Jonah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Mercy of God | Bellevue | June 7, 2026

The lights are off, and I'm staring at the screen as the movie begins.

Got a good friend on either side and my snacks in front of me.

And I wait as it all starts, and very quickly, within the first few minutes of the movie, we're in the situation room at the White House because an intercontinental ballistic missile has been detected, fired somewhere from somewhere in the Pacific, and it's headed towards the continental US.

And people are scrambling to figure out what to do.

There's been no visual confirmation, but it has been picked up on radar, and everyone has to take this threat immediately, very seriously.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff get on a Zoom call, the president is notified, and all of a sudden people are debating and discussing what to do.

No one's seen the thing visually, but radar confirms it, and it's headed towards, again, the United States of America.

There's a debate.

Should we prepare to fire our missile stocks at the rest of the world, launch our nuclear weapons?

Because if this thing lands in the US, we won't have the capacity to respond.

Do we fire preemptively or do we wait?

What if it's a hack?

What if it's not real?

No one's seen it yet.

The movie goes on and on, and the debate continues, and finally we get towards the end of the movie, and the president of the United States is sitting on Air Force One with a binder of options in front of him of how many nuclear weapons we should fire.

And he's staring out the window and he has to make the decision.

And as he's about to say, this is what the plan is, the movie ends.

And I look to my left and my right, and I go, that is the dumbest ending to a movie I've ever seen.

That's terrible.

Come on, what a cheap way out.

And then we sat there and we talked about it a little bit.

What do you think?

Do you think it was real?

Do you think that what do you think the president is gonna do?

What do you think the president should do?

And we chopped it up a little bit and talked a little bit about it.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, that's actually a good ending to a movie because we're sitting, we're pondering, we're thinking about it, reflecting on it.

And I think that was the design of the director as well to get you thinking, to get you processing.

That kind of cliffhanger left us again chewing on the contents of the story.

The reason I tell you that is because today we're gonna wrap up the book of the Bible we've been studying as a church last few weeks, and it too ends on a cliffhanger.

And I think the reason is similar that we are meant to read this cliffhanger of an ending to the book of Jonah and sit back and ponder and say, I wonder what happened next.

And then reflect, I wonder what I would do in this situation.

And I wonder what kind of wisdom there is for me in this story.

So if you haven't yet, turn your Bibles or turn on your Bibles, turn your Bibles to the book of Jonah.

If we haven't met yet, my name is Ryan.

I'm one of the pastors on staff with Spring Lake.

It's my delight to be with you here.

We are wrapping up a series we started just a few weeks ago.

And if you haven't been with us or if you're unfamiliar with the book of Jonah, let me catch you up to speed.

Jonah was a prophet, a messenger, sent by God.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah in chapter one and says, Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.

So warn them that judgment is coming against them.

And we see God's heart.

God's heart is to warn people of the judgment that they uh deserve, that is coming upon them.

Jonah, on the other hand, turns and goes the opposite direction, flees away from God, and so God brings upon him and the sailors that he's on this boat with this calamity, this disaster, a storm comes and it threatens to destroy them.

Jonah, you know, doesn't even want to help the sailors, he's sort of indifferent to their plight.

Eventually he has to be thrown into the sea, and the sea becomes calm, and the sailors turn and they worship God.

And so we see that God's heart is to save people who are far from him, lost people, even despite the reluctance of his servant.

Jonah heads down into the water, he's drowning.

God sends a fish to miraculously swallow him and preserve his life.

And inside the fish, Jonah prays a prayer to God and thanks him for his deliverance.

The center of that prayer is that salvation belongs to God.

So we see God's heart is to rescue people who are stubborn and running from him.

And he gives Jonah a second chance.

So God's heart is to give second chances.

Jonah goes to Nineveh, he preaches, he carries out his mission begrudgingly, and people start repenting.

The Nineveh, surprise, surprise, they turn and they repent and they say, We've done wrong, and they put on sackcloth and ashes and they're fasting, and they say, Please, please, would you turn from your fierce anger, God, and spare us?

And so then we read at the end of chapter three, this, verse ten.

