If Jesus can save me, He can save anybody | Sunday Sermon

Well, Acts chapter 9 picks up where Acts chapter 8, the first three verses, leave off.

Acts 9 · chapter mention Acts 8 · chapter mention

If you remember, we've seen a couple of glimpses of Saul of Tarsus.

One of them was in chapter 7, where Stephen is on trial before the Sanhedrin, and he's making his defense, okay?

And he he gives it, he's most likely present while Stephen was giving that defense because he was also present later when he was being stoned.

And so he most likely heard Stephen's speech, okay?

But as the Jews who were there picked up stones to begin to stone Stephen, he heard Stephen cry out, Lord, do not charge this sin against them.

As he was dying, as he was about to die, he said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

And it says that those who were the witnesses of those who were stoning Stephen laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

That's the first mention.

Then after chapter 7, Stephen dies.

Okay, he's stoned to death.

And then in the first part, the first three verses of chapter 8, it says Saul was ravaging the church.

Okay, he's going into homes.

He's pulling people out of their homes.

He's pulling out men and women and he's committing them to prison.

And later on, he'll even say that when the vote was cast against them to be condemned to death, he cast his vote against them.

Okay, he was terrible.

He was really wreaking havoc in the church.

But what this accomplished was that as more the enemy tried to come against Christ's church, the more Christ used the attacks of the enemy to push the church outward, to fulfill his promise.

Because what did he tell his disciples?

He said, You're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

You know that ends of the earth part is still happening right now.

You know, we think, well, if they reach the whole world way back then, then why do we still need to preach the gospel?

Because there's always a new generation, isn't there?

And so we have to keep going to the ends of the earth, over and over and over, every generation, to keep reaching the next generation with the gospel.

And so during, um after that first scene in Acts chapter 8, we see Saul ravaging the church, but then Luke shifts gears and he begins to show us what the effect of that was.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

The disciples are scattered.

Everywhere they went, they preached the word.

Stephen went, or Philip, went down to Samaria and he started preaching the gospel to the crowds of Samaria.

And they received the gospel with gladness.

There were signs and there were wonders, there was healing.

People were being delivered from oppression of demons, okay?

And so there's a massive move of his spirit.

And then we saw last week how an angel of the Lord came to Philip and said, I want you to go down to the road toward Gaza, to a desert place, and he ends up meeting the Ethiopian, and he preaches the gospel to this African man who took then the gospel back to his own country.

Okay, but now when we get into chapter 9, Luke brings us back to focus in more closely on this man, Saul of Tarsus.

And in verse 1, it said, But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priests and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Okay, Saul was not a nobody.

This wasn't just some random obscure person.

Saul was a rising star in Jerusalem.

He was a student of Gimaliel, a famous and well-respected teacher in Israel.

He was of the tribe of Benjamin.

He said he's a Hebrew of Hebrews.

He was excelling beyond his peers in the faith of Judaism, and he was rising to prominence within the faith.

And this shows because he had direct access to the high priest, didn't he?

He says he just went right in.

He went right to the high priest and he asked him for letters to Damascus, to the synagogues of Damascus, so he could travel to the city of Damascus, and if he found anybody there that was practicing the way, he might drag them bound back to Jerusalem for trial.

And I love how Luke uses the phrase the way here.

See, at this point, we wouldn't have been called Christians yet.

The church wasn't called Christians until Antioch later on in the story.

But at this point, they called the Christian faith the way.

And I love this because what it shows is that Christ the Christian faith is not just another belief system.

It's not just a religion.

It's not like an intellectual assent to, oh yeah, I think, I believe, you know, Jesus was the Son of God, and you know, he was crucified, and I believe he rose again.

Like an intellectual agreement with that.

It's not just like, I'm gonna check this box on this list of world religions, and this is my choice that I'm gonna choose to follow.

The way is the way of Jesus.

It's a life that is transformed by his spirit.

It's a life of following Jesus, okay?

It's a life of being formed by his spirit into the likeness of Jesus.

And so if your experience of the Christian faith has been, I checked this box and I jumped through the hoops every week, you're probably not experiencing the real thing.

The way is a life of transformation.

It's a life of being changed into his image.

It's a life of learning to turn the other cheek, of dying to our own agendas, of dying to our pride, of living in obedience to him, manifesting Christ to those around us.

God has a lot of work to do in order to do these things in me.

And he's doing them little by little by his spirit.

