In your wildest imaginations, you cannot conceive of how wonderful I am and what I am willing to do for you.

And so he's pressing us, he's pressing us.

So we're going to go down into those waters because you may never have

been afraid you were going to drown, but you have nearly drowned before in your circumstances.

Oh yes, you have. I know you have. You don't even have to be 17 to feel like you have been in

exactly these situations. Go to verse four. The ropes of death were wrapped around me. The torrents of

destruction terrified me. The ropes of shale and that's that's Hades, that's the place of

departed spirits, that's that sense of being away from God. They entangled me. The snares of

death confronted me. And so there's this feeling of being wound up,

of having cords wrapped around you. And this is so much of how the enemy works,

the foe of our very souls works. Because when we're first beginning to get in a situation that's going to end up being

true bondage to us, we're never aware in the very beginning that that's where we're headed

or wouldn't we usually stop. But see, the ropes drape around us very loosely in the beginning, don't they?

But they just keep winding around us and winding around us and winding around us and

winding around us and then they begin to tighten and tighten and tighten until we realize

we cannot move.

Now, I know some of you have come this week, and I know it.

I know it just from being as old as I am and having as much experience with people as I have.

Some of you feel like you are drowning.

And again, if you do, you are in the right place.

That in your circumstances, even if you would look at all of those things

and say, you know, one by one, none of them are bad. But I am drowning in the midst of them.

...