Psalm 100 - The Missing Jewel

Many people have twisted views of God, and those somewhat exaggerated views of God are really represented pretty well among the human race. The interesting thing is, however, how you view God determines how you will approach him in worship. If God really is a powerful being but uncaring, then you'll just be afraid of Him. If God is an angry God, then you won't want to approach Him. And if God is some kind of Eastern mystic with ethereal views, it really has no meaning to life, then who wants a God like that? How you view God does determine how you approach Him in worship. Back in 1961, A.W. Tozer, great writer and thinker about the Christian faith, was addressing a group of pastors in Canada. And he spoke several messages to them on the subject of what he called worship, the missing jewel in the Evangelical Church. He later put that in the form of a book. And he seized on something which was of great concern to many people at that time, and that was the seeming lack of emphasis on genuine worship, the missing jewel in Evangelicalism. Well many books began to come out not too long after that. In fact, in the 80s, there was a whole spate of books written by different people on worship. And a lot of attention was given to recapturing and renewing a biblical focus on worship. And so Psalms like Psalm 100 became favorites again. In our series on favorite Psalms, we find ourselves this morning in Psalm 100, invite your attention to that beautiful little Psalm. Very short, only five verses, aren't you glad? Very concise, very simple, and yet very powerful in its impact on what the meaning of worship is, who God is, and why we should worship Him. It's a masterpiece of literature. We often hear it quoted at Thanksgiving time because it is a Thanksgiving Psalm. This little Psalm calls us into God's presence based on who he is. We are called into His presence. We are called to worship Him based on who He is. That was the whole purpose of the drama this morning to set up the fact that we come into God's presence based on who He is. But we must understand, first of all, who He is, what He's like. And that dictates how we come into His presence in worship. It's a very special little Psalm. And I want us to see this morning what it teaches us about worship. Actually, it's kind of one of those songs that we have seen quite often in the book of Psalms that has a couple of verses and a couple of refrains. There are two verses in this Psalm. There's a call to worship and then we're given several reasons for worship. And then there's a second call to worship and more reasons given for worship. Let's see exactly what the Psalmist says about who God is and why we should worship Him. And how we should worship Him. First of all, a call to worship in the first two verses. Let's read those two. You follow us, I read. Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Let the Lord with gladness come before Him with joyful songs. That's a great call to worship. It's an invitation to worship. It's a command to worship God. We are called into His presence. And as we are called to worship God, we are called to do three things. We're called to worship Him in three ways. First of all, we're called to shout. Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Now if you have a King James version with you this morning, it probably says make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands. And that is often seen as the special contribution to the worship service of the tone death. If you can't sing, at least make a joyful noise, okay? And some of you can't sing, I've heard you. So we are grateful that you make a joyful noise. And we hope you do that anyway. But the Hebrew word here is literal a word which means to shout. It's used in the Old Testament for battle cries. It's used for triumphant shouts when something good happens. And sometimes it's used in a worship context like this. But this is not the only time it's used that way. Quite often in the book of Psalms, this word for shouting a triumphant shout, shouting a battle cry is used in worship. For instance, look at the screen, Psalm 66 verses 1 and 2. Not with joy to God, all the earth, sing the glory of his name, make his praise glorious. And in Psalm 95 and verse 1, come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. So lifting up a triumphant cry to the Lord, a battle shout, if you will, to the Lord is a part of worship. It speaks of exuberant praise. It speaks of passionate praise. It speaks of loud praise, if you will. By the way, those who don't like loud worship music are going to be disappointed in heaven. I think we're going to sing at the top of our lungs to the Lord. I don't think there will be anything languid or lacking about our passionate zeal for praising God there. It will come out much like a shout, a triumphant shout to the Lord. That's what he's talking about here. We're to shout. And you know that's a good way to start worship. I like the fact that that's the first thing he says to do when you come into worship. And I love the way oftentimes we see, I can see this so distinctly, Pastor Jim will use a kind of a louder, more upbeat song for the first song because as we're anxiously getting into worship, we shout our praise to the Lord. And then we may settle down to other kinds of singing. But that first one ought to be a shout to the Lord, if you will. Not for joy to the Lord, literally to exuberantly triumphantly with a battle cry shout our praise to the Lord. But secondly we are to serve. Not only to shout, we're to serve. Verse two, worship the Lord with gladness. It's at this point that I think the King James probably hasn't translated better. Serve the Lord with gladness it says. Really it can go either way because the Hebrew word that's used here is a word that is used in the temple of priests who lead the worship of God by their service in the temple. In other words, as the priests drain the blood from the animal, as they perform the sacrifices in the temple, as they go about their other duties in the holy place and the holy of holy, as they are serving God, their leading worship, their works of service are actually acts of worship. Now I know that probably some of us have seen these little signs in churches where they're usually over the door, the signs says something like this. Enter to worship, depart to serve. And the idea is that there's kind of a dichotomy, a difference here between you come to church to worship, then you go out there to serve. Well I understand that idea, the problem with the idea is it's just unbiblical. Because the Bible teaches that every act of service is an offering that we lift to God as an act of worship, the two are one and the same. As priests ministered in the temple, their service was actually an offering of worship to God. You know what that means to us today? That means when you usher someone to a seat or pass out a program when they come in or offer to help someone at the welcome center, you're offering your service up to God as an act of worship. When you play an instrument, you're offering your service as an act of worship to God. When you teach a Bible fellowship, that act of service is also lifted up to God as a sacrifice of worship. So whatever you do in serving God, that's also worship. Those two overlap and acts of service are also acts of devotion and worship. Paul tells us that same thing in Romans chapter 12. In verse 1 where he says, therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. You see that temple background there? Offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. The King James says this is your reasonable service, same idea. They're one and the same. Service is worship. The Greek word there in that passage is a word which means for the priests to worship God by their service in the temple. So whenever you serve God, you're worshiping Him. Every act of service is an offering that is lifted up in worship to God. So we are called upon to shout in our worship, we're called upon to serve in our worship. Thirdly, we're called upon to sing in our worship. Verse 2, come before Him with joyful songs. So the word here implies singing with passion, singing with zeal, singing with what's called a certain voice, with energy. Music is oftentimes the way we communicate our joy and gladness. Sometimes when you're doing something through the day and you find yourself humming, a tune. Or you may find yourself singing in the shower. It's just a way of you communicate your joy and your gladness. We sing to the Lord, but the word here means to sing exuberantly, to sing with a clear voice, not to just kind of let it roll out of our mouth, sing the songs again. Now we sing with meaning and purpose and zeal. We sing because we know we are in the presence of God and we are singing to Him. That ought to put a little life into the singing that we do. It's interesting to me that the whole focus of these first two verses and this call the worship centers around joy. Did you notice that? Three times in these three little statements that's mentioned. Shout for joy to the Lord, worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs. Note the emphasis there. Yes, it is a very solemn thing to come into the presence of an awesome God, a mighty indescribable God like we sang about this morning. It is an awesome and a solemn thing to come into His presence, but joy should never be absent from our worship. The passionate expression of our hearts, uninhibited praise should be always apparent in our worship. Joy should always be present. Someone has said this song is like an outburst of delight to the Lord. It is one who knows that He has been saved, that He has been redeemed by the grace of God. When you understand all that God has done for you, you cannot help but burst out in praise to Him. That's the idea in these two verses. The call to worship is not something. Okay, we've got a singing another song. I just hope we don't do all four verses. It's not that. It's an exuberant, joyful, willing cry of our hearts to God because of what He is, who is and what He's done for us? That's the call to worship in this song. But then we are given some reasons for worship as well. Why should we worship this way? Why should we shout and serve and sing to our God with joy? Well three reasons are given us in verse three. The first one is, know that the Lord is God. So the first reason is, He is God. That's the reason why we come to Him with this kind of joyful praise. He is God. Now if you were with us last week, you remember us seeing in Psalm 91 that whenever the word Lord is found in your Old Testament with all capital letters, it comes from a special name for God. The name Jehovah. This is the God who loves us and makes a covenant with us in salvation. Jehovah is God. The meaning is, He is the only God. There is only one