The Eyes of Your Heart, Eph, 1:18-19a

Good before noon. We want to look at this passage here in Ephesians 1, 18 and the first part of 19. One thing that I think I even noticed Mike kind of scratching his head about and squinting at me was, you know, boy, Vern, it seems like you're clipping right out of the middle of this thing. Well, let's take a look here.

One thing to remember, we pointed out in the past that Ephesians 3 through 14 is all one sentence in the Greek, okay? And as we step into 15 through the end of the chapter, that's all one sentence, too. And interesting, those who have taken a look at Greek literature say those are 3 through 14, the longest sentence in all of Greek literature, and 15 through 23 that we're looking at here is the second longest sentence.

So we're in the middle of a long sentence, okay? And admittedly, we're kind of clipping out of the middle. What a number of the English translations do is they'll put various breaks in there to kind of, you know, break it up according to English, you know, writing a little more normally. But the truth is we're kind of clipping into the middle of a sentence. And so, yes, we're sort of in the middle of a thought, but keep that in mind. And I think we'll keep it also in context.

So we've looked at 15 through 17. We've finished that this last week, but we're going to start kind of continuing on, and so we're going to ignore that little period there at the end of 17 in the knowledge of him. And it's really continuing on with the sentence in the Greek. And so we'll be looking at 18 through about the middle of 19 here. I'll call it 19A as we look at the next part of the passage.

Now, there's a few things most of you are aware I typically read from the New American Standard. and make note of what the King James has for a lot of the key words so that folks can track with me. But there's a few things to note here. This is actually a passage, this portion of it, I think the King James actually does a better job of conveying what the original language has. And so I want to note one thing. This, I pray that, is actually not in the Greek text. And a lot of the New American Standard will have it in italics to reflect that. So I'm going to do a little clip here and take that out.

Now, so there's part one. The other thing to note here is here's where the King James, the eyes of your, and the King James has an understanding, but the eyes of your heart here, being is where the King James puts it and it kind of implies a past tense and that's actually more correct because it's a perfect passive participle, it's a completed past action. A better sense of that would be not looking to the future, but actually seeing it as a past event. Now, here's a way to check this.

Suppose you look at this and you say, well, how do I know Vern isn't just bonkers here? Well, let's look at 2 Corinthians 4, 6, and look at what Paul writes to the church at Corinth there. For God who said, let light shine out of the darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. And what do we note?

Here has shown in the verse is the same Greek word, potizo, as is translated enlightened in Ephesians 1.18, and is also in the past tense, just like in 1.18.

And it also matches that up with hearts. So here is the statement, the Lord has already shown or enlightened our hearts in the past. So that fits more than looking to some future event, okay? All right, now, so this comes to, as you'll see in your handout, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened is closer to the original language sense there, okay? The eyes of your heart having been enlightened.

Now, let's look, let's just kind of summarize this verse and the next and get the idea here. Starting with verse 17, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you, so here's Paul's prayer, a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, that's what we finished off with last week, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and, final thought, what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. That's the content of Paul's prayer if we look at the whole thing there. Now, let's take a look at this one little bit at a time here.

The eyes of your heart, the King James has this understanding, and really that's not any problem at all. What the King James translators did is they said, rather than translating it directly, let's take the metaphor over into what it means. And so that's exactly what they did. The Greek word is literally heart. And it's the sense, not this little thumpy thing we've got in our chest, but it's the sense of the inner person, okay? And it's a similar way that we tend to use heart as a metaphor, not as the literal beating thing that's in our chest. The inner person is what it's referring to.

So is this what Paul had in mind? Eyes on the heart there. Is that what Paul had in mind? Not exactly. So what Paul has done is he's given us a metaphor, hasn't he? He's given us a metaphor. So the eyes of your heart, having been enlightened, This is so that you will know what is the hope of his calling, okay? There is an outcome that's intended here. What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us of belief? This is what he's looking towards. This is the focus of his prayer. He wants there to be a defined outcome. Alright, so this term heart here is a metaphor, it refers to the inner person. It was a term that certainly the Greeks would understand, but actually the Jews had used it for quite some time as the inner person, including the will and the mind and the emotions.

