A Life Pleasing to God: Sanctification Continued

Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 (read for us in Amharic) about sanctification in our social lives and work lives. Discussion points: The gospel transforms our social lives as God teaches us how to love one another, work does not satisfy our search for identity or our search for meaning, our spiritual life spans all of life rather than just Sunday morning.

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  Scripture reader: The scripture reading today is taken from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 9 to 12. I'll be speaking, I'll be reading it in my mother tongue of Amharic, and you're more than welcome to follow along on the screen and the English version. And when I finish reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord, and please join me by saying thanks be to God.

  [1 Thessalonians 4:9-12] Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: All right, good morning, my name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here. It's a joy to welcome you and hopefully you're, up and awake and lively. I know yesterday was Porchfest. A lot of people were walking around for Porchfest, so you know, some, some folks might be a little tired this morning, but it's sunny outside, OK, so let's rejoice. This passage today, we're, we're, we are working our way through a series on the book of of 1 Thessalonians and in 1 Thessalonians, the whole first half of the book is dedicated to kind of explaining to us what the gospel is and who Jesus is and, and reminding the Thessalonians of what they had already received from Paul when he planted the church there.

  Now the second half of this letter, like many of Paul's letters, shifts in tone and starts to talk about how you live. About your faith and so it's very helpful for us, but then we also have to go back and be reminded of the first couple chapters of First Thessalonians. We can't leave it alone. We have to kind of read it as a whole. The letter was meant to be read in one sitting, honestly, it was meant to be read at a church gathering where you read it out loud to everybody in the church. And so while we're going verse by verse, at the same time, we need to think about the whole letter together.

  Today we're getting to this aspect where we're just kind of continuing what we did last week. Last week Paul started talking about sanctification, which is this Christianese word for how a Christian grows, and this week we're continuing the conversation about sanctification. Growth as a Christian can be frustratingly slow. Amen. Yeah Sometimes when I think about the things that. I struggle with today, the sins that I struggle with today. Oftentimes they're just like a more grown up version of the sins that I struggled with 20 years ago. I just see in my own life that it is more slow than what I would like for it to be oftentimes, and I think another aspect of Christian growth or sanctification that's difficult is the lack of metrics for Christian growth.

  If you're familiar with thinking about metrics, it's just what do you use to decide if someone's growing. Like in my house we have this, this wall, maybe you're familiar with a wall like this in your own home, where every year on your birthday. You get to mark how tall you are now for me and mom we might not do this anymore because it'd be the same mark every year, hopefully Lord willing, we're not going down too quickly, but for our kids sometimes it's very remarkable. It's like, oh my gosh, can you believe how much you've grown in the past year.

  For the past 4 years solid, Shepherd, my middle child, has been making considerate gains. If you've seen this kid, I promise you we feed him normal food. Yesterday he ate 5 hot dogs for lunch, OK, but we feed him normal food. He, he's 8 years old and he's like, you know, 7 ft tall, but we, he, he just has been making these gains and every year I say he's gonna pass his older sister Kennedy. She's 3 years older than him and every year he doesn't because she continues to grow also.

  And so we, we have this metric though. It's easy to see how you grow in height. You can just see it, you can see children growing. But with your spiritual life, how do you even measure this thing? Most of us only have like one point of reference for spiritual growth, one metric, and it's how long do you pray, right? But isn't it kind of wrong to measure all of spiritual growth in like a prayer endurance test? Like, I think there's probably a little bit more to spirituality than how long you can pray and how much of your Bible you can read. At least I hope that there is, because I'll be honest with you. I have children, and my prayer life is maybe not as vibrant as it has been at other times in my life when I had less responsibility. There were times in my life where I could spend as long as I wanted in prayer, and you would think, Fletcher, you're the pastor, don't we pay you to do that? And the answer is yes, but there are other responsibilities too. I have lots of responsibilities and so maybe I'm not winning the prayer endurance test quite in the same way that I may have used to win that endurance test.

