3 Principles for Life – Luke part 18 – Grant Vissers

Hey, man, good morning, good morning.

If if I'm new, if you are visiting, welcome, special

welcome to you. My name is Grant and I'm one of

the pastors here at the church. It's good to have you all with

us this morning for worship. And I'm delighted that this

would be part of your day-to-day and beyond that, your weekly

rhythm of life and to worship together, to gather and worship.

So if you do, if you've got kiddos who want to head out to,

I know there are lots of kids going to Sunday school and

nursery, etcetera. If you also some of them just

want to hang here, that would be great too.

So please feel free to move, move around, get up, switch

seats if you'd like, if you just need listen, if you just gotta

move your body at some point, get up, walk around, you're in

good company. We're going to be reading from

Luke chapter 6 today and continuing on in what Luke calls

Luke 6 · chapter mention

the sermon on the plane. So I'm going to begin by praying

and, and then I'm going to read the passage once for us and then

we'll work our way through together.

But this is beginning at verse 37.

This is Luke in my Bible. It says judging others.

This is Jesus's teaching on judgment and a little bit on

hypocrisy as well. So it I think it's one that

lands and needs to land, especially for those of us who

call ourselves Christians and who have been around the church

for a long time. So let me pray.

And if you want to find in your phone or on a tablet or in one

of the Bibles behind at the back of the sanctuary, there you can

read along with us. God, thanks for your love, thank

you for your grace. Thanks that you're with us, and

we're grateful for all of what you invite us into for worship

and for worship together. Thanks that this is a community

that you form and you shape thinks that we are yours.

And so in these next moments, God, I pray that you would speak

to us. Would you speak to us as

individuals? Would you speak to us as a

community? And would you challenge us to

become more of the people you've created us to be?

In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

So starting in verse 37, this is what it sounds like.

Do not judge and you will not be judged.

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running

over will be poured into your lap, for with the measure you

use, it will be measured to you. He also told them this parable.

Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a

pit? The student is not above the

teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their

teacher. Why do you look at the speck of

sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the

plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother,

Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when you

yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye, you hypocrite,

first take the plank out of your eye and then you will see

clearly to remove the spec from your brothers eye.

That's alright. Got it.

You got the keyboard there. That's great.

That's too far away. Wonderful.

I love it. Oh, I love it.

I listen. We are like I said, we're

continuing in Jesus Sermon on the plane.

This is Jesus's teaching on how to live life inside the Kingdom

of God, life to its fullest measure.

What does that mean? What does it look like according

to Jesus's teaching and the way of Jesus?

What is the good life? What is it that we are invited

into when we live inside God's Kingdom?

And so today what I want to do is leave you with three

principles for life inside the Kingdom.

And I say this occasionally like closest thing to three-point

sermon we're going to get for a while, but I'm also going to

spoil the sermon right off the hop.

I'm going to give you the three points.

These aren't the only three points of what life looks like

inside the Kingdom. These aren't the only three

principles according to Jesus's teaching.

They are three of the ways in which Jesus invites us to live

and to live inside the Kingdom. So I guess that's your

disclaimer. Spoilers ahead. 3 principles, 3

principles, not 2 about life inside the Kingdom.

Number one is generosity. The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom

of generosity #2 loyalty. The Kingdom of God is one that

invites you to follow and to follow well, to be committed to

someone and something and #3 integrity.

To live an integrated life. One is we're going to see is put

back together, not broken into pieces.

So generosity, loyalty and integrity.

Now listen, Jesus's teachings weren't meant to to give his

listeners an answer for every possible situation or

circumstance that they encountered.

They were meant to be rules for the road.

And that's the language that we have been developing as we've

been working our way through this sermon or this collection

of Jesus teachings. They are rules for how to live

inside the Kingdom. They're quick.

And he wants you to remember them and he wants you to just

call to mind as things happen, as they unfold in your life.

This is how we are called to live.

They are true statements about the Kingdom of God and what life

looks like if you choose to pursue it inside of God's

Kingdom. Now, I don't know about you and

how you've gone about doing this, probably in a more

organized and advanced way from me.

However, every year in the spring and in the fall, I

changed my tires and I've done it for a long time, since the

first car that I that I bought, I've got winter rims, winter

tires and I've got all season rims and all season tires.

And all that means is that I don't need to remember to book

an appointment ahead of all of you in the winter.

So when I pick up the phone and call Canadian Tire to see if

there's anything available, it's not two months down the road I

can. I can do it myself every year

without fail when I switched the tires back over to whatever it

is like this, you know, this season, spring, I forget what

the proper PSI range is supposed to be on that tire every year.

And there's a couple of different ways to find that that

answer. So the one is that in my car,

there's a glove box with no gloves in it, but with an owners

manual in there. And I can flip over to the tire

maintenance section and find for my vehicle the range that they

suggest to keep my tires within. You can also find it out usually

on the tires themselves. But I know that that owners

manual is going to give me the exact answer to the question

that I need every single season when I flip those tires over.

And that is, what do I have to fill these things to at the

station before I put them on so that my whole car doesn't just

sit on the rims? That's an easy answer to find,

but this isn't the kind of manual that Jesus is writing in

his teachings about the Kingdom. This isn't for Jesus.

This his teachings aren't. And if this, then that kind of

manual you can't find. You won't find answers to every

single question, but what you will find are principles to live

by, ways to be, truths to remember when life is hard, when

there's joy and celebration. God speaks through His teachings

about who you are, whose you are, and about who He is.

Jesus's teaching. Excuse me?

It's similar to the wisdom literature in the Old Testament.

It would be like if I wrote the owner's manual for my van

instead. Simply in some ways keep your

pressure or your tires properly pressurized, not pressurize your

tires to exactly 36 PSI. That's got that's one answer,

but keep your tires properly pressurized and it will be well

with you. Think.

Think about it. Do the work right?

This is my body, my life, my heart, my soul, my mind.

The tire or the van? Does it really matter?

But what do I need to do to remain healthy?

What do I need to do to remain aligned?

What do I need to do to remain safe toward myself and others?

Like what is the work that I need to do?

And I think that's what Jesus challenges us toward today.

What's the work that we need to do to keep our tires ourselves

properly pressurized? So we've got wisdom, literature,

Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, truths that are intended to have

wide meaning application across all of life and all of time so

that we still find in it deep meaning for our lives, the best

meaning for our lives. And so we look value 1

generosity. Jesus says do not judge and you

will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not

be condemned. Forgive and you will be

forgiven. Give and it will be given to

you. A good measure pressed down,

shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap,

for with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

He says do not judge and you will not be judged.

Then He says do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive. Give he calls us to do.

But to be about something. Passages like this, I think, can

feel a little overwhelming. And I don't know about you, but

I think sometimes we can fall into the trap of trying to

figure out what every possible iteration of these words means.

What does it mean to not judge? And then I will not be judged.

How do I learn to not condemn so that I will not be condemned?

And what does condemnation mean and, and look like?

And where do I tip? And when am I judgmental?

And when is it judging and not judgmental?

When you know, how can I navigate it?

Are there situations where I should judge?

What does it mean that I won't be judged?

If I if I do judged, will then I be judged?

And how will that look? What is it gonna feel like?

Is this not just in some way like a Christian karma?

What goes around comes around. What you give, you get.

How much what does that even mean?

Like if you give me a cookie, do I have to give you also a cookie

back? Like, is that the like this for

that? How is God creating life inside

the Kingdom? How do I measure a value of, of

a gift so that I can return it in kind?

And I think what happens is that we, we end up down this rabbit

trail of in many ways, very good questions and important

questions to ask, but we get sucked around and around and

around until we end up at a place where we're not quite sure

how to live or how to be or what it should look like anyways.

And I think for us what we need to see that Jesus says simply

and it it really is actually just stop judging.

He says stop judging. Stop condemning.

And then he says give, Learn to be generous.

Instead of judging, Instead of condemning, he says forgive and

then give. And that to me feels like an

extra measure of grace. Forgive and then give on top of

Choose the way of generosity. Choose the way that leads to

more generosity. And then he writes a good

measure. Pressed down, shaken together,

and running over will be poured into your lap.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

If you were here on Wednesday for our community Bible study,

we talked a little bit about what this good measure is.

What does it mean to write or say or read good measure?

In Greek, that word measure is metros.

We actually get the word meter from that word.

And what it was, was a way to describe, yes, measuring

something, how to measure something, but it itself a good

measure. The measure was the standard

against which everything else was measured.

And so very often it would be grain that was used and there

was a fixed amount of grain, a container for the grain and you

would fill the grain up and that would be your measure.

And So what would make sense is and what would be equitable

would be a good measure. And so I listen, this is rice

and it doesn't work as well as I thought it would.

But but what he's right, what Lucas is, is saying, what Jesus

is teaching is a good measure is not one that's just poured in

and left to have air and room in it to to move around.

Because if we use this to measure against, it's going to

fall short. What he says is no a good

measure. So fill it up to the top and

then shake it around to get all of the air out and press it

down, he says. A good measure pressed down

South that you can fill up with more again, that's equitable.

That would be a good measure. That would be fair.

But what Jesus says is a good measure, packed down, shaken

together and overflowing. We're going to eat rice today

for lunch, and I very clearly have some vacuuming to do after

the service. But I want you to get this

point. What Jesus says is a good

measure is not what is fair. It's not what is deserved, it's

not what is equal, he says. A good measure Overflowing, so

he says. Choose to be generous and I

don't know again, but yeah, like I get stuck in this judge and

I'm not gonna be judged and don't condemn because I don't

want to be condemned. And we missed the forest through

the trees where Jesus says give with abundance, be generous

overflow in how you live life, in how you interact with one

another in the ways that you choose to be, choose to be

generous to overflowing. The economy of the Kingdom of

God is an economy of generosity. It is not one of scarcity.

It is not one of fear. It is not one that worries.

If I give this away, I will not have.

And so if you want to live life inside the Kingdom of God, Jesus

says listen, remember on your way choose to be generous.

This is why at the end of a fusions, Paul, Paul can declare

this about God. God is able to do what God is

able to do. What is fair and equitable,

exactly what we ask for, right? No, Paul says.

He declares, God will do. He's able to do immeasurably

more then we can ask or imagine. Why?

Because God is generous with you, and He has been and will be

generous with you. And so for you and for me, if we

want to live life inside the Kingdom of God, we must choose

to live generously. That's it, That's the principle.

That's number one. Live life open handedly,

generous toward the other. Value 2 is loyalty.

And this word falls short. I want to say that at the

beginning, but it sounded good because we've got generosity,

we've got loyalty. And it just felt right growing

up for me. Growing up in Montreal, one of

my fondest memories meant that we could drive like 45 minutes

almost in any direction and hit a ski hill.

And because there were so many, like it kept the prices fairly

reasonable as well, which was great.

And it meant like every March break, a couple of my cousins,

like their families would drive from Ontario to Montreal.

We'd spend the week together and we would go skiing,

snowboarding, we'd spend a day on the hills.

And again, like year after year, one of my fondest memories of

that place and of that time and season were those were those

trips, some of my best memories. But there was one year that my

cousin and I got it in our head were like, well, we're getting

pretty good. We're getting a little too good

for this hill that we're going to and listen like we're going

to try to find our own routes down the mountain.

And I don't know if you've ever been skiing or snowboarding

before, but that's not a good idea.

It's just not. There are guardrails on roads

for reasons. There are markers on ski slopes

for reasons. And if you grew up in BC, you're

like this. Listen, smaller hills, OK?

But one year we did. We got in our minds that we were

gonna go and find. We weren't gonna.

We're gonna go down the well marked trails.

We weren't gonna go down the well groomed paths.

We were going to go outside the lines.

We were going to go down the wrong side of them.

We're going to Bush crash through the trees and we're

going to go find fresh powder. And it was going to be great.

It wasn't, and you can imagine what might have happened.

So I can't remember who was going for I was following my

cousin or my cousin was following me down the backside

of the mountain and we hit a Cliff and it wasn't a big Cliff,

but it was a big enough Cliff. And one of us, I think it was my

cousin, for he sailed over and funk and like landed down maybe

about 10 feet in this big basin of snow drift.

And what happened? I also sailed over the same

Cliff. There we were, side-by-side,

luckily not on top of each other like up to our armpits and snow.

And at that point we knew we were in trouble.

We're on the wrong side of the mountain.

Little later in the day, nobody knows where we are, or you know,

anyway. So we had to dig ourselves out

all the way down to our snowboards, unclip the bindings,

bring those out and walk down the wrong side of the hill.

