Observation comes before interpretation

Smedly Yates: What is the point of all of this observation? We’re talking about how to get the most out of your Bible study. So often people want to jump to interpretation before they do observation. When you’re reading your Bible, have you ever had this temptation? I want to know what it means long before I know what it says.

The magic formula to getting the most out of your Bible, for interpreting your Bible, is simply observing, being a detective, seeing what’s there. God has written so as to be clear. The Bible is a book we’ll never exhaust. With all of us working as a team, we didn’t exhaust the word “observations.” But all the words that are available there were there the whole time. The whole time that “observations” has been a word, it has had those letters in it. It just meant that we sit a little bit longer and look. Maybe walk away, maybe pray, maybe think. Now we’re spiritualizing the game a little bit too much. But when it comes to your Bible, what is the key? Sit and read and look and ask questions.

You’ve asked some questions already. We’re going to field some of those. Jake and I might ask each other some questions, but I’m just going to tell you: in a lifetime of study, the most fruitful tool that I have to understand my Bible is my Bible. That is the most effective key. And I would say if you had a second tool in your arsenal, it would be a good English dictionary. A Bible and a dictionary is a huge help.

Some of you, in the back of your Bible, have things like maps and dictionaries and helps. In the front of your Bible, you’ve got a thing called a table of contents. You can get to know those parts of your Bible, too, to help you in your study of your Bible. All right, Jake, where do we want to go from here?

Jacob Hantla: Well, I actually want to add a third very important tool, and it was in the illustration. For those of you who were here last time, do you remember what the best eyes were? A pencil is your best eyes.

So often I feel this temptation too. I just want to sit down, read it, figure out what I need to know, and get on with my day. But it is so helpful to just sit, look at the text, and have something to write with. It’s weird. Thoughts up in your mind seem so clear until you try to explain them, and then you start realizing, “Oh, I didn’t quite understand what I thought I understood.”

A pencil or a keyboard, but someplace to write your questions and then write your answers, write your thoughts, underline, make observations. You’d do a lot better. I bet we would have done better if you would have had a piece of paper and you were writing down the words that had gone before. You would easily be able to say, “Oh, we’re missing an S. We could just pluralize that.” We probably could have gotten hundreds more if somebody would have thought to have a pen and a paper for this game. So, just to add to your observation.

Smedly Yates: And it goes along with being a detective. If you’ve ever seen one of the old sleuthing shows, the guy who’s investigating some crime has a pad and a pencil, and he’s writing stuff down. He’s making his observations and keeping track, and he’s writing his questions.

Your questions of the biblical text will help you. It will help you in a couple of ways. As I sit down, I write down all the questions: Who is this talking to? Who’s writing it? Where were they? When was this? Who is the “who” in this passage? Just start writing all the questions, even if they seem obvious, and it will be encouraging in a couple of ways. When you end up studying your Bible and you see the Bible actually answers these questions before you went to any resources outside of your Bible, it’s really encouraging. And then to see where you’ve grown in answering the questions is really helpful.

But I’m like you. I like writing, and I don’t do this on a keyboard because I like the backspace button too much, and I end up erasing my work. When you’re a detective, you just write down everything.

Jacob Hantla: Yeah. Honestly, you guys know I’m about as digital as they come, and I would strongly encourage you, especially if you have a hard time paying attention or you’re new at this, get a dead-tree Bible. Print it on real paper, and get another piece of paper and an old-school pencil or even a pen, and just write.

Your phones are designed to cause you to be distracted. There’s things on there like notifications, other apps. It’s possible, and I actually encourage you to do this, to learn to still pay attention when you’re looking at a screen. But there’s something really helpful about just a piece of a dead tree and some graphite, some carbon writing on there, to eliminate distractions and help you pay attention.

Does getting distracted mean I’m not a Christian?

Jacob Hantla: There’s a question I actually have for you, Smed, that was in our box. This one was left over from last year. We didn’t get to it, but one of the students asked, “I get distracted a lot when I read the Bible. Does that mean I’m not a Christian?”

Smedly Yates: It’s a great question. Getting distracted while reading your Bible, I would suggest, is normal, human, pastoral, parental, student-like. That doesn’t mean it’s okay, but I would suggest that you confess it, ask God to help, and put your nose back in the Bible. I get distracted reading my Bible probably every time I sit down to read my Bible. But Jake talked about this last week: you pray.

