What Kind of Year Was 1999?
Tom Shrader walks the congregation through his annual year-end review, contrasting the world's measures of a good year — money, status, and recognition — with six deeper questions drawn from Scripture. Using passages from Galatians, 2 Timothy, Ephesians, and Jude, he challenges listeners to evaluate whether they practiced self-examination, stewarded time wisely, fought spiritual battles, finished stronger than they started, defended the faith, and lived in light of Christ's return. He closes by urging each person to complete a self-examination exercise and return the following week for practical steps to make the coming year one of genuine spiritual growth.
“If you have godliness plus contentment, it is great gain. You came in naked, you are leaving naked; if you have food and covering, that ought to be enough.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Year in Review
Recorded: 2000 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 14 min
Themes: self-examination, spiritual growth, time management, new year, priorities, faith, perseverance, readiness for christ's return, feeling stuck spiritually, year-end reflection, struggling with materialism, mid-life reassessment, new believer, young adult, seeking purpose, feeling spiritually dry
Scripture: Galatians 6:3-4, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, Psalm 90:12, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Ephesians 6:10-13, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Jude 3-4, Revelation 22
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, eschatology, contending for the faith, spiritual warfare, stewardship, scripture application, spiritual disciplines
Full Transcript
What Kind of Year Was 1999?
We are going to pursue what has become an annual exercise for us. We are going to attempt this morning to answer the question: what kind of year was 1999? And thankfully, you are in a millennium-free zone — I hope I never hear that word again. But we are going to ask: what kind of year was 1999? On the surface it may appear that this is an exercise being done all around you, and we can let that one go by. The question we are asking today, however, is not about the nation as a nation. The question is about you as a person, directed to you personally.
What kind of year was 1999 for you? When you stop and look back over this year, we are going to ask you to put a numerical value on it — on a scale of 1 to 10. A 1 means it was an awful year, never want to see it again. A 10 means you hope every year is like 1999. Take a second. What kind of year was 1999 on a scale of 1 to 10?
How We Arrive at a Number
To answer that question, you had to go through some series of questions to arrive at this number. You did not just wake up and say, "I've always been a 4 and life's a 4 for me." There is some way you arrive at this, probably mostly on an unconscious basis — you start to tick through individual issues.
What we do every year is stop and go through this exercise. We point out that there is a typical set of inventory questions. If you went over to Fiesta Mall and asked 100 people what kind of year it was, and they said it was a 7, and you asked why, you would see them run through questions like these.
Did you make more money than ever before? If you were making $35,000 a year and now you are making $50,000, that is pretty good — you had a good year. If you were making $50,000 and now you are making $25,000, that may influence the decision in another direction.
Did you acquire more things? We separate that from money because you do not need to have money to acquire things. Right now there is somewhere around $6.3 trillion in credit card debt floating around out there — you can get a lot of stuff without necessarily having any money. Maybe this was the year you got what you really wanted: a house, a car, a pair of shoes. Whatever it was, you got something.
Was this a year where you improved your position or enhanced your career? You are now the senior sales representative, you are in management, you became an owner, you started your own business, or you simply graduated from school, got a job, and were still employed after six months. That is a big deal.
The Darker Measures of a Good Year
Maybe it was a great year because you advanced your image in the eyes of your friends. At the Christmas party this year, you walked in and everybody went quiet — "There they are. Look at them. I want to be like them." That registers as an eight right there.
Or, on the darker side, maybe it was a great year because you caused your enemies to be envious of you. Some of you like that. You take pride in the fact that you took a stand and now people are coming against you, and you see that as evidence that you are a good person.
But it is always worth beginning by understanding that you may simply be a difficult person and no one likes you — not because you took a stand, but because you are genuinely offensive. They are coming at you from every direction and will continue to do so, because you are obnoxious. That is nothing to be proud of. But for some of you, that still registers as a nine.
A More Profound Set of Questions
Maybe you arrived at your number through one of these questions, or through something else entirely — someone mentioned to me they just got engaged on New Year's Eve, which may have moved the number up or down depending on the situation. You have your own set of questions that you run through.
