I wonder if you've ever met a Christian who just retains a a deep sense of lack of assurance of of the love of God. A friend said to me recently, a mature Christian friend said to me, sometimes you wonder if he really loves you. Going through a hard time. Not much sign of it. So how do you really know Christ loves you? I rather suspect many Christians' subliminal answer to that is, Well, things are going so well in my life. Those are the signs the Lord loves me. And you see, that's why we get into difficulties when things aren't going well in our lives, where we're sitting there, He loves me, He loves me not. When things go well, I know He loves me. When things don't go well, I doubt whether He loves me. But the Bible never tells you to believe that Jesus loves you because good things are happening in your life. The Bible tells you to believe that Jesus loves you because he gave himself for you. Providence is extremely difficult to read because we are not God. We don't know what God is doing in our lives. We don't we don't see the full picture. So where are we going to look? We're going to look to the place where He gave Himself for us. Some of you will know how Charles Haddon Spurgeon sometimes used to say, I look at the cross and I wonder if God loves me more than he loves his son, because he's dying in my place, because he's given himself for me. I remember how Paul also, towards the end of Romans eight, says this is this is the anchor of our assurance as those who are united to Jesus Christ. We know that He will give us everything we need because we know He gave us His Son. It's as though God is saying, I don't have any more to give you. I've given you everything in giving my son to you. And this is the background to the idea of union with Christ. This is the Christ to whom we are united. It's amazing. From heaven he came and sought us to be his holy bride. With His own blood He bought us, and for our life He died. This is the foundation of all of our union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ.