're doing is we're taking some of the modern maladies of our cultural moment, and we're showing how the Psalms provide an ancient antidote. There's this way in which they kind of flip on its head the cultural ways of viewing things like time last week and this week restlessness. Restlessness. So in order to get there, I really want to take a uh a 10-part quiz, if you will, more of a diagnostic. Uh this is in the beginning of a of a really great book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, which I listened to at 1.5x on Audible because I have integrity and that's why it wasn't 2x, okay? Uh I couldn't, I had to ruthlessly eliminate some hurry. And in the beginning, he has this introductory assessment, if you will, about hurry sickness. So look at this with me together. Irritability. That is that you you just kind of have a hair trigger about you. It doesn't take much for you to be uh frustrated or easily angered, or uh people are kind of walking on eggshells around you. Now, this is related to the second one, which is hypersensitivity. That's when something relatively minor kind of sets you off. And you find yourself in a situation where um something that otherwise shouldn't be a big deal escalates really quickly. The third one is restlessness. You maybe have a moment of space or time where you could finally sit down and relax, but you cannot turn the inner revved up engine. It just won't settle down. Or how about the fourth one, which is workaholism or nonstop activity? You just are constantly going, going, going from the next thing to the next thing to the next thing. Whether you're in a workplace or doing this at home, running errands, you just you cannot slow down. Or fifth, there's emotional numbness. You turn to uh various, you know, socially acceptable narcotics in order to diminish your emotional experiences and pain, which if you numb your emotional experience, it makes you less empathetic with other people's. Or how about number six, out-of-order priorities? You live under the tyranny of the urgent, and you rarely get around to doing the things that really matter. Maybe for you it's number seven, it's a lack of care for your body. Uh we say there's a three-legged stool of eat, move, sleep. That's what your body's built on. And let's just say you're not really doing well with any of those. You're you're eating kind of the four cardinal issues of caffeine, sugar, processed carbs, and uh I can't remember what the fourth one is right now, but you you track with me. Uh high fructose corn syrup, probably, something like that. You rarely get eight hours of sleep. Maybe you're more sedentary than you want to be or ought to be. How about escapist behaviors, doom scrolling, Netflix binging, or maybe a lack of spiritual discipline. You know what's good for you. I mean, even secular science says that prayer to a benevolent being is mentally healthy. And you all the more, Christian, know what it means to be a person of word and prayer and uh community, and yet for whatever reason you find yourself checking out of those things. Or tenth, and finally you experience isolation. Isolation. We are so hyper-connected, and yet the UK has a minister of loneliness because of our lack of connection. We experience isolation from one another. Okay, how did it go? Some of y'all are like, I knew coming to church was just gonna make me feel guilty. Listen, I've got good news for you. Uh, and that is that I actually think what this represents is the malformation of our cultural moment. You are in a cultural moment that's designed to create this in you. And I believe that there's a counterformation

