Make the Invisible God Visible

Tom Shrader examines Jesus' teaching about Christians being salt and light in Matthew 5, emphasizing that believers must make the invisible God visible through transformed character. He explores the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 as the practical evidence of spiritual life that others should see. Shrader challenges listeners to examine their lives for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as the means by which God reaches the world through His people.

“You're Jesus' representative, you're His ambassador, and people should see something totally different about you.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Tools for Finishing Strong

Recorded: October 24, 2018

Duration: 46 min

Themes: character, witness, transformation, fruit, love, joy, peace, faithfulness, aging believer, struggling with relevance, new believer, mentor, parent, feeling spiritually stagnant, seeking spiritual growth, doubting faith impact

Scripture: Matthew 5:3-16, Galatians 5:19-23, 2 Corinthians 5:18, Ephesians 2:8-10, Isaiah 6, 2 Timothy 3

Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual fruit, christian witness, fruits of spirit, spiritual maturity, christlike character, holy living, biblical discipleship

Full Transcript

It is great to see you this morning. If you have Bibles, you can open them to Matthew 5. I also provided you the passage on the sheet that we handed out to you. When you hear Matthew 5, and you begin to think of Matthew 5, 6, and 7, you're looking at the Sermon on the Mount. If you have a red-lettered Bible, meaning the words of Jesus are in red, virtually the entire three chapters are in red.

So let me set the tone for you and put it in context. I met several of you that are here for the first time, so welcome to you. To the rest of you, you don't remember last week anyway, so it works out perfect. I don't either.

The Series: Tools for Finishing Strong

We're in a series that when this happens, for me personally, it's really great. I'm getting more and more into it the more I do this series. The more I see it come together. We titled it "Tools for Finishing Strong," and it was born out of this aging discussion that we've had, that we keep having.

I started to do a series on aging, and I realized it was too narrow. It didn't feel right, I'll put it to you that way. The more old people I talked to, the more I discovered they didn't want to talk about what to do when they fall. They wanted to talk about how miserable they were, how hard life was. What I discovered, I think, that has the potential to be literally revolutionary, is that people are not spiritually ready for aging because they haven't been doing all the basics all the way along.

Sandy has this deal, and it happened again the other night, where this lady stops her and is talking to her about how to get fit. She left, and Sandy said, "Everybody thinks they're two weeks away from being in shape." They think they're going to get there by doubling up. Everybody who's done nothing thinks they're going to run a marathon in two weeks, just by working hard. The reality is, it's every day. It's a little bit every day. It's taking what you've got. It's pushing it. Same thing is true spiritually.

Finding Your Compass

As we look at the tools for finishing strong, they're really tools for the Christian life. How do I find my compass in the midst of all this? Well, that's the Scripture. Now that I have it, I need to be a lifelong learner, which is coming from two directions.

I need to stay in tune with the culture around me. I need to understand what's going on. Some of you will think this is heresy. We as old people, and some of you don't fit that, but not many, we as old people don't help our image any when we start with, "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to do that. I don't want to learn that. It's way too complicated." You might as well just wear a lanyard that says, "I'm irrelevant."

It's so simple. I'm not kidding about this website. I've been doing websites since we started East Valley. They get so complicated. This thing is so easy. I have a granddaughter who's 11, and she's nonverbal autistic. She's never spoken. You give her an iPad, and I don't know how, but she can figure it out. She's flipping and handling it. These things are usable. When you start with, "Oh, it's all that newfangled stuff," you need to figure it out. You need to go to the Apple store, or the community college, or somewhere, or get your grandkid or neighbor to teach you how to get on this stuff. This is an amazing tool. It's got a lot of junk, but it's an amazing tool.

Lifelong Learning

I need to be a lifelong learner of that, but I need to be a lifelong learner of the Scripture. I can read a passage and think, "I know I read that before, but I didn't see this." Somehow, when I read that before, it strengthened me, and it will again. So now, I've got to make decisions.

My oldest daughter sent me a text the other day and said, "Can I stop by and see you?" I hate those texts. I told them when they got married, "Don't ever ask me for money. If you're old enough to get married, you're old enough to figure this out. If anything, I'll be calling you for some cash." She comes in, and all she wanted to do was talk. So we talked for two hours.

