Hope Is Alive! • Easter Sunday 2026 April 5, 2026 • Andrew Spradlin • 1 Peter 1-3–5

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible

and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.

So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bible, please open it with me to 1 Peter chapter 1, in a message I'm calling,

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Hope is Alive. Now, we're just going to jump into our verse here this morning. The Apostle Peter,

who saw the risen Jesus alive, he writes to believers,

in Christ, encouraging them.

And he says in verse number three, he says,

"'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

"'who according to His abundant mercy

"'has begotten us again to a living hope

"'through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.'"

This morning, we're talking about how hope is alive.

But maybe that's not actually the case for you.

Maybe for whatever reason, your hope seems to be fading.

It seems to be dying.

It's drifting away.

You're losing hope.

In many ways, we live in a generation of people who have lost hope.

And that's actually creating a mental health crisis in our world.

It's been said that a person can live a month without food.

They can live a week without water.

They can live five minutes without air, but not a second without hope.

And that's a problem because for most people, hope is fading.

And that's because they've put their hope in things that fade, in things that drift away.

Most people live for the here and the now, for pleasure, for money, for recreation, for the weekend, for accomplishment, for fame.

Maybe that's you today, and if it is, I can tell you right now, without even knowing who you are.

You don't feel much purpose in life.

Oh, you may create seasons of purpose when you have a goal that you're working towards,

but when that season comes and goes, your purpose fades.

And with your purpose fading, your hope fades as well.

Sometimes we'll hear about a celebrity who's living the American dream.

I mean, they've got money, they have good looks, they have influence, they have fame,

and yet we hear about them sometimes taking their own lives in suicide.

And we're all shocked by that.

We think, they had it all, and yet...

least for the believer, for those who have received Christ as their Savior, and God offers

you a hope that is alive, but you must receive it in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Those of us who are believers, Peter says, we have a living hope.

Now here's why our hope is alive.

Our hope is alive because, first of all, God loves us.

God loves you with an everlasting love.

You say, Pastor, me?

Yes, you.

Every single one of us, He loves us with an infinite, infinite love.

More than anyone who's loved us before.

John 3, 16 says,

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

That is the message of the Bible in a single verse.

Amen.

That God loves you so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins,

and then he rose on the third day.

Now, that's not what the world tells us.

They tell us that God doesn't exist, that God doesn't love us,

that we're cosmic accidents, products of blind chance,

so that even our brain is simply a random collection of chemicals

that has been formed by chance over billions of years.

Now, if that's the case, we have no purpose.

We have no significance, and we certainly have no hope.

We came from nowhere.

We're going nowhere, which means this broken world in which we're all living in is the

best it's ever going to get.

And that's the opposite of hope.

Because hope is the belief in a better future.

Our world, though, doesn't believe in a better future.

And that's why our world is drifting more and more into despair.

But the good news of the Bible is that our brains are not a random collection of chemicals

that have been formed by chance over billions of years.

No, we each, each and every one of us, we are carefully and wonderfully made by the

hand of God.

We were made for a reason.

For a purpose, we are created by a God who loves us more than we can imagine.

He created us to be alive, to live.

I mean, really live, to live in harmony with Him.

A blissful life of peace and unity with God who made us in all of His creation.

But here is the problem.

That's not what we're all living.

Not at all.

We're instead living in a world that's been broken and divided by sin so that we experience broken relationships and pain, loneliness, depression.

We experience death.

But the message of the Bible is for the child of God, hope is alive.

That's what Peter tells us in 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Peter's writing to Christians who are enduring an incredible amount of suffering and persecution.

The emperor of Rome, a madman by the name of Nero Claudius Caesar, has unleashed a

horrid persecution upon Christians all throughout his reign, so that they were being thrown to the

mouths of lions. They were being burned at the stake. Many of them were dipped in oil and lit

on fire to light the pathways of Nero's garden. And Peter writes to these people who are suffering,

and his main theme is that we have hope.

Peter wants them to know that while this world could take your food, they were starving.

While this world could take your livelihood, and the word for breath, they come from the same word.

