A Reason to Continue

2 Corinthians 4:1-6

Pastor Cory brought an incredible and timely message today. The devil wants nothing more than to get God's people to lose heart. Paul sets himself up as the example of how never to give up no matter the opposition. As a man who had the world, the flesh, and the devil against him and his gospel work, he understood that the mercy and grace of God was sufficient to carry him through no matter what was thrown his way. If Paul could carry the light of Christ and not faint, then we can too!

Pastor Troy has been in a series series on Worship for a while, but says we will be taking an extended break as the Lord sees fit during the start of this new season. For January and beyond, we will be focusing on the Vision of the church, praying that God will help us to reach the Shumont community and to grow as a church. Pastor Cory is also making his way through the book of Ephesians in his messages, but is taking a break from that as well during this season. We at Bald Mountain Baptist Church are so glad you have joined us here, and our prayer is that you are blessed by this message!

The calling for every Christian is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Well, where does the earth begin and where does it end? For us at Bald Mountain Baptist Church, the world begins in the Shumont Community on top of a little peak in Buncombe County, NC. Our prayer is that through this platform we might do our part in reaching the ends of the earth with the gospel!

Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.

Isaiah 42:10-11

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Troy Westmoreland and Cory Martinez are the co-pastors of Bald Mountain Baptist Church. They alternate on a semi-regular basis, and our prayer is that their insights from the Word of God may richly bless all those who stop by our neck of the woods! 

Please feel free to reach out to us through their email if you have any questions, concerns, prayer requests, encouragements, etc.:

t.westmoreland22@fruitland.edu
c.martinez22@fruitland.edu

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 1 through 6. 2 Corinthians is after 1 Corinthians and before Galatians in your New Testament. Um Romans or Acts Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, all of those good letters there. Chapter 4, verses 1 through 6, put a bookmark there, Lord willing. We're gonna keep going through chapter 4. When you find your place, I would invite you to stand with me for the reading of God's word. We might want to stand for this one, for what it says. We could weep bitterly for what this says. It says, Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, committing ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perished, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants, for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the reading of your word for us to be here together for your good gospel. We're fallen, man is broken, and you love the world that you sent your son. Your simple message. Father, I pray that you do encourage us. Give us a reason to continue on this vision, Father, that this would become a living and breathing in our life as we receive your mercy, as we receive your simple message and your glory through your son. And all of God's people said. Now, a description of a Christ-like person would be someone who emulates the character, the teaching, and the actions of Christ Jesus. Now it's very important to have this goal to be Christ-like, because we're not Christ-like. And because we believe as Christians, as Christ's followers, that he is perfect in character. Now, if there's anyone who could be described as Christ-like, it would have to be Paul the Apostle after his conversion. Now, the apostle he accomplished a lot, the man who's writing this to the Corinthian church. He comes just a lot over his time in ministry, and he only did this by trusting the Lord and having a Christ-like character through the work of God's Spirit and the work of application. Paul would go on missions and spread the good news. He preached the gospel. He remained faithful to the simple message. The just shall live by faith. He was always looking to start a Christ-length community, a church. In every region he was led to by the good Lord. When he went on mission trips, he wasn't taking pictures. He was planting churches after churches after churches. And he kept it moving because he knew the Lord was coming back. The greatest thing that Paul did, other than that, other than those things, was how he handled resistance and suffering and persecution. He expressed suffering as a part of following Christ. And if someone accused him of being wrong, he responded in a Christ-like manner. He would go on to help them understand the Lord even better than before. Paul made sure they were spiritually fed in their accusation of his apostles. That sounds like Jesus to me. The Lord helped them follow him with their heart through this blessed apostle. There were really four letters of Corinthians written, but the other two were lost in time. But praise the Lord. These are the only two we need. Before 2 Corinthians was written, false teachers or superapostles is what Paul called them. They had compromised the church, the Corinthian church. These would have been the Judaizers who preached a different gospel. They did not preach the same gospel Paul preached. They preached the gospel of self-righteousness and self-exaltation. They added the law of Moses to the gospel, the ritual law of Moses, to be clear. They also personally attacked Paul with bad criticism. They called him weak from his suffering and attacked his physical appearance as well as his ability to publicly speak. I guess I would have been in the same boat as Paul if I was there. One of the hardest times in Paul's new life, and these false teachers turned some of the Corinthian church against him, and they questioned his apostleship in Christ Jesus. Someone who'd really seen the Lord. Someone who was blind because the light of Jesus blinded. Along with all the other scriptures, I say that about. He responded in a way that deepens our knowledge of the gospel. He responds in a way that Christ did, full of grace and truth. There's no doubt Paul suffered in his ministry. By the end of his life, he was partially blind because of God's glory, and he was crippled, nearly crippled from all the beatings and the obstacles he had to endure from Rome and from Jewish leaders. The reason Paul suffered, the truth is, is because it wasn't because he's weak. He knew he was weak. He said he was weak. It's a good thing to be weak when you're walking with Jesus. Paul suffered because Christ called him to preach the good news. He didn't call him to preach himself. He didn't call him to preach another gospel like these Judahites. He called him to preach Christ, an offensive gospel. Now there was nothing more clear to Paul than to go and plant churches. And if that means suffering persecution, then so be it. To live as Christ and to die as gain. Now, in our mission, we're called to die to ourselves. Pick up our cross and follow the Lord every day. Now, up to this point, there's no other meaning in life. And I'm not one to debate or argue. But there's nothing more clear than what a church is supposed to be doing because of the fall of man, because there's people getting ripped up by bullets and asses. And that won't be the last shoot. Why does this kind of thing happen? It's because man is fallen. We have to go. We're called like Paul to get the word of God in people's ears and in their minds. When that happens, God gets the word in their hearts. But it ain't gonna get in their heart and their soul unless we go and put the word in their ears and their minds. Even when the Corinthian church is questioning questioning his calling in Christ. What Paul responds is the truth of the good news, the real truth that will move you, a Rhema word. He's responding with real truth that should move your heart and your soul. Absolutely mind-blowing, these letters. Help you. But we got the apostle, the Holy Spirit, inspiring him to write these letters. This is the doctrine of the gospel right here. Good teaching, doctrine, theology of the gospel, right here in verses 1 through 6. Now he begins in 1 and 2. If you look with me, he says, Therefore, since we have this ministry as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. Because we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, not teaching a false gospel like the Judaizers, but by man uh by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Now, verses 