The Family—Week Five
We’re kind of finishing up this series that we’ve been calling The
Family this morning, and I want to ask you guys a question. Who is your favorite villain of all
time?
(Darth Vader)
Darth Vader. That’s a good
one right there. Somebody
else—favorite villain of all time.
(Hans Gruber)
I don’t even want to know what that is.
[LAUGHING]
(It’s Die Hard!)
Oh, that’s right. Die Hard?
(Yeah)
Oh, okay. He was a good
villain, now that you mention it.
Captain Hammer? Arm and
Hammer?
(No!)
You guys just don’t even know.
I’m thinking like the Joker, you know? Common villains.
You guys have been telling me random people. Why do I even ask you questions? It’s so funny.
We all love villains. I
mean for the most part. Actually,
some of you have that dysfunction where you like the villain better than you
like the hero in the story. I
remember Levi, when he was younger, always wanted to be the bad guy, and I’m
like, “What is he going to grow up to be, a sociopath? I mean what’s the deal?” I think that’s just the pastor’s
kid. But he always loved the bad
guy and wanted to be the bad guy.
We all love villains, you know?
We especially love villains like… Matthew and I were having a
conversation this week while we were sitting in CVS waiting for our malaria
pills to be filled for our Haiti trip that Liz and I are going on, and I said,
“Matthew, who is your favorite villain of all time?” And he thought about it for a minute and he goes, “It’s got
to be the Joker.” I’m like, “Well,
you’ve got to tell me why is it the Joker?” He goes, “Because the Joker is like purely evil but feels no
guilt or remorse.” Like in Batman,
he just loves… Heath Ledger plays a fantastic villain and we love his
character; we love what he does.
But the truth is, even though we love villains, none of us wants to be
the villain, right? And the reason
why you don’t want to be the villain is because villains are known for bringing
death and destruction, and none of us wants to have a reputation for bringing
death and destruction, do we? I
mean we don’t want people talking about us going, “Oh yeah, they want to take
us all out,” you know? None of us
wants to have the reputation of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or some of the
fictitious villains that we hear around.
Even though we like them, we don’t want to be the villain.
But here is the deal. Today
we’re going to talk about something that really maybe you don’t even realize or
not, and that is that even though we don’t want to be the villain, we actually,
without even realizing it a lot of times, play the role of a villain in a
church family and can cause destruction and not even realize that we’re doing
it, because we do certain things that are destructive and we just don’t talk
about that stuff and we don’t think about that stuff, and so we’re guilty of
playing the villain in a church family and we don’t even realize we’re playing
the villain in a church family, which is why today we’re going to talk about…
Actually, I don’t ever say the title of my sermon, but I like the title. We’re going to talk about “How To Kill
The Family” today. And some of you
got really excited when I said that, because you’ve got that one family member
that’s been driving you crazy and you’re hoping you can go all Dexter on them
and kill them without anybody finding out about it. But I’m not talking about that. What we’re going to talk about today, actually, is little
things that we can do and things that we maybe we don’t even know we’re doing
that can kill our church family.
Now we all know that there are things that we can do to kill our
immediate family or to destroy our immediate family. I mean I’ve kind of made a list this week of things that
people do to hurt their families—their immediate families—like addictions or
affairs or selfishness or disrespect.
I mean those are destructive things for our immediate families. Some of you are carrying around scars
because you experienced things like that in your immediate family and it messed
you up for a while. Some of you
are still recovering from things like that that destroyed your immediate
family. But here’s the deal. There are things that you and I can do
individually that can have a destructive effect, not only a negative effect,
but a destructive and deadly effect on our church family. And if you’re here this morning and
you’re not a Christian, some of the things that we’re going to talk about
today, the reason you’re not a Christian is because you’ve seen Christians do
some of the things that we’re going to talk about today. And I understand that, because here’s
the deal. We’re not supposed to
act like that. We’re not supposed
to do some of these things that we’re going to talk about. And if we could fix this—if we could
stop doing these things that hurt our church family, that kind of rip our
church family apart, that can kill our church family—if we would quit that,
then we would be so attractive to people who aren’t Christians. Actually, I think they would want to
spend more and more time with us. So
we’re going to talk about that.