What I want to suggest, and this is what we do every year, is that there is a more profound set of questions you need to ask yourself. Before you write down in ink that 1999 was an eight or a five, before you make that final determination, there is a set of questions far deeper than these surface ones.
I do not want to minimize the surface questions. If you were making $40,000 a year at the beginning of the year and finished making $7,500, that is going to have an impact on your life — there is just no way around that. Those things are significant. What I am saying is that there are questions more profound than those, and we are going to look at them.
They are the same five or six questions we have used for the last eleven years. About a third of you are new — the church is a third larger than it was at this time last year — so for a third of you this is brand new. For others, you have heard it several times. Susan, Sarah, and Haley absolutely mock me every year when I get ready to do this. They all feel they could teach this lesson themselves, having heard it so many times. But that is by design — to return to the same questions year after year. First, because they are valid. Second, because I want you to see your life change from year to year.
When we finished this exercise last year, Susan said it was a genuinely helpful exercise, even though it was the same questions, to see where she had grown and to identify areas she still needed to work on. We will run through this series of questions together. You may want to add to it by the end of the day, but here are the questions we ask.
The Importance of Self-Examination
Do you recognize the importance of what we are doing right now? Paul writes in Galatians 6, in the midst of a passage about restoring a brother: "If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions." If you think you are really something and you are not, you deceive yourself. That word "deceive" means literally to lead your mind astray — your mind is swept away.
Each one of us should take time to go through the exercise of evaluating our own life and our own actions. In the bulletin when you came in today, you received a little self-examination pamphlet that we have put together. This is the second year we have put it out, with some refinement this year, and we will continue to work on it. It is a tool for you to use to ask yourself some of these questions and to begin to take some concrete steps in resolving them.
How frustrating it would be to get to the end of the day and say, "I am a three, and that is the way life is." We want to say no. Part of this process is to recognize where my life currently stands. The other part is to be able to move it along the continuum toward knowing Him and loving Him.
What we find in that passage is a glimpse of what you need in this process of self-evaluation. You need somebody who loves you enough to come alongside you and take the time to say, "This is an area you need to work on." But it is not just about constructive criticism — it is also about spotting the positive things in people's lives. I will frequently say to somebody, "The way you handled that meeting, the way you handled that issue — that was terrific, you did a great job." When they push back and say, "It just comes naturally," that is exactly the point. That is your gifted area. It comes naturally to you; it does not come naturally to everyone else.
Understanding the Value of Time
Have you understood the value of time during the course of this year? Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:6, "I am already being poured out like a drink offering. The time for my departure has come." He draws on the Old Testament sacrificial system — sacrifices of animal, then grain, then a drink offering — and says, in effect, "I am at the end of this life. My life is over."
Have you come to the realization this year that your life is finite? On the surface, all of us say yes immediately. But I want to drive this home — to really understand that there is a finiteness to your life. Your heart, the muscle in your body that beats away, has a finite number of beats in it. You have no idea what that number is, but it is finite. It beats about once every second, roughly 3,600 times an hour, and 87,000 times a day.
Here is a figure that is astonishing to me: since last year when we did this very lesson, you have invested 31½ million heartbeats. Thirty-one and a half million times your heart has beaten since we last did this lesson together. There is a commodity we have that is more precious than any other, and it is the commodity of time. If supply and demand kicks in — and I believe it will — the demand for time goes up while the supply stays constant, or perhaps even seems to shrink, and that precious commodity only grows in its value.
Did you understand that this year? Did you learn that? Psalm 90:12 says, "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." The Psalmist is asking to be taught this truth. Have you prayed that prayer this year? Do you pray it on a daily basis — God, help me understand the value of today; help me understand that I do not know how many todays I have, but whatever they are, I want to use them?
Where Did the Time Go?
Someone came over with some Christmas things and dropped off a picture of Susan and me when we were dating. It is incredible how she has changed over the years. I, of course, have not changed hardly at all. But I look at her, and I look at us as a couple, and I see us there.
