A Life Pleasing to God: About Celebrity Pastors
Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8. Discussion points: Paul does not present the gospel like a used car salesman but as a cure to the human condition; Paul lived to please God and not men; Paul was gentle with the Thessalonians when preaching the gospel, but that doesn’t mean he was passive.
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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:1-8] For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man but to please God, who tests our hearts.
For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed - God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Jimmy Jimmy Swaggart was a famous televangelist from the 80s and given that most of us are children of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, give it up 2000s, what's up? That not many of us are gonna know who Jimmy Swaggart is, but he was very famous. His broadcasts reviewed by millions of people every week and his ministry earned millions of dollars annually for years and years and years throughout the 80s. And then in 1988, Jimmy Swaggart was caught outside of a Louisiana motel, which is a word that you don't hear as often these days, but that's like a hotel with the doors on the outside, um. And with a, with a prostitute at the time and so he came out and he confessed his sin. And took a step back, but then he stepped back in until 2 years later, 3 years later, he was yet again caught with another prostitute. you would think that after happening twice that Swaggart would take a step down, but he continues to pastor to this day, running a, a television program.
Jim Baker, was called, was another famous televangelists in the 70s and 80s. In 1987, it became public that he had paid hush money to one of his secretaries who he had sexually assaulted earlier in the decade. He was also later convicted of federal fraud and sent to prison. This is not a collection of someone who you would think would be qualified to be a pastor, but after exiting prison. Mr. Baker returned to his television ministry, where he continues to minister. Ted Haggard, former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned after allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct with a male escort.
Carl Lentz, former Hillsong New York City pastor known specifically for deep V-necks, and being friends with Justin Bieber. Joe Rogan said something so funny about him, but I can repeat it. Today Was fired in 2020 for adultery and toxic leadership. Mark Driscoll, former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, almost was fired, but he resigned just before due to chronic toxic leadership and abuse of power.
Bill Hibels, founder of Willow Creek Church in Chicago, and those of you who weren't around for the early 2000s, you might not know. How big of a deal Bill Hibels and Willow Creek were, I mean, everybody was trying to copy what they were doing. He was the, he's the granddaddy of the mega church movement. Willow Creek at its height, 25,000 people every week, huge, huge, huge church, and he really applied business techniques to ministry in a way that had not been done previously. He started what's known as the seeker sensitive movement, basically, it might have started before that, but he's the one that really brought it into the forefront. He resigned in 2018 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and abuse of power. He's had the sense to stay out of ministry since then.
Ravi Zacharias was a very famous apologist, someone that I respected and appreciated what he had to share posthumously after he died. It was revealed that he had engaged in sexual misconduct for years. Creflo Dollar With a name like that, I mean, what's coming next, you know. Joel Osteen. TD Jakes. Kenneth Copeland. All own private jets, designer suits. Million multi-million dollar mansions and luxury vehicles such as Rolls-Royce. They preach what we call the prosperity gospel, but it's funny that. When you preach the prosperity gospel, the only people that seem to prosper are the preachers themselves. Don't get me started on the wealth and sexual scandals among the Roman Catholic Church. That's affected our city in huge ways.
When so many pastors use their power and influence to gratify their sexual desires. To fill their wallets and to boost their ego. It's quite difficult for us. To see the message that's behind that, the true message of who Jesus is. Is it not? When you think about sharing with your friends, are you not afraid? That they're gonna see you as just another one of these. Hypocrites. It's easy for people to believe that our beliefs are a scam, in fact. Like one of those phone calls that you might just ignore on your phone.
If you're here and you're not a Christian or you're new to Christianity, don't let these guys warp your idea of who Jesus is. I know that that they are the most high profile among us, but there are for every one of these that I just listed, there are hundreds of pastors and thousands of Christians who truly believe the message of Jesus and live in his ways. It's just there's something about the human nature, that when you put someone in front of other people. They want to consume the power and use it for themselves instead of laying themselves down for the good of others.
