Living to Win Over Worthlessness
Tom Shrader addresses the universal struggle with worthlessness by contrasting worldly measures of value (what we do, have, know, or who we know) with God's valuation of humanity. He demonstrates from 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Peter 1 that our worth comes from being purchased by Christ's blood, not from our accomplishments or possessions. The teaching emphasizes that believers are redeemed from the 'empty way of life' and can find security in their identity as children of God.
“There's not one thing I can do today to make God love me more than He does right now, and there's not one thing I can do to make God love me less than He does right now.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2014)
Recorded: 2014
Duration: 39 min
Themes: worthlessness, identity, value, self-worth, redemption, grace, security, purpose, struggling with self-worth, feeling worthless, new believer, parent, young adult, experiencing failure, comparing to others, seeking validation
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Peter 1:18-19, Matthew 6, Matthew 12:12, Romans 1:20, Romans 8:38-39, Revelation 5:9, Philippians 1:6
Theological Themes: redemption, justification, sanctification, adoption, propitiation, regeneration, biblical anthropology, soteriology
Full Transcript
We are in week five of an eight-week series. At both doors are CDs from the last two weeks, so if you missed it or if you were here, feel free to grab one on the way out and you can recreate those moments.
We are in a series titled Living to Win and it's subtitled "Identifying and Unraveling the Entanglements of Life." Obviously that could be a very long list, but we've condensed it down to eight. Let me give you sessions two through eight: winning over weakness, anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, stress, uncertainty. If you just walked in here for the first time, you've got to be thinking, "Are you kidding me? This is the way we're going to start the day? That's not a very uplifting list." Well, I don't know, but I do think it identifies life.
The Foundation: Winning Over Guilt
The one that we skipped as I was reading that is week one. Sessions two through eight, I don't think it matters what order, but week one is essential. Week one is winning over guilt.
We come into the world as sinners. My daughter Haley had a picnic Friday at church after the 9:30 service and the 11 o'clock service. There were two or three thousand people out in the yard in the back. There's a long strip where you get hot dogs, burgers, whatever, then you go and eat, and there are jumpy houses and all this other stuff.
Haley's there with her kids: Braden's eight, Yale's seven, Lucy's three, Harmony's two. Lucy has a hot dog and drops it. Haley picks up the hot dog, but Lucy wants to hold the hot dog again, which is just a dexterity problem—a three-year-old problem with stuff going on. Haley said, "No, no, no, I'll carry it." Lucy throws herself on the ground and starts to scream and yell.
The boys are there. Braden, who's really analytical, sees this as a crisis in leadership on his mom's part and he's analyzing this. Yale sees it as an opportunity to do whatever he wants to do. Harmony's just eating rocks. Haley describes it and she said, "All 2,000 people are looking at me and wondering what kind of a mother am I." I said, "Well, all 2,000 were looking at me and wondering what kind of a dad did you have." We're all being scrutinized.
Haley doesn't want to do this, so she does the right thing—take care of the thing in front of you. She grabs Lucy, off to the car they go, and the whole family pays the price. Haley comes back, gets the kids away they go, appropriate punishments take place.
We Sin Because We Are Sinners
You would look at this—and this is really important—and we would say, and you would say amen to this: this happens because Lucy's a sinner. Here's what I want you to see: it wasn't that action that made her a sinner. She had that action because she is a sinner.
It's not that we sin and become sinners. We come into the world as sinners and therefore we sin. The Bible tells us that sin separates us from God. So you begin at a very early age and you take it right through life to feel guilty. When you feel this, you have moments of clarity, you have moments when you just say, "The heck with it," but there are moments of time—and this is the time of year, you know, Christmas music starts and you think, "I've got to do something. It's the start of a new year. I'll clean up my act, I'll try to fix this." That's called religion. That will not get rid of the guilt.
God hates religion. God wants relationship. That's why Christ came and died.
The Christmas Connection
I have a daughter Sarah, and each year since they were in third grade, I would do a Christmas date with each of the girls. Haley and I go to the Nutcracker on the 23rd every year, sit in the front row as close to the center as we can. We've done it every year since she was in third grade, and she's 33 this year.