It says, When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

And so we see God's heart is to show mercy to those who repent and turn to him.

But as we get to chapter four, we turn the page and we see that Jonah's heart does not match God's heart.

And it's meant to ask us to reflect on our hearts.

Is our heart matching God's heart?

So let's read together chapter four of Jonah.

It's gonna be read a little bit, talk a little bit, read a little bit, talk a little bit, and then I'll summarize some key takeaways for us at the end.

So follow along with me as I read, beginning in verse one.

It says, but to Jonah, this seemed very wrong.

And he became angry.

He prayed to the Lord.

Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home?

That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.

I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.

But the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry?

So, right here, this is the record scratch moment in the book of Jonah.

If you're reading along, here we see that Jonah not only doesn't agree with God, his heart could not be further from God's heart on this issue.

And the narrator drives home this divide between God's heart and Jonah's heart with a key repetition or with the repetition of a couple key words.

I'm gonna see if I can show you this, okay?

In chapter three, verse nine, we see the Ninevehites asking God to relent from the uh disaster he's gonna bring upon them, and that he might turn from his fierce anger.

The word there for anger is like haron, it's it's like a burning, okay?

And there we see that they're calling out and asking um God to turn from his fierce anger.

Chapter 4, verse 1.

When God does turn from his fierce anger, Jonah, verse 1, becomes angry.

Same root word, harah.

So God is, God's anger has subsided, but that makes Jonah angry that God's showing mercy.

We see that uh that God was going to bring disaster.

The word is uh Ra, it can mean calamity, disaster, evil, can mean any of those things.

So God turns from his Ra that he's gonna bring upon the Ninevites, and then verse one of chapter four begins to Jonah this was Ra.

It was evil.

And it was a great Ra, like it's repeated there.

So you're supposed to see God and Jonah are just on totally opposite ends of the spectrum.

His heart could not be further from God's.

And then in verse two, we get Jonah's motivation.

He finally tells us why he ran in the first place.

He said, This is what I was trying to avoid by fleeing.

I knew that you would forgive them.

And then he quotes Scripture to God.

So he's like quoting Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7.

Exodus 34:6

He's like, I know that you're a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

That is why I ran.

I knew that you would do this.

I knew that you love people and you forgive people.

I just want to drive home to you how twisted this is.

Okay, I want to bring it to like a modern-day example.

And this would be a little extreme, okay?

Imagine God comes to you, the word of the Lord comes to you, Christian, follower of Jesus, and he says, I want you to go to the local pride parade that's sponsored by Planned Parenthood.

Okay, and I want you to tell them to repent, to turn from what they're doing, okay?

Or, on the other side of things, let's say God comes to you and he says, I want you to go to a white supremacist rally, people that are just spewing hateful rhetoric about immigrants and people who are not white.

And I want you to go to them and to call out against them and tell them to repent, turn from what they're doing.

And you say to yourself, I know what kind of God you are.

I know God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.

So heck no, I'm not gonna go and tell people to turn, because I know that you love them.

Do you see how messed up that is?

That is like super twisted.

And Jonah, it's not that he doesn't know about God's love, he doesn't like it.

He doesn't like that God is loving, that God is merciful.

He says, Now take away my life.

And he's sort of meant to be like an anti-Elijah here, if you know that story.

He's he's he's real, you know, he's just despairing because these people have turned.

He says, Take away my life.

It's better for me to live than to die, or better to die than to live.

Now I think Jonah is being portrayed here as being pretty dramatic.

I think the narrator wants you to kind of roll your eyes a little bit at Jonah, like, oh my goodness, Jonah.

But I also want to just name for a minute here that Jonah names something, he expresses something that maybe some of us have felt at one point in time.

Maybe you've felt like, man, it would just be better for me to die.

Would it be better for me not to be here?

And maybe you've wrestled with or struggled with that kind of suicidal ideation.

If if that is you, we don't want to make light of that.

There are people in this room who have struggled with that, who have suffered in that way.

And we want to help people who are in that situation.

We'd love to connect you with people who can help care for you.

But I don't think that's what Jonah is going through.