I mentioned that I went to bed last Sunday after church and did not get up again until coming here today, except for Friday morning, which was Sarah's birthday. We went out and had breakfast, and then I went back home. New Year's Eve, she turned 20 years old. I remember she was born New Year's Eve, around 9:40 in the evening. This was in 1980, and I went home afterward — nothing stayed open on holidays. The only place I could find to eat was the Jerry's Cafeteria at 24th and Thomas. It was about 7:30 in the morning on New Year's Day, and there was no one there but me and about five other people in the place.
All of a sudden I found myself swept away with these thoughts — and it may sound strange, but she was not even 12 hours old, and I was already thinking about her going to school, graduating from grade school, going to high school, then college, and everything life had in store for her. I remember sitting in that Jerry's starting to tear up, thinking, "This is incredible — she is already leaving." My mind was just swept away with that whole unfolding process.
The other day, after our birthday breakfast, I went back home and lay there thinking: where did those 20 years go? It seems like it was just the beginning of the week that I was sitting at Jerry's down on 24th and Thomas, and now, at the end of that same week, she is getting ready to finish her second year of college. Where did that go?
The Illusion of Satisfaction
I see older people at the end of their life — in a wheelchair, slowing down — and there is just no question that their life is close to being over. Now listen to me and see if this doesn't sound like the way you think. I know that that's my future, but I can't really see myself there. All the empirical data in the world tells me that's where I'm headed, but in my brain, I can't see me there. I still see myself fielding a grounder and firing it, and in reality it was more like, well, where did that go?
I understand all the limitations, I understand them intellectually, but putting them into my life is another matter. And this is why — if you spend any time listening to me teach, you will see this as a recurring theme — I believe it is one of the keys to having a life that is motivated to live for the Lord.
Godliness with Contentment
First Timothy chapter six, verse six. We go back here all the time: "Godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world, it is certain we can carry nothing out, and having food and clothing, with these we should be content."
I go to this over and over again. I personally believe that the missing ingredient in most lives — most Christian lives — is a lack of contentment. I think that is the thing that stops us from growing the way we can spiritually, just the pursuit of this world and the things of this world.
You all have a passage of scripture like this, one you go back to over and over. I study this, I turn it over, I apply it, and I have been teaching it for about a year. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me that this passage read much better without verse seven. Look at it: "Now godliness with contentment is great gain — if we have food and covering, with these we should be content." Doesn't that have a better flow? I can just feel it moving. Verse seven breaks the flow.
But I understand God wrote it, and He is the perfect author, therefore I understand that it is truth and it ought to be there. So I have to ask why. I think I know. I think verse seven is the key to contentment. If you have godliness plus contentment, it is great gain. You came in naked, you are leaving naked, and if you have food and covering, that ought to be enough. All the other stuff does not matter. It is the idea, in this case, not only of the shortness of time, but of the purpose of why I am here.
God's View from Above the Maze
It is interesting to listen to people talk back and forth, or hear them call into radio shows, trying to find the purpose in life, the meaning in life, how to live, what to do, where to go. It blows me away that somebody will spend $3.99 a minute to call a stranger and ask, how do you think my year is going to be? How desperate are we? These are legitimate questions we are asking, but those are not legitimate answers. Life is confusing.
We used to go — I think it was Knott's Berry Farm — where they had a human maze. You walked in and it was just a giant maze of angles, and once you got in you were in there forever. But they also built over it a little walkway where you could go up and look down and watch the people inside. That was my favorite thing about Knott's Berry Farm, watching these people, frustrated, and you just wanted to call down to them.
I was up there once and there was a lady next to me who had a child in the maze. The kid was not doing very well — he was frustrated, locked in a corner, and he started crying. The mom yelled, "Hey, Biff! Come here. Okay, go to your right. Make another right. Go left. Now angle off a little bit to your right. Now go fast, go fast!" And boom, the kid was right out, just like that. It did not take fifteen or twenty seconds.
The same thing happens in your life and mine. When I am living in this world with a ground-level perspective, I am running into one door after another and nothing is working. But when I get God's view of my life and look down on it, all of a sudden God says, "Go this way. Don't go that way. Go right down there. Shoot through there fast." Boom, I am there. Life becomes simpler because I understand from God's perspective what life is supposed to be. That is why that verse is there.