And so one way to think about hope is that hope is oxygen for the soul.

And biblical hope is not some cockeyed optimism.

No, it's a confident expectation that is based and rooted in the promises of God.

But notice Peter didn't say here that we have a hope.

He says we have a living hope.

He's saying as Christians, there's a unique quality to our hope

that the rest of the world doesn't have.

Our hope is alive.

You know, it's sad

when people's hope die before they do.

That happens all the time because our hope is only as good

as the object in which it's placed, and most people are placing their hope in

Temporary things, money, fame, good looks, and youth, wealth, health, all of that, it's going to fade.

It's going to be taken away.

And when it's taken away, people, most people, they drift into despair.

Peter tells the Christian, do not despair because we have a living hope through Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead.

You see, our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

Amen?

That's what Peter is saying.

Peter is an old man by this point.

He's still obsessing about the resurrection.

He remembers that first Easter morning when the women, the ladies, they came and they told him that Jesus was alive, that the tomb was empty.

So he goes running to the tomb.

He finally arrives.

He's out of breath.

He stoops down and he looks and the tomb, in fact, is empty.

And from that point on, Peter was obsessed with the resurrection.

Peter was also obsessed with a little word.

This little world living.

He says here, we have a living hope.

A few verses later, he talks about the living word of God.

Then later in the book,

he talks about how we are living stones.

You see, to Peter, everything in the Christian life

was alive because Jesus is alive.

You know, sometimes people will ask me,

well, pastor, what makes Christianity different

than all the other religions out there?

And there's a lot of answers that I could share.

But the main thing that sets Christianity apart from all the other religions of the world

is that our founder is still alive after 2,000 years.

Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, is dead.

He's dead.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, he's dead.

Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, he's dead.

They're all dead.

You'll visit their graves.

Their bones still remain.

But Jesus is alive.

The tomb is empty.

Oh, the Romans and the Jews alike, they searched the world over trying to find the dead corpse, the body of Jesus.

Because they knew if they could just find the body of Jesus.

Christianity would die as quickly as it began, but here we are 2,000 years later.

Why are we here? We're worshiping the risen Jesus.

There was no body to be found because Jesus is alive, and therefore our hope is alive.

Here's the thing though about hope.

Sometimes our hope experiences some life only to come crashing back down.

That was certainly the case with the Apostle Peter as a young man.

Jesus found him there fishing on the Sea of Galilee.

He said, follow me and Peter left his nets behind and he followed after Jesus.

And as he followed Jesus, he listened to Jesus preach with such power and authority like no man had ever taught before.

And Peter began to experience some hope.

Peter watched as Jesus healed the leper.

He made the blind to see.

He watched as a paralyzed man was carried to Jesus on a stretcher by his friends.

And Jesus looked at the paralyzed man and he said, Arise.

Get up, take your bed and go home.

And the man got up and he went home.

Hope began to well up in Peter once again.

Then one day...

When they were on the mountainside overlooking the Sea of Galilee, a massive crowd of men, women, and children, over 5,000 in all,

they gathered to hear Jesus teach because he was teaching with great power and authority, but they had no food.

They were hungry.

And so Peter watched that day as Jesus took a few loaves of bread and a few fish, and he broke them, and he multiplied them, and he fed the multitude in Peter's hope.

It grew.

And one day, their good friend Lazarus died.

And they went to the cemetery where Lazarus was buried.

Mary and Martha, his sisters, were crying.

They were weeping.

And Peter watched and he listened as Jesus stood at the entrance of the tomb and he raised his voice and he said,

Lazarus, come forth.

And this man who had been dead for four days got up, and he walked out of the tomb alive.

And Peter's hope began bursting forth.

And he confessed Jesus.

He said, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God.

It was at this point that I think Peter could not wait for Jesus, who was the Messiah,

to overthrow the Romans, establish his eternal kingdom here on the earth.

But then...

Just a number of days later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus prayed all night, He sweat drops of blood.

Jesus prayed, but then the soldiers came and they arrested Jesus.

Peter watched as they bound the Messiah in chains and they drug Him off.

