Winning to Live Over Fear
Tom Shrader continues his Living to Win series by addressing fear as one of life's major entanglements. Using Hebrews 13:5-6 as his foundation, he teaches that contentment with what God has provided is the antidote to fear-driven desires for more money, status, or security. He emphasizes that when we feel inadequate or overwhelmed by circumstances, we must remember God's faithfulness and His promise to never leave or forsake us.
“What you know trumps what you feel, and what you know comes from the scripture.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2014)
Recorded: 2014
Duration: 38 min
Themes: fear, contentment, security, faithfulness, trust, anxiety, provision, courage, struggling with anxiety, financial stress, feeling overwhelmed, new believer, facing uncertainty, dealing with worry, seeking security, young adult
Scripture: Hebrews 12:1, Hebrews 13:5-6, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Deuteronomy 7:17-18, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalm 3, Psalm 23, Psalm 47:16-17, Psalm 56:3-4, Luke 12:4-5, John 12:37-42
Theological Themes: divine providence, god's provision, biblical contentment, sanctification, spiritual warfare, christian living, biblical counseling, discipleship
Full Transcript
Today is week four of an eight-week series titled Living to Win with the subtitle Identifying and Unraveling the Entanglements of Life. In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 1, the author writes, "Therefore since we have so great a cloud of witness surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us." There are the entanglements of life, and obviously there is a reference there to sin, but just life itself. In fact, that's kind of where I landed—pretty soon to lay aside the entanglements of life is to almost stop life. All of life is an entanglement. All of the things that come potentially can draw us off course.
Here are the topics we've talked about. I'll give them in the order we're dealing with them: guilt, weakness, anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, stress. You can feel the piling on of these, and the last one is uncertainty. I said it the first week—the seven of them I don't think the order matters. The order does matter that we deal first with this idea of guilt.
Starting with Guilt
We come into the world, and there's something in us, the world around us—not just our environment—there's something in us that tells us when we do things that are wrong we're guilty. We feel guilty because we are guilty, and then all of life in some ways becomes an effort to figure out what do I do with that guilt. Instinctively our reflex is religion. I'll try to do this or not do this. I get a sense that God or this higher power is mad at me, and I will placate Him somehow through what I do.
Then along comes biblical Christianity, and it says there's nothing you can do—it was done for you. I got in the car this morning and was hitting my radio buttons. I have a little kind of ritual. I got a 10-minute late start today which messed me up on my ritual, but I'm driving in, I'm hitting my buttons, I got to 95.1 and they just went all Christmas music. So it's the first thing I heard this morning in the car was Andy Williams singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."
So now that starts this Christmas. What's Christmas all about? We've got all of our answers, but we know on our church calendar it's about Jesus, God, becoming man for a specific purpose. Not to separate Christmas from Easter, but becoming man so that He could die on the cross and rise from the dead in order to save His people from their sin. That's how guilt is dealt with. Now I'm ready to live.
What You Know Trumps What You Feel
What I discovered—and I hope you get this, I presume if it's important to me it's important to you or at least I want it to be—is that our solution to all seven of these that we talked about takes us back to one of my go-to phrases: what you know trumps what you feel. So when I get to those areas of, for example, fear—here's Webster: painful emotion marked by alarm, synonyms: fright, dread, consternation, panic, tear—when I get to those things of fear, what I need is to go back to what I know.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and asking myself, "Tom, do you remember when?" Because now a lot of these are so familiar to me that sometimes I forget the roots of them. I remember I'd been a Christian a year or two, I'm driving down the street, and that day you didn't have internet so you had Christian radio and cassette tapes. I've got Christian radio on and there's this guy teaching, and he's wailing away, and it was the first time I heard it—you've heard it since.
He said the number one prohibition that Jesus gives us, so the number one thing Jesus says not to do, and I said, "Man, whatever comes next has got to be pretty important." The number one prohibition Jesus gives us—you know it right from being in here for years, you know it. Do not what? Be afraid.
The Journey of Understanding Fear
That became for me like a two-year journey of just kind of noodling that, taking it around, playing with it for a while, putting it back away, and I kind of developed it into one of the talks that I would do as I travel with dozens of groups. I remember one night being up at Desert Mountain, and it was a senior tour event, and Gary Player was there and a bunch of guys like that. In came a guy I thought he was a caddy, and he sat down next to me, and it was time to pray and I looked down and I realized he had on blue pants and a blue shirt and blue shoes, and all of a sudden I realized it's Doug Sanders.