But there's another way to look at this phrase, because in John 14, verse 6, Jesus said to Thomas, he was telling Thomas, I'm going away, and where I'm going, you can't go.

John 14:6

But if I go, I go to prepare a place for you.

And then I will come back and I'll gather you and I'll take you to where I'm going.

And Thomas just says, Well, we don't know where you're going.

We don't know the way.

And Jesus tells him, I am the way.

I am the way and the truth and the life.

And no one comes to the Father except by me.

I was just having this conversation on Friday with someone.

We were talking about just faith and, you know, different belief systems and stuff like that.

And we were talking about the fact that Jesus is the way.

You know, and I think a lot of people struggle with that.

They're like, why would you say that?

Why would you say there's only one way?

Well, the fact is there was no way at all.

We were separated by our sin from our holy God, from the creator of all the universe, who loved us enough that he made a way for us to be restored to him.

And so every other way that we tried through the centuries to restore ourselves to him by creating religions, by worshiping idols, by jumping through hoops, by going and meditating on the highest mountain.

You know, I see people in India.

There's one who's held his arm up for like 20 years and it's like calcified up, and he's like doing this until he reaches this spiritual state, you know, and I'm like, you're trying to do it yourself, but you can't.

The imagery the Bible gives us is that we're Jesus is the branch.

He's the vine.

We're just a little branch, right?

And we've been separated from the vine.

Now, have you ever pulled a branch or a leaf off of a tree?

You can't just stick it back on.

You can't just take some super glue and stick that sucker back on there.

You can't wrap it up in duct tape and then it'll be okay.

The thing's gonna die.

You can't do that because that thing grew in there, and now you've broken the connection.

We were broken off from the connection to the source of all life.

And it doesn't matter what we try to invent to try to figure it out and fix it, we can't fix that.

We don't have the power.

But God fixed it himself by sending his only son in the likeness of human flesh to live a life that we couldn't live, to earn righteousness for us, to pay the penalty for our sin, and now Christ is that connection.

He says, I'm the vine and you are the branches.

He says, I'm the olive tree, right?

He's the branch and the olive tree.

That we're grafted into an olive tree by the power of God.

That he makes that connection, he makes that solid.

Jesus said, I'm the way.

There is no other way.

I'm the way, and I'm the truth, and I'm the life, and no one comes to the Father except by me.

There is no other way to heaven.

All paths do not lead to heaven.

Jesus is the way, the only way, and there is no other.

Can I say this again?

He said, I'm the way.

And any belonging to the way that it describes in the Bible would be a belonging to Jesus, who is the way.

Amen.

Verse 3.

Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.

Damascus was roughly about a week away, and from what I hear, it was like this desert oasis.

So surrounded by dry desert, and there was this beautiful oasis there.

And I'm willing to bet that at no point in Saul's one-week journey on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus did he have any thought in his brain that he might actually meet Jesus Christ in person.

I'm willing to bet a thousand dollars right now that there's no way that he had any thought in his mind or any intention or inclination of joining the Christians when he got to Damascus, did he?

You know how we do when we're on our way to something, especially like a confrontation, you're kind of running through the conversation in your mind.

You're running through what am I gonna say, how am I gonna do this?

You know, he's probably doing that the whole way.

He's thinking, like, I'm gonna get there, you know, and I'm gonna go into the synagogue and I'm gonna be so scary and they're gonna run from me.

And, you know, he had these ideas of what's gonna happen.

But it says as he went on his way, he approached Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.

And falling to the ground, he heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And he said, Who are you, Lord?

And he said, I'm Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

He said, Why are you persecuting me?

Who is Paul?

Who is Saul persecuting?

Christian.

Jesus was in heaven.

He wasn't physically present for Saul to persecute.

He had died, he had risen, he had ascended to the Father.

So Saul wasn't directly persecuting Jesus, was he?

He was persecuting the church.

But Jesus says, Why are you persecuting me?

This reminded me of another passage in Matthew 25.

It says, When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne, and before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food.

I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

And then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did you we see you hungry and feed you, thirsty, give you drink?

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you naked and clothe you?

When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?

And the king will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

And this is such a beautiful truth that Jesus so identifies with his church, with his people, with his bride, that to do something to or for or against Jesus is to do it to him or for him or against him.

I think what this does is it makes it kind of comforting to me as you think about when someone attacks you, when they do something to try to damage you, that we don't have to go and try to get vengeance for ourselves, do we?

We don't have to try to avenge ourselves.