  And so what other metrics do I have? What other ways do I think about how I grow as a Christian and I think that Paul outlines several different ways for us to grow and oftentimes we think about our Christian life as just like what we do at church, what we do during the quiet time, but Paul is basically telling. Thessalonians, your Christian life invades all the different parts of your life, and here's some ways to live out your Christianity at work. Here's some ways to live out your Christianity with the way that you relate with other people, with your sexuality. All of these different things are aspects of your growth as a Christian.

  So last week, we started to cover over this, and we talked about sanctification and how growth is oftentimes as a Christian. We like to think of it as linear, but like, you know, you start here and then you just keep on growing until you die and then you shoot off to heaven or however that works. I do know how that works. It's not however that works. That's a different sermon, um. But, the, it's more like the stock market, where, you know, there's days where it's down, days where it's up, but in general, over time, the market grows and in general, over time, Christians are to grow in a similar kind of fashion.

  And last week we gave the first illustration of sanctification and sex, OK? So if you weren't here, then you, you, you know, you're spared the, the sex sermon, I suppose. So this week we're going to talk about the next two. So he basically gives three different illustrations of ways that we grow. And the first one is the gospel transforms your sex life, covered, OK, last week. The, the next two that we're going to cover this week are 1, the gospel transforms your social life, and 2, the gospel transforms your work life. So the gospel transforms your social life, and the gospel transforms your work life.

  Point number one, how the gospel transforms your social life. Now let me be really clear before I start this, because I've heard too many pastors in too many churches do this and make a mistake with it. What they end up saying is that the gospel gives you a social life. Oh, you want a social life? Do you want friends? Are you lonely? Come to church. And that's not wrong. If you are lonely, and if you want friends, church is a great place to meet people. It's a great place to connect. But when we make. Church is the goal of church to build community. We're missing the goal of church, which is to grow an intimacy with Christ and to grow closer to God. Yes, community is an aspect of it, but it's not all of it.

  And I know this too, it's not the best selling point for the church always, because I know lots of people who do not go to church who have wonderful social lives. Lots of people, it's not that is not a selling point for everyone. It's a selling point for some, but not for everyone. So I just wanna be careful with that. I'm not trying to say it will give you friends. I'm just trying to say it transforms the way that you relate with your friends.

  Let's look at verse 9. Now now concerning brotherly love. Ah, we come to a Greek word that everyone in this room knows, Brotherly love. Philadelphia, there we go. It is literally Philadelphia, the city that does not represent its name. sorry, it's funny. I'm looking around at those from Philly and they're like, ha ha that's true, but it, it is. One of those words that almost everyone understands outside of the New Testament, the word Philadelphia is almost exclusively used, and not in reference to the city, but almost exclusively used to talk about the love between siblings. To talk about this this brotherly or sisterly this sibling kind of love. Now I'm an only child, so that is not something that I know firsthand, but I get to parent siblings, and this is what I get to observe about siblings in the way that they love one another, that siblings can annoy one another without mercy. And yet unconditionally love one another at the same time. That siblings can annoy one another without mercy, and yet somehow still love one another unconditionally. But never admit it. Never admit it. That's the key.

  This past week I was looking through the New York Times app and I don't literally get paper to my home. Do people still do that? I don't know, but I was looking through the New York Times and there was a whole article on the love between siblings and how the love between they're finally studying this thing. Most psychologists have thought about only the love of parents towards children and how that shapes children and their development, but recently there's been more research into the love between siblings and how that develops people and what they found is astonishing what they've actually found is that the relationship between siblings oftentimes has just as much if not more, impact on someone than the relationship with their parents. True? Those of you who have siblings, especially if you're a younger sibling, you're looking at your older siblings and trying to figure out life.

  Brotherly love, Philadelphia, sisterly love, whatever it is, sibling love, Philadelphia. It's very important to be a Christian, is to be a part of a family. That's what he's telling us from the beginning, a family that knows no ethnic boundaries, the way that all of our families do.

  This past summer I was on sabbatical. I took, a longer trip to France, which was really fancy, very nice. I wanted to prepare myself as much as I could. I studied the language like with as much dedication as I possibly could. We dressed a little bit more fancy during that time, OK? You gotta, you gotta look the part, you know, I learned how to say ooh la la and that type of thing and no matter how much we tried, we still felt like we stuck out, you know, we're Americans, we're loud, we lean on things. It's just uh. But there was one place where we did feel like home and it was church we went to church every week that we were there and it was astonishing how we could go into this place where we are foreign everywhere we look different just by our being yet. It feels so familiar. Like we don't speak the language very well, but yet we're loved by people, even when they can't communicate with us very clearly.

  Being part of a Christ being a Christian means that you're part of a family that spans cultures that you have siblings all over the world, which is one of the reasons why we read the the scripture in different languages so we can be reminded that this is not just for us, it's for people all over the world and it's one reason why we. Strive to have a community that is multi-ethnic, multicultural so that we can be reminded that we're not alone, that we are bound by Christ, that we have become brothers and sisters in that way.

  Verse 9 now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. What a great compliment from Paul, you know, I don't even need to write to you about this for you yourselves have been taught by God how to love one another. So what does Paul mean when he says that you've been taught by God how to love one another? He could have several things in mind. He could be thinking about the new commandment that Jesus gave the disciples on the night that he was betrayed, and when he said in John chapter 13, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. But by by this all people will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another. He could be thinking about that.

  Paul could also be thinking about. Their own experience of the love of God. And how experiencing the love of God enables you and empowers you to love other people in the way that God has loved you. Because they've been so loved by God, they can love others. I think often times when we talk about what it means to be a Christian, we can get lost in all of the theology of the gospel, we can get lost in all the details and we forget the very foundation of the thing that draws us together, which is the fact that there is a Creator God who reigns over all of the universe and loves us. That he loves us and has poured out his love to us.

  In fact, one of the things that's most foundational to who God is, is the fact that he is love. First John chapter 4. In this love, in this, the love of God was made manifest. Among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, that we might live through him. God has always existed as love. This is one of those divine mysteries of the Bible, but God did not exist. As a, that's why the Trinity is so important, because he has always had someone to list, to love. He has existed as one God, three persons throughout all eternity past.

  And so through eternity past, God has been loving someone else. He's been pouring out his affection, the Father upon the Son, the Son upon the Father, the Spirit upon the the Son and the Father. It's like that that Spider-Man meme, OK, where they're all just point. Each other they've been loving one another, the three members of the Godhead throughout eternity past. And so when Jesus comes on the scene, it's not something new. Look at it, it said, in this, the love of God was made manifest among you. It preexisted this time, but it was revealed. This, this word for made manifest could also be translated, revealed. The word of God, the love of God was revealed among you. In the person of Jesus Christ as God sent His Son into the world.

  The love that we experience from God is an extension of the love that God has experienced throughout eternity passed among himself. In the Trinity. Because we've been loved in this kind of way, because we've experienced the deep eternal wells of the love of God, we can in turn love one another. Just a few verses later in 1 John chapter 4, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

  I love this quote, and just talking about how the love of God teaches us to love one another. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, he's a Scottish pastor, put it this way, from a long time ago. He says, for every look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God, bask in his beams, feel his all-seeing eyes settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms. Let your soul be filled with a heart ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in him.

  Friends, if you want to grow as a Christian, this is where you start. You have no reason for me to write to you about brotherly love, because you've experienced the love of God in such a rich and profound kind of way that it has motivated you, inspired you, and allowed you to love one another. And so if you want to grow, you have to sit in the love of God. Maybe not literally sit, but you have to bask in it. You have to set your eyes upon him, be reminded of the love of God for you. Day after day. Verse 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia, but we urge you brothers to do this more and more.

  If you remember last week Paul gave us another one of these commandments. He said, to avoid sexual immorality as you are doing, but do it more and more. And this week he says, you are exemplary and brotherly love. Do it more. It's like you made an A on the test. Make an A plus keep going, keep making those A's, whatever it is. He's basically saying no one arrives. You don't arrive in Christianity. The nature of Christian love is that it is always practiced but never perfected. And so do it more and more.