This is God’s Word. I like to think of this book as having been written by an author who’s looking over my shoulder while I’m reading it, because he is. He’s right here. What would it be like to enter into the throne room of God, to have an Isaiah 6 experience, where Isaiah was transported into the very heavens where the seraphim are covering their feet, covering their face, and hovering, and they’re crying out, “Holy, holy, holy”? And Isaiah says, “Woe is me. I’m doomed because I’m sinful.”

God is there, and in his thundering presence, Isaiah is in awe. Well, listen. Every time you open your Bible, it is as accurate and authoritative and God-spoken as if you were in God’s very throne room. I guarantee you, we wouldn’t be distracted if we were in Isaiah 6 or Revelation 1. We’d be on our faces going, “This is the best and worst thing ever. I’m undone.”

So I actually pray, “God, would you help me to sit with your Word right now as if I’m in your very presence? Because I am.” That’s a help. And look, it’s okay to admit, “This genealogy is boring, and I can’t pronounce the names. God, help me.” It’s okay to admit, “I don’t understand what I’m reading. God, help me.” This week for me it was, “Oh no, we’re in 1 Corinthians 5. I’ve got to preach a sermon from this. God, help me.” That’s okay. Doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian.

Jacob Hantla: No. If you’re concerned over that, that actually is probably a really encouraging question. Whoever asked that, I want you to be encouraged that you realized: This is God’s Word. This is where God himself is revealed. Why on earth am I distracted when I open this?

I have to confess, I am too. Just like Smed said, I don’t think a day goes by when I read the Bible when I don’t fight. I talk to myself all the time: “Jake, this is God’s Word. Like a deer pants for streams of water, I should long for God. Where am I going to find God except for revealed in his Word?” I have a conversation with myself, and then I realize my weakness.

It’s actually a really good place to be, to realize your need. The prayer that I encourage you to pray, I need it. I need God to help me just listen. You can’t get to the next steps of interpretation and application until you’ve properly observed the text. And I’m so scatterbrained. I need help to even do that. So I need to just ask God, “God, help clear my mind right now. Help me listen.”

And then the crazy things are, things of my day come in, take my thoughts. I’m worried about meetings at work. Sometimes it’s just dumb things like a football game coming up. Just the dumbest things enter my mind, and I act like those are more important than God. It’s an opportunity for me not only to ask for help, but for me to confess. Smed said it: confess. “God, this is wrong. There’s something wrong in me. There’s something wrong in my want-to. I want something else more than you.” That’s the heart of what sin is, right?

One of the very reasons why we open God’s Word is to see God for who he is and to align our desires with what they should be from his Word. So if you start saying, “Shoot, I’m getting distracted,” that is a great opportunity for you to do exactly what reading God’s Word should accomplish in you: an opportunity to see your sin, confess it, and turn to God with hope.

It doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian, but you can’t stay there. If you get distracted and you’re okay with not reading God’s Word, you’re okay day after day after day of not being affected by God’s Word, that is not an okay place to stay. Ask for help. Come talk to me. Talk to your parents. But struggling with it is normal, and it’s even good. Don’t quit struggling.

Smedly Yates: And consider your distractions. I mean, don’t go try to read your Bible standing in the middle of traffic on I-10.

Jacob Hantla: Yep.

Smedly Yates: There are locations that are better than others. There are surroundings that are better than others. You need to know yourself in that regard.

Is there a place for big-picture reading as well as detailed study?

Smedly Yates: Jake, is all of your Bible reading study? Is there a place for just reading, sort of big picture, versus detailed study?

Jacob Hantla: Yeah, both. There is something really nice about just sitting back, even listening. There’s a lot of really good audio Bibles. Here’s a trick for me: I have a hard time sometimes just reading, and my brain gets distracted, so I read and listen at the same time.

You can read and listen for big chunks of Scripture. Sit down and read or listen to a whole book of the Bible. Depending on the length of the book, it’ll take you a few minutes or lots of hours. In that time, you are still exposing yourself to God’s Word. You’re going to miss so much, but you’re going to get the big picture.

