The Joy of Being Different

Alright, so today we are gonna talk about the joy of being different, which I think is appropriate since I'm different uh than Justin.

It's like an object lesson.

That's what we're doing here this morning.

Uh I do need to introduce myself.

Normally Justin would be here to do the intros and stuff like that.

Uh I am a uh stand-up comedian um at when I'm not doing this, I guess.

Um, and I I figured the best way for me to introduce myself would be to do it like I was at one of my shows.

So I'll do this.

So uh my name is Heath Arthur.

In addition to being a stand-up comedian, I'm also an actor.

Yeah.

Uh I don't like to brag, but I've been in some stuff.

Yeah.

You guys ever hear of a little movie called Avengers Endgame?

Huh?

Yeah, I wasn't in that.

Nope.

It's a good movie though.

You should check it out.

Uh y'all will also notice I have a little bit of a different accent than what y'all here have here in Georgia.

Uh I, that's because although we live here, I am originally from the great state of Louisiana.

Okay, thank you for that warm welcome.

Yeah.

I heard a few groans.

Okay, well, we'll get past that, I hope.

Uh yeah, so I am actually what they call a Cajun.

I grew up down in South Louisiana, about 30 miles off the Gulf of Mexico.

Uh, if you don't know anything about Cajun culture, they made this amazing documentary called The Water Boy.

Yeah.

It's a painfully accurate movie.

I'm gonna tell you that.

I'm gonna tell you that.

Uh so you're probably wondering right now, like, what was Justin thinking bringing in a comedian to preach to us?

And you know what?

Ask him the same thing.

I did.

It's like, what are we thinking here?

No, I used to be a youth minister.

Um I've I've I've worked in churches before.

I actually uh I did most of my work in youth ministry in North Louisiana and uh West Monroe, Louisiana, at what is commonly known as it's Whites Ferry Road Church, it's the Duck Dynasty Church, is what it is.

Yeah, yeah, I did my youth ministry there.

Yes, I know them.

They're actually my cousins.

Uh and that's not just a Louisiana joke.

That's uh I actually do know them.

Uh spent I've spent about 15 years working with them in ministry, four years doing youth ministry.

Uh youth ministry is actually how I got my start in stand-up comedy.

Uh, because every week, twice a week, I would spend time telling jokes just to get their attention long enough to tell them about Jesus.

Thank you.

He was in my youth group.

Appreciate you being here, bro.

Yep.

I uh so today we're talking about the joy of being different.

The joy of being different.

And we're gonna continue in our Philippians uh verses here and continue on with what Justin has been talking about.

Uh and I'm gonna go ahead and read that.

So we're gonna start Philippians 2, 12 through 18.

Dear friends, you've always followed my instructions when I was with you.

And now that I'm away, it is even more important.

Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear, for God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you.

Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.

Hold firmly to the word of life, then on the day of Christ's return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain, and that my work was not useless.

But I will rejoice, even if I lose my lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God, and I want all of you to share that joy.

Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy.

Now the verses that we're gonna really hone in on are 14 and 15.

Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you.

Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights, listen to this, in a world full of crooked and perverse people.

That sounds familiar.

A little bit?

Tells me that nothing's really changed in life.

You know?

It's more of the same.

These verses are interesting.

Do everything without complaining and arguing.

I would ask you the question of who complains, and like half of you would raise your hand.

But let me ask you this: who in here knows a complainer?

There we go.

Yeah.

If you didn't raise your hand, you might be that person.

Um you might not be.

You know, it's interesting, complaining is one of those things that I don't think comes naturally to us.

It's not one of those things where it's just like we come out complaining.

It's it's a learned behavior, and not only is it a learned behavior, it is an infectious behavior.

Like it's one of those things that can get inside of you and you start doing it without realizing.

Like you can get to a point where you could become one of those folks who can really find fault in anything.

And I'm guilty of that.

I'm guilty of that.

You know, when we think about complainers in the Bible, you know, one of the one of the best examples are the Israelites coming out of Egypt.

You know, they came and what?

They grumbled and complained, grumbled and complained.

I remember when I first started reading the Old Testament, I was like, what is wrong with these people?

God just did all these amazing things.

