What Make the Church the Church l God Answers Prayer l Pastor Jamie Kemp

What Make the Church the Church (Week 3)  l  God Answers Prayer  l  Luke 18:1-5

Life Group Guide: https://bit.ly/life-group-guide

The only way to fail at prayer is to not pray.

We are continuing our series, What Makes the Church the Church, and today we’re diving into our third Biblical Core Value: God Answers Prayer.

We often get discouraged when we don’t see immediate changes, but God calls us to persistence. Whether you are waiting for a breakthrough, a healing, or direction in your life, remember this:  Don't let your circumstances get between you and God; instead, put God between you and your circumstances.

Our most powerful prayers are the ones rooted in His promises. When life gets complicated, remember that the blessings of God often complicate our lives in beautiful, holy ways.

Whatever you are praying for today, don’t quit. Keep praying, keep trusting, and keep working.

Transcript

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Welcome to IS Jakarta. I'm Pastor Jamie, and I'm excited that you're joining us for this week's message. At IES Jakarta, from young to old, new visitor to founding member, married and single, no matter where you're at on your spiritual journey, you are welcome here. To find the most updated information about IS Jakarta and how you can get connected, follow us on Instagram at IS Jakarta. Thanks for listening. Great to see you guys here on a great Saturday night. Thanks for coming out. I'm always glad to see the Saturday night crowd uh here with us uh tonight. Um early on in my time in Indonesia, you know, I've some many of you know I've been in Indonesia for 17 years, but early on in my uh time in Indonesia, I was in uh I was invited to attend a rapata era or a or a regional meeting for pastors in the city of Pekin Baru. And I I was kind of new to Indonesia, and I mostly just sat in the back while all these pastors uh were kind of conducting their meeting, and and I was really kind of just working on my vocabulary words, all right, like writing down different words, um, especially church words. I was trying to figure out, okay, Pengharapan, you know, okay, that's hope and stuff like that. So I'm trying to figure out all my vocabulary words and and uh uh uh especially the church. But at the end of the meeting, the katua or the the leader of the meeting invited me to come from the back to to to come to the front and close the meeting in prayer. Whoa, now that was scary because you know, to no brul and to to to have small, to speak in Indonesian with others, no problem. But to pray in Bahasa, ooh, that's next level, right? You know, like uh you gotta use the unkau and stuff like that. You know, that's a that's different, all right? So now I'm all nervous, especially I'm gonna pray in front of 50 to 60 pastors. I mean, these are like professional prayers, right? So so so now I've gotta grab the mic, I gotta pray in Bahasa, and I can remember getting the microphone and kind of be super nervous and I remember looking up and all the pastors, they got their heads down, they're ready to pray, and and and I and I wanna pray, and all of a sudden my mind, it just goes blank, right? I I can't remember Bahasa, I can't remember English, my Bahasa roll, everything is gone. I lose it all, all right? So I'm just like, what do what do I say? What do I pray? And I and I remember just kind of in the timidity of that moment, I go, I go, hallelujah. And all the pastors they go, hallelujah. And I'm like, all right, here we go, let's go. And so now I'm feeling a little more brahny, a little more bold. I go a second time, I go, I go, hallelujah, and all the pastors, hallelujah. So I kind of look around, I'm like, all right, one more time. All right, so I go a third time, hallelujah, and all the pastors they lift their hands, hallelujah, you know. So it's great. And so after I prayed, after the kebak and after the service, um, um several of the pastors come up to me and they're like, Oh, Pastor Jamie, you're so spiritual. You said hallelujah three times before you prayed. All right. So just a little advice. If you don't know what to pray, um, if you say hallelujah first, uh people will think, oh man, that person's so spiritual. You know, they they must walk with Jesus. All right. So after I say that, um now I'm ready to pray. All right. I'm I'm kind of relaxed now. I'm ready to pray in Bahasa. And I want to pray this. I want to pray, uh, Tuhan kami mamujiang kao. Lord, we we praise you. All right. So I say, you know, Tuhan Jesus, kami mamujiang ka, we praise you. And all the pastors, hallelujah, all right. And then I want to say, I want to pray, Lord, we worship you. Come uh, Tuhan, come in many uh, you know, Lord, we worship you. But instead of saying um uh Lord, we worship you, uh Kami manyumba unkamau, I say instead I say uh uh Tuhan kami manyambu kan kao and um uh which means uh Lord we heal you and so uh and all the past were like tuhan saki, you know, like Lord, are you sick, you know? And so uh kind of a moment of uh like okay, I've been quite embarrassed, uh, you know, after feeling so spiritual, all of a sudden I I lost it all. All right. Well, well, here's what I've learned is there are