And so he says, Why are you persecuting me?

He says, Who are you, Lord?

He says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

But I like how Paul says, Who are you, Lord?

And that word Lord is the word kurios.

It means master.

It means Lord.

It's someone who has sovereign authority over you.

This is how you would address them.

This is the word that translators of the Greek version of the Old Testament.

It's called the Septuagint.

And it would have been available to Paul back in this day, okay?

This is the word they used over 7,000 times to translate the name of God, Yahweh, and Adonai.

He says, Who are you, Lord?

And what this is is submission by Paul.

He's submitting to one who has power and authority over him.

He says, I'm Jesus.

And I imagine this moment.

Everything Saul had believed about Jesus of Nazareth, everything he had been so sure about, sure enough to persecute Christ's church, sure enough to go into people's homes and drag people out and put them in prison, sure enough to cast his vote against them for their condemnation.

It all collapsed in an instant.

On Thursday, we at the Bible study we talked about, we had a we asked a question, what's more important?

To be sincere in what you believe, or to believe what's actually true?

Yeah.

How would you answer that?

What's more important?

To believe what's actually true.

A couple of you agree.

The other ones are sleeping.

Yes, it's more important.

You can be sincere in what you believe, and Saul of Tarsus was sincere in what he believed, but he was also sincerely wrong, wasn't he?

He was going down a path because he was so sure of what he believed.

And we can do the same thing.

There's a person, a kind of a famous person, but he asks a he says he says something that I always like and I always repeat.

He says, it's important and it's really healthy once in a while to ask yourself this question.

Is what I believe actually true?

See, I think sometimes we cling to beliefs.

We cling to things that we've grown to sort of believe, and we just cling to them because they're a comfort to us.

Maybe our parents believed that.

Maybe the church we grew up in taught it a certain way.

And so we cling to them because they're a comfort to us, but is it more important to sincerely believe something or to believe something that's sincerely true?

We want to know what's true.

So he says, Who are you, Lord?

And he says, I am Jesus.

But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.

And the men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.

Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

And so Saul is blinded by the glory of Jesus Christ.

And I'm sure that his entrance to Damascus was not like he expected.

I think he was expecting to come in with vengeance, you know, come in with power and authority from the high priest, and instead he's led by the hand because the great high priest had taken authority over him.

And so it says for three days he went without food or drink.

And I want to imagine what that three days must have been like.

And so now he's sitting here and he's not eating, so he's praying and he's fasting, and he's probably not sure what's going to happen.

Is he ever going to see again?

How are the Christians going to treat him when they find him in this room in the house of Judas?

What's going to happen to him?

They know what he's done.

But now he's been confronted with the truth.

And as he's praying and he's fasting, this is a brilliant theologian.

This is an intelligent, intellectual, educated man.

He knows the scriptures.

He's committed the first five books of the Old Testament to memory.

I'm sure that he's probably memorized great huge portions of the prophets and the Psalms and the Proverbs as well.

So this is a man who knows the scriptures deeply.

Like I said, he's one of the highest educated people of his time.

And so as he's sitting and praying and fasting and contemplating, Jesus is our Messiah.

The Messiah has come, and it's Jesus, and he didn't come how I thought he was going to come.

I thought he was going to come in this certain way, and he was going to have victory, and we were going to, you know, have our kingdom.

But he came as a suffering servant.

And I wonder if Isaiah 53 came up in his mind.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

These things are going through his mind.

And he must have contemplated the implications of the fact that he had betrayed him.

That when Jesus came, the Jews had rejected him, they had betrayed him, they had crucified him, they had hung him on a tree, that he had died and risen from the dead.

And as he meditated on these things, I bet you the pieces must have begun to fall into place.

Oh, I understand Moses and the law and the temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the psalms and the Proverbs, the suffering servant.

See, Saul was a Pharisee, and Pharisees had committed themselves to this purpose alone, okay?

Their purpose was we're going to so faithfully and obediently follow the Torah that we're going to usher in the coming of Messiah.

If we can teach the people to be holy and follow the law, and if we can so perfectly follow the law that we fulfill it, then the Messiah will come quickly.

And now he realizes that while he was looking the other way, while he was focused on other things, while he was acting on things that he sincerely believed but were sincerely wrong, the Messiah has come and gone.

And in verse 10, it says, Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord.

And the Lord said to him, Rise and go to the street called straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

For behold, he's praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.

But Ananias answered, Lord, I've heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.