What Bears The Weight Of Life

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 6:20

available to you. I believe that Jesus loves you as you are, but will not leave you as you are. And that's good news. And so there's an invitation as we take up Psalm 62 and we and we look at the roots of our restlessness. Why is it that we just cannot find ourselves at rest? If you have a Bible or device, go ahead and get Psalm 62 in front of you. It's on the worship guide as well. And I want to look at how do we move from restlessness to restfulness? And I've I've really just asking a question which is what is bearing the weight of your life? What is bearing the weight of your life? Look with me at verse one, and I want to see what it looks like to rest on God alone. Look at verse one. For God alone, my soul waits in silence. Now, how do you do with waiting in silence? What's that like for you? In 2015, there was a research team that put on an experiment. And what they did is they got a bunch of people and they put them in a bare room that had nothing but a chair, no phones, no headphones, no books, no nothing to distract the mind, okay? And they were supposed to sit in there for somewhere between six and fifteen minutes. That's all. Six and fifteen minutes. Now, before they entered the room, they actually were given a slight electric shock. And they asked people how they experienced that shock, and they all said, unpleasant. In fact, they said, we would pay money to not feel that again. Okay? Then they put them in this room alone with nothing but themselves, and they many of the people administered the shock to themselves. In fact, 25% of men shocked themselves. I'm sorry, 25% of women shocked themselves. 67% of men shocked themselves. One man shocked himself 192 times. I have no idea. I hope that dude's like in prison somewhere. I don't know. Maybe that's not fair, but something's going on there. Listen, what the findings of this study is that when left alone with ourselves, we would rather inflict pain than to be waiting in silence. Blaise Pascal, 400 years earlier, predicted this. He has this famous saying, which is all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Now we have empirical proof that that's true. What is going on? What is it about waiting in silence that's so hard for us to bear? Look with me again at verses one and two. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken. I think if we were to ask David, David, what is bearing the weight of your life? He would say, God alone. Now, if you said, Okay, David, thank you, what does that mean for me tomorrow morning at 7.30 a.m.? What does that actually mean? I think he would say something, this is conjecture. I think he'd say something like, resting on God means placing the outcome in God's hands while remaining faithful to your responsibilities. Resting in God, it is placing the outcome in God's hands, but remaining faithful to your responsibilities. And so David is in this position. He's refusing to carry what God has promised to carry. That's what I think it means to wait on God, to rest on him alone. Now, as a parent, what I think this means, it doesn't mean I'm just gonna let go and let God and see how my kids turn out. I don't think it means that. I think it means I'm gonna be faithful to disciple my children, but I'm not gonna carry the burden of guaranteeing who they turn out to be. I think for those of you in whatever roles you're in in your work, I think it is uh it's not I'm just gonna wing it and see how this meeting goes. I think it's I'm gonna prepare diligently, but my identity and my future are not determined by the outcome of this meeting. That's what I believe it looks like. Uh the International Justice Mission has been for years working to take down human trafficking. They're going to the most dangerous places to rescue the most vulnerable people, and they have this motto that I love, and it's it goes like this we do the work, God carries the weight. That's what it means to rest on God. We do the work, God carries the weight. What is carrying the weight of your life right now? What is it that is bearing the weight of your existence? Because I wonder if it's holding up. Now, be encouraged. Even David struggles. Look with me again at the text. Verse 2, he alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. Maybe a little shaken, but not a lot shaken. In the Hebrew, greatly is actually the last word of that verse. So it's almost like an afterthought. He's like, I shall not be shaken very much. What is that? I think David is wrestling this out. He's dealing with a little bit of, does this really work in practice? Can I really rely? Can I put the full weight of my very being on God? And I think that this is one of the reasons why many of us Christians, uh, we struggle with restlessness. Have you ever been in a boat stepping onto a dock? There's that moment when you have a foot on the boat and a foot on the dock. How do you feel in that moment? Rested? Contented? Calm? No, there's a tension in your abdomen and your, hopefully, there's not much waves, and that's where most of us live. We've got a foot on ourselves and a foot on God, and we think that we would find restfulness there. In fact, that's actually maybe the very source of our restlessness. And so David experiences this too. So, what do you do when life feels unstable? What do you lean on when life feels unstable? That brings us to the second point. Return, O my soul. Look with me at verse 3. David says, How long will all of you attack a man to batter him? Like a leaning wall, a tottering fence. Some of you this morning, you come in, you feel like a leaning wall, a tottering fence. You feel like the next thing is just gonna knock you over. You find yourself like you're a Jenga tower, and life just keeps taking out blocks near the base. And you're like, what? Which one's gonna make it fall next? And and David knows that experience. But David goes on and he actually points out the cause of some of this. The cause of some of this is evil. You see, evil has this thing where evil will attack you when you're low and attack you when you're riding high. Look at verse 4 now. They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood, they bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. Commenting on this, my favorite commentator on the Psalms, a guy named Derek Kidner, he says this quote, evil, being ruthlessly competitive, is attracted