To set the stage, I want you to open up your Bibles to 1 Corinthians
1. If you don’t have a Bible,
we’re going to put just one verse up on the screen. You can pull it up on your Bible app on your phone, because
we’re going to look at something that the apostle Paul wrote to the church in
Corinth that was kind of a warning for them. I don’t know if it’s a warning—just kind of a correcting
statement to them—that I think is so relevant to us as kind of a warning, kind
of a preventative statement that he says.
And before I read that, let me tell you a little bit about the church in
Corinth because it’s important that you kind of know what’s going on in that
church.
Some of you are messy, but none of you are as messy as the people were
at the church in Corinth, because what’s interesting about the city of
Corinth—it was this melting pot of people from all over the world; it was a
major trading city; and a bunch of pagans and then all of a sudden these pagans
heard about Jesus and they became Jesus-followers. So what you had is a bunch of Jesus-followers who were
pagans before they were Jesus-followers, who made up the church in
Corinth. And since that was the
case, all these pagans came to the church with a bunch of weird beliefs—a bunch
of messed-up beliefs—and a bunch of very strange behaviors. For instance, in the church in Corinth
you had a guy who was sleeping with his mother-in-law and there was a group in
the church who were like, “That’s kind of cool.” I mean they were a little messed up, you know? You had another group in the church,
whenever they would gather together for worship, like they would treat the
communion table as an all-you-can-eat buffet. And there were others who would come and get drunk off the
communion wine, which is why we serve grape juice, because I’m afraid some of
you would get carried away, you know?
[LAUGHING]
But seriously, that’s what was happening in the church in Corinth. And then you had these other groups who
were fighting against one another and talking bad about one another. And you had one group saying, “Well, we
follow Paul” and another group saying, “We follow Apollos” and another group
saying, “I don’t know who we follow, but we don’t like any of them!” And there’s all this stuff going on in
this church. I mean it’s just a
messy, messy environment. And it
was to this messy church that Paul writes the letter of 1 Corinthians. It’s really a fantastic letter that you
should read, but I just want to read one verse out of chapter 1—it’s verse
10—because I think Paul writes something that we need to listen to. It’s kind of a warning to us of what
could happen if we don’t make sure we get rid of those things that can kill our
church family.
Look at what he says in verse 10.
He says, “I appeal to you, dear brothers and sisters, by
the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, to live in harmony with each other.” Now let me stop right there for a
minute, because we need to think—what gives Paul the authority to appeal to the
church in Corinth? Well, what gave
Paul the authority was that Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ, which means
that Jesus appeared to Paul face-to-face.
If you know the story, Jesus appeared to Paul while he was on the road
to Damascus, turned his world upside-down, and he goes crazy. But Jesus personally, face-to-face,
called Paul to be an apostle, which means that Paul had the right and had the
authority to actually command the Corinthian Christians to get along. Paul had the right and the authority given
to him by Jesus. I mean it’s one
thing for somebody else to say, “I’ve got authority,” but when Jesus gives you
authority, I mean that’s pretty impressive, right? Paul had been given authority by Jesus. So he could have commanded the
Corinthian Christians to get along.
He could have kind of powered up and puffed up and got all mean and bad
and said, “You know what? Get
along or I’m coming to take you out.”
He had that authority from Jesus to do that. But instead, what we see here is Paul does something
completely different. As he tells
these Corinthian Christians who couldn’t get along to get along, to live in
harmony with one another, he does that with love, because like we said, he begs
them—he pleads with them—to get along.
He begs and pleads with them to live in harmony as a church family.
And then he says this—the next sentence—he says, “Let there be no
divisions in the church.” Now we
read that and we’re like, “Let there be no divisions?” This is a church that’s full of
divisions. I mean all kinds of
different people from all kinds of different backgrounds that had all kinds of
weird, different beliefs filled the church in Corinth. And Paul says, “Let there be no
divisions in the church.” The
Greek word for “division” there is the word “schemata.” We get our English word “schism” from
that, and it means “to tear or to rend or to rip apart.” So basically, what Paul is pleading
with them to do is to stop ripping apart their church family—stop tearing apart
their church family—that their church family is too important for them to be
ripping it apart, because that is exactly what they were doing; they needed to
stop it.
But then look at what he says.
He says, “rather” or “instead”—instead of tearing one another apart,
instead of ripping one another apart—instead of that, “Rather, be of one mind,
united in thought and purpose.”
