[SERMON] The Name of God | Hebrews

Discover the power and meaning behind the name of God in this inspiring sermon, the first in our new “Hebrew” series. Pastor Cyle unpacks the significance of names in the Bible, focusing on “Yahweh”—the covenant name of God—and how it shapes our understanding of faith, worship, and daily living. Through personal stories, biblical insights, and a heartfelt blessing, you’ll be invited to reflect on how every breath can become an act of worship and how God’s presence is woven into every moment of our lives. Whether you’re new to the Bible or seeking a deeper connection, this message will encourage you to live with purpose, speak God’s name with reverence, and embrace the peace and grace He offers. Join us as we explore the richness of God’s name and what it means to truly live for Him.

Transcript

 But it's NAMEvember. And so names matter. And we are going into a new series called Hebrew, and we did a series earlier in the year called, it's All Greek to me and J. If you don't know, the Bible was not written in English, just so you know. I know we all love English, but it wasn't written in English. It was written in Hebrew and the Old Testament in Greek mostly.

In the New Testament, there is some little bit of Aramaic thrown in, especially like when Jesus is speaking at times. So that's kind of where we get like the original languages from scripture. So when we get to to talk in English about the Bible, we're actually talking about something that was written in a different language that was in, translated to our language.

And then ultimately we have to figure out that means and how your Bibles come together. Some of you have a Bible version. That's the ESV English Standard version. Some of you have NIV, new international version. Some of you have NLT. Some of you have King James version. It doesn't matter what version of the Bible you have, whatever version you can read.

That's the best version for you. Whatever you feel like you can read. Some of them are more complex, some of them are less complex because as they take and translate the original languages, here's how this works. A company, um, gets the Bible is actually free. There's the rights to the Bible. It's free.

Until you put out your version of the Bible. Once you take your version of the Bible and then you translate it and make, as long as you change like 10%, you can copyright that Bible and sell it. So Zondervan, um, Thomas Nelson, uh, Dale, all these publishing companies have done that. They've taken what was free.

They've changed it based on their processes, and then they copyright and sell it to you. That's why we have these different companies and not one universal Bible. And how they do that is when they get together, they get a group of like 40, 50 scholars together and they, those scholars, if they're gonna translate the Old Testament, they'll get Hebrew scholars together who like know Hebrew.

They've studied it. That's their whole degree, their process. They know what the language meant back then, they know how to write it in English. And then they get those scholars together and they go like word by word, verse by verse through the original languages. And they come up with what they feel like that means in English.

Today and they put down a Bible. They do the same thing for Greek and they get all these different scholars together. And when the companies do it, they hire their own scholars to create their own Bible version so they can copyright it and sell it and make money. The Bible is the most so book in the world.

It's the most read book in the world. Uh, the Bible's up 40% this year. There has been a push back to Christianity over the last few years. The Bible sales are up 40%. Bibles make publishers a lot of money. A lot of money and someone who's very involved in the Christian publishing world, they make a lot of money with Bibles and so having a new Bible and all these new Bibles and cool bibles, you see, they keep putting them out because new products that are Bibles sell every couple years.

You wanna buy a new one. It's just like everything else. And so ultimately that's how the Bible comes together. And so these scholars, they take time and care trying to create a version of the Bible that some of the versions are more word for word. They're trying to take the exact Greek word and the exact language word, English word meaning, and match them together, and then put them in the sentence the way that they were written.

The problem is that can be very confusing for modern readers because we, we write English. Subject verb object. Not every language is like that. Spanish is different, other languages are different. Uh, and we also read our books from left to right. That's how we read. Hebrew is written right to left, and so it is written in a different, different language with the way they, they wrote everything different.

So scholars have to get together and try to go word for word. Or they go thought for thought, or they try to get the core of what that those words mean in Greek or Hebrew in a passage. And then they try to make it make sense in English 2000 years later. That's how the Bible comes together. So why we've taken time this year to talk about Greek and then talk about Hebrew is we want you to understand how your Bibles came together so you understand what you're supposed to do with that English description of what was written in other languages.

And so that's why, kind of like last series, we went to Revelation, tried to help you figure that out. We want you to know your Bible and we want you to understand it because Hebrew makes up the majority of your scriptures. The biggest part of our Bible is the Old Testament, which is written Hebrew. I love Hebrew I, that was my favorite thing to study in college was Hebrew.

I am not a master of Hebrew. I don't know every word or letter in Hebrew. I once did, um, but I'm getting older and I'm forgetting it. So as we go. But when we get to Hebrew, there's, we could have taken this series and jumped into any Hebrew word. So specifically wanted to start with one specific word. And there's reason because we're in name V and every name has meaning, but we know only one name really holds power.

Now think about this. My name is Cyle. And I think my name is cool 'cause it starts with a C. There's a whole thing. My parents thought I was gonna be a girl, so they had a girl name. She was gonna have a C and then they thought they'd make me a Kevin. But when I came out, I didn't look like a Kevin. So I came, became a Cyle with a C because every one of my family C.

So they just changed the first letter. 'cause I look like a Cyle. I don't know how that works, but that's the way it works. But I like my name and so I decided that I would like to put my name and all of my kids' names. So I have a Cylie Ann. That's my daughter. And I also wanted to have a Cyler, like C-Y-L-E-R.

Patty said no, so I got one. So I have one child named there for me, that's Cyleigh Ann. And so she has my name in her and she was actually writing her signature the other day, and I came in the room, I was like. That's my signature. And she's like, dad, let me show you something. So she's like, look at this. And she wrote her name and then she wrote my name.

She's like, see how your name is in my name? You did that to me. So our signatures look the same because you planned it that way. I was like, I know that was genius. Um, so. Um, but that's names have meaning. And my youngest son, Kerik, his name is a Irish name, which means like rock or fortress or strong like tower.

And we actually went to a, um, Ireland a few years back and we gotta go to Kerik Fergus Castle. And so, uh, it's like this giant Fergus rock castle. It's built like on the rock out in the, in the, in the bay. So we gotta go see this castle. So we named him that because we thought the name was cool and had meaning.

Some of you, your parents, they gave you your name because they picked a name that had meaning and they've probably told you that throughout your life. Some of you, they just picked one out of a hat and that's what they did, right? So you got your name one way or another, but oftentimes thought history names had meaning.

If you go, anybody have those pictures on the wall at your house that has the meaning of your name. All right. Or in a baby book? Nobody, like, no, nobody has nobody. Does anybody know what your name means? No. Okay. Like five of you. Okay. So yeah, I'm sorry. Your parents don't love you like mine do. Alright, so, um, yeah, yeah.

So, no, but when we come to names, names have meanings and traditionally, historically, especially in the Bible times. People got their names 'cause they had meaning and because names we think hold power, but there's one name that holds power above all the others. And that's the name of God. Now the name of God is this word, Yahweh.

It's YHWH. And it means the God. Who is the God. Who is the God, who is the God, who was the God who always will be God just is. God exists. He's existed over all time, all space, all continuum. It's God, that's his name. Now, you may not know that that's God's name. You may not know that Yahweh is his name, but that is actually God's name.

And the coolest thing I love about this, this, these four letters being God's name is in the scholarly circles. This is the thing that I most love about the Bible. That reminds me of the Transformers. This is called the Tetragrammaton. So this is actually what scholars call this. It's the Tetragrammaton, which is like four letters.

I think it should be Teragram Tron for Optimist, prime and Megatron, but whatever. Um. It's the Teragram. It's just the four letters that make up God's name. And there's a reason there's four consonants there. There's not actually any vows is they remove the vows at some point so that people wouldn't mispronounce God's name.

So they wouldn't say, Hey, Yahweh. And they'd say it the wrong way, which would be demeaning because God's name is above all ever names because God is God and you don't mispronounce God's name. And we look at those scriptures we see in Isaiah 42, 8, it says, I am the Lord. That is my. Name, name, that's your guys' part.

My glory I give, uh, to no other. So when it says I am the Lord, you see that capital Lord, there all capital letters. That typically means in any translation that that is the word, Yahweh. Underneath that, what happened is that they decided, you know, we will get this later, they decided to take out the name of God.

For the risk of people misusing it app inappropriately, and they replaced it with a word called Adonai, which means, Lord. So when you see I am the Lord, generally when it's like that in scripture, it's Yahweh underneath her. The actual Hebrew was Yahweh. It didn't say the Lord, it said Yahweh, but they didn't want to say God's name in an inappropriate way, so they replaced it so they didn't misuse God's name.

And when you look at scripture, Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton appears in scripture 6,800 times. That's a lot. That's a lot of words in scripture. So when the Bible is referenced in God, we have to think that something that appears, that that much God wants us to know his name, God wants us to know he is the God who is, who was and will always will be in Exodus three 15.

It says, this is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered Throughout all generations, we are to know God's name. We're to remember God, who he is. And who he will be. That's what we're supposed to do. And so as God repeats his name over and over and over again in scripture is because he wants you to remember it.

He wants you to know he is your God. And names in the Bible of God have power. They would often take, uh, God's name and com, combine it with some other, uh, characteristic of God. And so you'd have Jehovah Rah. Which would be the Lord, my provider. You'd have Jehovah Elroy. You have the God who sees me. You have all these different names.

Now here's the, here's the crazy thing. All right, I'll tell, tell you something. Who, who has ever heard the word Jehovah before? Okay, so Jehovah, not God's name. Okay. Jehovah is a mispronunciation of God's name because at some point in in history, they took the letters out of Adam and I. And they took the vowels outta that night and they put the vowels in the Tetragrammaton and it made it pronounced as Jehovah.

And then. People started repeating that we scholars, most scholars believe that God's name is not Jehovah, would not have been the pronunciation, but Yahweh, not Jehovah. And so you can say Jehovah, it's just like if I go to a foreign country and they try to pronounce Cyle and they can't, which happens everywhere.

It happens here. Um, people can't get my name right. I'm always Cal. Um, you know, I, I get called cow and it sounds like cow, COW all the time. So I just respond because that's the loving thing to do, and I think God knows that what has happened with his name from Ed and I to Jehovah and all those things.

But it's good for us to know God's name. It's Yahweh because his name, it is his covenant with his people. God's name actually appears in scripture as Yahweh. When Moses is during the Exodus, it doesn't give that name to Abraham. He gives it to Moses because with Moses, he makes a covenant with his people, how he's going to re save them from their slavery, and he's gonna take care of them, and he makes a new covenant with his people.

What Jesus then comes to fulfill. That covenant and bring us new life everlasting through him. So God's name is this covenant, and so why it appears over and over and over and over again is Yahweh is a reminder that God has a covenant with his people to care for them, to love them, to be with them. But what something that happened, uh, in about the third century BC, Jews stopped saying God's name, Yahweh, the Tetra Grandon.

And that's when they replaced it with Adam, I, Lord, because they were, became more and more concerned about misusing God's name inappropriately. And because of things like Exodus 27. You know, you guys know something like the 10 Commandments. You ever heard about the 10 Commandments? There's one Big 10 commandment.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. We anybody ever heard that before? Okay, now the Lord right there, Yahweh, you shall not take the name of Yahweh in vain. Now you got, most of you probably like, I didn't even know that was his name, so I've not done that. But what we call God in English is not Yahweh.

We call him God. We literally call God, God so much so that modern Jews don't even use the word God in writing. They write G underscore D, so they don't even misuse that version of God's name. And so this is one of the reasons why I don't use OMG or oh my God, when saying things because I don't wanna risk something that I know God says my name has powerful, I am your God and my name has glory and my name has power.

And don't use misuse my name. That's. Why we have to think about like the words we use, but guess what? God just doesn't have that name. Jesus is God's name as well, right? They're one God, three parts, three persons, and so we have to be careful. How do we use God's name? Because if we go deeper, it goes beyond just a word, it goes to a lifestyle.

The Tetragrammaton, YHWH. It sounds like if scholars love to talk about this, pastors love to talk about this. The word sounds like breathing. When you go back to the original letters in, in Hebrew, there's four letters that make this word up. And we're gonna, I'm gonna say 'em and then we're gonna repeat 'em, right?

It's Yohe. Vahe. All right. So I want you to repeat this with me. Ready? Yohe. Vahe. That's the exhale of existence. To pronounce each letter individually, you have to exhale, and so scholars like to say, when you pronounce the name of God, you're actually exhaling. You're breathing God's name. And this is powerful and it's impactful because if you go back to scripture at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis two, seven, it says, then the Lord, Yahweh, God formed the man and breathe into his nostrils.