there are no spiritual black belts when it comes to prayer, all right? There are no professional prayers. Instead, Romans 8.26 says this about prayer. It says, we do not know how to pray as we should, which is interesting because this is the the apostle Paul writing this. I mean, this is the guy who has a revelation of Jesus whose life is totally transformed. He ends up writing half of the New Testament, half of the New Testament scriptures are written by him. He has a revelation of Jesus, he uh encounters the risen Christ, and it's the Apostle Paul that says, we. It doesn't say he doesn't pray as he ought. It says we don't know how to pray as we should. So if you don't know how to pray or what to pray, you're in good company, all right? Somehow, God by his Holy Spirit enables us to take our feeble petitions and prayers and he translates them into something powerful. That God is actively helping us every time we pray to him, that we don't know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us. Right now we're in the middle, like literally in the middle of a five-week series. I'm calling what makes the church the church. Is it the building? Is it the music, the programs, the pastor, or or is it something deeper? Because we see in Acts chapter 2, we discover kind of the a blueprint from the very first church. It's a community that's transformed by Jesus that go on to change the world. They devoted themselves to uh to God's word, they lived in authentic community, they prayed with expectation, they worshiped in God's presence, they shared the hope of Christ with others, and as a result, the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. So, over the last two weeks, I've kind of introduced us uh the two biblical foundations that we must have as a church. Like, what's gonna make the church the church? The first one is this is that we believe that the word of God changes lives. And that's our foundational statement that we stand on the scriptures. The word of God changes lives. Last week, if you were here, I mentioned that that our biblical foundation is this is that everyone is welcome. That no matter your background, whether you're new to church or grown up in church, if you've been far from God or close to God, everyone is welcome here. And today I want to look at the third biblical core value that we need to have. What makes the church the church? It's the word of God, it's fellowship. But number three is this we believe that God answers prayer. That we believe that God answers prayer. Now, prayer is probably the most talked about but least practiced thing in the church, all right? Now, my goal is not to shame you or make you feel guilty about not praying enough, all right? Usually when we hear a sermon on prayer, it's usually like you need to pray more, all right? And then we leave feeling guilty. But my hope is really to empower you and equip you to understand what prayer is and how to pray more effectively. So here's what I want you to know. The only way to fail at prayer is to not pray. The only way to fail at prayer is to not pray. We all know we're supposed to pray, but sometimes we don't know how or why to pray. So as Christians, we're kind of stuck in this tension or this position of knowing we're supposed to pray, but we don't know how or why. So Jesus helps answer this question by telling a story. So in Luke chapter 18, it's it's interesting to me in Luke 18 when Jesus tells this story, the English version of the Bible calls it the parable of the persistent widow. But the Tebe, the Indonesian Bible, uh calls it the perampa ma'an tentang hakim yang takbenar. So let's read it and you decide: is it a story about the persistent widow or the bad judge? All right, so we're gonna see. All right, so this is the story Jesus tells when asked about prayer. Says this. One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they could always pray and never give up. There was a judge in a certain city, he said, who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that same city came to him repeatedly, saying, Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy. The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, I don't fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. Nobody say amen. Um uh I'm going to see that she gets justice because she's wearing me out with her constant requests. Interesting. Jesus says, You want to know how to get your prayers answered? Let me tell you this story, all right? Here's what I like about this story: it shows us how God answers prayer. It's it's like knocking until your knuckles are raw, crying out to God until you lose your voice. It's pleading until your tears run dry. My kids do this to me when it comes to ice cream, all right? Nearly every time we walk past Baskin Robbins, um, they're, you know, Dad, can we get ice cream? And we call Baskin Robbins, we call that grandma and grandpa ice cream, uh, because they can afford to buy Baskin Robbins for the kids, all right? We go to McDonald's for our ice cream. That's mom and dad ice cream, all right. So, but every time, you know, we go buy a Baskin Robbins and they're like, Daddy, can we get ice cream? And they beg. The problem is I love Baskin Robbins ice cream, the mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone. So they they uh they they keep asking, and finally I'm like, okay, I kind of want it to, let's get the ice cream. They kind of wear me down with their constant asking, and I finally agree to buy them and myself some ice cream. Well, prayer is a lot like that. It's not giving up until you get the ice cream. So, three quick points on how God answers prayer. But first, turn to the person next to you and say, but first, that I don't want to lose you. Because I want to make sure that we understand that I want us to be mature enough and to understand uh and pause for a moment to understand that that prayer is not formulaic or magic. Okay? It's not this like if I do these three steps, then God I force God's hand to answer my prayer. So even though I want to give us some some simple points on how to pray effectively, I don't want us to think that of God as this cosmic Santa Claus, you know, that that, or genie in the lamp, that if I do these things, then God is required to answer my prayers. I want us to be mature enough to understand that prayer is not a giant vending machine that when we put our prayers in, they come out answered. Because there's like a mystery to prayer that that I feel comfortable with, that I can trust that God's gonna answer my prayers, but in his time and in his way. So I look to the scriptures to help me to know what to pray and how to pray. And here's what I see from Jesus' story. Number one, persistence. Number one, if you're taking notes, you can write this down. Persistence. Now, what is persistence? Persistence is the quality that allows someone to continue doing something or trying to do something even though it's difficult or opposed by other people. Persistence is that quality that allows someone to continue doing something or trying to do something even though it's difficult or opposed by others. I have a biblical story I'm gonna tell here, but I already have seen some people who do high rocks here. You know what persistence is. Some of you are, it's difficult and something's opposed, but you just keep going, right? Well, in first Kings, on 1 Kings, we read a story about a three-year drought that's happening. It hadn't rained in Israel for three long years. Then the Lord promised the Old Testament prophet Elijah that he would send rain. But like every promise, Elijah still had to be persistent in prayer. So Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel, fell on his face, and prayed for rain. Six times he prayed, and six times he asked his servant, hey, go uh go toward the sea and see if there's a cloud coming. Is there is there anything you see in the sky? And six times he prayed, six times he sends his servant to go look, and six times his servant comes back and says, I see nothing. There's no sign of rain. And this is when most of us give up. We stop praying because we can't see anything changing with our natural eyes. We allow circumstances to get between us and God instead of putting God between our circumstances, us and our circumstances. Don't allow circumstances to get between God and you. Instead, put God between you and your circumstances. So Elijah held his holy ground. He stood on the promise that God had given him. I think Elijah would have prayed 10,000 times if that's what it took. But between the sixth and seventh prayer, there was a subtle shift in that atmospheric pressure. And after the seventh prayer, Elijah's servant looked at a looked to the distance and it said that he saw a cloud in this distance about the size of a man's hand rising from the sea. I can't help but think. What would have happened if Elijah would have quit after the sixth prayer? He would have missed the miracle. But Elijah kept praying, and God answered. Here's what I was thinking. What's the boldest prayer that you can pray? What's the boldest prayer you can do? Is it to pray for a nation? Is it to pray for healing? What's the boldest? Here's the boldest prayer you can ever pray. It's the prayer you've prayed a hundred times before, but you pray it one more time. The boldest prayer you can pray is the one you've prayed a hundred times, but you keep praying it. And recently I've been diagnosed with this with an autoimmune disease. It's nothing major. I have to take two pills a day, every day for the rest of my life. All right, but but be but because I know Jesus can heal me, I pray nearly every day. Jesus, heal this celiac artery. I want to call it a silly artery, but the celiac artery that I have, and it hasn't happened yet. I haven't been healed, but I'm gonna keep praying. I'm gonna keep praying for healing. So don't quit. Keep saying that same prayer, and at the right time, it's gonna happen, but it'll be in God's timing and in God's way. When I was 19 years old, I felt God had called me to be a missionary. I worked really hard and studied and prepared myself to move overseas, but when I graduated S dual, when I finished my time at seminary, I had no direction from the Lord. I had this call of God on my life, but no, where am I supposed to express it? What am I supposed to do now that I've graduated? I had no direction, a calling, but no direction. Some of you guys have been there. Some of you guys are there right