And so as Saul of Tarsus is sitting in the home of a man named Judas, blind, contemplating his future, God's given him a vision of a man named Ananias, and God now visits Ananias in a vision, and he says, I want you to go, and I want you to go to a street called straight, and I want you to go to the house of a man named Judas, and I want you to look for a man named Saul of Tarsus.

And Ananias was like, wait, what?

What the no, he didn't say that at all.

He did not say that.

We read it together.

You know he didn't say that.

But he did want some clarification, didn't he?

He's like, Lord, this I've heard a lot about this guy.

Like, are you sure?

Are you sure about that?

God, that's Saul of Tarsus, man.

This is the guy that has stricken terror into the hearts of us Christians.

This is the guy that has the church on the run.

Christians are being scattered all over Judea and Samaria because they're so afraid of Saul of Tarsus.

It's like telling Ananias, Ananias, I want you to go down to a street called straight, go into the house of Judas, go into this dark and scary room and lay hands on the boogeyman.

That's what it would have felt like to Ananias.

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine.

To carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

So the Lord says, Go, Ananias, trust me, I have a plan for Saul of Tarsus.

He's a chosen instrument of mine.

And I think never in the history of the world has there been anybody who is less inclined to follow Jesus in this moment than Saul.

He wasn't seeking the Lord.

He wasn't searching for the Lord.

He was not questioning his assumptions.

Saul hated Jesus.

He's trying to destroy Jesus.

In fact, he's made it his personal mission in life.

I'm going to wipe these Christians off the face of the map.

That was Saul's plan.

As he's going down the road, walking or riding his horse or whatever he's doing, he's going down the road on his way there.

He's like, I'm going to destroy them.

That's all he's thinking about.

But then Jesus steps in right in the middle of all his plans and all his stories and all of his ideas and all of his plans for evil.

And he stops him in his tracks.

He knocks him to the ground and he says, You are mine.

And I think sometimes this might be the kind of thing that makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Because a lot of us like to believe, all of us like to believe, that we're in control, aren't we?

We're the captains of the ship.

We're the authors of the story.

We're in charge.

We call the shots.

We're the ones that make all the decisions.

We get to choose our own path and chart our own course, and we get, I did it my way.

Come on, sing it with me.

I did it my way.

It's like the anthem of humanity.

I did it my way.

But then along comes Acts chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

And we see that sometimes God does whatever he wants to do.

In fact, all the time, God does whatever he wants to do.

Acts chapter 9 reminds us there's only one true Lord, and his name's not Jeff.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

His name's Jesus.

And one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Saul believed he was directing his own future, but on the Damascus road, he discovered that his life ultimately belonged to Jesus.

And he had claimed Paul before he was even born.

He had written his name in the Lamb's book of life before the foundation of the world.

He had declared that Saul was going to be his chosen instrument, and he even said what he's going to do.

He's going to go to Gentiles, he's going to go to kings, and he's going to go to the children of Israel.

And as we progress through the book of Acts, we're going to see how God makes him the apostle to the Gentiles.

We're going to see Paul stand before kings and give his testimony.

We're going to see him stand before the children of Israel, which was his greatest desire to see his own brothers, his own people saved.

And Jesus is going to fulfill this mission.

But some of us would say, well, what's up then?

God just forces people to believe?

He just forced Saul to believe?

What about Saul's choice?

When didn't he get to choose what he wants to do?

What's up with that?

Well, let me ask you, did God force Saul to believe?

What do you think?

Does it sound like you forced him?

What Jesus did in this moment is he did what Ezekiel 36 says.

And you know this one because I quote it all the time, and I'm going to keep doing it because it's really important and it's good.

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put within you, and I'll remove your heart of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh.

He goes on to say, I'm going to cause you to walk in my statutes and obey my commands.

See, what Jesus did to Saul was not override his decisions.

He changed Saul's heart and he made Saul desire him.

See, on his own, none of us would have chosen to follow Christ.

Not you or you or you or you or you or you or you or you or me.

None of us, none of us.

Maybe some on this side would have.

No, I'm just kidding, not you either.

Nobody in this room would follow Christ unless Christ first intervened in our lives.

And this is what he does with Paul.

He steps into his story, he interrupts his plans, and he says, You're mine.

You're mine.

You belong to me, and I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans for good and not evil to give you a future and a hope.

Paul would later write in Romans 3, he says, None is righteous, no not one.

There's none who understands, there's none who seeks after God.