The breath, breath of life, you see, God, God, breathe life. Into Adam. It's through breath that Adam came into existence. And so the breath that we breathe, it matters. Every breath you take, literally, if you think of the sound of God's name, is breath. Every breath you take actually whispers God's name, and so your life whispers God's name, your breath, just breathing existing as a follower of Jesus Christ is worship.

The Bible tells us in the New Testament that our whole life should be a spiritual act of worship the way we live. That's because our life, our breath, our existence, our everything should be worship. So when we think about that, go back to Exodus 27. When we think about that passage where we're not supposed to take the Lord's name in vain.

If you're breathing his name, that means your life, the way you live. You could be taking his name in vain with the way that you live. Your lifestyle, your behavior, your attitude, not just your words. Some of us, we can be really good about not saying certain words. What about not having the wrong attitude?

What about not having the wrong behavior? What about not giving into temptation or sin? Those things can take the Lord's name and vain. There's this passage in number six, and this actually passage is very meaningful to my wife and I. This is the passage that we prayed from scripture over our lifeless daughter as she died the day she was to be born into the world, and so before we sent her lifeless form back.

We prayed this prayer over her body because in that, the worst moment of our life, God gave us an immense peace and in, in our thoughts, we were directed to this passage. And so we prayed this together with tears. It was the worst moment of my life. We prayed this prayer together, and I think it's powerful, but it also shows you who God is and how much he loves his people.

It says in this, in this prayer. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. In that moment, God gave us peace. We named our daughter peace. So we, we, we set peace to be buried. We named her peace because in our worst moment we knew that the God who, who is, was with us and had a plan for us.

And he would take care of us. He would be gracious to us, and he would give us peace. And in the midst of our worst moment. He would bless us and keep us, and he has, he's fulfilled that promise. But here's the, here's the powerful thing of this. It's not just the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine up here and the Lord lift up his count.

So it's Yahweh bless you and keep you Yahweh. Make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. Yahweh, lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. And if you go one step further, the God who is bless you and keep you, the God who is, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The God who is lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

It's different. That God who his name is in there 6,800 times, so that we know that he is and he is for us and he loves us. This is a priestly blessing. A priestly prayer of who God is for us. And it matters 'cause it mattered in my life. This was powerful and tangible and real that God saw us and was with us in our worst moments.

See the other thing about this passage is the name Yahweh is repeated three times here and there are scholars who like to, to say that in the Old Testament. If you look, you find Jesus. This is one of those moments. Yahweh, bless you, Yahweh, the Father, Yahweh the Son, and Yahweh, the Holy Spirit give you peace.

So Christoph, I like to say. You can look in scripture, you can see the God who is, and this was powerful because at the time they had all these different gods, all these different regions and religions worshiped. God comes on the scene and Moses says, I am the Lord your God. And I am one. And I am God. We know that He is.

He's one God, three parts. God the Father, God the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. We can see that and we see in numbers. We see God in three different ways, caring for us, loving for us. And when we think about like how we Christians use God's name, we, we actually use God's name in different ways every time we use the word hallelujah.

It's a declaration of God's covenant name with his people. Anyone ever said the word Hallelujah before? How about song? That song hard fought. Hallelujah. I mean, jelly Roll sings it so like, huh? I think he just won a dove word for it. Right? So every hallelujah is a declaration of God's covenant name. In Psalm 1 56, it says that, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord. It's praise Yahweh. Praise Yahweh. That is, that is actually praise. The Lord is hallelujah. That's actually the greet. I mean, the Hebrew is hallelujah. Let everything has breath. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. That Hallelujah is actually praise Yahweh because it's hallelu ya. It's praise Yahweh.

Right? So we see it praise out Onai in scripture, but it's actually praise yah. Which is referencing Yahweh. Hallelujah. It just changes the way you think about the things you say. It changes that song. If you like Brandon Lake, right. Changes. You're not just saying and praise the Lord. You're not just saying hard fought, hallelujah.

It's a hard fought praise Yahweh. In that song, it's different. And when you go from from from Yahweh, the name of God in the Old Testament to the name of Jesus, anybody know the name of Jesus in the. JE ua. Yeah, je. So Jesus is not Jesus. That's English. Right? We call him Jesus in English. It's like mispronouncing Cyle, like he'll get it.