And at that moment, Peter's hope began to die.

He followed Jesus and the soldiers, but he followed at a distance.

Jesus, he watched as Jesus withstood a sham of a trial, facing accusation,

false accusation after false accusation.

And Peter watched as a distance.

So people that were close by, they said, hey, you have a Galilean accent.

I think you were with Jesus.

We saw you with Jesus.

And Peter denied even knowing Jesus.

His hope was dying.

Pilate.

Took Jesus and he had him scourged, beaten 39 times.

His back would have, our Savior's back would have been opened up.

His ribs, the lashes would have wrapped around.

They would have been opened up to be seen.

And a crown of thorns was shoved upon his scalp.

He was led away through the city gates of Jerusalem to Golgotha.

In Latin, it's Calvary, the place of the skull.

And there Peter watched as a distance.

As they crucified Jesus, they nailed him to a cross between two criminals.

And maybe, as Peter watched closely, maybe he could read the lips of Jesus as he hung upon the cross.

And he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Peter watched.

He watched as Jesus breathed his last breath and he died.

And they pulled his stiffening body off the cross and they wrapped it in linen.

And Peter's heart, it sank in despair.

He put all of his hope in Jesus, this man who he thought was the Messiah.

And now Jesus was dead and Peter's hope was dead with him.

Oh, but everything changed on the third day.

That first Easter morning, Jesus rose from the dead.

The angel said to the women who first went to the tomb, he's not here.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He's not here, for he is risen.

He goes running to the tomb.

Eventually he sees Jesus with his own two eyes.

He touches the flesh of Jesus and Jesus in the love that only Jesus can do.

He spoke wonderful words of forgiveness to Peter and Peter.

In that moment, his hope was reborn.

It was alive, never to die again.

So now, decades later,

as an old man, Peter's writing to Christians who are suffering terribly.

Life is getting the best of them.

They're suffering.

They're dying.

And all Peter can think about is how Jesus is alive.

So he says throughout the letter, he said, you don't understand.

I know it's bad.

I know you're facing some fiery, horrible trials in your life.

But don't you give up.

We've got a living hope.

Jesus was dead, but now he is alive.

You see, the resurrection of Jesus, it changes everything.

It changes everything within human history.

All of eternity has changed.

You see, God sent his son Jesus,

his begotten, only begotten son,

and he came into this world because why?

Because he loves us.

And we've been separated from him because of our sin,

but God looks upon us and he loves us,

and Jesus came and he lived the perfect life.

You and I have all failed to live.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We've all failed a perfect, holy, loving God.

And so Jesus came.

He lived a perfect life.

And then as the perfect substitute for you and I, he died on the cross for our sins so that we could live.

He died on the cross for our sins, paying for our sins.

Now here's the deal.

Here's the deal.

Had Jesus remained in the grave, we would not be here today.

I can promise you.

Had He remained in the grave, we would have no reason to believe that Jesus actually paid for our sins.

We would have no reason to believe that the cross accomplished anything.

Oh, but we know that it did.

Jesus proved that on that first Sunday when he walked out of the graves.

Friends, we do not gather this morning on behalf of one who is alive and is now dead.

We gather this morning on behalf of one who is dead and he is now alive.

Our hope is alive because Jesus Christ is alive.

But did you know this morning, the truth of this passage also says that our hope is alive because we are alive.

Now, I'm speaking spiritually.

All of us are alive physically, but not everyone listening today is alive spiritually.

I'm talking about those who God has given spiritual life.

His Spirit has touched our spirit.

We've experienced new birth in Christ.

Let's read verse number 3 again.

He says,

This little word, begotten again, literally is born again.

It's the same word that Jesus used in John chapter 3 when he was speaking to Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to him at night.

John 3 · chapter mention

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And he told Nicodemus, he said, unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus, a righteous, perfect, walking person in terms of that day and age.

He was confused by that.

He said, how can we go back into our mother's womb to be born?

But Jesus was not talking about a person's first birth, their physical birth.

Jesus was speaking of a second birth, a spiritual birth.

