DISTINCTLY LUTHERAN | Law & Gospel | Ben Anderson

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Redeemer.

If we haven't had a chance to connect before, share names, my name is Ben Anderson.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's so great to spend a little time with you this morning.

Hey, just really quick, if you are a first-time guest with us this morning, I do want to extend a special welcome to you.

I know how difficult it can be to walk into a new building with new faces.

So thank you so much for taking the risk.

But this is also what I know.

Oftentimes when people join a church or check out a church for the first time, it's because somebody offered them an invitation.

Someone simply said, Hey, I I love the church I go to, you love me, I think we love the same things.

Come sit with me, and I think you're gonna have a great experience.

But every once in a while, it's so nice to have a little bit of icing on the cake, isn't it?

To have something like September Fest where you can just take one of these cards, and I strongly encourage you to do that, be thinking of somebody, put in your pocket, put it in your wallet, and say, hey, come to church with me, sit next to me, and all the free stuff.

Like it's it's all for our community, it's all for people like this, people who maybe just need that gentle nudge to walk through a church door for the first time or maybe the first time in a long time and experience something that will change their life and change their eternity.

So be thinking of that person, hold this with you.

It shouldn't be that hard.

If they have kids, bounty houses, petting zoo.

If they like to eat, that's all of us, right?

Free food.

Bring them along.

We would love to have them here.

Uh also, between services or after services, don't miss out on these precious opportunities to build community.

When you're grabbing that donut or a coffee, uh, please, please, please.

I know I say this a lot, but it's because I care about this, it's important to me.

Lean over.

Meet somebody new, share your name, ask them a few questions about their life and build those deeper connections.

I want to be a church that has deep fellowship and deep connections with one another.

So please, please, please take the risk.

It's so worth it.

Learn somebody's name, uh, connect with somebody new this week.

Well, last week we started a new sermon series called Distinctly Lutheran, and I'm so excited about the series.

And I hope that many of you are as well.

But this is what I know, and this is what you've probably experienced in life, is that you can walk into a church that has a certain label on their wall or on their sign or on their website and walk into a different church with that same label, but there's such uniqueness between churches.

I mean, they can be incredibly different, even though they hold the same title, uh, Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, right?

They can be so unique in that specific culture.

And so I want to share a little bit about what I feel makes Redeemer unique, because I think this is really important in this conversation.

We are a church that really has three streams flowing through that.

And this is what I mean by that.

We have a stream, a charismatic stream that runs through us.

Right?

We want to be a church that is spirit-filled and spirit-led.

We want to see the gifts at work in our church, in our lives, in our community, right?

We are a charismatic bunch, but we also are an evangelical bunch.

And what I mean by that is we want to take the truth of God's word, and we don't want to just live up here.

We want it to get into here, into our hearts, into our lives.

We want it to impact the world around us, and we want to share that truth with those around us.

But we also have a rich Lutheran stream, which grounds us in life.

We have this historical, traditional theology which we holds us in place, keeps us foundational in our approach, and brings us back to the center time and time and time again.

And this is what I believe, and this is what you've probably experienced if you've been here long enough, is when all these three streams are running together, it creates a powerful river of transformation as we invite people to walk in the way of the Redeemer.

So, no matter today, where you land on that spectrum, I mean, maybe you're like, I really resonate with that charismatic crew, that stream.

I'm really all about that.

I mean, when I say the word Holy Spirit in this room, you just want to stand up, you want to wave your hands like this is you.

Or maybe you're more in the evangelical space, right?

When I talk about life transformation or missions or sharing your faith, like, yeah, that's what I want to do.

Like that gets you revved up, that gets you excited.

I mean, you want to clap, you want to say Amen, you want to do all those things.

Or maybe you're in the third stream, right?

You were born Lutheran.

You were baptized Lutheran, first communion Lutheran, confirmed Lutheran.

You even found a good Lutheran girl at a good Lutheran university, and you got married in a Lutheran church.

I mean, you are more Lutheran than Martin Luther was Lutheran.

Maybe this is you.

But no matter where you land on that spectrum, here's the thing: this is a series for every single one of you.

