Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on June 8, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Looking at happiness and obedience, which comes first.
The world’s goal is to be happy. But what we’re going to see today is that it is God’s desire for us. He doesn’t want us to be happy as so much as he wants us to be blessed. We could say that happiness is Satan’s substitute in this world for what God really desires for us, and that is that we would be blessed. Happiness is just a temporary high.
It’s like a medication that treats someone’s pain and their symptoms, but it doesn’t really bring a true cure to their life. Being blessed is further, it’s higher and it’s low. Larger in its scope than just being happy. We turn now to Luke chapter 11. I’ll read verses 27 through 28.
As he was saying these things, a woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the one who nursed you. He said, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we look at your word today, once again we thank you that you have given it to us that we might know the way to a right relationship with you through salvation by the work of Jesus Christ and his death, his burial and resurrection. And also that you’ve given it to us to show us how to live our lives.
Father, help us to see how individually, you want each of us to bring our lives more in line with your word today. And by the power of your spirit, we ask you to equip us, to encourage us, to empower us to make those changes. It’s in the name of your Son that we pray. Amen.
He was saying these things, and there was a woman in the crowd. She raised her voice and she yelled out, blessed is the womb that bore you and the one who nursed you. We want to look first at Mary’s example. This woman was basically fulfilling the prophetic word that had been spoken by Mary herself, the mother of Jesus. And we heard words similar to this when she sang what we know as the Magnificat.
Let’s go Back to Luke 1:46, 49, when we read this and Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, because he has looked with favor on the humble condition of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, because the mighty One has done great things for me, and his name is holy. Mary’s path to being blessed began with her relationship with the Lord. God speaks to her and tells her what he is about to bring about.
And her response is, she just says in verse 38, I am the Lord’s servant, may it happen to me, as you have said. So we see in Mary’s example that being blessed is not based on herself. It’s not based on any other humans. It’s based on. On God that he calls her blessed.
Being blessed isn’t based on material wealth. It isn’t based on power. It isn’t based on prestige, because Mary had none of these things. She was poor, she was young, she was unmarried, and now she was what? Pregnant.
Imagine her day, what people were saying about her. But Mary’s example is that in spite of everything that the world would say would make you happy, that she did not have, she understood that she was blessed because of her relationship with the Lord and her obedience to him. The woman was probably referring to Proverbs, chapter 10, where it says, a wise son brings joy to his father, Father, but a foolish son heartache to his mother. Often we look at children and we look at their behavior, and it makes us judge whose character we judge the parents. We look at them.
And the scripture kind of has a negative slant to it. But the positive side is that if you had the perfect son like Mary did, everybody would think you were the perfect. What did any of y’ all have perfect kids? So we don’t have any perfect mothers here today. Mary’s example was she was blessed again because she had a relationship with the Lord and she was obedient to him and she had a son that gave her a good reputation for a while.
Let’s go back to Luke, chapter 11. Now, after the woman makes this statement, Jesus said, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Jesus isn’t correcting the woman on her comment. He’s building upon three different words that are put together here. What he was actually saying is, yes, what you are saying is certain.
But therefore, let me elaborate just a little bit more on something else that’s more important and that is true. Mary’s relationship with the Lord and her obedience led to her being blessed. Therefore, Jesus is telling us that if we follow that same example of relationship and obedience, that we too may be blessed as Mary was. The two criteria that Jesus gives here. First, he says that you’re going to be blessed if you first of all hear the Word, and secondly, if you keep the word.
In other words, there has to be this understanding and there has to be obedience to it.
The Word to hear the word hear doesn’t just mean that you hear it being read or you hear it being spoken. It means that you’re engaged with it. You, you want to know what it means and you’re trying to understand it. If you visit the Ottoman palace in Istanbul, you would hear somebody continually reading the Koran and you walk through and I don’t speak that language. But they think, just the fact that I’m hearing the words, there’s something magical about hearing the words, that it will do something for me spiritually.
Jesus isn’t saying just hearing the Word is enough. What he’s saying is you need to embrace it, you need to seek to understand it. And once you do understand it, that that empowers you to keep it. In other words, to obey it. Jesus isn’t talking about keeping a Bible on a table in your living room or keeping a Bible next to your bed in your bedroom.
