SPEAKER_00 0:01

We're gonna take communion together. Um it's an honor to be here with each one of you this morning, and it's an honor that we get to come and um partake of the body and the blood of that whom we have to do, and that is Jesus. Um I love the first hymn. Um it really is the greatest story ever told. Um sometimes I I think that you know we hear it so often maybe it has a tendency to lose some of its luster, but let that never happen. Um it is literally the greatest story ever told. Um and uh so before we get to listen to Brother Adam, I'd like for us to just to prepare our hearts and our minds um to receive communion. Um in 1 Corinthians Paul tells us for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. We do this to remember him and to remember what he did for us. Um and it's a serious thing. Um so let's just take a moment. Um I'm gonna continue reading here. He goes on to say, Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, he'll be guilty of concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who drinks and eats without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of us are weak and ill, and some have slept. But if we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So now's a time for reflection, um, confession, repentance. Just take a moment and prepare yourself. Um we just want to say thank you. Thank you for giving us just another opportunity to come before you to acknowledge what it is that you have done for us. Um that story never lose its luster, Father. We love you so much, and we thank you so much for loving us that you gave us the spotless lamb. It was my sin that nailed him to that cross, Father. And I thank you for that. Thank you for that you have just rescued us. So please speak to us this morning, Father. Please let us hear your voice. It's in Jesus' mighty name we pray. In Luke chapter 22, starting in verse 14, we read, And when the hour came, he Jesus reclined at the table and the apostles with him. And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you that I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it amongst yourselves, for I tell you, from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. You are the great rescuer. We thank you so much that you sent him and that he was obedient unto death, even death on a cross. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, Jesus said, This cup is poured out for you, and it's the new covenant in my blood. Take and drink. If I can get it open. Thank you for the blood that was poured out on our behalf. We love you. We thank you, and we praise you. It's in Jesus' name, that name that is above all names. We say we love you and thank you. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

They know what to do. I'm thankful that uh we are a church that can give our pastor some time away and still be able to uh move on, I guess, maybe that to function. We have men in place that uh can take care of what needs to be took care of. And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for all those that I've called on this morning that stepped up to to fill the places that needed to be filled. Um, before we uh get into the service this morning, I want to welcome everybody. I'm glad to see every face that's here. Uh and I'm gonna go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come to you this morning. Um Lord, as empty as we know how to be. Lord, we know that if you don't speak, then there's nothing worth saying. And so my prayer this morning, God, is that you would speak. Lord, you know we can do nothing apart from you. Um God, I pray for every soul that's here this morning. I pray that uh whatever you have to say that would touch their heart, that would relate to them, that would bring them to the place that you would have them to be, whatever that looks like, whether it's surrender or repentance or just joy. And Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the joy that it brings to our heart, even when it's hard. Um Lord, we thank you that you are faithful and that you're worthy of all the praise that uh we can possibly give you. Father, we're thankful that you are a God of covenant. Lord, in spite of us, uh you honor your covenant with us. You said you'd never leave us nor forsake us, no matter the circumstances. Father, we just thank you for that. It's a it's above what we could even imagine. Um, but there's hope in that, and we trust that this morning. So, God, I just pray that you'd have your way. I pray over the reading of your word as we begin to open it up, and I pray that you would have your way. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen. Um, I've never really been uh one to preach themes because I've never really had one laid on my heart, but this morning uh God's laid a theme on my heart, and it has to do with the fact that we are in the new year or we're coming into it. And Terry, you're right, this is kind of an odd time. Um it's it's sort of a hinging moment, so to speak. Uh we're we're closing the door on a year that we're coming out of. We ain't quite out of it yet, but we're not hardly in it either, because most of it's already gone by. Uh yet we're we're opening the door on a new year. And uh, you know, it's it's been a year. It's had its ups and its downs, and uh some have experienced uh good times. Some have experien I mean I'm I'm sure we've all had our joyful moments, but there's also been times of loss, there's been pain, and there's been suffering, and there's been financial difficulties. Every one of us, if we if we are honest with ourselves, can say that we've had a year. Um, and only you know uh what