July 27, 2025 Special Guest Doug Routledge -Beyond Walls: Embracing God's Blessings Outside of Safe Spaces

Music.

Break God's word for us, please. Thanks. Sir.

All right, so two things. Number one, I don't have to tell you I'm Canadian,

but Daryl's boss is apparently also Canadian because he was walking a boot,

is what I heard of where I was.

I'm Canadian, but just barely. In fact, this week I had meetings with INS,

and so I'm in the process of changing that.

They may not be in the process of accepting it, But I have been in the process

of, you know, American citizenship pretty recently.

And so next year, probably you won't get to tell that joke.

And I won't get to tell the aboot joke without being some kind of nationalist

or whatever you call that when you don't like Canadians.

By the way, don't steal my Toronto Maple Leafs bag. It's back there.

And if you steal it, hope is done for me.

So if you're a hockey fan I'm a lifelong Toronto

Maple Leafs fan which means that we

haven't really won since 1967 and I

was seven when that happened and the only reason I remember it is I got to stay

up not really because we won so I have very no I have no memories of that I

do want to give a quick update just on our ministry so I'm going to try and

make this quick and by the way this train does not frighten me because Ben, this is cardboard.

I don't know if you knew that. And there's already a guy that's been run over

in the corner here, or he's pushing it either way. I can get out of his way.

And I loved Ben because he had a whole story built around a pretend train.

And that's what guys do.

Guys start talking to themselves about something that they see or do.

And they're like, this week I had the weirdest conversation about how edible varmints are.

It was all internal because this last two months I've shot 38 varmints near our chicken coop.

And I would say within 20 feet of our chicken coop.

So if it looks like I'm gaining weight, apparently it's because raccoon,

possum, and skunks are edible.

38. If you're a member of PETA, I'm sorry. None of the animals were actually

injured in the telling of this story.

So my ministry, our ministry, Dawn's My Ministry, has been growing.

And because of that, I do have some updates. But most of those are bigger updates.

This year, we registered somewhere around 850 students in the three branches

who came through our doors and were part of the ministry. That doesn't include big events.

Big events like the murder mystery that we always host has far more than that number of students.

But the regular attenders over the course of the week in the three branches

that we have, over 800 kids have heard the gospel and been engaged.

That's pretty exciting.

Along those lines, my wife was talking to a kid named Dan.

And so, not Dan, but Dan. And Dan was holding a Bible that my wife gave to him.

And it was his first Bible ever. You'd be surprised how many kids have never

held a Bible and never actually looked at it. They just know that they exist.

And so Don handed him a Bible and he said this, he said, wow, it's a lot of pages.

I mean, if you hand a Bible to somebody and you say, read these pages,

and they think, well, that's more than I've ever read in my entire life.

So I think I would like the, you know, idiot's version of that,

something much shorter.

We have that, but you don't grow as much.

And so he said this, he said, well, is there just like some button I can push

that'll tell me what to do?

And he was looking for kind of that, I push the button, I know how to live like a believer.

That's how much he knows about God. He accepted Jesus Christ,

and he and his friend have begun to take those first steps.

It happens every single week, happens over and over again.

There is another young man. His name is Wyatt, and Wyatt is a riot.

And it rhymes, so it's fun, but he's a riot. And he's a big kid,

and I mean a really big kid.

And so Wyatt just went to the music festival with our groups, and he loves music.

Now, unfortunately, at Walmart, they don't sell Christian band t-shirts.

So every t-shirt I've ever seen him wear is like a Led Zeppelin or,

you know, I mean, just whoever was popular in the 1970s.

And he likes them because those are the bands he's heard of.

And so they were at the music festival, and one of our directors,

a woman named Carrie, was talking to him, and she said, so Wyatt,

where do you stand with Jesus? And he said, oh, well, I accepted Jesus last May, like a year ago.

And she said, you didn't tell anybody. And he said, you didn't tell me I needed to.

And she said, oh, okay, well, we'll meet this week and maybe we can start that conversation.

Wyatt's been saved for over a year. They kept on wondering why he was coming

back. It's because the Holy Spirit kept on telling him that that's where he

belonged. But we didn't know that.

It's interesting how many kids have experienced Jesus Christ.

Pretty excited. I have a specific prayer request for you. As we grow and develop,

we have two branches that we're really working towards.