In fact, if you've never darkened the door of a church before, this is a series for you.

It's a series that I believe can truly, truly, truly set you free.

But here's the trouble with this series.

We started it last week.

And if you're here last week, you know there's a lot of content coming at a very rapid pace because there's a lot of ground to cover.

I'm basically trying to take a whole seminar experience and just cram it into like four weeks to get this foundational truth into us.

And so if you missed last week, this is my encouragement to you.

Go back and listen.

Because every single one of these weeks builds on the previous week.

And I'm telling you, if you miss out on one week, you'll be lost the next week.

And I just want you to get everything.

I don't want you to miss a thing.

Because there is just a beauty in every one of these conversations.

But if you were here last week, I ended the conversation on a cliffhanger.

I said something like this, I said, hey, uh, in 2008, I went to Concordia University and I went there to coach baseball.

And I went there to get a master's degree.

And I went there, even though this is a Lutheran university, I didn't go there because I was Lutheran.

I went there despite the fact that I wasn't Lutheran.

In fact, I told a whole story about how when I grew up in the town that I grew up in, the Lutheran kids were known as the bad kids.

Like all my friends who were Lutherans, I mean, they they drank before they should, they drank too much, they swore all the time, they watched movies they shouldn't.

Like that's that was what I knew of Lutheranism pretty much most of my life leading up to this point in time.

So when I walked onto that Lutheran campus, I had this thought in my mind that I am here to save the Lutherans.

And this is where I ended last week.

I left you with this.

I went to save the Lutherans, but they ended up saving me.

And I just left you there.

I didn't go any further.

This is where we pick up today.

See, when I said that word, when I said they saved me, what I wasn't saying was, for the first time in my life, I finally have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

I finally believe that He of His work on the cross.

That's that's not what I was saying.

I I had a relationship with Christ.

It was just incredibly broken.

I didn't view God in the way that I should see him.

And the reason that happened was because I misunderstood what the Bible is really trying to communicate in its fullest sense.

Specifically, I didn't understand the rules of the Bible.

And if you don't get the purpose of the rules or the laws of the Bible, it will heavily impact how you see your relationship with God.

For example, if you view God as a taskmaster, someone who sets all these rules, and you gotta do all these rules, and if you fail to do all the rules, then I'm going to kick you out.

I'm gonna spit you out.

I'm gonna move on.

Well, then how do you respond in life?

Everything is out of obligation, everything is out of fear.

You gotta check all these boxes, and as soon as you don't check the boxes, well, you have to hide.

You have to retreat, and there's no going forward.

In fact, sometimes when you view God like this, naturally what happens is you look at the outcome of your life and you decide how much God likes you.

Right?

You might look at your bank account and say, My bank account is good, therefore I must be making God happy.

Or my bank account is running low or is in the red, therefore, God must be unhappy with something I'm doing in my life.

Or maybe you ask out that girl and she says yes, like God loves me.

She says no, God hates me.

But you see how we can do this, right?

If we look at God like just somebody who is a taskmaster, do what I tell you to do, and if you don't know, do what I tell you to do, then you're gonna feel it.

Some of us we see God that way.

We've wrestled with this before.

But then on the opposite perspective, we have some people who view God in the completely opposite way.

They all view God as a fun uncle.

Somebody kind of winks at your sin.

Oh, you're doing that, you're behaving that way, and they just give you the wink.

Like, I know it's wrong, but I'm not gonna tell anyone we're cool.

I'm cool, I'm the fun uncle, right?

I'm never gonna tell your mom and dad what you're doing.

And if we view God this way, what really happens in that is like, hey God, thanks for dying on the cross for my sins.

I appreciate the grace.

That's awesome.

I'll take it from here and I'll do whatever I want to do in my life, however, I want to do it in my life.

And both of these perspectives are incredibly broken.

Because that's not how the Bible talks about God, at least not in its fullest sense.

And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

We're gonna talk about how do we navigate in a distinctly Lutheran way the rules and the laws of the Bible.

And we're gonna do that by talking about something called law and gospel.

Now, if you've been in a Lutheran church before, you've probably heard that before.

