July 21, 2024 | Guard Your Soul

This morning. We're going to be in First Peter chapter two as we look to the text, children, if you're headed out the back door to Children's Church, you're welcome to go ahead and go. If you want to stay in here with us. We're glad to have you here with us as well.

One thing I like about the song we just sang is it portrays a battle in our soul. It's full of longing that says, out of the depths I'm crying to God. And yet full of confidence that says. The only hope I have is found in him. Do you ever feel like your soul is in a battle? Or maybe not like it's in one now, but like it's been through one for maybe decades?

Feel like you can't even figure out exactly what's going on inside of you. You don't know the details, but you know it's not healthy.

Like the bullets are flying in your life and you aren't feeling peace or safety or joy. We live in a fallen world where this experience, unfortunately, is common. All of us have felt it, and we we start to develop in some ways, our own version of PTSD of the soul. If you look up symptoms of PSD, you'll find certain categories.

You'll find long lists. Listen to these four categories and diagnose your soul. And ask yourself, do I see these things inside me?

Might see intrusive memories, flashbacks or nightmares of things that have happened that have hurt your soul. And you think where on earth did that come from today?

Maybe it's patterns of avoidance. You avoid the things that remind you of the pain in your soul, or you numb yourself emotionally. However you can.

Maybe find negative emotions like hopeless negativity towards yourself. Or you find yourself detached from sources of joy that should give you joy. And you know they should.

Or just unpredictable emotional outbursts. Irritable anger. Reckless or self-destructive behaviors.

Has your soul's battle in this fallen world led to these kinds of symptoms inside you?

Mine has.

In this text. Peter introduces the next section of his letter, and in doing so, he deals with some huge questions because he you can read it through the book. He desperately longs to shepherd his readers. He wants to help them protect their souls. He longs for that. So he deals with some huge foundational questions because that's what it takes to protect your soul.

Questions like, who are we? Why do we exist? And how do I guard my soul against the dangers in this world?

I want to read and let Peter give his answers to those those questions. Starting in verse nine of chapter two.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his. That's God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul, and keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. God, this is your living word. Would you protect us by it today?

In contrast to those he's just talked about who didn't believe the word, who stumbled because of their unbelief. They reject the word Peter points to us, to people who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And he says, who are we?

And he uses three pairs of words here. He says, we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. Now he's primarily talking about a corporate identity. He's not talking to you individually to say you are a race in yourself. That wouldn't make any sense because he's using big terms, right? A priesthood or a nation is not just one person.

So he's looking at God's people as a whole, and he gives these three things. And I want you to think about what they imply. We won't talk about everything we could see from these three statements, but a few things that should impact the way that we guard our souls when he calls us a chosen race. He's speaking of security confidence because the God of the universe chose us.

That means he doesn't make bad choices. He has all of the wisdom that he needs to make the right choice. When God chooses someone, he doesn't come back and say, oh no, I made a mistake. And nobody else could make a wiser or more powerful choice. When he says, you are God's chosen race, he says, there's nobody else who can take you out of that group.

If God has said, this is who you are. There's security. He looks at believers in Jesus and think about their background. They're in a Roman Empire where they suffer persecution from their government. Probably not the fullest extent yet. This is probably before Nero's persecution ramped up. But there were still persecution and they knew it was coming as well.

And then the Jews would often look at Gentile believers with disdain. Now he knows they feel like outsiders and exiles in both their government and from the Jewish race. Not every Jew. But many. And so he wants them to know God chose you to be his people, to belong. How much of our lives do we spend wanting to belong to something bigger than ourselves?

He knows they don't feel that in their government, and he knows they don't feel that from the Jewish religion at this point. And so he says, you need to know something. You are God's chosen race. And you're secure because you belong in that group. How secure? Well, he used the exact same word back in verse six of chapter two where he said, I'm laying in Zion a stone.

That's Jesus, a cornerstone chosen and precious. So how secure, as secure as Jesus's place as the eternal Son who came and died for us. Jesus was the Chosen one, and no opposition could stop that. We are God's chosen people. Race and no opposition can stop that.

We're also a royal priesthood. Back in ancient times, the king would have his own set of priests. Not in Old Testament times, but in the world around them. They would have their own set of priests who would only serve at the palace. They belong to the king. Not in a weird way, but it was just. These are his special priests.

