Psalm 16 | Subversive Spirituality

Listen to this week’s sermon, Subversive Spirituality preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Psalm 16.

Transcript

Welcome And Opening Prayer

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.

Sarah Brunner 0:22

Please stand with me as we ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to his word this morning. Give us understanding that we may keep your law and observe it with our whole hearts. Lead us in the path of your commandments, for we delight in it. Turn our eyes from looking at worthless things and give us life in your ways through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Psalm 16 Scripture Reading

Sarah Brunner 0:51

Today's scripture reading comes from Psalm 16. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, I have no good apart from you. As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply. Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night also, my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand. I shall not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to shield, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. This is God's word. You may be seated.

Distraction And The Practice Of Attention

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 1:58

The beginning of evil is. Fill in the blank. What would you put there? Well, this is how the fourth century desert monk Abba Poeman finished that sentence. The beginning of evil is distraction. Really? Well, there was a researcher at the University of Charleston Southern named Michael Ziggorelli, and he did a five-year worldwide study of more than 20,000 Christians. It's a big study. And his point was to look at what are the obstacles to growth in the spiritual life. And he found a five-fold pattern that is repeated. And this is the fivefold pattern. First, Christians assimilate to a culture of busyness and distraction. Second, because of that, God becomes marginalized in their lives. They're too busy. Third, as a result of that, marginalization of God, their relationship with God deteriorates over time. Which fourth makes them more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about life, which results in, fifth, rinse and repeat, more conformity to a secular culture of busyness, hurry, overload, and exhaustion. And Michael Ziggorelli titled this research project Distracted from God. Distracted from God. So what is this distraction that we all know so well? Where is it coming from? The easy, more shallow answer would be it comes from this weapon of mass distraction in my f in my pocket called a smartphone. And that would be true, but I think our distraction is deeper than our devices. I think our distraction is a matter of our desires. Our desires. Now, in all of my research and reading and clinical work, I have tried to summarize and distill all of human desires into three things. I'm a simple man, I like things as simple as possible. I think all of your desires can be summarized under these three broad buckets: the desire for security, the desire for satisfaction, and the desire for significance. If it's not our devices but our desires that are causing our distraction, then to inverse that would be to say that maybe if the beginning of evil is distraction, maybe the beginning of good is attention. Simone Vey, the French philosopher, said it like this: attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Think about that. When you're with somebody and they are attending to you fully, how generous that feels in an age of distraction. And so in this series called Subversive Spirituality, we've been looking at how the Psalms offer an ancient antidote to our modern maladies. And today I want to look at the modern malady of distraction and the ancient antidote of attention. And I get that from Psalm 16, verse 8. If you have a Bible or a device or the worship God, go ahead and get Psalm 16, verse 8 in front of you. I think this is David's spiritual secret. Like it was a big deal when KFC released their secret sauce recipe, how they made their chicken. This is David releasing the recipe on how to walk with God in the world. Right here, verse 8. Look with me. I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I shall not be shaken. This is attention. David has learned to attend. Always, he says, always attending to the Lord, setting the Lord always before him, over and over and over again. And this results in an unshakable life, according to David. So with that, what I want to do is a little Christian psychology here of the modern malady of distraction and the ancient antidote of attention based on these deep desires that I think are the source of our distraction. So I have three points. That is the desire for security, the desire for satisfaction, and the desire for significance. And then I'll get out of your

