That's a charity, well, great. -Forgot about that part. So I'm glad I was in Guatemala, so I didn't get recruited to do that. That was our pastor Kevin Stiles from Bridgewater Hancock. Sorry, Halstead. Yeah, Hancock is watching now. That's not their guy. And so summer mixtape is not about bad dancing or music. The series we're doing is about short books of the Bible. So we've looked at Jude, we've looked at 2nd John, and today we're going to look at 3rd John. And as we do this, I just want to mention starting out. At the end of the service, we're going to do communion. If you did not get a cup as you came in, you can still get one in the back on the table there. And this is really just for those who are followers of Jesus Christ and who are following Jesus. But we'll do that together later. But I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth, 1,400 plus feet below sea level. And apparently if you go there, you have to get a picture of yourself sitting, floating in the Dead Sea, reading a newspaper. It's like a thing. Everybody does it. So because there's so much salt in the water, it's incredibly buoyant, and it's also incredibly dead. Because the thing about the Dead Sea is water goes into the Dead Sea, but no water ever flows out. And so the salty content of it builds and builds, and over thousands of years, it becomes unlivable. The only thing that lives in the Dead Sea are tourists briefly reading their paper and fungus, bacteria, and extreme algae. Now on the other hand, to the north of the Dead Sea and the Bible lands of Israel, is the Sea of Galilee. And it is teeming with life, fresh water. And there's fish up to 70 some pounds in it. And it's just a beautiful green lush lake. And the difference between the two is the Sea of Galilee has water flowing in and water flowing out. The Dead Sea only has water coming in. And I think this is a great spiritual picture for what we see contrasting two different men in the little letter of Third John. There is Gaius, who is like the Sea of Galilee. And John mentored him and poured into his life. And then Gaius is just serving other people and pouring out into others. And he has a spiritually lush and alive and beautiful life. And then there's a guy called Diatrophies. And Diatrophies is all about himself. And he's all about promoting him and what he wants and what he's doing. And he's like the Dead Sea. He's just completely dead, both to himself and others. And so let's just start the book of Third John. And I'm just going to read through it. The way we preach and teach, I think, the method actually is a little bit of the message. It teaches you how to study the Bible. So sometimes you can approach the Bible topically and say, OK, I'm going to look up of what everything the Bible has to say about fear. Or everything the Bible has to say about anger. I want to work on that, or my tongue, or whatever it might be. That's one way to read the Bible. But the way I preach most of the time and the way we preach as a church most of the time is you take just one passage and you just start at the beginning and you read it. And you say, what is this? What is the truth here and how should I live in light of that? And so sometimes we can do that with a passage. We can't necessarily do that with an entire book if it's like Ezekiel because it takes like three-- yeah, I was going to say years-- three hours maybe to read through Ezekiel. But these little books, we can read through the entire thing and talk about them. And so that's what I'm going to do this morning. This letter is from John the Elder. Now we use the new living translation here because it's very easily understood. The new living takes a phrase and translates it. It doesn't go word by word. The word John here is not actually there. They're adding that so we know who's writing it. Filling in the blank, John doesn't sign four out of the five books of the Bible that he wrote. Just the people in that day knew who was writing it. And actually even atheists who are Bible scholars, this is one of the very few things they agree on is that John actually wrote John in first and second and third John, John wrote them. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But so I'm just fooling in the blank. He's basically saying, this letter is from the Elder. I'm writing to Gaius, my dear friend, who I love in the truth. And second John was a lot about this. Joel Garrison preached on this a couple weeks ago here while I was in Guatemala in second John about love and truth. Mentioned over and over again. If you love someone, you tell them the truth. If you're lying to someone, you don't really love them fully. The flip side of that that a lot of us don't understand is that if you're telling someone the truth, not in a loving way, you're not being completely truthful either. So our world has pitted these two things, love and truth as opposites that we need to balance. The Bible says the opposite. It says these two things, truth and love, are actually the same thing that we need to emphasize both at the same time, truth and love. And that's new for me because I'm a truth guy. And it was kind of like a smack in the face reading second John that, oh, if I'm not being loving as I communicate the truth, it's not completely truthful. And if you're trying to be loving but you're not being truthful, you're not really being completely loving. But so he's talking about this. I love in the truth, those two things go together. Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you're as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit and some of the traveling teachers. And literally it says some of the brothers. There's not really a hierarchy in the New Testament church. There's elders and there's brothers and sisters. There's also a group called servants or deacons and that's it. There's no archbishops and cardinals and senior pastors and directors and all this. There's just brothers and elders. And so he says some of the brothers recently returned and made me very happy by telling me about your faithfulness and that you are living according to the truth. And I could have no greater joy than to hear my children are following the truth. This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Third John, four, I had to look as a five or four. But no greater joy than to hear my children are living or walking in the truth. A lot of people, when you take this out of context, you think he's talking about his physical children, but he's not. And this is true of my physical children. I have no greater joy than to see my daughters and my boys like just walking and following the Lord. That is awesome. But John's talking about spiritual children. He either led Gaius to Christ or helped disciple him and he's saying, man, to see Gaius and how he's following the Lord. That just just warms my heart. There's nothing that brings me greater joy. October is pastor appreciation month. And you'd only know that if you listen to like Christian radio. But here's the thing for pastor appreciation month. Some of you send me cards and sometimes even a gift card or a restaurant or something like that. That is wonderful. My wife especially loves that. So keep it coming. But here's what is much better than that for me. Is to live according to the truth. Some of you were in youth groups. Some of you were children. Some of you were in diapers when I started pastoring here almost 19 years ago. And to see you now as adults living for the Lord, serving others, families of your own, adopting taking in foster kids like just that. In fact, the best pastor appreciation gift would be to write a note saying, this is how my life has changed in this ministry under your pastoring or through. For any pastor, you know, I know we got some people from out of town. We got someone from like Arizona somewhere. Like do that for your pastor. That's awesome because this is really true. Dear friend, you are being faithful to God when you care for the brothers who pass through, even though there's strangers to you. And these are people that, yeah, Christians who come in and they just help in the ministry and maybe teach and do things like that. And he's just encouraging him. He says, that's awesome that you do that. They have told the church here of your loving friendship. Please continue providing for such teachers in a manner that pleases God for they are traveling for the Lord and they accept nothing from the people who are not believers. And then, so we ourselves should support them so that we can be their partners as they teach the truth. And so John is just saying to Gaius, he's like, I just appreciate the partnership you have with people that you are complete strangers to, that you've never met before and yet you're willing to help them. And when I thought of this word partner, it just triggered in my mind the fact that at Bridgewater Church, we have 10 international ministry partners that we help. And so when you give to this church, we turn around and take some of that money and over $100,000 every year and give it away to other organizations all over the world. And I just came back from visiting one of our ministry partners, which is Food for the Hungry in Guatemala. And I just, it was so important. I haven't been there in six years. It was so helpful to again see what's going on because honestly what they're doing there, we're sponsoring two villages with high rates of malnourishment. They go in, they teach them about sanitation, which is a leading cause of malnourishment there. They teach them about nutrition. They provide, we helped build, we didn't really help. We gave money to help them build another container, a water container up in the mountains. And we helped build it in that a bunch of us carried cement and boards like book. I tell you what, they do so much more work. I think we do it just as kind of a token, like we're behind you. And I think they have us do it just to see how hard it is to what they actually do. But this was actually given to our church from them, from the village, they hand make these, to make a blouse takes 15 days. Eight to 10 hours a day to make a blouse, but this isn't a blouse. So didn't take as long, but just beautiful. This is the colors of their village. And I'll have Don translate the Spanish. No, I'm just kidding. No, basically, do you speak Spanish? No, okay, I didn't think so. Man of many talents, but not that one. No, basically it says, from the village and from the water department, thank you for helping us build a new water containment during the dry season. They don't have fresh water for everyone in the village. And so this was just from them as a thank you. And, but here's the thing about what they do there. It's all about who is on staff. They could do everything they do in this village. And I would be like, eh, you know, not really that impressed. But it's the people who do it. The food for the hungry workers. This is not food for the poor. It's a different organization. Food for the hungry workers. At least in Guatemala, okay? That, the ones I've met, they love the Lord and they do it in the name of Jesus. They're not just teaching parents how to help their kids grow up and be healthy and good sanitation and proper nutrition. They're praying with them. They're telling them about our savior. They're not just, you know, building a water containment system and asking them to, you know, and helping them with the supplies and making a plan. They're telling them about Jesus and sharing their life with Christ with them. And so they really are partners with us as they teach the truth. And so I'll tell you just two stories about when we, if you want to go January is when you can sign up to go on one of these trips. And I think about half of those on our trip never been there before. It's just awesome to go. But here's two stories from the trip. One, I went to Bob and Karen Owens. They have their child that they support. We went to their house and they were asking them how things were. And I just blurted out a question. I said, how many kids do you have? 