Paul is basically saying, “Instead of tearing one another apart, instead
of talking about one another behind each other’s back, instead of fighting over
who is going to get communion”—it’s ridiculous, we think, but that’s what they
were doing—“Instead of doing all these things that cause divisions, start
thinking like one another. Start
having the same purpose.” Now when
we think “thinking like one another,” we think “cult” and “drinking the
Kool-Aid,” don’t we? That’s what
we think, because we’ve seen so many weird things. You think those people who show up at your door dressed in
the white shirts and the ties, and they all have the same thinking process and
they don’t seem to ever think on their own. That’s not what it’s talking about here. It’s not talking about having no
thoughts of your own. It’s talking
about intentionally submitting your thoughts to a same kind of belief system
where Jesus is the head of the church—he goes on later to talk about that—where
Jesus is the head and you all think alike because you had the same purpose, the
same goal. That’s what he tells
them to do.
Well, I just think this is an incredible verse. Actually, I came across it a couple
weeks ago when I was doing my daily Bible reading and as soon as I read this
verse, I paused, and I started thinking, “Okay, Paul says let there be no
divisions in the church. What are
some things that could cause divisions in our church family here at Hub
City? What could cause divisions
among us?” And I started to make a
list and then I said, “You know what?
I’m going to ask our leadership team. What do they think are some things that could cause
divisions in our church? What do
they think are some things that could really kill our church family?” On Monday night, when we met, they kind
of came up with a list, and I wanted to share their list with you—some things
that I think if we’re not intentionally working against could kill our church
family. Look at what they
shared. I just used some of the
ones that they mentioned.
The first one is selfishness.
Now we know that, right? I
mean none of us like to be around selfish people. They drain you dry, right? I mean why?
Because they’re only thinking about themselves. And some of you, right now, you’re
thinking about yourself. You are
that person, you know? Selfishness
though—we know how damaging selfishness is to relationships. We do not want to be around people who
are selfish. It’s the same in our
church family. Selfishness, where
we think only of ourselves—where we think solely about ourselves—leads to all
kinds of problems. All kinds of
problems.
Another way that we can kill the family—a lack of love. A lack of love. And you know why that can kill our
church family? Because Jesus says
that the thing that should characterize us as His disciples is our love for one
another. Actually, Jesus, in His
letter to the church in Ephesus, in Revelation, said the thing that He had
against them is that they had lost their first love. They had lost the love that they had for one another and the
love that they had for Jesus. He
rebukes them for not loving one another.
And later on, in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul really says that if you
don’t have love for one another, then anything and everything else you do is
completely useless. Like we could
have had 10,000 or 20,000 people at Movies in the Park, but if we can’t love
each other, then that’s just a waste.
It’s just a waste of time and a waste of space. That’s how important love is. A lack of love—it can kill our church
family.
I’m going to give you another one.
Gossip. This actually, I
think, is the number one thing that destroys church families. Gossip. You know what gossip is, right? It’s talking about something or someone instead of talking
to someone about something. That’s
what it is. And here’s the
truth. We all do it, don’t
we? We all do it. I know that you’re going to go home and
you’re going to talk about me, you know?
That’s just how it happens.
It’s cool. But what happens
when you talk about someone or something instead of to someone about something
is we unintentionally—we don’t mean to do this a lot of times—we drive a wedge
in between the person we’re talking to and the person we’re talking about. It happens all the time. We’re influencing the person we’re
talking to about the person we’re talking about and we’re driving a wedge. It divides. It rips apart.
Gossip is dangerous, man.
It’s dangerous.
Here’s another one—another way to kill a family. Not prioritizing the family. Think about it. If you have an immediate family and you
have an absentee dad or an absentee mom, you can’t have a healthy family with
an absentee dad or an absentee mom.
It leads to dysfunction, right?
It’s the same in our church family. If you have a church family member who is absentee… And
here’s the tension is to think, “Well, I’m just one person and there are 100
people here. One out of 100 is not
that big of a deal.” Actually,
it’s a huge deal, because each one of you has a specific part to play in our
church family, and when you’re not playing your part, the whole family suffers. That’s why this not prioritizing the
family could be very, very dangerous.