It's easy to think that these are modern issues exasperated by things such as TV and maybe they have been. Internet certainly hasn't been great for Christians at all times. But Paul talks of some of these same issues all the way back in the 1st century that this is what 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 is talking about. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, this is the passage we read earlier. We're just gonna walk through it and I'll, I'll bring it out as we go.
First, he says, for you know, brothers that are coming to you was not in vain. Now what's he talking about there? Of course they know it's not in vain. They're Christians. That's obvious. His coming wasn't in vain that there's a church that exists in Thessalonica. I think that what one way you could read this instead is it wasn't in in our own vein. So Paul is saying we weren't there just to boost our own ego. It wasn't out of our vanity that we came to you. It wasn't in vain that we came to you. But verse two, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of such conflict.
Now we were, we covered this a few weeks ago, but a quick recap. Thessalonica was a city that Paul visited on his 2nd missionary journey, and before he went to Thessalonica, he had gone to the city of Philippi, where he had been shamefully treated as an understatement. Paul was publicly stripped and flogged. He was thrown into prison with shackles around his ankles before the Lord released him from prison and the the jailer himself became a Christian after that. And then Paul was basically run out of town and he went to to the Thessalonians, so he was treated very shamefully in Philippi. But then when he made it to Thessalonica, he was only there for 3 weeks preaching the gospel before he was run out of Thessalonica by an angry mob that followed him all the way to Berea, where he was trying to preach in Berea, but the angry mob of Thessalonians had chased him and chased him out of Berea as well.
And so after all of this, when he's treated so shamefully, you have Paul come to Thessalonica, and yet he still has boldness to declare the gospel in Thessalonica after he's been treated so poorly in Philippi, which is kind of a crazy thing. If you're treated so poorly trying to do your job, you're gonna have a little bit of traumas. One time I was. Treated a little bit with disrespect on the subway, and I avoided riding the subway for the next two weeks. There's grocery stores that I don't like going to because someone was mean to me one time. But yet Paul, though he's publicly flogged. Treated shamefully for presenting the gospel, continues to have the boldness to preach the gospel.
And the question, the implied question of all of this is how, why? What empowers him to continue to be bold, even though he's treated so poorly? And there's really only two answers to that question. The first is, there's something in it for Paul. He's getting something out of it. He's getting some type of shameful dis shameful gain. He's getting some type of money he's getting some type of sexual pleasure. He's getting some type of ego boost out of this process. So there's something in it for him that he likes more and that would cause him to continue to go even though he's shamefully treated.
Or the other answer is he doesn't care because he has a greater joy somewhere else than what this world can provide. Let's look at how Paul explains it. Verse 3, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive. Paul's basically saying, look, I'm, I'm not a used car salesman. I don't know if you've ever dealt with used car salesman. We, we bought a car. Not the one we currently have because we bought a newer car then, but we bought a used car, and for weeks we would drive around to these different used car lots and we would get sold a piece of trash you know they would try to sell us this car and then when I told him like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take it to a mechanic, he'd be like, look, look, look, why don't you check out this car over here because your mechanic, he's not gonna actually like this one very much that I've been trying to sell you.
I'm always reminded when I think about a used car sale salesman, I'm always reminded of the 90s hit Matilda. You guys remember that one. Her dad, played by Danny DeVito, was a used car salesman and at one point in the movie. they go to his lot and he's showing the kids all of his tricks of the trade for selling, selling cars, and he says, we really should weld these bumpers on, but that takes time, equipment, money, so we're gonna use super super glue instead. Matilda responds, won't it fall off? Definitely. Isn't that dangerous? Not to me. Scene changes. Transmission. The sawdust quiets the gears and lets the the engine run sweet as a nut for a couple of miles. Daddy, that's cheating. Of course it's cheating. No one ever got rich telling the truth. So her dad says.