Then we were on the wrong side of mountain.

We had to walk around to the to the right side where the ski

lifts were and go our ways. And I don't know if anybody knew

about that story until right now either.

So Jesus tells this parable. Can the blind lead the blind?

He says. Will they not both fall into a

pit? Yes, the student is not above

the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their

teacher. OK, we're going to get to that

in a minute. I love this.

Right. He also told them this parable.

You could also probably read it this way.

He also told them this joke like this, this anti right says that

this is this is Jesus trying to be funny.

Anti right says that the Bible is funny if you know how and

where to look for it. Like God's humorous and this is

Jesus using humor to tease out what is a really difficult

principle to live by. And so he disarms his his

listeners. Like can the blind lead the

blind? No.

They're both going to fall into a pit.

Yes. Can one dumb teenager lead

another dumb teenager safely over the wrong side of a

mountain? Also, no, you're both gonna get

stuck. And again, like I said, like

Jesus isn't telling us to watch out for pits or ditches.

They literally what we would maybe read in the in the

original Creek. Like you're going to fall into a

ditch, you're going to get hurt. No, he's he's not saying walk

around watching for ditches and be like, I'm gonna hop over that

one and then I'm gonna hop over this one.

And hopefully you're following along behind me.

He's not saying watch out for sinkholes, which I learned this

week is a thing in Guelph. We gotta watch out for them.

Jesus is using humor to tease out this truth about life inside

the Kingdom. Who you follow matters.

Who you are following matters and how you lead matters.

Who is following you? Are you following someone who's

gonna lead you into a pit? Are you leading someone toward a

ditch? Who you choose to align your

life, Who you choose to align yourself with, matters.

Who you study from and learn from matters.

Why? Because we know that you become

like the person you follow. You become more like the people

you spend the most time with, whether you like that about

yourself or not, whether you want to or not.

Spouses. We even start looking alike as

we age. Sorry Connie, it for for the

that. Anyways, I figured that one out

after David Foster Wallace has this great quote and actually

shortly before his death he he said this at a convocation.

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what

to worship you will. To be human means that you will

worship something. Something someone will get your

attention and your affection. You will elevate somebody

something above the rest. You will behold in your life

towards something or someone and one of the most important

decisions that you have to make is who that thing or that person

is. What or who will you worship?

Who are you gonna actively pursue?

How are you going to go and align your life toward what is

right and true and good? Something is going to get your

attention and your affection. Something will demand your time

and your energy and your resources, your money.

Somebody will teach your kids you will spend years of your

life consuming content. And I don't mean years of your

life sometimes consuming content, but if the stats are

right, you will spend years of your life, actual real whole

years. Over the long haul, consuming

things, be it on your phone or computer or television,

Something is going to get your worship.

Something or someone will be your teacher.

So choose that teacher wisely. Because if your teacher is a

Pharisee, you're only gonna be like the Pharisee.

Jesus says this. No student is above their

teacher. OK?

No student like the student is not above the teacher.

But everyone who is fully trained will be like their

teacher. And in some ways, hear what

Jesus is saying. He's just warned us about the

blind leading the blind and the blind teachers leading you

toward a pit toward danger. So what he's saying here, I

think in many ways is even if you are fully formed, even if

you are successful, even if you become fully trained, you are

only ever going to be like that teacher.

So if that teacher is the wrong teacher, you're not going to

excel beyond, you're not going to follow your way into the

Kingdom. So he says, choose your teacher

wisely because you will be like that teacher.

And if it's the wrong teacher, you will only ever be like that

teacher. If your teacher is judgmental

and stingy, if your teacher is spiritually, morally, ethically

blind, if you're even if he says you're fully formed, you are

going to be like that teacher. Christians are those who submit

to Jesus. Followers of Jesus are ones who

say nobody. Nobody else gets the time, the

attention, the affection. As does Jesus, and that might be

a hard thing to hear. Not your spouse, not your

friend, not your boss, not social media, not your favorite

podcast. No politician or celebrity, no

Joe Rogan, no Jordan Peterson, not even your pastor.

Nobody gets the attention and the affection that Jesus gets.