Here’s another one. We did
a whole series on this a few months ago.
Not forgiving or not overlooking small things. As Christians, we really should be habitual forgivers,
right? I mean we have been
forgiven by God for all of our sins.
And since we have been forgiven, we should continually be dishing out
forgiveness to one another. But
instead, what we do a lot of times is we hold onto grudges. But bitterness and resentment and
unforgiveness—man, that can kill a church family. That can kill a church family. Some of you have experienced that in a church family. You know how dangerous that is.
Let me give you another one.
Disrespect. And really,
when you think of disrespect, the way I define disrespect—it’s how we talk to
one another or how we talk about one another. Disrespect, a lot of times, has to do with tone. If you are a parent and have a
teenager, you know exactly what I’m talking about, because they can be saying
all the right words but their tone is so disrespectful that it’s not… They’ve
disrespected you even though they’re saying the right thing. It’s how you say stuff. Have you ever thought about how you
come across to people? I’m always
fascinated by listening to people and listening to them talk to one
another. People can come across so
mean and they don’t even realize it a lot of times. They don’t even realize they’re being disrespectful. We’ve got to do some self-assessment
here. Are we doing that? Actually, did that picture come
through, Clay, that I had on the notes?
(Yep)
It did? Okay, put it up
there. It’s up there. Thank you. This was on Facebook.
I don’t like most of the stuff on Facebook, but I thought this was
cool. 10% of conflicts are due to
difference in opinion. 90% are due
to the wrong tone of voice. When I
saw that as I was working on this sermon, I thought that was a great
description of what it means to be disrespectful to one another. How we talk to one another is so, so
important.
Look at the next one. It’s
unconfessed sin. I don’t know if
you realize this or not, but did you know that your individual sins impact the
entire church family? Did you
realize that? Like you thought
they were secret. We think that a
lot of times. But our individual
sins actually have an impact outside of our individual lives. And your individual sins can impact the
entire church family. That doesn’t
mean that you have to be perfect and never sin to help out your church family. Not at all. What it means though is that we need to develop a habit as
followers of Jesus where we’re confessing our sin and repenting of our sin,
because the truth is all of us are sinful, right? We sin all the time.
I’ve had a little anger this week.
Not towards Jason—I don’t have any anger towards you—just the whole
situation. You know the stages of
grief? I feel like I’m working
through the stages of grief. One
of the stages of grief is anger and I promise you… Some guy cut me off… Actually,
I was driving to Movies in the Park last night. No lie. And
this punk teenager in a little sports car pulled up behind… I’m such a bad
person. I’m sorry. But he was riding my bumper like—I’m
not lying—that far from my bumper, and I… If I wasn’t going to Movies in the
Park, I would have slammed on my brakes.
I had the projector in the back so I knew it would mess up the projector
for Movies in the Park. But I was
just angry with him for riding so close to my bumper when there was no reason
for him to. And I’m usually not
like that, you know? So I had to
say, “God, I really need to confess that as a sin. It’s okay if that person gets in an accident in the next
five minutes, but God, I just confess my anger as a sin.” Just being real. But the thing is all of us sin,
right? I mean that’s just
stupid. I know. But we’ve got to develop this habit of
confession and repentance so that we don’t let unconfessed sin get in the way
of our family, because it can kill our church family.
And the last thing is unrealistic expectations. This is true in every area of life,
right? I mean when Liz and I had
premarital counseling, the only thing I remember from premarital counseling was
the advice that the guy said—the pastor, his name was Bob. Bob said, “You know what? Okay, lower your expectations. If I can give you one piece of advice,
just lower your expectations.”
That is fantastic advice because here is the deal. Most conflict that Liz and I have has
to do with unrealistic expectations.
It does. It just has to do
with unrealistic expectations. And
I think a lot of conflict in churches comes about because we have unrealistic
expectations. Like some people
think that they’re looking for a perfect church, and there’s no such thing as a
perfect church. So having
unrealistic expectations can kill a church family.
Each one of those things on that list can kill a church family. That’s why we need to guard against
those things. And when we do that
we can do what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:10. I’m going to read the verse again and look at what he says
one more time. “I appeal to you,
dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus
Christ, to live in harmony with each other. Let there be…” how many
divisions?
(None)
“…no divisions in the church.”