I got on a riff, and she said, "How are you doing?" I said, "You know what? I'm so sick of these 35-year-old couples who have no money, who take a family of six to Joe's BBQ for an $80 lunch. It's insane. You could fund your retirement with that." She goes crazy. She said, "Dad, I have almost no friends my age, because the whole time we're together, all I can think of is how stupid are you?" I said, "Well, we agree on one thing."

I don't mean that to beat up a whole generation, but you get the drift. "I'm so busy." Well, who keeps your calendar? "Well, I do." Okay, then we know who to blame. We just need to figure these things out.

Making Godly Decisions

I need to make godly decisions. What's important? What's going to matter? My old school nurse, I wrote about her in a blog a week or two ago. My old school nurse died the other day. I'm on this website. I read obituaries every day. This was a great lady. She was a school nurse for 20, 30, 40 years. Everybody loved her.

What do you want people to say about you? "He's an avid Hawkeye fan. He loves to hunt and fish." Okay. He could have been Merlin Perkins. There must be something more to that. So I need to make decisions about my time.

We had the discussion the other day. I'll bet you had this discussion this week. What would you do if you won $1.6 billion? Sandy, I said, "What would you do?" She said, "Well, I wouldn't do anything different. I might travel." I said, "Man, I'm going to miss you." She said, "I'm not going anywhere. You know, I got the Discovery Channel. I got everything I need." She said, "I don't know." I said, "Would you move?" She said, "I might get a place or something, but I wouldn't do much different." That's a pretty big statement.

Most people that I talk to really wouldn't do that much different. They would do less. I'm going to make a leap here, and I want you to come with me. Essentially, many of you in this room have done the equivalent of winning $1.6 billion. You quit your job. You can't just buy a jet, but you have access. What do you do with that? Those are godly decisions. Begin to appropriate that. Begin to think about it.

Here's what we're going to do today and next week. We're going to take two things that should not be separated and separate them, but they go together, so we'll keep coming back and forth. God has a plan, and this is amazing. God has a plan to reach the world, and it's through you. It's amazing. Not sure it would have been my plan, but it's His.

Make the Invisible God Visible

So here's this week's title: Make the Invisible God Visible. You can't separate that from speak the truth boldly. They go together. If you make the invisible God visible, but don't speak the truth boldly, you're a coward. If you speak the truth boldly, but you haven't made the invisible God visible, you're a hypocrite. These two are inseparable.

So I gave you that passage from Matthew chapter 5, and I started on that in verse 3. As you look at it, you see verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 all begin with the word blessed. Some places it's translated happy, not in a frivolous way, but in a deep way of contentment with God.

Making the invisible God visible begins with the acknowledgement in Matthew 5:3 that I'm spiritually bankrupt. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." What you really see here in these verses is a description of Jesus. Not poor in spirit, but He mourns, He's gentle, He hungers and thirsts. It becomes the portrait of a follower of Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit. This is where this spiritual journey starts.

Starting with Spiritual Bankruptcy

So we always have to go back to this, though it's repetitive. Making the invisible God visible without first recognizing your own sin is just going to make you into a Pharisee religious nut. Max Lucado writes this: "The first step to joy is a plea for help and an acknowledgement of moral destitution and admission of inward deficiency. Those who taste God's presence have declared, this is real, spiritual bankruptcy, and are aware of their spiritual crisis. Their cupboards are bare, their pockets are empty, their options are gone. They have long since stopped demanding justice and are pleading for mercy. They don't brag, they beg. They ask God to do for them what they can't do for themselves. They have seen how holy God is, how sinful they are, and have agreed with Jesus' statement, salvation is impossible."

So that's the Isaiah 6 moment: "Woe to me for I'm undone. I see the holiness of God." Now this is not unique to Max Lucado or a handful of people. This is the normal Christian life. It may be circumstantially different, but that's the starting point. I start with surrender. I don't start with cleaning up my own act. I start with this acknowledgement that salvation is impossible without God, that He does it all.