They were known as a royal priesthood. He's pointing us to the fact that we are priests who bring sacrifices of praise and love to God, and those are pleasing and acceptable in his sight. And he says, but you're not just doing it out somewhere else. You're the priesthood that belongs to God. So you're not outsiders from all the groups of people.

You might feel like it, but he's put you in a group that you belong to. Not only do you belong to this group, you're a part of it, but you belong to him as priests. And he goes on to say, A holy nation were set apart. Holy, set apart for service to God. He uses nation. Think about what a nation is.

It's a recognizable unity, a group of people who have some form of government that they share and some principles that they work with.

We're a holy nation that has one king and kind of one constitution. We could say. He points to them and says, you need to know before we start talking about how to guard your souls before we talk about that warfare. You need to have this confidence underneath your warfare. That is that God loves you. You are his and you belong to his people.

Now, at one point, that wasn't the case. These people did not belong to God's people to start with. We saw that in verse ten says, once you were not a people, but now you are God's. You're his people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. At one point, Jews and Gentiles were not in the same corporate group, but now God's people has been united.

This is a quote from Hosea which is used in Romans chapter nine as well. And there we're told, God's children are gathered from both Jew and Gentile. And he quotes this and says, once you were not a people, but now you are a people. They can now be called beloved. They are the ones who have received mercy. Do you ever feel like an outsider?

Praise God for his grace that he doesn't leave us like that.

Once you did not have this kind of belonging, but now you do. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. If you come to God through Jesus Christ. You don't need to believe Satan's lie that says, well, I've received mercy for some things, maybe, but not everything. You don't need to believe Satan's lie that says, maybe if I'll do the right stuff, I will receive mercy.

Now Peter looks at people who he's going to tell you have all this danger you need to guard your soul. And he says, you have received mercy. That wasn't always true. But you have come through Jesus Christ and now you have received mercy.

John used the picture of Niagara Falls in a waterfall. Similar picture to what I had in mind here. Let that mercy and that belonging wash over your soul.

All of those times we say, I don't want to be an outsider. I want to belong to something bigger. Let God's grace wash over you to say you are as a follower of Jesus, as part of something bigger and better. All those times you think I wish I had done better in my life so far, and you feel the angst of I want to do better and how can I ever make this right?

You have received mercy through Jesus Christ.

Peter can't tell them how to guard their souls without starting with, this is who God has made you, because their soul couldn't rest.

So he starts with who we are in in the middle of that. The end of verse nine says, why do we exist as a group of people? He says that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Again, the point is not that you individually would proclaim God's excellencies, although that's true.

But the point is, this is corporate. He's saying as a body of people who follow Jesus Christ, why do we exist? Why do we belong so that we can proclaim the excellencies of God? Now our individual worship of God drives our corporate worship. So what needs to happen for all of our souls is throughout the week, you are proclaiming God's glory yourself when you come to the word and read it.

When you pray, when you talk with others, you should be proclaiming God's glory to yourself. When you meet with fellow believers at different times, you proclaim God's glory to each other in smaller groups. And Sunday morning should be the outflow of all of that, where we come together with excitement to say, I will wait for you, Lord, and I want to pour out worship towards your throne with the people that I belong with.

This is why we exist as this group, and I want to take the next few minutes and invite you to think about the Excellencies, or the glories or the perfections of our God. Just look in this text first. He's a God who is so wonderful that he fascinates the easily bored. You can proclaim his excellencies, and you can keep proclaiming his excellencies and keep proclaiming his excellencies and not get bored.

Maybe you remember the story of Sherlock Holmes with his brilliant mind and and he would be so bored that he runs off to use drugs and all kinds of other things to try and relieve the boredom. God is so excellent that you would never need to do that.

He's the God who claims the unwanted. We've already been talking about this. The people who are outcast. God says no, no. You're mine. What an excellency! What a glory. What a perfection of God that is. He's the God who gives mercy, not what you deserve. So that would be punishment. It would be judgment. But not that he's the God who gives mercy.

What a God that is. But let's back up in this book. We're made to proclaim His Excellencies, not just a couple of them. So if we went back to the beginning of this book, we could talk about the excellency of his perfect foreknowledge. God has never been surprised. By anything. Because he knows everything. God can never be wrong.