you've been through this year. Now, I I caught myself just last Sunday, I think it was, talking with Terry, and I say, you know, we we tend to learn church language, and it just kind of rolls off our tongue. How are you doing? Well, I'm blessed. When maybe we're hurting. Uh you know, I'm okay, God's got this when you're confused and you really don't know, you know, what's going on. And I want you to know that God invites you this morning to be honest with him. That's who he is. He desires for us to bring our request to him, our pain and our suffering and things of that nature. Now, this morning I've never preached out of the Book of Lamentations, but that's where we're going to be. And by the help of the Lord, we're going to try to go through a couple of verses. And I do desire your prayers this morning, because one of the things that I found that's hardest, and it was really late on me really yesterday when I was praying. God, I just can't get my heart and my mind wrapped around this message. And as I was sitting in my recliner yesterday morning thinking about that, the Lord spoke to me and basically said, It ain't for you to get your heart and your mind wrapped around this message. It's for you to allow this message to penetrate your heart. And that is one of the harder things to do is to allow this message to penetrate your heart. And as a man that stands here, it's hard enough to uh, I mean, you you just know who you are, and you know what you do, and you know where you've been through, and to stand here and to to handle God's word, it's a fearful thing. Um I don't take that lightly. Uh so at any rate, this morning I'm gonna read a couple of verses. I'm actually gonna read out of the ESV. We're gonna be in Lamentations chapter 3. And uh, you know, Jeremiah, he was writing Lamentations. I could say it wasn't from a happy place. Uh Lamentations is a is a hard book. It's it's a book of lamenting. We we I don't know that maybe we don't hold the weight of actually what it meant when Jerusalem went into captivity. When they were conquered by Babylon. You know, we like to say, well, I mean, I don't know, some of us might think, well, they just, you know, okay, well, we can't live here no more. So we're gonna move all of our stuff over to Babylon and we're gonna take up ship there. No, that's not how it happened. They were conquered, and when they were conquered, it was not a pretty sight. The walls were breached, and the temple was burned, and families were separated and destroyed, and there were people that died in that. There were families that were just torn apart, the the young were uh, you know, took possibly into labor, those who were skilled were uh took to certain places, and literally there was just this uprooting of Jerusalem. Now, for many generation or years, you know, God warned Jerusalem, warned Israel to turn from their ways, to obey him and to follow him. And so, really, what we're seeing is the consequences of uh, I guess what you would say that they heaped upon themselves, that would probably be the right way to put it. It was a direct result of their actions. Um, but God allowed it, and God watched it all happen. And and Jeremiah here, he's looking at what he's seeing. He's basically preaching this message, not from a good place, but out of the ashes of what has happened here. And, you know, I thought about that, and as I was I was praying over this message, we we read over it, and and after God dealt with me about allowing this to penetrate my heart, you really begin to see the pain that Jeremiah was feeling here. You can relate to that. I mean, he he was looking upon a city that stood in ashes. And if you read through this chapter, you know it it just really describes this ruin. And and Jeremiah was, he was, he just lamented. He was, there was this sense of trauma, so to speak. I mean, this was not an easy experience. And, you know, I thought about that in relation to where we're at as a church. We know as a church, we we have a um that goes out often our prayer text, pray for so-and-so. And I don't know a lot of times whether we truly relate that we truly lament with our brothers and sisters. And I'm the the deeper that I've uh I get into this, the more that I that God begins to break my heart for those things. We do have members here that have basically had their lives changed in the last year. Things have just, you just don't know what's ahead of you. And so, I don't know, we we think about these things, and and here we go. We're gonna be reading out of Lamentations chapter three and verse 19 begins like this. He says, Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him. Now, Jeremiah here, he's basically praying, like I said a minute ago, not from a place of uh, you know, a great place, but he's sitting here and he's looking at all that has come to pass. And and when he's when he's praying this or when he's preaching this or when he's writing this, he he basically says, Lord, remember my wanderings, my afflictions. And and I ask myself, what is he talking about here? Because I want to tell you, we don't have to, we don't have a God that that has to be reminded of where we're at. But this seems like to me, when he's calling out on God, he's calling out on him to anytime that the Bible talks about remembering, it it talks, you know, it talks more about him interceding based on who he is. And that's what Jeremiah was talking about here when he called upon the Lord. He's saying, Lord, I see all that's going on. I see where I'm at, and and this is a and I see the destruction and I see the place where the people are, and I see the consequences of our