Jesus said himself, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

And so now the man who came to destroy the church desires to serve the Lord of the church.

Verse 17 it says, So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me, so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight.

Then he rose and was baptized, and taking food, he was strengthened.

And so Ananias, despite his fears, obeyed the voice of the Lord, and he went to the street called straight to the house of Judas, and he went into the house, and he found the room where Saul was staying, and he walked in, and his first words as he walked into the room, Brother Saul.

And I want you to imagine for a moment what this must have felt like to hear these words.

Paul had come in anger and fury with threats and murder and authority with vengeance to hurt people.

He had been stopped in his tracks.

He had been made alive in the spirit.

He'd had his heart changed, and he sat in this room with no food or drink for three days, contemplating what is gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's Jesus gonna do?

What's he gonna do with my eyes?

What's he gonna do with my life?

What's gonna happen when the church finds me in this room?

And the first words that come out of Ananias's mouth are brother Saul.

Ananias knew what he had done.

He had knew that he had imprisoned brothers and sisters, he knew that he stood by as Stephen was killed, he knew he had cast his vote against people.

Everyone knew.

But Jesus had told him that Saul belonged to him.

And so Ananias just received him as his brother.

He said, Brother Saul.

The Lord who appeared to you by the road by which you came sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And so Ananias lays hands on him, and Saul regains his sight.

And then Saul of Tarsus, the Pharisee of Pharisees, the Hebrew of Hebrews, the persecutor of the church, the boogeyman of the church, rose and was baptized.

And for some days he was with the disciples at Damascus, and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying he is the Son of God, and all who heard him were amazed and said, Is this not the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name?

And has he not come here for this purpose to bring them bound before the chief priests?

But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

And so immediately Saul proclaims Jesus.

His knowledge hadn't changed, the scriptures hadn't changed, what had changed was Saul.

So the Holy Spirit had opened up his eyes, and he could now see Jesus everywhere in the scriptures.

Hebrews 10, 7 says, Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.

Suddenly all this word, all the scriptures that are in Paul's heart and in his mind, they come to life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And all of his learning and all of his intelligence and all of his brilliance and all of his zeal is now united and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

And it said he grew in strength and he confounded the Jews, proving that Jesus was the Christ.

And years later, as Saul was looking back on what happened here, he's writing a letter to Timothy.

And he says to Timothy, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent.

But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

He says, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

What I want you to notice here in Paul's words are that he doesn't emphasize his own decisions, doesn't emphasize his own abilities, his own determination, his own great learning, he doesn't emphasize how moral his life was.

He doesn't even emphasize what he had to offer Christ.

He just keeps talking about the mercy and grace of Jesus.

He calls himself the foremost of sinners, and he says, Jesus saved him for this purpose, that he could display his perfect patience toward even the worst of sinners.

So that his life would become an example to everyone else who would later believe.

And guys, that gives me hope.

Acts 9 is not ultimately about how great Paul the Apostle is.

It's a story about how great Jesus is.

That the risen Lord Jesus is able to take his greatest enemy and show him mercy, to give him a new heart, to open his blind eyes, to call him mine, when Saul had no intention of following him.

And to transform him into a faithful witness that will give hope for salvation to others.

See, Paul's message was this if he can save me, Jesus can save anybody.

And did you know that that's our message too?

The message of the church is not to scold the world.

Our job is not to scold the world.

Our job is not to look down on people for their sinful ways.

Our message to sinners is not hurry up and get yourself cleaned up so you can come to Jesus.

Our message is if Jesus can save me, Jesus can save anybody.

Father, we love you and we thank you for your word.

We thank you for saving Saul of Tarsus.

We thank you for the work you did way back then to bring the gospel to the Gentile nations.

First through Peter and then through this apostle Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

We thank you, Lord, that we could be saved because of the work you did on Calvary, and we thank you, Lord, that you not only saved Saul of Tarsus, but we thank you that you saved us.

And I pray in the name of Jesus that you would continue to save others.

I pray that you would help our lives to become just a billboard of this.

If Jesus can save me, he can save anybody.

We pray that you would send us this week into this world.

Send us to the people who are lost and hurting and need you.

Help us to look upon them with compassion, realizing that but for the grace of God, we'd be just the same.

We'd still be the same.

We just pray that you'd help us to be sensitive to your spirit, to be open to the move of your spirit, to be open to conversations, that you would give us words to speak, and you would help us to live lives that reflect you in Jesus' name.

Amen.