Who here has played with Google Maps or Google Earth? Have you ever looked at something and you’ve zoomed in, and you’re like, “I don’t even know what I’m looking at”? What do you do? Zoom out, right? Sometimes that’s actually what you need to do when you’re studying. You’re in the details. You’re like, “What does Paul mean when he says, ‘Deliver the man over to Satan’?” Sometimes what you need to do is zoom out. Read the whole book. Maybe read both of the letters to Corinthians, and then you’ll get it. Maybe read the whole New Testament, and you’ll see God’s purpose for discipline. But you need to zoom out.

On my daily reading, I personally read four chapters throughout the Bible. I’m on the M’Cheyne reading plan, so I’m reading four chapters at a time. Sometimes when I’m doing that and I get lost, I’m like, “Shoot, I forgot where I am in this chapter.” I’ll just back up and listen to the whole book while I work out. But, Smed, you do both too, right? You read, but then you’re preparing for sermons. How have you balanced that?

Smedly Yates: You’ve heard the phrase “the forest and the trees.” Mike Riccardi has a little Bible study book called The Forest and the Trees. The premise of that is you want both. I want to see the entire western United States from a satellite, and then I want to zoom down into Yosemite National Park, and one glade in that park, and one clump of trees in that glade, and one tree, and one branch, and the veins on the wings of a bark beetle on one twig on a branch on a tree in the glade. I want all of it.

So there’s a place to listen to big swaths, and I love the context of listening to all of Romans in a row. Is it wrong to admit that my favorite audio Bible is James Earl Jones reading the King James?

Jacob Hantla: No.

Smedly Yates: “I am your father.” You know, it’s like…

Jacob Hantla: It’s pretty cool.

Smedly Yates: It’s pretty cool. But I love just putting that on repeat and listening to a whole book. A whole book over and over and over again. You’re not going to catch everything when you do that, but you’re going to catch things you won’t catch if you’re atomized, looking at the veins on the wings of a bark beetle on one tree. And if you’ve set your sights on a deep-dive study of one verse for a month, but you’re not feeding on other things, you’re going to miss out. So yes, I find a way to do both.

Skim, listen, read big chunks, and write down your questions and move on. “Well, I don’t understand that.” Okay, write that down for later, but keep the big-picture reading going. It’s helpful to have the big picture in mind. This is a really good exercise, to think, “Okay, I’m going to read the Gospel of John. What’s the big picture of the Gospel of John?” You might go to chapter 20 and read verse 31 and find out why John wrote what he wrote. Or, what’s the big picture of Romans? Then try to fit everything else into it, and just take a stab at it. Sometimes it’s an educated guess.

But if you learn to ask your question, “What is the point of the Old Testament, or what is the point of the New Testament, or what is the point of the Bible? And how does what I’m reading fit into that big picture?” that’s part of the detective side of things. That’s on the zoomed-out level. So yeah, I do both.

What should happen after you finish reading?

Jacob Hantla: So what about when you’re done reading, when you’re getting up out of the chair? Because the mark of the Christian life, it might sound like, “Well, if I could only just keep my Bible in front of me all day and do nothing but read the Bible, then I’d be truly holy.” What about when you’re…

Smedly Yates: Haven’t you seen me driving?

Jacob Hantla: I actually do that. My car drives.

Smedly Yates: Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s got a Tesla.

Jacob Hantla: But what about when you’re done? This is actually probably just as important, or even more so. When you’re done and you’ve said, “All right, I understand now what the text says, and I even understand how it must affect me,” what then?

Smedly Yates: Jake, I think you used the word “booger” in a sermon last week.

Jacob Hantla: I might have.

Smedly Yates: Yeah. When a man looks in the mirror, looks at his face, has a booger in his nose, walks away and forgets that it’s there, and he goes to school.

Jacob Hantla: Yep.

Smedly Yates: That’s a great illustration. What if I read the Word in the morning, and then I walk away? I’ve lost a lot of the value. So for me, thinking about Psalm 1, the blessed man meditates on it day and night. The word “meditate” conjures up the idea of a cow with four stomachs. He takes in grass, digests it in one stomach, brings it back up and chews the cud, digests it some more, puts it in another stomach, brings it back up. It’s really gross. It’s not what you want to think about as a one-stomach eater.

But that’s the picture of taking the Word in. You take it in by reading it or listening to it, and you bring it back up by meditation. You’re thinking about it. How can you think about it if you didn’t tuck a little bit of it away?