So I hear all these guys in this room, and I did my talk, "Do not be afraid," and I was amazed. I said, "All right guys"—many of them had their wives—"what are you afraid of?" They started, and the very first thing, it was a guy sitting right behind Gary Player, and he said, "I'm afraid of failure." I've done that exercise in women's studies, men's studies, couples studies, I've done them with students, and when you ask what are you afraid of, you get the same five, six, seven, eight, nine things.
I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of rejection, I'm afraid of suffering, I'm afraid of health issues, I'm afraid of money—not having enough money. There's one that I added to it, and maybe it's more—I don't know if I'm afraid of it, but it's more of a desire—I'm afraid of insignificance. I've come to grips with this: that I'm not anybody or ever going to be anybody.
Fear of Insignificance
We're coming up on Thanksgiving, and I realized that a few Thanksgivings from now, I don't know how many, I won't be here and my kids will be together, and my fear is the conversation goes, "You know, he used to cut the turkey, who's going to cut the turkey?" And that'll be the extent of it. That'll be it. "Well, and he paid for the turkey too, so I don't know, we'll all chip in, and you know, he didn't leave..."
us much money so I'll buy a turkey but I don't know who's going to cut it because that's what he did, that seems to be his holiday contribution. I want something more than that but I think you have that yearning in you so we put together a list.
My point is this, I'll kind of work my way through the outline here today but it feels to me like from here on out every week is to take this idea of fear and it's a prism and you twist it a little bit. So we talked about different things here, you've got the list in front of you: financial concerns, my personal inadequacy, being outnumbered, being passed by your peers, seeing bad people succeed, dangerous conditions, uncertain futures. In all of these the answer seems to me to almost always be the same. What you know trumps what you feel and what you know comes from the scripture.
Beyond Normal Concern
When we talk about fear we're talking about something that's more than natural concern. I tried to do that last week and I don't know if I did a very good job when we're talking about anxiety—this is beyond normal concern. If you get a call today and it says your daughter's been in a car wreck, well there's a natural concern. It's when it starts to be obsessive, it starts to be the driving force, those things begin to occupy your mind.
That's the fine line. What is that? I don't know how you figure that out but you know, you know in your own life, when it starts to be unhealthy, when it starts to affect your behavior, it starts to affect how you eat, or how you sleep, or how you interact with others.
The Love of Money and Contentment
So fear, and maybe, appropriately so, right in front of you, Hebrews 13. "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have."
Now if we stop right there, and if you are a priority living alumni, you know we're in my sweet spot here: contentment. It's the missing ingredient. What I like is that we used a phrase here, because we typically go to 1 Timothy 6:6, 7, 8. We're going to Hebrews 13, and it's the same idea. So what I want to do is just wander through this. You have the outline, you can figure it out. I want to give you what I think are the guts and the important part of this.
So keep your life free from what? Not money, but the love of money. You've heard it said that money's not good, money's not bad, money's neutral—how we view it, what we do with it. Wayne Grudem wrote a little book called Business for the Glory of God. And when I say little book, it's 97 pages maybe, 100 pages. I don't know why every business guy, and I've had a lot of business guys look at that book, and none of them seem to go wow. I would think they'd go wow if for no other reason than it validates some of your motives that you want.
So for example, when Grudem gets to money, he says money's good, but it can be used and become bad. Well, that becomes the opening paragraph to every topic. Profit—profit's good, but it can be bad. Money, good or neutral, money is not the problem. It's the love of money. It's what in our sinfulness, money does. It's not that we like it, we love it. Keep your life free from the love of money.
Now here's the antidote to that, and that's to be content with what you have. That's not a license to be apathetic.
Thinking Big About Contentment
So let's expand the thinking. You're going to have to think. This is the best, I don't know. Listen, I know we have no chance, but I thought, what the heck, I'm leaving town, right? Well, you're going to have to think, because I want you to see this principle and not go narrow on money, but go big on life. It's to be content with what you have—money and everything.