And so we see several Old Testament references. I've given several on your handout from Genesis. In fact, we could go through much of the Old Testament, and you will find that only rarely is the word heart used for this little thing in our chest that beats. Instead, what you'll find is most of the references to heart in the Old Testament are indeed to the same use that Paul has, the inner person, okay?

The mental picture is that there would be eyes on the heart, and what we find is that's uniquely Paul's, and I'll call it a mixed metaphor. The heart is a metaphor, and having eyes on it are certainly a metaphor, okay? And what Paul has done is mix these metaphors together, and he seems to be the unique one in all of literature in his time to have come up with that.

It seems to have been a creative thing that he's come up with. Matter of fact, in searching through all ancient literature, the closest we come up with is out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. May he illuminate your heart with the discernment of life. Sort of close, but not quite there.

So Paul's got a very unique metaphor that he's coming up with. Eyes of the heart. That's a special metaphor that only Paul has done, to mix the two. One thing, as we make clear here, Paul is praying that these believers would have eyes in their hearts, so to speak, that they would see deeply, seeing what's going on spiritually.

By praying that, there's one thing that's quite clear though, from Scripture, and this is even from the Old Testament, the Lord does indeed see our hearts, doesn't he? The Lord sees our hearts, there's no question about that. So he's not praying that the Lord would see, he's praying that we would see. The Lord certainly sees everything spiritually. It is only on our behalf that there is an issue, and He wants the believers there to grow in this regard, in their understanding, having had their eyes enlightened. Let's look farther into this passage here. There's a few words that come out here, and eyes and heart and enlightened, and what's interesting is the Greek words that are behind that show up in our language as well, so you'll recognize them.

If you've been to a doctor that deals not just with these lenses, but with diseases and conditions of the eye, you'll go to an ophthalmologist. So he uses this word, ophthalmos, which is where we get the word ophthalmologist. And so that's what he's referring to. If you want to get your heart checked out, you'll go to a cardiologist. And so this word, cardias, is the very word that Paul draws on, same root.

And then finally, if you have been around here the last few months, you've noticed that Norm has been taking photos. He's been photographing us. He's been shooting us, if you will, and capturing us digitally. And so that's a word that is again related to the Greek word.

So we've got words in our language that relate to this very source here. So when he says, the eyes of your heart enlightened, it's words that they certainly understood, and that we actually have roots in our language as well. But there's a cultural insight we want to bring out here. This word photizo, which is the verb for enlightened or shining, those among the church in Ephesus who are reading this, who are of Greek background, would have heard this word in the context of their pagan religions that they had grown up with, And it was used by the people in the pagan religions to speak of people who kind of understood things spiritually, okay? So it would have been a word that they would have been accustomed to in that context. They would have understood it that way.

But he's not done. It's interesting, this word shows up a number of times in the Greek version of the Old Testament, which is what they would have read commonly in the Jewish communities, because they're in Ephesus here, not in Jerusalem. So the Greek version would have been common to them, and it was frequently used for insight from God, or speaking of the presence of God. And so the word shows up a number of times. So both the Greeks and the Jews would have had an understanding of what Paul is talking about.

Okay, let's look at this next phrase that comes up in verse 18. so that you will know what is the hope of his calling. Let's zero in on that on three words and one of them is know and then hope and calling. Those three. Now, first one here is Edo. This is to know by perception. So here he's talking about this knowing that you may know.

This verb is actually a perfect passive And you might say, what's that? And it tells us that Paul is praying with actually an idea of a completed past action of knowing, ongoing results into the future, that's the perfect tense, by God having done the work of bringing them to know by perception. That is, God's the one who does the work of having us know, not us. It's God's action for us to know, not ourselves working to the place of getting to know.

So this perfect tense implies also permanence, the idea that he wants them to understand and keep it fixed in their mind, have it fixed in their mind, and that's the direction towards which he's praying. He wants them to keep on having this understanding. You see that? He's praying in that direction. He desires for them not to just know it and then pass on it sometime, but to keep on living and knowing. That's the intent. Now, there's this next one, hope. And the Greek word there is elpis. I know it sounds like help us, but that's not what it means. It's elpis. It is not an I hope so kind of hope, and that's real important for us to get across here. Paul doesn't want them to just have hope in a human sense. That is, if we have an expectation of a possibly good outcome, Isn't that what we think of when we think of people having hope? That we have an expectation of a possibly good outcome. It might come out this way, and we sure hope so. It would be nice if it did.