Sarah, we rotate. The Brian Setzer Orchestra's in town, but we're going to be gone, so I decide we're going to go traditional. We're going to go up to SBC and we'll go to the Christmas show, get dinner before, try to make it something a little bit special—an occasion to make fun of Jamie, so it'll be perfect.
That whole Christmas—and I'm not in on the planning or the rehearsing—my guess is there'll be some traditional Christmas song stuff, then there'll be the carols, then there'll be "Silent Night," which will make me cry and I'll think of my grandma. Then Jamie will get up and do a message that basically talks about how God was in heaven but became human and died. There you go. Hopefully you can take notes on this and send it to Jamie and he doesn't even have to do anything to prep.
I have Christmas, which I can't separate from Easter. They go together. It's like the crucifixion and the resurrection—it's the birth, the death, the empty tomb. Christ rose from the dead. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. You're a new creature. The wage of sin is death, meaning separation. You're now united with Christ. You're in communion with God.
Where the World Finds Value
That's in place. Now everything we're talking about flows from that. So now I face these issues of life like today—worthlessness—and I think, "Where do I find my value?" I know two groups of people I meet: I meet some people who feel very valuable and shouldn't, and some people who feel worthless and shouldn't.
How do we get value? On your outline, you take those first two areas, and this is the way that the world in general—if I go to Fashion Square today, get ten people, and start to talk about where do you find value—I'm going to get something like this. Here's what makes a person valuable: what they do, or what they have, or who they know, or what they know.
I'm guilty of this all the time. If I meet you, I'm going to say, "Hey, I'm Tom," and you're going to say, "I'm Barb" or "I'm Bill." It comes out like a reflex before I can say anything—I'm going to say, "Oh Bill, what do you do?"
In one sense, what I'm trying to do is fishing for that commonality. An astrophysicist? Well, I part-time in that. I don't, I just dabble in that. But part of it is going, "Bill, what do you do? Why do this?" I'm thinking, "You know what? I don't believe in the long run that's going to be to my advantage, Bill. I think I'll get coffee."
Or somebody says, "This is what I have, these are the things I have," and we go, "Wow." Or who you know—if you get tickets for the Cardinal game, which is going to get easier here soon. But if you can get tickets, or if you know somebody who can make the connection, "Can you hook me up?"
Knowledge Versus Wisdom
Now my personal view, which doesn't mean squat, but my personal view is that knowledge in a way is going to become less important than ever, and wisdom is going to become more important. My grandson Braden and I were watching something the other day. I don't remember what it was, and whatever the topic was, I asked him about it. I said, "I wonder when that happened," and he said, "Well, can I borrow your phone?" Now he's eight. I said, "Sure." So he Bing and Google and ding ding ding, and within a minute or two he had the answer to all my questions. He cross-referenced and took me down the road.
You need to know some things, but one of the things you need to know is where to go to find answers. But here's the problem we're having more and more: we've got people with a lot of knowledge but no wisdom. They can build you a car from scratch, but they're not sure where they put the keys. They look at the world and everything is overwhelming and gray.
Here's how I've always defined wisdom: wisdom is the ability to connect the dots. The ability to see these things and to put all these together. In one of the interviews that I was doing with the guys running for governor, I was talking to one of them and he was explaining his position on an issue, and it seemed totally disconnected to me. I never got my arms around the logic of it.
I watch more and more stuff on TV or have more and more conversations where they'll go, "You know what I mean?" And I'm saying, "I don't know what you mean. That doesn't make any sense to me. One plus one equals 500,000 in your equation."
How the World Values Things
But traditionally, what they do and what they have and who they know and what they know is where we find value. Kind of in a hardcore way, we could do it with scrap value. I have a friend who had a—and I want to make sure I get this right; I know Clark, he's a big car guy, so if I'm wrong, don't correct me—but he had a '64 Corvair, of which I think he said 2% of them had air conditioning. So you've got a '64 Corvair, which is no bargain to start with in Phoenix with no air conditioning. But he was able to find a Corvair in Kansas City that really didn't run and was up on blocks and had nothing. But what did it have? So he's going to go buy that.
