 I want to share a message that's been brewing in my heart for some time for last few months concerning trials, struggles and tribulations. And I wanted to specifically share it on our healing service. The reason why is because we don't like to talk about this a lot, but we all have to learn how to deal with certain disappointments that we experience in life. I think what Ashley shared today is actually why a lot of people lose their faith in God when they accept or they go to God and they experience certain things that sometimes are not mentioned from the pulpit. We love to celebrate the good things that God has done. And we don't talk about the things that don't happen. We kind of, most of us know how to deal with it, but some of us in here, we have to be learned how to process that properly with God. I'm going to share my first experience that happened that threw completely a curveball in my faith in God. Actually almost knocked me out. I was about 11 years of age. We went with our friends to school. There was three of us, the three Stooges we call ourselves. It was all three of us were neighbors. We grew up together. We did everything together. We went to church together. We served God together. I mean, our life was wrapped together. We were like David and Jonathan except just one more. And we walked to school. We were same grade. We were same age. And this particular time, instead of walking 40 minutes to school, one very generous person decided to give us a ride. And so instead of, you know, we had now 40 minutes to spare. And so in this friend of mine who lived third house from us, he had this swing in his yard, in his front lawn, front yard, and this swing. It wasn't one of those swings that we see today. It was a heavy duty. Like everything they make in Ukraine is heavy duty. It was a very heavy duty swing. It was full of metal, a city of six people. It was grounded in asphalt. And between the swing and the asphalt, there was maybe this much space. You can swing is so, so big. You can swing is so high. And I mean, we grew up on that swing. Okay. We knew how to do the tricks on that swing. We were reckless with that swing. Backpacks on our back. We're just swinging back and forth having a good time because we don't have to walk today. And so I'm sitting, he's standing over me, which we shouldn't, you shouldn't be doing. That's a safety problem. But I mean, who cares? You know, you're 11. We've done it. It's a crane. And so we're swinging. We're deciding to switch. And so as I'm sitting or he's standing, I don't remember now, I just know we were switching. Me and him were switching. And I'm going down. He goes up and the swing goes up and he just grabs, you know, to that swing and he loses his hand, just loses the grip and he goes down right in front of my eyes and the swing comes back. Heavy speed. 11 years of age and half of his brain got off right in front of me. And so I mean, that, even talking about it right now, put back into that scene, it just, it threw me off. I mean, for weeks, there was no console grief comes to counseling in Ukraine. I mean, how do you process it? You just, I said, I was silent for weeks. I couldn't speak like physically. I couldn't, couldn't process the fact that we were this close to death. The fact that we didn't plan to, for this to happen. Like why, you know, where was God in all of this? I mean, we were supposed to get to school faster and, and, and they're my best friend, you know, I attended his funeral at the age of 11. So, and moments like these, you know, when you experience, especially as young, it leaves, it could leave a really, really strong impression. Thankfully, I grew up in a Christian home and we were taught from the young age that when you don't understand something, you trust God in spite of it. You don't try to make sense of it because trust me, you can't make sense of it. There are things in life, they just don't make sense. My wonderful grandpa who passed, who went on to be with the Lord, you know, had a, drove a big car and one of his children went under a tire of a car playing and he didn't see it, ran over the child. How do you explain it? You don't, and it's easy sometimes to blame things, you know, like God, demons and everything. And, and there's sometimes, you know, there are mistakes people make. There's sometimes demonic attacks, but there's sometimes the Bible says the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous where stuff just happens in this world that you can't make sense of it all. The bones will break, cars will break, the accidents will happen, things will happen. You know, we've seen the miracles of God and we don't deny it. This doesn't shake our faith in God who is good. But we also have to be very honest. Life sometimes is not good. And there are seasons we walk through the valleys of the shadow of death. There are seasons where three Hebrew boys are thrown into the furnace of fire. There are seasons where the Bible says that things are in this world you will have tribulations, but be of good cheer. It doesn't say because it won't hurt, but because I have overcome the world. The Bible says that we counted all joy when we entered through various tribulations. Though it's for a little bit, we are grieved, yet we counted all joy because our God is a bigger than all of that. You know, I was, we were in the ministry of TB Joshua and we took a group of people from United States, the ministry of TB Joshua, about 60 people at the time. And I was one of the people that was there. They had a Boko Haram terrorist. And Boko Haram is a terrorist organization in Africa that is responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 Christians in the past 10 years. And this Boko Haram terrorist group decided to bring a bomb to