When Evil Attacks And Doubt Rises

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 14:00

to weakness. When you're feeling low, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence, evil's attracted to that because it knows that all it needs to do is give a last push to whatever is leaning and tottering. He goes on, though, he says, evil's also attracted to strength because it's the target of its envy and duplicity. Whether you're high or you're low, you are be evil is attracted to that. And evil, it says here in verse four, evil takes pleasure in falsehood. Evil really has like only a few strategies. They've been working for a few thousand years, so they just evil just keeps getting after it. This is kind of the main strategy. It's two steps. Step one, deceive you to build your life on something that's a false foundation. Step two, accuse you when that false foundation doesn't hold you up. That's it. Deceive you, accuse you, deceive you, accuse you. Back and forth. And that's what's happening here. And there's this there's this attack on David that he's experiencing. So what does David do? What do you do? Let's look at what he does. Look at verse five. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. Did you notice that? Look at verse 1 and verse 5. Compare and contrast. Did you notice the shift that happened there? In verse 1, you have the indicative. In verse 5, you have the imperative. This is what I mean. For God alone, my soul waits. Verse 1. Verse 5, for God alone, oh my soul, wait. The first one is about what is true. The second one is about what he ought to do. Do you see that? Now, what happened between verses 1 and verse 5? What happened in the gap? Verses 3 and 4. David dealt with difficulty. He set out to rest his life on God and he faced challenges. So if you find yourself really earnestly, intentionally, I want to live my life, resting, waiting before God, trusting in God. And then you get some setbacks. You're not failing. This is the way of life east of Eden. David knows it, he experiences it, and so what does he do? He doubles down. He doesn't give up. He doubles down. He says, Wait, oh my soul. Do this. You see, modern spirituality will often tell you to listen to yourself. Pay attention to your heart. What's your deepest passion? Just live that out for everybody to see. Psalmic spirituality will tell you, do not listen to yourself, talk to yourself. Wait, oh my soul. Tell your soul what to do. Direct it. It's not about self-expression, it's about self-direction. That's what the Psalms are going to invite you to do as an ancient antidote to your restlessness. Some of you in here, you're like, Ben, I am exhausted. I'm too weary and depleted and fatigued to even consider what it means to try to tell my soul what to believe. Listen, look at the end of verse 5. For my hope is from him. Feeling hopeless today? Feeling on the verge of despair? Your hope isn't self-generated either. It's from God. There's this thing that I think is really effective in community. And that is when you or somebody else is hopeless. I've said this to people before, you can steal this and use it yourself. I'll say, hey, I totally understand how you have like little to no hope for the outcome of this situation. I have hope. Do you mind if I hold that hope for you and you can come borrow it whenever you need it until you can find some yourself? That's why we need community. One of the things I love about Danny's testimony that we just watched is it was community. She asked community, hey, help me understand what God is like. Tell me about this God you hope in. You can hold hope for other people while they don't have hope because our hope inevitably comes from God. It's not self-derived, it doesn't come from within you, it comes from outside you. This is good news for those of us who feel too tired to hope. Look with me at verse 6. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. Here it is. I shall not be shaken. Do you notice what changed between verse 2 and verse 6? He took the condition out. He's no longer qualifying his hope. Before it was, I shall not be shaken greatly. Now it's I shall not be shaken. There's something defiant about that hope. And what made the difference? He went through verses three and four. He went through the attack of evil. He went through the difficulty of living life, following Jesus, struggling to hope, struggling to trust, struggling to put your soul's foundation on God and God alone. There's this thing in Arizona called a biosphere. They tried to replicate Earth in a kind of a dome in Arizona, okay? And what happened was initially the trees that they planted there, they sprung up super fast and then they toppled over when they reached a certain height. They studied it. What's going on here? And they realized what was missing in their biosphere. Something really important to the maturity and the strength of a tree. Wind. Wind. You see, when a tree feels the force of wind, it tells the tree to deepen its roots, to put its roots down into the ground so it has a more firm foundation and can uphold the wind in the future. That's why God will permit things like a season where you feel like a leaning wall and a tottering fence. He's trying to deepen your roots in him. That's what happened for David. That's what happens for each one of us. We get deeper roots through difficulty.