And then read this last sentence out loud to me. “Rather, be of one mind, united in
thought and purpose.” Actually,
let’s all read it out loud this time, okay? Here we go. “Rather,
be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.” Now we read that and we’re like, “Well, that’s really
good. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate that.” But the question is “How?” How do we do this? How can we be of one mind, united in
thought and purpose? Well,
thankfully Paul tells us in another one of his letters.
In the book of Ephesians 4:2 we read this. Look at what Paul says. And really, he’s telling us how we can be united. Instead of working to kill the family,
how can we work to bring about health in our church family? Look at what he says in verse 2: “Always be humble and gentle.” Now that’s a fine sentence, except for
the first word, right? “Always be
humble and gentle.” We want other
people to always be humble and gentle, but we don’t really want to be humble
and gentle all the time. But Paul
says, “Always be humble and gentle.”
But what does it mean to be humble? What does that mean?
A lot of times when we think of being humble, we think that we need to
think bad about ourselves or think less about ourselves like, “Woe is
me”—that’s being humble. That’s
just another form of pride really.
That’s not being humble.
Being humble is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself
less. And the reason you’re
thinking of yourself less is because you’re thinking of others, which is why in
another one of his letters Paul kind of defines for us what humility is. Look at Philippians 2:3-4. He says, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try
to impress others. Be humble”—and here it is—“thinking of others as better than
yourselves,” to which we write, “But they’re not better than me,” right? I mean how often do we think that other
people are better than us? We
don’t. We think we’re better than
other people, don’t we? It’s
something we have to intentionally do.
That’s why he says, “thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t
look out only for your own interests”—which is what we often do—“Don’t look out
only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” That’s what it means to be humble. So he says, “Always be humble.”
But then he says, “and gentle.”
What does it mean to be gentle?
Well, I think that being gentle, it’s like this. When we speak to other people in a way
that doesn’t make them feel worthless and like crap. Like you have all… When we speak to one another and we add
value to their life, that’s what it means to be gentle, even if we’re saying something
hard. Like you’ve had both
experiences before in your life where someone who was in authority over you
speaks to you—whether it’s a boss or a teacher or a parent—and they speak to
you in such a way and they correct you in such a way that makes you feel good
about yourself even though you just got corrected. They make you feel good about yourself. But you have others that speak to you
in such a way and you walk away feeling horrible about yourself. You feel worthless. That’s not being gentle. But being gentle is being able to speak
to others where you add value to them, saying hard things to them but in a
way—that goes along with the tone—that makes them feel good about
themselves. Actually, this is such
an important thing that in the book of Proverbs, Solomon, the wisest man that
ever lived, said this about it. In
chapter 15:1 he says, “A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make
tempers flare.” Now we know
that. We’ve experienced that. Some of you experienced it at work this
week with your boss when they were harsh to you. But some of you experienced it in a way where somebody said
something kind of hard to you but they said it in a gentle way and you weren’t
angry about it. That’s how Paul
says we need to act.
Well, he goes on: “Always
be humble and gentle.” And then he
says, “Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults
because of your love.” Now we want
other people to be patient with us, right? I mean honestly.
And we want other people to make allowances for our faults, don’t
we? I mean don’t you want someone
to make allowance for your faults?
We do. But we don’t want to
do that to other people so often.
But Paul says that we need to be the ones that are patient with other
people and we need to be the ones that make allowances for one another’s
faults, which is exactly… I’ll go back to Proverbs and read something else that
Solomon wrote. In Proverbs 19:11
he wrote, “Sensible people control their temper; they earn respect by
overlooking wrongs.” I love
that. They earn respect by
overlooking wrongs. This is the
same thing that Paul says, that we, as a church family, if we want to be
healthy, we need to cut each other some slack, right? And you know why we need to cut each other some slack? Because we need people to cut us slack
sometimes, don’t we? We all mess
up. We all do dumb things. We all say things we wish we… I mean if
I haven’t made you mad yet, just hang out at Hub City a little bit longer. I probably will, you know? I’ll probably do something to upset
you, say something dumb. Some of
you are mad because I said “crap” earlier, you know? I’m going to do something to upset you. I guarantee you. I promise. That’s why we need to make allowances for each other’s
faults—because we’re all faulty; we all make mistakes. And you know, when we do that, it keeps
us from holding onto grudges. It
keeps us from coming to that place where we don’t forgive others.