God and He is the God of the Bible. You don't call this God just whoever you want to call Him. In fact there are a lot of false gods out there masquerading as the true God. This God is not Allah. He is not Buddha. He is Jehovah God. There is one God, the God of the Bible. There are no other gods. You know people have a lot of strange views about God today and who He is and they think they can just kind of call anything or anyone God and that is okay. It's not. We come into God's presence, the true God and we worship Him because He alone is God. There are a lot of folks in Hollywood who have strange ideas about God. You know a lot of folks in Hollywood are all caught up in Eastern religions and mysticism and Buddhism and all that kind of stuff and Hinduism. Let me give you a quote from Will Smith. Will Smith start an independence day and men and black and several other big movies. Listen to what he said about God. I don't believe in God as an anthropomorphic ally. What he means is someone who helps human beings. I don't believe God gets angry and zaps someone. I believe in the power of a higher being that we can find our way into good graces or not. I believe positive energy begets positive energy, negative energy begets negative energy, less of punishment and reward and more of attraction for what you project. Kind of sounds like God number three, doesn't it? Right? You know that kind of a theoretical mystical type deal. Kind of sounds that way to me. That's not the God of the Bible. That is not the God of the Bible. Listen to what Mark Burnett said. Mark Burnett is the producer of the first reality TV shows. The first one was survivor and he produced that. He also produced the apprentice, the apprentice. Listen to what he said about God. He said, I don't believe in any religion. It's all made up. Religion is an organized thing by human beings to convince other people to follow a way of speaking to God. I think God's in everybody and you have to be in touch with yourself and your God within you. Let me tell you one thing. When the rapture happens, Mark Burnett will not be a survivor. He will not make it when Jesus comes back because he does not know the true God of the Bible. That's not the God of the Bible. And you know, when we come to church, when we worship God, we are proclaiming our belief in the true God of the Bible. The God that the Word of God proclaims to us and describes to us. We are saying in worship, he is God. He alone is God. But let me go a little further than that. When we come to God with this shout and service and songs of joy and we're worshiping him as God, we are making a declaration. Every time we do that, we are making a declaration that there are no competing gods in our lives. At least that's what we ought to be saying. Every Sunday when you come to church and you lift up your voice to God, what you're saying is God had a rough week. But I want you to know, my money is not my God. You are my God. My possessions are not my God. My home is not my God. My family is not my God. My position is not my God. My job is not my God. You are my God. There's only one God in my life and you are my God. You know, it's amazing what people think of as God or what they make God in their lives. I think maybe I've told you before about the unusual things that happen when the Stanley Cup hockey trophy is taken to different places around the world. You know, the NHL, the hockey league they play for a trophy, a big trophy, a huge trophy. It's called the Stanley Cup. Pat Plunkett is the name of the guy who guards the trophy when it's being shown at different places around the world. And he says, you know, it's amazing when people see that trophy. I've seen people cry when they see the Stanley Cup. I've seen them fall to their knees when they see the Stanley Cup. It's a hockey trophy. Come on, give me a break. A hockey trophy. And some people fall in their knees and weep in front of a hockey trophy. My, my, my. We're talking about God's in people's lives that amount to nothing and yet some of us kneel down every week to a paycheck, to a job, to another person. And we come to church. What we are saying is you are God. You alone are God. So we worship Him because He is God. Secondly, we worship Him because He is Creator. Look at it there in verse three. It is He who made us and we are His. Some of you may have a version that reads, it is He who made us and not we ourselves. That's the way most of us have memorized this chapter. He who made us and not we ourselves. The idea is the same. It's a little difference in understanding of one little Hebrew word here that makes a difference in the translation. But the idea is the same. God is the Creator and we are totally dependent on Him. We are not self-sufficient. We need Him. He's the Creator. We are the creature. I read a story one time. It's kind of a legend kind of a fable about a well-known entrepreneur who had made it to the very top, had everything this world could offer and was pretty arrogant and brash and proud. So He decided to give a challenge to God. God anything you can do I can do. And so God took up the challenge and came down and said, okay, let's see. Let's start with creation. And the arrogant, brash, entrepreneur, billionaire said, well, I can create anything you can create. So God said, okay, let's start with my utmost creation to start with man. I created man from the dust of the earth. So let's see what you