Silence, Hope From God, Deeper Roots

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 20:05

Now look at verse 7. On God rests my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Notice the shift. From leaning and tottering to resting on God. This is the move. From restlessness to restfulness. He is now resting on God. Why is it that God alone can bear the weight of your life? One word in Hebrew, kovod. Kovod. It's translated glory in verse 7. But I don't think you hear glory and think weightiness, substance. That's what it means in Hebrew. On God rests my kovod, my weightiness, my substance. It's from Him. That's where I find it. And so you were made to have substance. You were made to have glory. Psalm 8, verse 5 says that God has crowned humanity with glory and honor. And listen, that substance, that weightiness of your life, that you matter, it cannot just be held up by anything. And so David's saying, the only thing that can uphold you and your glory is the Lord. Now here's the thing. I've been, I wrote this down studying this text. Lord, teach me how to rest my glory on you. I don't really know what that means in lived experience, I'm gonna be honest. So here's an invitation. If any of you do, if you know what this means, I don't mean exegetically, I know it exegetically. I mean by lived experience. What is this like in your own life? Tell me about your history in God of resting your glory and having your glory come from God. You come up and talk to me. I'm always looking for good models. And we need a good model. And David actually notice what he does here, he becomes a good model in this text. So, what's what's beautiful is Is in verse 1, David tries. He kind of struggles, right? So then in verse 5, he tries again. But then look what he does in verse 8. He begins to teach others. The reason why is because what you have to offer to other people, oh disciple maker, is the treasure that you learned in the struggle. The number one reasons people don't make disciples in this room is because you don't think you have what it takes. What do I have to offer? Have you struggled? Have you gone through anything hard and you're still sitting here, standing here, opening hands, lifting them to Jesus, saying, Jesus, I want more of you? You've got something to offer. That's all that David offers. Look at He turns in disciples, people. Look at verse 8. Trust in Him at all times. O people. See that? He's turning to everybody else now. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. Let's look at this. Puritans used to do this thing where they'd preach a whole verse or whole sermon on one verse and they just unpack every word. I'm gonna try that for like 30 seconds. Here we go. Look at verse 8 closely. There's a bunch of questions you can ask of it. What? What are you supposed to do? Trust in him. When? At all times? Who? O people. How? Pour out your heart. Where? Before God. Why? God is a refuge for us. Some of you go, really? And the psalmist goes, Selah. AKA just rest and receive. Just just take it. It's good. That's what the text is saying. Why does David go from silence, verses 1 and 5, to pouring out his soul, which I assume is noisy. He's talking. Well, because maybe some of you know this too. Your soul is like a mason jar that you dipped into a creek, and it's all foggy and cloudy, the water, and you set it in silence, and the sediment of your soul begins to settle at the bottom of the jar. And you can finally see clearly what is it that I actually have to offer to God. You see, silence reveals what your restlessness conceals. And that is that your frenetic activity is actually disguising something, which is there's something not right at the foundation of your being. And so waiting in silence before God actually helps us to see what's going on. Where are our doubts and fears and insecurities and lusts and envies and idols? And where are all of those things? What are all of those things? Silence precedes pouring out your heart because an unceasing pace is the enemy of self-knowledge. You'll never know yourself unless you can pace yourself, unless you can wait in silence before the Lord. And that's exactly what David does. Now he has, he actually has something that he can pour out before the Lord. And this act of pouring out your heart before the Lord is so important. Some of us are verbal processors. And for a verbal processor in particular, you don't know what you think and feel until you begin to tell somebody else. I think that could be true with the Lord. I have a friend who's a counselor, and he says it like this he says, Tell Jesus what happened as if he didn't already know. That's wisdom right there. Pouring out your heart before the Lord is telling him what happened as if he didn't already know. That's what it looks like. So we get to verse 8, and we see that David ends with what he's learned about man and about God in these final verses. What he learned about man in verses 9 and 10 and verse 11 and 12, what he learned about God, and this is where we end, which is to reject false foundations. Look with me at verse 9. Those of low estate are but a breath. Those of high estate are a delusion. In the balances they go up, they are together lighter than breath. Put no trust in extortion, set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. In verse 9, this language of low estate and high estate is another way to talk about the rich and the poor, those of high status, high net worth, and those without. So it's basically saying everybody in between, all of humanity. But notice this it says that those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion. Interesting word. The word delusion, now I'm going into the psychological literature, the word delusion is a firmly fixed belief that doesn't change based on contrary evidence. How is it that those of us who are of high estate are but a delusion? I think it's because the poor are less buffered from the pains of this world by their wealth. Their self-sufficiency, the rich this is, is not easily punctured because they've always got their bank account to rely on to get them out of trouble. And so they have a firmly fixed belief