Security Through Refuge And Attachment

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 6:26

way. Look with me at the desire for security in verse one. Psalm 16, verse 1. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. Now listen, this is important. Security, the desire for it is a good thing. The number one metaphor in the book of Psalms is the metaphor of refuge. It's not an overstatement to say that the book of Psalms exists in the Bible to teach you, to train you how to take refuge in God, how to find God to be your sanctuary. I love that word sanctuary. It's a place of safety, it's a place of holiness, it's a place where you go to preserve life. David is trying to teach us through this psalm how do we find our security in God? Now, in the early 1900s, there was a man named John who was born in England. And John grew up in a time and place when children were to be seen and not heard. And in fact, if you gave them too much time and attention, you would spoil them. And so he had about one hour of his mom's attention a day until he was seven years old. And at seven years old, he got shipped off to boarding school. Now, fast forward, like many of people who become therapists because of their family of origin, he became a world-renowned psychologist. And he really was doing his clinical training in the midst of and after World War II. And he was in a hospital working with orphans, children who'd been orphaned because of the Great War, World War II, that is. And as he's working with these orphans, he found that there was this deep need and this deep desire for relational connection, what he termed attachment. This man, of course, some of you know, is a man named John Bowlby. He invented what's called attachment theory, which I'm gonna argue is maybe one of the greatest scientific advancements in the 20th century. Not psychological advancements, scientific advancements. Attachment theory gets closer to what it means to be human than any other theory, especially from the sciences of humanity, up until that point. And John Bowlby really distilled three things that make the foundation of an attachment relationship. The three things are a secure base, a safe haven, and proximity seeking. Now let me make that plain for a moment. Imagine you're at a playground and you see some kids with their caregiver, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, something like that. And and they're hugging grandpa's leg, and then they kind of run off to the playground to have fun and do something, and then they fall down and get hurt and they run back. That leaving the caregiver is moving out from a secure base into a dangerous world. That's what you need. You have to have a secure base to explore a dangerous world. But you also need a safe haven, a place you can come back to from that dangerous world and find security again. And that pattern of going out and coming back, going out and coming back is what's called proximity-seeking behavior. Does this sound like the book of Psalms to you? Preserve me, O God. Proximity-seeking behavior. For in you I take refuge. You're my secure base and my safe haven. The psalmist can't help himself. He's regularly going, You're my fortress and my rock and my strong tower. He could easily have said, My secure base and my safe haven. You see, David had a securely attached relationship with the invisible God. I believe this. And he's trying to train us how we can have that as well. And so listen, it is an oversimplification, but not too much, to say that the two things that fuel a human life are either fear or joy. The only two fuels for a human life, fear or joy. What fear would say if it could talk is it would say, I am powerless and alone. And trauma researchers have shown that not everybody's traumatized by a traumatic event. What makes the difference is in that event and in the aftermath of the event, did you feel powerless and alone? That's how you get a PTSD diagnosis. But if Joy could talk, Joy would say this, I'm so glad to be with you. I'm so glad to be with you. That's the language of joy. That's the language of a securely attached relationship. And so here's my invitation. What does it look like to find God as your refuge? Here's what I think it means three things. Notice, name, nearness. Notice, name, nearness. Here's what I mean by this. The first thing is you have to notice the moments when you feel insecure. Some of you are like, I don't think I'm ever insecure. No, you're just not self-aware. You are regularly insecure, and it looks like an increased heart rate. Just subtle. It looks like the chatter in your mind sounding like self-protection and self-promotion. That's what it that's what you notice. So you begin to notice those moments and situations and times where you feel insecure when you feel fear. The second thing is, is you name it. Call it what it is. I'm afraid right now. Name it to yourself, to the Lord, to a somebody in your community, name it out loud. If you have a hard time with that, you can ask the Lord. I believe the Lord wants to. Uh as verse 7 says, I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. I think the Lord's a good counselor. And you simply go something like this: Lord, what am I afraid of right now? Or where did I learn to be afraid of this? Or, Lord, what do I typically do when I'm afraid? Or, Lord, where what do you want me to know about this fear? Or, Lord, what do you want me to do with this fear right now? Ask those questions. I can promise you, one of the primary things God will lead you to is to draw near. So you not only notice, you name, and then you draw near to God in the fear. And you tell him, you say, Lord, I'm afraid of this. I'm just telling you that right now. Would you preserve me, O God? For in you I take refuge. This is what it looks like to take your desire, your good desire for security, and to direct it to the only place that really can give you security beyond death, which is the Lord Himself.

