Grace became Visible | Sunday Sermon

Well, we've been working our way through the book of Acts.

And a brief review.

We came into the book of Acts.

Luke has shown us the progression of Jesus through his church from the moment he ascended into heaven to when he sent his Holy Spirit to the church who is in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and they spoke with other tongues, to the Koinania, the oneness that the brothers and sisters had in the church, the sharing of all things, the miracles and the signs and the wonders, the preaching of the apostles where thousands would be saved, the beginning of the ministry of the deacons, right before Stephen was executed.

And that event, Stephen's execution, ended up being the trigger for the dispersion of the church.

So what was happening is, you know, in Acts chapter 7, it says Saul was there witnessing Stephen's death, and then in Acts chapter 8, we saw how Saul was ravaging the church.

Acts 7 · chapter mention Acts 8 · chapter mention

He was going into homes and he was pulling believers, you know, men and women and children, families out of their homes.

He was committing them to prison.

And later on, he even tells us some of them were committed to death.

And when the vote was cast against them, he cast his vote against them so that they would be condemned to death.

And that event was really the motive for the Christians fleeing from Jerusalem.

And so what's happening is there's this scattering of the church.

Before there was this peace and this koinonia, this oneness and this wonderful season where the church was just growing, believers are being added every day, and then they're just scattered.

And they're going into the surrounding regions of Samaria and Judea.

And there it says in Acts chapter 1, wherever they went, okay, they preached the word.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

It says in Acts chapter 8, verse 4, those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

Acts 8:4

And what so since then, Saul has shown us that progress.

When uh Philip went down to Samaria, he preached the gospel to the Samaritans.

There was people getting saved there.

There were signs and wonders, there were demons coming out.

The spirit told him to go down to the road toward Gaza.

And he went down there and he found an Ethiopian eunuch and he preached the gospel to him from Isaiah.

And that guy got saved and baptized, and then the Spirit carried Philip up to Azotis and he worked his way up the Mediterranean coast all the way up to Caesarea, preaching the gospel wherever he went.

Then the next chapter we see Peter going along those same churches along the coast of the Mediterranean.

And he goes into Lydda and he heals a paralyzed man named Aeneas.

And then he gets called over to Joppa, and he lays hand, or he sees a woman who's died, Tabitha, and he says, Tabitha, arise.

And Tabitha is raised from the dead, and words spreading around until last week we saw how an angel appeared to a man named Cornelius in the city of Caesarea.

This is even further north from Joppa.

And in the same day, Peter has a vision from the Lord.

The Lord tells him to go with the servants of Cornelius and to go with them to Cornelius' house, and he goes to Cornelius' home and he preaches the gospel to these Gentiles.

And we saw the moment, the first moment when the Gentiles received the gospel of Jesus Christ as well, because formerly it had only been Jews that had been receiving the gospel.

And so now, after taking that little divergence, that little side road where Luke wanted to show us everything that was going on outside of Jerusalem, now Luke takes us back to that moment when the believers are scattered.

And so he says in verse 19, those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen's death.

This is pointing back to Acts chapter 8, traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Phoenicia is just an area further north where Tyre and Sidon were.

Cyprus is an island off the coast of the Mediterranean, and Antioch was a city that we're going to talk about today.

So they were speaking the word to no one except Jews, but there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

And the hand of the Lord was with them.

And a great number who believed turned to the Lord, and the report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem.

So what's happened is Saul's persecuting the church.

The church is scattering.

Everywhere people go, they're preaching the gospel.

Some of these people go, you know, up the coast and they're preaching the gospel to the area of Phoenicia and Tyre and Sidon, and they're going into the city of Antioch, and mostly they've been preaching to Jews, and now at some point, I don't know if word came to them that the Gentiles had also received the gospel too, but they start preaching the gospel even to Gentiles.

And so there's this city called Antioch.

Antioch was not just this little village.

And I think for my whole life I've read the book of Acts, and I've always thought of Antioch as like this little town, you know?

Maybe because when I was a little kid, we moved up to the city of Antioch in Northern California, and it was a little town.