How are they not grateful?

As an older man, I look at that and I say, Well, they did walk through the desert for 40 years.

Yeah.

Eating mostly the same thing.

I might complain.

I might.

And I say that because there are things in this life that are probably equally as difficult.

Like, have you ever gone to a Starbucks and they put the wrong name on your cup?

Oh my goodness.

I've complained about that online.

I've wrote written jokes about that.

Like I've gotten seriously upset.

How could Starbucks actually do this?

And here I am complaining about things like that, and I look at the Israelites and I was like, how were they not better?

It's easy to complain.

I mean, in this world, in this life right now, there's plenty of things that I would even say are worth complaining about.

And the life that we live today, there's a lot of things.

The problem is, I've never complained so much that I felt better.

I've never done it for so long that I've been like, well, okay, now we finally got to resolution we needed.

Let's go have family dinner.

Um that's never really happened.

It's an empty type of thing.

It's one of those things where the longer that you do it, just the more consuming it becomes.

And you just realize, and you're just like, man, I'm just kind of unhappy a lot.

Look, in the way that the world is today, the only way not to be a complainer is to be different.

You've got to be different.

You've got to be able to set out and say, I'm just not gonna be like everyone else.

I'm not going to conform to these, I'm not going to fall into that trap.

Then being different is sometimes scary.

It's not always easy.

It's not something that that I would say, especially at an early age, we don't really just adopt naturally.

Some some of us do.

Some like I'll tell you this.

My daughter, my 17-year-old, who is a junior, she has been one of those folks that has always just naturally seen the world differently.

She has.

Like, she um she doesn't really care what other people think about her.

She doesn't look for that kind of approval.

At 17, she doesn't.

At 49, I do like more than I should a lot of times.

She's so different.

I remember when she was little, when she was six years old, she did something to her older sister, who was about 12 or 13.

Now, I don't remember if she hit her or if she said something mean or if she took something from her.

For being honest, it was probably all three of those things.

Okay.

And I had to become the parent and I had to go discipline.

So I went in, and then, you know, as parents, we have these tropes that we can use that work every time.

Like, as a parent, there are things that we can go to.

Like, for example, one of the things you use as a parent is hey, don't do that because I said so.

That's a get out of jail free card as a parent, okay?

They just have to adhere to that.

Everyone knows it.

Another technique we use as parents is we it's one word.

And that word is maybe.

Because we all, they're not in here, so I'm not gonna ruin it, but we all know that that means no.

Means no.

Can we go to McDonald's after church?

Maybe.

So I went with one of the tried and trues.

This is how I'm gonna handle this.

I went to her and I said, Hey, you apologize to your sister or you go to your room.

She looked at me for just a couple seconds and she said, I'll go to my room.

I don't know if you know the exact moment where you realized you weren't in control of your house, but that was mine.

I looked at my wife and I was like, I don't know what to do, and I gave her an option and she took one.

I mean, I just gotta wait her out, and so I did.

It was like three hours, and she came back out, and I was like, Hey, welcome back.

You win, I guess.

Sometimes being different, um, it's it's like it's being ostracized.

It's not being a part of a group.

Like I remember when I was in the third grade, um, and that's not a time where you want to be different or feel left out, you know.

Um I when I was in the third grade, everybody in my class was getting pencils with their names on it.

Okay?

I'm talking about old school yellow number two pencils.

Now, I did not get pencils with my name on it because they don't make pencils that say Heath.

All right?

It's like they had a meeting, they were like, nope, we're never doing this.

We're not putting this name on things.

My mom did not want me to feel left out.

No.

My sweet Cajun mama wanted me to fit in.

So you know what she did?

She went out and bought pencils that said Heather and scratched the ER off the end.

And let me tell you right now, in case you're wondering, that doesn't help you fit in.

Okay?

Yeah.

See, what that does is that gets you called Heather for the entire third grade.

Because I grew up in the 80s.

Look, not only was bullying around, it was actually encouraged for us.

So bad so that my teacher called me Heather.

Yeah, my therapist thought what that was a funny story, too.

Um sometimes being different um can be easy.

Uh like you might be different and not even realize that you're doing it.