now. You know God has called you to do something, but you're not sure how to make it happen. And I prayed and prayed and prayed, but it seemed like God wouldn't answer my prayer. God, where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do? And I'm and I'm bare I'm embarrassed to say this, but there came times in my life when I stopped praying about it. I knew that God had called me into missions, but I got tired of asking. And I felt like God had put me on hold. But a conversation with a spiritual leader in my life resurrected that dream and I started praying again. Is there a dream that God wants to resurrect in your heart? Is there something God years ago, maybe even as a teenager, God had put in your heart that you've kind of forgotten about, or maybe you put it off to the side because you haven't seen it fulfilled yet? Is there a dream maybe that God wants to resurrect inside of you? Is there a promise that you need to remember? Is there a miracle you need to start believing for and praying for again? The reason why many of us give up too soon is that we feel like we've failed God if He doesn't answer. This isn't failure because the only way to fail at prayer is to stop praying. So God answer prayer. God answers prayer means that we pray with persistence, but number two, we pray with promises. We pray with promises. Now you all know uh, you know how in WhatsApp, um, sometimes when you send a link in a WhatsApp, it'll send like a picture to go along with it. And so this week, our uh social media team, they had a post on Instagram, so they sent it the link to our WhatsApp group to kind of boost it so we can all kind of promote it. And when you uh when they put the link there, um it kind of zooms in on the photo, or you know, it zooms in on the link, and it ended up being like a close-up of my face, all right? And so I was like, can we please change that? Because that's actually gonna push people away from Jesus rather than bring them in to Jesus. All right. So uh so here's one thing I'm certain of. Our most powerful prayers are hyperlinked to the promises of God. Our most powerful prayers are hyperlinked to the promises of God. On January 28th, 2025, that's when I knew God had called me to be the next pastor at IS. Before the position was even offered, or any of you even voted for me, I knew that God had called me to be your pastor. I've shared this story before, but but I was just doing my normal daily devotional time. I had my Bible open and my journal out, listening to some worship music early in the morning, and just my regular time with Jesus when I read John 4.38. John 4.38 says this I sent you to harvest where you didn't plant. Others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest. And that's when I realized what the Lord was asking of me. That someone else, Pastor Dave and Gigi, had already done the hard work of planting IS and seeing it grow and bringing it to the position it is now. And now God was calling me to step into this new position so that we can see a great harvest. Somebody'd already planted and done the hard work, and now it's time for us to grow and to bring in more people to grow closer to Jesus. That's why I can stand with such great confidence before you today. That's why I can say we will grow. That this church, that I believe it's the promise of God that He's brought us together so that we can reach more people for Jesus. That's what God has called us to reach more people. Not because of me or anything I've done, but because the promises of God are rooted in Scripture. How many were there that first Saturday night when I preached at IS when I was doing my, I call it running for mayor? All right, you guys like ran me through the ringer for like a for like seven days. I was here in Jakarta, and I went to like 20 life groups that week and had like breakfast, lunch, and dinner with people, and then uh did a QA session, and then uh here at the church, and then Saturday night, uh I'm scheduled to preach Saturday night, uh, and then three times on Sunday. So Saturday night, my first time up here, I'm gonna come preach for you guys. I'm ready, I'm excited, I feel like I got a word from God. Worship is incredible. I mean, I'm worshiping. I get up here in the room, just so you know, it was filled. I mean, like standing room only, because everybody's like, we want to see what this guy's got. All right. So, you know, so I realized everyone to see what I was made of. And it was the first night, even though I was gonna preach Sunday morning, people wanted like first dibs, you know, like let's see what this guy's made of. So uh so the Saturday night, the room is packed. It's a you can feel like the energy in the room. I get up to preach and I say, Hey, it's great to be here. I start my preaching. Was anybody here that night? You guys, if anyone, if you know what happened, if you don't know what happened, the power went out. I don't mean like the Holy Ghost power, like I lost the Bible, but like the literal power went out, all right? Not spiritually, like literally, the power goes out. And so I'm standing here, like, okay, and uh I looked to Pastor Dave and he's like, like, just you know, he's such a cool character, right? He's like, just give it a minute, all