When I was in high school, I would take Scotch tape and a Bible verse out of what I’d read in the morning and just tape it to the front windshield so that I could see it when I drove. My bathroom mirror had taped verses on it, and I would just look at them. Then eventually I learned, “Wait, I could memorize these, and then I don’t have to keep looking at it.” And then you can think about what you memorize.

My encouragement to you is: take something from your morning reading with you to chew on. If all you can pull out of what you read this morning in John 11 was verse 35, “Jesus wept,” walk with that. Walk with it all day. Let that soak in your brain and recycle over and over and over again. Those two words just might change your life.

Jacob Hantla: Yeah.

Smedly Yates: You walk away with it, and you meditate on it, and you walk away from your Bible ready to tell somebody else about it, too. There’s something in the teaching side of things that solidifies the learning side of things. So yes, it’s selfish for you to tell somebody else what you read in your Bible this morning. But it’s not just selfish, is it?

Three questions to carry into your day

Jacob Hantla: This is really helpful to build on what Smed just said. If you take one thing from your day, what I would encourage you to do is not end at just making observations. You have to look intently at the text, right? But what does James say? If you look intently at the text but you don’t do it, it’s very possible to study the text, understand everything about it, but go away unaffected. The Bible says that you deceive yourself. It is so easy to get up, have an understanding of the Bible, and go about your day and live like none of that is true.

Three questions I encourage you to ask:

1. What did the text say? That’s just the summary. That’s the conclusion of the observations. You ask questions. You look. It’s like the guy with the fish, and the professor said, “You haven’t seen it yet. You haven’t seen the main thing.” You saw all the details, but you’re looking for, “What’s the main point of what I read this morning?”

   You might not get the main point, but you might get part of it. If it’s a story in the Bible, just rewrite the story. Try to summarize it into one sentence. Maybe it’s a sermon that you heard. You could do this after every sermon. You could just write, “What was the sermon about? What did I read? What was it about? What did it say?”

2. What does this teach me about God? It teaches you tons of things. It could teach you about you: “Man, I’m a sinner. Man, I am.” It could teach you lots of things about the world. You could learn some history. But the main thing that you have to get is, “What does this teach me about God?”

   That’s the example that you gave: “Jesus wept.” Why would that change your life? Because it tells you something about God’s compassion. It tells you something about God’s power. God was sovereign. God intended to have Lazarus die, and he still wept. We could write what that statement tells you about God, and we’re going to run out of paper.

3. How should this affect me? Then you go away and you write, “How should this affect me?” It doesn’t take you long to write those things down, but if you write those things down, you have a clarity from the text that you don’t just have from reading.

You could write these three questions down if you listen to the whole book of Genesis or you read one verse. They’re not the only three questions you should ask, but they’re three really good starters. If you’re looking for a place to start, this isn’t probably where you end. Hopefully you get more questions, and you’re free to write other things, but I would encourage you not to get up without these three questions. What does it teach me about God? And finally, how should this affect me?

But you know what? As you’re going about your day, think about these three questions. Did I get them right? Did I miss something? Just like the student in that story, he went home and he’s thinking, “I can’t wait to get back to see the fish.” You might be going to school, and you’re like, “What did that teach me about God?” You’re trying to think, “I think I missed something. I think I missed something.” Maybe you didn’t get an answer, and then you’re like, “I’m going to open up my Bible again and look for the answer.”

Or maybe there’s a passage in there that you’ve memorized or you sort of learned, and you’re just chewing the cud, trying to say, “How should this change my life? I don’t know yet.” Then you see a way. You see God’s patience with you. I write that like half the time: “What does this teach me about God? God’s patient.” And that’s okay. You don’t have to find something new. But how should this affect me?

Then in the middle of the day, your friend makes you angry, and you realize that you aren’t patient and that your impatience is totally incongruent with God’s patience toward you. You can’t hold a grudge against your fellow student if God forgave you so much debt. If God’s so patient with you, why should you demand immediate respect from your friends?

You didn’t think about that in the morning, but in the middle of the day you see your sin, and because you were thinking on God’s Word, you were chewing the cud, you were meditating on God’s Word, it had an effect on your day. If you do that every day, you start stacking days. You’re going to have a lot of sanctification, which means God’s going to take his Word and he’s going to slowly form you into the mature Christian that he saved you to be.