I remember one of the my first professional jobs.

So before I became a stand-up comedian, youth minister, I was an IT guy.

I worked in IT, which makes sense.

Every IT guy is secretly hilarious.

And um you guys have met some IT guys, that's good.

My first job, and I remember I was going to I'm a professional, and I was I was meeting a guy from corporate.

I came from a uh a regional office, and we met at actually we were in Atlanta going to a meeting here, and 24 hours after I met this guy, he looked at me and he said, Hey, you don't curse.

And I said, What?

He said, I haven't heard you use a swear word.

I was like, Well, you want to fight about it?

Like, what?

He said, I'm not gonna curse the rest of this trip.

I was like, okay, weirdo, do what you want.

Um and he didn't for the rest of the trip.

And if he did say a curse word, he'd be like, Oh, I'm sorry.

I was being different by just being who I am.

And that kind of broke down a wall for me in ministry because I always saw that ministry was like, I've got to stand out and boldly proclaim, and I've got to be on a street corner, I've got to be in front of people, and I've got to right the wrongs.

Sometimes just being different is all it takes.

I wasn't trying to do anything, it just happened.

Sometimes being different can feel very scary.

There might be repercussions.

I mean, being different could could cost you at your job, it could cost you in your social circles.

The first time that I headlined at a comedy club was by complete accident.

I uh my home club I had gone to visit because another comedian I knew he was performing, and it was R-rated weekend at the club.

Okay?

Now, let me tell you, if you go to a comedy club, you better be ready.

If it doesn't say clean, you better be ready.

I only do clean comedy, okay?

So if my name's on it, come see me.

But if you go to a club and it doesn't say clean, you need to be if it's an R-rated weekend, skip that one.

Okay?

Just go ahead and stay home.

I went, saw the club owner as a comedian.

You go hang out, you make sure everybody sees you, trying to get stage time.

The headliner, he's like, hey, stick around for the late show.

You could do a guest set.

And I was like, man, I've already planned on going home.

I'm gonna head home.

So I go home.

When I pull into my driveway, I get a message on my phone that says, Hey, you need to come back to the club.

I said, Oh man, did I forget something?

Did I not pay my Diet Coke tab?

Uh I get on the phone, they said, Hey, uh, there's been an accident.

The uh headliner can't perform.

We need you to come back, or we've got to close the club.

I said, guys, you know what I do?

I'm a clean comedian.

I've never headlined at a club before.

I've done headlined shows.

I, you know, I've got the time.

He said, It's you, or we we shut down.

So I get in my car and I'm thinking, this is R-rated weekend.

How are we gonna handle this?

And look, this was one of those things, this was not taped.

I could have done whatever I wanted to, and you would never know about it.

No one would ever know about it.

It would have been me and the people in that room.

And look, I didn't even have to go R-rated, I could have gone PG 13, you know, like not jalapeno spicy, but a little salt and pepper.

I was scared.

I went in there and I just did my jokes, the only way I know how.

I told the jokes, and at the end of 45 minutes, I stood in front of them and I said, Guys, it's our rated weekend.

You probably may have noticed that I've been clean the whole time, and I could visibly see on some of their faces the look of, huh.

He was clean.

And afterwards, people came up telling me how great of a show it was and how much fun they had, and they didn't know what it was supposed to be, but they couldn't imagine that it would have been more fun than they had that night.

And I would love to say, please don't take that as a story about how great I am, okay, and how how awesome I am.

Like I didn't walk in there and kick down the front doors and say, hey, things are about to change tonight.

No, I just wanted to survive.

I did.

But what that night taught me about being different is that sometimes I can be different, be who I am, be whose I am, despite what I perceive they might need.

It's not always easy though.

At work, at your work, you may been, you may be subjected to that where there are expect expectations put on you, how we're gonna act, the things we're gonna do, how we're gonna entertain clients, the the activities we're gonna take place in.

That could be costly.

I'd love to say that every time that I've said I'm gonna be different and not do that, that it's always just turned into an immediate blessing.

But as an actor, I've been booked for things before.

That's I'm in.

We've got a contract, money's going to the bank account.

And I've said, wait, but I I don't want to do this.