the church on that Sunday. And the place they wanted to put that bomb was exactly the place where 60 people from United States were sitting. We were about to, pretty much, we were right by the exit door and they were supposed to place a bomb there and it was supposed to explode. The power of God moved powerfully. Two of those terrorists ran for their life. One of them decided to fight the power of God and end up right. I saw him right in front of me for 30 minutes. He was being delivered. He finally got set free. Then the government police came and arrested him and took him. He accepted Jesus Christ before they took him. I mean, it was incredible. We were protected in the power of God. I mean, that's amazing. But in the same church, 160 people from South Africa came to visit and the building collapsed on them and they died. How do you explain that? I don't, I don't know. So what do you do in situations like these? You know, we have people that we've seen people be healed of cancer and we're believing for that, we're contending for that. Not in any way do I want to give an explanation for why certain things happen. What I want us to do is I want us to learn how to walk through some of those moments in our life. When you have a child that maybe is battling with mental illness, perhaps, you know, one of your spouse left or perhaps you found, you know, your parents are, you know, passed away from a disease or there was an accident or maybe, you know, your business didn't survive the pandemic and you're experiencing certain injustices where somebody went and shot somebody who was very close to you and, you know, like, it just seems unfair, it just seems not right. Where's God and all of that? And so I believe that today God wants to teach us not only to celebrate our victories but learn how to walk through certain things without those things destroying our faith. Amen? With that said, I want to share with you, our time is already gone but I want to share with you just a few of my thoughts. Honestly, it's been, it's been in my head for months already. For a few reasons, there are a few people in our church that have been battling with certain things that we are praying for. I have certain things in my life I'm still believing for God's intervention in. I believe that every person in this room as well has certain things. When the tibijasha passed away, I mean, I'm not going to lie to you, okay, that took me completely by surprise. He was very young still. He seemed like in a good health, you know, why did that happen? And I'm a normal human being, I don't bury my head in the sand. You know, I have questions just like everybody else and just because I'm a pastor, it doesn't mean I'm not a human. Just because I'm a believer, it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean that I don't have confusing moments and sometimes very difficult seasons. I remember when Kelly and Tim was going through a very difficult season. On one side, you know, Tim recovered. I mean, honestly, it was a supernatural thing. His head was literally almost dislocated from his body and today he's walking, he's in his full mind. On the other side, San Levi, you know, he passed away, right? On the scene and it seems like, man, this young boy still had a life ahead of him. You know, and any father, any mother would trade places with their, you know, suffering children, but that's just not how it always happens in this world. And to believe that just because you're going to come to church, live a holy life, speaking tongues 300 miles per hour, that you can avoid all of that is not always the case. And so how do you make sense of all of it? How do you understand it all? The Bible says, completely a little bit on the side, it says to dwell, husbands dwell with your wives with understanding. There's a secret to marriage and that is this, try to understand the other person. That they're not crazy, they're just different. Every husband knows that your wife is most likely opposite of you and the only way to dwell with her is with understanding. Understanding is slightly different. For me, that's a key to my marriage. The problem is this, with God, you can't dwell with God with understanding. Why? Because He's different. He's infinite, you're finite. He's omnipresent, you're present at one time. His ways are higher than yours, His thoughts are higher than yours. He is God and you and I are not. You can dwell with another human being with understanding, meaning they're different, they're experiences, what they went through, they're the opposite gender, there are certain things about them, they're just different than yours and learn to dwell with understanding. The challenge happens is when you dwell with another human being who's just like you with understanding and that is what helps you to dwell with them. When you take that into relationship with God and think, I have to understand everything to dwell with God. But Hebrews 11.6 says that it is impossible to please God, not without understanding but without faith. God says, I'm on a such a different planet. I'm on a such a different dimension. There is nobody like me. You can't compare me to anybody. I have no beginning, I have no end. I live in eternity, I am ancient of days. I am eternal. I was never made, I was never created. I can't fathom things, I can't imagine things. I can't, you know, think of something I haven't never thought about before. I am Almighty God and therefore in order to dwell with me understanding has to give in to trust. He who comes to God must believe that he is God and he is the rewarder of those that seek him. Your understanding will either be enlightened or darkened. In Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter one, verse 18, it says the following is that