Learning the Secret of Contentment
Did you have a year where you understood that you can be content? Paul says, "I have learned to be content." It must be something that is taught. He says he has learned the secret to life — he has learned to live with a lot and learned to live with a little. He has learned to realize that it really does not matter, because all of this is fading away.
Not tonight, but in a couple of nights, Florida State and Virginia Tech play for the national title. Whoever wins is national champion. And if Virginia Tech wins, let me tell you how it is going to go — the same is true of Florida State, but they are used to it. Virginia Tech will win, and the very first question asked is going to be, "How are you going to do it next year?" These kids are not even going to get to take off their uniforms and shower before someone asks them how they are going to do it again. That is what life does. Life gives you the illusion that you will maybe be satisfied, but never gives you the reality of it.
Some of you just finished the strongest year in your sales career. Top five. 1999, top five. When you go in tomorrow, let me help you out —
Contentment and Kingdom Perspective
You came in with nothing and you're leaving with nothing. That doesn't mean it isn't important — it's very important. But it's a ministry opportunity to build God's kingdom and God's agenda, not yours. That's why, whether you make the deal or lose the deal, we understand all the human ramifications of it, but in God's kingdom, the issue is: did you do the deal correctly? So why not get content? You had a great year if you understood that.
Victories Exceeding Defeats
If your victories exceeded your defeats, Paul writes in this process and says, "I have fought the good fight." In Ephesians 6 he says, "I put on the full armor of God so you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood." Let me try to bring some of those phrases to life.
"Put on" carries the idea of putting on once and for all — not putting on, then taking off, then putting on again. It's put on once and for all, the full armor of God, to stand firm. "Stand firm" is a military term; it speaks of defending an area against the attack of an enemy.
"The devil's schemes" — that word means deception or deceit. "Our struggle" pictures hand-to-hand combat. So here is what Paul is saying: put on the things of God once and for all, don't be messing around, you are in battle. Defend your life against the schemes of the devil, because you are in hand-to-hand combat with your mortal enemy. You are in a battle, a struggle — not against this world, but against Satan and his demons.
Knowing Your Enemy Is Real
This is serious, and you need to know a couple of things. You need to know your enemy, and you need to know that he is real. The last survey I saw, 80% of people who identified themselves as Christians said they did not believe Satan was real. They believed there may be a force of evil out there, or some kind of personality, but that he was just a fictitious character. You have an enemy who is real and who is out to destroy you.
Maybe you are here today for the first time and you are thinking, "Oh, this is one of those places where it's Satan, Satan, Satan." It's not one of those things. Oral Roberts was on Christian television one evening and Paul said, "Oral, how are you doing?" He said, "The devil almost got me today." Paul was intrigued and asked what happened. Oral said, "I was playing with my grandkids and I climbed on one of their bikes, and I'm riding along going faster and faster, and I came to a hill and now I'm going faster and faster down this hill with traffic everywhere. All of a sudden I realized I didn't know how to put the brakes on. I came around the corner, just missed cars, and landed over in the grass. I didn't get hurt, but Satan was out to get me."
Let me help you out here: if you get on a bike and you don't know how to stop it, Satan doesn't need to get you — you already got yourself. This is one of those situations where people say Satan is attacking. I was somewhere one night and the microphone wasn't working, and the host said, "Brother, we're glad to have you here — Satan is really attacking the sound system." I said, "I don't think so. It's an old sound system; that's our problem." Now, having said all that, we don't want to take Satan and dismiss him entirely either.
The Devil's Real Strategy
There is a real enemy. He is out to destroy you. He is a liar and a murderer. He will come at you through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life, just as he has done since the garden. He is not going to change his tactics because they work. How confident is he of them? When Jesus Christ comes out of the desert, it is the same three areas — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life — that Satan brings to Him. He is pretty confident he can handle you with these.
There are no rules. They are jungle rules. His strategy is to attack you and to destroy you, and he will execute this in whatever way he can. Scripture says he comes as a subtle serpent, an angel of light, or a roaring lion, and he will bring all of those against you. You are in battle, and you are puny in comparison to your adversary the devil. You are a fool if you think he doesn't exist, and you are a fool if you think you can overcome him in your own power.