Salt and Light

Well after these things are in place, look at verse 13 you have in front of you, Matthew chapter 5 verse 13: "You are the salt of the earth. The salts become tasteless. How can it be made salty again? No longer any good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone put a lamp under a basket but on a lampstand." You see that transition? He talks about our salvation and then He says you're salt and you're light.

Over the years we've done entire messages on salt and on light. But basically what we acknowledge about salt and light is it has to have contact to be effective. Salt is a preservative, it creates thirst. That's what you are. You're to create thirst in the people around you. You're the light. My friend Larry Wright used to say something and it always made me a little bit queasy. He used to say you may be the only Bible some people ever read. But then I saw MacArthur said it so I knew it must be right, or at least I know it wasn't wimpy.

So tie all this together. You're salt and light. You walk through this world. You come in contact with people. You're Jesus' representative. You're His ambassador. That's what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5.

Our Ministry of Reconciliation

In verse 18 of 2 Corinthians 5 from the Amplified: "In all these things," he's talking about salvation, "all these things are from God who reconciles us to Himself through Christ, making us acceptable to Him." Now here you go, that's step one. Step two: "and He gave us a ministry of reconciliation so that by our example we might bring others to Him."

Look at verse 16 of Matthew 5: "Let your light shine in such a way that people," and then the next word to me is the operative word here, "see your faith." Apparently I'm supposed to be able to look at you and see that you're a follower of Christ. It's visible. There's something different about you.

Not odd. That's my fear so often is that people look at Christians and they go, "Gosh, they're odd." If wide ties are in, they got narrow ties. Telling all these corny, old, super silly jokes. They're just odd. I mean, they're recording Ozzie and Harriet. I tape two shows every day, Bob Newhart and the Lone Ranger. I love the Lone Ranger. I will tell you this, you couldn't get the Lone Ranger on network TV today in a million years. The Lone Ranger and Tonto walk into a bar, sounds like a bad joke, and there's one parachute, and they walk into a bar and everybody in the bar will say, "Who's the engine?" We don't talk like that anymore, but it reveals a lot. I tape these all the time, and I love that kind of day, but if you're going around...

talking about the Lone Ranger, I can pretty much guarantee that people are going to tune you out pretty fast. I can get away with it in here because you're as weird as I am, but I don't do that in the marketplace. And it's not like it used to be. I saw a survey not too long ago, and for the first time in the history of polling, the group—and I think it was 25 to 40—when asked for religious preference, said none.

Most of you, if you had a problem in your marriage, you'd go to church. You might not ever go there except Easter and Christmas, but something in you told you to go to church. These guys are as likely to go to Starbucks and talk to a barista. They'll go to Ace Hardware and talk to the helpful hardware man. You and I should be magnets for people, especially people who are hurting, because they see something different in you. And that difference is a heart that's different. An edge that's different. They look at you and say, "Gosh, this is a really screwed-up world. Yeah, but you're different. How do you handle this?"

Living Differently in a Hurting World

My goal with every nurse I have is to be patient of the month. So far, I haven't gotten there apparently. I haven't gotten any trophies or ribbons. But I have Savannah, my Tuesday nurse. She comes to my house every Tuesday, and it's her bowling night. She's a big bowler. She's bowled five 300 games and an 807 series, which I don't know anything about bowling, but that's way more rare than a 300 game.

She sees me on Tuesday, and I said I can do any day. She goes, "No, I go from you, I go home and take a nap, I shower, and I bowl. It's the best day of my week." We sit and talk about all this stuff. She was talking yesterday about how she's never going to get married again after getting divorced. "Guys are stupid," and all that stuff.

I said, "Do you have these conversations everywhere?" And she said, "No, everybody I call on is talking about how they feel and all that stuff." There's something—I'm self-promoting here—she sees something different in our house with Sandy. She'll be talking to Sandy all the time saying, "Can you help me figure out this diet thing, this food thing?" People should see something totally different about you.

Salvation Changes Everything

In Ephesians chapter 2, which we're studying in the redemption churches, the guts of this is simple: You were dead. Now you're alive. But God in His grace and mercy saved you. Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9: "For by grace you've been saved through faith, that not of yourself, it's a gift of God, not a result of works, so no one will boast."

