Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Exodus Series, Part 14 | Lying | Randy Garcete
What if the foundational concept of truth is not as solid as we think it is? Join me as I unravel the nuances of truth in a world often described as "post-truth," drawing inspiration from the ninth commandment in Exodus 20:16. I share a memorable childhood experience with lying, highlighting the guilt that lingered and the crucial role honesty plays in our lives. In today's society, where objective facts sometimes take a backseat to subjective realities, we explore the challenge of aligning our lives with divine truth, reflecting on how it can lead to profound personal transformation.
We'll navigate the intricate relationship between truth and justice, contemplating the Ninth Commandment's implications beyond mere morality. By examining Kent Hughes' "rule of categories," we delve into how truth-telling can safeguard justice, from legal proceedings to everyday interactions. The Old Testament’s legal safeguards against wrongful convictions serve as a historical backdrop, emphasizing the seriousness of false testimony and the responsibility of truth-bearers, particularly in matters of life and death. Through these explorations, we aim to uncover how these ancient principles can still apply in our modern world.
Finally, let's consider the liberating power of living a life of radical truth, inspired by Jesus' teachings and the revolutionary simplicity of letting our "yes" be yes and our "no" be no. With insights from Sam Harris and George Orwell, we discuss how honesty can free us from the burdens of deceit, encouraging authentic living. As we reflect on Jesus' encounter with Pilate and the misuse of oaths, I invite listeners to examine their own motives and intentions. Together, we'll seek divine guidance to commit to radical truthfulness, exploring how this powerful commitment can transform not only our lives but also the world around us.
share that with you. My heart is that God can use that to actually work in our lives. I don't just want to feed information, but I want God to actually work in your lives and work in my life through the truth found in His Word. And so I'm just going to ask God to do that Take what I have to share and actually use it to work in our lives. This morning let's pray, father. I feel a deep sense of need for your Holy Spirit to work in our lives. Father, I don't just want to share information, but I want you to use your word to cut to the very heart of all of us here, that we could be moved, that we could be changed, that you could bring conviction and that you could move in this place in a way that nothing I do or say can, that nothing I do or say can. So I trust you that you will work and that you will have your way in this congregation. All this, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. I invite you all to open your Bibles to Exodus 20. We're going to be looking at one verse today, exodus, chapter 20, verse 16.
Speaker 1:I remember the first. I have a vivid memory of the first lie that I ever told and felt a real sense of guilt, for I was probably about 12. I had, just several weeks before this, given my life to Jesus and I was right around that time. I was feeling a real sense of like. My conscience was very sensitive at that time and it was a Sunday morning. We were on our way to church coming down the Pleasant Valley Road. We were on our way to church coming down the Pleasant Valley Road down into Sugar Creek, right above the IGA at that stop sign for those of you who know where that is and I remember Mom and Dad asked us Children, did you brush your teeth this morning? And I hadn't. And I remember my brother Lyndon hadn't either and he just admitted it and so while he got sort of a little bit of a tongue lashing, I just stayed quiet and I didn't say anything Because I didn't want to get punished for the act of disobedience. And I remember over the next week I felt such a tremendous sense of guilt and like it was crushing. It was for about a week that I went like this and I couldn't. I wasn't myself, I couldn't. I could barely look at mom and dad in the eyes and I was deeply ashamed of and guilty. I felt this sense of guilt for what was a lie and finally I couldn't bear it anymore and I talked to mom one day and just told her mom last Sunday I didn't brush my teeth and I just confessed that to her and I remember feeling such an amazing burden was lifted off of me.
Speaker 1:This morning I want to talk about truth and falsehood, specifically looking at the ninth commandment in Exodus we live our society has been actually termed a post-truth society, not simply because so many people today live lives that are dishonest and lives that are characterized by not telling the truth. Not simply that, but it's also because we live in a society that doesn't even believe in objective truth anymore. My truth can be different than your truth, and it's okay is what our society believes, and you see it all through the news cycle. Right now, we're watching the incoming candidate, trump selecting his cabinet members, and there's been different ones of them that have had accusations of different moral failures or sins or discrepancies, and everyone is wondering what's the truth? Is he guilty, is he not guilty? And we're waiting for evidence to see. Is this person guilty or not, or is he being falsely accused?
Speaker 1:This problem has been around for a long time and, like the rest of the Ten Commandments, this Ninth Commandment that we're going to look at today speaks really gets to a foundational problem in our world, that is, the problem of truth and falsehood. So I'm going to spend some time looking at this specific verse. We've been going through the Ten Commandments Actually, we've been going through Exodus, and right now I'm sort of nearing the end of the Ten Commandments, and I think part of my struggle with preaching on this is that I don't just want to give a moral lecture and stand here and make you feel guilty. What I want us to do is I want us to understand what is behind this command. What does it mean for us and how do we actually, how do we live this out in the way that Jesus would have us do? How do we reflect us do, how do we reflect this command in our world today? So what I want to do is look at two, maybe two different interpretations of this command, and so the first one being sort of in its strictest, like immediate sense, and then, secondly, truth more broadly in our lives today. I found something very interesting while I was studying this. Actually, it was very helpful, and it's this idea called the rule of categories, as we interpret these Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1:This is by Kent Hughes in his book on Exodus, and it's this idea that each of these commands are a category of sins and each of these commands are the stand for a whole category of sins, but it's the extreme outcome of that sin. He says it like this Each commandment stands for a whole category of sins. It governs not only the specific sin that is mentioned, but all the sins that lead up to it, all the supposedly lesser sins and all the supposedly lesser sins of the same kind. What the Ten Commandments forbid is the most extreme form of any particular sin. So we looked at murder several weeks ago. He says murder is the worst kind of hatred, adultery is the most destructive sexual sin, and so on. Similarly, this command forbids the deadliest lie, one that condemns an innocent man for a crime he did not commit. So when we look at this commandment in its strictest sense this is the first interpretation of this command that I want to look at is that the ninth commandment is in the strictest sense, in its immediate context, is about giving false testimony in a court of law.
Speaker 1:The word for witness in Hebrew is ud and it literally means to answer or to give a reply or to testify. The law that God gave Israel was the foundation or the bedrock for a society to flourish and for justice to be part of that, and without justice they could not build a society that God was asking them to build. Without justice, their nation wouldn't reflect their God to the world around them, and this without truth, justice couldn't be served. Truth was absolutely crucial for justice to have its way in their society. So in a court of law, in a court trial, justice largely depended on the reliability of the witness, the truthfulness of the witness.
Speaker 1:False testimony, testimony if there was a witness that was giving false testimony, it could be, could be devastating for the accused victim, and that's true even till this day. But a classic sort of example out of genesis that we of is Joseph being falsely accused by Potiphar's wife. It's just Joseph and her in the house, and she accused him of assaulting her, and we know that didn't happen. He was innocent, but it became his word against hers and she ultimately had the greater power and the greater influence and the law on her side and therefore Joseph suffered unjust punishment for something he didn't do. This still happens today. So I read an interesting article of a story of a man in 2016. Of a story of a man in 2016. There was a man who was released from prison after 18 years. This man had been accused by a 10-year-old girl of sexual assault and this girl, when she was 10 years old, had been coached by her mother to lie on the witness stand and it was only after she was 30 years old that she came forward and admitted the truth of what had happened. By now, this man he was 2016. He was 72 years old, had kidney failure, was in and out of coma. Totally innocent.
Speaker 1:False testimony could have devastating consequences today and in the ancient world. And if you think about, if you imagine sort of the potential for false testimony and wrongful convictions in the ancient world, this was a world the Israelites. They lived in a world that didn't have security camera footage as evidence. They didn't have smartphone cameras, they didn't have lie detector machines. The primary means for evidence in a court of law, if someone was convicted or tried, was the reliability of a witness testimony.
Speaker 1:Was the reliability of a witness testimony the weight of the truthfulness of a testimony and the beauty of, I think, of God's law in the Old Testament is that it builds in some protections for people to protect people from getting wrongfully convicted. And there's three ways that the Old Testament law has sort of built in protections to keep people from being wrongfully convicted. And the first one is that a person could not be convicted without at least two or three witnesses giving testimony against him. In our law courts today we have in America at least we have this due process which is you're assumed innocent until you're proven guilty. In the ancient world it wasn't like that, and so in order for someone to be convicted, god had told them in Deuteronomy 19, he said a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. So that was sort of like one protection to keep truth, to uphold truth in the court of law.
Speaker 1:Secondly, in the case of a death sentence, the primary accuser or witness, the people that were accusing someone in the law of court, they had to throw the first stone. Deuteronomy 17, 5-7,. He says Then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones, which is just like for myself. It's just hard to wrap my mind around that. But he says this On the evidence of two or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the people. So it's like it's one thing to accuse your neighbor of doing something wrong, but it's an entirely different thing to be standing there with him in front of you holding a rock in your hand and having to be the first one to throw the stone. That sort of raised the bar and, I think, built in a certain level of protection for people to keep them from being wrongfully convicted. And the third sort of protection that God gives is that a witness who gave false testimony would have to receive the punishment that was intended for the accused victim. That was intended for the accused victim.
Speaker 1:We read of these Old Testament laws and they don't always make sense to us, but they're brilliant. God is amazing when he gave his law to Moses. It was revolutionary in that time. In Deuteronomy 19, it says that the judges shall inquire diligently and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother, so you shall purge the evil from your midst. This was a strong deterrent to keep people from falsely accusing someone. If you're accusing someone of adultery, and the punishment for that is to be stoned to death, if you're falsely accusing that person and the judges find out that you're lying, you're going to be stoned in his place. And all of a sudden people are thinking twice about falsely accusing people.
Speaker 1:Proverbs 25, 18 says a man who bears false witness against his neighbor is like a war club or a sword or a sharp arrow. In chapter 19 it says a worthless witness mocks at justice and the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity. So in its strictest sort of interpretation, the ninth commandment is talking about justice and truth in a law of court. However, in a second, maybe in a more general sense, the ninth commandment is about telling truth and avoiding deception in every part of our lives, not simply in the law of court. In the court of law, the law of court. In the court of law, leviticus 19.11, says you shall not steal, you shall not deal falsely, you shall not lie to one another. So it's sort of repeating some of those commands and we can draw from a couple different scriptures where it specifically lays out that it is wrong, it is wrong and it is sin to lie, to deceive, to be deceitful.
Speaker 1:So what is lying? I'd love to hear from you guys what's the definition of lying. This is not a trick question, this is just like I'd love to hear your thoughts. It is something you believe or say that is a deviation from the truth that you know. Okay, it can be an exaggeration, it can be in the court of law, it can be gossip. If you know it to not be true, then it is a lie. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Anyone else? I mean, I'm not. I'm up for a correction, right that the inside is not the same as the outside. Oh, okay, yeah, the inside is not the same as the outside. Yeah, and it should be. Yeah, yeah, thank you, theodore. Anyone else? Distortion of reality Okay, I looked through a book called Lying.
Speaker 1:It was written by Sam Harris. He's not a Christian, but he had some good. I thought he had some interesting insights into this idea of lying, and he defines it this way. He says to lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication. It is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born, and lying dishonesty. It comes in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. We have little white lies. There's the big like fat whopper lies. There's Kent Hughes says. There's all kinds of little lies.
Speaker 1:We tell half-truths, flatteries and fibs. What we may say may be true as far as it goes, but we leave out the details that might put us at a disadvantage. Or we say something that is technically true yet nevertheless intended to deceive. We overstate our accomplishments, putting ourselves in the best possible light. At the same time, we exaggerate other people's failings, thinking and saying the worst about others. We mislead, misquote and misinterpret. We twist people's words, taking things out of context.
Speaker 1:The top 10 most common lies that British people tell, according to a study in 2022, it's them, it's not us. That's why we nevermind Number one. I forgot Number two. I'll do it tomorrow. I am listening. I'm busy then. Nice to see you. I haven't got any change. I've got no money. I got stuck in traffic I don't know what happened there and not disclosing the actual price for an item that they purchased. So I'm glad that's the British, not us Americans. But in response to this, there was a burger company, honest Burger, based in England, that set up a pop-up booth called Tasty Truths and said if you come and you confess a lie you've said you can get a free burger. It was sort of a marketing ploy, I guess.
Speaker 1:So why do we lie? Why do we tell lies? Why do humans tell lies? Often, and probably most often, it's for self-protection we want to protect ourselves. Sometimes it's to impress other people, or other times it's to protect other people, people we love or people we know. Sometimes it's to avoid conflict. We know that if we say the truth it's going to mean a butting of heads and different opinions that are going to have to come out. Sometimes it's to make other people happy or to harm other people or to draw attention to ourselves.
Speaker 1:Harris, in his book online, shares a story of his friend named Sita, who was traveling to visit a friend with her young son, and they stayed at a hotel overnight and she noticed that when she was getting ready to leave the hotel she realized she had forgotten to get a gift for her friend. And so she noticed that the like, the, the little bath products, um, that they were sort of, they were unusually nice, like the shampoo, the bottle, the soap. And so she just she got some of this stuff and put it into a bag and tied it like a nice little ribbon around it, and then she gave this gift to her friend and her friend said she was delighted, said, where did you get them? She asked. Surprised by the question and by a lurching sense of impropriety, sita sought to regain her footing with a lie oh, we just bought them at the hotel gift shop. The next words came from her innocent son no, mommy, you got them in the bathroom.
Speaker 1:And he concludes with this. He says, funny or not, this story reveals something distasteful about Sita, and it's this is that she will lie when it suits her needs. She will lie when it suits her needs. It's so true, I think, of you and I and of people more in general, why we lie. It's often because lying protects us from immediate consequences. But this lying has really damaging effects. Immediate consequences, but this lying has really damaging effects, and two of probably the greatest ones are just like. It damages relationships Think of this in the context of marriage or a family relationship and secondly, it erodes trust. Lying erodes trust and this was a problem that was around when Jesus was on the earth. And turn your Bibles to Matthew, chapter 5. Matthew, chapter 5. We look at verse 33 through 37.
Speaker 1:Jesus said this erosion of trust that comes from deception, from lying, was something that Jesus saw in his world, and in his world oaths were invoked to sort of reinforce people's language. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to just say yes or no. They felt the need to call on God's name or on Jerusalem or some other weighty, sacred thing to reinforce or back up their words. And it was meant as a way to reinforce trust. But inadvertently it was actually eroding trust and it sort of cheapened language.
Speaker 1:If you think of what we have today as kids, we would call it pinky promises and you would pinky promise to your friend because they wanted to make sure you're going to do what you said you're going to do, because a little part of them is wondering if you're actually going to follow through. Maybe it's because you didn't in the past and because you's just not a trustworthy person. So we heap promises and oaths and swearing on top of each other to sort of reinforce our words and Jesus' words and his teachings around. This was so simple, but it was so revolutionary. So simple, but it's so revolutionary. He says just let your yea be yea and your nay nay. I love the King James Version there. He's saying you guys are adding this extra burden of all this oath swearing. You're blaspheming God's name by doing that and people still don't trust you. Your words still don't mean much. In fact, the more you swear and swear oaths, the more you are eroding your words. You're emptying your words of weight and meaning. Instead, if you replace that with simply yes or no and doing that, your words have weight, they have meaning and people can trust you.
Speaker 1:Later in John 18, this is what I want to draw our attention to now is Jesus. He's standing before Pilate John 18, verse 37. He's standing in front of Pilate, someone who has incredible authority and has the ability and the power to take Jesus' life. And Jesus says this to him. He says you say that I'm a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him what is truth?
Speaker 1:Jesus would go on to be wrongfully convicted. He would go to suffer on the cross. He bled and he died. He took our sins, our lies, our deceitfulness, our dishonesty. He took all of that upon Himself when he hung on the cross. It was our lies, the lies of the world, that crushed Him, that weighed on Him and took his life. He took the punishment that you and I deserve for our dishonesty and our sinfulness, and he suffered in our place. And three days later we know that he rose again and vanquished death, vanquished the power and the, the, the effects of sin. He defeated satan, which is the, the father of lies, and today you and I can be free from from the, the effects and the, the bondage of falsehood. As a result of that, as believers, when we trust in Jesus to take away our sins and when we follow him with all of our hearts, jesus calls us into a new way of life, and that new way of life is marked by radical truth-telling.
Speaker 1:There's an idea with these Ten Commandments that each of these Ten Commandments have sort of a mirror side, like there's two sides to each of these commands. So take, for instance, don't commit adultery. It's like that's one side of the coin, but what's the inverse of that? It's strive to live with radical integrity in your sexual life and in your marital relationship. When you think of stealing we saw last time it's not enough to just not steal. The inverse of that is to become a radical giver with how Zacchaeus did and for this sort of the mirror rule for this command is don't just not lie, don't just avoid telling lies. Instead, become a truth teller. And there's sort of four, maybe, markers that I just want to briefly cover, four markers of a truth teller.
Speaker 1:As believers, we're called to be truth tellers, and the first marker is this Truth tellers, don't minimize, exaggerate or deflect from the truth. Our biggest temptations to lie aren't to come up with big fancy stories and tell outright, bold-faced lies. The temptation to lie for most of you and I come with just twisting the truth a little bit, with minimizing something in our lives that reflect negatively on us, often because it probably should reflect negatively on us. Often because it probably should reflect negatively on us Other times we exaggerate the truth because we want other people to like us, we want to impress other people, or we just deflect from the truth, yesterday or the day before I did this, I was working by myself and we had plans in the evening and it was a rainy day and I tried to go to the gym at least once or twice a week.
Speaker 1:And if I'm working by myself I'll do that if I have time built into my day, and this specific day it was Friday. We had plans in the evening that I had to be back for in time and in the morning I had gone to the gym and done a workout and I knew that I was just closing my window of time to get things done and I knew that I had to. I was just like closing my window of time to get things done and I ended up being late. And later that evening Christy just asked me. She said, randy, did you? We were just talking about the weather and she was like, so you ended up working all day? Like, did you work all day? I said yeah, and I knew right then I was like Randy, that's not the truth. I was afraid to tell her that I had. Actually I had spent about an hour at the gym not working, working out, but not working, and that's why we're late, and I was afraid that she would be angry at me for making us late, and rightfully so. So I just confessed that to her. I confessed that to her yesterday as lying and as a deflection of the truth, and that's often how we do it Not an outright lie, but we just deflect, minimize or exaggerate the truth.
Speaker 1:Secondly, truth-tellers don't stay silent in the face of falsehood. Truth-tellers don't stay silent in the face of falsehood. Truth-tellers don't stay silent in the face of falsehood. Throughout history, great acts of evil have been perpetuated and have continued, things like the Holocaust or human trafficking or exploitation of the poor. Because good people stay silent in the face of falsehood. Instead of speaking up and speaking truth, they stay silent. This could look as simple as hearing a conversation. Maybe you hear your friend or an acquaintance tell a story that you know isn't actually 100% true and inwardly you know they're not telling the whole truth and you stay silent. As believers, we need to be radical truth tellers, and that means not staying silent in the face of falsehood. It means speaking up when truth needs to be spoken, and it can come at a cost in a short-term, immediate sort of cost, but it builds trust.
Speaker 1:Thirdly, truth-tellers speak the truth. Even if it's uncomfortable. Truth-tellers speak the truth even if it's uncomfortable. And I think about this in the sort of the immediate context of our relationships, whether it's family or friends context of our relationships. Whether it's family or friends, there are people many of you have people in your maybe one or two people in your life that you know will give you their honest opinion, even if it's going to hurt you. They're going to give you, they're going to speak the truth as they see it, even if they know it's going to hurt you. And there's something really magnetic about that and it builds us a level and layer of trust that keeps you coming back to them, because you know that their praise is not flattery. It actually means something, because you know they their praise is not flattery. It actually means something because you know they're willing to speak the uncomfortable truth to you when they see it.
Speaker 1:I personally, I really struggle with this one because I tend to want to please people and want to want to have people like me, and so if we're having a discussion around something controversial or a debate or something that has has sort of a something that has sort of polarizing, I'll either not say what I actually truly believe or I'll try as much as possible to agree with them without really compromising, instead of just coming out and just saying what I think and speaking the truth as I see it, which will be uncomfortable in the moment, but I think it makes for a much more dynamic and interesting relationship because there is the butting of heads and ideas, but ultimately a true relationship, a true friend, will outlive that. So truth tellers speak the truth even if it's uncomfortable. Proverbs says Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. So if someone asks you for your opinion on something, even if you know it's a little bit offensive or could be taken offensively or negatively, just share your opinion truthfully and honestly. And those of you who know me really well hold me to that, because I do struggle with this one. Because I do struggle with this one.
Speaker 1:And lastly, truth-tellers reflect the ultimate truth, which is Jesus. None of these things that we're talking about living a life of radical integrity and honest, like radical truth-telling is really truly possible without Jesus. He said this. He said I am the way, I am the truth and I'm the life. No man comes to the Father except through me and as followers of Jesus, we are to reflect him, his life, into the world around us. And if our lives aren't known for honesty and integrity and truth-telling, if we compromise with little lies, if our words can't be trusted, why would the world trust our Jesus? If the world can't trust our word, why would they trust Jesus If we say we follow him and his example, if he's the truth, our life should, should, should, reflect that, should, exemplify that in that reality sort in the world.
Speaker 1:So I, most of you, are sitting here. Maybe you're pondering, like, maybe you're thinking of a little of a time that you maybe didn't speak the truth, or maybe you're thinking you know what, like I'm above this. This was a baby, this was a baby sin for me and I'm sort of I've overcome that and there may be people here who have. But I imagine for most of you, like myself, this command is actually often looks a little bit more black and white or a little bit more gray than maybe it should, and you might be finding yourself compromising in ways that are sort of eroding trust in your relationships and eroding trust in your own heart. So I have some questions that I want to ask you. I'm going to invite you to close your eyes.
Speaker 1:My honest goal here is not to make you feel a sense of guilt for something that you have not done, but my goal is for us to consider how does this command impact our lives? So I'd like to ask some questions and just ask yourself is this true in my life? All right, first question is this how would my relationships change if I vowed to never lie again? Do I make verbal commitments that I don't keep? Do I stay silent with the truth when someone else I know isn't being honest? Do other people trust me with their secrets? Is there something that I'm hiding from my spouse? Do I intentionally minimize, exaggerate or deflect to hide from others about my reality? And if you sense any type of conviction from the Holy Spirit, I would invite you to confront those and to address those areas of your life. And if there is confession to be made, go talk to the people that you've hurt with the ways that you've lied or maybe been dishonest, and you can go ahead and open your eyes.
Speaker 1:I'd like to close with this idea found in John 8. Jesus says if you are my disciples, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The truth will set you free. There's something truly radical that happens when you become a truth teller. It frees you from so so much bondage. Harris in his book, he says honesty is a gift we can give to others. It's also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth whatever the circumstances leaves us with little to prepare for. Knowing that we told the truth in the past leaves us with nothing to keep track of. We can simply be ourselves in every moment. It frees us from having to be a fake person and having to keep track of your lies.
Speaker 1:And last quote I'd like to leave you with is is this by George Orwell says in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. So I invite you all, as you go this week into the world, pay attention to your words and and maybe the intentions behind your words. What are the motives that are driving you and the intentions with how you communicate? Is it based on radical truth telling or is it based on falsehood? Let's bow our heads for prayer.
Speaker 1:Father, I come before before. In jesus name, lord I, we are, we are human and we are in so many ways so broken, and I thank you that you've died. You sent your son, jesus, to die die on the cross for our sins, to take on our brokenness, to bear that on the cross and ultimately to raise again and to live again and to set us free from the power of sin. But while we live here on this earth, we're broken and imperfect people and we want to follow you, and we want to follow you and we want to do what Jesus said. We want our words to have weight, but we're so imperfect and we need your help to show us how to live that out in a way that is faithful to your word. All this is prayed in Jesus' name, amen.