So we evaluate things by scrap value or replacement cost. That could be humans. I've said in personnel meetings where we go, "Well, if we lost Bonnie, what would it cost to replace her?" And then at the same time, we're looking at it and go, "We've got a whole cemetery out here that's filled with people that we once thought couldn't be replaced."
Or it's an income multiplier, a cap rate—we take cash flow and just put a value on it. Or it's market value. The last time I did this, your market value, hardcore: you have 90% water. If you took the rest, your personal market value when we're all done with you is about fifty bucks. Now they're paying fifteen grand for a kidney, so maybe we're back to scrap value for you. I don't know, but that's how the world looks at it.
How God Values You
All that by way of introduction. On your outline: how does God value you? Not the world, but God.
Well, God values you above the rest of creation. Matthew chapter 6—we were just there a couple weeks ago. Jesus says, "Look at the birds of the air. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 12:12: "How much more valuable is a man than a sheep?"
God looks at all creation and He says, "It is good." He looks at man and He says, "This is very good." God looks at creation and doesn't dismiss it. He says there's a proper use for it. In a way, as followers of Christ, we ought to be the ultimate environmentalists—not in some extreme way. I mean, here's a cow. What do you do with a cow? Feed it, kill it, eat it. You don't worship it. You don't abuse the environment. You understand it's part of God's creation. We ought to nurture it and value it. But in all this creation, supreme above everything else is man.
In Romans chapter 1, verse 20, Paul said, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so they are without excuse." Here's what he's saying—it's really simple: anybody anywhere ought to be able to look up in a telescope or down in a microscope and go, "Wow, something had to create this." Forget that we'll get into God or whatever, but something had to create it. You don't get something from nothing.
Jonathan Edwards defined nothing as what a rock dreams about when it sleeps. You can't even think—if I say to you, "I'm going to count to three, and when I say three, I want you to think of nothing. One, two, three"—I don't know what you thought of, but it was something. There was an unmoved mover.
God's Purchase of You
Now we know from Scripture that as we look around, we see this creation. This creation points us in a direction. Christ is revealed and the Bible teaches us who this God is. He's a God of order and power and magnificence. But how did God value you?
Take a second, let's turn there. First Corinthians chapter 6. God established a value by purchasing you. First Corinthians 6:9: "Or do you not..."
The Value God Places on You
Know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. First Corinthians 6:11, okay?
You all got your Bibles out and you got pens and you make all these notes. Here's a place to mark. And I do it right in the text to bring you back to it. And note the tenses.
Paul's writing to men and women, students, who have believed. So He can say in First Corinthians 6:11, such, here's the circle, were, past tense, such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified. Back to session one, you were guilty, but now you've been washed, justified, sanctified, cleansed.
First Corinthians 6:20, for you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. You were bought with a price. You know the song we sing, you'll never know how much it costs to see that sin upon the cross.
The Price That Was Paid
Infinite value, Christ came and lived and died for you. In your place. The price that was paid could not have been higher.
So when you're walking around, you're going, I don't know if I have value. I don't know if I'm of any worth. I don't know. Don't go to scrap value. Don't go to what you have or who you know or what you know. Look at the cross. You see it all.
No player's worth $128 million. Apparently they are. Somebody just paid it. What was paid for you? The creator God of the universe became human, lived and died. That's the value that was played on you.
Understanding Redemption
Now turn with me. This is a sub, let me check time. Turn with me if you will. All the way to the back of the Bible, 1 Peter chapter one. And I want to take what we've talked about and maybe add some, to me, some stuff that makes you go, wow.
1 Peter chapter one, verse 18. For you know, it was not with perishable things such as gold and silver that you were redeemed. So we take a step back for a second and look at that word redeemed. You weren't bought with something material. You were bought with the blood of Christ, redeemed.
When I was a wee little lad, one of the tasks I had generally every Friday night or Saturday morning, my mom would grocery shop. She'd pick us up from school and we would grocery shop on Friday. And as we checked out, she would pay and they'd keep hitting these and out would spit these S and H green stamps. Did you have them when you were a kid? We had them.