One is in Rosebud County, Montana.

We have the director. He has gone through our training.

He is now currently the director of the shed branch because he was there and we needed him.

And he said, I'll just stay as long as God has me here. I'll go to Montana because

that's where my heart is.

But I'll wait until God's done with me here.

And God has been using Jabin. That's his name, Jabin.

And he is waiting for an administrative director. You have no idea how hard

it is to recruit somebody to ministry and then tell them, oh,

and by the way, you get to raise your own support. It's a fun add-on.

See, the body of Christ is so important that there are communities that are

waiting for someone in the body of Christ to support people who are in ministry,

even in the United States.

In fact, one of the pastors in Wapaka County, Wisconsin, where our fifth branch

will go, is Filipino. And we asked him about it.

He's actually Filipino United Methodist. Okay, so most of you,

if you're conservative, you're like, oh, boy.

That's not a good—I mean, because not only can you not understand him very well,

but, you know, here's the deal.

We asked him about it because he was talking about the love of Jesus and sharing

the— and we were just a little bit surprised. And we said, you know,

we said, Leon, it's interesting to hear you talk.

You sound like you are a world Methodist.

Like, you sound like you're an evangelical Methodist. And he said, I am.

And I said, but you're, he said, a missionary to the United States for the United Methodist.

And I said, that's interesting. He said, I have four churches in Wapaka, four churches.

We have a Filipino ministry missionary who is a free Methodist.

And we said, why didn't you change to an evangelical?

I mean, you're staying with a church that claims they're not.

And he said this, he said, if light leaves, there's nothing but darkness.

He regards his mission, not only to people in Wapaka, Wisconsin,

but he regards his mission as to the denomination of the Free Methodists as well.

So, or United Methodists, sorry, if you're a Free Methodist,

I've just offended you, but United Methodists. It's an incredible story.

We, because of that, have a great need for national leadership.

Because as we start hearing from places a lot like this, a lot like everywhere

we plant, we have heard people who have said, can you come?

And our answer is always the same. Do you have someone?

We have to have someone from a community before we start in a community.

And there has to be a series of things that happen that God's in charge of, not us.

So you can be praying these national leaders will help us move faster and help us move farther.

We call it the line. It's named after a railroad line. It really is.

In fact, on our map, we have a train on there and tracks.

But they don't threaten to kill the harbinger of God's word.

So if I can't get out of the way, I'm already dead. That's all I'm saying waiting here.

All right. So pray for those people that we're recruiting to national leadership.

And there's always something that's very difficult.

Most of the time, they have to be high capacity leaders.

And remember that statement that I made. It's difficult to recruit somebody

who is a high capacity leader and then say, oh, and the fun part is you get to raise your support.

Here's what I'll tell you about mission work.

When God supplies it, there is a power that goes into it. And I will also tell

you there's a different buy-in.

And God has been working through those people, and he's been working in those

people's lives, and God is preparing something powerful across the United States.

You can already start praying for the 20 churches, 20 areas,

not churches, but 20 areas along the CRF line, because there are areas that

have kids who need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's my update. It didn't take 31 minutes, and so I hope I've got enough time

left to share what God wants to say today.

Here's where I started. My mind has been rolling around on this same verse over

and over and over again, just rolling around on this same verse, just one passage.

It's the way my head tends to work. And so as I caught this verse,

I don't remember when I saw it first, but it was in Genesis chapter 49. It's Jacob.

Genesis 49 · chapter mention

I'm fascinated with Jacob in his life. I'm fascinated with his sons and the blessing.

And in chapter 49, he stands there and we read another statement in Deuteronomy

where it says, as he leaned on his staff, as he leaned on his staff,

meaning that as he's blessing his children, he remembers back to the day he was broken.

You can't lean on a staff without being aware of your being broken.

And he begins to bless his kids. As he gets to verse 22, I had this moment where

I paused on a verse and I thought, well, that's interesting.

That's interesting. Verse 22, it talks about Joseph.

And Joseph is an interesting part of the blessing for a million reasons.

This passage in Genesis 49 is so rich, it literally ties the history of the

people of God to the future of the people of God.

And it all comes together in these 12 very, very broken people,

the sons of Jacob, because Jacob was broken. Remember the staff.