You need to put on the full armor of God — that is, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be a man or woman of prayer, to be reading this book, and to be in the fellowship of other believers. You had a magnificent year if you understood this and your victories exceeded your defeats.
Finishing More Strongly Than You Started
Consequently, you finished more strongly than you started. Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I finished the race." He builds for us a picture using the imagery of athletics. He writes to the church at Corinth, and other than the Olympic games at Athens, the second most familiar and popular games were the games at Corinth. They were significant — paled only by the Olympics at Athens — and Paul writes to people who understood competition.
He said, "Don't you know that in a race all run, but only one gets a prize? Run in such a way to get a prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training." He is saying you need to be disciplined for this. Those who compete in these games do it to get a crown that will not last; we do it to get a crown that will last forever. When you won an event in the games at Corinth —
Defending the Integrity of the Faith
You had a great year if you defended the integrity of the faith. Paul says, "I have kept the faith." It is significant to me that he chooses a definite article — the word *the* — rather than a personal pronoun like *my* or *our*. He doesn't say he defended the integrity of our faith or my faith, but of *the* faith. He speaks of a body of truth. Paul says, I got this truth and I passed it on. I defended it.
Jude writes in verses 3 and 4: "Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt that I had to write to you and urge you to contend" — that's the struggle, that's the hand-to-hand combat word — "to contend for the faith." Not my faith or our faith, but *the* faith. There is a battle going on for this body of truth.
Well, who is the enemy? The liberal left? The secular humanists, Planned Parenthood? The media? Look at what Jude says: "For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have slipped in secretly among you." There are people who claim to be Christians. It's not those people out there — it's those who say, come on, let's link arms. People who say, oh yes, I pray to Jesus too, and look how much we think of Him, we even put Him in the name of our church.
He says, watch out. Just because somebody says they're a believer, just because somebody stands in a pulpit, just because somebody is in a church, doesn't mean they are engaged in the same exercise of faith you're in. Watch out not for those people out there, but for those that are in here — the wolves in sheep's clothing that Paul would talk about.
Recognizing Godless Men Within the Church
Jude says you will know these godless men in two ways. Number one, they change the grace of our God into license for immorality. They say, I understand it's wrong to leave my spouse, but I believe in Jesus, and since He forgives sin, He'll just forgive me down the road. I encountered more of that kind of thinking this year than any year I can remember — people coming to me and saying, I'm going to go ahead and do this. I know it's wrong to be with this secretary. I know it's wrong to cheat in this deal. I know it's wrong, but I'm going to do it.
When I would ask how they could do that, their answer was: God is going to forgive me. He has to forgive me. I said I believe in Him, and if I believe, then He forgives. Jude says anyone who thinks that way is a godless man. That is why one of the great indicators of where you are spiritually is how you handle your sin.
Every person in this room sins — I am right there with you, chief among sinners, I'll take that title. But when I sin, it breaks my heart. When I sin, I understand it is displeasing to God. I don't say, well, I'm going to go ahead and do this because God is obligated to forgive me. When you think that way, you are in trouble.
The second way you will recognize these godless men is that they deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign Lord. They acknowledge Jesus, but they add to Him any other god they want. They will say that Jesus is their Messiah, but not *the* Messiah. They say we are all in this together doing the best we can, and Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all lead back to one God. They say it doesn't matter what you believe, only that you are sincere about it — and that for you, because of the way you have been enlightened, Jesus Christ is true, but not for everyone.
That is from the pit of hell. That is a lie. There is only one way. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He is not some patient God sitting in heaven saying He hopes everyone figures it all out and does the best they can and that it will work out in the end. He is saying that if a person does not come to Him in repentance and faith, that person will not be in heaven. This is serious business.
Disciplining Yourself for the Crown
Corinth bestowed upon its champions three things: lifetime status as a hero in the land, a lifetime exemption from taxes, and an exemption from military service for all of their children. That is significant. But Paul says that honor pales in comparison to the crown that we as Christians pursue. That crown fades away and has its limits. Our crown lasts forever.
So Paul says, I discipline myself, I prepare myself. I don't run aimlessly. I don't fight like a man shadow boxing. I take my body and I discipline it and I prepare it so that I will prove worthy. Paul says he understands that at the end of his life there is a time of judgment. We as Christians are judged. Non-Christians are not judged — they are condemned at the end of their lives. God judges us.