If you call him Jesus, he'll get it. It's, that's actually not his, like his name, original name. It's not Jesus. That came through a lot of different iterations and ways and just language over time. We're not gonna get into that. Okay. From how the Greek comes out, but his name kind of Hebrew is Yeshua, and that comes, that name literally means Yahweh safes, Jesus.

Comes on the scene. People have been waiting their whole life for the Messiah that God would send to save them, right? That God promised all through the Old Testament, I'm gonna send my Messiah. I'm gonna send my Messiah the Messiah. He's gonna come, he's gonna save you. And so when Jesus comes on the scene, he's born in a miraculous way.

He does miracles. He lives life. He has knowledge beyond is He child should ever have, and then people meet him. People who have spent their whole life growing up, reading the Old Testament and, and waiting for the Messiah, and they find out that his name is Yeshua, Yahweh saves. And then they seem doing miracle, after miracle, raising people from the dead, healing blind people, and they recognize he is the Messiah.

Yahweh is saving us through Jesus. This is why people left their houses, their homes, their villages, and they would follow him and tra chase after him to have miracles done. To see his power to sit on hillsides and listen to him because Yahweh saves through Jesus. In Jesus, the invisible Yahweh became visible grace for us.

That grace that was promised in. Numbers. Jesus is the visible sign of that grace that we see. We see God's invisible. Grace made real through the love of Jesus, the grace of Jesus first people. And so we think about this. I love that digging that song. It just keeps going, doesn't it? He is just, I over here dying right now.

He's also dying. He is got a name tag on like, man, I'm never come back here again. Sorry, Allen. Uh. So what does this, what does this mean for you? Why aren't we taking time to tell you all this? I know this is like deep and you probably never thought about this or never wanted to think about this, but really if you think about it, you don't have to remember.

Yes. You don't have to remember. You don't have to start calling him My daddy. Yahweh. Don't start being weird. I see people doing this stuff weird all the time on TikTok. People do the weirdest stuff like you don't have to start calling God Yahweh. You don't have to change. They, he knows that you call him God.

You can still call him God, right? But the reason we're telling you this is that you just have to rethink your life, your perspective. Every breath you take, proclaims this name, right? If you're breathing, it changes things, and breath matters. Here's how I know the last four weeks, or five weeks or four, last five weeks, Cody was in the hospital hanging on to dear life with very rapid, very shallow breaths.

Cody's 35. We've, we've been talking like he knows and he knew. When your breath runs out, your life runs out. Right. We all know this. You don't breathe anymore. You, that's the end. And so the reality is, Cody, if you don't know, Cody's been in hospital. He had, we don't even know how he got it. He doesn't know how he got it.

He had pneumonia that turned into like having his lungs remove his body, put back in, all kinds of stuff. Um, he could tell you the whole story, but there was the real reality that if his breath stopped because of just the pneumonia was so filled, his lungs, that was the end. That's scary. And it gives you a different understanding of how important and valuable it is to just be able to breathe.

Cody still can't breathe if you listen to him up here. He was, you felt like he was rapidly talking. No, he's breathing because he's still repairing his lungs. Right. He's just trying to catch his breath. Catch his breath, and he, he's, that helps him that this is called healing, right? Get, let's get up there and make you talk a bunch.

That's what we do. Uh, but breath matters. And sometimes we don't think how important God's breath is. His living breath that gives us life. You have your breath because God gave it to you. We have life because he created humanity to have to life. He gave all of creation that has breath, praises, Yahweh, praises God, our animals.

Anything that breathes praises, God, it brings glory to his name. Your breath. It's supposed to be used to praise God. Are you doing that? Does your breath bring praise to God? Or does it use his name in vain? Not just the words. What about your lifestyle? Does your lifestyle, the way you live, the way you act, the way you talk, the way you treat people?

Do you live for God or do you take His name in vain with, does your very existence take him in vain? That's a harder question. My whole life in church, people tell me, don't use the Lord's name in vain. That's just words. What about your life? Don't live your life. In vain because you are the very breath of God into the world.

That's a whole different perspective because you carry his name wherever you go if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. And the Bible tells us that our lifestyle is supposed to be the spiritual act of worship. Is your life lived in vain? Is it live for him? Is your life worship on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

Are you living for Jesus? Or are you living in vain or are you just living Sunday mornings for Jesus and the rest of the week in vain for you? It's, it's a change of perspective. It's a change of perspective. I think for us, we have to, we breathe his name, we have to speak his word, and we have to live his glory.