Satisfaction And The Infinite Ache

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 13:12

So not only do we want to be safe, we also want to be full. Look with me at the desire for satisfaction. The desire for satisfaction. Verse 2. I say to, now, L-O-R-D, all caps is Yahweh, the proper name of God. I say to Yahweh, you are my Adonai. That's the word for Lord or King. I say to Yahweh, you are my Adonai. I have no good apart from you. Listen, the desire for satisfaction is always a felt sense of emptiness, longing for fullness. That's what the desire for satisfaction is. And so it doesn't really matter if it's food or sex or art or ambition. You're always, when you're dissatisfied, it's emptiness, longing for fullness. Now listen, you were made with that desire. A principle, a foundational principle of Christian psychology or anthropology is that evil does not have its own clay. What do I mean? All that evil can do is to come in and to warp, pervert, distort, and bend God's good creation. So the good creational desire for satisfaction, this emptiness, longing for fullness, evil comes in and warps and distorts and perverts and misdirects it. One of the words translated iniquity in your Bible means bent. You have a bentness in your desires. And so it's not the desire that's the problem, which is a real issue that Christians have to wrestle through. Your longing, your emptiness, longing for fullness, what the Chilean poet Pablo Naruto calls the infinite ache is something given to you by God. The problem is when we take that infinite ache and put it on finite objects. Look at verse 4 with me. Verse 4 says it like this the sorrows of those who run after, underline that in your Bible or on whatever you got, those sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply. That language of run after is important. When you give your infinite ache to finite objects, you will find yourself on a treadmill. A treadmill that gets faster and faster and faster and results in something psychologists call addiction. The best definition of addiction I've ever heard is from C.S. Lewis. He says, addiction is an ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure. That's the treadmill. That's running after false gods. Do you hear it? The anxiety, the distraction, the frenetic, can I get more of what I need? Because I'm longing for fullness. Yes, you are. You have an infinite ache. And none of those finite objects will ever suffice. So since we're around the time of the World Cup, there's a podcast episode called Goats on Greatness, where Zlatan Ibrahimovich interviews Tom Brady. It's amazing. Goats on Greatness. I don't know if I can commend it to you, but I can commend this portion of it to you. Ibrahimovich asks Tom Brady, he says, Did you ever enjoy your achievements? To which Tom immediately responds, No. And they both laugh. Did you ever enjoy your achievements? Tom Brady? No, I never enjoyed any of them. To which Ibrahimovich replies, I never enjoyed whatever I won. I always wanted more. Even now, I'm still not satisfied. I cannot really enjoy it because I want more. Do you hear the desire for satisfaction? Do you hear the infinite ache beneath the surface of the goats of our generation? And so the danger is to say that the infinite ache is the problem. It's not the problem, it's the finite objects. It's putting the infinite ache on finite objects. That's what creates the problem for us. And so C.S. Lewis said it like this if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. That's why secularism is so suffocating. There's no transcendent reference point for any of your desires. Your ache for satisfaction. And so what you do is you distract yourself to death doing what ironically is called an infinite scroll. And what's happening? You're looking, you're longing for your emptiness to experience fullness. Now, this is where religious people come along and they say something like the problem is that you've been indulging your desires. No, no, no. Instead, they