 I stood in this pulpit last year and preached a sermon on God's protection. One of the deacons asked me to pray for a family whose grandson had been missing for three weeks. The deacon called me at about 7.30 that night and said, Pastor, praise God for that prayer. God answers prayer. They found the boy in Charlotte, North Carolina alive and the family is on the way to get it. I said, well, praise God for answering that prayer. I'm on my way to Columbia to identify my dead body son. Same day. A key part of Scripture, a key part of our understanding of the divine is our understanding of the devil. This is kind of a two-part question. What do we misunderstand about the devil's slash? What is God's relationship with the devil? Because we brought up the story of Job last time and let's say we took off our religious lenses. It seems like, and this is a craft's way to put it, a bet amongst good friends. So it begs the question, does God love the devil? And if he does, how do we understand that? Yeah. I don't know if God loves the devil, but it does seem like this wager between old friends, doesn't it? And maybe we need to reimagine what the book of Job is about. If we read the story of Job and conclude that Job gets it all back in the end and we've missed the point of the book in his entire, of course, Job is a tale of the Odyssey. And the Odyssey is really about trying to defend the goodness of God in the face of sheer evil and terror, right? And Job is a narrative that allows us to peek into the mind and the thought of the writers during that time. I think one of the basic and important principles we should take from Job is not that Job gets it all back and not that double for your trouble, not any of that. I think what we should take from Job is that God is sovereign and God gets to do what God wants to do, even if I don't agree with it, even if I don't like it. Because if I were God, I would make different decisions about my life and the people around me, but I don't get to be God. So whatever conversations God has with Satan in that text seem to be unnecessary from a human perspective. The Bible says in the book of Deuteronomy, the reveal things belong to you and I, and the secret things belong to God. There will be some things God does, God allows that I will never understand. I stood in this pulpit last year and preached a sermon on God's protection. I used Psalm chapter three and preached the third Psalm and preached a sermon on God's protection. Prior to that sermonic moment, one of the deacons asked me to pray for a family whose grandson had been missing for three weeks. Now when you hear three weeks, you automatically think the worst, but we had a great worship service. We prayed and we worshiped and we sang and I did my best to convince this congregation that God loves us and God protects us. All while thinking, I need to pray for this family at the conclusion whose grandson has been missing for three weeks. Sometimes you got to lift your voice even when you can't lift your head. We prayed for that family. This is on a Sunday in August of 2022. The deacon called me at about 730 that night and said, Pastor, praise God for that prayer. God answers prayer. They found the boy in Charlotte, North Carolina, alive and the family is on the way to get him. I said, well, praise God for answering that prayer. I'm on my way to Columbia to identify my dead body son. Same day. So you swing from spending an entire week prepping and planning a sermon on God's protection, minister that word to an entire congregation, have a visible demonstration of faith, having real legs, praying for a family whose grandson has been missing for three weeks, fighting the boy on the same day, only to lose my son on the same day. If that isn't the Odyssey, I don't know what I don't know another example. And so a part of the Odyssey is trying to do the hard work to keep believing God and God's personality in the midst of persistent evil. And that's hard work. So when you ask questions about the relationship between God and Satan, I don't know if I have an answer to that. I focus more on my relationship with God than God's relationship with other spiritual beings, one, because they're all alien to this journey of what it means to be human. The devil's never been a human. So therefore, his relationship with God is less of a concern to me. What seems to be more forefront in my mind is what is God's relationship to me? What does God owe me? Right? You talked about, does God need to be managed? I don't think God needs to be managed, but my interpretation of God does. And one of the things that helps me constantly think about that management is what does God owe me if we're in relationship? Right? And there's there's to be reciprocity than what is owed to me. Yeah.