Be content, here you go, be content with the spouse God's given you. So ladies, here you go, 3.5 billion fish in the sea. This is the guy you picked. You said, "I do." You said, "for better or worse, rich or poor, sickness and health." I don't know that I subscribe to this idea that there's one guy in the whole world that I have to find Him and I don't know what you do if He's somewhere in Sri Lanka and you're here. I don't know. Here's what I know: I know the minute you say, "I do," that's your guy. You picked Him. Gals, you picked Him. Guys, I don't know, but once you say, "I do," she's your gal.
It's to be content with the spouse God's given you. To be content with the kids God's given you.
A Flag Football Lesson
Saturday, the boys had a game way out, I don't even know where we were. I don't have a clue. It was almost the Oro Valley, down the back way. We went out to Higley, go to Higley, and then stop, eat, get some water, because you're going to need it, because it's another two canteens to get down to. Stop when you get to a mountain. We're out in the middle of nowhere with no parking, and we're walking to the game.
It's a flag football game. It means absolutely nothing, and it was amazing to watch, because there's certain kids. I mean, there's eight and nine, Yale's seven, so let's say seven, eight, nine. There's kids, you just give them the ball, and you should see them, and they just have a move. I mean, it just happens. And there's other kids that they just get the ball, and they go, "I don't want it. I have to run and carry it, and it's a hassle. I don't need this."
If you're a parent or a grandparent, I guess, I don't know, I didn't get that into it, but if you're a parent, you want your kid to be the one that can juke. And pretty soon, if you don't guard your heart, you're not content with the kids God's given you or the gifts God's given you.
Musical Memories
I watched these music guys. I got none of that. Here's my first recollection: Sixth grade, Sister Mary Owen. So all you need to know is that right there, and it's got a bad end to it. And we're up, it's this time of year, it's a Christmas show. So we're up, and she's directed us, and she goes, "no, no,"
That's not right. This side over here, stop singing. This side, keep singing. And then he goes, you stop, you stop. Well, they're honing in, and here I'm standing, singing my brains out, and pretty soon, she's going, you don't sing anymore, stop, stop. You move your lips like you're singing, but don't sing. I mean, I'm screwed up today because of this. I probably got a lawsuit if it wasn't 50-plus years old.
I got none of it. Well, it doesn't do me any good, and there's always a fine line here, but I'm spending a bunch of time trying to get better at something you'll never be good at. It's silly for me to worry about the fact, I go in, this was, I had two doctors on Tuesday, and every time they do the same thing, this is awful. It was worse Tuesday. She said, all right, Tom, get on the scale. And she's standing over there, I can't see it. What's it say? I said, oh, you don't want to know this. And then when they're done, which I can deal with that, then they take me over and stand me against the wall, and I'm standing there like a doofus, so they put the little height thing. I wish I were taller. There's nothing I can do about it.
The Key to Contentment
There's something about the human experience here. Keep your life free from, in this case, the love of money, but be content with what you have. How can I do that? That's so hard.
Here's the answer, you see it? Because, I'm gonna tell you, here's why. Here's how you can be content. Because God said, never will I forsake you. So we say with confidence, the Lord is my helper. I won't be afraid. I can be content. I can be satisfied. Why? Well, because the Lord is engaged. He's not passive. He's not disengaged. He didn't start the world and walk away and say, I wonder how this will end.
The Cost of Financial Bondage
Here's a stat. 90% of those desiring to go to the missionary field do not get there because of financial obligations at home. Think about that for a second. I remember when I heard that, I said, wow. Nine out of 10 people who say, God's called me to the mission field and I want to go, don't get there because of essentially consumer debt.
Imagine standing before God and saying, yep, I heard you. Yep, I wanted to go, but I needed that new, that's that humanness in it that has to be controlled. I've played 12 holes of golf in two years. I'm watching the golf channel the other day and the next thing I know, I'm planning a trip to the PGA store to look at a new driver. Listen, you could put a cannon in my hand and I can't hit it 180 yards. Well, I don't need a new driver.
It's into, you see it, you want it. This time, it's the old Radio Shack ad, now the Shack, my favorite ad that gets this, went their tagline, we have thousands of things you never knew you needed. Thousands that I need.