won't use this word, but this is what they're saying. Instead, you should repress those desires. Repress them. The problem with repression is what psychologists call the revenge of repression. Push those desires down, I dare you, it will pop out somewhere else, just like a beach ball in the pool. That's what happens when we push our desires down. Somebody said it like this the world offers a fast food diet. You'll die pretty well on a fast food diet. But then the church comes along and offers a starvation diet. And people with enough willpower will go, Yeah, that's right. I'm not gonna do fast food, I'm gonna starve myself, which also leads to death. And so either you'll starve yourself to death or you'll run back to the fast food diet because Christianity didn't really work out for you, anyways. So if you're not supposed to indulge your desires, if you're not supposed to repress your desires, what are you supposed to do with this infinite ache, this emptiness, longing for fullness? You're supposed to direct them to the proper place. Direct those desires and redirect those desires. Look at verse 2 again. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have no good apart from you. Something really beautiful happening here because I'm confident there's people in this room who are not yet believers in Jesus, not yet disciples of Jesus. Welcome. We love having you here. You're no more welcome anywhere in Orlando that I know of than you are right here, right now. And I also know there's people in this room who think they know Jesus, but they really don't. And that's a real concern in the scriptures. In fact, in James 2, James, brother of Jesus, says it like this You believe that God is one, good on you. So do the devils. The demons have good theology. Good theology doesn't save anyone. The devil can never say what the psalmist says here in verse 2. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. The first step with your desire for satisfaction is to bring your desires under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus, you are Lord over my desires. I don't get to determine what I do with them. I'm not what our cultural moment would say about you. I am not simply, merely my desires. Whatever I feel, whatever I desire, whatever I long for, that's who I am. Jesus, I'm submitting and surrendering that to your lordship. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. And then he goes on, he says, I have no good apart from you. I love this. There's something brilliant in this in this insight here. No good apart from the Lord. The invitation here is to take everyday experiences of goodness as shafts of glory, as sunbeams that you follow back to the sun. Every little bit of pleasure you experience, the enjoyment of it, and you respond and make it a channel for adoration. Not just thanksgiving, although I think it's really important. Experience good things. Give thanks to God for them. That sounds like, God, thank you for filling the blank. But even more is not thank you for these things, but thank you, the giver. Praise you. I adore you, the giver of these good things. One of my favorite stories is uh Augustine of Hippo, who's walking on the Mediterranean beach and he's looking out at how beautiful the Mediterranean Sea is, and he ponders to himself, oh Lord, if these are the beauties afforded to sinful men, how much more do you have in store for those whose hearts are yours? That's what it looks like to say, I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, I have no good apart from you. Every experience of goodness in your life is a channel for adoration. It's intended to draw your heart up to go, wow, God, you are amazing. If this sunset is so beautiful, how much more are you beautiful, the maker of that sunset? That's the invitation. And so not only are we safe, needing safety, not only are we empty, longing for fullness, this infinite ache is a signature of our infinite author who's saying, Find that satisfaction in me.