  And I think the same could be said for our church. When I look around in our church, I see a church that is exemplary in the way that they love one another. But I maybe I can give you just a couple of challenges or encouragements with that just looking at our church where we're at right now and and where we're we need to go. I think that there are many people who do a great job of loving one another, so many and some who are especially, especially exemplary in the love for one another. But I will say that our church is growing, and this one of the challenges always with the church that is in a city, that's transient, that's growing, where it feels like half the people here feel new. Where you don't feel the ownership to be the one that exemplifies what it means to be a Christian.

  And so I'll just say this, if you've been here since 2024, you're no longer new. And you now are being called by reaching out and being exemplary in the way that you love one another. And we're all called to this. We can't a couple people can't do it. It's something that we as a church have to do together, and there's several people who are newer to the church that are on the fringes of what we're doing or who just feel left out at times that we have to make a step toward to reach and to love. And so I'm not saying you're doing a bad job. I'm saying you're doing a great job. Keep it up, do it more and more. And I'm just trying to give you a practical way that you might want to do that and think about it.

  So the gospel transforms your social life. It gives you this ability to love people even when they might wrong you, when they might not be like you, when they might not be into the same things as you, it transforms your social life.

  But the gospel also transforms your work life. So he's just from talking about how we love one another to how we work. Oftentimes we present Christianity as something that people do in their time off. It's like you come to, you come to church, you, might pray in the morning or get together with a community group in the evening, but rarely do we talk about the way that the gospel or Jesus interacts with your 9 to 5. What does being a Christian mean for the time when you're not in your time off?

  I love the way that Dorothy Sayers puts this, this she's a novelist in the early 20th century, and she says it like this. How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with 9/10 of his life? The church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to extorting, exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this, that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. She goes on to say, I'm sure that the tables in Nazareth were crafted quite finely. And shorter than ours. They, they sat on the ground.

  Most people in our city approach work in one of two different ways. We have a tendency to overvalue our work. I've been doing ministry in Boston for 13 years this Sunday actually, 13 years. Thanks. And and if I observe anything is that people don't work to live, they live to work here. A lot of times people don't care how much they make, they want to make a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it matters a lot more to folks. How many papers they get their name on. How many rungs on the corporate ladder they can climb, where they can end up in their career, who respects them, what their title is, what letters are after their name. These are all the things that tend to matter more to people here.

  And so often times our careers can just be a veiled attempt to build our identity. Who am I? How do I know I'm not a lazy bum. I have a good career. I'm respected in my workplace, but usually what happens when people do that for long enough, they, they might have some success and Boston tends to attract people that have have success in the workplace, but then. They either get burned. Or they get burnt out. You get burned or you get burnt out. And then you oscillate to the other side of the work life, where it says, I don't care about building my identity anymore. I'm just gonna collect a paycheck and have hobbies, and that's gonna be my life. I'm gonna travel, I'm gonna take my time off. I'm gonna collect the paycheck, move on with my life. And what happens there? You get bored.

  And so you go back to step one, like, OK, no, I have to find my identity in my work because this is so boring for me to just live for my hobbies. Does this feel familiar to anybody the cycle, I think that we, most of us have gone through this at one time.

  As Christians, we have to recognize that the purpose of our work isn't just to make money, and it's definitely not to build your identity on your career. Instead, the purpose of our work is to reflect our Lord, to glorify Him, and to fulfill the commandment to cultivate the earth. If you go back to the original creative mandate for God that he gave to Adam and Eve in the garden, Genesis chapter 2, all the way back, we see that he gives them this creative mandate to to not only be fruitful and multiply, we talk about that one pretty often, be fruitful and multiply, but in the same breath, he says, To fill the earth and subdue it. What does it mean to subdue the earth? He's talking about bringing order out of chaos, contributing to society we were created to work often times we think about work as this bad thing that we have to do, but we were created to work. It's not a result of the fall. Work existed before the fall and work will exist into eternity. It will be without frustration. It will be without sin. But it will continue to exist.