Jesus said, you must be born again from above, from the Spirit of God.

You see, the Bible teaches very clearly that all of us are born spiritually dead in our sin.

Ephesians chapter 2, verse number 1 says,

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And you He made alive, who were dead in your trespasses and sin.

Because of our sin, without Jesus, we're all spiritually bankrupt, dead.

We're all spiritually dead, separated from the living God.

There's only one way to be reconnected to him.

There's only one way to be born again and to receive everlasting life,

and it's by receiving the mercy and the grace of God

that comes to us through a relationship with the risen Jesus.

Peter said we've been born again to a living hope according to the mercy of God.

not according to your baptism, not according to walking in the aisle,

not according to your confession, not according to how you live,

not according to how much money you give.

No, he says, according to the mercy of God.

It's all by his grace.

You see, we're not born again by our own doing.

It is completely the grace of God.

Now, some people, and I imagine there's some listening today,

have a hard time accepting that.

Because our life is all about earning and doing.

And so we think, man, I've got to make up

for all of my sin, I've got to make up

for all of my failures.

And so we think we gotta do something

to ingratiate us with God to earn God's favor.

But Jesus said, no, you must be born again.

And so let me ask you, what did you have to do

and accomplish in order to be born physically?

Think about it.

As a baby, what did you accomplish to be born?

You didn't do anything.

You were born through the pain and the labor of your mother.

And it's the same with our spiritual birth.

We're not born of our own doing.

We are born through the pain and the labor of our Savior Jesus.

So to my brothers and sisters who are gathered with me

and us today, your hope is alive.

Why? Jesus has made you alive.

You've been born again to everlasting life

by the mercy and the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

Folks, we have a hope that's alive.

The question is, what are we hoping for?

You know, faith,

is often looking backwards in time or it's looking in the present.

Hope is looking to the future, though.

So what are we hoping for?

Well, we find out in verse number 4 that we're hoping for an inheritance that Jesus has earned.

We're joint heirs with Christ, the Bible says.

An inheritance that's incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away.

Reserved in heaven for you who are kept.

By the power of God, through faith, we're salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

I wish we had more time to unpack all the glorious details of this verse.

But Peter is saying, he said, you and I as believers, we're rich.

We're rich in Christ.

All that is Jesus's is now ours.

He's giving it.

He's sharing it with us.

We have this wonderful inheritance.

It's incorruptible.

It's never going to break.

It's undefiled.

It's perfect.

It's pure.

It does not fade away.

It's untouched by death.

And he says it's reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation.

Now this word capped,

It means to guard, to garrison, literally.

It was used of soldiers who are guarding a city.

You see, God is guarding us as his children.

He's guarding our salvation.

Now, notice Peter doesn't say which are kept.

No, clearly he says who are kept.

So God's not guarding our inheritance.

That's not what this verse is saying.

He's somehow guarding our inheritance.

No, he says he's guarding us.

Who are kept?

You see, our hope is alive because we are safely kept by the hand of Almighty God.

I'm speaking to believers here.

I want to encourage our church family and those who are believers listening today.

It may be that...

That you've never really truly been born again.

You've never experienced the life Christ has to give.

But for those of us who have, we are now kept securely in the hand of God.

Sometimes Christians worry about losing their salvation.

They think that, well, this eternal life that I've been given can now be lost somehow.

So sometimes they fret about it.

I got to work really hard to make sure I keep my salvation.

Well, let's think about that.

How does a person keep their salvation?

Well, we keep our salvation the same way we got it.

So how did you get it?

by the mercy and grace of God.

Well, that's how you keep it then.

Peter's saying, we don't keep our salvation.

God keeps our salvation.

That's literally what he says.

We are kept, God keeps our salvation

by the power of God through faith.

God is holding onto us as his children by his grace

and we're holding onto our Father by faith.

When my kids were little,

I remember holding their hands as we were crossing

a busy street from time to time, and occasionally I remember a car just coming at us a little faster than anticipated.

