Zach Peters' Podcast
A place for sermons, reflections, and general pondering on life and stuff.
Zach Peters' Podcast
The Potential of Normal Part Three
God consistently uses normal people with normal problems to accomplish extraordinary purposes in the world around us, showing there's incredible potential in our ordinary faith and daily dedication.
• Families are our first mission field, where our daily faithfulness matters most
• Hannah's story demonstrates how personal pain can become part of God's bigger plan
• Prayer is simply ongoing communication with God – like a never-ending text message chain
• Mature faith stops asking "why bad things happen" and starts asking "what God wants to do through my pain"
• Society's problems are spiritual at their core and require spiritual solutions, not just laws or regulations
• Normal dedication over time is more powerful than sporadic moments of spectacular faith
• God can use your pain to help others who will face similar struggles in the future
• Mary and Joseph were ordinary people navigating extraordinary circumstances with faithfulness
• Your ordinary faithfulness today may impact people you haven't even met yet
• Being steadfast matters more than being spectacular in God's economy
Don't count yourself out because you feel ordinary. God loves using normal people who stay dedicated to Him. There's abounding potential in your ordinary life when surrendered to God.
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Well, good morning, good morning. I've got to tell you it can be distracting to have all these kids in here, but I'd rather them here than anywhere else. So this is fantastic. I like this and I don't know. I just think if they're not here, they're not going to learn like they need to learn. And they are our first mission field. Our kids are our first mission field. So if you don't feel called to Tanzania or Yugoslavia or wherever, call to home, call to your kids, call to your family.
Speaker 1:First I'm going to read a scripture, just a part of a scripture, real fast. And we've been in 1 Samuel, chapter 1, for a couple of weeks now. This is the third week, the final week. I'm not going to read the entire scripture, but I just want to read part of it and then we can jump into this week's sort of focus point. And it starts like this it says there was a certain man of Rethiam Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, the son of Joraham and the son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zoph, an Ephraite, who had two wives. The name of one was Hannah and the name of the other was Pananiah. Pananiah had children, but Hannah had no children. We're not going to read the rest of the verses that we have been reading. If you've been with us, you know the scripture. If you haven't been with us, just know that Hannah has a struggle with barrenness and she can't have a kid, and it's a pretty big deal. And Pannoniah makes fun of her, elkanah loves her and there's this whole process of watching this normal family, this normal dedicated family, sort of worked through this problem together, culminating in a very desperate prayer from Hannah and then God being faithful and granting Hannah a child named Samuel. And so this is week three of looking at the scripture. 1 Samuel 1.
Speaker 1:We've talked about the context of the scriptural several times and how, at the time of the scripture, israel is in a very, very peculiar place, very, very difficult place. They are doing the wrong things, they're heading in the wrong direction From the top to the bottom. People have forgotten God and forgotten the guidance of God and they don't even realize they need help. And we know that out of this context, we are introduced to this normal family with normal problems. And we've talked about the main overarching point of this scripture for the past couple of weeks and that is basically don't discount that God can use the normal things in your life right, that there's potential in normal. There's potential in being a regular Christian just trying to do your best. There's potential in normal. There's potential in being a regular Christian just trying to do your best. There's potential in that God uses the normal over and over again to do the extraordinary in scripture and I think if we open up our eyes, we can see that in our lives on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:And so this normal family was a family of dedication, not just Hannah's dedication of Samuel, but we see that through their history they are dedicated year by year, to worshiping and serving God. Right, it wasn't just a moment, it wasn't just one prayer, it was a lifestyle. And it's the same dedication that we are called into. We're not called to a day of worship, we're not called to a day of serving God, we're called to a lifestyle of serving God. And the beautiful thing is he enables us to do that. To do that because it can be a lot to think about God all the time. I've always got to be on. I've always got to do this right and do that right, and it can be a lot, but you're not on your own. God enables you to do that, so that you can do work for the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:Last week we looked at Hannah and we looked at her response to this grief, to this trouble, to this pain, and her response was focused on talking to God, communicating with God. She prayed passionately and she prayed honestly, and then out of that prayer, god changes Hannah Even before he answers the prayer. Hannah's changed and we also touched on how Jesus prays an honest and desperate prayer, and the result is a little different. But in both cases, both turn to God in their pain and God both used their pain for a purpose. Right. Prayer is just communication with God. It's just talking. It's a text message chain. Right, that's what prayer is. It's a never-ending conversation that you have with your best friend, with your mom, with your dad or whoever. It never really ends.