right? And so I'm like standing here, and man, it was probably only like 15 seconds, but it felt like like 15 hours to me, because I'm just standing here, like, what do I do? And uh, so we're like, is the is the power gonna like when when's the gen set gonna reset? Or when's uh when is the power gonna go back on? And uh and it wasn't coming back on. All right, so we've got a full house, people ready to hear me preach. And um, so I looked at, I remember looking at Pastor Dave, and I and I go to him, I go, can I keep going? And he's like, sure. So everybody turns on their cell phones, right? And they've got like I'm like uh like all the spotlight was on me. All right. And so that first night here at IS, man, I preached the whole night without a microphone, without anything. Um just Of yelling the sermon. You guys are like, you're yelling now, and you have a microphone. Um, but you know, I remember just like kind of yelling that sermon, and and then right, I don't know if you guys remember, right when I said amen, the power came back on. It's like just incredible. But uh, here's what happens though. I want to show you the importance of the promises of God in our prayers, why it's important to hyperlink, if I can put it that way, the promises of God with scripture. The power goes out, and I find out later, that's never happened before at IES in this building. No one, no one knew what to do, but I want to show you how the enemy works, how how tricky the enemy is. As I'm preaching that night, I start to have a conversation in my head. Have you ever had that where you're talking to somebody, um, you're listening, but you have like a separate conversation happening in the back of your mind, right? And and this is what I hear in the back of my mind. Did God really call you to pastor that church? Have you ever experienced that before? Where you're you're you come in pretty confident, and all of a sudden, self-doubt creeps in. You start to question God and wonder, did God really ask me to do this? Did God really call me to this? And you start to wonder. You start to debate, and all of a sudden I start thinking, is the power going out? Is this like a sign from God that I'm in the wrong place? Not at all. Because I was able to counter that self-doubt, or what I I would even say the lies of the enemy, with the scriptures of the promise God had given me all those months before. That I wasn't just gonna rely on my emotions or my feelings or even circumstances. As I'm preaching, I'm able to stand on the promises of God and say, Man, I know that I know that I know that last January God spoke to me through his scriptures that God is gonna bring a harvest, a great, somebody's already done the hard work, and now I'm called to bring in the harvest here at uh at IS. That's why every night I pray Luke 252 over my son Beniah. Lord, let him grow in wisdom and stature and with favor with God and man. That's why I pray Proverbs 4.23 every every day over my daughter Phoebe. Above all else, Lord, guard her heart, for it's the wellspring of life. Every morning in my quiet time with the Lord, I pray 2 Peter 1.5 over all of you, that you would have everything you need for life and godliness. Here's what I want us to understand. When Jesus says on the cross it is finished, it's not only the final installment of our sin debt, but it's also the down payment on all the promises of God. That no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes and amen in Christ. I mean, isn't that what 2 Corinthians 120 says? It says, for all the promises of God in him are yes and in him, amen, to the glory of God through us. All of God's promises are yes and amen in Christ. Several years ago, uh I saw a t-shirt that said uh that said, I love you 3,000. Does anybody remember that uh that expression? Or uh uh if I was in the teens, they'd be like, Yeah, we got that. All right, so uh one of my staff actually had a t-shirt that said, I love you 3,000. And I remember uh I was too embarrassed to ask, what does that mean? You know, just kind of assumed that we all knew what it meant, all right? And and so I Googled it, and uh, and I guess it's from uh an Avengers movie uh that means I love you more than anything. All right, I love you more than anything. So I love you 3,000. Now get this. There are about 3,000 promises in the scriptures. I guess we could call them the I love you 3,000. Here's the cool thing. Because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, every one of them, every one of those promises are for you and for me. I don't think Tony Stark was referring to Jesus when he made that I love you 3,000 comment. But I do know this: God answers prayers when we pray according to his promises. God answers prayer, means we pray with persistence, we pray with promises, and number three, we pray with participation. Come on, guys. Did you catch the alliteration there? I work hard for that. All right, I gotta shoehorn that one in at the end, all right. That participation, all right. One reason so many of us get frustrated spiritually is when we feel like it should get easier and easier to do the will of God. I don't know if this is gonna be an encouragement or a discouragement to you, but the will of God doesn't get any easier, all