If you've taken any Lutheran classes before, you've heard that before.

In fact, you've maybe heard the purpose of a pastor is to rightly divide law and gospel, right?

This is a distinctly Lutheran thing.

And it's a beautiful thing because it is a way that we can unlock Scripture.

It's like putting on the right pair of glasses.

Now, I don't know if you've done this before.

Maybe when you're younger, you put on your mom's glasses and all of a sudden everything becomes foggy.

And then when you're older, yeah, it's more like, yeah, you had that moment.

Or maybe for some of you, right?

It's inverted.

You're older, and for the first time, you put on a pair of glasses, and now you can finally see.

I had one of these moments a number of years ago.

I was serving at a church in New Mexico and I stood up in front of everyone, and we used to have like all these cues on the back wall where they would have the things to say and stuff like that.

So I was sitting up there in front of like 800 people.

I get up there to talk, and all of a sudden I cannot see the words.

I cannot make them out.

Everything's kind of foggy.

As you can imagine, it didn't go well.

I'm sitting in the Monday meeting, and I'm like, hey guys, we got a deal.

The screen is foggy, the lights are too bright.

Like, I'm blaming every single person.

Like, you all did this to me.

Finally, I got a little bit of humility, and I went to the eye doctor.

And they said, Well, you're getting older.

You need glasses, you have astigmatism.

Now, this is how this impacts me.

What I found out was when I get stressed, when I get nervous, when I don't quite get enough sleep, my eyes will go from crystal clear to foggy.

And all of a sudden I can't read letters like I should.

Which is why you guys have never seen me on a Sunday morning without my glasses on.

Sometimes I get nervous, sometimes I get scared.

And even if I'm not, I'm too paranoid to be up here and not be able to read what I need to read off my iPad to help me move through a day to teach properly.

Now, this is also why when I'm driving down the road, I'm actually rarely wearing my glasses.

So if you ever see that, don't panic.

Everything is fine.

I'm just, I'm in a good space.

I'm in a very calm place, every everything is good.

But it's amazing when you get the right pair of glasses, how everything changes.

It's kind of like when you used to have that old box TV in your house and then you upgrade it to like the ultra HD 4K TV and it looked completely different.

That's what it's like when we begin to look at the Bible with the proper lenses on.

And that's what we're gonna do today.

We're gonna look at three usages of the law, and we're gonna start in the book of Romans, uh specifically chapter 13.

So if you have your Bibles, you can look uh look there or in your phones or up on the screen.

But this is where we're gonna begin.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.

The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted.

And those who do, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.

Do you want to be free from the fear of the one in authority?

Then do what is right, and you will be commended.

For the one in authority is God's servant for your good.

But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.

They are God's servants, agents of wrath, to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment, but also as a matter of conscience.

Here's the first usage of the law.

The law functions as a curb.

In other words, it protects you.

That's its purpose, right?

It protects not just you, it protects society in general.

That's what law does.

That's why God gave us law.

I don't know if you guys ever do this, but sometimes I sit and reflect on the dangers of life.

Anyone else do this?

There's probably like two of us in this room, but that's fine.

Sometimes I'll just sit and think, like, how dangerous is driving?

You guys ever stopped?

Not to freak you guys out, but let's think about this.

I get in my car.

Typically, I'm carrying the most important things to me, like my family and my kids, my wife.

I'm trucking down the road at 75 miles an hour.

There's a car to my right, there's a car to my left, there's a car behind me, there's a car in front of me.

I'm trusting all the people around me to behave and function as we're going this fast.

If this person swerves into me, I'm in trouble.

If this person swerves into me, I'm in trouble, right?

I'm in my their blind spot, maybe they don't see me.

The person behind me, if I hit the brakes and they don't see the red lights, bam, they hit me from behind.

Let's say the person in front of me doesn't maintenance their car properly and they don't have brake lights.

They slam on the brakes, I don't see it, I bash into them.

It's kind of scary.

Let's make it worse.

On the other side of the road, there's people driving at you in the same situation at 75 miles an hour, we're going in this direction, and if they veer into our lane, guess what?

We're gonna go hang out with Jesus.