Speaker 1:You're always in communication mode with God, right, and in your problems, in your stress, in your pains, which we are guaranteed to have, our first instinct needs to develop into turning to God, because God will do something with those prayers. In fact, when we believe in our prayers and we believe in the person that we are praying to, we can work ourselves into a place where we can stop asking why are bad things happening? Because we do that. We all ask why are bad things happening to me? And if we can develop a little bit of maturity, if we can have a little bit of faith, if we can look at scripture and look at other people around us and look at their lives and see how God has used them, we don't have to ask why. We can start asking better questions. What does God want me to do in my pain? What is God trying to accomplish in my trouble? Who is God trying to reach while I'm low and while I'm down? Are there people around me who don't have God like I have? And so, while I'm in this position, can I pick them up and carry them back to the top with me? Because, in this position can I pick them up and carry them back to the top with me? Because that's the power of prayer, that's the power of what God can do with your normal, with your prayer.
Speaker 1:Hannah had pain, she had problems. She prays, she has changed, she's given a baby, and yet that's not all. This life of dedication, this life of prayer, this response to prayer are more than they seem. It's connected to something bigger, just like us, our individual problems, our individual lives, the things that we go through that are very personal to us. They take place in a world that's interconnected, that's bigger than us, and this world has problems. Just like Hannah's world had problems, we've got problems that we live in right now, right here, right now, and so around the world there are evils, we can call them evils.
Speaker 1:We're Christian. We recognize them as evil, not just bad things or negative things, but actual evil is at work in the world that creates all sorts of issues and problems. Specifically for us in the US, we've got some real spiritual issues, spiritual issues. People live however they want to live. Spiritual issues. People live however they want to live right. They make choices and decisions based not on anything in scripture, not on God, not on anything like that. Just what do I want to do? What feels good, what's best for me, what's best for my family and I'm not saying you shouldn't consider what's best for you or for your family, but if that's the only deciding factor in your life, well, no wonder we've got so many problems.
Speaker 1:Our leaders, local and on state levels, and on national levels, they're lost right. Republican, democrat doesn't really matter. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them are just sort of in it for themselves. They're missing the point. It's evil. Every other day I read a news story, I see a news story about a church or a pastor doing something that just is horrible and it's hurtful to the kingdom of God. It's a spiritual issue, spiritual issues, and they weaken our nation more than debt, more than a natural disaster, more than a foreign enemy. It's these spiritual issues that erode our peace and our security and our hope and our potential to be a nation that does something great. We've forgotten God. Even worse, many people haven't forgotten God. They just don't care or they don't let the knowledge of God impact the way they do life.
Speaker 1:We got problem with the media right. The media is listen. The thing about the media is that they have to have views to make money, which means they're going to stir stuff up, because that's the only way they're going to get eyeballs on what they're doing. And so I say that to say that they are part of the problem, but also to say that not everything they bring up is just out of nowhere. Even if they are exaggerating, right, some of the stuff they talk about still matters. Racism still exists, guys, it does. Maybe it's not as crazy as what some people peddle it to be, but it still exists and it's evil.
Speaker 1:Okay, we have issues with immigration, complex issues with immigration, we have complex issues with debt, and there are most certainly practical solutions and practical ideas that can be applied to some of these problems. That would help, but for most people, the answer to all of these problems, these practical problems, are laws or regulations, or a retraction of a law, the retraction of a regulation or some sort of elected official or officials who are going to be the savior for this problem. There will be a solution for this problem, but I can't tell everybody in here something you probably already recognize and know you can't solve a spiritual problem with a practical solution. Right, a law can't make you love somebody like yourself. A law can't do that. A law can't make you look at somebody who's different than you, whether it be the color of their skin, how much money they have, who they hang out with, their behavior, their beliefs. Allah can't make you look at that person and love them. Allah can't do that. Only God can do that.