See that? That's not what he's talking about here. He's talking instead here, he desires them to know absolutely and with a certain expectation that is basic to their position in Christ and which is irreversible and untouchable in the heavens. It's that kind of a hope.

It's a certain hope, it's a real hope, it's a fixed hope. It's not a hope that you have some doubts about. It's not a hope that you have prominently positive ideas about but you know in the back of your mind it might not turn out that way. It's a certain, fixed, absolute hope. We actually rarely speak of hope in those terms in English, don't we? In our culture, we don't talk of hope that way because the only thing that's certain is death and taxes, right?

But this is what he's talking about. This is a certain and absolute expectation. Important to get the distinction. This isn't the hope that the world conveys to us. You see, the world is constantly holding out hope, isn't it? But it's a hope that often disappoints. Isn't that what an advertisement is? It's offering out a hope?

If you're like me and you're past 50, if you put this thing on or you take this pill, you'll look like you're 20. That's what the advertising does, is it gives you hope, but when you chase it down, you find out it doesn't do that. If you buy the Cadillac, you don't get the girl. You get the payment, but not the girl. So the world holds out hope, but it's not like this hope.

Real key that we see the distinction and the difference. Now, calling is the next word that comes out there, and there's something we have to clarify here. When we say calling, we're not talking about this thing, because calling has nothing to do with Nokia. And by the way, the Lord doesn't call and say, can you hear me now? That's not the point. We don't mean to imply that at all. Instead, here's what we're looking at.

It's an invitation from God Himself into the eternal and unfathomable blessings with which we've been blessed in Christ. That's what it is. It is a personal invitation from God. It's funny, when you go through seminary courses or you read any theology books, they get really big into trying to get real technical with all this thing. They forget this is personal. When God gives you a calling, He's not being theological. He's being personal. He's not trying to solve some sort of theological argument.

He's saying, I invite you. That's what it means. That's what it means. We saw when we went through Philippians, this word paired up with the word upward, upward calling, was a pair of words that was used in an athletic event. and you got the upward call was not the call to come home and be with the Lord, the upward call was to come to the judge's table and receive your reward and your invitation to the victor's banquet. So this calling is personal and it's special. It's not theological, in spite of what they teach in the seminaries. Now, the next part here. What are, and this is the thing he's, again, we have to remember, he's praying that they have this understanding, okay?

What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints? Now that's a kind of a full phrase there, so let's take a look at it a little at a time. One of the things we notice, there's a pattern in Paul's writings that tends to stand out. Paul wrote both riches of the glory and riches of his glory, and he put both in there, and we see these references in Romans. We see them here in Ephesians, and we'll continue to see them later on in Philippians and Ephesians, and in Colossians as we study through it.

One of the things that comes across real clear as we take a look at these, God's glory is not a small thing. God's glory is not some sort of a minor and incidental feature. God's glory is not some little tiny thing off in the corner. God's glory instead is major. And one of the things that is interesting, He has this word riches that stands out, and if you want to substitute in your mind wealth, go ahead. Okay? Wealth. wealth of glory. God is not minuscule, minor, and barely sufficient in His glory. God's glory is major, substantial. There is a wealth of glory, an abundance of glory.

That's the picture that keeps coming across. Every time we see it, that's how it gets described. Here's what's even more amazing. We saw in Ephesians 1.14 that we have been made an inheritance. Now that's interesting. That was passive voice.

You don't get to earn being an inheritance, by the way. You don't get to earn it. You don't get an inheritance button. There's no awards for an inheritance. You have been made an inheritance. God gets the award. But here he makes it abundantly clear we are God's inheritance. Now does that make you scratch your head? We're God's inheritance?

You're kidding! I mean, I'm balding, I'm a little short, you know, my knee isn't as good as it used to be, and I can't run as fast as I used to. I'm an inheritance? Really? That's what's amazing. What makes me worth being an inheritance? What? What on earth could possibly make me worth being an inheritance? It's who we are in Him. That's what makes us worthy of being an inheritance. It's His glory in us. It's His glory shared with us. That's what makes us worthy. It's His glory in us.