can do. So the entrepreneur with a proud, brash, chuckle, bent down, picked up a handful of dirt. God taps him on the shoulder. You gotta use your own dirt. You see, man has never created anything. Man discovers things in God's creation. He puts them together in different ways and invents things. But man has never created one thing. We use that word a lot. Oh, wonderful new creation has come out. No, no, a discovery or an invention has come out. Not a creation. God is the creator. He's the only creator. He's the only one who ever created anything. Spoke and things came into existence. The only reason man can invent or discover what's in God's creation is because God gave him the brain to do it. So you see, God is the creator and we worship Him because we are not self-sufficient. We should never be so proud and brash and arrogant to think that we've got life together. God is the creator. We are the creature we need Him. We're dependent on Him. So we worship Him because He is the creator. Thirdly, we worship Him because He is the redeemer. Verse 3 says, we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. We are His people. You know, we're in the Old Testament and so He's talking about Israel there. And Israel was God's people in the Old Testament. But we are today, the church, those who know Christ as Savior, we are God's people too. And we are the sheep of His pasture, just like those Old Testament saints were. In fact, Jesus speaks of us that way. In John chapter 10, look at these verses, verses 9 through 11, He says, I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. And then in verse 11, He says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. Jesus, as the good shepherd, came to this world to lay down His life for the sheep. Now, in one sense, He died for the whole world, but in another more specific sense, those who come to know Him as Savior become His sheep. They become a part of His family. And Christ's death is applied to us in all of its saving power. We are saved and we're in His family. We're part of His flock, we're the sheep of His pasture. And because He has redeemed us, bought us with His own blood, made us His people, His sheep, we worship Him. We fall in His feet and joyfully, exuberantly shout, serve and sing because He is our Redeemer. If you ever get over your salvation, you lost your first love. The first love that we have for Jesus is a love that just bursts from our hearts because we recognize the enormity of what He's done for us in saving us and forgiving us of our sin, cancelling hell, guaranteeing heaven through Christ. When you recognize that and come into a full realization of that, you can't help but have your heart burst with praise. And if we ever get over that, our hearts have gotten cold. Hearts have gotten cold. So we worship Him because He is the Redeemer. Well, I guess the Psalm could end there, but the Psalmist wasn't done. The Psalmist had more force to think about. So he's going to go back and repeat kind of the same thing, but using different ideas, same pattern though. We have been called to worship. We've been given reasons why we should worship. We're going to go back through the same thing, but little different words. He's going to give us another call to worship in verse 4. Look at this one. Here is his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. This is temple terminology here. Again, we're in the Old Testament and you can see enter his gates and his courts, talking about people coming into the temple. And many, many Bible writers, commentators believe that this Psalm was probably sung by people as they came to the temple to worship. As they entered the gates of the city of Jerusalem, God's city, and as they walked into the courts of the temple, the outer court where they brought their animals for sacrifice, they would sing these verses. You know there's a beautiful application to us today. It's not coming through those doors back there and coming into this auditorium that I'm talking about. There's something much more special than that. You see that the temple gates and courts were places where God manifested these presents to Israel and they are not fulfilled in a church building as wonderful as it is to be able to come together in a building like this, especially on a day like today. But they're not fulfilled in that. They're fulfilled in heaven. And the Bible teaches that we can enter into the most holy place that Jews could not enter into in the Old Testament. They could only come to the outer courts and only the priests could go into the next area which was the holy place and only one priest, the high priest, could go back into the most holy place where the holy of holies and only once a year and he would take the blood of an innocent sacrifice and offer it on the mercy seat to cover the sins of the people for a whole year. But the Bible tells us that because of Jesus' death, every Christian, every believer can go directly into the presence of God in heaven through prayer anytime you want. Isn't that special? Look at this verse in Hebrews chapter 10, verses. Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter, look at this, enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus. That's talking about the heavenly equivalent of that inner sanctuary that only high priest could go into once a year. We have confidence to enter that by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain. You may remember in the Old Testament there was a large veil curtain that stood between the holy place and that holy of holies. Well, in this text, Jesus' body becomes that curtain and Jesus lays down his body for us so that we can have access into God's presence. He says through his body and then he says, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. You see, we can come into God's presence at any time because we know Jesus as our savior and Jesus has taken away all the pictures and the shadows that told what it would be like to be in the presence of God, the temple and the Old Testament. Jesus has taken all that away through his death on the cross and through his death on the cross faith in him we can come directly into the presence of God. So we have access into the presence of God. We can come into the courts, enter his gates and his courts. Now how do we come? How do we come? Verse 4 tells us. We come first of all with thanksgiving. Enter his courts with thanksgiving. Now thanksgiving is simply what it says. It's giving thanks. It's being grateful for what God has done. I'm not sure if we've sung this little chorus here or not. We probably have at some point. I'm sure many of you have sung it. Little chorus written by Henry Smith called Give Thanks. You may recall the tune. Give thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the Holy One. Give thanks because he's given Jesus Christ his son. And now let the weak say I am strong. Let the poor say I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us. Give thanks. Give thanks. Give thanks. Henry Smith wrote that song back in 1978. He had had to drop out of seminary and go back and work in his home church because he had a degenerative eye disease. He was going blind. He had to get some odd jobs because he couldn't hold down a job. Life was tough. Life was rough for him. Within a very short period of time he went blind. But one day his pastor and that church preached from 2 Corinthians 8.9 talking about the one who was rich became poor for your sakes so that you through his poverty might be made rich, talking about Christ and what he did for us. And Henry Smith said his heart just welled up with joy when he thought about what Christ had done for him and he went home and he pinned that little chorus. Give thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the Holy One. Let the weak say I am strong. Let the poor say I am rich because of what the Lord has done for us. I don't know what's going on in all of your lives today. But I do know this. I do know that whatever is happening in your life wherever you are in life's journey, however difficult it may be, you can give thanks with a joyful heart. You can enter his courts with thanksgiving. There is much, so much, to be thankful for that God has done for all of us. And if life is extremely tough for you right now, remember what God has done for you in salvation. That he gave his son to die for you so that you might live eternally in heaven. And one day everything that's happened here will make sense when we're in his presence. Give thanks. Give thanks. We'll come into his presence with thanks. We'll come into his presence with praise. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. The word praise literally means boasting. And it's not talking about boasting about us or our ability or intellect or whatever. It's not talking about personal boasting. It's talking about boasting about God. That we boast about Him. We talk about how good He is. We talk about who He is. Boasting about God that's being talked about here. So this is another call to worship. We enter into his presence any time we want to with confidence and boldness through the blood of Christ. We come into his presence and we come with thanks and we come with praise. But why again? Why? What's the motivation for that? The Psalmist in verse 5 gives us more reasons for worship. Again, this is because of who God is and what He does. This is not manufactured. This is not something you have to try to work up. This is not sitting around trying to think of, oh, I don't know. It's not much I had to be thankful for or do I have to, I heard a story about a wife one time who was trying to get a compliment from her husband. And so she asked him, she said, honey, do you love me because I'm astonishingly beautiful or because I'm extremely sharp and intelligent or because I'm such a wonderful cook. He thought for just a moment and said, honey, what I love most about you is your vivid imagination. That probably was not the right thing to say, but when it comes to worshiping God, we don't have to fish for things to compliment Him about. We don't have to look far for things to praise Him for. This five gives us three things. For the Lord is good. That speaks of His character. He is good in Himself and He is kind toward us. He is good to us, isn't He? The Lord is good. When you think about all that God does for us, all that He gives for us, all that He is, the Lord is good. He is good. And we worship and praise Him because of that. Secondly, we praise Him because He is loving. Verse five says, the Lord is good and His love endures forever. This word is talking about a covenant kind of love. It's sometimes translated in the Old Testament by the word mercy. It's a rich word in the Old Testament, which means a covenant kind of love, a relationship kind of love, that God has established a covenant with us where He