'Cause it seemed like a big family. And they said, we have eight children. But one of them is dead. And he took his own life in December. He's 22 years old. And I was like, oh, and then you're like, oh, that's why. They've been like this in the visit. Just still grieving. But here's the amazing thing. At the end of the time, Bob and Karen mentioned about Jacob Amato, 15 year old in this community that just recently passed away from a brain aneurysm. And so they prayed for Jacob's family. And then we prayed for them. It's a partnership. It's not us, the great white Americans coming in and they're working harder than we are. They're sacrificing more. But it's a partnership with the food for the hungry workers, with people in the village. I went to see my friendship, I call it friendship family. That was a program up in Binghamton. My sponsored child, Felipe. And in fact, I have a picture, Felipe drew. He's 15 years old. And he wants to be a tie-air. I don't think I pronounced that properly, but it's spelled taller in English. It means a mechanic. He wants to be a mechanic when he grows up. And so, but he had to drop out of high school this year. In fact, if he doesn't go back to high school, I can no longer sponsor him. That's how it works. But he dropped out of high school because his dad has diabetes. It's not been going well. He's been taken to the hospital multiple times. They've given him medicine, but he says it makes all his food taste rotten. And they don't understand about diabetes. They don't understand that you don't just take it when you feel sick. Like you have to, and there's a language barrier. So, Ishaile, which is the language they speak there, is as close to Spanish as Navajo is to English. In other words, it's not. And so that's their first language. And then many of them have learned Spanish. Felipe spoke Spanish faster than anybody there. Like it was like, holy cow. This kid's smart. Dropped out of high school to help with the farm, the corn and the beans. And also with a little business, electronic fixing phones business that his dad does because his dad is not doing well. And so the responsibility comes on the 15 year old to take care of his little sisters and his mother and to provide for them. And so I tell you what, $38 a month, like $16,000 that our church sends for these projects to build water containment and classrooms and all sorts of things like that. I mean, it is worth it. And to be able to pray with them for his dad. Man, next time if I go back, if any of you go next year, I'm sending you, if we can do this. Soccer wrench sets something to help him get started. Anyway, there's a link bridgewater.church.outreach and that has all the ministry partners we support that are there. If you want to support a child, FH.org. If you want to wait a little bit and support one of the children in this village that we're partnering with in the villages, please contact me or Bob Owens or anyone who's gone to Guatemala, anyone on staff and we'll put you on a list and make sure that when those become available, you can do that. But this is really important. I say this all the time. Great things almost never happened to individuals. Great things happened to teams. So many promises in the Bible are it says to you and you in the New Testament Greek can be singular and plural. It's almost always plural. God wants us to do great things for him together. Doing things together multiplies. These believers that speak is shield and that live in this region, mountainous region. I mean, there's a mountain. The mountain that Shapun is on, okay? This village is at like 7,000 feet elevation. The mountain goes up over 10,000 feet. I mean, it is just hard to access area. These people that live there that love Jesus, they can reach their own people. They speak the languages so much better than us. But they don't have resources. And then we have resources and money, but we don't speak is shield. We don't even speak Spanish. Some of you speak Spanish, but not very well, right? That was my goal. I wanna speak Spanish as poorly as Bob, always. It's my goal in life, you know? 'Cause I'm not there yet. It'll probably take my whole life to get there. But here's the bottom line in this and we're gonna look at some more verses that John is saying to Gaius. He's like, man, that makes me so happy to see your life, to see your partnership with other people because you don't love yourself. You love others. And this is a key to joy, right? This is a key to unlocking so many wonderful things, to power a powerful Christian life is to not be a lover of yourself and to sacrifice for others. And goes on and says, I wrote to the church about this, but the atrophes. Now he's turning a corner here, first eight verses. He's like, Gaius, you're awesome. These brothers are awesome. Everybody's loving each other. They're helping the Word of God's going forward. Great stuff. Sometimes we idealize the early church, right? We say, man, wouldn't it be great to have been in the first gentry church would have had Mary the mother of Jesus right in