But he comes to verse 22 after blessing most of the sons.

Two weren't blessed with land. They weren't given any property.

Simeon and Levi were violent men.

And I don't want to go into the story. We don't have time, but they were violent men.

They took out vengeance on someone else.

And Jacob said, you won't receive a blessing because of that.

He comes to Joseph, who's been in Egypt, and he doesn't need land.

And here's the verse, verse 22.

It's fascinating to me.

Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over the wall.

Now, the rest of the blessing talks about those people who are coming after Joseph.

But this one verse sticks out to me as peculiar, as really different.

Just think about it. It says Joseph is a fruitful vine.

Well, yeah, his entire life had been a blessing. He was Jacob's favorite. He got to Egypt.

Everything he did seemed to turn out to be gold.

Except it was a tortured route. It was hard. It was difficult.

Everything looked like God had abandoned him.

He's a fruitful vine, but what's interesting is the passage,

a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over a wall.

Whose branches climb over a wall.

I just wanted to stop there because I was thinking, well, of all the people

that Jacob blessed, the one who understood walls and buildings was Joseph.

Joseph actually had built monolithic structures to house food.

He'd built palaces. He'd built fortresses.

He was in charge of that part of Pharaoh's kingdom. So this is a guy that understood walls.

And when Jacob comes to him, he says, you're a fruitful vine,

but you're not a fruitful vine because of the walls.

You're a fruitful vine that reaches out past the walls.

This is why I love this passage. We as a church tend to think we're blessed

within the walls, but God is offering a blessing when we pass outside of the walls.

And it had me think, what are our walls?

See, some of our walls we build for ourselves.

Some of our walls other people build for us.

And walls are really only good for two things, keeping me in or keeping you out walls.

See, we like our walls because they give us the illusion of safety.

They give us the illusion of protection. And I don't know what your walls are,

but we're going to talk about them at some point today.

Because God blesses through Jacob Joseph by saying the wall doesn't contain the blessing.

We tend to think the blessing is all here. But what I'm understanding from this

passage is that the blessing actually extends there.

And I'm not just talking evangelism.

Any area where I think I'm contained, in fact, psychologists have a phrase for

it. They call it stuckness.

I want to be a psychologist because you can make up words and then people will write books about them.

I've made up lots of words and nothing's really stuck. but I do think that this

would be a great book, and actually there are many books.

Stuckness is a psychological condition that we find ourselves in.

In fact, last year, 37% of all Americans considered themselves emotionally stuck.

Wow, what's that mean? It means that I'm stranded, I'm packed in,

I'm surrounded by my own walls. I can't get out or I can't get in I'm stuck.

I was thinking about this particular story over and over again,

and there was another story that came to mind.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because it's one of those stories

that stuck in my mind, and it's a horrible story.

I don't know what kind of Sunday school teacher I had, but I remember hearing this in Sunday school.

It's the story about the siege of Samaria. If you're a Bible scholar and you've

gone back into 2 Kings, chapter 6 starts this discussion about the siege of Samaria.

2 Kings 6 · chapter mention

The king of Aram had come in and he'd surrounded the walls of Samaria.

And they were stuck in.

In fact, he was content to wait it out. The king of Aram, Ben-Hadad,

stayed outside of the walls.

And they just said, they're going to run out of food. They're going to run out

of water. We'll just stick.

And when they're all dead, we'll take the city.

It's a really simple plot. Unless they have some other way to get food or some

other way to get water, it won't be that long a wait.

The Bible says that it became so difficult for people, listen to this,

that the city was starving to death.

Literally one after another, people were dying because of starvation.

And it says that a donkey's head sold for 80 shekels of silver.

And listen to this. A quarter cab of dove's dung sold for five shekels.

I don't know. Like I said, I considered what a possum would taste like this

week, but I have never stooped to say, you know, I wonder how much chicken feces caught.

You know, what would I be wanting? I would never eat it.

You'd have to be so desperate.

A donkey's head. I don't know how much meat is on a donkey's head,

but this is prime. I mean, 80 shekels of silver.

And the Bible tells the story that the king is blaming Elisha for it,

saying that's the man of God.

He's the one who said that this was going to happen. It's happening.

And so I blame him and we're going to kill him.

Sometimes people in leadership don't necessarily think logically,

but they do think about other people being the cause of the problem.