It's kind of scary, isn't it?

When you stop and think about it, everyone's gonna walk home.

But okay.

Hang with me.

Why do we get in our cars?

Why, why, why do you, despite all those realities, why do we do that?

Because we have rules.

The people who drive the cars, they have to get training, they have to get a license.

They get in the cars and there's lines, and there's stoplights, and there's stop signs, and there's all these rules of the road that keeps us safe.

In between the roads, there's a curb or there's a median, right?

It's it protects us from people veering into our space and it keeps us safe.

That's the first usage of the law.

God uses the rules to protect the world, right?

To protect you from me and me from you, to protect a bunch of sinful people hanging out on the same planet.

That's what that's what rules do.

God does it for our protection.

But here's the thing with rules.

Without consequences, they aren't effective.

So God gives us rules and consequences.

In fact, if you're a parent, you get this, don't you?

Rules without consequences do not work.

And if you want to know this, go to Walmart today, follow a family around with a bunch of little kids, and you'll probably hear something like this Bobby, I'm serious this time.

We're gonna go.

Get out of the twice section or whatever is going on.

Like, stop screaming.

I'm gonna count to three.

And if I get to three, you know I'm serious.

But the kid already knows we're in public, and mom's not gonna do anything in public, right?

She doesn't want to be embarrassed.

So there's mom.

One two, two point one, two, two, two point two, two and a half.

See, rules when there's no follow-through, or there's no consequences, aren't effective.

But when we look in the Bible, what do we see?

In fact, it's right away, isn't it?

God creates the world, and what's the first thing that He does, that He gives Adam and Eve?

He gives them a rule.

I've created everything, it's good, it's wonderful, you're in the garden, this is a place of perfection.

Do not, do not, do not, do not eat from this tree.

All the other trees were good.

Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And if you do it, you will die.

Right?

You're gonna bring death into the world.

He gives them the rule, he gives them the consequence.

Of course, we know it happens.

They break the rule and they experience the consequence.

God's first use of the law is that curve.

It protects the world, it protects society.

In fact, that's how he partners with government in that.

Right?

There's rules and there's consequences.

We call this in Lutheran theology they have the sword.

Now we can argue about whether they do this well.

We we can argue about whether they they enforce the right things, and that's actually a conversation we're having next week.

So if that seems interesting, just mark it on your calendar.

I'll see you next week.

But we're gonna move on.

Romans 3, it says this as we move into the second usage of the law.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law.

It's that every mouth may be silenced.

The whole world held accountable to God.

Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law.

Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sins.

Now, if you guys remember last week, we we boiled all the core teachings down.

We talked about the five solas.

And I made this statement.

Hopefully you're starting to memorize this statement.

I think it's so helpful as you're thinking about what is the core that we need to hold on to.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, for God's glory alone.

But what's the first statement?

We are saved by grace alone.

And how do we know that we need grace?

The answer is clarity.

We need something to tell us that we need saving.

We need something to tell us that we are broken, that we are flawed, that we need help.

Have you guys ever gotten in trouble for doing something that you didn't realize was wrong?

A number of years ago, I used to do this thing with my staff where I would pick out one staff member if they were really doing well that month, and I would say, Hey, let me buy you a gift card.

What's your favorite place to go?

Like, where do you want me to get a gift card from?

And so I had this older pastor, and he won that month and said, I'd like to go to this place called the precinct and drink coffee with my buddies.

I was like, okay, no problem.

So I I Google precinct, make my way down there, get into a parking lot, park my car, walk into the precinct, which I found out was a bar, by the way.

So I'm in there buying gift cards at bars, it was a whole thing.

Like kind of hiding my hiding my head.

So I walk out of there, go back to my car, and what's on my car?

A ticket.

So now I'm upset.

Right?

You guys know what that feels like.

I feel wronged.

I'm like, there's no sign.

So I'm looking around and finally I see the sign.

It's hidden behind this tree, and the leaves are like covering the sign.

It says, parking for bank customers only.

So I'm like, I'm gonna fight this.

I go before the judge, right?

Finally, my day comes.

I get dressed up in my nicest black suit.

I'm there to impress.

