82 | Examining Future Leaders: Protecting the Church Before Problems Begin (1 Timothy 5:22) Pt. 2

What if the greatest protection for Christ's church isn't better policies...but better stewardship?

In the final message of our series on church leadership, Paul gives one last command: "Keep yourself pure."

Before we can faithfully lead others...we must faithfully guard our own hearts.

Because every leadership decision reveals something about the leader making it.

In this episode, we conclude our study of 1 Timothy 5 by exploring the weight of spiritual stewardship, the responsibility leaders carry before God, and why no human shepherd can perfectly fulfill Christ's standard.

That's why our hope has never been in perfect elders.

Our hope has always been in the perfect Shepherd.

In This Episode, We'll Discuss:

✅ What Paul means by "sharing in the sins of others"
✅ Why leadership decisions carry lasting responsibility
✅ The connection between personal integrity and public leadership
✅ How churches can protect future generations through faithful stewardship
✅ Why every leader ultimately points beyond himself to Jesus Christ
✅ The hope every wounded church and every imperfect leader needs

Every shepherd falls short.

Only One never has.

🎧 Listen now to Episode 82 | Examining Future Leaders: Protecting the Church Before Problems Begin (Part 2) and discover why Christ remains the faithful Shepherd of His church.

RESOURCES
📖 FREE 5-Day Audio Devotional: Renaming Your Story
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you have been listening to Sunday Renewal, then you know this is now the second time I have had to split a message in this series. And I'm laughing at myself a little bit, because every time I tell myself I'm going to keep it tight, the text has more to say than I planned for. But I want to thank you for staying with us. This is Lord Willing, the final episode of what was supposed to be our three part series The Stewardship of Church Leadership, and we have one verse left to finish. Quick reminder of where we are, the series anchor we have heard every week and the one we are going to hear a few more times before this series is over is this truth Christ protects his church when his people steward leadership according to his design. In week one, honor. Faithful leaders who rule well deserve recognition, esteem and tangible support. In weeks two and three, accountability, truth before conclusions, courage when sin is confirmed, impartiality before the watching gaze of God. And in our last episode we began the third discernment, patience in selection, the refusal of haste, the truth that God's timetable for leadership formation is usually slower than ours. And we end it with the question hanging in the air. If careless appointments harm churches and they most certainly do, who shares the weight and responsibility for that harm? That is exactly where Paul takes us next. So settle in and let us finish this series together. Let's get back into the message. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. In a single phrase, Paul connects the act of appointing a leader to the future consequences of that appointment. He tells Timothy, If you are careless in how you appoint leaders, you do not get to walk away clean when their failures unfold. You have a share in what comes next. Now we have to handle this phrase carefully because Paul is not saying what some readers assume he is saying. Paul is not saying that Timothy becomes personally guilty of every sin a future elder commits. He is not saying that when a leader falls, every man who ever affirmed him stands condemned before God for that leader's personal failures. He is not teaching that one person bears the moral guilt of another person's actions. Scripture is consistent across both testaments on this point. In the Old Testament, God said through Ezekiel, The soul who sins shall die. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself Ezekiel chapter eighteen verse twenty. And in the New Testament, Paul himself wrote, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body. Corinthians chapter five ten. Each person stands before God for his or her own conduct. That principle is unchanged. What Paul is saying in Timothy five verse twenty two is this When a man is entrusted with spiritual authority through careless or hasty evaluation, when warning signs were ignored, when the qualifications were not honestly verified, when the appointment was rushed, the people who made that decision share responsibility for the consequences that follow. Not the moral guilt of the sin itself, but the responsibility for putting a man in a position where he could cause the damage that he caused. This is the principle of stewardship. Throughout Scripture, stewardship creates accountability. The steward is responsible for how he handles what God has entrusted to him. Joseph was a steward in Potiphar's house, Genesis thirty nine. Moses was a steward of God's people. The apostles called themselves stewards of the mysteries of God Corinthians chapter four and two. And every leader in Christ's church is a steward of what does not belong to him, the people of God, the doctrine of God, the appointment decisions of God's house. A steward who is careless with what God has entrusted to him does not get to claim he had no responsibility when damage follows. The careless steward shares in the outcome, not because he committed the harm himself, but because the harm was made possible by his failure to faithfully steward what God placed in his care. That is the weight Paul is placing on Timothy, and through Timothy, it is the weight Paul is placing on every leader, every leadership structure, every congregation that has any voice in who gets appointed to spiritual responsibility