This is what many people see Christians as doing like we're used car salesmen, and that's what Paul is saying. He's like, look, I'm not a used car salesman. I didn't come to you with error and impurity and any attempt to deceive. I wasn't trying to fool you into this thing, and we often have, have you ever tried to share the gospel and felt like you were a used car salesman? Like You're trying to like frame the gospel in a way that the person might buy it. Even though they don't seem interested in it. Well, look, friends, You don't have to do that.
Because we don't have to come to with the gospel that is some we don't have to come with some cheap imitation dollar store generic brand gospel, OK? We come with the message that has changed millions of lives throughout the entire world. That's universally applicable to all peoples throughout the past 2000 years. We come with a message that brings life and truth, and more than that, it's not only that the message works, it's that it is true. That if Jesus really is who he said he is, you are not some used car salesman, you're someone trying to give away this great cure you're like a doctor who's gone and he has the the cure to a a terrible disease and all you want is to give out the cure and people are saying, I don't trust what you have and you're like, would you please trust me? I have the cure to your soul.
That is the gospel. You are not a used car salesman. You are someone with the cure to the human condition. Which is known as the grace of God, forgiveness for your sins. And you long to give that away. That is where Paul is standing. That is what he's trying to do. He's trying to give away the costly, genuine, sweet, good news of the true message of Jesus. And so many pastors have peddled an erroneous gospel for impure motives attempting to deceive others. You see, when you make the gospel about you when you make sharing the gospel about something you can gain from that. It ruins the very nature of what it is that you are sharing.
Listen again to Paul, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. So what gave Paul the ability to stand confidently, though he was shamefully treated time and time again? What gave him that confidence to stand before people declaring the same message once again? It was that he did not live to please men, but rather he lived to please God Himself. He lived for the approval of one, and it was not those who might accept him or reject him that were in front of him. Because he knows that he has been entrusted with the gospel.
Have you ever been entrusted with anything? Maybe a family heirloom. You know, my my dad one time gave me a ring that I was allowed to keep. And I felt like. Admit the world And there was no way I would ever sell that or give it away. You know, if you're entrusted with a family heirloom that's been in your family for centuries. You're not gonna put that on eBay, are you not? You, you don't have the right to put it on eBay you don't have the right to sell it it's not really yours, it's your family's you've just been given the honor of taking care of it for a little while so that you can pass it on to the generation that goes after you. If you've been entrusted with something of such great value, that means you have to be responsible with it. I'm getting Frodo with the ring vibes here, you know, you have to be responsible with this precious thing that's been entrusted to you.
And Paul says that he's been entrusted with the message of the good news about Jesus. And the reality is that the message isn't Paul's message, it belongs to God. And so he can't change the message to make it more amenable to what people might want to hear. He has to present the message. It doesn't belong to him, it belongs to God. All Christians have been entrusted with the same message. When Jesus left and was ascended into heaven, he says, I'm giving authority to you, all of you, not just the leaders. I'm entrusting you with the gospel message to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to follow my ways and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
You, my friends, have been given the gift of the good news of the gospel. And many times though we have been entrusted with this gift what we choose to do with it, it might not be, we might not cheapen it and selling it on eBay that's like takes a very special type of personality to want to do that, but what we might do is like find a secret closet in our hearts and in our lives and shove it in there and say yeah I'll hold on to that. Thank you very much. When God wants you to put it out on display to show it and maybe. You can make a copy of it and give it, you can give, you can entrust it to others, pass it to the next generation.
This message of the love of God for sinners like you and I, this is what he's entrusted to us, this good news that Jesus has paid our debt before God. I can receive the love of God and have life with him throughout all eternity, and all I have to do is trust in what He has done for me. This is a message of good news that it's not what I do, but it's what he's done for us. That I need to pass on, and so Paul is able to boldly share the gospel, not because he's a used car salesman, but because it's true, he wants people to hear the good news. He's been entrusted with it. When you share the message of Jesus.