Isn't that amazing? The Lord is not only glorious, He not only has riches of glory, He shares it. He doesn't just say, He says, I will share my glory with you, believers. If you're a believer here this morning, if you put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you're included in this. You are in Him, and He is sharing His glory with you. That's His plan. Not just for a while, not just for five minutes, Not just after you've eaten breakfast. Sharing His glory. This is part of His eternal plan. This is His eternal plan.

Let's look at Romans 8.18.

For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The headache you had this last week. And maybe it was big, maybe it was little. That problem you've been having. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

When I first came on at Holly Hills, and that's coming up on three years ago now, matter of fact it was like the first Sunday in June that I came here for the first time, I was in the middle at that time of a situation where the company that I had worked for had sued another company. And so I was a prime witness. So before I came on, that was the case, and you know how legal cases are, they can drag on. And up until almost a couple years ago, still, you know, going through and I had to fly back and go give testimony.

And believe me, sitting there in front of an attorney who's grilling you and trying to make you look like a fool and that kind of thing, it's not fun. Okay? Anybody who thinks it is, let me know. It'd be real interesting to see why you think that is. But, it's not fun.

The reality is, we go through all kinds of things, and it can even be sufferings from some attorney, where he says, you know, raise your right hand, do you swear to tell the truth, and he doesn't want you to, okay? Even if it's that situation, okay, that's not worthy to be compared with the glory that's to be revealed in us. The sufferings that we go through, and some of them can be immense, and they're of all kinds, aren't they? The sufferings that we go through are not worthy to be compared to this glory. That's what he means by riches. Something else here, this to is the Greek word ais, and it's interesting, this is revealed to us, the classical meaning of this is really into, revealed into us, okay? Revealed into us.

Let's take a look at Romans 8.28, just a little farther down there. He also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son. And I'm kind of zeroing in on the middle of 28 and 29 and 30. But that conforming process includes he also glorified.

We are positionally glorified, right? Glorified. It's not just a little bit of glory dust. It's His glory, okay? We're conforming, being conformed to His image, and that's not happening by an extreme makeover, okay? Not in the sense that you'd see on TV.

It's happening because of the things that God causes to work together, including attorneys, okay? Including things that you wake up in the morning and discover, oh now that hurts, okay? including the things that irritate us, including the accident you weren't planning on having. Hopefully you don't plan on too many of those. But the key thing is all those things that are happening, those are part of the process of that conforming that's going on.

Let's look at another one here, 2 Corinthians 3.18, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as an emir the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

There is a process here. Now, let's define something because we can talk about glory, and I need to tell you it's not fighting in a war, primarily. It's not winning a football championship. It's not the neighbor girl next door. Glory is the radiant essence of who God is. Glory is the radiant essence of who God is. As we saw as we were studying through the end of Revelation, the Lord won't need to have any son. It'll be day constantly. Why? Because of the radiant essence of who He is. Okay? His glory. Okay. Another cultural insight here. Can you stand those? Hope so. Okay.

The gods and goddesses that were present among the Ephesians, and remember we said before, the Ephesians, from all the records we have, worshipped as pagans about 50 gods and goddesses. They may have worshipped more, but that's the number we can catalogue as we go through it.

The gods and goddesses were self-seeking human beings. They said, what are you going to do for me, so I'll do something for you. And you were hoping to get their favour, but the gods and goddesses that the people of Ephesus had worshipped for all these decades and centuries, never blessed the people, never really cared about the people. They just wanted, you do something for me and I'll do something for you.

Instead, what we find here is Paul is teaching this teaching about a God who loves them and cares for them. that someone would actually be an inheritance was absolutely unheard of. That anybody who worshipped any of those gods would be an inheritance for that God, totally unheard of. What Paul brought in was radical, radical good news. Amazing. Here is a God who actually cares about me. That is phenomenal. That is phenomenal.