1 and 2, Paul doesn't lose heart in the mission because of the mercy from Christ. He ain't gonna lose heart because mercy from Christ. Now in the Bible, mercy is the compassionate withholding of a deserved punishment coupled with a generous extension of love and kindness. Mercy pairs with grace. Well, grace it means receiving a good gift you don't deserve. Mercy is not receiving judgment your actions deserve. Mercy is getting the love of God through Christ Jesus in the place of your guilty action of sin against God. Every time you do something that doesn't glorify God, you sin against him. Everybody does. Not against your neighbor, not against your mama or your daddy or your Gram. You sin against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We need mercy every day in the place of our sin we commit. I'm not the only sinner in this church. And Paul wasn't the only sinner in the Corinthian church. What the good Lord does, when you realize that you need his mercy, when he gave Paul his mercy, like we'll look at, is he hands you his love through the only begotten Son. And what happens next is you receive his vision, his action, his revelation of love in place of your uh sin. It fills your heart until you become free from a guilty flea. If there's anybody that was in need of mercy from sinning against God, it was Paul the Apostle, the man writing this letter to the Corinthian church. He, before he was saved, he hunted, he killed, he arrested Christians, believers of the way. He was trying to kill the little sinful sheep of the Lord. And he did very well so until he encountered mercy that changed his entire life. Acts 9, 3 through 6, Paul journeyed through, came near Damascus, it said, and suddenly a light shone around Paul. This is when his name was Saul. And then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? Then the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It's hard for you to kick against the ghost. So he, trembling and astonished, said to the Lord, What do you want me to do? The Lord said to him, Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. He was blinded. And he went and got baptized. Now, what this is, what we're looking at, this conversion, what this point is, is a fresh encounter with the mercy from Christ. Now, not only were there false teachers in this region, but there were entertainers who were heretics. Like we got enough entertaining heretics of today. In Corinthians, these were men of great speech who said that if you can speak the best in public, you're qualified to tell people anything under the sun. They called them sofas. These were masters of Greek rhetoric who just talked all day long. Not only were there false teachers being the Judaizers who added the ritual law of Moses to the gospel, but there were philosophers who said wisdom comes from within and from what you say. And that's not true. But at the end of it, we have this, the Judaizers, we have the sophas, the philosophers, but we also have the apostle who says he encountered mercy that changed his life, that blinded him, caused him to pursue God through Christ Jesus. What we're looking at on behalf of the false teachers and philosophers is a lack of the knowledge of the good mercy of the Lord. If they knew in their hearts mercy, real mercy from Christ, then these false teachers would never disrupt the church and add the law of Moses to the gospel. If they knew in their hearts mercy, real mercy, then these philosophers would not only would only talk about Christ crucified and not the wisdom of the world. It's important to know that this gospel that Paul discovered was handed to him. Not by man, not by the world, it was handed to him by the will of God. Galatians 1, 11 through 12, but I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached to me is not according to man. Neither was I taught it. But it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. That's what this mercy is talking about. It's not received. It's not taught, but it comes through a revelation of Christ. He hands it to you and shows it to you. It's yours to keep, and it's your responsibility to go and do something with it. If there was ever an application preached at this church, according to exposition, it's this one right here because it talks about trust and being made strong in the Lord. It talks about changing your heart. Real application. This apostle trusted the Lord. He had amazing, life-changing, fresh encounters with the Lord so much that he stuck a thorn in his side to keep him humble. Paul knew the Lord. He knew the Lord would keep him from the time he was saved until the time he went home. The Lord sent him into environments that were hostile where people would get saved and then people would come and beat him half to death. What that means is that more people should be getting saved than what the early church saw. Nobody's gonna come here and beat us up. But the truth is there's not people getting saved now like the early church. We don't know the Lord like we should. That's everyone's excuse. Well, I'm just not where I need to be with the Lord. Well, after reading something like this, you should be able to put it to bed. After today, no one in this church should say that. Well, I'm just not where I need to be with the Lord. Well, not today, not after today. Has this life-changing mercy touched your life and your heart so much that he has stuck a thorn in your flesh to keep you humble? Has this life-changing gospel touched your life so much that you go and you preach and you teach and tell that Christ is crucified and risen from the dead? We need him. We need the mercy from Christ to touch our hearts and our minds and our souls to change it. Something like this will happen to us so much that everyone in this room will be in Sunday school. Something like this happens, and everyone in this room will be at the pyramid. Something like this happens, and everyone will be in Sunday school on time, and everyone will be at church on time, and everyone will bring a Bible to church. That's what the mercy of Christ does. So all of our pride, all of our anxiety, all of our fear, all of these distractions, these devices of the world we're gonna learn about, they dissolve, they dissipate. We need his mercy. We do not know him enough. But that will be the last time we say that in this time. Because the good Lord is alive. He is risen. And he is near to encounter us for this. Continues in verses 3 through 5, if you look with me. But even if our gospel is veiled, he said it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose mind the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is in the image of God, should shine on them. We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus' sake. Verses 3 through 5, Paul does not lose heart in the mission because of the simple message. And now what Paul was given, it was profound. It was clear, it made perfect sense to him. He knew what he'd seen. It had to be made clear, the simple revelation from the Lord Jesus. These three verses are a profound truth. You see in every day of your life. This truth is a sight to behold. It's a sight to see according to the world and the condition thereof. There are two truths in verses three through five that Paul kept in mind while preaching the gospel of Christ Jesus. First truth is in verses three through four. He says, But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled, it is covered to those who are perishing, whose mind the God of this age has covered, has blinded, who do not believe, unless the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. The first truth that Paul kept in mind while preaching the gospel is that Satan blinds the eyes of man. Satan, Lucifer, the devil, he blinds the eyes of man. Now Satan is the God of this world, the God of this age. He's talking about Satan, who fell from heaven, who hates God, who wants to be like God, who was frustrated and defeated, whose time is short, who is not as scary as you think, who is an absolute liar. He is so frustrated that he uses the devices of the world to blind the eyes of man. I know what it's like to be blind. Whoa, I've been there. The only way for a man to be healed from this condition of being spiritually blinded is Christ in the light of the gospel. There are those who are blinded by the God of this age, and there are those who can see from the light of the Lord. Those are the only two types of people on this earth right now, walking around. Blinded in darkness or walking in the light of life. I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. The second truth is in verse 5. He says, For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves, your bondservants, for Jesus' sake. The second truth he kept in mind while preaching the gospel was that the gospel had to be preached in simplicity towards Christ. He had to keep it simple towards Christ Jesus. He wasn't doing what the Judaizers are doing. He wasn't talking all day like the philosophers. In fact, those people were blinded, could be blinded, let me say, by Satan. He addresses this in 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through 2. He says, But I, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The whole time he's responding to resistance and accusation of his apostleship. Under no circumstance or situation can you add to or take away from the good word of the Lord? The pure and unadulterated, simple message you are called to go and to preach and to know and to seek after is that man is broken and fallen. We can't save ourselves. People who shoot into crowds of people like that can't stop doing that on their own. If you let them back out, they're gonna continue to fire, open fire in the middle of them. And so God sets Christ to die in the place of people who cannot stop shooting innocent people. Christ Jesus of Nazareth. He was born, he lived, he had a ministry, he died on a cross, he rose from the grave, he ascended to the Father, and boy, he is coming back again. That's the only way people will be healed from spiritual blindness. That is the only way we in the Corinthian church, and we as a church will be sustained by going and telling people about the Son of God knowing nothing among anybody but Christ crucified. There's never a time that you are detached from this word. Everyone on this earth. There's never a time that you're so far away from the Lord that you can't reach out and deal with God in this way and reckon with his simple message. You're not as far away from the Lord as you think. The Lord is not slack in keeping his promise. You reckon with this message, you turn from being blinded, you are made well, you find rest, like we know, you will not faint, you will not fail. He's calling you out of darkness to this side. Walk out of there. To reckon with the simple message, to tell people that Christ died, or do you want to continue to shoot innocent people? You want to keep doing drugs, Corey, or do you want to be a preacher? And you won't ever fail. You will never faint. If you do the other stuff, you're going to fail and faint. When you reckon with this simple message, he continues to guide you, like we'll find out. We'll can in our later verses. He'll continue to guide you and protect you and strengthen you and surround you with songs of deliverance. You keep preaching songs of deliverance, and I'll keep preaching songs of deliverance, and you watch what happens. That's our new verse for the month or two. Now, this is an important step as a church. I was gonna preach these points all day long. Church that applies the simple message to your heart, a church that applies the simple message to the heart of the church, who is Bald Mountain, a church that reckons with the simple gospel, not the law of Moses. We're not adding nothing, not philosophy, not every religion under the earth, not every religion known to man. Christ crucified. When this happens, we should and will be made strong. There's no excuse to not continue. He will make us strong. His power. This is this is revival, we're talking about. We're knocking on the doors of revival, we're knocking on the doors of the deep things of God, and I'm not driving this thing. God's driving it. We can't lose heart in his mission if we do this. Because the Lord has done the work. If he died on a cross and rose from the grave, what makes you think he won't strengthen your soul and revive your spirit? He is able to revive you according to his word. As we wait on his blessed return, on his glorious appearing. The darkness cannot comprehend the revival power that's in the simple message of the gospel. And now, before we go on, I'll tell the Sunday school, my Sunday school class. There are churches or religions, and I'm not a judge. I'll stand in front of the same God and be judged just like them. There are churches who uh never hear this. Their children never hear the simple gospel, their children never get saved. And they're led by Judaizers and philosophers, and they're deceived, and they never get the blindness of Satan out of their eyes. And they never go with Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