And I know here's the difficult thing. It, it is, it is hard because message of Jesus is not always popular. There's something inherent about the message of Jesus that is slightly offensive, is it not? Because the message of Jesus says, That all people are living for themselves, ultimately. And that Jesus has come to set us free from self-service that we might understand what we're really created for. But that means that when you're sharing it with someone, you have to say the way that you are living. Is wrong It is not the best way to live. That little thing, that feels so offensive, does it not? But what you're doing isn't just saying, you're wrong, I'm right, that would be, you know, if we cope before them trying to prove ourselves right. And that's your goal you're gonna lose. Your goal isn't to prove yourself right your goal is just to share the good news.
Look, I have good news for you. That Jesus, he has done what your works could never do. He has made you right with God. You can share in the love of Jesus. It's a beautiful thing. It's not about us. You see Paul had this gift of self forgetfulness, which is really the thing that tortures us more than anything is our self obsession, our worries about how other people's perceive us. He's unconcerned about how other people perceive him because he knows he's been entrusted with this message, and he lives to please God, not people. And so he basically has, well, he kind of reiterates the message.
Let me go over this first. He reiterates the message in verse 5 he says, for we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness, nor do we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. And so Paul here, he's just reiterating what we've been saying. He's saying it in a different way. He's kind of repeating himself once more. And then he goes through and he describes the way he did try to share it. So I've given you a lot of how not to share the gospel this morning. OK, how not to and why not to, but how do you? Do this in a way that's faithful and that's what Paul talks about next.
And there's really 2, 2 points he brings up here with how to do this in a way that's not like a celebrity pastor. First is gently. And the second is genuinely. That's what he says. And, and I know you're sitting there and you're like, yeah, that sounds like a modern way to do it. No, that's what Paul said he did in Thessalonica. He shared it gently and genuinely. Verse 71, gently here, two ways that people talk about that that to talk to people about the gospel from Paul, gently and genuinely. First gently, verse 7, but you, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.
What does it mean to be gentle? That's a question. When we think about being gentle, we might think of someone who's meek, who's lowly, and those things are probably true, but also when I think about being gentle, I think of it like this that to be gentle means you use the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more. Let's say you break your arm. And you have to go into the hospital to have your arm set. And just before your arm is set by a doctor, you look at the doctor and you say, doctor, be gentle. Now, to set an arm, I assume I'm not a doctor, but the way they used to do this at least they had to yank on the thing pretty hard to to get the bones to go back into place. When you look at that doctor and you say, be gentle, you're not saying. Don't pull my arm very hard. You're saying, use the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more, please God. Don't pull my arm harder than you have to. That's what it means to be gentle in that situation.
And so for us when we think about Paul, he's using the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more. A gentle parent is the one who uses the right amount of force with their children. A gentle friend is the one who uses the right amount of force with their friends. It doesn't mean that there's no force, but oftentimes, and you know we had to decipher this for ourselves sometimes. We use too little force and we, we aren't gentle and we use too little force. In fact, that's just, that's just torture, is it not? for the doctor to pull your arm a little bit, but not quite enough. It's like, oh, that's not good. And many of us use too much force and so we have to think about that when we go into a place where we want to share the gospel, oftentimes we think, OK, our our battle is not with flesh and blood, it's against the powers and principalities of the of the kingdom of the the air and and the the enemy and everything.
So we're thinking we need to go in with our bazookas ready, right? Have you ever argued with someone who had bazookas tied to them at that moment? They're just ready to decimate anything. That's not how Paul was. He didn't go in with his bazookas, armed. You know, he went in. Being precise, willing to share about the gospel, willing to give of his life, to give of himself. It says that like a nursing mother. He was. With his own children. A nursing mother knows intuitively how much force to use with her children. She knows how to be gentle. Children are delicate they're fragile and so he knew that the Thessalonians, they were fragile and so when you have fragile people, you use little force. Now a nursing mother if you threaten her children, she will turn green and come at you and to smash. But other than that, with her children, she knows to be delicate, to be gentle.