I'm saved by grace. Unmerited favor. I didn't do anything to earn this. It's not a result of works. Salvation is absent works, but once I'm saved, verse 10 says, "We are His workmanship in Christ for good works." Your life's supposed to change.

We're not to judge, I guess, but we certainly, as my friend Larry would say, can be fruit inspectors. There's a tone about this. I had a long discussion the other day about whether Trump's a Christian, and I'm so sick of this. I said, "How would you possibly know? I can tell you this: you wouldn't let him lead a small group here. I don't know if he's a Christian or not, but you wouldn't let him lead a small group." There's just an edge.

The Evidence of Faith

The minute I say that, I create all this political stuff that you tune me out, and some of you are going to want to come up afterwards. I don't want to argue. I don't want to argue about the border or any of that stuff. I already filled out my ballot and put it by the door because on election day, I like to go to the polling place and drop it off. I like to walk around the whole line to the front and drop it in, and I feel special. But there's fruit. I ought to see it.

That's what we're going to talk about in the 15 minutes we have left. How do I know I'm a Christian? Turn with me in your Bible to Galatians. Paul's laying out all of this. When I think of Galatians 5, my brain goes to Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit.

In the next 15 minutes, I want you to be extraordinarily judgmental of yourself. I don't care about Bob who's not here or Beth who didn't make it. If God wanted them here, they'd be here. This is not something that you need to sit back and say, "I wish they were here to hear this." They aren't. You are.

Walking by the Spirit or the Flesh

He gives us two lists. He's talking about you either walk by the Spirit or you walk by the flesh. If I walk by the flesh, he begins in Galatians 5:19 to talk about what I'm going to look like. There's going to be immorality. It's the word porneia from which we get the English word pornography, but it's in the longest, broadest sense of perversion. Perversion is nothing more than operating contrary to God's plan. So if you're married and you're having sex with somebody other than your spouse, you're a pervert. That's fun to say.

There's impurities. It was actually a medical term. It described pus oozing out of a wound. Sensuality. There's a lack of restraint. I see that all around me. It's like you're going to Golden Corral every night. You're just shoveling this all-you-can-eat. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just all you can eat. It sounds good.

Idolatry. Sorcery. It's anything that takes the place of God. Sorcery is from the word pharmaceutical—it's things that alter our minds. Enmity. That's what you begin to see. So you're at war.

You've got 50 attorneys who represent you. You're fighting with the homeowners. You're fighting with the neighbors. You're fighting with your kids. You're at war. You're at enmity. You've got to stop and say why.

This morning I'm driving in and I have the Beatles channel on, and it's "We Can Work It Out." Life is very short, and there's no time, my friend, for fussing and fighting. I mean, 90% of the time is spent fussing and fighting. You've got two guys who go to Costco and get in a fist fight over free samples. Now, if you're a Costco person, you see how it happens. I see families of four are dining at Costco at the sample station. These guys duke it out. Here's what makes this story great: one guy's 72 and the other's 70. By that time, you know, you can wait on the free sample.

But there's enmity. Doesn't it feel like that? I'm so tired. I just watch TV, and I mean the ads, and I just want to take a bath when I'm done. Instead of baths at my own fill. But I want to take a shower. Drunkenness, carousing. If those are words that mark your life, if we do an open, honest mic at your funeral, and they said, "I came to know him through his lawyer."

I remember at the Homeowners Association, where I live in the islands, they have not got this fountain fixed. It's been two months on that fountain. If I got a chip on the paint on the back, I don't know how they find it. And if I don't fix it, they're sending me pictures and threats. And so here's my inner battle. I want to argue: "You can't fix your fountain, I'll fix my house." You know what? Just fix the house. They're not going to fix that fountain any faster because you write a letter. Maybe slower. And they're going to tag your name, and they're going to find so many chips in your house you never dreamt about it.

The Fruit of the Spirit: Love

So here you go, with nine minutes left. You make the invisible God visible, beginning in verse 22. The fruit of the Spirit is... Now grammatically, we'd look at this and go, "Well that's not correct." He says "is," and then He lists nine things. So I don't know, and either one of these frankly work. I don't know if He's saying the fruit of the Spirit is love, and then all these other words describe love, or if He's saying the fruit of the Spirit is like a bunch of grapes, and they all hang together. Doesn't really matter.