Okay, but this Antioch had at least 500,000 people living there, maybe more.

And it and there were people from all kinds of different nations.

There were at least five different languages that were spoken regularly in this city.

There was a large population of Jewish people there.

But what's interesting is God's moving in this city, and both Jews and Gentiles are getting saved, and there's a church growing in Antioch, and Jerusalem catches word of it.

What's interesting to me is that Jerusalem's where all the apostles are.

This is where everything started.

This is where the leaders of the church are, and yet they're just finding out about it.

And what that means is that they're not calling the shots anymore.

So this isn't some like missions plan.

This isn't some strategy that they're like sitting around the war room going, okay, all right, crew, how are we gonna reach, you know, all the nations like Jesus told us to do?

He said, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Okay, guys, who's gonna go where?

They're not planning this.

This is something that Jesus is doing.

And that's why this series is called Acts.

The story continues, because the thought is that Jesus lived his earthly ministry.

He went to the cross, he went to the tomb, he rose, and then he ascended to the Father, and now it's our ministry.

But the fact is, what what the Bible teaches us is that Acts is just the continuation of the ministry and the work of Jesus Christ.

And so Jesus is working in his disciples in the city of Antioch.

And it's not through apostles, it's just through ordinary people.

Ordinary believers that are just going through their lives, sometimes in really hard circumstances, but God's using their lives to draw other people to himself.

And to me, this is super encouraging because for a long time I always thought that I had to be the one to figure it all out, you know.

Like I had to have the plan.

And so I thought I had to be out passing out tracks, you know, and I'd go down to Main Street, you know, Huntington Beach, and I'd be passing out tracks to everybody, and nobody wanted them, but I'd just pass them out anyway and just keep trying, and I'd take my guitar out there and be singing out there, and then trying to get a crowd, and then I could preach at them, you know, and then I was doing street evangelism, you know, standing up and preaching out there, and then we tried like some street um like theater.

We would do like a like a play to music, you know, with no words, and and then and then when we'd gather a big crowd to watch, then I would preach the gospel, and then, you know, a couple maybe would hang out and they'd wander away.

But I thought that's what it took.

Trying to turn every conversation to faith in Jesus, just like I'm trying to sell some multi-level marketing product, you know, to the point where people avoid you because all you want to do is talk about God.

But that's not what these people were doing.

I mean, maybe some of them probably were.

I don't know if they had big yellow signs out there with like a sharpie that was like repent.

Do they have sharpies?

I don't think they had sharpies, right?

Maybe charcoal, right?

But the majority of these people are just living their lives.

They're just trying to be faithful to Jesus, they're just sharing their hope in Jesus.

Like the Bible says that, you know, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready at all times to give an answer to anyone who asks you.

Like, well, man, you're going through some hard stuff.

Like, how are you doing that?

How are you getting through that?

Well, I mean, you know, I don't think I could if it wasn't for Jesus, you know?

I mean, he's with me every day, his spirit's in me and gives me strength and faith and hope that I can look to him and I know that I don't have to figure my own life out, and so I just put my trust in Jesus and I know he's got a plan for my life, and they just begin sharing their faith in natural circumstances.

And this is something that's taken me a really long time to understand that I don't have to figure it all out.

In fact, I couldn't figure it out if I tried.

I don't know why God opens up opportunities with certain people, and their heart is just open, and I have this chance to speak the gospel to them, and you can see that it has an effect.

And why other people, that door just never opens.

I don't know why some people's lives get changed and turned around and other people's don't, but God does because it's his plan and it's his strategy, not mine.

It's it's my responsibility is to be faithful where he planted me in life.

I have no power to do more than that.

But God's job is to transform lives and hearts and minds, and so Jerusalem catches wind of what's happening in the city of Antioch, and they decide they need to send someone to check it out.

And so look who they sent.

They didn't send Peter, did they?

Did they send John?

No?

They didn't send an apostle.

They sent Barnabas.

And what Barnabas was, it doesn't tell us what his official role was.

He was just this big, loving, seasoned, mature Christian believer.

He just loved Jesus.