I think he's being dramatic.

I think he's grumpy in his heart.

But look at God's response, verse four.

It's not harsh.

He says, Jonah, is it right for you to be angry?

The root word there is really close to the word for good.

And it's like, Jonah, is this good?

Is this good for you to be angry?

Is it is this good for you to burn with this kind of anger?

Jonah, I want you to have my heart, and this is not good for you.

But Jonah is stubborn, and so God once again has to work with him and give him a little lesson here.

Look at verse five.

It says Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city, and there he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.

Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort.

And Jonah was very happy about the plant.

But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered.

And when the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed down on Jonah's head so that he grew faint, and he wanted to die, and said, It would be better for me to die than live.

But God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

So Jonah heads east of the city.

Apparently, he climbs up into the hills around Nineveh, and it says that he makes himself a shelter.

Now, I think there's an allusion here, a hyperlink, to the festival of booths, okay?

The word there for the shelter is the same word for the booths that the Israelites stayed under.

If you care to know what I think about that, nerdy little insight, come find me after the service, I'll tell you.

Most of you would be bored.

And so he's sitting under this booth, and I think he's waiting for this 40-day timer in his mind to go down.

How is God gonna do it?

Is it gonna be like Sodom and Gomorrah?

Is brimstone and fire gonna rain down from the sky?

Or is an army gonna come in and conquer them like God sometimes does in bringing about judgment?

Maybe he's hoping that the Ninevites' uh repentance is short-lived, that it's just a quick flash in the pan and that God is eventually going to judge them.

Or maybe he's hoping that God will listen to him and actually give in to his demands and execute judgment.

But he sits there and he waits.

And God appoints a leafy plant to come up and grow up over him.

It's the same word as what God appoints the fish to swallow him.

And this happens later with the east wind as well, and the worm demonstrates God's sovereign control over all of his creation.

This plant comes up over Jonah, and here again we have a little bit of wordplay in the Hebrew.

It says this plant comes up over Jonah to deliver him from the Ra, from the disaster, the calamity that the sun is bringing.

Okay?

So I think in the NIV translates it to ease his discomfort, which is which is fine, but I think you're supposed to see that Jonah is mad that these people have been delivered from the Ra that was to come to them, but he sure likes it when God delivers him from calamity, when God comforts him and protects him.

And so God sees him and it says that he is very happy about the plant.

He's very satisfied.

He likes it when God delivers him.

But God's lesson isn't over.

The burning of God's anger, the burning of Jonah's anger.

Now Jonah is feeling the heat from the sun.

And it's as if God is saying to him, Do you like the heat, Jonah?

Can you stand?

Can you withstand the heat of my anger?

You want the heat of my anger for the Nineveh, Jonah, but how do you like it?

Are you able to stand under the heat of my anger?

Obviously not.

Jonah says, It'd be better for me to die than to live.

And once again, God says to him, This same phrase, Is it good for you, Jonah?

Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?

He says, It is.

It is right.

I'm so angry, I wish I were dead.

He's stubborn.

He is stuck in what he's thinking.

He was angry about God extending mercy to the Ninevehes.

He was mad that they don't get the calamity, the wrath that they deserve.

Here he's angry that God has taken away his mercy from Jonah, and that Jonah is experiencing disaster, calamity.

He's experiencing discomfort.

But again, Jonah, the message is not getting through.

He's stuck.

We've got a couple little kids in our home, and sometimes you would be surprised, but they will, you know, disobey us.

And uh they'll fight, they'll hit each other, they'll steal things from each other.

And every once in a while I'll try and employ this tactic as a parent.

Maybe you've used this at some point.

You know, one of them hits the other, and I'll say, uh, how would you like it if I let him hit you?

How would you like it if I hit you?

Right?

Uh maybe that's not the most godly thing to say uh to your kids.

But what are you what are you trying to do in that moment?

Don't look at me like you've never said that to your kids.

What do you what are you trying to get across, you know, in that moment?

You're trying to say, you're trying to, hey, put yourself in the other person's shoes.

How would you like it if this happened to you?