And so the king said, we're going to kill him.

And Elisha said, hang on, by tomorrow, you're going to be eating grain.

It's going to be back to normal. You'll be living large. King didn't believe him.

But outside the city walls, there were four lepers.

The four lepers had been outside the city walls for a while because they had leprosy.

They were dying already. And they had a conversation.

The four lepers had this conversation. And it went something like this.

Well, we're dying anyway.

We can't go into the city because nobody wants us there. But things aren't great

there. were starving to death as well as having leprosy.

Let's just go to the Armenians.

Let's just walk over to their camp. What's the worst they can do? Kill us fast?

Maybe they'll throw us a scrap of bread. Maybe they won't notice us.

Maybe we can get something to eat there.

And so they wander into the camp that surrounds the wall.

And what they discover is that the Armenians had left.

They left everything. They left their horses. They left their donkeys.

They left their camels. They left their cattle. They left their gold.

And so these lepers move into the camp and they say, it doesn't seem to be anybody

here. So they walk into the first tent.

Literally, the Bible says they walked into the first tent and they started collecting

gold, which seems like a bad decision.

But then they realized there's also food there. And so they started eating and

they started packing their pockets, which I don't know why the lepers thought

this is we're going to live large for the next couple of years of our lives.

But they were packing it. And by the time they got to the second tent,

they said this, this is evil.

Because over there in our city, the entire city is dying from starvation.

Here we've got so much, we couldn't possibly eat it all. So they told the king.

We're saying, okay, Doug, I know you're a storyteller, but what do those have

to do with each other? Here it is.

That sometimes our walls trap us. and they trap us in a position where we die.

We just aren't willing to give up living in the walls.

I contend that when I come to this verse, chapter 49, verse 22,

there's a statement from God.

I can't claim this as his promise for me, but I can claim it as his nature that

he blesses outside of the walls.

He intended to do it. There will always be opposition.

And I thought to myself, well, what does that mean?

What's it mean that he's always going to bless outside of the walls?

Well, here's what I think it means.

Number one, most of us live within the protection and the comfort of our walls.

Some of the walls are built for protection. In fact, scripture talks about it

and it talks about a variety of different walls that are for protection,

but it talks about money. We think money protects us.

We do. If I just had enough money, it would protect me.

Or maybe education. If I just had enough education, it'll protect me.

If I had a good enough job, it would protect me. Or if I have a healthy enough

family, it'll protect me.

I'm protected by virtue of something that I can control.

I have a friend who said this just this week. He said, the problem is we have control over nothing.

No wonder we're stressed.

No wonder we're chronically anxious.

Because there's so much stuff we don't have control over and it always brings

stress and it always brings concern and it always makes me anxious.

37% of the people in the United States say they're stuck in anxiousness.

I told my friend, well, I don't struggle with anxiety. I do what a good man

does. I ignore it and press on.

I shove all those emotions of desperation down.

And I cloister myself behind my own walls of self-sufficiency.

And if there's a good movie, I can totally disengage from the reality around me. We all do that too.

See, here's what it says. The rich think their wealth. This is Proverbs 18,

11. and the rich think their wealth as a strong defense.

They imagine it to be a high wall of safety.

The bottom line is none of us are protected from what's out there.

Because what's out there is more like us.

There's sickness, there's joblessness, there's depression.

I don't know about anybody else in this room, but age seems to be out there.

If I can just keep in this wall and I

don't know what's in the wall that's going to keep me young because it has not

been working but if I can ignore it and frankly I can watch people do it they

keep on saying as long as I don't feel old as long as age doesn't start hitting

me I'll be okay you know the truth is we can't keep it away or tragedy.

This last couple years have been tragic they've been difficult not just for

me I have a friend who's a counselor.

This year, my counselor friend lost his daughter who is in her 20s.

She left a family of little kids.

Wow. And he knows all the answers. This is hard stuff.

Some walls are built for protection, but they don't work. Some walls are built

for isolation, but they don't work.

In fact, sometimes we use religion

as isolation. If I can keep all the heretics out, that'll be great.

I don't know if you've ever had a conversation with other people at a church

potluck, but I've come to the conclusion pretty much all of us are heretics.

There is something I'm going to say when I get to heaven and God is going to

go, hey, come here, come here.