He’s saying that you’re keeping it, that you’re desirous to understand it. You know, we really need to think of God’s Word as being a very precious gift for us. It’s a gift first of all, because he gave it to us. He did not have to give us his special written revelation. We also, most of us, have it in a language that we can understand.
God has been working in the background all along to make sure that we have His Word and where we can understand it. And throughout all the years, he’s preserved it and he’s guarded it to keep it accurate so that we really know what his words to us are. And he’s also led individuals and organizations, people have given money, people have worked to make God’s Word available throughout all of the world. And all of these things are a precious gift from God that we need to appreciate. God reveals Himself in what we call general revelation, that we look at the sun and the moon and the stars, we look at animals, we look at other people, we look at the world, and it gives us a sense, yes, there must be a great and awesome God out there.
But His Word is what we call his special revelation. Because without understanding the written word, we wouldn’t know how to have a right relationship with him and we wouldn’t have instructions on how we are supposed to live our life. Part of being blessed means that we hear the Word of God and we also keep the word of God. Let’s look at some definitions of the word here for blessed. Jesus was multilingual.
He spoke Greek, which would have been the language that he would have used speaking to anybody that lived in the Whole Roman Empire. It would have been the language that they used in the marketplace. But he also would have used Hebrew, because Hebrew would be what their scriptures were written in. So if he studied the word of God, the religious leaders would have been spending time in the Hebrew language. And the people also spoke another language called Aramaic, because they had been dispersed into other nations.
And when they went to those other nations taken captive, they picked up the language there, which was called Aramaic, which was quite similar to Hebrew. I’m not multilingual, but if you know several languages and someone speaks a word, your mind immediately goes to the different languages that you know to try to get an understanding, to put all of it together here. So we want to look at the. The Greek word, and we also want to look at the. The Hebrew word.
Now, Jesus was probably speaking to these Jewish followers in Aramaic in their common, everyday language. But the writers of the New Testament chose to translate all of this or write it down into Greek, because that was the language that could be dispersed throughout the world. The Greek word makarios, here talking about blessed. It means possessing the favor of God, marked by fullness from him, and having full satisfaction no matter the circumstances. The key there is that this makarios, this blessed part that we have in our lives, it doesn’t come from anybody else.
It doesn’t come from ourselves. It doesn’t come from anything. To be truly blessed, it means that you possess a favor that comes from God, and it’s marked by fullness that comes from nothing else except for him. And it results in a full satisfaction no matter the circumstances. Aristotle compared the happy person to the person that had makarios.
The happy person was someone who was needy, but the person, the hemakarios, was a person. They were in this world, yet they were independent of this world, meaning they didn’t have to have anything to be happy. Blessedness comes about no matter what your state is in life. This blessedness, it’s not based on anything in this world. It’s based on something that is spiritual and eternal, that only comes from God the Father.
And there’s also the hint here, when we are blessed, when we are under God’s favor, that we’re not living so much in this world. But what Aristotle says, we’re looking to the other world. We’re going to live eternally. We can see the connection that living in this world, but not of this world is something that we talk about, believers, that we are in this world, but actually we’re citizens of another world. We’re citizens of the kingdom of God.
R.K. hughes defines it this way. He says, contrary to popular opinion, blessed does not mean happy, even though some translations have rendered it this way. Then he says, happiness is a subjective state. It’s just a feeling. But Jesus is not declaring how people feel.
Rather he is making an objective statement about what God thinks of them. Blessed is a positive judgment by God on the individual. That means to be approved or to find approval. When I was going through school, I always wanted to please the teacher. Any teacher pleasers in here.
I’m looking to see who I would think would be that way.
It was more important for me that the teacher was pleased with me than what the kids thought at school. And there was a certain element of fear there if I didn’t please them. But when I was seven years old, I fell in love with my second grade teacher as much as a seven year old could. I mean, I wanted to please all my teachers. But Ms. May was special.