says, I am the I am binding myself to you in a love relationship that will never end. I promise you I will never abandon you and isn't that the kind of love that every human heart longs for? I mean, even Madeline Murio Hare, the most blatant atheist probably this nation has ever seen. Madeline Murio Hare who spent her entire life trying to crusade to pull God out of public life and to make the point that there was no God when she died and she died under very mysterious circumstances. If you remember, her body wasn't found for several years. But when she died, her diary was found. And in a very short space in her diary, six times she had written these words, somebody somewhere, please love me. That was a human heart who was crying out for the kind of love that God offers us right here in this verse. God offers an unconditional love, a covenant kind of love. In fact, He does the same thing in the New Testament. Look at this verse, Hebrews 9, verse 15, for this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive, here it is, the promised eternal inheritance. Now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. Because Jesus died for us, in other words, to set us free from our sins, He has established an unconditional covenant of love with us. It's like a marriage covenant. When two people promise to one another their lives, they're making a covenant with one another. God has made a covenant with us that He will love us forever. We have eternal inheritance. He will never abandon us. He will never turn his back on us. He will never abandon us. We're going to give Him great time, you know. We worship Him because He loves us. My wife, Jeannie and daughter, Missy, teach the four-year-old Sunday school class. I'm learning a lot about church families. Through those kids. Wow. Do they tell all? No? If you've got a kid in that class, don't pull them out. It's okay. Well, we used to make an agreement with their teachers. And we would tell the school teachers at the very beginning of the year, you don't believe half of what they say about us, we won't believe half of what they say about you. Got it? Okay, we got an agreement. So don't worry about that. I don't believe half of it. But the half I do believe, man, it's really good. Now, this did not happen in our four-year-old Sunday school class, but I did hear about this in one class. The teacher was trying to explain to these little four-year-olds the love of God and that God will love us forever and it will never stop. And she's trying to get it down on the level of the kids, you know, and she's really trying to explain it to her. They understand God will never quit loving them. He'll love them forever. And so at the end of this long discussion, she says, okay, now children, how long will God love us and one little four-year-old who had evidently just seen one of the toy story movies and had Buzz Lightyear's refrain clear in his mind, said, to infinity and be on. That's a great answer, actually. You know, God will love us to infinity and be on his love never ceases. It never stops. He promises his love endures forever. So we worship him because he's good. We worship him because he loves us. He's loving and thirdly we worship him because he is faithful. You see it there? His faithfulness continues through all generations. He's faithful. His word is true. We can trust his word. We can trust him to always be faithful. We can count on him. We can count on his word. He is faithful. So friend, as we worship him, as we worship this great God, what we are doing when we come together is we are saying, this is who you are. We recognize, oh God, you are God. You are the Creator. You are the Redeemer. You're good. You're loving. You're faithful. And for that reason, I shout, I serve, I sing, I give thanks and I praise you. That's what worship is all about. Just a couple of weeks ago I came back from Trinidad. Trinidad is actually a two island nation, Trinidad and Tobago, both under the same government. On the island of Tobago, there's a leper colony. I've not visited that. I've not seen it, but there's a leper colony there. And a pastor from North Carolina was visiting that leper colony and ministering there. Pastor from Newburn, North Carolina was ministering there. He was leading the song service and he was asking for people to give their favorite songs and they would sing them. And he said, toward the end, he said, okay, there's time for one more song. And he said a lady who had had her back to him the whole time turned around to face him. And he said, I saw a sight that almost sickened me. Her ears and nose had already been eaten away by that dreaded disease of leprosy. Her lips were almost gone. She raised a fingerless hand and said, I have a song I'd like for us to sing. And he said, yes, ma'am, what is it? She said, could we sing Count Your Blessings? He led the song and then walked out in tears. His friend said to him later, what happened? What's wrong? He said, I will never be able to sing that song the same way again. If that woman could say my favorite song, the one I want to sing to my Lord is Count Your Blessings. I'm ashamed of myself for my grumbling and complaining. We have a great God. He is the Creator. He is God. He is the Redeemer. He's good. He's loving. And for that reason, we have a lot to praise Him for, don't we? We'll never run out of things to praise Him for. That's what worship really is. Would you join me in prayer?