When I look back on my life and consider where it has come from, I am just bewildered at how Faithful God is and how it is literally true that He makes all things new.  I never thought that at the age of 24 I would be married  to the love of my life who was created to be my help mate.  I never thought that I would be living in an apartment in Bountiful, Utah.  I never thought that I would be involved in seeing a church planted in Centerville, Utah.  I never thought that I would be so busy that life can get so overwhelming at times.  God has definitely shown me that we must be prepared for anything that He is ready to throw our way.  I also never thought that ministry here in Utah would be so difficult.  I’ll tell you what I do know though.  Everyday is a fight for joy.  A fight to delight and love God’s Word more than anything in this world that attempts to deceive us into thinking that it is the highest good.  It is a fight to ponder, meditate, rejoice, and delight in God’s Word above all other things.  It is a fight to spend time in prayer asking Him to mold our hearts and unite them with one purpose to be most pleased with Him and fully delighted to serve His kingdom.  It is a fight to turn from the sin that can so easily ensnare us and to the living God who is enough and is sufficient and is the highest good from whom all things exist and have their being.  It is a fight in which we must rely on His grace to bring us through.  It is a fight to derive our very breath from Him so that we don’t become suffocated by the stench of our own self-will or self-effort.  It must be Him in us that fights.  It must be Him in us that breathes.  It must be Him in us that lives.  There shouldn’t even be an us because we are dead, and He has given life to our mortal bodies.  This fight is worth it though.  We will all have to give an account for what we’ve done in this life in regard to what we have known about the true and living God and what He demands from us.  We serve Him because we love Him.  We delight in Him because He is satisfied with us.  God can never look at us and say that we lack His righteousness because it is forever before Him interceding on our behalf.  He is worth every trial.  He is worth the fight.  Oh to know the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ  that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3: 18-19).  Every trial is worth it that they might result in the praise of His glory.  Thank you Lord for the trials you send our way.  May we be purged of sin and filled with the Holy Spirit that the fruit therein would abide more and more.  God is good and I will serve Him into eternity.  I am ecstatic that my wife is the one in which gets to go along with me.  She complements me so well.  She encourages me when I need encouragement.  She exhorts me when I need exhortation.  She convicts me of idolatry when I need to be convicted of it, which is often.  She causes me to examine the motives of my heart that they might be pure before Him who sees the secrets of the heart.  Thank you Lord for her help and her aid as I value life so much more with her than without her.  Life is so good only because He has made it so.  Let us continue to rely on His energy that He so powerfully works within us, so that we might be able to bear the crosses of everyday life and that He would be alive in us.  To Him be the glory now and forever more, and that His bride might delight in Him and find full satisfaction in His glorious grace and mercy.  Praise Him all you nations, and extol His name Oh kingdoms of the earth.  Lay your crowns at His feet and gaze into the eyes of Him who causes hearts to melt before His Holy Majesty.  Fear Him.