A bunch of people go before me.

The judge is so lenient with them, and they're wearing like casual everyday clothes.

You know, it's like, you're free, you're free, no ticket, everything.

Finally gets to me.

Takes one look at me, looks at my suit, and goes, You look like somebody who can afford to pay a ticket.

You can go out there and pay out there.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, listen to the story.

And so I'm like just kind of you know, machine gunning the.

I'm like, I parked, I wasn't trying to, I didn't see the sign, the tree is covering it, and he's like, I don't care, go pay your ticket.

You see, rules without punishments aren't effective.

But punishments without clarity is just abuse.

But we don't have a God who's abusive.

We have a God of clarity.

And he creates this clarity through the second use of the law.

You see, the law is a mirror.

It shows us our reality.

When you read through the Bible, you will very quickly realize that you are flawed, that you fall short, that you fall into sin, right?

You have lied, you have lusted, you have done all the things, right?

It will not take you very long to work through the pages of scripture to realize, oh, this is not going well.

And I need to do better.

And we have a real problem.

In fact, let's go back to the garden.

God gives a rule, He gives a consequence.

They break the rule, they experience the consequence, they're kicked out of the garden, but even that is an act of grace.

I don't know if you guys have thought about this before.

Because this is a place of perfection.

And now these people are imperfect because of their sin.

And if they were to go back into the garden, one of two things is going to happen.

Either they'll make the garden an imperfect place because of their imperfection, or if they took an imperfect thing into a perfect place, they would be absolutely obliterated.

So God puts the angels outside, keeps them out, protects them, but then gives them a plan and a hope.

That someday there's going to be someone who's going to fix the problem.

And when that someone comes and fixes the problem, guess what's going to happen?

Paradise lost, so we come paradise restored.

A place of perfection once again.

But we still have our problem.

If we go in there, we'll make it imperfect.

Or if we go in there, we'll be obliterated because we are imperfect.

And so we need someone to show up.

We need somebody to care for us.

Because every single one of us, we we pulled into that parking lot of life.

We saw that we should not park there.

We parked there anyways, and we left our car and we got our ticket.

And when we see it through Scripture's lens, we know we deserve what we get.

And in that moment, we are just hoping that someone will save the day.

This is how the Bible says it in 1 John.

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But if anyone does sin, that's all of us, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

See, we are guilty, we are imperfect, and we need Christ's sacrifice.

We need him to place his perfection upon us so that we have a chance.

The law shows us our failures, and this is where the gospel steps in.

Jesus shows up and saves the day.

And when you believe in Christ, when you trust in his sacrifice, as a follower of Christ, you are grafted into the family of faith, and this changes everything, which leads us to our third law.

Find that in Ephesians 2.

It says this For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Now, some of you guys might have caught this, but I use the ESV translation.

Normally we use the NIV, and that's just for simplicity to keep it all consistent.

But I just love how these experts translated these original manuscripts.

Because it just works so well in our context that as a child of God, He's inviting you to walk in the way that He's calling you to.

You see, this is all about opportunity.

Once you're in the family, everything about the rules comes back as an opportunity, a better way of life.

You see, you are not saved by works, and you don't keep yourself saved by works.

Neither of those things are true.

It's grace from front to back.

Christ just wants to give you something for your benefit.

But maybe you've internalized it this way.

Maybe somewhere along the way you fell into one of these traps, you either saved by works, I've got to work harder, I've got to strive harder.

Or maybe you thought I was saved by grace, but now I better get to work.

If I don't do all the things that he tells me to do, he's gonna get ticked off and he's gonna kick me out.

Or you fall into those traps.

This is a trap that I fell into.

Now, I don't think I ever went to a church where a pastor explicitly said something like this.

But sometimes you aren't taught things, sometimes you catch things, right?

You're not taught, you're caught, is caught.

And that's exactly what happened.

I attended a church and I was in a community where I would see things like this happen, even as a little kid.

Someone would get caught having an affair.

They'd kick them out of church.

Someone got divorced, and maybe it was a messy divorce, and they'd make one of the people leave the church, if not both people leave the church.

Someone would have a public drinking problem and they would kick them out of the church.