Okay, she had long blonde hair and she’d take us outside and read Charlotte’s Web to us. We had cool projects. But I was just absolutely enthralled with her. And what I wanted wasn’t just to be happy in her room. I wanted to be blessed by her.
I wanted her approval to think that I was special or she thought I was doing the right thing. And her approval was worth more than a million dollars to me. Can you relate with what I’m saying? I wasn’t just happy, I wanted to please her. And when I knew she was pleased with me, then it was wonderful.
She didn’t come back. The next year she got married and had a baby. I was so disappointed because I was planning on marrying her so.
But I’m thankful that I didn’t because I have something far more wonderful here. Being blessed is having God’s favor. It comes from him. It’s a positive judgment. It’s about what he thinks about us.
And that is more wonderful and more worthwhile than just being happy.
Jesus gave us an example and it answers this question. Why does it feel like we’re not very blessed? And it’s because we put blessed with happiness. It’s not related to how you feel. It’s based on what you know.
Because Jesus told us in John 17, I have given them your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world. And just as I am not of the world, I am not praying that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world. Just as I Am not of the world.
And we go back to Aristotle’s definition. People can be happy when they live in this world. But in order to be blessed, all of your contentment has to be based on something outside of this world. And Jesus is reminding us that we’re not going to be happy in this world. We’re going to be persecuted in this world because we’re really not part of this world.
We’re just in it presently. We’re in part of something that’s more important. We’re part of God’s kingdom where we can truly be blessed. Abraham lived his whole life this way. In Hebrews, chapter 11, we read by faith.
Abraham, when he was called, he heard God’s word. It says that like Mary, then he obeyed. And he immediately set out for not a specific place, but just a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. How many of you have ever gone on a vacation that you have no idea where you’re going?
I mean, you might be going to Antarctica, you might be going to the Sahara desert. Who knows where you’re going? You’d have to pack for everything. I would not take my wife on a trip like that. She likes to know where we’re going.
You know, follow the maps, ask for directions. Robert, don’t just drive down the road. Think how Sarah felt. What do you mean? Well, what do I need to pack?
Well, I don’t know. I don’t know where we’re going. We’re just following God. Well, what if we’re going here? Do I need shorts or do I need dresses?
You know, how am I supposed to pack?
But Abraham was blessed because God said he was blessed and he obeyed him. It says he went out even though he did not know where he was going. And by faith, he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise. And he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. Even when he got there, he knew it was not his permanent residence.
And he. He lived intense. He wasn’t just looking for the promised land. More important, he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. He was looking forward to being blessed outside of this world one day, for eternity.
Spiritually, we are like Abraham who lived in a tent. He had no permanent residence in this world. So when we’re suffering, when we are tired, when we are troubled, when we are distraught, we can know for certain that we’re just in a temporary place. But there is a permanent kingdom that is yet to come. And scripture tells us we are heirs of that kingdom because we are blessed.
Therefore, we’re to live in this world, but we’re to live not for this world, but for the eternal kingdom of God we’re not supposed to live in. And for the temporary kingdom of Satan that we call this world. Once again, Satan offers a substitute for being blessed. He offers happiness. But happiness will come to an end.
Happiness is fleeting, but being blessed is eternal. When they heard Jesus use these words, they would have gone back to their original Hebrew language and they would have heard in their mind, oh, yeah, we’ve heard this word in the Psalms. It’s used a lot in the songs that we sing. So in Hebrew the word would be esher. It’s a noun, not an adjective, but a noun, meaning a person’s state of bliss.
And it’s usually an exclamation that really it should not just say blessed, but it should say, oh, the bliss of. Or the New Living Testament says, oh, the joys of someone. Blissful is a noun that describes a state of extreme happiness. Joy, contentment is often associated with a sense of peace and well being. And it implies a profound level of happiness that feels serene and enduring.
It’s something wonderful to have. It’s like being on cloud nine or being in the seventh heaven or walking on air. We see it in Psalm 146, verses 5 through 6. Happy or the word here is blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. Being blessed revolves around our relationship with, with God.