I don't know where they go.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

But they don't go with the Lord. But at Bald Mountain, if you want to talk about sovereignty, sovereignty means that God's in charge of everything. Everything that's happened from, let's say, 1900 to 2026, it's had to go through God's hands. And that's that's that'll give you some meat that you want for a while. But at Bald Mountain, if you want to talk about sovereignty and God's providential plan for every child and every woman and every man in this church, he's landed you here. He's landed you to live by Fruitland Baptist Bible College who won't roll over on the simple message, who won't give out, who won't give in to philosophy, who won't give in to Judaizers. We are given time to have the simple message preached to us. There's never a time any of you can be deceived. You have been given time by the hand of God to receive his gospel. And praise the Lord, Eli and little uh Leah. They took advantage of that. They said, I believe in the Lord. They got saved. Jaden, he got saved. We're blessed, is what I told my class. We're blessed physically. None of us are starving to death. I mean, I'm a little hungry right now. But we're blessed physically because we're eating good, and we're blessed spiritually because we're eating good in the word of God. Do not miss this today. Do not miss this. And now it gets even better. The apostle continues in verse 6. If you look with, he says, uh, for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Paul does not lose heart in the mission because of the glory of God. He ain't gonna lose no kind of heart or energy because of the glory of God that he has behold through Christ Jesus. So much that it made him blind. But it made his soul, it made his soul well. When God spoke light in the darkness, when he created the heavens and the earth, so he does the same through a revelation of Christ. When Christ raises your soul to life, he speaks light and life. In the beginning was the word, and in him was the light and life of man. He speaks this kind of light and life into your heart when he raises you from the dead. When he touches you with his glory through his son, you become illuminated and raised from the darkness of death. You know those real good warm and fuzzies you get when you know the Lord walked in a room with you. That's the light of the knowledge of the glory in Christ. When the Lord touches you with this illumination, this isn't an abstract idea or some kind of abstract concept. This is a real life-breathing revelation of who God is in His Son. Believers come to know who this glorious nature and character of God is when this light turns on around you. A physical light, like that light right there. The good news, the gospel, the simple message, is indeed the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. When you see Jesus, you see the knowledge, the supreme revelation of God. When you see this, when this light permeates your entire soul, you become a vessel, a clay jar full of treasure, a light set up on a hill of exaltation, walking on your higher places, where everybody can see you, because God says that's my child, and he's full of my glory. And whoever hears you will receive the light of glory also. Now, back to my testimony concerning the good word of the Lord. After I got out of incarceration, I was trying to get work with no ID and no birth certificate and no nothing. And it was the peak time of COVID-19. 2020, I think, 2021. The DMV was shut down, the SSI was shut down. I couldn't get anything going in my life. I didn't know anyone I was I was where I was. And eventually I just threw in the tower. I figured I had to return to my old ways. And you know, looking back, I was wrong. I just needed to wait on the Lord. I wasn't very good at waiting back then. I figured I just had to do what I always do. And six months later, I was at my mom's house, her new house, helping them move in. And I had heard about Benthel Colony of Mercy six months before I was in the hospital. When I was in the hospital uh before uh going to my mom's house. It was a rough time. I wasn't doing good in my sobriety. And I remember I couldn't sleep for a long time and I wasn't doing good things over. And I remember I was trying to sleep in my room, but for a week or in about a couple days, uh a light would kept shining in my eyes. I love that light. That light follows me. I was used to seeing visions of the Lord, hearing the Lord's voice the whole time I was locked up. But this kept happening, this light that was shining every time I tried to fall asleep. But the thing about this light, it was like the brightest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. It was like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It was like the most beautiful picture or the most beautiful painting I have ever seen in my life. And it made me feel captivated when I seen it, and it made me feel free, made me feel good, it made me feel like my breath was being taken away. Every time I saw this beautiful, glorious light who shined in my eyes, I could hear the Lord's voice at the same time. But I could only hear his voice every time the light shined on me. He did this until I could completely hear what he was saying. And we're talking about I was about 80 pounds. You know, tore up. I'm gonna get out. If you if I showed you a picture of what it looked like, it's not it's not good. You