Living in a Consumer World
Because you live in a world that says, come on, I got out of college and I got one day, I'll never forget it, got in the mail a MasterCard with a limit on it, you're going to laugh, of $250. Before you could say MasterCard, I was at my limit. I was at $250 like that. Don't remember what I did, I just knew that I took all $250 and it was gone. And so then I thought, well gosh, I know there's a Visa, can I get a Visa card? I went to the bank to talk about a Visa card, I applied for American Express, they turned me down, I'm still boycotting them, they turned me down, but so did Visa.
Here you go, in this world we live in today, if you don't have your appetites under control, the world will eat you up. I don't know what it's like, but I know a few years ago when you checked into your dorm at ASU or any other school, laying on your bed were all sorts of opportunities and for on average $15,000 of pre-approved credit cards. Can you imagine how fast I'd have gone through that?
Now I can get, within reason, all of that I want. But there has to be a switch, you have to honestly ask yourself, why do I want that thing so much? My phone's acting up, and I'm convinced this is a plot from Apple, but it's four years old, and I had somebody's new phone the other day, it was pretty big, it looked pretty cool, it seemed like the more I looked at their phone, the more my phone was acting up, I don't know if that's true or not. To where I called Sharon, but she didn't answer, and I hung up, and I thought, I was gonna call Sharon and say, gosh, I need a new phone, can you swing by, because it would clearly be inconvenient for me to do it, can you swing by and get me, I don't need a new phone. But what's that thing in your heart? That's what we're talking about, what do I know? What's my heart?
When You're Afraid Because of Personal Inadequacy
Look at your second thing. When you're afraid because of personal inadequacy, Deuteronomy 7, you may say to yourself, the nations are stronger than we are, how do we drive them out? Don't be afraid of them, remember, this is what you do, you remember, remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all of Egypt.
Lucy's teaching, let's see, so 7:30, so she's done running, she's getting cleaned up, and she teaches at 9 o'clock three-year-olds at BSF, so she goes to BSF yesterday, teaches three-year-olds today. And Lucy, my granddaughter, is in that class, and they are learning, this year BSF is studying Moses. So last week, or the week before, you said, Lucy, what did you learn? I learned that Moses went to France, really. I said, Sandy, I'm not sure that you're quite the teacher you think you are. Well she heard Pharaoh, and she didn't have in her vocabulary anything that went with that except France.
And so the next week was the burning bush, and I said to Sandy, here's what I would do if I was teaching it, I'd get a bucket, I'd get a bunch of these dead plants we have, put them in there, light them on fire. And she said, you know the story is they don't burn up, they keep burning. And I said, well I know that, but just tell the kids this would
keep burning, we need to put it out. And she said, here's the basic—now she has, as she likes to point out to me, three degrees, two from Wash U, one from somewhere else, master's degree in education. She said, "This is a basic principle with three year olds: you don't bring flammable material into the classroom and light it." I said, "Okay, that seems on the surface a good idea, but if I'm not mistaken, the objective is to have them learn a lesson. They'll never forget this bucket if you light it on fire." With the whole thing, so I see Lucy, I said, "What'd you learn?" "Let my people go." Okay, that's what she learned. That's what you remember.
God's Track Record in Israel's History
Here's Moses, Israel, you're looking around, you're outnumbered, you're defeated, it looks like the whole world is over, and God says, "No, do you remember being like this before? You remember when you're moving away?" And let me remind you, there were two million Israelites moving through the desert—that's a lot of people. Two million of them, and they're going, "Well, there's an army behind us, and there's a river in front of us. We don't know what we're gonna do." And God says, "Hang on," and the river opens up and in they go, and then it closes up and swallows their enemy. "Do you remember how I did that? I think I can handle it."
"Oh, you don't know, God, we don't have any food." "Food?" And they wake up in the morning, and there's the manna. Now, remember the end of that story. "Oh, manna, God, you're so good." And then after three days, "Manna, manna, manna, manna. All you got's manna." But all you wanted was food, all you wanted was a healthy baby, ten fingers and ten toes. We're chronically—some of us don't hide it as well—we're chronically dissatisfied.
The Reality of Our Inadequacy
You feel inadequate because you are inadequate. Here's one of my favorite Larry Wright stories. We got 11 minutes, so I've abused time, and whenever I tell a Larry Wright story, he's the hero. In this case, I am. Larry came home from teaching in Dallas, and I said, "Doc, you don't look so good." "Oh, gosh," I said, "Well, what happened?"