Nobody can ever come to God and say, I told you so because God has perfect knowledge. And if I had that kind of knowledge, if I knew the future, what I would be tempted to do is to use it to protect myself. Or maybe in a more crass moment, to go make a whole lot of money off the stock market.

God doesn't use it that way. God uses his perfect knowledge to show magnificent mercy to his people, to plan from before the world was made to give himself in love for you. For me? How about the excellency of his mercy that lifts us from the life we deserved, to new birth to every other mercy that you can find.

Reaches its limit somewhere. You might know somebody who's merciful, but you say, well, if you go too far. Some people are beyond that reach. God's mercy is so great that people who are dead in their sins can instead have perfect joy in him. What if we proclaim the excellency of his hope? All other hopes are going to disappoint you, but God will not disappoint you.

His living hope that he gives you is imperishable and unfading, and it's never going to die. What about the excellency of His Holiness? Whatever else you could treasure in life, whatever else you could look at, eventually there'd be a point that you loved it too much. God is so great and so wonderful that you can love him with absolutely every fiber of your being.

And it's never too much. You're never foolish for loving God so much. How about the excellency of God as both a father and a judge? We saw that in chapter one. Every other father, every human father, is going to fail you sometime. I speak as a father. I fail a lot. Your heavenly Father is not going to fail you.

He's the most excellent father. How about the glory of him as a judge? Every other judge will not give perfect justice 100% of the time. God will never fail. He's always just. How about the excellency of his sacrifice? Peter said we're ransomed from the futile ways of our forefathers by the blood of Jesus. Everything else you can look to to deliver you is only going to maybe help in some areas, but it can't deliver you from everything.

Jesus blood ransoms you from every pointless way of life that you could have received from someone else, or chosen for yourself. What about the excellency of his word? Peter said, everything else is like the flower that passes away. Looks beautiful, but it goes away. It's temporary. God's word lasts forever. Or the glory of his gospel. His good news.

Every other good news you have is weak. It might seem great, but it doesn't last forever. The gospel is good news that brings life over and over and over again and lasts forever. What about the excellency of his goodness? Everything else you think of his good will leave you unsatisfied sometime. We all know that God's goodness fills you with longing for him more and more and more, and then satisfies you.

That's just in a chapter and a half.

What if we keep going in first, Peter? How about the excellency of his freedom? All other freedom is incomplete. Nothing else can set you completely free. But God frees you so that you can live a life of honor to him. And true free love to others. How about the glory of his forgiveness? All other forgiveness has its limits.

Somewhere. But Jesus forgave those who were pounding nails into his hands. Father. Forgive them. You're made to proclaim these excellencies to yourself and to others. What about the excellency of his gentleness? While he was being crucified? He didn't fight back. That's the end of first Peter two. How about the excellency of his shepherding? The end of this chapter says he's the shepherd and overseer of our souls.

He cares not just about your body or your physical well-being, but he cares about you and your soul. But the excellency of his compassion, he takes people who are overlooked beginning of chapter three, and he pours out mercy on them. How about the excellency of his kindness? He says, if you want to love life and see good days, come and drink and have it.

That's God's kindness. He doesn't hide it from you. He says, come, here's what's good for you. How about the excellency of his love? He substituted. He died in our place. Bible says greater love has no man than this. That he lay down his life for his friends, for the glory of his praise worthiness. Chapter four. You can serve God and you can speak for God.

You can do that for his glory in everything. And you're never foolish to do so. How about the excellency of his care for us? Your God is so glorious in his wisdom and his power and kindness, that he can care for you better than you can care for yourself. Do you believe that?

Do you believe even if you had all power to do whatever you wanted to accomplish? That your God can and does care for you better? Than you could care for yourself? God made you to proclaim, to see his glory and to proclaim it and to love it. How about the excellency of his reward? Chapter five calls it an unfading crown of glory.

Or the excellency of his promised help. God says he will restore you when you feel depleted. He will confirm you when you lack confidence. He will strengthen you when you will weak and he will establish you when you feel shaken. That's our God.

We exist to proclaim those excellencies and thousands more of the one who called us out of his darkness, into his marvelous light.

Peter wants his readers to hear those things. Why? What drives him? He says, here's who you are. He says, here's why you exist. Where does his mind go next? And I think Peter is just thinking back to a day when Jesus shepherded him. You might remember from Matthew 16, Jesus says, who do men think I am? And they have this conversation.