in the Church of Jesus Christ. Let me give you an image that may help you feel this. Imagine an airline knowingly hiring a pilot who is not qualified to fly the aircraft. Imagine the warning signs were there, the failed evaluations, the witnesses to his recklessness, the documentation of his unfitness and the airline hired him anyway because they needed a pilot and he was available. If that plane crashes, who bears the responsibility? The pilot certainly. He flew the aircraft. He made the decisions in the cockpit. He is personally accountable for what happened in his hands. But not only the pilot, because the people who put him in that cockpit knowing are carelessly failing to verify what they should have known, share in the catastrophe. They cannot say we had no responsibility for what happened up there. Their responsibility is different from the pilots, but it's real. And the families of the passengers know it is real. Paul is saying the same principle applies to spiritual leadership. When a man is appointed who should not have been appointed, and the consequences unfold, the people who appointed him cannot claim they had nothing to do with what happened. They were stewards. The stewardship was carelessly handled, and the people who were harmed by the consequences of that careless handling have every right before God and before the world to ask the question How did this man become an elder in the first place? And here is where this should sit heavy on every one of us who has any voice in leadership appointments, because some of the failures that have wounded the church most deeply in our lifetime were not surprises. They were predictable. The warning signs were visible to those who were close enough to see. The questions had been raised by people brave enough to raise them. The patterns had been noticed by spouses, by family members, by close friends, by previous congregations, and yet somewhere in the appointment process those signs were minimized, those questions were brushed aside, those patterns were rationalized away. And a man was placed in spiritual authority who, with honest evaluation, would not have been placed there. When the failure finally surfaced, sometimes months later, sometimes years later, sometimes decades later, the harm landed on people who had no part in the original appointment decision. The wounded members of the congregation, the families whose trust was betrayed, the young Christians whose faith was shaken, the community whose witness of Christ was damaged by what they saw, those people did not appoint that leader. But listen to me, someone did, and Paul says those who did share in what unfolded. Now let me be careful here, because the same precision that protected the first part of this verse must protect this part too. Paul is not laying impossible burdens on those who exercised their stewardship faithfully, who did the best they could with the information they had at the time. He is not saying that every leader who ever fails reflects guilt on every man who ever affirmed him. He is not telling congregations to live in fear that any appointment they ever made might come back to condemn them years later. The Bible distinguishes between careless stewardship and faithful stewardship that nonetheless encountered a hidden heart that no amount of evaluation could have detected. The eldership that carefully evaluated a man, or the congregation that prayerfully affirmed him, or the leadership structure that walked through the qualifications honestly and appointed him in good faith, and then years later watched him drift into sin nobody could have foreseen. They have not violated Timothy five twenty two. But the eldership, the congregation or the leadership structure that brushed past warning signs, hurried the process, lowered the standards, and laid hands on a man because they wanted him in the position. They share responsibility for what they enabled. The difference is not the outcome. The difference is the stewardship. So let me press the application of this verse on three groups. To the elders listening today and to every leadership body that has any role in appointing leaders or appointment decisions, take evaluation very seriously. Treat every appointment as the weighty stewardship it actually is. Paul wrote elsewhere that it is required of stewards that they be found faithful chapter four verse two. That requirement applies to every elder who has ever laid hands on a man. The standard is not that you got every decision perfectly right. No human elder or eldership can claim that. The standard is that you were faithful in the stewardship. You asked the hard questions, you weighed the evidence honestly. You did not lower the standards under pressure. You did not appoint a man you knew or suspected was not actually qualified. That is what God will weigh, not the outcome alone, but the faithfulness of the stewardship. To the congregation listening today, pray seriously for the leadership decisions being made on your behalf. If you are a member of a congregation with elders, those men carry a stewardship burden they may rarely think about. They are weighing future appointments. They are wrestling with hard cases. They are making decisions that will shape the church you and your children attend for years to come. And they are doing it under a verse Timothy five twenty two that places real responsibility on their handling of those decisions. Pray for them. Hold them up before God. Ask the Lord to grant them discernment, courage, and the willingness to wait when patience is what the situation requires. To future leaders listening today, understand the weight of the office before you ever consider stepping into it. If men of God are going to lay hands on you, they are doing so under the sober commands of this verse. Their stewardship is on the line. Spiritual leadership is not a credential. It's not a platform or a step on a career path. It is a transfer of responsibility before God for the souls of the people of God. Do not seek it lightly. Pursue the kind of character that makes the stewardship of those who would appoint you easier, not harder. And here is the truth that holds this entire point together. Leadership decisions are never isolated decisions. They shape the future of Christ's church. The man appointed today shepherds the flock for years to come. He counsels marriages, he visits the sick, he guides the church through hard decisions, he shapes the spiritual formation of children who may not yet be born. The decision being made about him today reverberates through lives that have not yet entered the picture. That is what Paul is asking Timothy to feel. That is what Paul is asking every eldership, every appointment committee, every congregation to feel. Because a careless decision today can produce a generation of damage tomorrow. And the church, the precious bride of Christ, deserves better than careless doership. But Paul still has one more command in this verse, because while the first command addressed haste, and the second command addressed shared responsibility, the third command brings the entire matter home to the one man who was originally being instructed Timothy himself. That is where Paul takes us next. Verse twenty two again in its entirety Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. After six verses of detailed instruction how to honor faithful leaders, how to handle accusations, how to confront persistent sin, how to act impartially before God, how to appoint future leaders without haste. Paul ends with three words that turn the entire passage back on Timothy himself Keep yourself pure. And I want you to feel the weight of where Paul places this command. He does not place it at the beginning, he places it at the end. Because everything Paul has just said, every command about other people, every standard about other men, every responsibility about evaluating, confronting and appointing leaders depends on the moral condition of the man making those decisions. You cannot expect a man to handle leadership accountability impartially if his own heart is divided. You cannot trust a man to evaluate other men's qualifications carefully if he himself has stopped guarding his own walk. You cannot ask a man to refuse partiality, refuse favoritism, refuse haste, refuse careless stewardship if he himself is compromised in any of those areas. The integrity of the appointment process depends on the integrity of those running it. That is why Paul ends here, not as an Afterthought not as a closing tag, but as the foundation underneath everything else he has said. Now let me unpack what Paul means by pure. The Greek word Paul uses is rich and broad. In some contexts it does refer specifically to sexual purity, and that is certainly a real and important application for any leader. But in the broader New Testament use, this word covers much more than that. It covers integrity, the quality of being undivided, of being the same man in private that you are in public. It covers impartiality, the freedom from compromising loyalties that bend your judgment. It covers faithfulness, the unbroken commitment to do what God commands regardless of what it costs. It covers moral cleanness, the absence of hidden sin, the absence of hidden agendas, hidden compromise. In other words, purity in this verse is the whole hearted condition of the man, his integrity before God, his honesty in relationships, his consistency between what he confesses and how he lives. It is not perfection. Paul is not asking the impossible, but it is uncompromised faithfulness, the kind of life that can be examined and found genuine. And Paul says Timothy, keep yourself this way. The word keep is also important. It is not a one time achievement, it is an ongoing discipline. Guard, maintain, watch over, continually preserve. Paul is saying your purity is not something you reach and then move on from. It is something you protect every day, every week, every season of life. The faithfulness of your stewardship over Christ's church depends on the faithfulness of your stewardship over your own heart. Now think about what this means for leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ. Every leadership decision a man makes reveals something about the man himself. When he weighs an accusation against an elder, his impartiality is exposed. When he confronts persistent sin, his courage is exposed. When he evaluates a future leader, his discernment is exposed. When he refuses to lower the standard under pressure, his faithfulness is exposed. When he stands before God in prayer over the church, his own heart is laid bare before the very one who sees what every congregation cannot. The man making leadership decisions for the Church of Christ cannot hide behind procedure, behind committee, behind tradition or behind position. Every decision he makes reveals who he is. And Paul knows this. That is why he writes the closing command of this entire passage to the man who has to do the work. Keep yourself pure. Because if Timothy is pure, the leadership decisions he makes will tend toward faithfulness. If Timothy is compromised, the leadership decisions he makes will tend toward compromise. The integrity of the church flows downstream from the integrity of those who lead it. Let me give you an image that has helped me see this. A compass must be properly aligned before it can guide anyone else. If the compass needle has been knocked off true north, if it has been compromised by some magnetic interference nearby, then everyone who follows that compass will be led off course. The compass cannot give what it does not itself possess. Its alignment is the precondition for its usefulness. The same is true of those who lead the church. The man whose own heart is not aligned with God cannot reliably point others toward God. He might say the right words, he may go through the right motions, he may even make some decisions that turn out correctly, but over time the compromise of his own walk will produce drift in the decisions he makes, and the people he is meant to be guiding will be led away from where they were supposed to be going. That is why Paul places this command last, if you will, in his instruction about the stewardship of leadership, because every command before it honor, accountability, impartiality, discernment and appointment assumes a faithful man doing the work, and a faithful man is not produced by procedure or position. A faithful man is produced by the daily discipline of keeping himself pure before God. So let me press the application once again of this verse on three groups. To the current leaders listening today, guard your own heart while you guard the church. The very stewardship you carry over the souls of others requires a stewardship over your own soul that no one else can do for you. In Proverbs chapter four verse twenty three the Bible admonishes us above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs chapter four verse twenty three in I the verse is not optional spiritual advice. It is foundational leadership wisdom. The elder whose own heart is well tended produces fruit in the church he serves. The elder whose own heart is neglected eventually produces fruit too, fruit no one wanted, fruit no one asked for, fruit the congregation will have to deal with for years. Keep yourself pure, not because you have to be perfect, but because the church you have been entrusted with deserves a faithful man at the helm. To the congregation listening today, pray for the personal walks of the men entrusted with leadership decisions. You will not always know what your elders are wrestling with privately. You will not always see the temptations, see the discouragements, the spiritual battles they carry in the unseen hours of their week. But the God who sees them sees those things, and your prayers for their personal purity are a real means by which God protects his church. The writer of Hebrews put it this way Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. Hebrews chapter thirteen verses seventeen through eighteen ESV That is one of the most direct calls to intercede for spiritual leaders in the New Testament. And notice what the leader himself is asking the church to pray about that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. He is asking them to pray for his integrity, his purity, the honor of his daily walk before God. Do not assume that because your leaders are faithful today, they will be faithful next year. Pray that God would keep them pure. Pray that the Lord would shield them from drift, from compromise, from the slow erosion that has destroyed leaders in every congregation. The faithfulness of your leaders is partly the fruit of your intercession for them. To future leaders listening today, your personal purity matters long before any leadership begins. The disciplines you develop now will become the foundation of your ministry later. The habits of prayer, of scripture, of repentance, of accountability you build in obscurity will be what sustains you when the weight of leadership lands on your shoulders. No man becomes pure on the day of his appointment. He becomes pure or he fails to in the years of formation that preceded it. So begin now. Walk with God now. Confess sin honestly now. Build the disciplines that will hold up under pressure now. Train yourself for godliness Timothy chapter four verse seven. That training is the most important leadership preparation you will ever do. And here is the truth that holds this all together. Churches are protected not only by qualified leaders, but by faithful men who recognize and appoint them. You cannot have one without the other. A church can have the highest standards on paper, but if the men applying those standards have compromised hearts, the standards will not protect the church. A church can have careful procedures for appointment, but if the men running those procedures have lost their own integrity, the procedures will not save the church. The protection Paul wants the church to enjoy depends on the personal faithfulness and integrity of the men entrusted with leadership stewardship. So we have come to the end of three weeks of Paul's teaching on the stewardship of church leadership. And if we are honest with ourselves, if we have heard these messages with any kind of self examination, we are not standing here feeling proud of our own faithfulness. We are standing here aware that no human leader has ever fully met the standard Paul has laid out. Every elder has fallen short of perfect impartiality in some moment. Every preacher has wrestled with self interest somewhere along the way. Every man who has ever laid hands on another man for leadership has at some point looked back on a decision and wondered whether he handled it with the wisdom God required. Every faithful shepherd in the history of the church has needed grace, repentance, and forgiveness for failures of stewardship, sometimes large, sometimes small, but always real. There has never been a human leader who honored faithful shepherds perfectly, who held leaders accountable with perfect courage and perfect impartiality every single time, who selected future leaders with perfect patience, who kept his own heart perfectly pure in every season of his life, except one. There is one leader in all of human history who carried the full weight of every command Paul gave Timothy in this passage and carried it without failure. One shepherd, whose own purity was never compromised, one steward whose appointment of leaders was always patient, always discerning, always faithful. One judge whose impartiality was never bent by favoritism, one under shepherd provider, whose every gift to the church has been a gift of love. His name is Jesus Christ. And he is what this entire series has been pointing toward. Think about how Jesus selected the twelve. Luke chapter six tells us that before Jesus appointed the apostles, the men who would become the foundational leaders of his church, he went up to a mountain to pray. And listen to what Luke records. In these days he went up to a mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God, and when day came he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. Luke chapter six verses twelve and thirteen. The Son of God, the one who knew every heart, who could read every motive, who possessed perfect discernment in his very nature, prayed all night before selecting his leaders. He was not hasty. He did not rush. He did not give in to the pressure of the crowds or the urgency of the moment. He prayed. He waited. He selected with the patience that Paul would later command Timothy to imitate. Jesus is the perfect picture of every command in Timothy chapter five verse twenty two. He did not lay hands hastily. He did not become entangled in the sins of his leaders through carelessness. He kept himself pure, perfectly, completely eternally pure through every decision he ever made about the leadership of his church. Now you may be sitting there thinking, but what about Judas? Because Jesus' twelve apostles included a man who betrayed him, a man who was numbered among the twelve, a man on whom in some real sense Jesus laid the responsibility of apostolic leadership. And if Jesus chose Judas, how can we say Jesus selected with perfect discernment? Listen to what Jesus himself said about it. Speaking to the twelve, he said, Did I not choose you the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil? John chapter six verse seventy and later in John thirteen, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled he who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. John chapter thirteen verse eighteen. Jesus knew exactly what Judas would do when he chose him. The selection was not a failure of discernment, it was a deliberate act of divine sovereignty. Jesus included Judas in the twelve because the scripture had to be fulfilled, because the redemptive plan of God required that the Son of Man be betrayed by one who had eaten his bread, because the cross itself, the The very salvation of every soul listening to me right now depended on a betrayal that God Himself had foreseen and woven into his purpose. And this is precisely what makes Jesus the shepherd no human leader can fully replicate. You and I cannot see what Jesus could see. We cannot select leaders knowing exactly how they will turn out twenty years from now. Paul commands Timothy to be patient and careful because Timothy is not Jesus. Human elders do not have divine foreknowledge. They must therefore exercise the most careful evaluation they can muster, knowing they will sometimes miss what only God could have seen. But Christ is not bound by that limitation. He sees every heart. He knows every motive. He weighs every soul, and he has been leading his church with that perfect knowledge from the beginning. Even Judas's betrayal, even the worst failure of leadership in human history did not derail Christ's plan. He used it to save us. That is the shepherd we serve, and he is the Christ this entire series has been about. He is the chief shepherd of week one, the one who provides faithful under shepherds to a church he has not abandoned. He is the righteous judge of week two, the one before whom every leadership decision is weighed, the one who walks among his congregation with eyes like a flame of fire, the one who will one day evaluate every steward of his house with perfect justice. And he is the perfect shepherd king of today, the one who has done flawlessly every single thing Paul commanded Timothy to do. But there is more we cannot leave unsaid, because the Christ who modeled perfect leadership did not stop there. He did not merely demonstrate the standard, he carried the consequences when human leaders failed to meet it. Every careless appointment that has ever wounded the church, Christ bore its weight. Every leader who has ever drifted into the sin Paul warned about, Christ bore the judgment that drift deserved. Every congregation that has ever been harmed by leadership failure, Christ entered that harm with his people and carried it to the cross. The same Jesus, who selected his own apostles with perfect patience, walked deliberately into the unjust trial of the religious leaders who were pointed false witnesses against him. The same Jesus who modeled perfect personal purity, took on himself the impurity of every person who ever stood in a leadership office he never should have held. The same Jesus, who is the perfect shepherd king, laid down his life as the good shepherd for sheep who had been harmed by every kind of failed shepherding the world has ever seen. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. twenty four and twenty five. That is the cross, that is the Christ, and that is the shepherd to whom every soul wounded by leadership failure, every soul tempted by leadership ambition is being called to return. We begin this series with a single sentence. Christ protects his church when his people steward leadership according to his design. He protects his church by providing faithful shepherds and calling us to honor them. He protects his church by establishing accountability and calling us to exercise it with truth, courage, and impartiality. He protects his church by demanding careful discernment and calling us to select future leaders with patience, shared responsibility, and personal purity. And underneath all three responsibilities, undergirding every command, sustaining every steward, redeeming every failure, there stands the one whose perfect leadership of his own church is the reason any of this matters at all. The chief shepherd, the righteous judge, the perfect shepherd king. He is Jesus Christ, Lord, Savior, and head of the church which He purchased with his own blood, and He is calling even now. And here is what is at stake. Honor without accountability produces corruption. Accountability without honor produces suspicion. Leadership selection without discernment produces future problems. The church needs all three. Christ designed all three, and his people are called to steward all three, together, not one at the expense of the other. The call before us is clear. Honor your faithful leaders, tell them what they have meant to you, pray for them by name, support them tangibly, hold leaders accountable, pursue truth, exercise courage, refuse favoritism before the watching gaze of God. Examine future leaders with patience and prayer. Refuse haste. Take stewardship seriously. Keep yourselves pure as you keep watch over Christ's flock. Be the church Christ is calling us to be. Because the church does not belong to its elders, it does not belong to its preachers, it does not belong to its longest tenured families, its largest donors, or its institutional history. The church belongs to Christ. He purchased it with his own blood. He governs it with perfect wisdom, he shepherds it with patient love, and he has called every one of us to steward what he has entrusted to us according to his design. But before any of us can steward his church, we have to belong to him. And some of you listening to me right now have never come to him. You have walked with us through weeks of preaching, you have heard the call to honor faithful leaders, you have heard the warning about accountability, you have heard the wisdom of careful discernment. But you yourself have never personally come to the Christ this series has been about. He is calling you today. Even if you have walked away from the church wounded, even if your trust has kept you at arm's length for years, even if you came into this series expecting nothing. So come, hear the good news that God loved you enough to send his son John chapter three verse sixteen. Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose on the third day, Corinthians chapter fifteen, verses one through four, Romans ten seventeen. Repent of your sins, turn from the life you have been living, and turn to Jesus Christ. Acts chapter two, verse thirty eight. Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Son of the living God, Romans ten nine and ten. Be buried with him in baptism and raised to walk in the newness of life Romans chapter six verses three and four, and live faithfully to the chief shepherd of your soul. Come, let us pray. Father, we have walked through hard ground over these weeks. You have searched us as only you can. You have shown us where your church has failed and where our hearts have drifted. You have placed before us the standards you established for the stewardship of your church, and you have shown us the only one who has ever fully met them. For every wound we have carried into these messages, heal what only you can heal. For every leader listening today who has felt the weight of these commands, sustain them, strengthen them, keep them faithful. For every congregation wrestling with hard questions about its leadership, grant wisdom, courage and the fear of God. And for the one who has never come to Jesus Christ, oh let today be the day. Let them feel the call of the chief shepherd reaching for them. Open hearts, soften hearts, and give them the courage to come. We thank you that you have not left your church without shepherds. We thank you that you have given us your word as the blueprint for stewarding what is most precious to you. And most of all, we thank you for the Christ, who is chief shepherd, righteous judge, and perfect shepherd king, and the one who alone has saved sinners like us. In his name, the name above every name, the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen. Thank you for spending this time with me on Sunday Renewal. My prayer is that today's episode encouraged your heart, strengthened your faith, and reminded you that God is still at work, redeeming, restoring, and shaping your story for his purpose. If this message spoke to you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone in your life, a friend, a family member, or a coworker, because God often uses one simple conversation to bring renewal to someone else's journey. And if you have a moment, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts truly helps others discover messages of hope and faith when they need them most. Before you go, I want to invite you into a deeper journey. I've created a free five-day devotional called Renaming Your Story From Pain to Purpose to Legacy. In just 10 minutes a day, it's designed to help you walk through healing old wounds, breaking false labels, is stepping into the fruitfulness and legacy God intends. If there's someone you love who needs encouragement, healing, or direction, or if this journey is for you, this resource is available now. Just click the link in the show notes to get started. Remember this God is present, your past does not define you, and your story is still in motion. Until next time, walk by faith, stay open to God, and trust Him with the next step. God bless you.