All of our help and assistance comes from him, and all of our hope for everything that we desire and that we need. It’s not in things, it’s not in other people, it’s not in ourselves, but it’s hope in the Lord our God, because we have a relationship with him. But according to the psalmist, being blessed also has to do with being obedient to God. And a most popular psalm that we all know is Psalm 1. Let’s read some of it there.
How happy or here again it is. Blessed is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, or stand in the pathway with sinners, or sit in the company of markers. And there’s a punctuation there. It’s an exclamation point. It’s just something very small.
But the translators are trying to tell us this. This is a very excited and joyful statement we’re making. Oh, how happy are these people that live this way, Verse two says instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. We’re talking about a relationship with God accompanied by obedience to him. Let’s go back to Luke 11 again, where Jesus said rather blessed are those who first they hear meaning.
They comprehend the word of God, but they also keep it. And we see that here in Psalm 1. How happy or how blessed is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked. They do not stand in the pathway with sinners, and they do not sit in the company of mockers. This is the keeping of God’s word.
That’s what this blessed person is doing. But there’s also the hearing and the comprehending. Because in verse two it says that his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it on Sundays. Is that what it says? And he doesn’t just read it either.
Meditate means to be like a cow. They chew the cud, if you understand cows, they have more than one stomach. They bring the food in and then they regurgitate it and they chew on it some more, and they swallow it, and it goes through the whole process of digestion. That’s what the word here means, that we not only take God’s word in consciously, but we think about it. We stir it around in our minds so that we can digest it and fully understand it.
The blessed person in Psalm 1 is keeping God’s word, and they’re also hearing God’s word to comprehend it. What does it tell us about this man? What is it like to be blessed? Poetic language sound he is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
So if you ever had fruit trees, what do you expect the fruit tree to do? Bear fruit. And it’s really nice when every time you go out and there are no bugs on the leaves and the leaves haven’t been eaten by the deer.
I planted apple trees last year, and the deer ate two of them, so I moved one up to the house. And then during the winter the rabbits ate that. I mean, it’s that apple tree was not doing what it was meant to do, and it certainly didn’t look like it was supposed to. But when you have a fruit tree where all the leaves are gorgeous and it has beautiful fruit, fruit, it’s just a great joy because that tree is doing what it was designed to do. And part of being blessed is that when God is in our lives and we’re obeying him, we all of a sudden begin to live our life and do what we were created to do and what we were created to be.
When we are blessed, we are doing well what we were created to be and what we’re were created to do. So I want you to imagine that you’re a car, okay? Can you just imagine whatever kind of car you want to be? You’re doing your thing when you’re what, when you’re driving down a road or you’re on the expressway going as fast as you can. You’re blessed when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
But if you get on the ferry and for some reason you go off into the water, all of a sudden as a car, you’re no longer doing what what you’re supposed to do until you follow the Lord. You’re like a car trying to act like a boat, or you’re like a dog trying to give milk, like a cow, okay? You’re truly blessed when God is in your life because then you’re like this tree that’s doing everything it’s supposed to do and only what it’s supposed to do.
The psalmist goes on to tell us in verse four, but the wicked are not like this. Instead they are like chaff that the wind blows away. They’re the car that gets blown off the ferry. Therefore, the wicked will not stand up in the judgment when they stand before God. They’re going to have to to fall away because they don’t have any reason to stand there in his righteousness.
And there’s nothing permanent about their eternal life. It says, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. No relationship with God. Disobedience to God relates to being in a non blessed state. Yes, they might be happy, but it’s not not something that lasts eternally.
In verse 6, the Psalmist sums it up. The Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. It’s God that’s doing it. It’s God that declares that we are blessed. Let’s go to Matthew chapter five, where we’re going to look just very briefly at what we call the Beatitudes, or how people that are part of God’s spiritual kingdom are supposed to live.
And this word blessed is used over and over again. But I retranslated here. Oh the joys, Jesus said, oh, the joys of those who are poor in spirit. Oh the joys multiple of those who mourn. Oh, the Joys of the humble.
Oh, the joys of those who hunger and thirst, thirst. Oh, the joys of the merciful. Oh, the joys of the pure in heart. Oh, the joys of the peacemaker. And oh, the joys of those who are persecuted because of righteousness.