Speaker 1:So you want racism and other social problems to disappear? Well then we have to, as Christians, start acting like Christians all the time and let the love of God and the grace of Jesus unite us in worship. We can't be united based on the color of our skin. We can't be united based on anything else other than the most grounding thing that we have in our life that we are sinners and that we need help, and the help is Jesus Christ. If we can unite around that, well then maybe we can start making some progress towards stuff, because otherwise a law is not going to help, a regulation is not going to help, dei is not going to help. Okay, only Jesus can help with any sort of social problem that we face.
Speaker 1:In general, society is producing broken people. I like to imagine society as some sort of assembly line process and we just spit out adults every day which are broken. They're broken, they're not functioning correctly, and somehow we are surprised whenever those broken people do broken things right and we think what are we supposed to do about this? Well, we need another law, or we got to elect this person, or this person has a better idea. And the reality is it's a spiritual problem and it can't just be addressed with a law or regulation or something new. Right, the very real violence that's around here. It's just a symptom of something deeper, and too often we focus on addressing the symptoms without looking at the source, and so, while there might be practical solutions to the symptoms, they're just going to keep cropping up if you don't cut out the cancer of sin. That's dealing and messing with everything that we are involved in.
Speaker 1:It's a spiritual issue, which means it needs spiritual solutions, and that's a great bit of news for us, because I don't know if you're with me or not, but I feel a little normal and maybe even a little I don't know not qualified to deal with some of these big picture issues that we face. But because it's a spiritual issue, it means I am now invited into the process of being a solution, because your relationship with God is primarily and first and foremost spiritual in nature, meaning that you don't gotta have money to solve a problem. You don't gotta be a politician to solve a problem. You don't have to have some sort of spectacular influence in your life to solve a problem. Just as you are right now with your relationship with God, you have the opportunity, you have the ability to speak to the problems that this world faces. I don't want to make it sound too grandiose or whatever like that, but even for practical problems for your family, you have a solution that's not just practical but spiritual. Hannah addressed her problem not with anything practical, because she didn't have anything practical. They didn't have doctors like we have doctors now. She didn't know why she was barren, so she did the only thing she could do, and that was attack a problem spiritually first, and there was a solution produced by that spiritual solution.
Speaker 1:Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions, which means that you have the ability to say something to the world around us. And, by the way, I'm not saying you shouldn't be in government. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be a politician, I'm not saying you shouldn't use your influence or your resources to do good things. I'm just saying there's no excuse for anybody not to step up and do something, for someone to speak to the evils of the world, whether it's just in your family or in your circle, in a community or even an entire nation. I'm also not saying, by the way, every time you have a personal problem and God provides a spiritual solution to that problem for your life. I'm not saying that's going to produce world peace, but sometimes, like Hannah, something is produced from the solution God gives us that touches more than just us.
Speaker 1:Hannah was normal, with a normal problem, and God answered her pain in a great way. And that leads us to our last point, which has been the overarching point of this entire thing God uses the normal to do the extraordinary. How many of you feel normal, right? You got normal aches. You got normal pains. You got normal broken hands, whatever it might be. You got normal talents. You got normal gifts. You got normal abilities. You're not extraordinary in any real way. You're just sort of working through your normal life with your normal tools and you're just sort of normal. Okay, that's all right. Me too, right, that's a. We are normal, right, you're just trying to do your best.
Speaker 1:Israel is facing some issues and, for some reason, first Samuel decides to start this story with a single, normal family dealing with normal issues. God so often does special, unique and amazing things with normal people. Right, the story. If you zoom into the story and you get rid of the context, it's just the story of a woman struggling with infertility. That's what the story is. It's not about a nation, it's not about kings, it's not about prophets, it's not about judges, it's not about enemies or the Philistines or anything like that. It's just a family dealing with some stuff.
Speaker 1:And then Hannah starts praying and they're dedicated and Hannah prays and God blesses her and she gives the blessing back to God and God answered her prayer in a very personal way. It was a personal thing. It had nothing to do with the nation of Israel, the people of Israel, but God had other plans for her pain. God had other plans for what she was going through. God was going to use their dedication. God was going to be faithful to her prayers. So God answered one prayer for a normal woman, but it ended up being the answered prayer for a nation that didn't even know they needed help to begin with.