the eyes of understanding might be enlightened. Come on, somebody say enlightened. Those of you on live stream drop that enlightened. May the eyes of your understanding be enlightened. But if you read later in Ephesians chapter four, verse 18, three chapters later it says having their understanding darkened. So everyone's understanding is either enlightened or their understanding is darkened. So the question today is this, how do you live your life when you can't make sense of things? How do you go through things when it just doesn't seem to fit into this box? You must understand. Hebrews chapter 11, verse three, and this is the title of this message, by faith we understand. Our starting point to understand as Christians is not understanding, it's our trust. For the world they start from the point of trying to make sense and their understanding goes fried. It goes dark. It gets frozen. I don't get it. God must not love me. God must not be with me. God must be mean because he didn't stop this. He allowed this. When your understanding is the point for your understanding, it will darken you. It will confuse you. It will throw you off. You will throw away the cross. You will throw away rational understanding that God is real and he loves you. All of that will go on the backseat. Why? Because understanding became the starting point for understanding. You can't dwell with God based on your understanding. You could only do that if he would be just like you, but what's the point of worshiping someone like you? Why trust somebody who has your limitations, your weaknesses, and your strengths? That's why Israel wanted a king just like other nations. They wanted a king just like them. Someone who had their issues, somebody who could understand them and guess who they got as their first king? Someone just like them. Chronically insecure, demonized, and cuckoo crazy. And then they realized we don't need a king just like us. God always wanted to be their king, but there's one trick to being with God is you can't always understand him. The Bible says his ways are past understanding. His ways are past figuring out. He says, my ways are higher than yours. My thoughts are higher than yours. And see as Christians, when we study the Bible, we get to know God's will and we figure out the formula. If we pray, believe God answers. The problem is that God doesn't work by formula. He works by faith. There are things formulas will not work for. There are things that once you have God's will figured out, God switches the whole thing and changes his ways. We have God's will figured out, but God's ways are past finding out. Sometimes his ways are different than the way we think he should be acting and that's what makes him God. I'm not in any way shifting all the responsibility on suffering, pain, abuse and accidents and hurt, cancer and death on God. No, no, no, no, no. But what I'm saying is this a Christian who trusts in God, who trusts in his sovereignty, who trusts in his goodness, who trusts in his love. You have to give God room to be God. If he doesn't fit into your four by four box, if he doesn't fit into your, I have God figured out box, give him room to be God because that's who he is. If we don't start from the point of faith, our understanding will become our God and it will darken us. Hebrews 11.3 says by faith, we understand. That means our starting point for understanding is not understanding, it's trust in God. Now it makes sense why the wise man said, lean not on your understanding, but in everything. Trust him. God is saying that I want trust in me. Trust me, I got this. Trust me in the valley, I got this. Trust me in the furnace, I got this. Trust me in your healing and trust me in your sickness. Trust me in your prosperity and trust me in your poverty. Trust me when your kids are healthy and trust me if they found a down syndrome. Something in your child, trust me. Come on, somebody touch your neighbor and say trust him. Come on, somebody touch your neighbor and say trust him. If your kid is changing the world or if your kid is sitting in jail, trust me. God says, trust me. I know you do not plan to spend your life like this but God says, can you trust me? Because our understanding starts from the point of trust, not understanding. You know, when I hear the story of our members, you know, Sam and Lorena and you know, Pastor Sam and I remember being a young teenager. I said under his teaching in Jubilee, I'm powerful, powerful, amazing, you know, man of God and when this happened with Lorena, you know, it kind of put his whole life on pause. He stepped away from being, you know, a board of directors. I asked him a few times even to speak and he says, I can't lie because I'm taking care of my wife and I'm pretty sure when he was marrying her that wasn't the plan that he had. What do you do? And they prayed they have their men and women of faith. I mean, you can't find somebody who has that much faith. If you ever met my uncle who passed away, you know, Stefan who co-founded the church with a pastor, you know, there is no, I don't know anybody who has greater faith than that and so, and I asked myself my question, why did it happen? And when there is no answer to why, your understanding has to go back to the place of trust. By faith, we understand. Otherwise, what's going to happen is that if you try to understand by understanding, you will get dark. You will get disappointed. You will get so discouraged. You will throw away the Bible. You will throw away and you will go, guess where you'll go? It won't make your life better. It will go, it will take you into alcohol. It will take you into drugs. It will take you into cutting. It will take you into delusion. It will take you into craziness, my friend, because that's