sin, and this is not good. He's coming before God, and he's coming before him honestly. He's not trying to hide this uh away from the Lord, he's not trying to suppress it, but he's asking God to intercede here to to to just be who God is supposed to be here. I I don't know if that's the right way to say that. But he's saying, remember this, God, remember my affliction, see it. This is not um a great place. My pain and my suffering, God, you know what's going on and you know where we're at. And Lord, this hurts. Now, I don't know. Uh a lot of times, like I said a minute ago, we we tend to suppress these things. We tend to say, well, you know, it's gonna get better and and and things are gonna be okay. And and maybe as I go into the new year, you know, I don't know about you, but there's been times I wonder if the new year that I'm going into, if I'm gonna be still doing the same things that I'm doing this year. Am I still, am I gonna just try to, you know, maybe I'll make a little more money this year, or maybe I'll get things worked out, or maybe I'll get disciplined, or maybe I'll do this, or maybe I'll do that. And that becomes the things that I rely on. It becomes uh sort of my portion, I guess, and we'll get to that in a minute, but it's the things that that I tend, if I don't recognize it, that I'm trusting in. And what I'm doing is I'm bottling up the things that are really going on in my life and saying, well, I can just handle that. But again, God invites us, and just like uh Jeremiah here, he brings that to the Lord, he brings that to the light, he brings that to a place to where he's calling on God, Lord. I need you to remember with me, not not to forsake me, but to know that that this is a place of pain and of suffering and my wanderings. Lord, we are the displaced people. Now, I don't know what you've been through in your life uh this in this past year. I don't know uh the things that that you've dealt with, but again, like I said, I know what I've experienced. I know that the first part of this year, I was sitting here and I was battling the things in my mind and repeating over and over, just like uh verse 20 says, My soul continually represents. Remembers it and is bowed down within me. I could tell you at the beginning of this year, I had thoughts on rerun that were just affecting my life. They were just, I mean, oh, the things that you've done, oh, you remember when you've done, oh, uh, all these. Terry, could you get me smarter? Because my mouth is as dry as it's ever been. But but that's where I was at at the beginning of this year. That's what I entered into this year with. And when I began to think about and read into this, I realized what I had not done. I realized the things that that I had bottled up and the things that I was keeping uh uh just to me and not allowing God to intervene with, not not bringing it before the Lord and saying, Lord, these are my afflictions. Thank you so much. And this is my pain, and these are my wanderings. These are the places where I feel displaced. And Lord, this is a bitter place for me. This is pain that don't taste good. That's what it talks about here, the wormwood and the gall, this bitterness that we have within us. And and Jeremiah, he's just saying here, Lord, I just need you to remember. Remember, here is an appeal to God for intercession. It doesn't mean that God has forgotten us. It doesn't mean that God forgot Jerusalem. It doesn't mean that God forgot Israel. In the midst of where they were at, God was still God. And why was he still God? Because he is in covenant with us. And where you're at today and where the things that you have dealt with in your life, the places where you feel like that you've experienced lost and where you feel displaced. God wants you to bring that to him. And God wants to remind you that you, that he is in covenant with you, and that even though you are experiencing these things, that he is still who he says he is. You see, I I thought about this. We think, well, we can't bind God, but God is bound by something, and that is the covenant that he has made with us. The covenant that he made with Abraham, that he swore unto his self, that he said, I will I will bless you, and I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you, and your offspring shall be as the sands of the sea and the stars in the heavens. God has made a promise to us that through it all, no matter what, just like we've studied over the last couple of Sundays in Sunday school with Daniel, with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and with all these men that have gone through the challenges of life and have been faithful, that he has never left them, he has never forsaken them, and that he is the God of covenant mercy. And I want you to understand that He is the fact that we get up every day and we don't stand in judgment, the fact that we're not uh being struck down for the for our sin and our displacement, because they were displaced because of their sin. They were displaced and and they were they were being uh afflicted because of sin. And God warns and he warns and he warns. And he says, come out of that. And I don't know, you know, we may be going into this year, I know some have experienced loss and the weight of that, but some of us today may be experiencing the weight of patterns that are destructive. We might be entering into this new season and and and thinking, how am I gonna get over the things that I continually over and over and over again stumble over? Well, I want to tell you today when we come to that place where we get real about it and we bring it to God because we think we're