And my job was to get them in the books, in the little books. So the greatest invention ever made was the guy who came up with the idea that one little stamp represented a whole page. Because you'd lick these, and for those of you that are Seinfeld fans, the guy who did the glue on S and H green stamps is the same guy that did the glue on George Costanza's wedding invitations, okay? They were awful. They were terrible.
The S&H Green Stamps Story
And I would lick them and the other kids were too small and I was trustworthy to get this job done. So my dad had a deal with my mom that she could use S and H green stamps for anything she wanted. Didn't have a lot. I don't, as I look back, I don't think she got a lot of perks. This was a big deal.
So we'd get a catalog, get the S and H green stamp catalog. And I don't, I remember different things, but the thing I remember most that she wanted was a hairdryer. It came in a box. The hairdryer was in kind of a container like this and you opened it up and out came this long tube and then this plastic bag that went over her entire head, including her ears. So we could sit behind her, mock her, make fun of her. She would never know.
And it was 12 books, let's say. So we're counting. And she'd say, Tommy, how many books we got? Oh, mom, 11. We're almost there. And the day we got to 12 books, it was 12 books and $4.75. And we went and got the groceries and went right across the street to the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center. And it was the day that we redeemed that hairdryer from that conglomerate called S&H Green Stamps.
Christ redeemed you. That is, paid the price for your sin.
Propitiation: Satisfying God's Wrath
Give you the big word. Here you go. Here's the big theological word, propitiation. You ought to know the word. How's it spelled? P-R-O-pitiation, OK? I don't know how you spell it. It doesn't matter how you spell it. I don't know. Google it. I don't care.
Here's what it means. It means to satisfy wrath. We don't use the term hardly anymore. And we hate it when we hear it. Because the implication is that God's mad. Well, He is mad about sin. He's going to judge sin. 17 minutes left, if you're wondering. You can do anything for 17 minutes, including this.
God's angry, and God's wrath has to be satisfied. And on the cross, when Jesus said, it is finished, He satisfied God's wrath. Let's personalize this now. Towards you.
You're Not on Probation
We have this kind of goofy thought, even as followers of Christ, that God's in heaven, and somehow you're on probation. You're not. You're His. You don't have to perform for Him. You don't have to make Him love you. He already does love you.
This is incredibly freeing. There's not one thing I can do today to make God love me more than He does right now. And the counterside of that is there's not one thing I can do to make God love me less than He does right now. I'm accepted. I'm not on probation. Christ died. That satisfied the wrath of God, and I am redeemed, and now I'm His.
Redeemed from an Empty Life
Now, time's going to get away, but I don't care. This is such a huge point. Look at 1 Peter 1:18. For you know that it was not with perishable things, such as silver and gold, that you were redeemed. What were you redeemed from? Look at that next phrase. From the empty way of life. Some of your translations will say, from the futile way of life.
Life without Christ is empty and futile. That is a huge deal. All of life is a journey to find value that I'm trying to find in a way with what we do or what we have or who we know or what we know. And along comes God and says, yeah, it is that. It's who you know. It's Jesus.
Everything else is empty. I have a lady that comes to PL on Wednesday, and every week she gives me Sports Illustrated. She reads it, and so I'm a week behind. She just leaves them for me. But on this one, she put a little note and said, "You should read the article about Howard Cosell."
So there's an article in the back. Al Michaels has written a book, and in it is a segment on Cosell. Here's what he writes. Here's the last paragraph: "We had a lot of fun, especially at the beginning, but something was always eating at Cosell. If you elected him senator, he wanted to be president. If you made him president, he wanted to be king. If you made him king, he wanted to be God. He ascended to an extraordinary position, but never felt the sports broadcasting industry was exalted or revered enough. Howard Cosell may have been who he was, but he could never be at peace with where he was." That's the empty way of life.
The Emptiness of Worldly Achievement
Last Wednesday was perfect. We're sitting in PL the morning after the election. There's the morning paper, headlines in about 120 font: "Ducey wins big." I guarantee you, about March 5th, he's going to go, "Oh, why did I want this? What is this? You tell him we're going to raise taxes. No, you tell him. No, you tell him." I mean, somebody's got to do all this. That's not a shot at Doug. That's just saying, that's inevitably what happens.