Significance And Choosing The Lord

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 22:33

But we also wonder, do I matter? That's the third and final point here is our desire for significance. Look at verse 5 with me. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. When I say significance, what I mean by that is this question, this desire to have meaning or status or purpose or weight or a future, all of those things I'm kind of wrapping up in this sense of significance. We were made to matter. There's a psychological literature base called the psychology of mattering. Studying this thing right here. And it's actually important to note 30% of people, 10 to 19, do not feel like they matter to anybody. We have the joy of being a multi-generational, intergenerational church. Listen, if you're in your 30s or 40s in this room, you have a responsibility to communicate mattering to people in their 10s and 20s in this room. Now, what does that look like? There's an acronym, SED, S-A-I-D. It looks like this. You communicate to them you're significant, you're appreciated, you're invested in, and you're dependent on. We need you, we want you, we delight in you, we enjoy you. 30%, one in three, nine, 10 to 19-year-olds doesn't feel like they matter to anybody. This longing to matter, this desire for significance is something God gave us. So what do we do? Well, listen, in order to unpack verse 5, I've got to tell you the background. There's a story behind this. This fall will be in Deuteronomy, maybe next fall will be in Joshua. Who knows? Joshua is the story of how the people of Israel, 12 tribes, are entering into the promised land called Canaan. And as they're going into the promised land, Joshua is told by the Lord to divvy up the land among the 12 tribes. So you can imagine this. Handing out parcels, and you know, he's going to Gad. He's like, Gad, you get the gardens and the groves. Reuben, you guys are gonna be ranchers, you're gonna get good hamburgers. Uh I don't know if that's kosher actually. Anyways, you get the hamburgers, and then the Lord looks at the Levites and says, Levites, you don't get land, you get me. Now listen, for generations the people of Israel have been longing, aching to be in the land. And now it gets parceled out, and eleven tribes get portions, except for one, the Levites, they get the Lord. This might be a recipe for discontentment. Honestly, it's kind of like maybe some of you, when you were kids, you grew up and your parents would say, Hey, can you go do this thing for me? And you say, What do I get if I do? And they replied, The satisfaction of a job well done. And you're like, You could have just said nothing like that. Instead, you patronized me. Like, is that what the Levites are saying here to the Lord? Are they like, Lord, we get you? We wanted something more tangible, maybe. Something we could grow crops on. You see, in ancient Israel, land was the source of your wealth, your future. To be landless was a curse, not a blessing. That's what makes verse 5 so startling, so scandalous. Because King David of the tribe of Judah says, The Lord is my chosen portion. He's a Judahite, he had a portion in the land. Not only that, he's not only a Judahite, he's the king. In one sense, all of Israel belongs to him. He has everything, and he says, I don't want it. I don't want all the significance that comes from owning all this land, being the king. I want the Lord. He's my chosen portion. I wish I was a Levite. I wish I had what they had. So I'm gonna choose that portion instead. Why is that? Well, because David knows that if your significance is built on anything that can be taken away from you, it makes you profoundly vulnerable. Profoundly vulnerable. That causes a lot of distraction. So I don't know, how would you fill in the blank here? I matter if. I matter if I'm noticed, I'm needed, I'm admired, I'm successful, feel in the blank. I matter if whatever it is, if it's not some version of, I matter if I belong to the Lord, if he's my chosen portion, he's my inheritance, if it's not that, you're vulnerable. If you don't believe me, believe Warren Buffett, who was a pretty significant dude, is a pretty significant dude. He says it like this the most dangerous distractions are the ones that you love but don't love you back. How would you fill in the blank? I matter if. So listen, if distraction is the beginning of evil, and maybe attention is the beginning of good, let's end where we began with verse 8.

Building A Habit Of Godward Attention

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 27:37

In verse 8, David says it like this I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. You hear this? He's invulnerable because it's the Lord who's his security, it's the Lord who's his satisfaction, it's the Lord who's his significance. That's why he's unshakable. He's saying, Lord, it's not control or my security system or my bank account. It's you are my security. Lord, it's not more of whatever already is not satisfying me. It's not just more of that thing, it's you are my satisfaction. It's not more of mattering to those who matter and being seen and looked at well in other people's life. It's not that. It's you, Lord, are my significance. A modern example of this, maybe better than anybody else I know, is a guy named Frank Laubach. Frank Laubach is a literacy genius. He kind of proliferated literacy across the globe in a lot of ways. Um, but but he has this book called Letters by a Modern Mystic. It's a good summer read by Frank Laubach. And in that he talks about this thing he calls the game with minutes. And what the game with minutes was is he he endeavored to think about God for at least one second of every minute of the day. Not that easy, but he claims to have done it. And the reason why he could do it is because it became a habit over time. He just drew his attention back to God, back to God, back to God, back to God. And what starts as an action that requires willpower becomes a habit that requires a lot less willpower. Dallas Willard says it like this if we learn to constantly redirect our attention back to God, our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass points north. There's a secret here. David's showing you, Frank Laubach's showing you. This is the secret to unshakable confidence right here. Setting the Lord always before you. So some of you in the room are going, okay, so if I hear you, what you're saying is if I develop a habit of always bringing God into my mind, or you know, one second of every minute or whatever it is, uh, if I do that, I will be safe, full, and never forgotten. Sadly, no. Because we live in the tension of the times. We live on this side of Eden and this side of the new heavens and new earth, and in the tension of the times, we find ourselves with these desires that go unmet. In other words, there's harm. There's ache. There is forgottenness. So where's the hope in all of this?