gonna do this in our own strength. And church, I want to tell you today, the Bible says that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. But you can't do it in your own strength. You may try. You may try your best. Well, I'm gonna get more disciplined. Well, the Bible teaches us that we need to be disciplined, it teaches us that we need to set boundaries, but it also teaches us that we need to bring it into the light. That don't mean you have to stand up here and confess to the whole church, but you need to come to the place where you come to the Lord and say, Lord, these are the things that I struggle with. This is the place where I'm displaced from you. This is where I am failing you. And God, I need your help. I need you to remember my affliction. God, I need you to act on you, who you are. And that's that's what he's doing here. He's saying here in verse 20, my soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. What does that mean? It means he understands and he sees what's going on. And it's brought him to a place that's low. It's brought this is not just some uh trip up, you know. Oh, I I mean, this is this is some serious hardship that he's experiencing. This is the deep traumas of life, is what he and I know we we think, well, this is 2025, and everybody wants to talk about trauma. I'm gonna tell you trauma's something that's real. It's something that affects us. And he's he's here and he's seeing this just this displacement. And I don't know if you've been there, but I have. I've felt the weight of my actions, I felt the weight of sin. I felt the the weight of my decisions. But and my soul has been bowed down in me. And my thought process in those times is Lord, how am I ever gonna get past it? But he uses a word here, and I like it in verse 21. It says, but and and basically this is this is like a defiance of of everything that he's seeing. And I don't know if that's the right word to use, but but God, I know where we're at. God, these is my pain, these are our trials. But this I call to mind. But this I call to mind. You see, my soul continually remembers it. He's let me just say this. We have to remind ourselves of who God is. And when he says, but here, when he asks God to remember his affliction, when he says, but this I call to mind, he is remembering who God is. He's remembering God based on his character, based on who he says he is, based on that covenant mercy that he extends to us. He's not now looking at his situation, but he's looking at who God is in the midst of it. And that is the turning point of all of this that we begin, or that we read. If you read Lamentations, you see the displacement and and and the just the this place of pain and suffering. But he says here, but this I call to mine. And therefore I have hope. And I'm gonna say today that hope is something you have to choose. And I don't we don't we don't like that word, but you have to, because you're going to preach to yourself whatever's going on in here. And whatever's going on in here is going to affect your direction in this life. And we can be bound by our circumstances, and we can be bound by our traumas, and we can be bound by our sin, or we can trust in the God who delivers. And that is important today, church, because we we just we need to get real with ourselves and in what's going on in our lives. We don't need to suppress these things. It binds us down and it weighs us down, and we're carrying weight we ain't supposed to carry. And believe me, I could remember the first couple of months of last year, and and basically, to be honest with you, the whole year before, my whole direction in life was every morning I would wake up, and the first thoughts that would come into my mind was those things that was on real with me. And I was listening to it. And it affected my movement, my thought process, my the way I dealt with people, the way I dealt with my family, the way I moved and breathed and all these things. Now, church, you might sit here and say, Well, I don't know if I experienced that. Then you need to get real with yourself. Because these are the way that you think is the way that you act, and the way that you move. We have scripture that backs that up. Where your mind is, there your heart will be also. And that that goeth into the heart proceedeth out of our mouth, or it puts us in motion. It determines your day-to-day. It determines how you think, how you breathe, how you act, how these things. And it's very important. It's important that we come before the Lord and just be honest with him. You know, I could remember a time, and it's been several years ago, that, and and God brought this back to my memory. I was struggling with somebody. And and ah man, I was just, I was to the point I was ready to explode. And I could remember being in that sleeper that night, and boy, did I get honest with God. And I said, God, I'm mad. And I'm I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know how to overcome it. I don't know how to love in this situation. I don't know. But I'm tired, and I can't do it anymore. I just can't. And I mean, I look back on that and that was as real as I'd ever been. I was I was out of it. And I go back and I look at my journaling in those days, and I seen how God began to heal that situation. I seen how my relationship with him from that point and going forward to the point now that I can love unconditionally there. You see, there's a place in this walk where we trust God and allow him to do what he can do. That's what Jeremiah was doing here. He said, I'm seeing my circumstances. I see where I'm at, but I trust you and your character. And