That's what we have to do. You wonder how he can practically be changed today? Breathe his name, speak his word. Live his glory. God's name is glory. It's His glory. You have to share him with the world. The way that you do that is you gotta know the Bible, you gotta read it, you gotta study. You gotta interact with it.

You don't have to memorize Greek and Hebrew. There's so many tools. Now you don't need to. There's a lot of scholars who put all their research on there. They're smart. You don't need to know that. You just need to know where to look, and you need to stay off TikTok, YouTube, and all those scholars. 'cause those aren't real.

Those are just nutcases. You need to go to actual scholars who know what they're talking about for your information. And then you need to show people the good news of Jesus and the God who is by the way you live, by the way you act, by the way you love, by the way you talk, and by the way, you breathe His name.

Make sense? That's how Christians are supposed to be. We are supposed to be different. I went to, uh, Ireland versus, um, the All Blacks New Zealand, uh, rugby game. Yesterday I was representing Iris Hills, so it was good. Um, so, but I went and, uh, Ireland lost, but in front of me there was these, this whole whole group of guys, these older guys, they flew all over from Ireland.

They were having a time in their life. Every customer at Imaginable, they were drunk outta their mind. And like they were, they were, they were living kind of a fruitless existence. I don't think they're gonna remember the game. It's probably a good thing 'cause Ireland didn't do so hot. But I was, I was thinking, I was like, I'm not gonna join them.

In their chaos, they kept wanting us to kind of join them in their chaos. 'cause they thought that'd be fun. And I'm just telling here, my life is different than your life. Although some of the things they did might be funny. Um, we're just, we're just glad they survived the game. Um. I, I just thought the whole time our life's different.

They kept trying to get my son to, to join them and they're kind of crazy. And he's like, no, because we're called to live different than the world. Not like the world. I still enjoy the game very much, much better when they went to get more beer and they were gone in front of me. So, but like you have to think about it.

Do people see the way you live and think there's something different about that person? And I wanna know what it is 'cause I like it. Or do they just think, oh, they're just like everybody else. 'cause everybody else, if they're not living for God, they're just taking his name in vain. 'cause vain means selfish vanity, fulfilling your own needs.

If you're living in, in vain, if you're living for you, not Jesus. And if you know that's a struggle for you, if you know you're not breather's name, you know you're not speaking his word, you're not, no, you're not living for his glory. You can make a decision to to change that. That's easy. Just say, today I'm gonna do better.

I'm gonna be better for Jesus because now I know that the God who is, he sees me, he's with me, but I'm not living for him the way I should be. I'm not speaking about him the way I should be. That'll make some change. And if you need help with that, that's what church is for. We're not gonna track you down, but you can just write in the back.

We'll pray for you 'cause we'll go to the God who is and we'll pray that not only does he convict you, but He encourages you. Empowers you to be successful. And living for him. On the back of your connection card, you can just write name. Make sure you put your name on it so we can pray for you. But anybody that puts name down, we will, we will pray for you this week that you, if you know you need to make a change and you need to live different for the Lord, that you start doing it and you know that as a church, we're gonna join you and lifting you up in prayer.

So you can do that, make that change and see what, how Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday can look different than Sunday if you really start taking time. To breathe his name and live his glory and speak his word in those days. Let's pray. How many, father Lord, we just pray we can be a church where we understand the importance of your word, of your name, and we live for you.

When people see us, Lord us and they know that we're followers of Jesus, it means we're also people who are speaking your name. As we exist and we share love, and we share the light of Christ, we pray that we can be better and do better. We can understand who you are as our God, how you're for us, how you give us grace.

You give us peace, and you call us to live for you. I pray if anybody here knows they're struggling, Lord, and they've been living in vain, they've been speaking in vain, they've been acting in vain lord's, just time while your Holy Spirit, just tell 'em, knock it off. Start living for me. Lord, I just pray you.

That's the words you share to 'em this week, and you, you embolden them to do so. You give them opportunities to have success and Lord, protect them from opportunities to have failure, and Lord, to see what it looks like to live connected to a God who is and breathes life, and even our own very own existence.

Lord, we just pray this. We lift this up and we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.