Jesus says, You're the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus says, yes, and I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Then Jesus goes on to say, I'm going to Jerusalem. I'm going to die. Peter says, not so, Lord. Jesus looks at him and says, get behind me, Satan. The very next thing that Peter is told is this if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? I think Jesus, I think Peter is thinking back to these phrases that Jesus told him and he says earlier in the chapter, Jesus is building his church like living stones on the foundation of Christ.

And then his mind goes, what does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? So we get to verse 11.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.

Peter looks at people he loves deeply. We can hear it. He he addresses them directly with this term. Beloved, we don't do that very often. But he's telling them I care about you. And he uses this strong word. He urges them. He pleads with them and says, yes, you belong to God. But right now you're not in your home, your exiles, your strangers in this world, and you're in the middle of a battle.

That message has not changed. That's true of you. It's true of me. And so he says, you must guard your soul. Your soul is the the immaterial part of you, not your body. It includes things we talk about as mental health, not the physical elements of pieces of your brain firing. Although there's plenty of evidence your soul and that aspect of your mental health can impact each other as well.

But he says, you need to care not just about your body, not just about your physical health, but about your spiritual health, your health of your soul. Because there are enemies, he says, abstain from the passions of the flesh. That's what's going to wage war against your soul. So we need to know what is that? Well, the word passions just means desires.

And it would include sinful desires for certain things. Like if I have a desire for theft, I want to go steal something that would be a passion of the flesh. A desire for adultery or for hatred. Things that we know are bad. It would include that, but it includes a little more than that. If I asked it this way, if God did not exist, what desires would you have and how would you act on them?

Any of those desires that fit with the idea of God not existing? Those are passions of this natural world of the flesh. So to give a specific example, you might have a desire for comfort. I imagine you do. I've seen some of you shift positions, probably because of your desire for comfort. Nothing wrong with a desire for comfort.

But if God did not exist, how would you use that desire for comfort? What would you do? That's dishonoring to God because of your desire for comfort. So it is not that a desire for comfort is a passion of the flesh. It's that a desire for comfort that ignores God is a passion of the flesh. This morning I want to talk about four specifically.

We could talk about a lot more, but I want to talk about four comfort, approval, pleasure and power. There's nothing wrong with a desire for any of those four things in itself. There is something wrong and dangerous with having a desire for comfort, approval, pleasure, or power in a way that ignores God.

We'll come back to some more examples of that in a minute, but I want you to think, how do those wage war in your soul? Peter is inviting you to use your imagination here, and so I want you to do that, too, this morning. Satan can't overthrow the city of your soul by a direct frontal assault. God protects you.

So Satan sends in cleverly disguised traitors. They look like desires that aren't bad in themselves. And these desires come into your soul. And Satan wants them to take over your life. As Paul Tripp said, a good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing. When you are ruled by your desire for comfort or pleasure. It's dangerous to your soul.

These passions wage war against you. What does a war torn soul look like? Then? How do I know if that's what's been happening? Well, it looks like what we started with. It looks like PTSD of the soul. It might look like discouragement or depression. It might look like addictive behaviors.

It might look like traumatic responses. Fighting or hiding.

It might just look like laziness.

If you take these four types of desires, I want you to imagine someone whose soul is ruled by a desire for comfort. Let's think about what that looks like. Is that a healthy soul in your mind? I doubt it.

Change the picture. What about someone whose soul is ruled by a desire for approval?

How about pleasure?

I imagine there's something that pops to your mind. And you say, I know what that would look like. And it's not healthy.

Now, we might react defensively. This would be my instinct and say, no, I don't really think my soul is ruled by comfort. At least not all the time. Which is true. Satan is deceptive and devious. He is a vicious enemy. He knows we're quicker to spot. My life is only ruled by approval. He knows that. So here's what he'll do.

My desire for approval rules in my life for these few minutes, and then three hours later, my desire for comfort rules in my life. And then the next day, my desire for pleasure rules in my life. You see. A soul that is ruled by a thousand dangerous desires is just as unhealthy as a soul that is dominated by only one dangerous desire.

Because if I am ruled by that desire, then I'm not thinking about it in relationship to the excellency of my God. I'm thinking about it only of the flesh. In the natural world.