Pour Out Your Heart In Prayer

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 27:10

that they can rest on themselves and their riches, what Jesus calls the deceitfulness of riches, upholds that lie. That's the danger if you're of high estate, friends, brothers and sisters of New City. It's a real danger for us. But the reality is that put human beings in the scale, and we are all lighter than a breath. But Ben, you just told me Kavot, I'm made for weightiness and substance, right? Something really beautiful here. This is what I think it is. You were made for glory, but you were never made to get that glory from yourself. Like the moon that shines with borrowed light, all of your glory comes from God given to you. It is not self-derived. It is, it does not come from within. It comes from God giving you weightiness. And so when you look to things like your wealth, your riches, your words, your work, your portfolio, when you look to things like that for your glory, you're lighter than a breath. You have no weight at all. And that's what happens in the text here. Now, look with me as we close where David closes. He takes up verse 10 put no trust in extortion, set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your hearts on them. Now, notice what he doesn't say here. He doesn't go, if riches increase, you're a dirty, rotten capitalist. Doesn't say that. Money is not bad in the Bible. Money's also not neutral in the Bible. Money is actually a constant temptation. Jesus calls it deceitfulness of riches. Money is regularly trying to get you to set your heart on it. That's what it says here in the text, right? This is why Jesus, taking up very psalm-soaked man that Jesus was, said it like this: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So money has some dangers for us. And it doesn't have to be the criminal kinds of extortion or robbery. It can just be simply riches increase. You got a promotion, you got a raise, you got a windfall, whatever it is, riches increase. And when riches increase, there's an increasing temptation to set our heart on those riches. That's what the text is saying here. So you might not be tempted to criminal activity like robbery and extortion, but have you ever been tempted to compromise your convictions because of money? That's what David's trying to prepare us against. But this isn't just a risk for the rich. Anyone, the poor, the middle class, who wants to set their hope in riches, that if only I could get rich, then I would be filling the blank. Then I'd have restfulness. Jim Carey said it like this I wish that everybody could get rich and famous so that they could realize it's not a thing. So what is the thing? What can carry, what can hold, what can bear the weight of your life? Well, David ends in verse 11 like this. It's not what, it's who can bear your life. Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this, that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love, for you will render to a man according to his work. Why power and love? Well, because God needs to be both of those things in order to bear the weight of your life. If God is powerful but not loving, you can't trust him. If God is loving but not powerful, he can't help you. Either God is like your boss who might be powerful but doesn't really love you. Or he's like your grandma who might love you but isn't super powerful. No, no, no, God is both omnibenevolent in love and omnipotent in power. Bringing both of those things together alone, that God is both able and for you enables you to rest your life on Him. That's what the text is saying here. And you notice what David does. The whole passage really is a testimony more than a prayer until verse 12. And to you, O Lord. Now he's praying. To you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. This is a clue. The first turn to take your life from resting on something else to resting on God is to turn to him in prayer. Just tell him what's true. To you alone, O Lord, belongs power and love. And I want to put my life on you. But there's an unsettling ending. I wouldn't, if I was writing Psalm 62, I would not end it like this. Look at verse 12. For you will render to a man according to his work. Does that unsettle anybody in the room? It's true, first of all. It's in the Bible, it's true. But there's really only two ways to take this. One is, if that's true, if God's gonna render to me according to my work, I need to get after building out my portfolio of good works. I need to show that I in the it's often, I actually, this is still a common metaphor, that God is gonna kind of weigh your good and your bad in the scales of justice, and you better hope you've done enough to tip the scales towards good. God's gonna render to you according to your work, right? That's one interpretation. The other one is the foundation of restlessness in your life is trusting in yourself. Even in your work. So is that just because I'm a Protestant? Like, is it just because I'm reformed and so I'm gonna stay in Christ alone? You gotta trust Jesus, blah, blah, blah. Is that why? I don't know. Maybe David was a Protestant, Reformed Protestant, maybe that's what's going on here. But look at the text. He makes a point here. There's a theme. You can underline this in your Bible if you want to. Look with me at verse 1, 2, 5, and 6. Notice, for God alone, my soul waits in silence. He alone is my rock in my salvation. Verse 5, for God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from him. He only is my rock in my salvation. That's

Christ Alone And The Final Invitation

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 33:40

the same word in Hebrew. Alone, alone, only, only, only. Five times in the text, four times about God, David makes the emphasis: this is about God and God alone bearing the weight of your life. Yes, God will render to you according to your work. How's that gonna go for you? Who can stand? How many of us have waited alone for God in silence perfectly? Not David, not me, not you. So then what? What do we do with this reality? We look outside ourselves and we look to solace Christus, to Christ alone. Dallas Willard, the philosopher, was asked one time to describe, actually, he said, hey, if you could describe Jesus in one word, what would it be? Be curious what your answer would be. Merciful, maybe gracious, kind, generous, great answers. Dallas Willard said this one word, he said, relaxed. Why? Because Jesus knew what it looked like to live with his life resting on God alone. And so he lived relaxed. He lived relaxed. And what Jesus knew, he offers to you. He offers to you a life resting on him and on him alone. Because the truth is, is that until you can take the weight of your life off of the thin ice that is yourself and put it onto the quote, mighty rock that is Christ, you will always be restless. And the invitation of the text here is you will, it will be rendered to you according to your work. But there's only one man who on the cross had this experience. It was rendered to him according to your works, so that it could be rendered to you according to his works. That's the good news of the gospel. You see, on the cross of Christ, both the power and the steadfast love of God meet in the cross of Christ, but also his justice. And his justice is perfectly satisfied. And so the invitation, as the great hymn once put it, in Christ, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other hope is sinking sand. Don't put your life on anything else but Jesus Christ. Shift the weight of your life from one leg to the other and put it all on Him, the solid rock, because Jesus alone is powerful enough to bear your life and loving enough to bear your sins. So that you could come to Christ, this mighty rock. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this good news, for our restlessness. Oh Lord, we you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. So give us, Holy Spirit, a fresh invitation. Some of us for the thousandth time, some in this room for the first time, to shift the weight of our life from ourselves to you, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.