And they said, We'll get somebody else.

You may experience that.

So when I think about being different, the potential cost, how hard it can be, one of the first things I think about is Jesus.

I mean, I think about how different Jesus was.

You know, we talk about that in uh my men's group.

We've talked about Jesus.

Like, Jesus was just so different, not only than what we expected, but just in different from the way I see things.

Like, Jesus was so relaxed all the time.

Wherever he was, that's where he needed to be.

And people were trying to rush him along and get him to places.

You think about Jesus, Jesus really did not meet the expectations of the Israelites at that time.

In a good way, but they didn't see it that way.

See, they were they wanted a conquering hero.

That's what they were waiting on.

Man, we are ready for someone to come in on a war horse with a big sword who's gonna come in and overthrow the Romans, and we're gonna establish an earthly kingdom right here and all be prosperous.

He didn't do that.

He didn't do that, and I'm so thankful that he didn't because if you look at history, history is filled with conquering heroes.

History's filled with men that tried to overthrow the world.

Jesus did not come to overthrow the world, he came to conquer death.

Which was so that you think about what they wanted from him was so limiting.

It was so small.

And he gave them so much, but he gave us so much more.

One of my favorite stories about Jesus.

Like, I I love uh turning over tables, the money changers tables.

That's a fun one.

That's a good one.

When he spit in the ground and rubbed mud in somebody's eyes.

Like, what are we doing here?

I love it.

But my favorite one is in John.

John 8, 1 through 10.

I'm gonna break this story down for you guys, but I'm gonna read it first so you can hear everything.

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back at the temple.

A crowd soon gathered and he sat down and taught them.

As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery.

They put her in front of the crowd.

Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.

Law of Moses says to stone her.

What do you say?

They were trying to trap him and saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and he said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.

Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.

Then Jesus stood up again and he said to the woman, Where are your accusers?

Didn't even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord, she said.

And Jesus said, Neither do I.

Go and sin no more.

Wow.

Like, okay, we need I want y'all to understand what this looks like.

Now Jesus had been teaching in the temple for many days.

They knew where to find him.

This wasn't an accident, this was a setup.

And these aren't characters in a story, these are people.

These are human beings, these are creations that are fallible.

We've got a woman here who is making some bad decisions in her life.

She's living in a way that is not going to produce fulfillment, wholeness, peace.

And then you've got this mob.

These religious leaders and Pharisees, they're angry.

They don't believe that Jesus is who he says he is.

In their mind, they're doing what's right.

They're trying to, you know, right or wrong in this situation.

So they drag this poor lady in front of this crowd.

Now, it's always been interesting to me is that it says she was caught in the act of adultery.

So whatever was going on, and she's living with somebody, what's happening?

In the world that I've seen, uh, adultery is a two-person activity.

But she was the only one they bothered to bring.

Because it didn't matter what was in front of them.

They just needed a pawn to use against Jesus.

Now, the way Jesus handles this is just, I mean, it's it's wild.

I don't know what it's like to show up to a stoning, okay?

I've never participated in one.

I imagine things get heated.

Like, I don't imagine you walk in calmly, like, hey, hey, Jesus, this person was caught.

What do you think we should do?

If you walk in with rocks in your hands and you're prepared to throw that at a person until they are dead, I imagine the adrenaline is flowing.

You're coming in hyped up, you're ready to prove him wrong, you're ready to enact justice on this sin.

And so you're asking these questions, and it's probably a little heated.

And this is a gimme question.

You can look at the law and it tells you what to do, caught in adultery, stoning, okay.

So they're asking the question, and then Jesus does what you should never do in an angry mob.

He bends down, he makes himself vulnerable, he looks at the ground, and he starts drawing in the dirt.

There's an angry mob around you, the thing that you're tactically speaking, what you're gonna want to do is you're gonna stay up tall, you're gonna try to get your back against something, you're gonna make eye contact, make sure he made himself vulnerable next to that woman.

Now, we know he's God, he can do anything.

The crowd didn't know that.

The angry people that were there thought he was definitely not that.

So to them, this is a man who just put himself in this position.

They got madder, you know.

And as Jesus squatted down, I imagine they came in.