Now I've got one one kid, and I won't name who it is, but those who know will know.

Uh, who when we try and use that logic, when we're like, how would you like it if I let him hate you?

Or if I let her hate you, they'll say, I wouldn't care.

I'd like it.

Like, that's the response.

Like, how would you like it if if I took that away from you?

I wouldn't care.

Go ahead, see what happens.

It's like, okay.

All right.

So gotta redirect a little bit, gotta take a different tactic here.

And I think that's where Jonah's at, too.

God's like, seriously, Jonah?

You're mad about the plant?

Come on, Jonah.

How would you like it?

And Jonah's like, I I I I wouldn't.

You know, I I'm so I'm so mad I could die.

I do have a right to be angry.

So God takes a different tactic, verse 10 to the end of the book.

The Lord said, You've been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow.

It sprang up overnight and it died overnight.

And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?

He says to Jonah, Jonah, you love this plant.

You're so happy about this plant, so concerned about this plant, even though you didn't create it.

Implying that how much more would you have cared about it if you had planted this plant and you had watered it and you had nurtured it and enabled it to grow up?

You'd care even more than you do now.

But how much more should I care about Nineveh, Jonah?

Because I did create them.

I have cared for them.

See, God is the creator of every single person, and He's concerned about every single person deeply.

He's saying, Jonah, don't you see the inconsistency here?

You are concerned about one plant.

I'm concerned about 120,000 people because they bear my image and I love them.

Also, another reason you should maybe show some compassion, Jonah, is that these people don't even know their right hand from their left.

Now, that is not God saying that they are uh stupid or unintelligent.

This is a language that shows up in the Bible to refer to like moral knowledge.

Do they know right from wrong, essentially?

And he's not saying that the Ninevites are uh innocent or that they're not morally culpable for what they've done.

But I think what he's saying is that they do not have the Torah.

They don't have the Ten Commandments, they don't have the divine revelation that Israel has.

And so there's a different level of culpability there.

They don't have the same kind of accountability before God.

He's inviting Jonah to consider what it would have been like to have grown up in Nineveh and have pity on them and have compassion on them.

And then the final phrase is a bit of a barb, I think.

He says, Jonah, there's also many animals in the city.

Jonah, if you don't care about the people, would you at least have some pity for the animals, Jonah?

Because you seem to care quite a bit about the plant, so maybe you'd be moved by the cattle getting wiped out.

I mean, it's that's this is God in spicy mode, okay?

And and that's how the book ends.

Now, if you pick up your kids' Bibles and read Jonah, oftentimes it sort of like skips this part of the story.

It just ends with God kind of sparing Nineveh, and it's it's nice.

But the end of the book is it's a cliffhanger.

It ends with a rhetorical question, God saying, Jonah, don't you care?

And there's also many animals, and that's the end of the book.

And we're meant to sit there and go, oh, that's a b-that's a bad ending.

Ah.

Or maybe or maybe it's a good ending.

Maybe it's meant to cause us to pause and reflect and say, what is Jonah gonna do?

What should Jonah do?

And where's my heart in comparison to God's heart?

Because it's clear from Jonah's response and his posture towards the Nineveh that he has a very different heart than God.

Confession time for me.

Um I'm not a pet person.

I know.

I don't really like don't really like animals.

Um and so you can send your angry email to uh pastorjack at springlakechurch.org.

It's not that I hate dogs, cats, I just they just don't just don't do it for me.

And so um over the years I have had to, you know, work with and and serve alongside people who love animals.

Uh Ellen, who I work really closely with, she loves animals and talks about her dogs and and will show me pictures of her dog, you know, and and I I just okay.

And and in, you know, over a decade of pastoral ministry now, there's been a few times, multiple times, where you know, I'll have a student who will come up to me and say, Hey, you know, Pastor Ryan, um, could you pray for me?

And I'll say, Oh yeah, I'd love to pray for you.

Why can't I pray?

Could you could you pray for my dog?

Yeah, yeah, I can pray for your dog, you know.

And I think what I'm cheering is I think that's a deficit in my heart.