The fruit of the Spirit, the distinctive factor, the way that people are going to look at you—is they're going to look at you, and they're supposed to see love. Do they see that? Is it a characteristic that people see? And not an emotion. In the car the other day, one of the great love songs of all time comes on: "There she was just walking down the street, singing doo wah diddy, diddy dum diddy doo." Oh man, that's Sinatra, should have sung that one. Or here's how we treated it, my generation: "Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name." There seems to be something cheap about this.

Love: Feeling, Action, and Commitment

There are emotions with love. I don't want to pretend there aren't. There's feeling, there's action, there's commitment. Now I saw Sandy, it sounds like—I've never said this out loud—it sounds almost predatory. She used to come to church, and I'd notice her sitting in the front row, looking at me like Nancy Reagan used to look at... But I'd see her, I'd notice her. And then we had coffee, and I had these feelings. And then I acted on them. I said, "Would you like to go out with a really cool guy?" And she said, "I really would, if you know one, have him call me."

So I called her. She had not had—I don't know if you guys have heard this—she had not had a date in eight years. So the moral of this story is, find a girl who hasn't had a date in eight years, and even I look good to her. So there's feelings, and then I act, and then we had this day of commitment. We went to the Valley Ho, we went up on the roof, and there was Tyler and Tim and Sarah and Haley and Braden and Yale, and Tyler married us. There was a commitment.

And we said these words: "better, worse, rich or poor, sickness, health, till death do you part." Two weeks later, if there's a lemon law... Two weeks later, she's got the Attorney General on the phone going, "This is..." And this cuts both ways. It's not what she signed up for, but it is what she committed to.

The Reality of Commitment

It's one thing, and I've been through this myself and watched it, it's one thing to have a spouse who's sick and dying, and you've been married for 40 years. It's another thing, and you need to think about this if you're going to get married a second time. It's another thing to have a spouse that's sick and dying, and you've been married to for 40 weeks. It's very different. But it's what you did.

We had a couple, and I'll tell this story, and you can work your way through the rest of this. We had a couple at this church, and actually we were still over in Dobson, and so this lady came to see me, and she said, "I hate my husband." I said, "Okay, well, that's a starting place anyway." And she said, "I have a fantasy about him." I said, "Really, what is it?" She goes, "I want him to die. I want him to die fast. I want it to be horrific so that I can be a grieving widow getting all the sympathy." Wow. And she went on. That was on a good day.

She went on, and so she goes, "I don't have to say anything, that's perfect." She said, "What should I do?" And I said, "Well, why did you come and see me?" She said, "I want you to tell me what to do." And I said, "Well, what do you think I'm going to say?" And she said, "You say it, and I'll tell you if I think it." And I said, "I think you should make him his favorite meal and make love to him," which to me seems to solve just about every problem there is. And she said, "I knew you were going to say that. I knew that's what you were going to say. I hate this guy."

Next Sunday at church, she said, "My husband has agreed to come to church. He's never come to church before." So the next Sunday they're there. So I see her in the middle of the week, and there's always that, "How was it?" And...

She said it was the day I did the introduction to the Gospel of John. She said, "We're driving home, and I said to him, 'How'd you like it?' And he said, 'You know, I just don't like that guy. But you know what? I'm going to commit to you that I'll come to the church until he finishes this John thing. That can't take long.'" It was three and a half years we were in John. And he was committed. He was there every week. And it was when we unpacked John 3:16 that God saved him.

If you saw these people around church, you would have never dreamed this. But God took out his old heart and put in a new heart. He later told me he had the same dream about her that she had about him. Which is kind of interesting. But it's love. It's life changing. There's a commitment about it.

Joy: Happiness Based on Spiritual Reality

There's joy. The word appears 70 times in the New Testament. It's an attitude not of frivolous happiness. It's an attitude of happiness based on spiritual reality. It's love, joy, peace. They all start to group together.

There's joy and peace in the midst of the x-ray that says there's a nodule. There's a growth. I had an x-ray like three weeks ago. And they called and said, "You've got something on your lung." I said, "What? Unless it's air, that doesn't sound good." So they do all these tests and their conclusion was, "I don't know, it's fine." Okay. But I didn't have this "woe is me, life is over" attitude. Haley was there yesterday. And they called and said, because I just did a biopsy, I got another cancer on my head. So they're going to do another cut and shave and all that.