What is he doing?

We demand an answer.

This y this is the right thing to do, just say it.

He stood up.

He said, Well yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, here's the thing.

At a stoning, I think it's probably y who gets to go first, right?

It's probably a question.

That's my commentary.

Jesus didn't say that.

But Jesus said, okay, tell you what, uh, whoever's without sin, you throw the first stone.

And then he goes back to this compromised position of drawing in the dirt.

Now, instead of hearing the thunder of rocks being hurled at bone and flesh, now what you start hearing is you just hear like a light thud.

Because the older guys in the group says they walked away first.

Like if you're leaving the stone, you don't need to carry your rock.

So I'm assuming you're just gonna go ahead and drop that.

Just go, you know what?

I'm just gonna sneak off in the crowd.

You know, maybe nobody will recognize that I was doing all this.

The younger men, they're still hyped up until they realize what's happening.

They start dropping their stones.

And then what does Jesus do?

There are a lot of things that could happen at this point.

He could point out to her, hmm, you know what almost happened.

You know what you did.

I remember one of the things, uh, so when I'd work with Phil, Phil Robertson, back at the Duck Dynasty Church, one of the things he always liked to say, and I thought it was a joke, but after being around him long enough, I realized it wasn't.

He would say, the first thing that you do in any crisis is assess blame.

His boys told me it'd be like, you know, they would one of them broke their arm.

And he's like, Whose fault is this?

Okay, now we'll take you to the hospital.

Here's one of those moments where Jesus could have just been like, Goodness gracious, look at what you did.

They I could have let them stone you.

They had every right to.

Why are you living like this?

Adultery?

Come on.

I love it.

The NIV version of that verse, it says the first word he said to her was woman.

He didn't talk about adultery.

He said, Hey.

He addressed her as one of his creation, as one of his children.

This was far more important than her sin.

Her.

And then when he asked her a question, it was about the other people.

He said, Hey, where'd those people that accused you go?

We're still not talking about her sin.

Did not even one of them he's having a conversation with this woman who would be an outcast in this society because of the way she's living her life, and still there's a crowd of people who were listening to him teach, and he's talking to her like she's what matters, and it's because she is.

She says, Lord, I no, that didn't stick around.

He said, Well, I don't continue, I don't condemn you either, but go and sin no more.

They drug her in because of her sin, and it's literally the last thing that Jesus addressed.

Man, how I want him to do that to me.

That is what he does to us.

You're not your sin.

You're important, you're valued.

You matter, it's so much bigger than this.

Still, he's gonna say, Look, don't live this way.

It's not gonna give you peace, it's not gonna give you hope, it's not gonna give you fullness.

I have a better way.

I have a better way, but you are my child.

I mean, as humans, sometimes it's easy for us to see what other people do wrong before we see them.

Man, especially in our world today, where everybody's got an opinion and everybody's wrong and everybody's right.

I think a lot of times we just want to be seen.

Just for who we are, not for our mistakes, not for our victories.

Man, I just want to be.

And God offers that.

He's like, you matter to me.

So much so, I mean, you think about him being so different that he not only came and didn't conquer and overthrow, he said, I'm gonna die for this.

An earthly kingdom doesn't matter.

Redemption matters because you matter.

And I'll tell you, we live in a world today that will tell you don't matter.

They'll tell you that.

If you don't have enough followers on Instagram, if you don't have enough influence, if you don't have enough money, if you don't have this, if you don't have that, hey, you're just one of eight billion people.

And I'll tell you right now that Jesus comes to you and says, No, you are one of one.

That's important.

I have a friend, we were talking about this, and he said, you know, I believe that we each reflect God in a unique way.

You know, we're made in God's image, and we each reflect him based off of all of our experiences in a unique way.

That's powerful.

That means you matter immensely.

You matter unfathomably.

You you can't assign a number to how important you are to the creator of the universe.

He really laid out a roadmap for how we could be different.

He did this in a lot, a lot of different ways.

One verse that comes to mind, and worship team, I'll go ahead and invite you guys back out.

Um thing that comes to mind for me when I think about being different is uh Romans 12.2.

Romans 12.2 is, I mean, it's this is what being different is.