I got to talk about something you were preaching for years.

I want to show you how this actually works. And I will have to say, I am so sorry, Lord.

I had no idea. He said, I know. that's because you're not that smart.

I was talking to a guy who talked about isolation. Here's what he said.

And again, if this is your life philosophy, good.

This will be God speaking to you. He said this, I just bought two pit bulls.

And I said, oh, that's great.

You don't have any young children, do you? Now, if you're a pit bull lover,

and I know we have some, some are good and some are bad.

It's like pythons, I guess, because people have them as pets too.

I'm not, I love your dog. I'm just saying he bought two, but the reason he bought

two pit bulls is he said this, he said, we're getting close to the end times.

And I got a basement full of food and I got a closet full of guns and I am going to protect my family.

And I said, wait, you bought two pit bulls. Does anybody else know that guns work on them?

Because if it comes down to this and your objective as a believer is to keep

the rest of the world out of your storage closet, there's a fatal flaw in your

plan for surviving the end times.

Your dogs aren't going to make it either.

Isolation. If I center myself around, if I get enough people who totally agree

with me, we see this everywhere, there won't be any anxiety.

If we all can agree on the same stuff, but I've got news for you outside the

wall is a world that doesn't agree and they need Jesus and they need hope and

they need to see us living our lives.

They need the walls to come down.

But I like building walls. Some walls are prisons and some walls are fortresses.

There are people who protect themselves with alcohol. They surround themselves with numbness.

There are people who protect themselves by being angry. By the way,

I'll just be honest. I'm an angry guy.

I think if I can be angry enough, everybody will stay away from me when I'm in a bad mood.

And what I've discovered is they do. But then I'm lonely and I'm kind of mad about that.

The truth is that nothing in this world that we build or that someone else builds

for us works. It doesn't work.

And faith operates when God, by the way, this is a great distinction,

when he causes our branches to grow past the wall, the greatest blessings happen outside of the wall.

The great point that I found in this verse was just two simple thoughts.

Number one, there are two kinds of material here.

Number one, there's man-made building material. It's blocked. It's dead. you,

And the second is a vine, which is organic and lives.

It lives past the wall. It doesn't just get built past the wall.

Here's some of what I want you to get.

If you use religion to keep people away, that's not what God intended.

He intended it to be a door.

He understands the danger. That's why he's the shepherd.

That's why he stands at the gate as the door. We don't have to do that.

And so when I think about this,

how people have used it, in fact, Paul talks to Ananias, and Ananias uses the

law and then tells somebody to punch Paul in the mouth because it's heresy.

And Paul turns around and says, you are a whitewashed wall.

You look good on the outside, but you're deaf. You're dead. You're not living.

And your religion is only designed to make life comfortable for you.

Some people have built walls around me. Have you ever had somebody tell you

something about yourself and you say, that's a barrier.

You're never going to make it. You're too old. You don't have enough opportunity.

You're not smart enough.

I'm going to tell you those walls aren't living either. Because the vine will

always grow past the wall if it's God's.

So some of us stay in those walls because we like that comfort of being enclosed.

But we know it's to death.

There's life outside of the walls. Joseph is a fruitful vine,

a fruitful vine by a spring.

It's even more than just being a fruitful vine. It's a vine that goes to the

source of life, which is the water.

And there's no question here that all of Joseph's life had been a source of

life for others because he worshiped the one true God.

But he allowed his roots to go deep, so his vines grew.

We need to find those springs of water.

This is where God promises something really incredible. We don't need walls.

We don't need them. Whatever you use to protect yourself, you don't need it. You can get rid of it.

Because Psalm 139, verse 5 tells us this, that God hems us in behind and before.

Psalms 139:5

And he places his hand on us. Now, I love that passage because I have my grandson

here and my grandson, I cannot hem in.

Not quick enough. There's no way. In fact, there are two of us and we're really

looking for Lauren to come up and then there'll be three of us and we'll be,

you know, three sides closer to hemming in my grandson because that kid has some energy.

And he can move. He can run.

I keep on thinking, yeah, I used to sprint in college. That was about 50 years

ago. So I don't think I'm doing that again.

I'm just going to tell you that he moves. But what I've found is if my hand

is on him, I can walk with him.

He doesn't really want to run ahead of me.