And so Paul says that we were like a nursing mother. What does that mean? They were patient. They were loving, they showed the fruit of the spirit. Imagine that. Kind, not forceful. Or maybe just with enough. But they also were presenting the message still. And when we think about Jesus himself was gentle, I've quoted this a million times. It doesn't mean weak, gentle doesn't mean weak always. It means humble, lowly, gentle, and when Jesus describes his own self. He only describes his own self one time throughout all of the scripture, and it's in Matthew chapter 11, and Jesus says, for I am gentle and lowly of heart. That's how he describes himself. And so what if you wanna understand who Jesus is, that's probably the best place to go, to read him describing what he's like, that he is gentle and lowly of heart.
The second way that Paul shares the gospel is genuinely. Genuinely, gently and genuinely. Verse 8. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel. Of of God, but also of our own selves because you had become very dear to us. So Paul and Silas, but Silas was with him on this trip, and they had become affectionately desirous of the Thessalonians. That means that he genuinely liked them. He genuinely loved them. He wanted to spend time with them. He, he liked the Thessalononians. They weren't just a project for him.
Sometimes, people treat evangelism like sharing the gospel as a project. Like another notch on their evangelism belt that they can tack on there when I was in seminary, this was definitely the attitude of many seminarians. I remember my first couple of weeks there in seminary some people approached me and were like, we're gonna go share the gospel and we got out there and it was without genuine, without being genuine, without being gentle, we just went out onto like the busiest street in the city and tried to stop people from having a good time and. tell them about Jesus, which I mean in some ways that works. I've heard people who have come to know Jesus that way and you know I guess any faithfulness in this is better than none, but at the same time what Paul is saying is that he was genuinely affectious towards them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be near them. It wasn't just another notch on his belt that he could say, look, I, and we would come back after doing that, and be like, yeah, we shared the gospel with each of us would share how many people we talked to. And it was, you know, it's fun, it's fine, but at the same time, maybe not the best way.
Because Paul here, he's describing himself as having this, this affectionately desirous attitude toward them. Look, people can tell when you see them as a project. They can tell if you if you only have the desire for them to become a Christian to prove that you're right and they're wrong or whatever it might be, that is like the wrong attitude to have. That is not a Christ-like attitude because what Paul says is we desire not only to share about the gospel with God but our own selves. We had become so affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our own selves because you had become very dear to us.
Your goal when you're sharing the gospel with someone isn't just to fix them, but is that you share even your own life with them, that you're friends with them. Because that's the way that Jesus loves us, is it not? Jesus didn't just come declaring the message of the good news about the kingdom of God, but he came sharing who he is. His very self. He came to give himself up in that way. He doesn't just come to tell us that all the ways that we're a failure. Many people misread Christianity is like it's just a list of do's and don'ts and all the ways that I'm a failure, but Jesus comes to us gently showing us love and compassion. His, his love leads us to repentance. His kindness, but Romans chapter 2, verse 4, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.
So a few points of application here before we end. First, how does your idea of Christianity need to change? Because maybe you have encountered some people in your life or televangelists in your life who have used the gospel for personal gain, and it's left you with a really nasty taste in your mouth. Maybe it's impacted the way that you think about Christianity, and maybe you need to just get back to what Jesus taught. And look at the hundreds of pastors that are out there faithfully living this out. And, and the hundreds of Christians who are out there faithfully living this out. Ask the Lord today to help you to see Jesus with fresh eyes.
Maybe there's just a, maybe today's just a day of healing for someone. I know that with a room this large, with this many people, that undoubtedly there's a few of you that come from churches that had abusive leadership. That had leadership that were for selfish gain. And today can be a day of healing. Jesus would love to deliver you from those mistakes of others. Would you come to him and see how sweet the true gospel is? And would you maybe have forgiveness for people that don't deserve it? And maybe you've seen Christianity as a list of do's and don'ts, but now you're realizing that there's so much more to it. That's a message about the love of God for undeserving people. And today can be a day where you reconcile that once again. Where you connect with God in a different kind of way.