He's one of the ones that in the early chapters of Acts, he sells some property that he had in Cyprus and he takes the money and he just donates it all to the church.

He's like, just distribute it.

Whoever has a need, just give it.

He's just this big-hearted, Jesus-loving man, okay?

And they send him to Antioch.

And so in verse 23, it says, When he came and he saw the grace of God, he was glad.

And he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and a great many people were added to the Lord.

So it says when Barnabas arrives, he sees the grace of God.

But I have a question What does grace look like?

Can you see it?

Is grace something tangible?

No.

Oh, there went some.

There's some over there in the corner.

I thought I saw one under the pew in the back.

No, grace is intangible.

Grace is something you can't see for itself.

The only way to see grace is to see the fruit that grace produces.

Amen.

And so the way you see grace is you see transformed lives.

You see a heart that was hard suddenly become humble.

You see a person that was, you know, anxious and anxiety-ridden, and all of a sudden they're filled with faith.

You see the fruit of the Spirit: love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.

Okay, you see the work that grace produces in a person.

So Barnabas gets there, and the thing that made him glad wasn't the fact that he saw, oh, they have a discipleship program.

They have an evangelism meeting.

Let me see your attendance numbers.

The thing that made him glad is he saw the grace of God.

He saw the work of the Spirit in the lives of believers there.

He saw transformed lives.

He saw Koinonia.

He saw Christian unity, people sharing, people providing for each other's needs.

He saw people that were devoted to Jesus.

He saw people who devoted their lives to prayer.

People that had humbleness and love, and he recognized the grace of God.

Have you ever noticed how you can meet another Christian and you've never met them before in your life, but when you meet them, there's just an instant like a there's just a fellowship, isn't there?

There's a recognition, like that in some way we're connected.

We're like family.

In my 30-something years of walking with Jesus, I've been to lots of different kinds of churches.

And I remember I started out like in a Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa.

I ended up in a charismatic, you know, big church.

I was in a smaller church with Carlos and Michelle and Marie for a while, and we, you know, we did worship over there.

And then I ended up at the Crystal Cathedral, which is like a whole other animal, you know.

I went to a church in the Bahamas.

I've been in liturgical churches back east.

That like their worship service looks completely different than what we're used to, you know, and most of us here.

Um the youth camp I used to take the kids to from my youth groups was a Baptist camp, you know.

It's like I've been to all these different kinds of churches, and it's funny is wherever I go in the body of Christ, no matter what their liturgy or their service type or whatever it is or what kind of music it is, what's funny is I always seem to find my brothers and sisters there.

I find my family there.

I see the grace of God, that same grace of God that has transformed my life and changed me and is still changing me and working all the bugs out of me that I still have.

That same kind of grace, I find that in them.

There's a kinship that's there.

And so Barnabas sees what God's doing in Antioch, and he's glad when he recognizes the same grace that God has shown him in the lives of these Jewish and Gentile believers, but as a leader and a pastor, he also recognizes that they need something else as well.

They need maturity, they need spiritual growth.

This was a new church, and what they needed were seasoned believers and teachers to help them grow to Christian maturity.

Christ has given us a monumental task.

He said, Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

How are we gonna do that?

Oh, well, he'll raise up some preachers and they'll go do it.

Oh, he'll send off some missionaries and they'll go do it.

Really?

Just the preachers and the missionaries, huh?

They're gonna do all of it?

Maybe a couple of evangelists, you throw some evangelists in there because they really make a big impact, you know, Harvest Crusade, the old Billy Graham ones, you know.

See, what the Spirit had been doing in Antioch was powerful.

But it wasn't the end of what they needed.

The believers needed to be trained and equipped for the mission that Jesus was entrusting to them.

Because the mission is not just for preachers and for evangelists and maybe like an apostle or two, you know, maybe a missionary.

The mission is all of our mission.

He didn't mean just that the twelve apostles go into all the world and make disciples, did he?

Who's called to mission?

Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this one.

It's gonna take a while, but I'm gonna give a little permission here.

You have permission to speak.

Who's called to mission, church?

Yeah, all of you, all of us.