And he said, "I'm teaching on Sunday, and they took me into a Sunday school class for a Q&A, and I don't do a lot of Q&A. And this guy asked this—he got up and made a speech, and then he asked this question. He said, 'Tommy, if I wrote the question and gave it to him, it's the question I would have given him. It's the easiest question in the world. And I just went blank. I don't know what happened. I'm so inadequate.'"
And I started laughing. He said, "That's not funny." And I said, "You know, if there's one thing you've taught me, it's that we're inadequate. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' I acknowledge I'm inadequate." There's a sense in which we're constantly living over our heads. We're in it deeper than we can get ourselves out, not through stupid decisions, just through—you aren't as sharp and as talented, you're not the spiritual giant you think you are.
The Power of Remembering God's Work
So what do I do in those moments when I start to get a little—remember. Remember what God did. Remember when you were up against it, and you didn't think there was a way out, and God intervenes? Read that Old Testament, read that New Testament, see how He worked again and again. That can be so abstract. Think in your own life. Think of those moments when you're almost overwhelmed by the circumstances.
It's the same as being outnumbered in Psalm 3. David's writing, and he said, "But you are the shield around me, Lord, you bestow glory on me, lift up my head. To the Lord I will cry, and He will answer me from His holy hill. I'll lay down and sleep." How do you sleep at a moment like this? Well, I remember, He's in control. Deuteronomy chapter 31: "The Lord is with you, He's ahead of you, He won't abandon you, don't be afraid."
Facing Reality with Faith
Now let's be realistic—not because it's not scary. It's scary. Not because it isn't a dark world. It's a dark world. Not because you aren't going to make mistakes. You are. Not because there aren't going to be people who take advantage of you, or circumstances that seem beyond your control, that begin to come in around you. Maybe it's a health issue, maybe it's a financial issue, a relation—who knows what it is?
In that moment, when my flinch is to become reflective, and maybe fearful, all of a sudden I'll—you know what, I can lie down and sleep. How? "The Lord's my shepherd, I shall not want. He made me to lie down in green pasture." That whole Psalm 23, that's not about dying, that's about living. The Lord's my shepherd today, so I can begin to navigate my way through life.
When Life Gets Competitive
When all of a sudden your peers are passing you by—I wrote down high school reunion—you begin to think of that. I don't know how to tell this story. I would be better told with a group of guys in a booth at a restaurant than in here, because you could make it more real. But I remember, my best friend post-college was a guy by the name of Joe Tuffinelli, and Joe was one of the funniest guys in the world.
Math mind that he could use in one of two directions: invent the Internet or perfect a daily racing form. He opted for the second. I took him to the track for the first time. He bet two dollars on a horse to show. They gave him five and he said, "I gave him two, they gave me five. I think I could make a career of this." And the rest of his life was consumed with this.
We're in Vegas one time. We'd been there a week. That's a long time on a limited budget. We're standing in front of Caesars Palace. We had gone down there, not because we were staying there, but we wanted to see. They had built a new building in the back where Connors was gonna play McEnroe and where Ollie would fight and all this stuff. We're standing in front of Caesars. Up comes the world's longest white stretch limousine. We're standing there. Out gets this girl. Her legs start and about five minutes later the rest of her gets out. And you know, you couldn't miss her. And behind her this guy gets out. I'm looking at him. I said, "Gosh, I know that guy." I said,
Joe, I think I know him. And we're thinking some movie star or something. And he said, is that Dickie? I said, yeah, I think it is. It's a guy we went to high school with. He's the guy who stuffed his head in the toilet. He was the trumpet player in the band. And we were all cool. And he was Dickie. And hey, Dickie. Hey, guys. How you doing? Good. Are you staying here at Caesars? No, we're at the El Morroco. If you remember it, there was a flamingo and then the Holiday Inn, then a McDonald's and down a little. We're at the El Morroco. Room four.
Anytime you're in a single digit room, you're either very special or a bad boy. We're at the El Morroco in room four. You stay in here? Oh, yeah. This is where I stay when I come. Well, this guy had made a bunch of money on some computer. And all of a sudden it was this overwhelming thing that people are blowing by us.