You know, I'm I love people who love animals, so no shade on anyone here, but I just don't have that big heart for pets, for animals.

And it's clear in my response to, you know, animals uh who are near or who are hurting, I just I just don't have the same kind of heart um that other people do.

And Jonah uh clearly doesn't have the heart that God has for the people of Nineveh.

And it's obvious from his response to what happens to the Ninevehes.

So how would we know, how would we know if our hearts were not matching God's hearts?

I'm gonna offer three indicators that our hearts might not match God's heart, and I want to ask us some rhetorical questions like God does to get us to reflect.

So, number one, when our hearts don't match God's heart, we resent mercy for others.

When our hearts don't match God's heart, we resent mercy for others.

We see that with Jonah.

That he's upset.

He's upset that God has spared the Ninevehites, that He's shown them mercy.

And so maybe you can't really identify with that feeling of Knowing that someone has been forgiven by God, forgiven by Jesus, and you hating them for it or resenting them or being angry at God.

Maybe you've never had that experience, but maybe it might look like something like this.

Maybe someone hurt you earlier on in your life.

Maybe it's someone who mistreated you or abused you, or an ex who cheated on you and left you and left your life in shambles.

And then you see them post on Facebook or you hear about that now they're doing well and they're remarried and seems like they're following Jesus.

And the question is, what does your heart do in that moment?

Are you angry about that?

Like they're not getting what's coming to them.

They've they should be punished for what they've done to me.

Or can we rejoice at God's mercy and trust that God is a God of love who bestows mercy?

Maybe it doesn't look like that kind of mercy that we resent.

Maybe we just resent it sometimes when things go well for other people because we felt like we've been dealt a bad hand.

So this can happen often when we're trying to get pregnant and have kids and just feels like we've got a bunch of unanswered prayers, and then someone in our life, it seems like everyone in our life is able to have kids.

In those moments, do we resent the blessing, the mercy that God is showing these other people?

And does it eat away at us and build up in bitterness?

Or we're single and we're still unable to find, we'd love to be in a relationship, but it seems like everybody else, things are going well for them and they're getting married, or we got kids that are not turning out the way that we're hoping that they would, and it seems like these other people, like things are going well with with their kids.

It can happen in the realm of school.

Man, it seems like everybody else is doing well, or on the sports team, or getting starting time, whatever.

And and we can resent the mercy of God, the kindness of God, the blessing of God towards other people.

That's an indication that our heart does not match God's.

And so the question I think God would have us ask is Are there people that you have a hard time celebrating for?

You have a hard time rejoicing with them when they rejoice.

Might be an indication that your heart does not match God's heart.

Number two, when our hearts don't match God's heart, we prioritize ourselves over others.

We prioritize ourselves over others.

Jonah is so worried about his own deliverance.

First, in the fish, he's so thankful to be delivered.

He says, Salvation comes from God.

You're so wonderful, Lord.

He's happy when God delivers him from the heat of the plant of the sun with the plant, but he does not care about the deliverance of the Ninevites.

So we're meant to ask, do I care more about myself or about others?

Am I prioritizing my own spiritual needs, my own health, my own growth, my own comfortability over the spiritual state of others?

Or am I putting others before myself?

When our hearts don't match God's, our first concern is with ourselves.

But a heart that matches God's heart is brought out really clearly in Philippians chapter two.

Paul says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, consider others better than yourselves.

Now looking to your own interests, but to the interest of the others.

In your relationships with one another, should have the same mindset as that of Christ Jesus.

Then he goes on to detail how Jesus, though he was in very nature God, did not consider his equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but he humbled himself, took the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, even death on the cross.

That is meant to be our mindset, our heart, others focused.

God is love, which means he is others focused, always.

And that is meant to be our heart as well.

And so the question is how much of my time, energy, prayers go towards me and about my circumstances, my needs, my issues, my family versus others.

When our hearts don't match God's, we prioritize ourselves over others.

And then finally, when our hearts don't match God's heart, we lose compassion for others.

We lose compassion for others.

We see this with Jonah.

He would be happy to see all of Nineveh wiped out.