Someone would get pregnant before marriage and they would kick them out of church and they would isolate them from the community.

Now, as a young man, I'm seeing this, and I'm seeing the church, which is representing God to me, and what I started internalizing is this idea that if I make a mistake, if I fall short, that God will be done with me, that He's gonna kick me out.

You see, these moments spoke so much louder than any sermon that I might have internalized.

Now, what I'm not saying is we should just go loose on sin and do whatever you want and all that type of stuff.

But but what I am saying is this when people fall into sin, where do they need to be?

They need to be in a church community that can point them back to truth and lead them back on Christ's path.

It's so important that we lean into this idea.

And in the end, I internalized this, and because I internalized it, I experienced this.

I fell into some sin, and I felt like God hated me.

Now, if I told you what the sin was, don't let your mind go wild, it wasn't that big a deal.

It was just because I knew better.

That was the thing.

I knew better, but I did it anyways, and if I knew better and I did it anyways, and I viewed God this way, well then God was done with me.

And if you've ever felt that like God is done with you, or maybe you're feeling that right now, here's the thing.

We're stuck with two options.

We either try to give maximum effort, I'm gonna earn my way back into the loving grace of God, and so we pray more, we read our Bible more, we we serve more, right?

We we do all of this stuff.

And you know what happens when we do that?

We become more hopeless because we can never be good enough to connect with God.

It's only grace.

But if we think we can do it and we fight and we strive and we still can't get there, we can't make ourselves happy, guess what happens?

The next thing is we have maximum hopelessness.

And we just give up.

If God isn't happy with me, if God doesn't love me, if I have no way to heaven, then what's the point?

I'll just do whatever I want, however I want, I'll just give up completely.

And when I was in my mid-20s, this is exactly where I was.

I knew better, I did it anyways, and now in my mind, God had kicked me out and he didn't love me and he didn't want me, and I found myself lying face first on the floor of my apartment asking God to let me to die.

Because why would I keep going if there was no path forward?

So God just just ended.

Now the good news is this I was laying on the floor in an apartment where there was a Lutheran campus surrounding me, and I began to internalize some of those teachings.

And one of the teachings that set me free was this third usage of the law.

And it's this that the law acts as a guide, it's an opportunity.

Once you are in the family, the law comes back to you as a gift.

In fact, some people call it the second use of the gospel, right?

This is good news.

God now gives you a path to walk in your life, in your marriage, with your friends, in your schools, wherever that is.

He gives you a clear path to walk down.

And this is why the Bible calls him a good father.

All right, when you are a part of a family, you don't have to work to get into that family.

And you also don't have to work to stay in the family, do you?

No, you are a part of the family.

The rules don't kick you out, and the rules don't get you in.

Because good parenting is about guidance, it's not about determining value for somebody.

You are saved by grace into opportunity to follow Jesus Christ.

Of course, this isn't permission to sin, it's actually permission to experience true freedom by doing exactly what God calls you to do.

So in 2009, I would find myself lying face first in complete desperation that, God, you've given up on me.

You're done with me, you've moved on from me, God let me die.

And one year later, in 2010, I was teaching a confirmation class in a Lutheran church.

Because God was doing his work.

I began to experience the freedom that I needed, which is God was saying, You are part of my family.

I just want to guide you.

And when you fall down, I'm gonna pick you up and I'm gonna point you back in the right direction.

You don't have to live in shame or fear anymore.

I have so much more for you.

So get up, wipe the dirt off.

I want to give you a hug, and I'll point you where you're going.

Which leads us to next week.

So I'll see you back next week.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this time to hold on to your truth.

And for every single person who's maybe struggled with this idea of like, God doesn't love me, God doesn't want me, I'm not good enough for God, or I'm struggling in my sin, and I've got to hide it, I've got to live in fear or shame, Lord.

May this break them free of that.

Lord, I want this to be a place where we can surround each other, we can hear truth, we can hear struggles, we can rally around each other and point each other in the right direction to experience the freedom that we experience from doing life your way.

So, Lord, may we walk away knowing we are loved, you have a path, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing that can separate us from your love.

Amen.