Who's a missionary?

Who's an evangelist?

Who's called to share the gospel?

Who's called to make disciples?

Yes.

So the good news is that God designed a way for his church to be trained and equipped.

And Paul talks about this in the book of Ephesians, chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

He says, but he gave some to be apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers and evangelists for what?

To do what?

To equip the saints.

Who's the saints?

Who's the saints?

Who's the saints?

That's right, you are.

He gave apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists to equip the saints.

For what?

For the work of the ministry.

But I thought only the pastors were called to ministry.

I thought only the missionaries were called to ministry.

I thought only the evangelists were called to ministry.

Wait, they're in the ministry, right?

No, he called you to ministry.

You are called to ministry.

Barnabas knew that this work of God that was happening was powerful, but if they he left it that way, if he's like, okay, well, the grace of God is here, I'm out of here.

And he headed back to Jerusalem, he's gonna have a bunch of baby Christians growing up, and then you don't know what's gonna happen.

What kind of crazy doctrines are gonna come in through that because they they need to be trained, they need to be equipped for what God has called them to do.

And so there's there's a re-me and Steve were talking last week.

Remember, Steve?

Remember we were talking last week in the fellowship hall?

And we were talking about how quickly time goes by.

Can you hear me?

Alright, let me tell you about it.

Steve ain't saying nothing.

That's the guy.

He's like, I'm not gonna tell, I'm never gonna tell.

You can torture me, I'm not saying anything.

Steve and I were talking, and he was saying, you know, what did you say you turned 78?

You're you're 79.

He's like, I turned 79, and he says he's just been like thinking about that, reflecting on that, thinking, like, man, it goes fast.

It goes fast.

That him and his buddies were talking about it, man.

It goes, it just goes so fast.

Time goes fast, life goes fast.

And even I've been thinking about the same thing.

I'm only 50, right?

But I still, I mean, I've seen one daughter, she's just out there, whatever, doing whatever.

I got one that's close to 18, right?

And she's like wanting to fly away, and we're like holding her back.

No, stay.

And we got one little tiny one, and I'm like holding on, like, no, no, no, happy.

Please.

Because it goes fast.

And I think when you're young, you think like, I've got so much time in front of me.

What am I gonna do with my life?

I don't know.

I think I'll just play video games for a while.

I'll play some of this, I'll go to some school, I'll figure it out along the way, and then before you know it, it's like, oh my gosh, decades have gone by, but life goes fast.

It goes faster than we want it to.

But as quickly as our lives pass, so do the lives of people who don't know Jesus yet.

And it's crazy to think how many people leave this earth not knowing Jesus.

And so this situation is urgent.

And Barnabas is looking at this situation, going, This is wonderful.

Praise God for the grace of God that I'm finding here right now.

But there's an urgency.

We got to get these believers trained.

We got to get them equipped because they're called to mission and time is passing, and age is coming, and the next generation's coming, and we have to equip them.

We gotta equip these to equip them because guess what?

When they get here, we're not gonna be here anymore.

And so they got to be ready to keep equipping, and then they can equip the next generation and pass the faith down and pass the gospel down, pass Christ down to the next generation.

That's how we reach the whole world.

You know, in the days of the apostles, they reached their whole known world.

Said, go to the ends of the world, ends of the earth.

They took it to the ends of the earth as far as they knew.

But guess what happened?

Then another generation was born, and they had to be reached too, and then another generation and they had to be reached too.

That calling continues to move forward.

Romans chapter 10 says this for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

And when it says preach, it just means to let them know.

Tell them.

Like you don't have to have like a pulpit on wheels that you take with you.

Oh, wait, you want to hear about Jesus?

Hold on.

Put this up.

Okay.

Alright, ready?

I'm gonna preach.

It just means tell them about Jesus.

Share your life, share the gospel, share the faith, share what he's done in your life.

And so Barnabas is thinking, okay, I gotta get them trained, but he probably can't do it himself.

It's already growing.

He's like, Who can I bring?

Who can I bring up here to help me to preach?

And then he remembers Saul.