Speaker 1:Only God can take your needs. Only God can take your pain. Only God can take your fear. Only God can take your anxiety, your grief, whatever it might be. Only God can take those things and draw out of them something not just for yourself but for the people around you. On a grand way. Only God can take your normal and do something extraordinary. Don't feel discouraged, don't feel disqualified, don't feel like you don't have what it takes. Don't feel like you're stuck in a pit, because God can do something with the pit that you are in that you couldn't do on your own, because that's the God that we serve. He is faithful, he's good, he's merciful, he wants to take care of you, he wants to use you.
Speaker 1:Don't count yourself out. You might just think you're a normal person with some normal problems, but when you give those normal season, you give those problems to God, he so often turns them into something radically spectacular. David was the youngest of many sons, normal, normal kid out in the field. God used him. Just one example, one example of many, not just in scripture but in my own life, that I have observed with my own eyes of God taking the most minuscule, the most overlooked person and doing something great with them.
Speaker 1:Don't count yourself out just because you feel a little normal today. Right, you don't have some sort of great spectacular gift or talent or ability. You don't stand out. Stand out in your dedication to God. Stand out in your consistency, stand out in your prayer life. Stand out in the way that you treat other people, stand out in your love. Stand out in your ability to allow the Holy Spirit to use you. Stand out in other ways. You don't got to be a great speaker, singer preacher. You don't got to have a speaker, singer, preacher. You don't gotta have a lot of money, resources or influence. All you gotta have is a relationship with God and a little bit of dedication. Let God use your normal. Let him use your normal.
Speaker 1:For some of you, that means different things. For some of you, letting God use your normal and stepping into your potential means that you don't grow weary of well-doing, right. We've already I touched on this briefly already. Normal and stepping into your potential means that you don't grow weary of well-doing, right. We've already touched on this briefly already. I touched on this the first week. We talked about this.
Speaker 1:It is extremely difficult to consistently live for God every day. Every choice, every decision, right, it can be a lot to have remunerating in your head, thinking about how am I supposed to please God with this choice or this decision? Because I don't know about you. Whenever I'm in the middle of traffic or when I'm in the middle of doing something for work, I'm not necessarily thinking about how is this gonna impact the kingdom of God. How is this email that I'm sending about a feeder a 2,000 pound feeder that's gotta get shipped here today are gonna impact the kingdom of God right, going to impact the kingdom of God? Right. And you can extend that on down to whenever you're changing a diaper, when you're wiping your kid's butt, like how's that impacting the kingdom of God? Right? And so it can be a little bit of a burden to have on your shoulders thinking about that all the time, but the reality is, don't grow weary in well-doing, because out of that something can be produced in the long run. Small seeds make big trees. Many small streams make big rivers. Right, don't be overwhelmed, stay the course.
Speaker 1:Now, some of you, you've got problems, you've got pain, you've got fear, you've got anxiety and you've got no solution. Right, you've got no hope. You've been to the doctor, you've looked for another job, you've prayed and you've prayed and you've prayed and it seems like there's no answer to your prayer and you don't know what to do. Keep praying, keep praying, keep believing, keep believing that God can take what you're praying for and eventually something will be born out of that prayer, not just for you, but maybe for other people around you. So often we get so tied up with ourselves and us. And what was me? Me? I, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with that. This is my problem. This is my issue, and the reality is God can do more, not just for you, but for the people around you and for your family Belief, for more belief, for more in your problems, right?
Speaker 1:I like this pattern of thinking because it takes the pressure off of these questions that we so often face, that we have a hard time answering God. Why do bad things happen to me? Okay, I don't have a great answer for that other than sin, right, and a lot of people are not satisfied with that answer. That's not enough for some people. Okay, they still don't comprehend it. Why is there sin in the first place and all these things? I'm not saying those aren't important questions. I'm not saying there's people who are qualified to give really detailed answers about those that I've read. That are really good answers.
Speaker 1:But what I'm saying is maybe, when you reach a certain point in your maturity in Christ, we stop asking why has this happened to me? And we start realizing maybe God is going to use this. Maybe God's going to use this brokenness. Maybe God's going to use this season. Maybe God's going to use this pain. Maybe God's going to use this moment that I'm hurting for somebody in the future so that I can relate to them, right, you guys know, I lost my dad recently.
Speaker 1:Two years ago, I lost my brother it was eight years ago, almost at this point now, my younger brother right, you guys know, I lost my dad recently. Two years ago, I lost my brother it was eight years ago, almost at this point now, my younger brother right, and I could be really, and I am upset about it. I hate it. It hurts, it hurts, it certainly hurts, but the reality is I have reached a place where I've allowed that pain to be turned into wisdom and empathy for other people who are struggling. I've allowed that experience for God to use it, to turn it into something fruitful for my life. Out of death literally out of death God birthed something inside of me that I now help other people with.
Speaker 1:Okay, it can be the same thing in your lives for whatever issue that you might be facing. Don't give up. Keep praying, keep going. Let God use your prayer. Let God use your prayer, let God use your dedication. Let God use the normal to do something extraordinary for your life and perhaps even for the people around you.
Speaker 1:By all accounts I'm almost finished by all accounts, mary and Joseph were normal, ordinary people. They were faithful, right. We get a sense that they were very faithful. We get a sense that they were obedient even in stressful times. But they were normal. They weren't kings, they weren't super wealthy, they were just sort of living their life and they had to work through their normal life dealing with some pretty significant stuff. They had to work through Mary being pregnant before being married right, and I know that maybe the stigma against that has changed considerably in our culture. There's certainly still a stigma around that issue now.
Speaker 1:But can we put ourselves 2,000 years ago in a holy, traditional society where this is a thing that's happened and Mary and Joseph, who are both righteous and holy, have to deal with that? They got to deal with it, and there's normal people, normal teenagers, trying to figure this thing out. How am I supposed to do this? They had to work through going to Bethlehem while Mary was ready to burst. I don't know about you, but I've got enough experience to know that whenever you are pregnant, things aren't normal. Driving down the road isn't normal whenever you're pregnant, when your wife is pregnant, right.
Speaker 1:And so you go to Mary and Joseph and they don't have paved roads, they don't have cars, they don't have buckies. They don't have cars. They don't have buckies, they don't have any of that. They got a donkey. And then they get to a place and there's not even room for them and so there's no Airbnb. Right, they couldn't call ahead, they couldn't secure a Marriott hotel, and they're. They got to deal with that. They got to deal with it. They're just normal trying to do their best trying to deal with it.
Speaker 1:Right, they got to deal with that. They've got to deal with the fact that now Mary is going to give birth without her family around, right, ladies, do you want to give birth by yourself, with no help? I'm going to tell you, tara's out there. Go ahead and tell you I was useless during Tara's birth. I just sat there and held her hand. That was it. She screamed at me a little bit. Maybe that helped. I tried to make some jokes. It wasn't funny. I guess the nurses laughed. She didn't, right.
Speaker 1:And so Mary and Joseph are dealing with this childbirth by themselves. Hope, maybe a woman came and helped. I don't know. There were probably some cows around, some sheep around, I don't know, but they're just normal dealing with this. They had to deal with having to go and flee to Egypt because Herod was trying to kill them. They had to deal with it. They had to deal with it and so they were working through these normal life stresses, these normal problems, these things that they're doing.
Speaker 1:They lose Jesus at one point. They leave him behind. Right, we haven't left Benjamin or Adeline or Ivy anywhere yet, but my mom left me at church a couple of times. Right, we haven't left Benjamin or Adeline or Ivy anywhere yet, but my mom left me at church a couple of times, right, but they realized, like at least 15 minutes down the road before they turned around and they interrupted me trying to catch some lizards in the church yard. Okay, right, but they left Jesus and they didn't realize that he was gone until like a day later.
Speaker 1:They're normal. They're normal, but they're faithful, and maybe they had some hints, maybe they had some clues, but they had no idea what their normal life and their normal faithfulness and their normal dedication was going to produce on the end of what they're doing as a parent. Their normal produced something. I mean the most extraordinary thing. Your normal can produce something extraordinary.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've heard the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. You recall that Jesus goes to Samaria, the Samarians and the Jewish people don't like each other. I'm not gonna give you a big social lesson here and Jesus has this miraculous but normal experience with this woman. Normal for Jesus, let's say it that way, because everything Jesus did is amazing, but it's sort of his norm and he has this normal experience with this woman, this personal experience with this woman, where the woman sort of is transformed and receives this living water and something is unlocked in her mind, where she recognizes and realizes something has changed and it's a very individualized thing for her that quickly spreads to her community. She runs back into her town and she tells everybody all this stuff and, because she is a woman of ill repute, people pay attention to what this woman is saying, and so the entire community receives teaching from Jesus, which is awesome. But then Jesus leaves the town and the Sumerians leave the story for a while, and it's not until Jesus is gone, he's crucified and resurrected and returned to the father and the church has been born in Jerusalem, and then the Jerusalem church is persecuted and then people flee from Jerusalem, and some of the people who flee from Jerusalem they end up where they end up, in Samaria, and, lo and behold, they run into people who not only were familiar with Jesus, who had heard Jesus, but they believed in Jesus and they were ready for the church to grow and to explode. Out of one woman's normal encounter with Jesus was birthed the expansion of the church years later.
Speaker 1:Your normal matters the miracle God can provide you whenever you are faithful and you believe and you pray. It matters not just for you, but it might matter for your family in the future, it might matter for your neighbor, it might matter for your coworker, it might matter for your church, it might matter for somebody that you've not even met yet. But if you are faithful now, if you believe now, if you pray now with faith, there's no telling what God might do in the future. Don't count yourself out. God loves normal, loves normal.
Speaker 1:And for you guys who are hearing this, and for anybody who ever might hear the random recording that I do of this, there is abounding potential in your ordinary. You don't have to be spectacular, you've got to be steadfast. A dedicated relationship to serving God is a potent thing. That doesn't mean everything's going to be perfect. It doesn't mean that we're going to reach some points whenever we are desperate and we are hurting and we have some very tearful and prayerful moments with God. It doesn't mean that you're going to reach some points whatever. We are desperate and we are hurting and we have some very tearful and prayerful moments with God. It doesn't mean that you're not going to have doubts. It doesn't mean that God's going to answer every prayer the way that you want God to answer that prayer.
Speaker 1:But God can use you. God can use the pain. He can use your failure, right, all of us in here have had failures in our life, maybe moral failures, practical failures. God, all of us in here have had failures in our life, maybe moral failures, practical failures. God can use them. Don't count yourself out. There's grace and mercy for your life. God can use your ordinary. Let's pray, let's pray and I'm going to simply pray a simple prayer, and I always encourage you to pray with me.
Speaker 1:Prayer is not a spectator sport. We're not standing in a stadium watching me play baseball, right, we are in this thing together and so we're going to pray together and I do mean together, all of us, everybody in this room, even if you're praying in your head but we're going to pray together. That God would help us to stay steadfast, to stay dedicated to pray and to have faith and to believe that God can use the normal of our life. Some of you might be going through some stuff right now. Lift that up to God in this moment, in a prayer of desperation and honesty. Lift that up to God and see what he will do with it.
Speaker 1:Some of you, maybe your life is pretty good right now, but God wants to use you in greater ways. Pray for boldness, pray for opportunity, pray for just a deeper level of getting closer to God, but we're going to pray right now that God do something spectacular with our ordinary Heavenly Father. We come to you right now, together, praying as one that you encourage us and help us and strengthen us, that we would be dedicated to you, that we would be focused on you, that we would follow you even when it's tough, even whenever it seems so mundane and so ordinary, that we would stay steadfast to you and hold on to you. Holy Spirit, even right now, anoint us for the task, anoint us for the purpose of proclaiming your gospel. God. Use our pain. Use our pain, lord. Use our hurt. Use our stress. Use our failures.
Speaker 1:Lord, I pray that your grace and mercy would abound in our life and that you would transform our failures into something for the glory of your kingdom.
Speaker 1:Lord, I pray that you would take even sickness, take even hurt, take it all, lord, and turn it on its head and produce something fruitful for the kingdom of God, in our lives, for our families. Lord, for those in here who are struggling right now with something whether it be financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially it doesn't matter, god, whatever it is I pray that you would hear their prayers right now, hear their heart, see their heart and answer their prayer in a mighty, mighty, mighty way. Lord, I pray that we would not be discouraged, that we would not grow wary of well-doing, lord, that we would be okay being normal, that we'd be okay being ordinary, but that we would believe that out of it can be produced something for our neighbors, for our family, for our friends, for our churches, for our communities, for people we've never even met yet. Lord, god, have your way in our lives. In Jesus' mighty name, I pray and we all say amen.