  We were created to cultivate the earth, to make contributions. And so as Christians, we're able to say, work is important, but it's not everything. And we're able to love our jobs and not expect our jobs to love us back. Because oftentimes we want our jobs to love us back, but then when we do, we dedicate religious fervor to our job that only God can receive and, and do with well. So Paul has 3 commands in 1 Thessalonians that reflect everything I've just taught you. First, verse 11, they're all in verse 11, and then he has the results of what happens after that.

  Verse 11, and aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you. So first, aspire to live quietly. He's basically saying, be ambitious to not be ambitious. It's like a little irony that's happening there. Aspire to live quietly. Don't. Don't let your job control your life. That's basically what he's saying. Don't let your job control your life. Don't live to work. Just do your job. Don't feel the need to constantly climb the corporate ladder. It won't save you. It won't give you the satisfaction you're looking for. Don't give in to the temptation to make recognition what you live for. Aspire to live quietly. It's not wrong to climb the corporate ladder, but if that becomes your sole goal, then you're going to have a soul sickness.

  Second, he says, mind your own affairs. Basically mind your own business. Don't worry. In fact, I think the more literal translation is mind your own business. it's just probably not appropriate for the Bible to say mind your own business. Don't worry about what other people think about you or say about you. Do your job, get in, get out, do a good job as if to the Lord. Mind your own business. We can get so wrapped up in the opinions of others.

  Lastly, work with your hands. This is an interesting commandment. I will volunteer and say that I've had one job in my entire life where I worked with my hands. I have been a desk worker for my entire life, but when I was in high school, I, took a job with my uncle who's an auto mechanic, and I worked with my hands in his shop, and I learned a lot of important things like how a push broom works and, how to look busy when you're not busy. And how your employer has to pay you to go to the bathroom and learned these important things at that job and at the end of that job, my uncle said you might be better cut out for desk work. And I think he was right. He said, you have lots of books since and no common sense. I, you, you move on now.

  I don't think that the passage is saying that you have to work with your hands. He's not saying, hey, white collar folks, go get blue collar jobs. I think what he's saying is work hard and don't let any work be below you because in this ancient culture, manual labor was oftentimes seen as something that slaves will do. And so, most people thought it was below them to do manual labor. And so what he's saying is, no, manual labor is not below you. Do the work in front of you. Get, get your hands dirty, do the work that you have in front of you. Don't be afraid of the dirty work. Be humble in your work.

  So those are the 3 commandments, and then Paul tells us why these are important. He says, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and depend on no one. So that you may walk properly before outsiders and depend upon no one. Show of hands, who here hates group work as much as I do? Hopefully I hate group work. It was, it was the worst. that's why I don't do it anymore. I do group work all the time, but, I. I hated group work and the reason why I hated group work is because I'm highly strong and will if I feel like someone's being lazy, I'm not gonna take a B, OK? I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna get all the work done by resonate a little bit where you feel like other people are just riding your coattails the whole time you did the the group project.

  Never mind the fact that that's basically the gospel, OK? That Jesus does all the work and we get all the benefit, OK? That's basically what we believe. I don't like it, OK? but what he's saying here, Is that You have to do your job because we all work in jobs that have group work for the most part. And if you aren't contributing, that you're a bad testimony to the gospel. That you are a bad person. You people will see you as a bad person if you don't contribute to society.

  And so what he says is that you may walk properly before outsiders if you wanna walk properly before outsiders, you have to do your job and do it well. It's part of you have to have a strong work ethic and be dependent upon no one. As Christians, we, we want to be able to contribute to society. It it's interesting because he's like, you could make money, do it, be dependent upon no one. Don't be in debt if you can avoid it. Don't like be out there begging if you can avoid it. He's not, he's not making a condemnation upon unemployment, don't get me wrong, sometimes we go through times like that, but if you were able to work, work. It seems like in the Thessalonian church, there were some who thought that Jesus would return very soon, and so they quit working. They gave up.