And I'm not saying that Jesus won't use people to speak to

you. He will and pay close attention

to your spouse. Trust the friends who have

earned the right to be heard and speak into your life, but

remember that there is only one King inside the Kingdom and his

name is Jesus and there is only one teacher who we are called to

follow and his name is Jesus. Imitating Christ is the heart of

the Christian vocation. To be.

In other words, to be a Christian is to be one who

imitates Jesus. So are you living a life that is

aligned toward Jesus? Are you living a life of loyalty

toward Jesus? Value 3 is integrity.

And this is where we're going to wrap up.

Why do you look? He says.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust and your brother's eye

and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

This. We could read this as a log.

We could read this even as doc that's closest.

Can't really read that up there. I'm sorry.

Log dock plank, the plank in your own eye.

How can you say to your brother, brother, let me take the speck

out of your own eye when yourself failed to see the plank

in your own eye, you hypocrite. We're going to get to this word

in a minute. First he says take the plank out

of your own eye and then you will be able to see clearly to

remove the spec from your brother's eye again.

And I think it's OK here to realize Jesus is using comedy to

reveal what is painfully true about human beings.

That so often our actions don't align with our beliefs and what

we say we believe. Our intentions, though good, can

be hurtful. Our actions can hurt others, and

at times we can be really good. Christians can be really good at

pointing out other people's flaws while ignoring our own.

So I want you to imagine this. Can you imagine for a minute

what it would be like to remove the speck of sawdust from

someone's eye while battling a log in your own?

I didn't bring a log, but it did bring a stick because I think

it's helpful to see this. I'm not gonna invite anybody up,

and I'm not gonna stick a speck of sawdust in your eye, and I'm

not gonna try to get it out of your eye while also

simultaneously hitting you in the head with this stick like

it's not gonna happen. Even if you have the best

intentions, you're still gonna hurt somebody.

Like if this thing sticking out of your own eye and you're

walking around and you're like, let me help you.

Like it's just not gonna happen. This is the humor of it.

You can't do it. He doesn't want you to feel bad

about yourself and feel shame that you can't help somebody.

He's simply pointing out the fact that if I've got a log

sticking out of my, I can't help you because I can't even get to

you. No amount of love, no amount of

kindness, no matter of gentleness or steady hand or

slow like heart surgeon level accuracy is going to allow me to

help somebody. If I have a stick coming out the

front of my face, I'm gonna hit you.

Even if I could reach, I'll probably spin around and hit you

on the way out. Like, just accidentally,

brother, let me take the speck out of your own eyes.

As even if you want to, even if you're trying to be helpful,

even if you're not being judgmental, even if you're not

condemning, even if you are out of the goodness of your heart

trying to help somebody you love and care for deeply, you are

gonna hurt somebody until you start to deal with your own

stuff. Luke's Point, Fred Craddock

writes. Is this the disqualifying

factor? I want you to hear this is not

flaws but it is blindness to ones flaws and it's an

unwillingness to be self critical and honest.

I want to be like abundantly clear, Jesus is not saying to

you deal with your own stuff before you can enter the

Kingdom. He's not saying dress a certain

way. He's not saying look a certain

way. He's not saying speak a certain

way. He's not saying be a certain

way. He's not saying go and clean up

yourself. I don't wanna deal with you.

Once you've done all that work, then come and see if you measure

up, if you're good enough. He's not saying fix it all

before you can belong or believe.

He's not saying that you gotta pay up and kind of find your way

into the Country Club of Christianity, but he is saying

that being a Christian, part of being a Christian, a follower of

Jesus, is working on your own logs.

Having the humility to be self critical an honest with

yourself. What logs you need to address as

you go and as you live inside the Kingdom of God.

Jesus issue isn't with the person who's honestly and

earnestly seeking to heal themselves by removing the

plank. His issue isn't with people who

who ask hey please, like if I smack you in the head with a

plank sticking out of my eye, like tell me point them out.

We need one another to encourage and admonish and challenge each

other. Jesus's issue is with those who

refuse to deal with the plank in their own eye while at the same

time insisting on pointing out and attempting to remove

everybody elses, which is again, is a, is a comical thing to see

because everybody, like, we can all see it.

You got the stick, you got the big, you get the long sticking

out of your face and you're the one running around trying to fix

everybody else. We can see it.

It's sticking out of my, you know, eye.