Resurrection Hope For Lasting Joy

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 30:14

It's in the last three verses. Look with me at verses nine through eleven. Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices, my flesh also dwells secure, for you will not abandon my soul to shaol or let your holy one seek corruption. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Listen, the apostolic interpretation of these three verses come to us from the lips of Peter on the day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2. And this is what Peter says about these three verses. It's a big deal. Ready? David died. Period. David's the one writing this. David's going, You're not going to bend in my soul to Sheol. You're not going to let me see corruption. I'm stoked because I'm not going to die and be buried like everybody else. Or is he? Because Peter goes on, he says, David died, which is why we know David couldn't have been speaking about himself here. Peter says it like this. He says, quote, David says concerning Jesus. Verses 9 through 11. So the apostolic interpretation of this text is it's not until resurrection that we have the hope of the satisfaction of all of our desires. You see, the resurrection of Jesus is the only hope. It is the ultimate. It's why I can say to you, yes, if you belong to Jesus, you will ultimately be secure, ultimately be satisfied, ultimately be significant. And in the here and now you get touches and tastes of that, I promise you. But let's end where the Psalm ends with verse 11. It says, This, you make known to me the path of life. The Proverbs has this way of saying this. It says, There's a way that seems right to man, but in its end it leads to death. Listen to me. Jesus walked that way. The way of death, the Via Dolorosa, all the way to the cross of Christ. And on that cross, he died. He died. Why? So that he could be to you the path of life. So you could take Jesus as the path of life. That means that Jesus Himself is our security. But it goes on, it says, in your presence there is fullness of joy. Do you notice that word? Fullness of joy. Listen, Jesus is Emmanuel. That means God with us. Jesus opens up to us the access that we need to the presence of God, the place where fullness of joy. It says, in your presence, there of all places, in all of the cosmos, there is fullness of joy. Jesus, God with us, is the place of fullness of joy. Now listen, you will taste some of that joy in his presence. I hope you do today. As you gather as his people, he's here with us. But you will never full have the infinite ache fully satisfied until you are with him with a resurrected body, with resurrected eyes, beholding the face of Jesus. Imagine what taste is going to be like when you have resurrected taste buds. Your infinite ache is for that moment, that time, then and there. Finally, because Jesus is himself our satisfaction, we can hope for that. And look at verse 11, it says, At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Throughout the story of Scripture, the right hand is the place of significance. It's the place of significance. I have a friend named Matt who lived in China for a little while. You have to know this about Matt. He's Egyptian and Alabamian. Alright? He's in China. And he's walking around for weeks and months, and he's not seeing anybody else that looks like him or talks like him. Some of you know what it's like to be a cultural minority. It could be exhausting. And Matt walks into a room, and when he walks into the room, he overhears somebody talking, I think with a southern accent. And he looks across the room and he's like, somebody like me. Somebody familiar. He goes and starts talking to this person, and it feels refreshing. Listen to me. The transcendent reference point of all of reality is the throne room of God. It's the throne room of God in heaven. And if you were to go there, you would feel like a cultural minority. I promise you that. You'd be walking around, you'd be like, what is that thing with like eyes all around and six wings and seraphim, the burning ones? You'd be like, what is happening? It would be staggering. And as you'd be looking around, you'd see that everybody's looking in the same place, and that the focal point of the throne room is the throne. And on it, sitting on that throne is somebody familiar, somebody who looks like me. Because the dust of earth is enthroned on the seat of heaven. His name is Jesus Christ. The point here is that you, if you belong to him by faith, Ephesians 2 says you are already raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So listen to me, Jesus Himself is our significance. As we look at this text, we see that Jesus is the path of life. Jesus is the place where there's fullness of joy. Jesus is already at the right hand of the Father, and if you belong to Him, so are you. And that means that you matter because He matters. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you that we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in you. Hidden in you, God. That's our refuge. Be to us the security you promise in the psalm. Be to us the satisfaction for our infant ache. Be to us the place where we matter. Our significance, Jesus, is in you. It's for your beautiful name we pray. Amen.