And so I'd speed up my pace, and sometimes their little legs couldn't quite keep up,

and so they'd trip and they'd fall, and I'd end up dragging them along to safety.

I'm sure from their little perspective, maybe they thought,

good thing I was holding on so tight to Dad's hand.

But the truth is, it wasn't the strength of their grip that held them up.

It was the strength of my grip, their father, who held them up.

You see, while we hold on to God in faith, sometimes our grip isn't as strong as it should be.

Sometimes we trip.

Sometimes we fall.

Sometimes we face plant, don't we?

But when that happens, make no mistake about it, we are held safely and securely by the strong hand of Almighty God.

Look at Romans 8, verse 38.

Romans 8:38

I hope you're encouraged by this.

It says,

Amen.

Now here's the significance of Easter.

Because Jesus lives, we live.

Because Jesus rose from the dead, someday we will rise from the dead.

That's why our hope is alive.

After our Easter services this morning, our family is...

back into a van and we're driving to Oklahoma for my aunt's funeral service.

My dad's sister, my aunt LaDonna, passed away last week in her sleep.

In many ways, my dad and my aunt LaDonna took very, very different paths in life.

My dad, a number of years after, a number of years of rebellion,

he went all in for Jesus.

And we know about his faith and his legacy that he left behind.

My aunt LaDonna didn't.

She continued on that path of rebellion.

And yet today, I've got this calm assurance

that she right now is in the presence of Jesus.

And I'm going to see her again because after decades of rebellion against the Lord,

she accepted God's grace and put all of her trust in Jesus.

Praise God for his amazing grace, right?

Isn't that how we're all saved?

We're not saved by doing.

We're not saved by living a righteous life.

We are only, all of us are saved by the mercy and the grace of God.

I've been thinking a lot this week about my dad and his parents and his sister.

All in heaven now together.

That entire family unit.

They've all run the race.

Their purpose on earth is all done.

And now.

What they hoped for has become a reality.

I'll tell you what, it's better than they could have ever imagined.

I told you this before, but early on as my dad was dying, he was in excruciating pain one evening.

We were gathered around his bedside, and Dad said something softly,

kind of muttered some, mumbled some words, and I wasn't sure exactly what he said,

so I asked if you could say it again, and the room went quiet,

and he raised his voice with as much strength as he could muster,

and he said, Jesus, Jesus is our only hope.

Jesus is our only hope.

I'm telling you here this morning, Dad was right.

Someday, when all of us come to the end of our life, and we will all come to the end of our life in this world,

it will not matter how much money we've earned, how much money is in the bank,

the house that we live in, the car that we drive, the trophies that we've won.

They won't matter at all because in that moment, we're going to leave them all behind.

Amen.

The only thing that will matter is do we know the living Jesus as our Savior?

Have we experienced the love and the mercy and the grace of God?

Let me ask you.

Has your hope faded in this life?

If it has,

I want to encourage you that the reason it has is because we weren't made for this life.

This is not our home.

C.S. Lewis, I want to end by this.

He wrote in Mere Christianity, listen carefully to these words.

He says,

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists.

A baby feels hunger.

Well, there's such a thing as food.

A duckling wants to swim.

Well, there's such a thing as water.

Men feel sexual desire.

Well, there is such a thing as sex.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy,

the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

See, we've all been made for another world.

The question is,

Do you know Jesus as your Savior?

That is the dividing line of all of history.

That's the most important question of life.

Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, if you will, both here and at Olive Drive.

This is a holy moment in the life of our church.

I ask that we remain focused on what the Lord's doing at this moment.

Some of you listening are wrestling with eternity right now.

You're wrestling.

You know that what you've been living for in life, it doesn't satisfy the deepest longings of your soul.

So you're struggling to give that up.

You've been hoping for those things.

You've been placing your hope in sin.

You've been placing your hope in accomplishments or money or all of these things.

And it's not delivering.

It's not satisfying.

It's not satisfying.

And yet you find yourself right now struggling to give it up.

To let go of those hopes and to cling to Jesus.

And I think that's because those things are all you've ever known.

The problem is you are far too easily satisfied.