So maybe that's why we struggle to see it.

But we do like we struggle to see our own areas of need, but

we've got to deal with them. The hypocrite that Jesus refers

to, we've spoken about this is a play actor, one who acted under

a mask. So this word hupo creno, it's

like under and judging, but it properly means one who acted

under a mask and then who was judged for their performance.

So in the theatre, in public performance, you would play a

character and then at the end of your performance you would come

out on stage and you would remove your mask.

And if you removed your mask and people considered generally, oh,

they convinced me that it wasn't my friend, They convinced me

that they were the character you would applaud.

And if you didn't convince them, I guess they wouldn't applaud

for you. But that's what Jesus is

referring to, people who play under a mask.

But then you are still judging everybody else on how they're

acting and living. Their job was to convince you

that they had become the person while not being the person.

And so I think the challenge is to be honest about ourselves,

toward ourself and toward others.

Have I become the person? Am I doing the work or am I

trying to convince you that I'm somebody I'm not?

And in the meantime, am I trying to point out everybody else's

flaws and faults and failures? Am I trying to judge and shame

and condemn? Are you intentionally seeking to

find healing and deliverance and restoration and forgiveness in

in Jesus? Are you honestly addressing the

planks sticking out your own eye?

Are you genuinely pursuing healing and health and

wholeness? Because then Jesus says it's

game on not to judge, not to shame, not to condemn others.

This isn't the green light to go and be judgmental.

You're like, I got my judgment card check.

Like now I can go. I graduated to the judgment

level. That's not what he's saying it

is, though, he says. A green light to go and heal and

help others heal. Too many Christians, I think,

call ourselves Christian but act like Pharisees when what we need

is what Henry Nolan calls people walking around being wounded

healers, people who know our own faults and our own failures and

our own field fears, deepest insecurities.

The thing I don't want you to find out about?

Know about this, All of it. Submitted to Jesus, healed,

healing, restored, restoring toward life together as a

community and calling other people to come to that same

place of healing and forgiveness and restoration.

Say, hey, I can't do it for you, but I can bring you to the one

who can. And I'm broken and I'm wrestling

it out and I'm trying to figure it out and on the way.

Whatever I can do to drag you along with me, you tell me

because somebody else drugged me when I needed to go to and they

weren't perfect and they weren't fully restored and healed and

they were figuring it out and they were on the road.

Just says on the road as you go, be ones of honesty and

integrity. Mended put back together again.

That word fully formed from a couple of slides ago, actually

hit carries this deep, beautiful meaning of peace and wholeness

and healing and restoration. It is all of the goodness of God

and it and it is all of it. Mended put back together again,

pieced together. We picture a Carpenter who's

really good at their job, joining pieces of wood that have

been broken and fractured back together again, mending it so

that it's whole. And that's how Jesus called us

to live. Generous like Jesus, following

deeply Jesus and put back together again by Jesus mended

to go and mend others. Let's pray.

Yeah. Thanks for your love and for

your grace. Thanks that you're with us, and

thanks that you call us into greater ways of being.

God, we are grateful that you don't leave us in the midst of

our mess. Thinks that you are one who

mends, puts back together again all of the ways that we are

broken as individuals and as a community.

Thinks that that's not just for ourselves, but that you do it so

that we can go and bless others and in seasons pull people along

so that they can find health and healing and wholeness in you.

Scott, I do pray that you would teach us to be generous.

I pray that you would remind us of the ways in which we are

encouraged to follow you, and I pray that you would keep us

honest and humble. I pray that You would give us

eyes to see these broken pieces in our own hearts and minds and

lives, and then give us the courage, God, to name it and

just say, please, Jesus, we need you to heal it.

So God, as we go, as we continue to worship into today, into the

week ahead, into all that it will hold, the good, the bad,

the ugly, everything in between, that I thank you that you are

Lord and we are not. I thank You that you are in

control and doesn't depend on my control.

I thank you that you are one who loves better than we could

imagine. And I think that you are one who

is generous beyond what we could hope for or imagine.

And so if we need to hear it, if we need to maybe hear it and

receive it for the first time, God, I pray you'd speak to each

one of us thinks that we are yours.

Thanks that you are here, things that you do love us and I pray

we would go knowing that we belong to you.

And I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.