I don't say this so you go, "Poor Tom." This would be a good time to say "poor Tom." But that's just what it is. I can't let my happiness be driven by whether I'm the guy in South Carolina that won the Mega Ball.

Here you go. We said this a couple of weeks ago. This is tweetable: We believe in God, but we believe God. When He says, "I've got it under control," He means "I've got it under control." It doesn't mean it's smooth and easy.

The Fruits of the Spirit Require Testing

Love, joy, peace, patience. And think about all these love, joy, peace, patience. They all demand tough circumstances. If you're driving from here to the mall and every light is green, you don't know if you have patience or not. You need red lights to figure out if you have patience.

Peace, patience is a willingness to endure painful situations frequently in the form of a person, but also in the form of a circumstance. I don't feel like it's my job to change everybody around me. It's my job, responsibility, duty, to show the love of Christ in the midst of it. It may take different forms based on our relationship, but there's this patience. It's an endurance.

Kindness and Goodness in Action

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Here you go. That's common courtesy. That's holding that door. I'm a big door holder. If I got a door, and there's somebody, and they're over by that building, I'm going to stand there and hold that door. And people act like I just gave them a hundred million dollars. "Thank you so much. Thank you so much." It's kindness.

Goodness. Goodness is kindness in action. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3 that in the last days, people will be haters of good. It's not just that you'll love evil. I had a guy one time, and this dates it, but he said to me out of the blue, "I hate Debbie Boone." And I said, "Really? Did you go on a date, or do you know her?" And he said, "No." I said, "Well, why do you hate her?" And he said, "She's such a goody two-shoes." So, you want your daughter to be more like Stormy Daniels? Well, it's silly.

Faithfulness and Commitment

Faithfulness. That's loyalty. It's trustworthy. It says if you're going to be somewhere, it's little things. Don't make these into big things. If you say you're going to be somewhere at seven, get there at seven. When we plan events based on RSVPs, we calculate in, this is at that church, we calculate in about a 15 to 20% no-show. Now, you can't all have emergencies, but we say we're going to be there.

Gentleness and Self-Control

Gentleness is strength under control. Self-control, it's restraint. You're not a dog that's just being led around by every passion. You have control. It doesn't mean you don't have these wild days.

Sandy was explaining, and we've got to go. Sandy was explaining to Savannah the other day. Savannah said, "Sandy, I want to get my weight down." And she gave her a target. And Sandy said, "Well, you know, you can do that." And it was Sandy's birthday. And I made brownies. I've never done this before. I'm not holding myself up as a great husband here. But I got a box at the store. I mean, this is not like cracking the Da Vinci code. It's mix an egg, it's water, it's stir it and put it in. It's like doing laundry. It's not like taking them down to the river and beating them on the rocks. It's pretty easy.

And Sandy said to Savannah, "My birthday was Sunday." Savannah said, "What did you do?" And she said, "Tom made me a batch of brownies. And I ate every one of them." And Savannah said, "No, there's no way." And Sandy said, "Yeah, you know, like once a month or something, I'll go nuts." I'm not saying all you ever eat are carrots and green stuff. The only thing I want to eat that's green is chocolate mint ice cream. Okay, I'm not looking for that. But there's control. There's control of your tongue. You're not arguing about everything all the time.

Making the Invisible God Visible

So here you go. If I'm going to make the invisible God visible in my life, there needs to be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. It's not you come to Bible study on Wednesday or go to church. Those are all part of it. But the tool that Paul gives you as the metrics for measuring your life is a heart change.

So if you live that way, you make the invisible God visible, you let your light shine. Here's what Jesus says: "Let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven." The only way they're going to glorify Him is if you tell them to.

Living Beyond Natural Personality

Otherwise, they're going to see these good works and just say, "Well, that's your personality. Peter Myers Briggs is nice," or whatever it is. So next week is the second side of the same coin.

Father, take this truth, make it real in our life. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

Have a great week. I'll see you next week.