Now, when you first look at this, I’m joyful if I’m poor and if I’m crying and if I’m humiliated and I’m hungering and I’m thirsty, thirsty. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but Jesus is speaking about spiritual truths here, about what it means to be living in a blessed state in the kingdom of God. So what we see here is that it’s divided into two parts. There is a relationship with God, and that relates to the first four. And there is a relationship with others for people that are blessed, that live in the kingdom of God.
And we could spend a long time, many sermons, going through each of these, but I’m going to try to briefly explain them today. What does it mean to be poor in spirit? It means to be spiritually bankrupt. It means that we realize we have nothing to do that can take us into eternity. We can’t drive fast enough.
We can’t pay enough money. We can’t take a rocket. There’s nothing we can do that makes certain what happens to us after we die. We are completely bankrupt spiritually. And when we come to a point in our life that we realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, all that we have left is to turn by faith to God and say, God, I know that I can’t do anything to secure my salvation.
Nothing that I can do can get me into a blessed state, except I place my faith in you alone. Because where I am spiritually bankrupt, you have everything necessary for me.
If you come to that point in your life, accompanied with your faith, there also is repentance. According to scripture, that’s where Jesus says, those who mourn will be blessed. What do we mean here? It’s talking about sorrow for sin. If you don’t understand that your sin has condemned you from having a right relationship with God, you don’t understand what salvation is.
We don’t just get saved and place our faith in Jesus Christ to have eternal life. We’re also repenting and we’re turning away from a life that we’ve been living for ourself, that we’ve been living for the world. Those that are truly best, they realize they’re spiritually bankrupt and they have this deep sorrow for sin. And it doesn’t just Happen one time. We should live our entire lives day by day, always sorrowing for sin.
We should feel guilty, we should feel bad when we recognize sin in our life and come back to the Lord in repentance and confession and always continually bring that back up to him. But it’s also talking about sorrow for sin. As we look out in the world, it’s really easy for us to see other people doing things that we think are evil. And we jump really quick to judging them. Don’t judge people for their sin.
God’s going to do that. Our proper attitude is to help have deep sorrow for them that they are in sin and they do not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
What happens when people come in faith and repentance to God? We’re slaves to God. But it says that we’re now going to be humble. The word humble here means it’s a gentle strength. It’s like a gentle giant, you know.
You know, some people, and they’re just really bulked up, you know, and they’re. They look like great football players and. But then you talk to them and it’s like, wow, they really love me and they care for me, because there’s a gentleness there. But, you know, they could rip you apart, you know, just by looking at you. The word here in the Greek is talking about an animal that’s very strong, like it.
Like an oxen, or they use it to talk about horses. There’s a lot of strength there that could destroy things and tear things apart. But when that animal is humble, they don’t lose their strength. They just become gentle and they use their strength for the right things. So Christians aren’t supposed to be people that we’re so humble, meaning that people can walk over us.
It means that we are using the strength that God gives us, but we’re using it for the right reasons. And fourthly, in our relationship with God, not only are we humble toward him, but it says that we’re supposed to hunger and thirst for righteousness. And that means here that we are desperate to conform to how God wants us to live. We’re talking about hungering and thirsting here. We’re not talking about your looking at your watch.
And roast is going to be ready at 12:30. So you’re hungry. Don’t raise your hand if that’s what you’re doing. What we’re talking about here is someone who literally, they’re hungry and they don’t know when their next meal is going to come or they’re out in the middle of the desert and they don’t know where the next oasis is and they have run out of water. People that are starving, people that are about to die of thirst.
This is the way we’re supposed to continually feel about wanting to live our lives according to God’s standards. We have this desperation. God, how can I obey you more today? What am I hearing in the message? What am I reading in your word that you want me to do?
And I’m desperate to do that. People that are blessed have all of these things in their life, but it doesn’t only affect our relationship with God, but Jesus says it reflects our relationship with others. People that are blessed are merciful. And it doesn’t mean you look at somebody and say, oh, I’m sorry you’re hurting, or I’m sorry you have needs. Being merciful is active compassion for the suffering.
It goes beyond just feeling for people. It’s when you actually do something to assist them and help them.