  But he's saying, no, part of your creative mandate is to work and to work hard. And as Christians, we have more reason than anyone to work hard. 1 Corinthians 10. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And so when we work, we're doing it with this glory of God in mind. Now, how do you do it? I'm just gonna conclude here, OK. You might be in a job that you feel like doesn't have purpose, and so you, a lot of times when you preach this type of sermon, people are like, that's it. I'm gonna find the most purpose-filled job I can find. I'm quitting what I'm doing, I'm going to seminary. I'm a pastor now. That's not the calling on most of you, OK? That was the calling for me, but not for most of us.

  There's plenty of ways that you can contribute to society and be a Christian without being a pastor. And anything that contributes to society can be like this. Something as simple as driving the street sweeping truck through Somerville. I'm grateful for that. Our streets are clean. It's nice. You know what I'm really grateful for? Air conditioning. You know who you have to, I wish it was on now, um. You know what you have to have to have air conditioning. You have to have engineers contributing to society. You have to have people inventing these things. You have to have chemists thinking about the Freon and everything that goes with that. You have to have the HVAC repair guys praise the Lord for them who maybe one will answer my phone call if we just praise them enough.

  You have to have people contributing to society. I'm thankful for the Department of Public Works person who empties the trash in the in the park so that I have somewhere to throw my coffee cup when I'm done. Whatever you are doing, try to find a creative purpose for it. The way that it helps people contributes to society, and it will give more meaning and purpose to your job.

  Now sometimes I do see employers abuse this. Has anybody ever experienced this where they're they're like, you're here for a purpose, think of all the lives you're going to save, work harder. That's why we work 80 hour weeks here. And it's an abuse on the truth that we know that's why it's so effective because it is the truth it's the best way to be motivated, but when you twist that and manipulate it, it becomes an abuse and that's not the way that God would want that to happen, so you have to protect yourself from that also.

  But as a Christian, your work, your primary purpose can't be to simply make money, you'll get bored and miserable, and it's definitely cannot be to build an identity for yourself. You'll burn out and only experience pain. You have to instead see your work as a calling. And to do everything to the glory of the Lord. To work for his glory and his pleasure and contribute to society, even if it's not and and use your work as you can, as the Lord gives you money, you contribute to those who are in need. As the Lord gives you opportunity, you share the gospel in work. There's ways to do these things in the workplace, but also just the work that you do brings glory to the Lord, even if it doesn't feel sacred, maybe very secular, but it brings glory to the Lord.

  So to wrap things up, you cannot measure your spiritual growth simply by looking at your, your prayer chart, or how many boxes you check off your, your reading list that month. One, you have to look that those are some indicators you need to do those things, but. Your spiritual life spans all of life, and that's what Paul's saying, that your spiritual life spans all of life, that you look at your relationships, the way that you love others, the way that you include others. You look at your work, the way that you work hard with your whole life, that it all matters to God, that what you are doing from your 9 to 5, matters to God. It's not good news. Good news.

  Each week we take a sacred meal to be reminded of the way that Jesus has given his life for us, that we might live in response to him, and we call it communion or Eucharist or Lord's supper, whatever you might want to call it. But on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus broke a piece of bread and he he said, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we do this, we're reminded that Jesus is with us all the time. Not just here at church, but 9 to 5, the Holy Spirit is with us, that he matters and that our work matters to God.

  And the way that we, and, and so if you're a believer here, we encourage you to come and receive this because Christ's body has been broken for you but let's take a moment to prepare our hearts to receive this meal, and I'll invite you to stand as the band makes their way, back on the stage and and pray with me.

  Father, we, we thank you for the good news of Jesus, that we've been set free from our sin, and God, would you help us to be people who love well, who live exemplary, who love you in the way that we work. That our work would bring you glory. God help us to find our purpose in our work, even if it's small, even if it's menial, help us to find our purpose in our work. And God, we pray for those who feel like their work doesn't have a purpose. We pray that you would help them to figure out the best way to use their life and to leverage it for you. And God, we, we thank you for this communion meal. We pray that you would be present with us during this time. And God, we, we thank you that that you have given your son, you've poured out your love upon us, that we might receive the love of God and be a part of that. And so we ask all of this in Christ's name, Amen.