this is the place I will call this to mind. And in this I will have my hope. But it begins by coming to that place where we're honest with Him. And that's where God invites you today to do that. What does He call to mind? That the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Never. That's his character. That's who God is. We've heard it said before that God just don't love, but that's that's his embodiment. That's who he is. He loves. And and you know, I like what Justin said the other day when he was preaching that Christ is the, how did he put it? Is the exact reflection. Oh, I can't remember the how. But basically, if you want to know who God is, then look at Jesus. And Jesus was a he loved people. He was sometimes it was hard, love. Sometimes he overturned tables. But he went to the weak, and he went to the sick, and he went to the he loved people. And and when we think about God, and especially when you're in these places, maybe we're you've got unrepented sin in your life, or you have destructive patterns, or whatever, the first thing you want to think is, God, how can you love me right now? How can you do this? And I want to tell you today, that ain't nothing but the devil, and God is in covenant love with you and in covenant mercy with you in spite of what you're doing. And that is not a license to sin, but it ought to give you some hope. That he is in covenant with you. That when he says, I will never leave you nor forsake you, that I will go with you always, even until the end, that ought to give us hope. Because I'm going to tell you, there's a lot of people in this life that's not going to walk that road with you. But God will. You hear that? God's faithfulness outlasts our failures and does not depend on our actions, but his word. That's what he said. That's who God is. And if you can grab a hold of that today, I would pray that it could bring you to a place to where you can get honest with God. Because I'm going to tell you that if you go into the new year preaching the same things to yourself that are causing you to stumble, then that's the direction that you're going to go. What we I'm gonna I'm gonna get to this. What we choose is our portion will shape your direction. He says, here the Lord is my portion, says my soul. Now, a portion is something that sustains you. A portion is something that I mean, you know, I I tend, especially over the holidays, I've got a pretty big portion every time I've eaten. Um but today, what what's in your mind and the things that you might be leaning on? Maybe whatever whatever that looks like. Maybe okay, I'm gonna try a little harder to make a little more money this year, and maybe that'll help me when I get to the end. Maybe I won't be in the same position. Or I'm gonna be a little more disciplined. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be. But how about this? How about first and foremost, let's bring our petitions to the Lord and let's be honest with him. Let's let's depend on him because he says, the Lord is my portion, says the Lord. This world, I'm gonna tell you, politics ain't my portion. Uh government's not my portion. My my job is not my portion. These are the things that God has placed in my life that some has authority over me, some is used to help sustain, but he is my portion. And I want to be able to say that with confidence. That that through trials and through tribulation and and and things of that nature, that he's the one that I want to come to first. He is enough, he is my portion, and it says, and therefore I will have hope in him. Hope is not accidental, church. It's something that you have to choose to have. And that's when when you begin to preach the truth to yourself, when you begin to lay your burdens down before the Lord, and you know, this morning I was laying in the bed, and boy, I was all in my head. And my wife said something to me. She said, What's wrong with you? And I said, I don't know. I'm just all over the place this morning. I said, I'm just trying to get my heart in this message. And she said something that was so simple. Why are you trying to preach it now? It's pretty smart. In due time, God's faithful. And and to set our heart and our mind on the now, and to set our heart and our mind on him in the moments. If you've been in Sunday school, you've seen some really tragic moments that we've read about in the book of Daniel. And and the thing about it was is their faith didn't waver. You know, we were talking about Daniel this morning in the lion's den, and my wife said something. She said, I just can't imagine him going kicking and screaming. He just he just stood and he walked and he went. I'm sure he wasn't happy about it. I'm sure it wasn't the first thing on his list of things to do that day. But the fact is, he trusted in the God whom he served, who was his portion. And I hope you can do that today. I know this has been kindly all over the place, but he says there and therefore I will hope in him. We got to make that decision. I know I've said it a couple of times, but I want to reiterate it. All of us have been through a little something this year. And you're fixing the enter in. We're closing the door on this thing. And I want to tell you, God is not trying to get you to make resolutions. He's trying to bring you to a place of restoration. Because he's in covenant with you. And today, if you'll be honest with him and you'll lay these things down at his feet, don't carry them into 2026. Lay them down at his feet and trust him. And I know for some of us, that's going to be hard. But I'm going to tell you through it all, God, you know, I last time I stood