And let me tell you, that's phenomenal in our culture. That's phenomenal in our culture too. We have all sorts of gods in our culture, and those gods don't love people. Do you notice that? People are desperate, people are hopeless, people are taking all kinds of things to try to correct their difficulties and imbalances in their person, and a good deal of it is simply this, the gods and goddesses of our culture, are insufficient, inadequate, self-centered gods and goddesses. This is special good news. Our culture desperately needs it. Not as a culture, but the people in it. He taught them about a God that genuinely loved them. That was unique. That was a special cultural insight for his time and for now. Here's an amazing thing to think about.

Don't we live in a phenomenal universe? Have you thought about that? We have this telescope that we've sent out there, the Hubble, and it comes back with some amazing pictures of different things. Galaxies and a nebula. Phenomenal things that are out there. Amazing things. Billions of galaxies. And I don't have to quote Carl Sagan. Billions and billions of galaxies.

But you know what? God says, I'll get rid of that stuff. that someday will come to an end. I've got something better in mind. How about things here on planet Earth? Have you been up in the mountains or you walked along some lake? Seen different scenes? Have you looked down and seen some of the amazing things that the Lord has made? Maybe you've had an opportunity to see some things close up. Beautiful things aren't they we love to go see the the gorgeous and amazing things that God has made There's no question about what they're beautiful, but you know what?

God's gonna get rid of those. He'll let those go There'll be a time when those will be done could be as close as 1,007 years from now Okay Be a time when that's all done the galaxies nebulas Lake scenes Beautiful things in the ocean, wildflowers, sunsets. They'll be all gone.

But you know what he says? He says, the saints, now that's different. I'm going to keep those. He says, I'm going to keep those. He says, I'll get rid of the galaxies. Billions of them, no problem, I'll get rid of those. He says, that gorgeous sunset, that'll pass. He says, those beautiful wildflowers, that's nothing. I'll get rid of those. I'll replace them with something better.

But those saints, I'm going to keep those. Those are my inheritance. Those are in Christ and those are special. I'm going to keep those forever. Forever and ever and ever. I'm not letting loose of those. Those are the ones I'm looking forward to. Yes. Yes. I'm looking for the day. Can you imagine that? The Lord looks at us and we might wonder. He doesn't. He says, that's my inheritance. I'm waiting. I'm just eager for that day. Let's look at the first half of verse 19 here.

He says, and it's continuing the prayer here, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe? Okay, we've got to look at this little word pair here, surpassing greatness. This word pair is in the King James, exceeding greatness, and it's in the Greek, huperbolo megathos, okay? And it literally means overthrown greatness.

I think overthrowing that means some kind of an error in baseball, but that's not what he means here. If we break apart that first word, hooper-ballo, we get hyper from this hooper, okay? Hyper is like much, you know, kind of the way I was when I was in elementary and junior high, okay? A little much.

And then ballo is the source of our English word ball, okay? We get the idea of throwing a ball because the ball is thrown and that's where the word comes from. So, as Hooper follows overthrown greatness, Paul is conveying that this power directed toward us as believers is overwhelmingly, super-astronomically, mind-bogglingly great! See?

That's what he means. If we were to think of it in these terms, if it was a football kick through the goalposts, it would be out into orbit. If it was a baseball game, it would be reaching escape velocity, not just out of the ballpark. If it was a tennis match, it would not just be a ball burned into the corner, it would be right through the fence.

That's the kind of super, extra, big, massive that he's talking about towards us. Over the throne. Over the top. Now, what's amazing, he accomplishes that, and we'll be seeing that. We've seen just one of them, but we'll be seeing the rest of these in Ephesians and Colossians. He accomplishes exactly that because we've been identified with Christ. That's how the overthrown greatness gets applied to us, to us who believe. Now, the greatness of his power, for us who believe. We saw this word before, dunamis, okay?

You notice here in Colossians 1.11 is where we saw it before, and it's now, and I think it's on your handout as Ephesians in this passage, but that's where we saw it. This Greek word is indeed the source of our word dynamite, and I think you might remember that was where I showed a movie of a mine blast, and I couldn't get the movie to stop. Anyway, that's the one. It doesn't mean, however, something explosive or impressive. What it's talking about is primarily ability. It's talking about God's power in the sense of God's ability. God is not limited or constrained in His ability.