Last time we saw Saul, the Jews in Jerusalem had wanted to kill him, and so they sent him off back to Tarsus where he was born.

Okay, and so he's in Tarsus, and Barnabas travels to Tarsus to look for Saul.

In verse 25, it says, So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch.

For a whole year they met with the church and they taught a great many people.

And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians.

What does it say?

Saul and Barnabas did for a whole year.

What's that, Thelma?

Yeah.

It says they met with the church, and what else does it say they did?

They taught a great many people.

Notice what we don't see anywhere in this passage about the church in Antioch.

Is there anything you can think of that you don't see in there?

How about signs and wonders and miracles and healings and angels and demons being cast out and voices from heaven?

Do you see any of that in that passage?

We saw it in other passages, right?

But what I love about this is just how normal this season was in the life of the church in Antioch.

Sometimes we want to see the supernatural.

We want to hear the voice of God.

Like I have to hear the literal audible voice of God or I'm not going to move.

If I'm not hearing him or seeing an angel or seeing a demon cast out of somebody, then God must not be moving.

And yet here in Antioch, right in the middle of all of this normalcy of life, Jesus is saving souls.

He's equipping disciples to be effective ministers of the gospel.

He's reaching the lost.

He's spreading hope.

He's redeeming lives.

He's preparing missions.

He's growing disciples in generosity.

And so the question for us is what if what the Lord is wanting for our lives in this church looks more like this: meeting together, growing, becoming the people that God desires us to be, being in Christian unity, love for one another, meeting each other's needs, encouraging one another to continue to grow and to be what God's made each of us to be.

It says in Antioch, the first that was the first place where the disciples were first called Christians.

And I don't think it was a compliment at the time, okay?

I don't think this was like a friendly thing.

Oh, little Christians, you know.

And ooh, they didn't coin the term themselves.

At the time, if you were like a follower of Herod, you'd be a Herodian.

If you were a follower of Caesar, you'd be a Caesarean.

And I know those of you who have had kids, probably that's a scary word.

And so they just were like, these people just can't stop talking about this Jesus guy.

They must be like, they're followers of Christ, they're Christians, you know?

Those Christians.

And I think it's probably why.

They probably just wouldn't shut up about Jesus, you know?

They just want to talk about him all the time.

Why are you so happy?

Jesus saved me.

And so it's kind of cool because this little term of mockery gets embraced by them, right?

They just take it as a badge of pride.

One of our when I was a little skater kid, um, we would ride around and we just thought it was funny, you know, to do the yeehaws and all that stuff and act.

We just being silly, you know.

Yee! We'd go out to the desert and we'd go riding dirt bikes and we'd shoot guns, and then some of our friends and the big, larger group of friends, were more of like the city type, and they thought those things were dumb.

And so they called us rednecks.

And so we all went and had sweatshirts made that said redneck on them.

You know, it's like we just embraced it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, we are rednecks.

Yeah, we like to go dirt bike riding and play in the dirt, and we say, yeah.

That's what the Christians did.

They just embraced it.

Yeah, we are followers of Christ.

So what?

Verse 27 now in the days, these days, the prophets came down from Jerusalem and Antioch, and one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.

This took place in the days of Claudius.

And so the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

And so they're just growing, they're just teaching, and one day this prophet arrives from Jerusalem, and he just foretells that there's going to be a great famine across the area of Judea, this larger area that includes down by Jerusalem and up, you know, where they are.

And so, Luke tells us also this took place in the days of Claudius.

Claudius is just one of the emperors.

And what's so cool about the Bible, I was telling the Thursday Bible study group about this too.

And Thursdays, by the way, we slow down and we go a little more in depth and we look at the background and the history and we try to understand some context so we can understand the text.

But this famine happened.

And you can read historians who were alive during this time in the first century that are not Christians.

They're not trying to write the same story as Luke.

They're just telling the events and the history of the world, and there were famines that happened during this time.

There was a famine during the days of Claudius, about 45 to 48 AD, where everybody was starving.

There was even a queen from Alexandria that came and she donated a bunch of money and grain from Egypt to try to meet the needs of the poor who were there.

So there was people who were starving to death.

And what was happening during this time is the rich people would hoard it all to themselves so that they could take it and drive the price of it up and then sell it to people at a higher profit.

So they're getting rich, and the poor people are starving to death.

And notice what the church does.

This prophet comes up.

He says, There's going to be a famine over all Judea.

It's going to be bad.

And notice what this church does.

This church, having been discipled by Barnabas and Saul for at least a year now, they hear this prophecy.

They said, You know what we got to do?

We've got to set aside money.

Let's just start gathering.

Let's just start putting in.

Each one, just don't give more than you can, but give what you can.

We'll put it into a pot.

And when the time came, they took that offering and the famine started, and people were hurting, and they took this offering.

This Gentile church takes an offering and sends it back to Jerusalem by Barnabas and Saul.

And so here we finally see a little bit of a sign, right?

We see a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

We see a prophetic word given.

But notice what the church does with it.

This prophetic word is given so that the people of God could respond with prophetic, sorry, with practical love.

Or to put it another way, the grace of God becomes visible in them through their response to the need of God's people.

And so there's a couple things I wanted to notice about this.

That the grace of God that Barnabas saw when he arrived in Antioch was now being tangibly felt by the church in Jerusalem.

So this was the same church that it had to decide.

Remember when Peter went to Cornelius and he preached the gospel to the Gentiles and then he went to Jerusalem, and then the people in Jerusalem, like, what are you thinking?

You went into the house of a Gentile and you ate with them?

What the heck?

Peter's like, look, the Spirit told me to go, okay?

And I went down there, and then I started telling them the gospel, and the Holy Spirit filled them, and they spoke with other tongues.

What am I supposed to do?

You know, God saved them, He filled them with the Holy Spirit just like he did to us.

And so they're like, okay, I guess the gospel's gone to the Gentiles as well.

Praise God.

So this is the church that just had to wrestle with this.

Now this Gentile church is sending them aid.

Secondly, this is Saul's first trap trip back to Jerusalem.

It's been a long time.

He's been in Tarsus.

And so now the cool thing about this is this was the chief persecutor.

This is the guy that was driving people from Jerusalem.

That's the reason they scattered was Saul and probably his henchmen were the ones that were persecuting the church.

And so this guy that persecuted him and caused this scattering, God used to build his kingdom, and now Saul's the one coming back that's bringing aid to the church in Jerusalem.

And the third thing I noticed is that at this point in the story, the church had matured to the point that it was ready for Saul and Barnabas to be able to leave and they would be okay.

Because they had spent the last year, possibly more, being trained and discipled by them.

And I'm sure by this time they had raised up other spiritually mature leaders.

And so Luke tells us that when Barnabas came and saw the grace of God in Antioch, he was glad.

The one question I've been thinking about this week is if Barnabas walked into faith church this morning, what would he see here?

Would he notice the new flooring and the new paint?

Would he care what kind of music we played?

Would he ask us what kind of programs we're running here and what our attendance numbers are?

I kind of don't think so.

I think what he would be hoping to see is that the grace of God was at work in him.

And if you ask me, I think that he would see that.

I think he would see the grace of God at work at Faith Church.

I think he would see transformed lives.

I think he would see humble hearts.

I think he would see people that genuinely love each other.

I think he would see people growing in Christ.

I think he would see people encouraging one another.

I think he would see people whose lives are continually growing and increasingly resembling Jesus, who are willing to sacrifice for brothers and sisters.

And we're not perfect.

But I've been here for five months, and over the last five months, I've watched people pray for one another.

I've seen people care for each other, I've seen people encourage each other, I've seen people serve quietly and love people right where they're at.

In other words, I've watched grace become visible in the people of faith church.

And to me that's encouraging because it means that Jesus is at work here.

Amen?

And the coolest part about it is that when Jesus starts a good work, he he doesn't stop till it's finished.

In Philippians it says, He who began a good work in you will also complete it at the day of Christ Jesus.

Amen.

So we're gonna keep going.

We're gonna keep growing.

Keep becoming.

Let's pray.