People that have a right relationship with the Lord are also pure in heart. And that doesn’t mean they only think good thoughts or they don’t think evil things, that there isn’t lust there. It means that there’s this single minded devotion to God, that I’m not wanting to please anyone else, I’m not wanting to please myself. I. I’m just continually thinking, what do I need to do today? And your continual thought is my thing to do today is to be obedient to the Lord and to follow him.
That’s what pure in heart means. And then it says, we’ll be peacemakers. That doesn’t mean when someone complains and talks bad or they’re upset and angry, you just sit there and say nothing and nod your head no. To be a peacemaker is to be an energetic conflict solver. It’s like someone that goes in for counseling, a counselor, if they’re a good counselor, they’re not only going to love the person and show appreciation for what they’re doing right?
But if somebody’s doing something wrong, what’s a good counselor going to do? They’re going to tell them, you know, you need to change here. That’s what peacemakers do. And within the church, whenever we hear people that are upset, when they’re bothered, when they’re complaining about other believers or complaining about one thing or they’re causing problems, don’t just stand there and nod your head and think that that’s going to solve the problem. You need to step in and figure out, look, you’re Thinking wrong here or you’re causing conflict, you need to energetically try to bring about peace in our relationships.
And the last thing is that Jesus says that in regard to others, we’re going to be persecuted because of righteousness. And what that means is our lives are going to be testimonial living. If you’re living for the Lord and people see you living for the Lord, you’re going to get persecuted in one way or another. Whether it’s small and just that people think you’re odd, or people think bad of you, or they outright do something to hurt you. That type of life is what our life is supposed to be like.
What does Jesus say these people will have? Then we go back and we look at verse three. They’re going to have the kingdom of heaven, something more wonderful than the kingdoms of this world. They’re going to be comforted, they’re going to inherit the earth, they’re going to be filled from showing mercy. Then God is going to show them mercy.
The wonderful thing is that they will see God face to face. And everything that you enjoy, everything that brings delight to you. When you see God face to face in his presence, you’re going to feel more delight and joy than anything else you’ve ever experienced. And not only has God called us to be his slaves, but we are called to be his children, part of his family. And we are told that if we are truly blessed, we have a right relationship with God, then the kingdom of heaven is going to belong to us.
Oh, the joy that we have is based on, not on what is in this temporary time, but oh, the joy, this blessedness that we have. It’s based on what will be and what is eternal. So we come to a closing. Today. We all have to say we fit in one of two categories.
We can go to the next slide. Deb, first question. Are you a believer? Is this evident in your life? Has there been a point that you said, well, I’m spiritually bankrupt.
I’m placing my faith in Jesus Christ? Has there been a time in your life that you understood how awful sin is in God’s presence and you wanted to turn from that and be repentant? Are you humble? Are you desperate to conform, to live the way that God wants you to? And is this all result in mercy and purity in heart and being a peacemaker?
If you say no to all those questions, or most of them, you’re probably not a believer. You’ve not come to the point in your life that you placed your faith in Jesus Christ if that’s where you are today, I encourage you tell God, God, I am a sinner. I’m sorry for the way that I’ve been living. I want to turn and live for you, but I don’t know what to do about it other than to trust you by faith that you’re going to change me, that you’re going to make me right with you. For the rest of us that say yes, I know that I’m a believer.
I encourage you to look down that list. Maybe you’re not hungering and thirsting for righteousness as much as you should be. Maybe you’re at 10%, maybe you’re at 90%. There’s something here today that you can improve in being pure in heart, being more merciful, being a peacemaker. Ask God to show you what you need to focus on.
If it’s not all of these things, at least one of them. And if you ask him to help you to make these changes in your life, you, he is going to answer that prayer and empower you to do so. So as Kelly Jo comes and leads us with the worship team as we close today, that’s what I want you to have in your mind. What do you need to do in response to today’s message? May we pray?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this state of blessed living that you have given to us. Father, let us truly put aside the desires for happiness in our life and value more greatly being people that live under your pleasure and your recognition and your work in our life that we are your children. Help us to look to eternity more than we look to this world. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.