You don't think Barack's on that plane going, "Well, why did we want this?" And we think, if I get that job, that promotion, close that deal, get that scholarship, get on that president's list, get into that MBA program, get out of that MBA program, start this company, sell this company, that right around the corner, I'm going to feel valued. And no, you need to be redeemed from that empty way of life.
What makes it so hard is the world is saying, "But you're really special because of what you do or what you have or who you know or what you know." But inside, you're Howard going, "I'm happy for a minute."
Redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb
It's just a great passage, 1 Peter 1, verse 18: "You were bought not with silver or gold, not with something material, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish." Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That meant so much to the Jew, who for years had seen hundreds of thousands of lambs sacrificed as some sort of compensation, sacrifice for their sin. There's always a picture of the lamb that was to come. When John the baptizer sees Jesus, he says, "There it is right there."
I'm sure I've told you this story before. We were going to do the Seder dinner one year. I said, "Let's make this authentic." The ladies came in and said, "We're having a hard time with the lamb. We can't get it right." I said, "Well, call the temples. There's three or four temples. Call them and see what they do. They'll share."
So they came in the next day, and they said, "We called three of them. They said, 'We don't do lamb anymore. We do chicken.'" I said, "Well, somehow, 'Behold the chicken of God who takes away the sin of the world' doesn't have the punch that we had hoped for there." Isn't that interesting? He's the lamb. He's the sacrifice.
Your Value as a Child of the King
Do I have value? You have great value, not because of who you know or what you know, but because you're a child of the King. That sounds almost trite or pompous. He's my Lord. He's my Savior. Your eternal value is secure.
I alluded to it before. It's Revelation 5:9: "You were slain, and with your blood, you purchased men for God from every tribe, language, people, nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God, and they will reign on earth." In this totally disposable, recycled world, we come along with this relationship with Christ, and it's not disposable. It's not something that we recycle.
Philippians 1:6: "He who began a good work in you will continue it till the day of Christ Jesus." I alluded to it before. I'm not on probation. I'm as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there.
The Transitory Nature of Life
I've been thinking, not that this is unusual, but it seems with more occurrence than normal lately about dying. I know, and I get maudlin around holiday time. 95.1 is already playing Christmas music, so I'm singing to this music. "I'll be home for Christmas." No, I won't be. I'll be down here. There's not any snow. "I'll have a blue Christmas." Yes, I will. "Silent night," and grandma, and all that goes with it. Then I think of them. Then I'm thinking, they were there not that long ago, and now they're gone. I'm here, and I'm going to be gone.
We're trying to figure out Thanksgiving now. We've got to coordinate eight kids, eight grandkids, and they nap, and in-laws. Last year at Christmas, I have one task: cut the turkey. I do it with an electric knife. Last year at Christmas, I cut a little bit of turkey, and I was so winded I had to go lay down. That should have been a little alarm that maybe there's something wrong with you, buddy, but I powered on another month.
There's a day coming. I'm already walking and exercising getting ready for cutting the turkey this year with an electric knife. We shouldn't have to train. It doesn't seem like you should have to train for this. But I know, I know, I know that not long from now they're going to be at Thanksgiving and going to go, "Who's going to cut the turkey? He's not here. What do you remember most about Don? Cut the turkey. We'll get somebody else to do that." And he paid for the turkey. We're going to miss that. But other than that, it just goes.
It's the transitory nature of life. It's the cycle of life. It's what happens. You can't stop it. You can't stop it from happening. We're heading over to Coronado for that week before Christmas. I love it. I stand there every time and I watch this stupid ocean, and that ocean doesn't care if it's Christmas, the 4th of July or March 8th. It just keeps coming. That's that cycle of life. But here's what I know, as inevitable...
God loves you. It's almost childlike to say that I need it, but it's what I need more than anything else. God loves you. I know you've heard this. God loves you in spite of you.
He's looking down, and I think of the love part. Whenever Brayden comes in, Brayden will always walk over and he'll kind of stand by me and he's getting a little thin and getting taller, and he'll kind of say—and he just wants to hug. He's not quite—he's eight, so we're getting to where it's a little awkward, but he'll just kind of come over and he just wants you to hug him. I went for a walk the other day and I knew they were out of school, so I went over and knocked and went in and saw them and they're running around and I said, "I got to go, that's the best 30 seconds I got for you right there." And I'm leaving and Harmony said, "Papa, I got to have a hug." And I thought, you know, I'm too cool to say it, but that's how I am with God. There's just days I got to have a hug. And they're more frequent now than maybe they've ever been.
God's Love Is Our Security
Because what I have, or what I know, or who I know, or what I do, isn't all that impressive. And I'm never going to get that list high enough. Every person alive needs to be redeemed from the empty way of life, which is life without Christ.
As the cycle is, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And He bought me and made that possible, guaranteed it. So here, let me read it to you. Because when you read it, it's almost overwhelming from Romans 8. Paul poses a question: what can separate us from the love of Christ? Not my love for Him, but His love for me, Romans 8:38. "I'm convinced that neither"—and listen to the list now—"neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing." That's a pretty important catchphrase because everything other than God is a created thing.
So here's what he's saying, let me condense it. I'm convinced not one thing, including me, can separate me from the love that God has for me. Not one other created thing is able to separate me from the love of God.
The Futility of Worldly Pursuits
Will comes along and says, "They said, are you going to be at the game Saturday?" I said, "Yeah, what time?" "Well, we kick off at 10:45. And if we win, we play for the championship at 11:30. We're so excited." And I thought, you know what, buddy? FYI, it doesn't matter. That's why they don't let me around them too much because they don't want to suck a little of the life out. You're just killing yourself. It's all futile, it's vanity. But I try not to. You know, play hard and play your best.
But I mean, do you remember? Do you remember your first championship? Or do you remember that first deal you closed? I do. I remember sitting at Coal Bank, sitting at my desk, and this envelope came, and I was shaken when I got it. And it was a check from a deal. And I knew to the penny what it was. And I thought, "Man, this is it. This is it." But I remember even thinking, "If I never make another deal," that was stupid. But I remember, "This is it."
And then I got in the same car and went home to the same deal, all of which is good. The mistake was not going home to the same deal. The mistake was thinking this check was somehow going to make life more than it really was.
Finding True Value in Christ
Lest you—I'm not saying the things of the world are not important. I'm just saying that's not where you find ultimate fulfillment and happiness and love. You find that in Christ. My fundamental problem, yours too, is not educational or economic or environmental. My fundamental problem is spiritual. And so it has a spiritual solution, and that solution is Jesus.
And my value—it's like every guy, I don't mean to demean it, and this is probably you. I have it. I have it in my office. I don't have a very big office. But if you walk into my office, there's a picture of me and my dad in a golf cart. And then there's assorted pictures that Sandy has around of us at different stages of life, mostly as kids. And there's a picture of when we went to see Coach Wooden. And there's a picture of a couple hours with Muhammad. It's kind of the me wall. Everybody's got it.
The Only Picture That Matters
But really now, you know the one? The picture that I'm waiting for is the one where Jesus gives me the crowns from this life. That's the one that needs to go on the wall. That's the one that matters. None of these matter. The minute I see my dad, who cares? John Wooden, never really liked him. Muhammad, not even a believer. I mean, I know the debate. I've been down them. Man, these are those little landmarks that seemed so important at the time.
Here's the deal. If I'm doing anything for a motivation other than to glorify God, any motivation other than that, it'll ultimately fail me. That's what He says. Where do I find value? In understanding Christ died for me.
Looking Ahead
Now I got to give this life. We got something next week. Over the next month, you will be—you'll be in these rooms filled with hundreds of people with holiday cheer. And you can be as lonely and isolated as possible. How do I win over loneliness? Next week, we'll take a look at that.
Father, thank You for the amazing truth. Help us understand. For some, they just go, "Amen," that are here today. Others are going, "That's—"
So much I don't know. God, help us understand our value is not in what we do or what we have or who we know or what we know other than knowing You through Your Son, Jesus. And we pray to You in His name, amen.