Another way you could apply this, do you see the gospel as something to keep to yourself or something to share with others? If you've been entrusted with this thing that you're keeping deeply locked up, you know, maybe it's in a safe somewhere, you know, you don't want anything to happen to it because it, it you can bring it out. It's fireproof, OK? That's, the very nature of what the thing is you, you bring it out and allow yourself to share it. Maybe you need to just take that step, maybe. You have this thing where Paul says that he was affectionately desirous of the Thessalonians, and I'm just gonna place the challenge on you. Who has the Lord given you an affectionate desire for? Alright, single dudes, single ladies, I'm not talking about the other, you know, the that. I'm, I'm talking about who in your life. Has the Lord given you a desire to love and to be with? And how can you share not only the gospel of God, it assumes that you're sharing the gospel of God. I think our default is not to share that one, but it assumes you're sharing the gospel of God, but also share your very self. Will you make room for them in your life? Your friends, it's OK to play the slow game sometimes, you know, it's not even a game it's just like you be with someone.
There's this famous quote from Saint Francis of Assisi, that wasn't actually a true it wasn't actually Saint Francis of Assisi. It was it someone made it up and attributed it to him, but it says share the gospel at all times, use words if necessary now. That what's wrong, because words are necessary to share the gospel, but I love the heart behind it because it says that we're not only supposed to share with words but we're supposed to share with the way that we give of ourselves. So use, share the gospel at all times using words. When you can, and sharing yourself at all times with others is the best way to think about that.
I encourage you, who is the Lord placed on your heart like that? Maybe you need to write that name down. Maybe you just need someone to pray with you after the service for this one friend. You don't have to share their name or you can just share their first name. Maybe you want to join us on Tuesday mornings through the period of Lent, 7 a.m. at the community space where we pray and you can take your name and you can pray for your friend and pray for opportunities that you might be able to share yourself and with them. You can share, you can pray after service today. We'll have time after the service is over up here. If anybody would like to pray, you can come and pray for your friend.
If we're honest with ourselves as we look at all these mega church pastors and the damage that they've caused. The reality is, while we know that there's something especially insidious about pastors behaving in that kind of way and especially continuing a ministry after behaving in that kind of way. We know that many of the ugly desires and sins that live in them live also in us, do they not? That the seeds of that type of sin is. Present in each of our hearts. And it's especially And it's especially shameful when a when a leader fails in that way, but each of us has had a desire to build, to build our own kingdoms and wealth in a similar kind of way.
And so as we go to Christ and remind ourselves that we all need Jesus, that we're not actually any better than this list of names that I brought to you at the beginning. Some of us hide our sin more, some of us, we might not have been caught in the same. Patterns of sin, but the seeds still live there. And so what the gospel says is that Jesus. Didn't just come to proclaim the kingdom of God, but he came to give of him his very self. And what Paul is saying is that to follow Jesus, you don't just come to proclaim the kingdom of God, but you give of your very self the way that Christ has for you.
And so when we celebrate the gospel, we recognize that Jesus didn't just teach us how to live, but he gave his very life for our lives, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, that we might have life with God forever throughout all eternity. And so each week we participate in a sacred meal where we're we're remembering what Christ has done and he's present with us and it's a physical way of remembering what he has done and being reminded of that truth once and again. And so each week we participate in this communion meal. If you are a believer here with us, we encourage you to come and receive this, be reminded of it once again in this physical tangible way. So let's stand as we prepare to respond to God's word and to sing praises to Him and receive this meal over the next song.
God, we pray this morning that you would help us to, to see that you've given your very self for us and that you would help us to live in response to that by giving of our very selves for you. And by loving others in this personal tangible kind of way. God I pray for anyone here who has a misconception of Christianity that you would heal that for them, help them to understand the message of Jesus truly. And we pray for our friends and family who might not know Jesus. And God, we, we confess that we have failed in the way that we have shared. God have forgiveness, have mercy for us. And give us the power and strength to move forward in love and compassion. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.