darkness. People say, well, your faith is blind. If you don't have faith, you are blind. The only way to start seeing is to have faith. Otherwise, we're operating in the blind. We're hitting in the blind. We have no idea what's happening. We're not seeing the eternity. We're not seeing the realm of the spirit. When you lose faith, you lose sight. When you lose faith, your mind is no longer in light and it's darkened. I know the world will mock us and say, well, your faith is blind. Listen, atheism is blind because they're not aware of the universe or what's happening behind the universe. They're not aware of the other dimensions. None of the people who push atheism were here 20 million years ago. None of them. And none of them will be here 20 million years ago after this. None of them know everything. But God tells us something and we trust Him. Now, is it risky to trust Him? Yes, it's more risky not to. Proverbs 3.5, it says this, lean not on your understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Somebody say, trust Him. See, our point of understanding is trust. And it says, only not on your understanding. That means I don't lean on my understanding. Could you bring me a chair? But I trust. My point of understanding is the trust. Until I get into the seat of trust, my understanding cannot lead me. It will confuse me. Until I get to the point, trust in the Lord with all your heart. I trust Him. I trust Him that He loves me. I trust Him that He died on a cross for my salvation. I trust Him that even in this world, certain things don't work out the way I planned, prayed, and asked, God is still in control. And at the end, God will settle the score. It will change at the end, and it's not the end yet. Even if somebody died, it's not the end. It might be the end for this person on this earth. It's not the end for this person, they're still alive. It's not the end. And so when I trust Him with all my heart, if something happens, I am free to make my understanding a source of my support. And lean not on your understanding. The problem with many of us is that many of us are sitting on our understanding. If you're gonna try to sit on your understanding, you are holding you. Nothing is holding you. You will get tired and then you will fall. If you trust with all your heart. His goodness, His love for you. His faithfulness, His presence. You will have the freedom to have your understanding enlightened. Enlightened with what? I wanna just enlighten our understanding with the scripture today. Point number two, four truths or a doctrine of suffering. Sin brought suffering, number one. God used suffering to bring salvation, number two. These are truths, these are facts. Number three, at the end, God will end all suffering. He will. All death, all pain, all rejection, all abuse. In fact, God not only is going to end the suffering, He will take away the dark by removing the night. It will always be day. Sun will never go down and it will never rise. He'll remove the need for sun making Himself the ultimate light. He will give us resurrected bodies. I'm not talking about the bodies when you were in the coma and you came back and you're still gonna die. I'm talking about resurrected bodies where you will never, ever get sick again. Where you will never, ever get weak again. Where your back won't hurt. Where your knees won't give out. Where you won't have to take five, six vitamins every single day and watch your blood pressure. He will give you brand new bodies. No matter how healthy, healed, resurrected you get my friend, it is appointed for a man to die. But he will end all of that one day. So that's the third truth about suffering. The fourth one is that God in this present age uses suffering to refine us. If we refuse it, to let it define us. He will use that to purify us. He will use that to still show His glory. If we refuse being offended, disappointed in God and throw the towel. And we have to enlighten our understanding with the truth of God's word. I love what Jesus came back from the, being raised from the dead. The scripture says that He enlightened the understanding of His disciples by explaining the scriptures. He pretty much went down and broke down the scriptures and said, hey guys, this is how it's supposed to be. He was supposed to come and die. He was supposed to be crucified. You got it wrong. He wasn't supposed to come and reign. He was supposed to come and die. He expounded on the scriptures. The problem happens is when we take our theology from what we want to happen in our life. Instead of from the truth, the Bible reveals to us. Bible reveals to us from the beginning God never created death. He never created suffering and He never created sickness. He never created mental illness. He did not create accidents and He did not create disappointing moments. He created world perfectly. But sin entered and with sin came death. Then God went in and how do I know that He loves me? Because He did not let sin run its final course. For God so loved the world. See, God's love for you is not that He answered your prayer or did not answer your prayer. People say, well, God, if God loved me, why did He let my dad die? If God loved me, why did He let me born like this with my eyes? If God loved me, why is my child ill? If God loved me, why did He allow me to go through that heartbreak? If God loved me, why didn't He stop the abuser? If God loved me, why did my parents get divorced when I was two and it threw my life into a spiral and I found myself making very unhealthy decisions. My friend, the proof of God's love is not in what happened in your family. Please, the proof of God's love is not what's happening in your body. The proof of God's love is not what's happening in your bank account. For God so loved the world. It does not say, and then He gave you a healthy body. The Bible doesn't say, for God so loved the world, then He gave you perfectly healthy children. For God so loved the world, He gave you a husband or a wife that was perfect for you. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The greatest thing, the most important thing that proves God's love for you is that He died for you. He died for your eternal salvation. He died that you will become new in Him. He died that you will be forgiven. He died that you will be justified. He died that you will be redeemed. He died that you will be loved. He died that you will be in His family. That is the proof. He loves you. Somebody shout, He loves me. Come on, somebody drop it in the chat. He loves me. Somebody tell your neighbor, He loves you. He never stopped loving you. When you went through the valley of the shadow of death, He did not stop loving you. When you went through the furnace, He did not stop loving you. When your child died, He did not stop loving you. When your business collapsed, He did not stop loving you. Because the cross still remains. When your lungs are on your kidneys, so something else start hurting, He did not stop loving you. Somebody give God some praise right now because He did not stop loving you. He loves you so much. Hallelujah, hallelujah. And lastly, we're going to come to prayer to deal with disappointment. Thank you. To deal with disappointment, we have to overcome four big myths. Myth number one, if I give my life to Jesus, He will take away all of my present sufferings. That's a myth. The reason why it's a myth because Jesus actually is called in Isaiah 53.3 as a man of suffering. Jesus says in John 16 verse 33 that in this world you will have tribulation. That's a promise. Jesus keeps his promises. You will have tribulation. The scripture says in 2 Timothy chapter three that everybody who desires to live godly will be persecuted. So there will be suffering. People will suffer who follow Jesus Christ. In fact, the other truth that is sad that sometimes sufferings only begin when you accept your life, to give your life to Jesus. The real sufferings, the sufferings of rejection, the suffering of being misunderstood, being made fun of and mocked and those sufferings are real. But we don't believe that if you give your life to Jesus Christ ultimately, right away everything, all the suffering ends. It doesn't. Jesus takes saves our soul and many people experience healings. We contend for that. Many experience deliverance and we contend for that. Many experience restoration in the family. We contend for that. But the idea that suffering is gone when Jesus comes in is completely foreign. In fact, unlike other religious leaders who lived in pleasure, who lived eating, feasting and killing people, our savior is the man whose scripture says a man of suffering. He suffered really well. And through his suffering, he redeemed the world. And when he invites us to follow him, he doesn't invite us to pleasure. He invites us to denial. He invites us to pick up the cross. The symbol of Christianity is not a beach, it's the cross. And therefore, throughout Christianity if you read Fox's book of martyrs for 3, 400 years, people did not know the blessings we experienced today. To them to follow Christ meant this. You're gonna spend eternity with him and you're gonna suffer. Today, any motion of suffering, people dropped their faith for people in those days, when you found your faith, it meant one thing. You lost your job, your family most likely will remove you and you most likely will die. Their honor wasn't breakthrough. Their honor was to be martyred, to be just like their savior. This was their honor. When you read those pages, your heart is swollen with tears because you realize how much they love Jesus. Their life wasn't dear to them. It was no more dear than Jesus's life was dearer to him. So we have to get this away that somehow that if I become a Christian, if I accept Jesus Christ, yes, he'll take away loneliness. He will deliver you from demons. Yes, there's healing that's going to take place. Yes, he's gonna fill your heart with peace, but please understand, the world is not a paradise yet. The second myth is, if I just get the Holy Spirit, all of my problems will be over. Well, it's not really true because the Bible says the Holy Spirit helped Jesus to die. Jesus offered himself through the eternal spirit on the cross. The Holy Spirit did not stop the suffering. He helped Jesus to endure it. The fruit of the Spirit is long-suffering. The fruit of the Spirit is not suffering avoidance. It's learning how to suffer well. Not how to not suffer at all. It's how to suffer in a way that actually people can see Jesus, not only in your miracle, but also in your misery. The people will see Jesus, not only when the fire stops, but even if you go through the fire and they see God right in the fire with you, when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death and know that He is with you. And so some people He delivers from it and some people He delivers through it. The myth number three, if I could only have a lot of faith, I will avoid all suffering. And this is really taught by some people who, the moment somebody dies and everybody prayed for, it's such a, I feel like so wrong when they come up and say, well, you guys did not have faith. You just did not have faith. First of all, it's wrong. It's true. Some people don't get healed because of faith. How many people you know who got healed with zero faith? A lot. Some of the craziest miracles I've seen, people barely even prayed for it. Somebody else believed on their behalf. And some of the people where we fasted, we prayed, we sowed finances, every man of God we could think of on the planet, prayed for the person and just things did not happen. So don't say that it was not enough faith. In fact, Book of Hebrews 11 gives us all the crazy miracles that happened through faith. And then it goes into this little part that most of us like to skip. It's in verse 35. It starts with saying things, women receive their dead children to life again. Awesome. Children being raised from the dead. People became violent in battle and they fought and they overcame. And then look what it says in the later part of 35. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain better resurrection. Still others had a trial of mockings and scourgings. Yes, a chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were stoned into two. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins being destitute, afflicted, tormented of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in tents and in caves of the earth. And all these have obtained good testimony through faith did not receive the promise. The Bible doesn't say the reason why they were homeless, the reason why they were running for their life, the reason why some of them were cut in the half, the reason why some of them were beheaded, some of them were skinned alive. The reason why some of them went through that is because they had no faith. Scripture never says that. Faith is not always a bridge over troubled waters. Sometimes it's the path right through them. Some people through faith, some people have faith that enables them to escape troubles. Other people have faith that enables them to endure it. Some faith delivers some from death. Others, it helps them to die victoriously. We cannot see word faith as something that is a magic pill that avoids everything. For us, our faith is anchored in God's love for us and our eternal life. We see God's grace moving, we see the kingdom of God coming, but the kingdom of God is now and not yet. The kingdom of God is now and yet to come. The fullness of that kingdom is still coming. We won't see that fullness when we are here until the king of kings comes in and settles the scores with death, settles the score with Satan, settles the score with the kingdom of darkness. But that time has not come yet. Yes, we drive out demons. Yes, we speak healing to the sick. Yes, we win people for Christ and we are moving and the kingdom of God is advancing. But that time when he will settle the final score is still coming and we're awaiting that time. And that end will not be for us. The end will be to sickness. The end will be to death. The end will be to curses. The end will be to weeping. The end will be to sorrow. The end will be to the valleys and the end will be to the fire furnaces. The end will not be to us. The last myth is that, well, if I only exercise spiritual warfare, all of my sufferings will end. Well, the moment you hear about spiritual warfare, this is one thing. You think like, this is the missing component. Like, I know we prayed for healing. We had faith. What we did not understand is there are demons. And the moment you know about demons, like you found a missing link to your eternal happiness. And how disappointing that will be after you get all the deliverance and everything. And you realize, bones still break. Accidents still happen. Interesting, in a spiritual warfare text, Apostle Paul tells Timothy, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, endure suffering. He says spiritual warfare does not remove suffering. You can drive out all the demons and still suffer and still experience some moments of loneliness and still experience some unexplainable things. We do the ministry of deliverance, but please understand, we don't see ministry of deliverance as a pill that cures the world of everything that sin has ever done. Amen. I wanna encourage each one of you to pray, always believe, never let your understanding jump ahead of your faith in God. Put your understanding after your trust in God. And I wanna encourage you when God removes the suffering, praise Him. If suffering doesn't end, if things you have to learn to live with, I'm not saying to stop praying. I'm not saying to give up trusting in God, but learn to suffer well. I read the book by a search for men's meaning by Victor Frank, it was a Holocaust survivor. And though it's not a Christian book, but it has a really powerful principle, as a quote I really liked. He says, forces beyond our control can take away everything you possess, except one thing, your freedom to choose how you respond to the situation. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. The last of human freedoms, the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. When I read to you a few verses and we're gonna pray. In this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes. Though it is tested by fire, may be found to the praise, honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 1.6 and 7, Habakkuk 3.17, 18 and 19. Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be in the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He will make my feet like deer's feet. He will make me walk on my high heels. And these are not talking about girls having high heels. It means when all of this will be done, He said, I will still rejoice in God. My friend, your faith is so much bigger than just an answer to prayer, which you desired. Your faith is so much bigger than just the temporary things that we all crave and desire. And most of us, we receive it most of the time. We trust in God's word, in His will. But we also know, in this life, when it rains, when it suffers, our foundation is in trust in God. And therefore, once it will be over, the rains will stop, all of the storms will stop. We will be standing, serving, praising and moving forward in God. Amen.