right? The will of God actually gets harder. Because here's why: the harder it gets, the harder you have to pray. The harder life gets, the harder you have to pray. Now, some of you guys are gonna be like, that's not my amen point, all right? This is not where you're like, amen, hard life. Woo, let's go, all right. But but God will keep putting you in situations to help you grow your faith. As your faith is stretches, so does your dream, so does your vision of who God is, so does your impact on those around you. Because if you pass that test, you graduate to a bigger and bigger test and bigger dreams and more blessings on the other side of that. It won't get easier, it gets harder. It won't get less complicated, it gets more complicated. But complications are the evidence of God's blessing. And if it's from God, then it's a holy complication. Some of you are thinking, Jangan Tuhan, you're like, no more, Lord, like I don't need any more complications in my life, right? But but here's what I want us to come to truth. I want us to come to terms with this spiritual truth, this what I want to call a two-sided truth. The blessings of God won't just bless you, they will also complicate your life. But sin will complicate your life in a negative way. The blessing of God will complicate your life in a positive way. Okay? So sin will always complicate your life in a negative way. The blessings of God will complicate your life in a positive way. When I married Tasha, it complicated my life, all right? And it really complicated her life, all right. So I want you to understand, and and and to go on with that, man, I have I have two complications in my house named Phoebe in Benaya, right? But I can't imagine life without those complications. When I became the pastor of IS, I got a whole lot more complications. I'm just kidding. Here's my point. Blessings will complicate your life, but they will complicate your life in the ways that God wants to complicate it. So here's where most of us get stuck. You can't just be willing to pray about it. You also have to be willing to do something about it. We're willing to pray up to the point where it gets uncomfortable or it gets too hard, and then we stop. For some of us, the reason why God doesn't answer our prayers is isn't because we're not praying hard enough. I believe that a lot of us are sincere in our prayers, but but the reason is that we're not willing to work hard enough. I was discipling a student in Choccha that had told me that God had called him to go to Ugam, to Gajamada University, uh, but he wasn't accepted. And he was so sincere, but I had to tell him the reason why you didn't get accepted to that university is because you never studied. You know, he was a terrible student. He never had the discipline to get in, you know. And so he's like, but God called me. And I'm like, but he called you also to participate in the plans of God. A couple of months ago, it was probably five or six months ago, um, one of the families here at IS, they came up to me and they asked me to pray for their daughter because uh she was applying to go to the University of Chicago. Man, I'm I'm from Chicago, so I'm like, I got the faith to believe, you know, like I'll pray for you. I love Chicago. So so I pray for her, and I was happy to pray for them. So I prayed, and then two weeks later, the family comes to me, and with the daughter, and they say, Man, our daughter was accepted into the University of Chicago. Thanks for praying for her. And I was like, I doubt my prayers had much to do with it. You know, I think your daughter's grade point average and how well she she did her part and God did his part, right? Here's how I like to say it. Pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on me. Pray like it all depends on God, but work like it all depends on you. That you participate in the answer to prayer. Pray with persistence, pray with promises, pray with participation. More than anything, we need to be people of prayer because we believe God answers prayer. I like what Billy Graham said. Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask. Hearday, yes, we believe that God answers prayers. Marikita Burderibur Sama Sama, would you stand with me this evening? Here's what I want to do tonight to end our time. I want to spend a few moments just in the presence of God because some of us and we've kind of given up on prayer. It hasn't been working for us. We didn't get the answer we thought we we would. But tonight I want to remind you that God answers prayer. God answers prayer. Let's keep knocking, let's keep seeking, let's keep going after it because in God's timing, in God's way, He'll come through for you. So let's prepare our hearts before we leave to say, God, I might need you to resurrect a dream in my heart. I might need you to do something to give me the faith again to believe and to trust you. Would you pray with me, Father? I look around this room and I see so many sincere people. Lord, help us to trust. To trust you again. To trust you again, Lord. Hallelujah. I hope you enjoyed today's sermon. Feel free to contact us with any questions through our Instagram. You can share this podcast with others. And until next time, may God bless you and keep you.