That's what's getting across here, okay? As we look through this dunamis, here is the key part to take a look at. Paul will spend the rest of the chapter, 19b through the rest of the chapter, expanding upon the source, scope, and character of that power. We're going to be looking at the rest of that chapter just to get where this power comes from, what the magnitude of it is, and what it's like. That's what the rest of the chapter is all about. It's explaining this power. So as we proceed forth, we need to keep that in mind. Now, one more cultural insight. Can you stand it? Can you tolerate it? Or are you up to here with cultural insights?

The people of Ephesus, the Jews and pagans alike, were grasping desperately for spiritual power. And by the way, I include the Jews there, and you'll see why. Acts 19 reveals Ephesus' pagan deities, and it talks about some of them, and we've talked about more, the archaeologists and historians have dug up. Jewish exorcists, and that's one reason why I include the Jews, because it's interesting, rather than that many of the Jews in Ephesus were not involved as much in Judaism, as they were in a bunch of other hocus-pocus, okay?

Including, read about the seven sons of Sceva, if you read through there, and huge amounts of magic. This document you see on the right is one, not from Ephesus, but one from that time, and what's interesting, it has on it, you see those kind of words that are spelled out with larger letters there.

They had special names built into those. Those are actually acronyms. And the names have Jewish words, so the Jews got involved in the magic documents. It's written in Greek, and they found this in Egypt. The Jews were getting all mixed up in the magic.

There was a desperation for spiritual power. A desperation for spiritual power. What's Paul doing? He's saying, you want to talk about power, let me tell you about Jesus Christ. Let me tell you about Jesus Christ. That is the source and scope and character of God's power. That's what he's going to tell them about. And we'll even see, as we study through that passage, he makes reference to things in these magic documents. as he goes through and explains the source, and the scope, and the character of Jesus Christ. We'll see that in the weeks to come here.

Notice in the end of verse 19a, the middle of the verse actually, his power toward us who believe. And here's this Greek word eis or eis, some folks pronounce it different ways. into is the classical meaning. So he didn't just have surpassing greatnesses of his power sort of broadly in our general direction. He didn't say, I'll throw some power sort of along their way and just kind of make some fog or dust. That wasn't what he had in mind. the power toward us who believe, it's very important we understand He is being specific about that. Into, okay? You as a believer here this morning, okay? Into us who believe, okay? So we look here at Ephesians 1, 18 and first half of 19, and Paul is kind of completing his prayer here. He wants them to understand the incredible character Amazing character of what God has done.

It totally blows away all the pagan gods and goddesses. It totally blows away all our modern gods and goddesses. Everything that is advertised as hope on the television, blows it away. Blows it away. Far and above. Overthrown. Hooper Ballo. Way past it. Way past it.

Here's a key point, I think, as we look at this passage. What God has done, because he's talking past tense here, what God has done, is doing, and will do in each believer isn't something that's superficial, incidental, or of minor significance. The world will want to tell you that because it doesn't see this. The world is ignorant of this. And the world will not convey this message. But God will. God will.

He's telling us that what He has done is of profound significance. Major. He has done, is doing, will do. Huge, huge significance. To the point where Paul is saying it's overthrown. Finally, what God has done, is doing, and will do in each believer is intensive, personal, specific, intimate, intimate, and of cosmic and eternal significance. Remember we looked at before, we said, you know those galaxies out there? The numbers of stars are just boggling. The distances across some of those galaxies is incredible, and he's got billions of those.

He says, I'll do away with those. But those believers, he says, I'll keep those forever. I'll keep those for eternity. That's my inheritance. Those, those are worth it. What price do I have to pay? I'll pay it. Whatever it takes. That's my inheritance. Whatever it is, it's a bargain. Let's pray.

Lord, how marvelous a thing you've done. How marvelous a thing you're doing, and how marvelous a thing you are yet to do. Indeed, as we'll see in the next chapter of Ephesians, Lord, You tell us that it will take eternity for You to reveal the riches of Your grace. Oh, Lord, how awesome, how marvelous. It is indeed overthrown. It stretches the limits of human words to begin to even scratch the surface of what You have done and are doing and will do. Lord, we praise You for it and give You thanks. In the name of Jesus, our Savior, Amen.