Psalm 47 says: "Don't be overawed when man grows rich, when the splendor of his house increases, for he will take nothing with him when he dies." There's the equalizer. I don't know if that's to say, oh, it'll all get even. I am putting together some stuff to take with me to reengage.
When Life Doesn't Seem Fair
I used to say every day had a Seinfeld moment. Every day. Those of you that are Seinfeld fans, you have something that happens in the day and you go, that's Seinfeld. I just the other day parked in a parking garage and came out and I couldn't. And I said, that's a Seinfeld. Well, about a year ago, I noticed every day was having an Ecclesiastes 3 moment. That this is for a season.
And you get it here with peers passing you by or when you begin to look around and there's people who you know. You know they're bad people. You know they cheat. You know they steal. You know they'd screw you in a nanosecond. You know they have. It's the reputation in the community. And yet you see them succeed.
What do you do in the midst of that? Because everything in you wants to get even. God says, listen, that's my job, not yours. As far as it depends upon you, live at peace with one another.
Trusting God When Afraid
Psalm 56: "When I'm afraid, I will trust you. In God whose word I praise, in God I trust. I won't be afraid." Don't be afraid in those moments. And He adds at the end, Psalm 56 verse 4: "What can a mortal man do to me?"
What about the circumstances around you? What about the future? Which by definition is uncertain. We get all concerned about that. I'm watching now on the Christian TV and they're selling five years worth of food for $10 a day or whatever. And the end is coming.
Well, listen, we had a dry run on this. Do you remember? It was called Y2K. And you went to the Christian bookstores. They had all these books and the end was coming and all the Christians, they're supposed to have all the faith, were the ones who on the day after looked like idiots. Well, the future is uncertain by definition and I can't fix it, but He can.
Proper Fear and Perspective
Luke 12:4: "Truly I say to you, my friends, don't be afraid of those that kill the body and after that do no more. But I will show you who you should fear. Fear Him who after killing of the body has the power to throw you into hell. Yeah, I tell you, fear Him."
So I'm trying to give you a metric for being able to deal with that. And that is in this area of fear, I go back to what I know trumps what I feel. I go back and remember. I remember that God's in charge.
In John 12, John writes this: "Even after Jesus did all these miraculous signs" - so this is after the feeding of the 5,000, waters turned into wine, the paralytic can walk, deaf can hear, blind can see, Lazarus is back to life - "even after those, they still wouldn't believe. Yet at the same time, there were many who would believe." So the question is, are you going to believe?
The Choice to Believe
I mentioned Joe Tufanelli. I'm talking to Joe one night and he said, "If I could see a miracle, I'd believe." And I said, "Joe, that's not true. You won't believe because you won't believe. I can show you a human miracle. It's me. It's a transformed life. I can take you to an empty tomb and a risen Christ." There's our hope.
I mean, we just came through the political season and nobody gets into that any more than I do. But I don't for a second think because you had a house and Senate turn the other night. I don't think your problems are over. My hope's not the Republicans or the Democrats or the libertarians or the independents. Do I think it makes a difference? I really do. But my hope is in Christ.
Where True Hope Lies
My personal salvation is in Christ. My redemption for today's in Christ. He saved me and I'll be with Him one day in heaven. But He's the thing that sustains me today. He's the thing that when I look at the world around me and I start to just see it.
You go from the five o'clock news to Brett Baier. And if you're heading south now, Greta and O'Reilly and Megan kicks dirt on you and then Hannity kicks dirt on you. And if you're not down enough, we'll replay O'Reilly. And by the end of this, you're looking for a new rope. You want to get out of here. And God says, "Listen, those are nothing. I love you. You can trust me. So don't be afraid."
Right along that same line, next week we get into worthlessness. "Oh, I'm a worm. I'm not worth anything." Really? Well, let's see what God says about your value.
Back to the Basics
Father, help us take a look at this and see it. I got that. It's wandering around. But I also know that it's the basics. It's the grip in the stance. It's "gentlemen, this is a football." It's all those basic things that we go back to again and again and again.
And here's the truth. You love us. You sent Your Son to die for us. We embrace that. And since we're ready to die, we're ready to live, and You'll give us hope. God place that in our heart. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.