God offers you something so much greater than you could ever imagine.

And so please know today that I don't want to force you to give up your sin today.

I don't want to force you to give up your fading dreams that will soon die.

Instead, here's what I want to do.

I want to offer you something better.

It's like if you have a dog that has a dirty, nasty bone in its mouth.

You can try and try as you may to try to take it away from him,

but he's not going to give up that bone very easily, is he?

He may growl at you.

He may even bite you.

So what do you do?

Well, one way to get that bone out of his mouth is just to put a big old stake right in front of him.

Tell you what, he's going to drop that bone in a hurry.

He's going to grab on to that stake.

Maybe you've been holding on tightly to some nasty bones,

some faulty hopes and pursuits,

hopes that are being corrupted by this world.

Why don't you put down all those hopes and why not put your hopes and your dreams

in someone who's incorruptible, who's undefiled and who never fades away?

And his name is Jesus.

Put down that bone and pick up the stake.

Just a moment.

We're going to invite you to do just that.

We're going to have an invitation both here and at Olive Drive.

We're going to stand to our feet.

I'm going to pray.

As soon as I pray, we're going to stand to our feet as a congregation.

And we're going to sing.

And we're inviting you at that moment to come forward.

We're going to have pastors and other prayer partners, other leaders at the front of our worship services.

And we're going to invite you to walk down one of these aisles or walk down one of these staircases and say,

you know what, it's time.

It's time that I stop pursuing those hopes that lead nowhere.

It's a dead end.

I want to pursue Jesus so my hope can never be taken away, so my hope remains alive.

I want to invite you to give your life to Jesus today.

It's not that you've got to clean up your life and then come to Christ.

No, you come as you are.

Why? Because it's by His grace.

You just come as you are, and God will meet you here,

and He'll forgive you as you trust Him as your Savior.

I want to invite you to do that here in just a moment.

Maybe you say, I want to be baptized like many others in our services,

being baptized this morning.

Or maybe you say, I want to join this church.

Maybe you don't need a pastor, you just need a master.

God's touching your heart, you've been discouraged.

and you need to pray.

Maybe you're a Christian, but you're constantly discouraged.

Maybe you're experiencing a midlife crisis,

whereas you age a little bit,

you're realizing that life's passing you by,

and you're starting to panic

because your hopes are beginning to fade.

Those things that you thought you were going to accomplish,

those things that you thought you were going to experience,

you're not experiencing yet,

or maybe you experienced them, they didn't deliver.

And so your hope is beginning to fade.

Listen to me very carefully.

If your primary focus is on this world, the older you get, the more discouraged you'll be.

Every time.

But if your primary focus is eternal, the older you get, the more encouraged your hope will be.

See, as Christians, our hope is as bright as the promises of God.

I want to encourage you today, if you're a Christian, but maybe you've let yourself start

being focused on things of this world. You've got your eyes off Jesus, and that's why you're

feeling a sense of despair that God does not mean for you to feel. I want to invite you

to get your eyes back on Jesus.

who is our living hope.

Let's bow together as we pray.

Father, we thank you so much

for the living hope

that is found in your son, Jesus.

I pray right now

that you would do a work

that far surpasses

all that has been said today,

that goes way beyond

the audible ear,

that goes way beyond

the spoken word, Lord,

that you would take your word

and the truth of your gospel

and you would bring life

to men and women,

boys and girls.

Lord, that you would touch them in a place that only you can, in a deep place of their heart, of their soul.

That you would clear their mind in this moment.

That you would give them a hatred of their sin, Lord, that they could just turn from it and see it for what it is.

That it is an empty road, that it is a dead end.

Lord, would you touch them?

Would you open their eyes that have been closed tightly and blind to the reality of you and your love?

Would you soften their heart that has been hardened because of their sin?

Would you, Lord, do something mighty and wonderful?

Please, Lord, would you work in our midst as only you are able to do?

Draw people, please.

Lord, draw people by your Spirit.

Help them, give them the courage that it's going to take to step out and come

and to give their lives to you.

We pray in Jesus' mighty name.

Amen.

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