the front row? I just got Carol and Terry. None. And Danielle, yeah, two for one. Now I'd still rather marry the mother of Jesus. Of course, I wouldn't be preaching. It would be Peter or John or Paul. You all would love that much better as well. You know, the early church, so awesome is that. But you know what? There were problems in the early church. There were wolves in the church. There were jerks and evil people and mean people and people that didn't teach what was true and that deceived and so he's talking about one of them. I wrote to the church about this, but the atrophes who loves to be the leader refuses to have anything to do with us. It sounds like John wrote to the atrophes and the church that meant in his house. And the atrophes took that letter and was like, yeah, that'll never see the light of day. Maybe even burned it, we don't know. But John's hearing like, no, like what you sent? He's not having any of that. And when I come, I will report some of the things he's doing in the evil accusations he's making against us. The atrophes had a little bit of keyboard courage here, I think. You know, John's not around. Like, obviously they didn't even have the printing press back then, I'm just, but John's like, I'm on my way and I'm gonna deal with him, okay? And the accusations he's making against us, not only does he refuse to welcome the brothers, he also tells others not to help them. And when they do help, he puts them out of the church. Can you imagine church leaders kicking out some of the best people in their church because they love people that aren't from their church and they aren't going to their church? Can you imagine that? I know you can imagine that because some of you have experienced that. And unfortunately, this is not all that uncommon. In fact, this is, sometimes people ask me, hey, my son is going to South Carolina or Texas or wherever, can you find him a good church? And here's how I do it. I Google churches in Raleigh or wherever they're at. And I look for a church that has multiple services because that means they are reaching so many people that their building can't hold it probably in one service. And so they're doing something right. They could be apostate, they could be terrible, but they're at least reaching people. So then I call that church and then I ask them about what they believe and one of the big questions and one of the questions that I ask is what do you believe about LGBTQ? And I don't ask it because of the answer to that question. I ask it because I'm trying to diagnose does this church believe God's word? And so then after that, I say, now I want you to give me one or two churches that you recommend in the area for this person to go to that's not your church. And if they can't come up with one or two churches, I cross them off the list and call somebody else. But almost always when I've done, in fact, every time I've done this, they very quickly, like, oh yeah. Man, there's this church over on this side of town and where does he live? And yeah, that church is great and, you know, and then I call that church up and I ask some similar questions and I ask about the church I just called. You see, because in fact, sometimes when people come here, they'll say, you know, yeah, I'm new in town and I'm just looking at different churches. And so I'm just looking and I said, oh, great. Let me help lower your search. There's like 50 churches in this county, but let me tell you some of the best ones. You need to go to South Numo for Baptist Church and check that one out 'cause they are awesome. Pastor Ray Mitchell, godly man, great staff. Or depending on where they are, and sometimes I ask questions like, "Do you like healing services and that kind of stuff?" And, you know, are you into that Elijah's home, man? They do healing services every summer at different times and that's that kind of a church. Are you looking for a suit coat and tie, like King James only church? Like, Stanfordville Baptist, man, they are, they are, they love the Lord, that's that kind of, right? Or, man, are you from Forest Lake area? Forest Lake Baptist, Ken Young, great pastor, right? Because it's not about building Bridgewater. It's not about building, you know, some kingdom that you have or that I have. You know, what if you're a small group leader and someone leaves your small group to go somewhere else? They're not getting a Christmas card. (congregation laughing) No, you're like, great, hey, if that's, you know, don't take it personal, you know? Like, anyway, so he's saying, man, like, he's not taking these people in. He's like all about deotropies and he's making accusations and here's the crazy, so here's what he's, we need to choose to be a contributor and not a consumer or a taker. Can you imagine deotropies? He is undermining the apostle John. I mean, this is perhaps by this point, the last living apostle, he's maybe in his 70s or 80s and he's not just the last living apostle who had traveled around with Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry, but he was one of the three. Jesus, every so often, he'd be like, I'm gonna go up on a mountain to pray and you don't know this, but Elijah and Moses are gonna show up, God's gonna speak from heaven, I'm gonna be transfigured, but Peter, James and John, you're with me and he goes up with Peter, James and John, they have this amazing, and then like the garden of Gethsemane, you know, it's that he's gonna be crucified the next day, he says, okay, let's all pray, but Peter, James and John, you're with me, let's go and the four of us are gonna pray over here, like at the last supper, when Jesus is having what we're gonna celebrate in a few moments, communion, right? And he's saying, this is my body, which is for you, this is my blood and the new covenant, which is for you, John was the guy right next to Jesus, right at his right hand, you know, says he was leaning on him, that John and deotropies is going after him, like what? And this is where, don't take it personal if people criticize how you're serving God and how you're trying to love other people. I like how you're trying to love and serve other people way better than how other people aren't and criticizing you for it. And this was the case with deotropies, and so we need to be a contributor, not a consumer. He goes on and he says, dear friend, don't let this bad example influence you. Don't let the deotropies of the world, like hold you back. Anytime you love and serve God, you're gonna take a risk. Someone's gonna judge your motives wrongly and accuse you every so often I have, especially in marital counseling, right, marital counseling, sometimes one person does something and the other's mad at him for it. And sometimes it's because they were a jerk and you're like, I can't believe you did that and that was sinful and wrong and, you know, but other times it's like, okay, so what if he did the opposite? Well, that would have been worse. Okay, so what if he did what he did differently? Well, that's because it had a motive, bad motive awful. So basically what you're saying is it doesn't matter what he does, you're gonna hate him anyway. You just don't understand. I probably don't, but, but, you know, like, so no matter what you do, someone may judge you and maybe you do it wrong anyway, you know, but at least you're trying, you're serving others, you're putting yourself out there and that's so important. Remember that those who do good, prove their God's children and those who do evil prove that they do not know God. This is why I'm so happy that this last Sunday we went out for be the church. In fact, how many of you were here last Sunday or not here, like doing stuff, right? And online I see all those hands and Hancock, yeah, thank you for raising those hands. Yeah, and it was hundreds of you out in the community serving God and doing stuff. Here's like, here's Beth Lawrence and some little kid. I don't know who that is. And that was the before and this is the after, right? Isn't that cool? Like just an older lady and just cleaning up everything for her and this is before, actually a lot of these projects, you can clap, yeah. All right, all right, here's Beth. We're clapping for everybody otherwise, this will take too long, okay? A lot of these projects, some of the project leaders went there ahead of time to get stuff ready, like take down trees, so it's not dangerous when the people show up Sunday morning, right? And so this is one of them where the project leader went there a little bit ahead of time to help with some of that wood and that's what it looked like before and they split it and stacked it and after. And then here's one picture and this does not do this house justice. The paint was awful and so they're scraping it and then they painted it all and that kid is so happy, it looks like he did the whole thing, but we know he didn't. And then for an older man, they put in a new fence post for his garden, he appreciated it and this one was amazing. I actually tried to pull the plug on that one. This guy had metal for a roof, but didn't have the money to put that metal on his roof. And says, oh, we can do that, what does he have? He has a trailer, he had two trailers, it was 86 feet long, 86 feet long. It took them, not two or three hours, it took them at least twice that long to do it, but they completely roofed that I think it's three or four professional roofers. I saw, yeah, some of them are out there, just awesome. And so this is what 3rd John is about. We need to be gayesses, right? Like the Sea of Galilee who take in, you're taking in right now. There's nothing wrong with receiving good things from God and with soaking in spiritual help and love and truth. But like gayess, we gotta pour out as well. And so as you came in, you all got one of these sheets and I wanna encourage you to get it out. I don't know if we can turn up the lights a little bit more. And you gotta pen, just go down through this. And if you are not serving in a ministry, I wanna encourage you to maybe think about one of these areas that you can serve. Because, you know, a lot of times there's a saying, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. But we do a survey once a year in November and we have found that 40% of everyone in this room who's 12 years old and older is serving in a ministry at Bridgewater. That is amazing statistic. (audience applauding) Because some of you, some of you, like this is your first Sunday. So obviously you can't be serving. Like you're like, I didn't even know where the doors were. Like, but you know what, this is also cool. I'm not gonna mention it in my name, but there is a family who were here two weeks ago and called me up after I got back from Guatemala or I followed up with them. And they're like, man, our son wants to greet. I love to be involved in the music. My wife likes to do behind the scenes stuff. Maybe she can work in the offices. I'm trying to find where he is. But anyway, like, they're here just a few weeks and they're like, man, we wanna jump in, we wanna get involved, we wanna serve God. Like, that's awesome. And so I wanna encourage you to do that. So just hand this in, like to anybody as you leave or over at the Welcome Center, you know, and this is a hand-in-a-mountain Hancock. If you are online, you can, you know, just go into the chat and say, I wanna serve and they will talk to you about that and just get you going. This is another thing. If on this sheet, you wanna be a part of our new Springville area, Elk Lake Church, new congregation that we're starting, new Bridgewater location. This is a DMIC Baptist Church. They just, as they said in announcements earlier, they gave us their church and we're gonna remodel it. Probably not gonna start regular services until just before Easter of next year because of the renovations that need to be done and all of that. But we're gonna wanting to start small groups. One in Springville, one in DMIC, one in Lawton and maybe one in Auburn as well. So if you wanna be a part of this and I'm gonna be preaching, you're gonna get the sermon like through a screen for, as it just starts off and then hopefully be able to forward a campus pastor that will be able to preach live eventually, but just starting off, it'll be me. So if you're saying, well, I don't wanna go 'cause I wanna hear Bob's preaching. Excuse removed, all right? Now, if you live in like Nicholson, that might not make sense. But if you live in Springville or DMIC or Lawton or Auburn or any of that area, I really wanna encourage you to leave. No, no, to go, to go, because that's what Jesus said. He says, go into all the world. And before you go to someplace like North Africa, why don't we just go down the street a little bit to something like this? So just reading the last of third John, everyone speaks highly of Demetrius. And this is someone that John knows, as does the truth itself, we ourselves can say the same for him and you know we speak the truth. So he's saying, Gaysh, you're not alone. There's guys like Demetrius that are good examples as well as you. And he says, and I have much more to say to you, but I don't wanna write it with Penn and Inc. For I hope to see you soon. And then we'll talk face to face. Peace be with you. Your friends here send their greeting. Please give my personal greetings to each of our friends there. Here's the thing, everyone here, you need Godly friends. You cannot follow Jesus alone. Christianity is a team sport. How do you build Godly friends? Not this way. Not with 150 people staring at one person talking. You will never build friends that way. One of the best way to build friends is to serve with other people. Going to Guatemala with Lisa Chirelli. Like I kind of knew of her. I've said hello to her before, but just getting to know her better. Building a friendship. I coached soccer with Ed Lucas. I knew Ed before, but I was, I am friends with Ed. He is my friend, why? Because we serve together, doing something together. And so we're gonna have small groups starting in a month. And that's a great place to build friendships, but serving is really a key way to do that. Serving God together. So we're gonna just wrap up the message today, remembering the greatest servant of all, and the one who loved us so that we can love each other. And that's Jesus Christ. And so if you have one of these, it's kind of complicated. Flip it so the juice side is up first, okay? No, flip it so that, don't do that. Flip it so that the bread side is up first. And if you can't open it because you have big strong man fingers, hand it to somebody next to you, but this doesn't literally become Jesus's body and blood. But this was a symbol that Jesus told us to do on a regular basis. And so he said this bread, he says this bread represents my body, which was given, which was broken for you. And he said the blood is the new covenant of my blood, which is given for us. Jesus Christ went to the cross and died to take our sin and our punishment for our sin. And then he rose from the dead to give us new life in him. And so why don't we before we eat this together? Why don't we just take some time of quiet reflection? Just make sure your heart is right with God. If there's any sin that's not been confessed that you've been wrestling with, ask God to forgive you for that. Come up with a plan to not do it again and to just be committed and totally all in for Jesus. Let's just spend some time in prayer right now. (clears throat) (sighs) (coughs) (sighs) (sighs) Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that we can love because you first loved us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rarely will someone die for a good man, and sometimes someone might die for a righteous man, but God loved us in this way, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Just thank you for your love, for the sacrifice of Jesus, and that we can give our lives to you. Help us to do that every day. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. On that night he was betrayed. Jesus took the bread, and when he broke it, he gave it to them, giving thanks. He said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." ♪ And then after supper he took the cup, and he said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Drink this in remembrance of me." ♪ Heavenly Father, we just talk to you again this morning, and we're just so thankful. Lord, we're thankful for the John's and the gayesses in our lives, who not only received the word of God, but then turned around and poured into our lives. God, I just thank you for Mrs. Shoemaker, I don't even know her first name, who led me to Christ in Sunday school when I was a kid. And Lord, I just thank you for so many others like Dave Mitchener, who is my youth pastor, who's the reason I'm a pastor today. God, I just ask that you would help all of us here to be followers of Jesus like that, to be to take in your word and your love and your truth, but then also to pour out into the lives of others. Thank you for the opportunities we had to serve last Sunday and to serve every day. In the name of Jesus, we thank you. Amen.