know, I hadn't slept for two weeks, and this light is shining on absolutely beautiful. When I could hear the Lord, he would say, uh, go. Go. Go, Corey. Go to Bethel. He would be like, I'm calling you to go to Bethlehem. When he would say it, it was like a real, it was like it was almost gonna explode my uh eardrum, but I don't think he was gonna do that. It was just like real heavy, the Lord's voice. It sounded like a rushing wind, uh like the ocean. That's what we're looking at. That's what was happening here with me. This experience I went through in tough times of my life was the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. I could see why he was shining that light on me, because it was the knowledge of the glory of God, the gospel shining on my broken soul. Boy, when I got to Bethel, the gospel was there. It was uh handed to. That's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, of glory of Christ. It shone, it shined into my heart. The more I followed him, the more I needed him, the more I talked to him, that kept shining. And nothing's changed in the meantime. Here I am on top of this mountain, still being led by the glory of God, the light, the knowledge of Christ in his glory. That shines from the face of Christ Jesus. And now, I didn't even time this when I practiced it. I don't even know where I'm at on time. The glory of God got me all messed up today. What is time? Really? Wow. Now, if you think for one second that you are not here to receive this kind of truth that we're talking about from God's word, you are wrong. And you may, if you think that you ain't a part of this, what you're hearing right now of God's sovereignty and his providential plan, you may be blinded from Satan in the devices of the world. I told you not to miss this. And if there was ever a time that I've told you to receive something, it's now. And I know I told you last time I preached, and I told you about the woman at the well, but this even so more. Every kid, every woman, every child in this service. Nobody's excluded from this. He's calling you to encounter by faith the mercy from Christ, because we are not where we need to be with the Lord. Lord is calling you to do this. Through faith, so that he'll touch your heart with your with his divine love in place of your sin. And we're all sinners. And boy, he'll give us a heart for him. He'll give us a yearning. We'll burn for him. We'll yearn for the word. We'll want to go on missions. And we do. But we'll never lose heart. There won't be any kind of question. The Lord is calling you today, reckon with his simple message. You've been given this time. You're not being deceived. Nobody's a Judaizer. And I'm definitely not a philosopher. God is calling you to reckon with his simple message for yourself, for your family, and for this church. Boy, for us to find rest and peace. For him to remove every dark scale from our eyes. For us to see like Christ. That's what the Lord wants you to do today. Nobody's leaving here blinded by the dirty devil. And the Lord is calling you today to behold by faith the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, the glory of Christ that shines from the face of Christ Jesus. So you become illuminated, Christ-like, set apart for God's good use. So he raises your spirit. We got business to do with everybody's head bowed and eyes closed. We got something good. We got meat and potatoes right here. Do not miss this. This is why we are here to receive something from God, from the living word of God, who came in flesh to give us light and life, to give us grace and truth. It's happening right now. That's why we're you have to pray to receive these things. And you pray for you and your family, and we pray for each other. Pray that we all get this. This is a breakthrough, an absolute breakthrough, a new kind of freedom for us to experience. You know, you do business, Lord Jesus. For this time we get to spend with you, to abide in you. As your branches, you are the true line, you are the light of the world, you are the bread of life. We're just your branches. We're we're connected to you. We need you to give us light and life, strength, and peace. Where you nurture us, where you give us nourishment. We need this. Thank you for every single person in this morning, Lord, and I pray we do indeed receive your mercy, that you withhold our deserved punishment, and that we receive your love. That you would give us a heart for you, Lord, and that we would desire more of you, that we would burn for you, that we would yearn for your word, Lord. We take this time, Father, as a church, the real church that Christ started, to reckon with your simple message. We're not deceived. We believe the entire gospel. So that every dark scale this morning, removed from our eyes, that we will see you and know you, Father, that we would walk like Jesus and be Christ-like, that you revive us and strengthen us every day of our life, that we would never faint or fail, never lose heart in the middle. Thank you for this time we get this fin, Lord, that we would behold your glory by faith. That this light of the glory of the glory of Christ, the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ, would shine in our hearts, that we would be illuminated, Father, and we would be set apart and free. That you would set us up on our higher places. If there was ever a time we needed you, Lord, it's right now. And all of God's people.