I imagine he would sit there with glee if hail, storm, you know, fire and brimstone came down and just smote the entire city.

But God has to remind him that God cares deeply about human suffering.

That God cares about these people.

As wicked as they are, as messed up as they are, God cares about each individual.

And Jonah should as well.

Now, there are many things that are working against us today to desensitize us and remove our compassion for other people.

One of those is that in a digital world, we are able to take in the suffering of the world at a moment's notice, push notifications to our screens.

And I don't think we were designed or meant to take in all that suffering and have compassion for the entire world.

It just overloads us.

And it is scary and sad the amount of suffering that you could be exposed to with the click of a button.

You could watch videos on YouTube or TikTok or whatever it is of people being blown up in war.

And it would desensitize you to just not care.

You could listen to reports of people being killed each and every day, and you would just eventually stop caring.

It would stop hurting a little bit.

And so I think one response is to if your social media diet, your exposure to news and all that, if it is desensitizing you to caring deeply about human suffering, you gotta stop.

You gotta change something.

Because God wants you to have his heart.

And God mourns the loss of human life.

The question is, do we?

Another factor working against us is that every human tragedy, today, at least in North America, is politicized so that something terrible happens, someone is killed, there's at war, people die, and somebody posts about it, are like, man, this is really awful, this shouldn't have happened, and immediately people jump to one side of the aisle or the other and say, Well, yeah, about this, or yeah about that, and they assume that there's a political agenda going on.

You guys, we have stop it.

That cannot be the response of the church.

When people are dying, when people are suffering.

Please, if there are people who are hurting, suffering, dying, you can just say, this is tragic.

God cares about this.

And we should mourn and we should lament and we should grieve.

We don't want to lose our compassion for others.

We want our hearts to match God's heart.

Amen?

Amen.

And when our hearts don't match God's heart, we lose our compassion for others.

We want to have God's heart.

We want our hearts to match His.

So how do we how do you cultivate a heart that matches God's heart?

I think it starts by reflecting on our own brokenness and our own need for rescue.

I think it starts with placing ourselves in the position of the Ninevehes and saying, I am messed up, I am wicked, I am in need of God's salvation.

It's what Jonah should do up on that hill outside of Nineveh is he should get down on his knees and say, Woe is me, I am deserving of your judgment.

I'm deserving of your fierce anger, God, and thank you, thank you for your compassion, for your mercy, for your steadfast love.

I don't deserve it, but I'm so grateful when you chain my stubborn, twisted, broken heart so that I love people the way that you love people, God.

That's the proper response.

And for us as followers of Jesus, that's how it starts as well.

To recognize our own state before God, to say that I am deserving of your judgment, deserving of your condemnation, Lord.

But God saw us in our wickedness and our rebellion, and he sent his son Jesus to live the life that we can never live, to die the death on the cross that we deserve to die, to pay the penalty for our sin.

He was raised from the dead and he extends forgiveness and eternal life to all who repent and turn and put their trust in him.

And when we understand that, when we understand the gospel and the good news about God's grace, slowly but surely, I believe our hearts will begin to transform and we'll be more and more like God's heart.

Then we'll be able to sing full-voiced, oh, how great is the love of God that rescued me.

And so if you're here today and you have not yet known that the love of God, He loves you deeply.

He wants you to call out to Him as Lord, as Savior, give your life to Him.

He is waiting with open arms.

He's so quick to forgive, He's so quick to rescue.

I'd invite you to turn to Him today.

And for my brothers and sisters in Christ, let's ask God to change our hearts, to transform us to be more like His.

Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Father, we start by recognizing our own brokenness, our own sinfulness before you.

That if you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, none of us could stand.

And we're grateful for your love, for your grace.

Father, if there's anyone here this morning who's not yet received the forgiveness, the mercy that you offer, I pray that they open up their heart, they open up their lives to you right now.

And call upon you as Savior and Lord.

And Lord, for those of us who know you and are walking with you and seeking to be transformed more and more, would you keep on changing our hearts to care deeply for those in need, deeply for those who don't yet know you?

And we just we start with gratitude for your love.

We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.