And if you’re not a believer, if you’re not a believer, still meditate on God’s Word. There’s nothing that you need more than God. You just don’t believe it yet. God’s Word is where he reveals himself. So if you’re like, “I’m not sure if I believe God. I’m not sure if the Bible’s true. I’m not sure if I want to give up my sin,” well, I’m glad that you’re being honest. That’s a very bad place to end.

If you’re saying, “I’m not sure if the Bible’s true,” open up the Bible every day and read it, and start praying, “God, if this is true, change my heart.” That’s it. There’s nothing to be lost by doing that. But here’s what I promise will happen. If you are honest with God and you say, “God, if you’re true, if this is really your Word, will you show me?” Then you start reading it, and you start praying to God, “God, if this is true, I have to change my life.” Then start just acting as if it is. Just start trusting the God who reveals himself in his Word.

What’s so sweet is, when you do that, my experience with God’s Word is he will start to show you who he is, and he will take away that hard heart, the blinders that were on your eyes, and you’ll start to see what was there all along. Pretty soon God’s Word, which seemed cold and distant, that was my experience with God’s Word all through high school, all of a sudden you’ll look at it, and there will be life, and there will be eternal life, because you will know God through his Word.

So whether you already trust God, be in his Word. And if you don’t, read his Word too, and look to answer these three questions, and end by praying.

Smedly Yates: No book like it. Living, active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It is God’s breathed Word. It is the words of his Holy Spirit. We’ll never exhaust it. We’ll never get to the bottom of it.

But if you make it normal to take a little bit of your Bible reading into your day and talk to somebody else about it, it will solidify it for your heart. But it will also do something else. Think about what happens if you go to your Classical Conversations group, if you go to the lunch table at the public school, and you say, “Hey, guess what I read in my Bible this morning? Jesus wept.”

The first day, people might go, “I should read my Bible,” or, “You’re weird for reading a Bible. What’s that all about?” or, “‘Jesus wept.’ Huh, that is weird.” And the second day you do it, and the third and the fourth and the fifth. Sports team, Sunday night at your dinner table with your siblings: “Hey, sibling, guess what I read in the Bible this morning?” Just normalize it, and that will change the world.

What do I do when I don’t understand what I read?

Jacob Hantla: I want to ask you another question that was in our Q&A box: “What do I do when I don’t understand what I read?” Say that you spent a good time thinking. You looked at that fish for a good long time, and you’re just like, “I don’t get it.” What do you do?

Smedly Yates: There are some barriers to our understanding a very clear Bible. God’s Word is objectively clear. It’s one of its characteristics. God wrote to be understood, but I don’t understand it. What is a choenix? Am I even pronouncing that correctly? There’s lots of reasons we might not understand. The grammar might be difficult. The vocabulary might be difficult. What’s a cubit? What’s a denarius?

We are separated from the culture, the language, the geography, the politics of the Bible by 2,000 years or up to 3,500 years. People wore different clothes. They ate different food. Can I really understand this? If you start to think about it, you go, “Wow, it’s a lot more clear than I give it credit for, but I might have to look some things up.”

If you don’t understand, write down your questions. And they’re great: “God, I don’t know what you mean by this.” I’m going to confess to you that every single week I come to a new text to teach to this church, and there are things I do not understand. That could be discouraging and deflating, unless you’re the dude with the fish, and it’s like, “Whoa, I’ll never answer all these questions. Isn’t this great?” It’s a matter of perspective.

Write down your questions and keep reading. Eventually the Bible, attesting to its own truth, solves most of them by you just keeping on reading. Ask your buddy, ask your parents, get a study Bible, look down at the study notes. If you’ve got a study Bible with study notes and biblical text, just know the biblical text is the only error-free portion. But the study notes are a help from people who have worked out some of these things before and done the observations. There are so many tools and resources. Ask Pastor Jake. Put a question in the box.

He said this last week: what we’re after is authorial intent. We want the author’s meaning of the text. There’s only one meaning in a text, and that’s the one we want to get. So we work hard at it, and we get to the end of where we’re able, and we say, “I don’t know, Lord. Help me.” There are ways to go do some homework. There are places I do all the homework I know how to do, and I still go, “I don’t know.”

We’re coming to one in 1 Corinthians. It’ll be interesting. I’ll say this now, and then when we get there you can say, “That’s not what you said before.” It’s because, well, I haven’t studied it yet. I don’t know. But Paul says that women at Corinth wore head coverings…

Jacob Hantla: Because of the angels.