and preached, I preached that God sees, God hears, God knows, and God moves. And he does. He knows where you're at. He's seen it. He's seen where these children were, he's seen where Jerusalem was, he knowed where they was at. He knowed the pain that Jeremiah was feeling here. He knowed the displacement. He knowed the lie. And I'm gonna say this the wormwood and the gall is the very thing that Christ experienced on our behalf. He He died a martyr's death, he was torn apart, his family was torn apart. The Bible says that they run that gall up there to him. And he didn't take of it, it was with bitter vinegar. He knows the bitterness and the and the pain and the suffering that we go through. And God took the very judgment that we deserve every day that I said we should wake up and praise God that we're not in it, and he put it on his son. That we might have life and we might have forgiveness, that we might be able to say, My hope is in him, that we can come before him and say, Lord, this is where I'm at. Lord, I want to be honest with you. These are my struggles. I'm gonna tell you I'm 45 years old, and there's been some things I've been struggling over my whole life. And there's it it it's really it's time to get real. Do we want to continue in the same patterns? Or do we want to see God do something in our life that only He can do? Or He can deliver you out of the fire, or He can close the the mouth of the lions. He says, I come to give you life, not just any life, but abundant life. And as Pastor Harrison says, that starts here, and we can't overcome. He said, We are more than conquerors, we can overcome these things, but it's gonna begin when you get honest with the Lord. So I petition you today to be honest with yourself and to evaluate where you're at. And in this, as Terry would say, this weird time that we're in. It's almost like a little displacement. What do we do? Well, this is a good time for reflection. How do you want to enter into 2026? Do you want to carry the same burdens? Do you want to continue the same patterns? Or do you want to see God deliver you out of those things? Because He can. And He will. And I I we don't like to hear the if of this thing. But somebody said something, I believe it was Stephen, when he was praying this morning. He said, God, you're gonna do your part. But God, you're not gonna do our part, but you're gonna give us the strength to do our part. And today I want to tell you that that is about as true as what I've heard. That blessed me because it's true. And today you have a part in this, and that's to respond to God, and He'll give you the strength to do it. And I want to tell you, when you come to that place, hope begins to arise. It begins to push you out of the darkness. It begins to give you something. And and here here we go again. I can't explain this part. This is what God can do in your life. He can deliver you, and he can give you hope, and he can give you joy, and he can give you peace. And he can lead you in the path of righteousness. The Bible says, for his name's sake, that he would get all the glory out of your life. So I don't know where you're at, but we got done at twelve o'clock. Praise the Lord. If y'all would like to get a song, I think that's the reason we didn't have choir today. They know that I'd be up here. I don't know where you're at today in this, but my prayer for you is that you would respond to the Lord. My prayer to you is that uh that God would speak to your heart, a message of hope, and that you would be honest with him, and that you'd lay your burdens and your cares and cast them at his feet. And today, if you've got sin in your life, come and repent. Make that move, get real with that. And if you're hurting, let him know, for he does know. And just trust him.

SPEAKER_02 49:04

I must tell Jesus number three uh six hundred and thirty-six, six thirty-six. I must tell Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

And Lord, I just pray that it uh that it would go out, for you say that your word doesn't return unto you void. Lord, I pray that we would not focus on the messenger but the message. Lord, I thank you for the hope that we have in you. I thank you for your character. And you are one of integrity, for you do not fail. And you said that without fail, you keep your promises. You swore them by yourself because there was none other worthy. And Lord, I thank you that we could lean into them, and I just pray that we would lean into them. Lord, that we would not listen to the enemy. But that we would listen to you. For you tell us who we are, and your mercy never fails. You are faithful. And Lord, I pray that uh each and every heart that's here, Lord, that you know the place where this needs to land, and I pray that you'd give us the courage to just move and respond in that direction. Father, we thank you for your son Jesus Christ, who bore our sins on the cross, whom you resurrected, that we may have life. And Lord, I pray that as we go in this new year, that it would be new beginnings, that we would just cling to him with all that's within us, that we would let the rest of this stuff go and just cling to him. That you may guide our feet in every step that we take. Lord, help us to lean not on our own understanding but trust in you. Father, I thank you for forgiveness. Lord, I thank you for forgiveness. Lord, I thank you for mercy. Thank you for your kindness and your goodness and your faithfulness. And most of all, I thank you for salvation. Lord, go with us as we go throughout starting this week and bring us back here safely again. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.