Now, really, if I had to say one thing I want to make sure you hear this morning. Here it is. All of that sort of sets up background for this question and answer the question. How does Peter's exhortation to guard your soul relate to your purpose of proclaiming God's glory?

Don't think of it as two separate ideas. I'm supposed to worship God, and I'm supposed to not do bad things. And both of those are true, but they're not unrelated. Peter is driving you to guard your soul by proclaiming God's excellencies. You say you can not do bad behaviors without ever really guarding your soul. We've all been there.

You've all had times that you know you're doing something and I shouldn't do this. So you stop and you know your soul is still just as unhealthy as it was before. Might see it in kids sometimes when the kid goes and obeys, but you can see the attitude on their face.

Peter is driving them, and we're going to see throughout the next two chapters over and over. Peter is saying you need to guard your soul. How do you do that? By doing what you were made to do. Proclaiming the glory of your God. I asked you to imagine people ruled by those desires. Now take a different picture. Imagine or think of someone you know where you would say, I feel like there sight of God's goodness and mercy rules their life.

I'm going to bet that you think that soul is healthier than the one dominated by pleasure.

Guard your soul by proclaiming God's excellencies. I want to give you some examples of what I think that looks like. Giving specific examples is always hard, because I probably won't mention the one that's the biggest deal for you, and that's okay. God's spirit can handle that. But think about this pattern. Here's one example. If you're ruled by a desire for power or control, well, what kind of sinful fruit comes from that?

A lot of options maybe worry because you say, I can't control tomorrow. What if something bad happens? Maybe bitterness. If only I had had the right power and control before, this would have been better. Maybe anger because you know you don't have the control you want. How do you fight that? More importantly, let me phrase it specifically. How do you guard your soul in that?

You need to look to the excellent see the glory of God's perfect wisdom. Instead of saying, I need to control this so I can work it out. You say God knows the best ways to accomplish the best goals. Now, as soon as you say that to yourself, what are you doing? You're proclaiming the excellency of your God and that shapes you.

And you know he has matchless care. He cares for me more than I could care for myself. He has perfect power and perfect control. So if we proclaim that to ourselves and to each other, it's key to battling the sinful fruits. How do I fight worry? How do I fight anger? How do I fight bitterness? But it's also key to protecting your soul from that which would rip it apart.

Another example. Same pattern. What if your desire for approval rules in your life? Well, there's sinful fruits that come from that too. Could be hypocrisy. I want people to think better of me than I have any intention of being. Could be slander because I want you to approve of me. So I've got to make sure you don't approve of them too much.

Could be self-pity. I did all the stuff that should have been approved. And you didn't approve of me. Woe is me.

How do we guard our souls? You need to look to your God. And say his mercy is such that I have received approval through Jesus Christ. That's perfect approval that will never go away.

You look to his grace that says, I will help you, even when others around you don't approve of you.

And when we proclaim God's excellency in that way, it helps us fight against slander and hypocrisy. But deeper than that, more important than that, it guards your soul. What if a desire for comfort rules your life? Maybe it looks like laziness. Maybe it looks like apathy. I just don't care about anything. Maybe it's just self-centeredness. It's all about what makes me feel better.

Those sinful fruits are there, and you can spend a lifetime trying to knock down every one of those sinful fruits, and you might see some results. But make sure you guard your soul. How will I go back and say, God's goodness is so wonderful and his wisdom is so perfect that if he puts something that is uncomfortable in my life, that's good, and my desire for comfort doesn't get to pop up, sit on the throne and tell me to be self-centered because I'm proclaiming and loving and worshiping God for his glory.

Maybe a desire for pleasure. And that pops up in sinful actions like greed, theft, adultery, envy, a whole lot of other rotten fruit that comes from it. So what do you do? You look to the excellency of God and say, God's love is so great and so satisfying that I don't have to have this kind of pleasure right now.

I'm not saying it makes it easy. I'm saying it protects your soul. From that which would wage war against it.

And Peter continues and says, here's why you guard your soul. Because it wouldn't do any good for Peter to look at you and say, you need to guard your soul because you need to look out for yourself. And that's all you need to worry about. That's not guarding your soul. That's selfish. So instead, he points you in verse 12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.

Live in this way so that other people will see it. Guard your soul. Fight your inward battle. But do it with first other people in view, so that they would see it and do what? When they speak against you as evildoers, they see your good deeds and glorify your God.