Smedly Yates: Because of the angels. I’m like, that’s it. Because of the angels. That’s the answer. What’s the connection to the angels? I don’t know. I might know more when I get there, but right now it’s an “I don’t know.”

Jacob Hantla: One of the things: if you write down a question in your Bible, use your pencil, write it down, think about it, and then the next day go on to the next chapter or the next verse. Think about it. Don’t move on too quickly. But the next time that you come around, you’ll see that same question, and you’ll know more of the Bible. You might not get all of your questions answered the next time around, but you’ll get more of them.

If you start reading the Bible, the whole thing through every year, you students, you have a lot of years ahead of you, Lord willing. You don’t know. This might be the last one, so don’t bank on it. But if God takes a while to come back and you don’t die prematurely, you have a lot of times through God’s Word. You’ll know a lot more at the end than you do now.

One of my temptations is to look for the answer by going to sources outside the Bible too quickly. “Oh man, if only I knew the answer, then I could get on with my day.” Sometimes I’ll short-circuit what actually God has for me, which is to ask the question and look at the text.

If you ask the question and you open your English Bible, sometimes you might want to grab a second version, look at that, bring your parent over and ask them, and look together. It’s okay if they don’t know the answer, but start thinking, start meditating. That will make a bigger difference in your answer than if you ask ChatGPT or ask the little study notes. There’s a point to do that, but don’t go there too quick.

Actually sitting there and thinking on God’s Word and praying is a great way to get understanding. And more than understanding, it’s a great way to get it from your eyes into your brain and then to your heart. If you just see, “I don’t know what that is. Let’s see what John MacArthur says. Okay, cool. Now I know,” you’re going to go on with your day and be unaffected.

Very, very, very different than if you spent a half hour as a detective with your pencil out, asking questions, inviting your parents in, and then out of the overflow of that, now you know not only the answer to that question, but maybe you have questions that you never even thought to ask. That’s where God’s going to change your life.

Smedly Yates: And remember, we’re not after information for its own sake, but the Bible is both revelation and regulation. It is God’s revealing himself. Number one, we want to know him. We want to be with him. We want to hear his voice. We want to love him. We want to worship him. When we say the Bible is regulation, it means there is an ethical element to it. God is telling us how to live. Here’s the promise from God’s Word:

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

So even if you don’t know the difference between a denarius and a talent, in the context you can figure out, “Oh, here’s a resource. It’s an amount of money, and I’m responsible for what’s there.” Someday you might look it up and find out the denarius was one day’s wage, and a talent was 15 years’ wages. Now the passage means even more to you. But at any level you’re reading the Bible, God intended for it to be a pointer to himself and a light for how you shall live. You can always learn from his Word, and it doesn’t come back void. He does what he intends with it. Our task is to be yielded before it.

An invitation for help and closing prayer

Jacob Hantla: If you’re having a hard time reading God’s Word, if you’re having a hard time wanting to read God’s Word, or if there’s any other questions, come talk to me. Drop things in the Q&A. You can have your parents send me a text, send me an email, or even just invite your parents into your life. We want to help you read God’s Word. Let’s pray.

God, thank you for your Word. Thank you for revealing yourself to us. If we were left to just nature, we would know a lot about you, but we’d never know about Jesus. We’d never know just how holy you are. We’d never know how to be made right with you. We’d never know the way that you patiently endure with humanity, patiently endure our sin. And even while we were sinners, you loved us and died for us.

God, I pray that from the overflow of these first few weeks at Student Ministries, where we’ve learned about the importance of your Word, I pray that you would make these students marked by being students of your Word, not so that they know a lot about the Bible, but that they know you. And may their lives match.

God, I pray for all of us at Grace Bible Church that we would be people of your Bible, that our lives would look like you, like the godly lives that you saved us to live, because we set the gaze of our hearts and our mind on you in your Word every single day. And then our minds are constantly thinking on that, that we’re meditating on you throughout the day.

God, be glorified in our lives so that when we do good works, it’s so obvious that it wasn’t us. It wasn’t our diligence. It wasn’t our study, our efforts, that ultimately created it. It was you using those means. God, we love you. Be glorified in us. In Jesus’ name, amen.