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Don't copy and paste.

Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world.

If you're like me, uh every once in a while I'll get one of those uh do not statements, either from the Bible or from somebody else, and I'll get a little bit of that, hey, whoa, I'm a full-grown adult.

I'll do what I want.

Okay?

So if you kind of have a little bit of that contrary spirit in you, let me phrase it to you another way.

You don't have to copy the patterns of this world.

See, the joy of being different leads to this gift, and this gift is freedom.

Trying to be like this world, trying to copy the patterns of what's going on is is is it's crazy.

Like it's gonna put you running in circles.

You can never put your finger on what the thing is that you're supposed to be copying and pasting, uh copying and conforming to.

I'm doing IT stuff there, copying and paste.

It just came out.

Um you can't keep up with what's the truth, what's right, what's what you're supposed to do, what you're not supposed to do.

What a burden.

Man, the world will tell us just indulge yourself.

Indulge yourself in all the things that you want, in all the things that you need.

Get as much of it as you can because that's what will make you happy.

It won't, I tell you, it won't.

There's great activities out there to do, there's great things in life that you can be, you know, enjoy, but it won't fulfill you.

One thing will, and that's Jesus.

It won't make you whole, one thing will, it's Jesus.

It won't make you feel purpose or meaning, but Jesus will.

See, I want to choose to make my foundation on something that outlasts this world, that outlasts my uh limited human capacity to see things.

I want my foundation to be on something eternal, not only on something eternal, but on something based off of a God who loves me so much that he will give so much just to be with me.

The things of this world are fleeting, they're frustrating.

They're changing all the time.

So, what I want to say to you this morning is you know what sometimes being being different is can be scary.

It can be, it can be costly, it can be.

But man, tell you what, Jesus laid out the groundwork.

Say, be different like me, you can experience freedom.

You can.

You don't have to worry about what everybody else is doing.

It brings up the verse in Joshua.

I didn't, I don't have this one on my board.

This is a bonus verse.

Joshua 24, 15.

But for as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.

You can be excited about that.

I don't know what everybody else is gonna do, but this is the only thing I know how to do.

And it's the only thing that really makes sense to me.

Oh, sometimes the distracting things will come along and the other things will make sense.

That night at the comedy club, it made sense for me to compromise.

But I didn't.

I'm thankful I didn't.

I want to be able to have my foundation on a place that doesn't change.

Guys, thank you so much for letting me be here this morning with you.

We love this church.

Uh, this is our home.

Uh, we love being here.

Uh I do, you know, stick around, stick around with us.

Guys, we'd love to get to know you.

Love for the opportunity for you to get to know other people.

Um now this morning, we don't we normally have baptisms.

Uh, this is, I think, one of the one mornings at his hands that I've seen that we don't have a baptism this morning.

So that is something that's always important to us.

If if that's something that's on your heart, if you want to be baptized, just reach out to our church.

We'll make sure that happens.

Um, but before we go, uh I want to take a I want to take a moment for us to share in some communion.

Uh now, this is something that we do every week.

Um it's it's in remembrance of what God did for us.

Now, we have these little handy-dandy uh to-go packets, so you can just grab them.

If you didn't notice, they're on the way in.

If you didn't get one, you can go get one right now.

Like, this isn't a time where you gotta be real quiet and you know, solemn.

Just run back there and get one.

But also, if you don't want to, that's cool.

You'll know for next time.

So I'm not putting you on the spot.

Just whatever you want to do.

But we're just gonna take a moment.

I'm gonna pray for these, and then we'll take the communion together.

So let's start with the bread.

Mighty God in heaven, I'll thank you for this sacrifice, Father.

Sacrifice that we didn't expect.

We didn't even at that time even want, Father.

But you knew what was best for us, Father.

You gave for us so that we could be with you, Father.

Thank you.

Thank you for this bread that reminds us of that.

You take the bread.

Now, the juice, God, we continue this prayer and we thank you for this juice that symbolizes your blood that was shed, Father.

Thank you for choosing us, Father.

Thank you for reminding us of how valuable we are to you, Lord.

How much you love us, how much you care for us, Father.

Thank you for this sacrifice.

Take the juice.