I can walk with my grandson. The nature of God's promise to Joseph is simply

this, that his hand is with us.

I was on a one-day sabbatical a little while ago.

Two months ago. And I went and I wasn't sure what I was going to hear from God.

You know, when you get alone with God for eight hours or so,

is anybody else worried about what he's going to say?

I'm a little nervous about that. I really haven't. I mean, I really don't know

if I could spend eight hours with my wife that closely and just say,

just tell me what you're thinking.

I think I could last about three minutes. I think she would have more to work

on. And I spent the entire day doing nothing but praying.

And then I was so tired and I'd fall asleep and I'd wake up and go,

you're a stupid disciple.

And God said, no, it's okay. And then I'd read some more and then I'd pray some more.

And then I fell asleep for a while. Happened for about four hours.

And then I woke up and I read some more and I heard God's voice.

Not audible, but I knew it was him.

You know what he said? I knew it was him.

He said, I'm with you. I'm with you.

I don't know what you need to hear today, and I don't know how long I've got

before the train runs me over, but here's what I know.

The walls don't keep evil out.

They just keep us in.

But God walks freely with a hand on us through everything,

through anxiety, through physical turmoil, through difficulty,

through things I have zero control over.

He hems me in and places his hand on me like I do with my grandson.

And he just takes a step and it's way slower than God needs to move,

but it's the speed I'm moving.

He hems me in in front and behind wow what do i what do i do with that.

My life verse is in second thessalonians chapter 1 verse 11 and 12 this is what

2 Thessalonians 1:11

i want to leave you with so paul is talking to the church there and he says

this so we keep on praying for you keep on praying for you asking our god to

enable you to live a life worthy of his call,

May he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do.

Then the name of our Lord Jesus will be honored because of the way you live,

and you'll be honored along with him.

It's biblical. It's scripture.

And he says this, this is all made possible because of the grace of our God

and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Every blessing of God happens because of faith in God who operates outside the walls.

My personality is a wall. My abilities are a wall.

My finance is a wall. My health is a wall. My age is a wall.

My family heritage is a wall.

Everything around me is a wall. and God says, you're a fruitful vine. I'm with you.

And I'll be with you out there too.

So my only question is, what have you done this week that moved you out past your wall?

Because that's where God promises the blessing.

Out past your ability, your strengths, your thoughts, your visions. He's out there.

He's so out there he just needed a couple of desperate lepers to prove it to

the samaritans samarians he just needs us to be desperate enough to walk out

let me pray lord god we love you today,

i pray that you continue to move us past the walls that we we allow to be excuses "'I don't know.'.

Lord, bless us. Invigorate us. Lord, give us that shot of fresh water that we need.

Invigorate our root system so that our branches grow. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'll share one last thing because my wife wants me to and because I always forget.

If you want more information on our ministry, there's stuff on the back table.

It looks kind of like this.

This is the only thing I know that's free back there.

So you can take anything that says Crossroads Farm And it is perfect Thank you,

Josh, for letting me do this today It's been great And thank you for allowing

me to share with you today God bless you Thank you for the truth,

That Doug shared with us today God, I pray that as we go through our week That

we will look for walls in our lives And look at areas that you want to grow

us And you want us to grow deeper.

God, we thank you for the ministry of Crossroads Farms and just the humility

of Doug and just what they're doing with these kids across the country is huge.

So Jesus, I pray that you would intervene and you'd do something massive this year.

You'd provide the staff that they need. You have everyone already laid out.

So God, I pray that you would encourage Doug and Dawn

and that you would just fulfill everything that

they need to get your gospel out there is

you're doing something with this next generation

i don't know if the adults here have noticed if they're out there on on all

the social media things but there's a group of guys and ladies who love you

and your gospel is getting out there to the unlost or to the lost god and i

pray that you would utilize and work through doug and their ministry,

to get your gospel, the good news, to these kids who are our next generation.

I pray that you would move in a great way. I thank you so much for him and his

life and just the blessing that he's been to our body today.

Jesus, I pray this week that you would give us, us opportunities with your gospel.

I pray that we would not pass it on to somebody else, but that we would look

for opportunities that we can share the good news because the world is out there

but we have friends out there who are just hurting.

So God, I pray that you would give us many opportunities this week to show your

love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Have a great week.

Music.