I have come to believe He doesn't judge our sin, because that is already paid for. He judges those things we do for Him subsequent to our conversion — where we invest our time, our energy, our effort, and our money. Paul said he disciplined himself so that at the end of his life, when he stands before God and God judges his life, God sees someone who was worthy of the privilege of knowing the Savior, who lived a life that pulled others into that knowing and understanding, and whose life was exemplary in the world he lived. What a great year it would be if you understood that.
Jesus Is Coming Again
It was a magnificent year if you defended the integrity of the faith and you did it with love. Here is the last thing: you had a great year if you understood that Jesus is coming again. Paul said, "There's stored up for me a crown of righteousness, which the righteous judge will award to me on that day, and not only me, but to all of you." In the book of Revelation, chapter 22, three times Jesus says, "Behold, I am coming soon."
Sometimes we get hung up on that word "soon." That is a relative term. What does it mean that He is coming soon? He has been away two thousand years — maybe this is not going to happen. But what the Scripture tells us is that a thousand years is a day to the Lord. In His economy, He has been away only two days. He is coming again, and He is coming soon.
Now that we are past the millennium for a while, hopefully we can catch our breath and not have to listen to all the end-times speculation about this being the time. I do not know if He is coming today, tomorrow, the next day, or a week from now, and very honestly, I do not really care. What I want to know is that He is coming again, and consequently I live as though it is today. That is the whole issue.
Rather than running around trying to pin down a date — I have a book right over my phone at home, visible whenever I stand up in my office. On the cover it reads "1980?" The author was able to determine that Jesus was coming again in the 1980s, but he was not bold enough, in his own words, to put a specific year on it. I look at that and laugh every time I see it. I do not laugh because He did not come. I laugh because some publisher — and some idiot, that would be me — paid for the book, allowing this man to make a market and turn a profit out of the fact that Jesus is coming again.
Are You Prepared for His Appearing?
Jesus is coming again. Have you prepared yourself for that? Not just knowing Him as Lord and Savior — are you prepared for that crown of righteousness? Look at it: there is a crown stored up, not only for Paul, but for all who have longed for His appearing. Have you longed for the appearing of Christ? What a magnificent year it was if 1999 was the year you longed for the second coming.
Evaluating 1999 Honestly
Now I ask the question again: what kind of year was 1999, on a scale of one to ten, in light of this second set of questions? Some of you came in saying 1999 was a real good year — made a little more money, gained a little more prestige, received a little more recognition — and put a seven on it. But all of a sudden you realize there was nothing in that evaluation that truly mattered. Your victories and your defeats amounted to a flat line. You did not live in light of the fact that Christ may come again, and in reality you are now sitting at a three, having started at a seven. Some of you came in at a three and are going out at a seven. In a very real sense, the number itself is not the final point.
Here is the good news and the bad news. The bad news is this: if your life looks like a three or a four or a two, that is your fault. Not mine, not God's, not anyone else's — that is your fault. If your life scored a dismal number, that is your fault, especially for those of you who were here last year, because we told you then that on the first Sunday in January we would ask you these same six questions again.
Now here is the good news: if it is your fault, you can fix it. But you have to take some steps to do it. Do not fall into the trap of saying you wasted 1999 and it is not worth starting over. It is always worth starting. Every single minute of every day counts, and you can begin that process today by putting on the full armor of God and preparing for these struggles.
A Call to Action
I am going to ask you to do two things. First, complete the self-examination exercise — go through it carefully. Jim has provided some concrete steps you can take, both within the church and in your own personal life. Second, next week we are going to give you some additional concrete steps, some ways to look at your life so that 1999, no matter how it was, stands independent from what comes next.
Let me put it another way: just because you had an eight in 1999 does not mean you are automatically going to have an eight in 2000. It does not just happen. So be prepared for that, and next week we will talk about how to make the year 2000 the greatest year of your life.
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*Father, help us see the truth of this — to evaluate our lives in light of the reality of who You are. God, please let us be men and women who bring honor and glory to You. We pray it to You in Jesus' name, amen.*