He says, guard your soul because it is valuable, because what good is it if you gain the world but lose your soul? But he says, guard your soul so that others see it and glorify your God. That's one way we know that. This is the logic of Peter's passage here. You see, if I guarded my soul, if it was merely my effort that guards my soul, then you would come and praise me.

There are people in this world who are extremely disciplined. Maybe you know the name David Goggins. He's a little bit crazy, but he runs ultramarathons and all kinds of stuff and has gone through three different types of special forces training. And you can look at him and say, wow, he's a disciplined man. But you look at him, you say, look at what he's done.

And even if you were the spiritual equivalent and you said, here's all the bad things. I don't do it. I don't do it, I don't do it, I don't do it. I don't do it. If that's all it is, then we'd look at you and we'd say, wow, look at you. You're disciplined. That's not what Peter's pointing them to.

He wants them to guard their souls in such a way that God is ultimately glorified by it. And the reason that works is because the way they guard their souls is by proclaiming the excellencies of God.

As we continue throughout this book, Peter is going to talk about how to guard your soul in your relationship to government and to masters. If you are a servant, roughly translates to employees and employers and how to guard your soul as a husband or as a wife. And over and over he's going to say, you need to guard your soul by glorifying God.

Now, I want to say one implication of this if that's the way we're to guard our souls, and I especially want to say teens in this room and kids in this room, listen to me. The rest of us need to hear it, too.

For the health of your soul, we have to move past. What's wrong with it? Thinking so many times, I feel like I hear it more from kids and teens. But honestly, I see it in my life all the time. To so many times we think I want to do this. And if somebody says you maybe shouldn't. Well, what's wrong with it?

Adults, let's not look down on the teens. We all do that too.

If this is how you protect your soul, it's not enough to ask what's wrong with it. That's a it's a question. It's an okay question. It's just the lowest question.

What's wrong with it? I want to. Well, Peter's saying, of course you want some things that will harm your soul. They're called passions of the flesh. In this text. Instead, we need to ask, does this thing fit with proclaiming God's glory? If I really see God's goodness and grace and mercy and kindness and compassion and that whole list we talked about earlier.

If I really see all of that, will I live this way?

How is God going to be honored by this choice? We do it all the time. We talk about the entertainment we want to choose. We say, what's wrong with it?

It's the wrong question.

We talk about the words we want to say. Well, what's wrong with it? It's an okay question. It's just not the one that's really going to guard your soul.

We talk about what we want to wear. What's wrong with it? The friends we want to hang out with and how we want to interact with them. What's wrong with it?

Sometimes that answer is I don't have a specific thing that's wrong with it, but the attitude around it will eat your soul alive.

There are many people who sit in church. And we all do it sometimes. And we live with this. Well, what's wrong with it? Mentality. And we have war torn bruise and bleeding unhealthy souls. And we feel that. And we wonder, how can I have a healthier soul? Peter's message of these verses in one sentence is you are safe and secure because you belong to God.

So guard your soul by proclaiming his glory over and over and over again. If your soul hurts this morning, if you look back. And you feel that trauma in your soul. God offers you healing. Will it be difficult? Yes. Will it be immediate? And you just. I'm all better. No. But he promises you. You proclaim His Excellencies, and it will bring healing into your soul.

It will guard your soul against future damage. And where you may go through life and say, but it never got all the way where I want it to be. One day. When you see His Excellencies as they truly are, your soul will be well. I want to invite you to bow before God in prayer. Ask him to give you wisdom to know how to guard your soul and how to proclaim his glory.

Father.

You know all of the weight of the different situations in our souls this morning.

None of us even know all of the challenges in our own soul, much less in each others.

You know that we live lives where we have hopes and expectations and desires. And sometimes those are just ripped away and our souls feel devastated.

You know. That we can look to anything else and that these desires and others wage war against us. And so many times we are blissfully ignorant of what is going on.

Would you protect us? Would you fill us with the sight of your glory? Would you bring healing to our souls?

And wisdom to guard them well?

As you have worked in our hearts. Help us to come to you.

And help us to come to one another with our struggles. To be able to bear one another's burdens, to exhort one another. And to help one another walk through this battlefield of this life. Looking forward to the perfect hope that we have of seeing you and loving you fully, and being transformed and perfectly, completely healed.

It's in Jesus name. We pray. Amen.