Look at verse 3. He says
this—finishes up his instructions—“Make every effort to keep yourselves united
in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.” What’s incredible about this verse to
me is that what Paul commands us to do as Christians—as followers of Jesus—is
to do our part individually to keep the church corporately united and at peace
with one another. We—each one of
us—has an individual part to play to keep our church as a family united and at
peace with one another. And that
word “peace” is a relational term—that we are relationally at peace with one another
as a church family. See, not only
do we as individuals sometimes do things that could kill our church family, but
we as individuals can intentionally do things that contribute to the health of
our church family. And that is
exactly what I want to happen with those of us who consider Hub City Church our
family.
I came across a quote. I
got distracted and didn’t write down where I got the quote, so I’m just telling
you I didn’t come up with this on my own.
I stole it from somebody else.
But I just love this. It
says this: “Believers must sense
the need for the health of the church and take personal responsibility for it’s
maintenance”—I love that—“take personal responsibility for its
maintenance. This is such a needed
truth in our day of individual rights and privileges and personal
preferences. Believers are
personally responsible for the corporate health and vitality of Christ’s
body.” Christ’s body is just the
church. “This means you. Only active submission to the good of
the whole can maintain peace.”
That is a fantastic quote.
If you want that… Actually, some of you, you need to email me and get
that quote and like print it out and put it on your dashboard to remind
yourself of that. I mean it’s so
good, because we all have a part to play in contributing to the health of the
family.
So here’s what I want you to do.
In light of all that we’ve talked about, in light of what Paul says,
where he says, “Don’t let there be any divisions among you. Don’t rip one another apart. Don’t tear one another apart. But live in harmony. Be united. Be humble and gentle.
Always be humble and gentle…” In light of all that Paul says, I want you
to do two things this week as homework, okay? This is it. And
you might want to write these down to remind you. The first thing I think you need to do in light of what
we’ve talked about is that I think you need to repent and ask God to forgive
you for the times you’ve done those things that could kill the church family,
like maybe go back to that list that we mentioned—those things like gossip and
disrespect and lack of love and unforgiveness and unrepentant sin and all that
kind of stuff—and spend some time confessing that sin to God… confessing your
part in the problem to God. I
really want you to do that. I want
you to be a people who habitually ask for forgiveness, because we all need
it. And I think we need to ask for
forgiveness for those times that we have all done things that could kill the
family. That’s one thing I want
you to do.
But then the second thing I want you to do this week is I want you to
commit to doing your part individually to make our church family as a whole
healthy. I want you to do
that. I want you to commit to
doing your part individually so that our church as a whole, as a family, can be
healthy. And some of you, you need
to think about whether you want to make that commitment, right? I understand that. But others of you, you’re ready to make
that commitment today. And so
here’s what I want those of you who you’re ready to make that commitment today,
here’s what I want you to do. I
want you to take your commitment card—your little connection card that’s in
your bulletin—and I want you to pull it out, and on the bottom of it where
there are some lines, I just want you to write a simple statement—“I commit to
do my part to make my church family healthy.” Here’s what I know about commitments. When we make commitments, actually God
grows us spiritually whenever we make commitments. He does. That’s
one of the main ways He grows us spiritually—when we commit to do things. And I want us to be a church family
that’s committed to the health of one another. And that happens when we decide to do what Paul says in
these verses.
So let me pray for us. God, thanks for today. Thanks for letting us talk about
this. I am so grateful for our
church family and I really do believe we are healthy and I thank you that we
don’t have the divisions like they had in Corinth, that you really are helping
us to get along. But we know that
we have an enemy who is out to kill and to steal and to destroy, and that Satan
wants nothing more than to destroy Hub City Church. But we don’t want to let him do that. So would you give us the wisdom and the
courage to do our part so that we can individually contribute to the health of
our entire church family? Whenever
we’ve done things that actually are damaging to our church family, would you
convict us of that sin and help us to confess that sin? And I thank you that you say that if we
confess our sin that you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I just want to tell you thank you for this church family. I really do love them and I want what’s
best for them and what’s best for us so that we, as a church family, can bring
as much glory and honor to you as possible. We love you.
It’s in Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment