Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Free to Love: How to Leave the Judging to the Judge Paul Weighs in on Not Judging
Free to Love: How to Leave the Judging to the Judge Paul Weighs in on Not Judging.:: Ken Wilson. October 11, 2009
- Free to love how to lead the judging to the judge. We've been looking at first session, we looked at the original sin and the connection with that and judgment, the choice between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Second session we looked at, what was it? Jesus weighs in on not judging, looking at Jesus in eternal life and not judging those themes running through the gospel of John. Then we looked at not judging in the gospel of Matthew, really important theme there. We considered Jesus conflict with the Pharisees and how that was really centered around the Phariseic view that judging was essential to their path of righteousness. And now we look at Paul, Paul weighs in on judgment. And Paul, if you don't know, he was one of the early followers of Jesus. He met Jesus in his risen form. And Paul is a very important witness. He's responsible for about a third of the New Testament. In fact, the earliest written articulation of the gospel comes from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, probably earlier even than the gospel. So Paul is a very important witness and Paul has special authority on this topic of judging, of not that Jesus ban on judging. He has real authority on this issue. You know, they say that when truth is personal, I am the way, the truth and the life. That's the way of saying truth is personal. When truth is personal, all theology is biography. It comes out of the story of the life of God and our lives. And Paul had a really interesting biography because he was an up-and-coming Pharisee who was apprehended in the act of judging others. He was actually authorized to judge others by the highest ruling counsel. He was trying to wipe out the heresy that had been perpetrated by the followers of this failed Messiah. And he was apprehended on the road to Damascus in the very act of doing his righteous judging. Now, it's very fashionable if you're at all tuned in to like bigger currents and Christianity. And if you're not, it's not like you're missing anything, but it's very fashionable in that kind of world to claim that Paul actually founded like a different religion than Jesus, that the religion Jesus founded and the religion Paul founded are very different. But I think it doesn't even take a careful reading of the gospels and a careful reading of the letters of Paul to see that Paul met the same Jesus that Matthew and John met. And Paul is bearing the same message that the eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus in the gospel bore. And especially when it comes to this central message that pertains to our series, which is twofold, make love your aim and do not judge. So this is very much the teaching of Jesus and it's reflected in the teaching of Paul. We read Jesus, we read Paul in light of Jesus. We don't read Jesus in light of Paul. Jesus comes first and if you read the letters of Paul through the lens of the gospels, you see the way it lines up. Like Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Paul sees the gospel actually as a new path to righteousness. And we see this in Romans chapter one, verse 17, for the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. This is Paul's view of the gospel and it very much corresponds to Jesus' view of the kingdom of God being a higher righteousness than that of the Pharisees. And then for the rest of Romans chapter one, Paul, what he does is he sets up this revelation of the gospel by exposing the root and the fruit of paganism because he's writing in contrast to Jesus who is ministering to the Jewish people almost exclusively, Paul is ministering to the Gentile nations, the pagans. And he's in his letter to the Romans, which is the heart of the pagan empire. He takes a moment to step back and just look at what paganism is brought. Just what are the dynamics of paganism at large? The root of paganism, he says, and Romans one is in gratitude. So something that we all experience in gratitude is actually the root of paganism. Rather than receive the world around us as a revelation of God's glory, we treat it as an entitlement. We take it for granted. And from there, it's just one short step to idolatry. When we lose sight of God, we will worship something else. So just a side note, don't let a day go by without pausing to thank God for the world around you. Because if you fail to do that, you will stop seeing God as the creator and you will be inclined in your heart toward idolatry. So it's so important not to let a day go by without thanking God. Now, Paul probably wrote, it's fairly well agreed that Paul probably wrote the letter to the Romans from Corinth. And Corinth was a center of wild pagan worship. Corinth is where the primary cult was the cult of Aphrodite from which the word aphrodisiac comes. And the cult of Aphrodite featured orgiastic worship. So if you don't know what orgiastic worship is, ask your parents when you get home. And it was of a sort that was far beyond the wildest frat party. Men would orgi with each other and work themselves into a frenzy before Aphrodite, and then a few zealous souls would slice off their own genitalia. Talk about girls gone wild, pagans gone wild, worshippers gone wild. Next comes in Paul's argument, the depraved mind. And the fruit of the depraved mind is a much more familiar, less exotic list in our fruit market, greed, envy, murder. Of course, Jesus defines murder in the same category with contempt for our brother. Gossip, slander, acceptable forms of brother hatred, God hatred, insolence, different than insolence. And that's an important distinction. Arrogance, boasting, inventive ways of doing evil, disobedience to parents. And of course, in the Bible that's not like it says, well, after age 21, you don't have to obey your parents. That's just a cultural thing, and I'm not arguing for it, but I'm just saying, disobedience to parents in the ancient world was much different than we think of it in our world. And then last but not least, to end the list of pagan horrors is the absence of covenant love. The absence of steadfast love. No fidelity, no love, no mercy, which together was the Hebrew concept of covenant loyalty, covenant love, steadfast love and faithfulness. You can read all about it in Romans one, Paul's classic diatribe against sin-soaked paganism, and it would have elicited in the readers a kind of a moral outrage. Like, amen brother, those, you know, there's nothing like an adult convert to say what I just left. You know, yeah, what of amen brother. And we might expect Paul to now rally the troops in a moral crusade against pagan sin. But this is not what Paul does. Instead, Paul unleashes the sword that pierced his soul when Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself in homiletics, that teaching about how to preach. They say, don't say you, because you is kind of like condemning. And people bristle, say we, you know, don't say you, Paul didn't get the memo. Because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now, we know that God's judgments against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you amir human pass judgment on them, and yet do the same things, do you think you'll escape God's judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Now, sometimes we pay too much attention to the chapter divisions in the Bible. You know, we read through the Bible a chapter a day, which is a great practice. I've done it many, many years, read through the Bible two or three chapters a day. But the thing is, the Bible is not divided into chapters in the original manuscripts. And so sometimes you can read Romans one, and then just not read Romans two, and you don't realize the profound connection between the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two. There's actually no break in the original manuscripts. You therefore, takes this paragraph all, it's connecting to all that goes before it. That's what it's there for when you see therefore. So he's saying, therefore, the lesson to pull out of this diatribe against paganism is that if you judge anyone on any of these things, pick the most disgusting thing in the list. You judge yourself unless you can say that you never fail to give thanks or to glorify God. Unless you can tell me that you never put the fruit of the depraved mind into your plum market fruit basket. Envy, gossip, slander, greed, disobeying parents, loss of covenant love and faithfulness. So you see what he's doing? He's whipping up moral outrage against pagan sins only to cut to the heart of religious sin rooted in the knowledge of good and evil, which confers man's righteousness, not gods. And he's offering the same medicine that Jesus gave him on the road to Damascus. It's that don't judge or you will be judged. Jesus word to the Pharisees. Fast forward now to Romans 13. That's on page 777. That's a much better page than 666. I feel so much better. And this is verse, I didn't write it in verse eight. Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. Oh man, if we'd only listen to this, about between 1990 and 2008, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. No, he is echoing Jesus here. Jesus said, the love of God and the love of neighbor is, it sums up the law. This is the law and the prophets. But Paul here interestingly, stresses only love of neighbor. Maybe because his greatest sin against God, Paul's greatest sin against God, was his failure to love his neighbor in the name of righteousness. He was willing, Paul was, to harm his neighbor by his judging. And so this lesson was just burned into Paul's being. I mean, at other places he talks about just the grief he feels over the way he was judging the early church and going after them. And so he says, love your neighbor as yourself. This is the same formula that Jesus uses in the golden rule. You know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, love your neighbor, not just love them, but as you would love yourself. This is the law and the prophets. This is the Bible. This is the fulfillment of the law. So in other words, the same pairing of truths that are in the Sermon on the Mount, you have in the book of Romans, a new way of righteousness through the message of the kingdom. The ban against judging and the Sermon on the Mount, don't judge or you'll be judged, followed by the laser focus on love and the Sermon on the Mount. So in everything you do, do to others what you would have them do unto you. For this sums up the law and the prophets as in verse 12 of the same chapter where the don't judge thing is. In other words, you cannot love your neighbor as yourself while you're judging your neighbor. You just can't do it. They're mutually exclusive for human beings. Romans 13 has the same pattern. Love of neighbor as yourself is paired with Romans 14. What page is Romans 14 on? I didn't write it down. Oh, that's still on 7/7? Oh, that's right, 'cause it's right by Romans 13. So yeah, sometimes they're on the same page. That would be 7/7/7. Oh, that's what this thing is doing. Okay, no, that's for first Corinthians. I'm gonna be ahead of you when it comes to first Corinthians. All right, Romans 14, verse one through 13. Accept those whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. One person's faith allows them to eat everything, but another person whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted that person. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, they will stand or fall, and they will stand for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some consider one day more sacred than another. Others consider every day alike. Everyone should be fully convinced in their own mind. Those who regard one day as special do so to the Lord. Those who eat meat do so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God, and those who abstain do so to the Lord and give thanks to God. For we do not live to ourselves alone, and we do not die to ourselves alone, whether we live or we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Sorry, I was doing that from memory from so many funerals, and then I lost track on the thing here. For this very reason Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the living and the dead. You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat as surely as I live says the Lord, every knee will bow before me. Every tongue will confess to God. So then we will all give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Now we sometimes easily dismiss this prohibition on judgment because we think well it only applies to like minor controversies. Like this would apply to, I don't know, different worship styles, contemporary or traditional or things of that nature. But these debates in the early church were a really big deal. If you think this is equivalent to some minor controversy, you just don't understand the temper of the early church. These people knew how to fight. I mean, Paul had to write to the Galatian church, if you keep biting and devouring one another, there won't be anyone left. If you look at the two issues he's looking at there, you could say, I could make a very good biblical case for not eating meat, especially in the pagan world. Most of the meat that was available at Kroger's in the pagan world at this time had already been sacrificed to idols on its way to market. And so you could easily say that to eat meat in the pagan city like that was to self with demons. I mean, I could just imagine the deliverance ministries passing the emails around saying, you know what they do? They do it at Kroger's when they sacrifice it to idols. And so when you're eating meat, you're sipping with demons and everyone would be in a, plus you add the fact that meat eating was not actually allowed by God and the human race until after the flood. So in the beginning, it was not so. You were vegetarians in the beginning. And Jesus, on a number of times, can have banned things on the basis of in the beginning. It was not so. So you could build a really strong case for not eating meat, same with special days, the Sabbath, for example. I mean, the Sabbath, keeping the seventh day holy, not the sixth day, not the first day of the week, but the seventh day, that would be Saturday, keeping that day holy is commanded in the 10 commands. Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands will be called least in the kingdom of God. So you could make a very strong biblical case on this with an impassioned kind of this, a lot hinges on this. So these debates were as fierce as any that racked the church today. So imagine any denomination going through any controversy at their local convention or whatever. That was the Roman church on these issues. And Paul, as it were, grabs the microphone, raises his voice above the den and says, who are you to judge someone else's servant? See, judgment is presumption to Paul. It's not a matter of being accurate or not. Doesn't matter if you're judging as accurate or not. It is banned activity because it comes essentially and fundamentally from the forbidden fruit, the knowledge of good and evil. To their own master, they stand or fall and they will stand for the Lord is able to make them stand. You then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? But we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written as surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will confess to God. So then we will all give an account of ourselves to God, therefore, let us stop judging one another. Now, let me deal with something that, speaking of stumbling blocks, this is a stumbling block that I have had in studying and engaging the Jesus ban on judging and maybe you have been affected by the same concern that I have. I'm a pastor and I'm a father. You cannot be a pastor and a father without really caring about right and wrong. I mean, people don't go to a counselor, a therapist, to talk about right and wrong, but they come to a pastor to talk about right and wrong. I'm the father of five children, four daughters, all have been through or are going through the teenage years. Believe me, I am concerned about the moral climate. I am concerned about friends with benefits. If you don't know what friends with benefits is, man, you're just, I was gonna call it friendship with privileges until my daughter set me straight. Don't dad, that's actually called friends with benefits. Hooking up, recreational sex, or I love this, the creative fiction that says that oral sex is not sex. I just want to say, actually it's called oral sex, not oral bingo, because it is sex. I mean, I just think it's so funny that when you're young, you want to say, oh, it's not sex, it's not sex. And then when you get past 50, you want to say, well, that counts as sex, doesn't it? If a middle-aged couple counts as sex, it is sex. (audience laughing) So here's my concern, and maybe it's yours too. People who are unfamiliar with the teachings of Jesus might hear his sharp warning, not to judge, as like gentle Jesus meek and my old saying, "Anything goes, if it feels good, do it." I mean, can you understand how mature believers might be nervous about the judging ban? And so I want to step back, I want to review, and I want to clarify in this point. Again, the Bible says, the original choice in the garden is not between good and evil per se, but between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are only two trees, and they're in the middle of the garden, the middle is significant. Our lives will revolve around one tree or the other. Our lives will either orbit around the knowledge of good and evil with its fruit, which is sin, but sin that also includes man's righteousness, a defective righteousness that is marked by judging, or our lives will orbit around the tree of life and the fruit of eternal life, which is a righteousness fueled by love. We don't, in other words, have the option of letting go of judging to float free in the cosmos. We're either bound to continue to orbit around the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or we shift our orbit from that tree to the tree of life. And sure enough, this is exactly what Jesus does. He transfers us from one domain to another, the domain of the knowledge of good and evil, which produces sin along with righteousness based on judging, he transfers us from that domain to the domain of eternal life, which produces life and a righteousness based on love. So there's two domains, there's two kingdoms, there's two ruling powers. Judging reflects one, love reflects the other. But we fear sometimes, letting go of the knowledge of good and evil, because it's, well, it's familiar number one. I mean, it's like the blankie. And it's our way of being good. It's our way of being righteous. It's our way of righteousness, though, not God. So as mature believers, we often fear that if we give too much room to don't judge, at all that don't judge talk, all we have left is anything goes, right? Please, somebody nod your head. Am I the only one who has this concern? You know, and you've got men going to Thailand for a weekend of sex with girls who are in the slave trade, quoting, judge not lest you be judged when someone objects to their behavior. Does anyone, I mean, we're nervous about the don't judge ban. We think it's just a cover for anything goes. So when we hear the ban on judging, we respond with a yes but. I've seen a lot of that in the blog. Yes, but, you know, in conversation, yes, but. You know, yes, but just doesn't cut it. When Jesus is giving us a ban, the only response is yes, sir. Yes, sir, yes, but is not good enough. And what's behind our yes but? You know, have we forgotten the power of love? Have we forgotten who love is? Love, as my father used to say about getting older, love is not for sissies. First Corinthians, chapter 13, what page is that? First Corinthians 13. (indistinct) 786. Before I read this, I want you to know this is not a wedding. Okay, don't think about someone getting married and how great that is. Think about you and your friend or your spouse this morning bickering at each other or think about last night or think about you at work and the stressful day you're gonna have tomorrow at work, love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy ever. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others ever. It is not self-seeking ever. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs, none. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices only with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Now I know one part, then I shall know fully, even as I'm fully known, and now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. This is from the apostle of faith. So, bring it down to reality. You're a sophomore at the University of Michigan at a party last night. Anna Freshman, who's had a few drinks, comes on to you. And she's offering herself no strings attached, friends with benefits. She is more than a consenting adult. In fact, she pulls you upstairs to an empty bedroom. It is your lucky day. But in the room, seated next to the bed, is a figure that only you have eyes to see, pure love. Why does your heart sink when you see him there? Why do you try to ignore him? In fact, the more you try to ignore him, the less visible he becomes. You shake your head out of this fog because this is pure love sitting in the room. So you open your heart to his silent demand, which is essentially, those benefits are not for you. So you back off, you go back downstairs to the party. Scenario two, you're frustrated with Ron. You're frustrated with Ron at work. Another coworker says, what's with that fur old bra? You want to talk and you step into their office and you share your frustration with Ron. Then you remember something that Ron disclosed to you about struggle he's having in his marriage. And it seems to support your point that it's really hard to get along with Ron. And so you're just about to disclose this tidbit when the eyes of your heart open and you see pure love over there in the corner in the office. I mean, pure love is there in the room with you. And the eyes of his heart flash a warning to your heart, that say, just zip it. But the morsel is too choice, it makes the point too well and you just drop it. And then when you look over in the corner, you can't really make out that figure anymore, it's just fading. It's April 14th, 2010. You've procrastinated, once again, doing your taxes. Things always seem so tight, especially these years. You fill in the charitable contributions line and you put in $250, that's the total from three different organizations that you support it over the year. And you think, that looks a little low. And then you remind yourself, that actually, that doesn't include the $200 loan I gave to my brother and I'll never see that money again. And it doesn't account the cash I dropped into the Salvation Army thing. And you know, I bought more cookies from the Girl Scouts this year. And then you feel this incredible warmth behind you and you turn to see a figure in a chair and it's pure love. It's, you are in this room with pure love. And then suddenly it hits you. I could have given so much more. I could have given $5,000. I really, especially with love taking care of me like, I am so blessed, I could have been, I could have given so much more. But then comes a twinge of fear. And then a voice imitating reason says, who's to say he'll be satisfied with that? You know, you give him an inch and he might just take a mile. Do you really want to go down that road where he's demanding more and more? And so you finish up your business and you high tail it out of there. Love, we're talking about love here. When Jesus announced the gospel in the gospel of Mark, he said, the kingdom of God is near. It's at hand, it's near. Pure love is near and is ready to rule if our hearts are open to his rule. So if we think that anything goes with pure love, we just, we have not met the man. We just haven't met the man. But this truth of the nearness of love cuts both ways. As a mature believer, you cannot let your nervousness about the judging ban change your response to the ban from yes, sir to yes, but you cannot do that. Judging is after all the occupational hazard of mature believers, of mature believers. And it feels like zeal for righteousness. But it doesn't work the righteousness of God. See, because the kingdom is near, because the king who is also the judge is near, it's the nearness of the judge and the certainty of judgment that is the compelling reason not to judge. Romans 14 is preceded by our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. So if you're trying to understand the balance between love and judgment, you know, well, what's the balance between loving and not judging? You don't do it by adding a dash of judging to your loving just to keep from falling into moral anarchy. Here's how you balance love and judging. You do so in partnership with God. You can only do it in partnership with God. And here's how the partnership works. You do the loving and leave the judging to him. That's how the partnership works. Why? Because he is near, he's near, not far. Had my good clothes on and I get a flat tire and I realized I have AAA and they'll come out and change a flat tire. So because I have my good clothes on and I don't like changing tires, I call AAA. But they take a while to get there, the tow truck. And I'm thinking, "Oh, I could just change this tire." But then I hear the tow truck coming and I'm like, "Nope, I'll let them do the job." It's the same thing, he is near, let him do that job. So practical tips. I got this one from Fritz who's in our introducing Jesus Brand spirituality class. It came on the first magical ministry tour that we had Friday night. And try this for a full day. Greet every person you see with a thought. Greet them with a thought in your mind. Here is another precious image of God-bearer. Or here is just another precious image of God. Or here is another precious member of the body of Christ. So everyone you see during that whole day, just greet them with a thought. Here is another precious image of God-bearer. That will just do wonders to drive this narrative of judgment out of your mind. Fritz is telling me he did this for like a couple of days in a row and it just became like second nature. Everyone he looked at, he said, "Here's a precious member." And he saw a reflection of someone in like a store window. And he said, "Here's another precious member "of the body of Christ." And then after he said that, he realized it was his own reflection in the mirror. I mean, isn't God saying something to us through that experience? So try that. I encourage you to try that as a practical tip and see if it doesn't flip. When you do that, you're orbiting around the tree of life, not the knowledge of good and evil. And then here's the second one. Meditate on first Corinthians four, one through five. I'll go ahead and put that up on the screen. It's the next slide. This first Corinthians four, one through five. Meditate, remember I encourage you to pick out someone through this series that you wanna love without judging. You know, you wanna make a special focus of loving this person without judging them. We'll read this text from Paul about judging the motives of other people. He's actually applying it to himself 'cause he's a leader and he's in the whole conversation about leaders that people are picking sides and all that. And he's realizing that the Corinthians are like judging him as a leader, whether he's faithful or not. And so he has this whole thing about judging motives. Read that and put, instead of Paul in there, put the person that you're trying to love without judging them in there, okay? And so that we're the person speaking directly to you. Just meditate on that. So much of our judging is judging the motives of other people and we're just not very good at it. So I wonder if Tanya could come up, where's Tanya? Tanya is just a great story of God's saving power in our life and thought I'd have her share it with you before we go on to communion. So make Tanya feel like really relaxed in the morning. (audience applauds) - Thank you. Well, what I wanna share with you this morning is just how God basically brought me home. On March 30th, 2006, I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer that in its earliest possible detection is well into stage three. And it's called inflammatory breast cancer. And up until just over a decade ago, it was almost certainly fatal. I videotaped my first chemotherapy session and my sister was there and she turned on the camera and she pointed it at me and she said, "So, how's your relationship with God?" And frankly, I didn't have one. I had rejected God nearly a decade earlier when my mom died and it had been a long time since I had spoken with him. Although in hindsight, I would realize that I actually had spoken with him earlier that week when I asked him what purpose this diagnosis could serve in my life. And it wasn't a conscious prayer, but he still answered it. And what he told me was, "Tell your story." And in fact, that's why I was videotaping that chemo session. I documented my entire recovery process and because of the calling, I somehow knew I was gonna survive it. I didn't know what story I was supposed to be telling but I knew to tell it, I had to survive it. So within the first month of recovery, I actually prayed consciously to God for the first time in nearly a decade. And my prayer was simply two words, thank you. I thank Tim for the blessings that he poured into my life through the support of my family and friends, through the amazing medical team that took the time to explain everything to me. They treated me like a person and not a chart and they never treated any question that I had as if it were too little or too stupid. I thanked him for all the complete strangers that when they saw my bald head would walk up to me on the street and tell me their story and just give me support and encouragement. And for the courage and strength that God gave me and for giving me a greater purpose through that diagnosis. And finally, for the healing that I already knew had begun. And that prayer was my first step back to renewing my faith and in that moment, Jesus became my center again. Now, my medical team included an oncologist, a radiation oncologist, a surgeon, a plastic surgeon, the chemo nurses, the radiation staff, and a host of others that just supported me through my various stages of recovery. My treatment involved eight initial sessions of chemotherapy for each, or four sessions each of two different types of drugs. That was followed by bilateral or double mastectomy. And after recovering from surgery, I underwent 35 rounds of radiation, five days a week, for seven weeks. And that was followed by two more rounds of chemo, was just enough to lose my hair again. But in January 2007, I was found to be free of any further evidence of cancer. And I had already begun. Thank you. (audience applauds) And even more importantly, I had begun my journey back into relationship with God. And that journey would lead me to vineyard almost exactly a year later. But it's interesting to note that the cancer was found in my left breast directly over my heart. And I now believe that the illness wasn't just over my heart, but it was in it. And that God used the illness over it to heal the illness in it. And he did heal me. Now, God didn't miraculously remove the cancer overnight. Like he sometimes does, and it's just a praise when he does. But for me, if he'd done that, he would have healed my body of cancer, but my heart would have still been closed and broken. Instead, he gave me people to heal my body. And he used that opportunity to also heal my spirit. So I stand here today as proof of his healing power. And in fact, just a few weeks ago, my radiation oncologist who I've been following up with once a year since my recovery released me from his care, telling me that I was gonna be fine. And so, which is very exciting. I still see my other oncologist twice a year, but that was just one more milestone on the path to recovery that God had blessed me with. And so, that just brings me back to the healing in my heart and my sister's original question, which is, how's my relationship with God? And my relationship today is alive and vibrant and present and to quote the song all as well with my soul.