I'm going to begin reading my text from the 44th verse of chapter 10 in the book of Acts. And we were in this same text last week, but I want to read from verse 44 through the 18th verse of chapter 11, still tied to what happens in the house of Cornelius and what Peter has to say in chapter 11 is in response to criticism. At least that's how he gets started telling how the events were from his perspective. You'll see a different order in the events. In chapter 10, we started with the house of Cornelius and the revelation to him. But when Peter tells the story, he starts with his own vision on the roof, which I like because we get to follow him all the way through. as the events happen. He's going to repeat them. They're going to be a shorter version. They're going to have some variation. But He is defending what He has done. And I'll show you what they're mad about or what they're concerned about. Maybe we shouldn't say mad or angry. Maybe they're just concerned about it. You know as well as I do that when things change, when a change is made, especially a drastic change that might open the door to a different group of people into this Jewish church following Jesus Christ, people tend to back up and wonder about that. They're concerned about it. They might be opposed to it. They're going to complain about it. Or they're going to consult with the one who was there, and that's what happens here. I don't think Peter went back to Jerusalem just to tackle that criticism. But when he's there, he's not afraid to deal with it. And they're going to come to him. So let me read this to you, reading what we read last week, beginning at verse 44 and then picking up verse 1 of chapter 11 down through 18. While Peter was still saying these things, still preaching to them in the house of Cornelius, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, then they ask him to remain for some days. Now chapter 11, continuing. Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party, which we'll try to identify for you in a moment, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them. Peter began and explained it to them in order. Here he goes. I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending down from heaven by its four corners, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey, wild beasts some translations say, and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. And I said, By no means, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth. But the voice answered a second time from heaven, What God has made clean do not call common. This happened three times. and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household. As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? When they heard these things, they fell silent, notice, and they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. That is a big shift. The early church had its beginning in Jerusalem, and it basically, basically was a Jewish congregation. Born again, yes. In Christ, yes. Christians, yes. But mostly Jews. In fact, there were proselytes, I think, from other nations who had become Jews who also believed, so you had Jewish believers, and Gentiles become Jewish believers. who made up the early church and for about, it was like that for basically about ten years before the Gentiles will roll in, starting with Antioch, which is going to show up right after these events in the book of Acts. We get back to Brother Paul as the lead character as we continue our study. Now, we've talked about the earlier part of Peter's sermon last Sunday. And when Peter is preaching, he recognizes and says that he recognizes that God does not show partiality, meaning God does not choose and bless people based on race, religion, or any other number of things that you want to put there. God will redeem those who are not Jews, is the point. God will accept what I would call the unclean. and make them a part of his community. That's how Peter is saying it. I know, I've come to believe, I understand now with all this vivid interpretation of the sheet full of animals and birds and reptiles that I must look at this from a standpoint of seeing men and women and recognizing that what God accepts we cannot reject. And God is opening His door and His gospel reality in His kingdom to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. And Peter said in that sermon that certain ones of us have been left behind to bear witness to what we saw. We are sent here with a message. We beheld Him die. Then we saw God raise Him from the dead. Then we heard along the way that He would be the judge of the living and the dead. And we are witnesses to that life that went about doing good and all that were oppressed of the devil. We saw those works. We beheld them. We are witnesses to the reality of who He is, what He did, and what that significantly means for not just the Jews now, but also for the Gentiles. Now the prophets had witness that was a little bit different. Verse 43 says to him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him, in Christ, receives forgiveness of sins through His name. The prophets had predicted it. The Old Testament prophetic word had made it clear that there would be those who would come and believe in His name and receive what the Jews had received in believing. So he talks about all of that. I have a sense about me that we human beings can't be fully human as God intended us to be without that redemption, without the Holy Spirit. to shape our lives and to make us who He made us to be. Now, there are lots of religions. And there are lots of people who have many gods. Their religion has room for all kinds of gods. But when we look at the gospel or Christianity as we know it, the religion Christianity, the gospel reality of the truth that sets men and women free, Christ, the Redeemer, dying, being raised from the dead, coming again. We all understand that there is only one God, not even three, just one. God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Spirit, one God, one God. And that Father is revealed in the Son. And the Holy Spirit has been sent by the Father and the Son in order to do the work that He does. One single wholeness of a Godhead. Now I realize it stretches our minds to try to figure out the Trinity. But it's there nonetheless. We don't have to explain it. We probably have a hard time explaining it. I mean, it's hard to explain the Trinity by talking about water and eggs. I mean, you see an image, but you've still got all the pieces apart. And God never comes apart in pieces. God is God. I love the dance we did at Regent. I've done that before. I went to Regent College in Vancouver and studied there. The first year we were there, we went down to Warm Beach, Washington, this huge camp area and had all their buildings rented and had a retreat for every student and student, every family, every student at Regent if you could get there. Regent being in Vancouver, B.C. And so all the profs and their families, all the students and their families. That's the only one we got a chance to go to. We were working, couldn't go the next year, but we went to that first year. And it was amazing. And then we had this, what was it, Scottish dance we were going to do. Now, I'm not a dancer. I've said this a lot of times. My wife will explain how I dance if you give her a chance. But they had this meal and service and all kinds of good things going on, and somebody introduced the Scottish dance. And we were going around in circles, and I don't know, I just stayed alive. That's all I could do. I just tried to stay in the flow. And here comes one of the ladies that's a high-ranking leader inside the works of regent, and she looks like a wild woman coming around there dancing. Her face is just wild woman. I want to leave. I can't dance. I'm going to get run over, get killed, whatever else. But Eugene Peterson used to say, he said, listen, a good way to look at the Trinity is a dance, Scottish dance, where you're going in and out like that. It's one dance, it's one deal, and you look up and there's the Son. And you're quickly moving and there's the Holy Spirit. And you're quickly moving and there's the Father. It's how it is when you read Scripture. How it is when you start meditating on the reality of God at work. So we assign different works to different ones. God the plan, He had the plan. Jesus came to carry out the plan. The Holy Spirit is still carrying out the plan in us and with us. And that works. But when you have the Holy Spirit, who does He represent in you? God. When you have the Holy Spirit, you have a connection to the Father. You have that through the Son. It's never a disconnect in the individual pieces. Well, I love the Father, but I love the Son. I don't like the Father. He's mean. No, He's not. He's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And that's a little aside, but it was helpful for me. And the dance made me thankful I was in a dance with the Holy Spirit and Father and Son, rather than people who looked demonic coming around the corner, knowing that she wasn't. But it was just, it was painful. He comes to dwell in us by His Spirit and works His will through us, always by the Spirit. Do we give enough credence to God the Holy Spirit at work in us? Can we do anything without Him? He's the one who represents the Godhead in us. We behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us and make it possible to live as the redeemed, no matter what we face, no matter what we deal with. Hard places like that. So when Peter was preaching, the Holy Spirit came, or the dove landed, came down on all those people in that room, filled them with the Holy Spirit. And you know what it was like? It was like the day of Pentecost among the Jews. That's what Peter said. He said it was the same deal, same kind of tongues. In other words, real languages that were expressing glory to God, come by the Holy Spirit. Now, let me just say a word or two and then I'll leave it alone. We're not going to run down this trail. But I spent a lot of time growing up in a full gospel church, and I had quite a bit of fellowship, Grace and I did through the years, with a lot of charismatic folk. And you can really find some out there stuff. You know, you can. It just kind of gets crazy. But I'm wide open to the Holy Spirit working in me because I know the frailty of this country boy. And the gifts, if they're usable at all, have to be energized by God the Holy Spirit for every one of us. Coming to dwell in us and empower us and use us. These things happen, as I see it, this kind of tongue happened only twice as I read the book of Acts. That was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and then the acknowledgement of the same event for the Gentiles. Jews here, Gentiles here. The gospel is open to all men, Jew and Gentile alike. That's the point. And it was confirming that these people in Cornelius' house have been legitimately accepted by God. and had experienced faith and a new birth. In fact, when they believed that forgiveness was theirs, the Holy Spirit didn't say, let's make a confession. You notice that? He didn't stop and say, okay, let's see if you really do believe. Make a confession of faith. They didn't do that. They didn't have to do it at all. No confession of faith, no baptism in water, no laying on of hands. He just came. landed on them and filled them and they begin to praise God in languages like it happened on the day of Pentecost. Now, the supernatural reality of that is to show that God has done for the Gentiles in this house what He did for the Jews in Jerusalem. He accepted them because of His Son. His Spirit comes to bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and our lives are no longer the same. We are given life to live. What was there that made the difference? Let me read something to you from John. Don't turn here, just a couple of verses. I want to read it. John 7, on the last days of the Feast, this is the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. Jesus had gone to the Feast. They've been carrying this water from the pool back in front of the altar for a long time, every day. And on the last day of the Feast, here they come with this water in a bucket. It's just going to dribble down on the ground in front of the place of worship. That's what they do. It's a ritual of the Feast days. And Jesus is there. And on this particular day, the great day, the last day, the important day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Forget the dipper and the bucket carried by the man from the pool. You really are thirsty for life. You really are thirsty for something to satisfy your being. Come to Me and drink. He goes on to say this, "...whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." The river is loose. The dwelling place of God now is in the human temple. And the river is turned loose. To who? To the person who believes! So when Peter is preaching, and he's talking about what is accomplished by Jesus, how he's appointed by God to judge the living and the dead, how he is alive forevermore, the witness was that the prophets bore witness to him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. No doubt while he's preaching, they believed! And in that belief position, God just opens the window and says, don't need a confession, got it. Because I see it. These are unique events. And He pours His Spirit out upon the Gentiles who now have an affirmation of acceptance by God just like the Jews in Jerusalem did when the Holy Spirit came to fill them. How do you tell when the Holy Spirit comes? Don't even go there yet. Because that's our problem. We are not repeating Pentecost. That happened for the Gentiles as it happened for the Jews. Now the door is open. And the dividing wall has been torn down between the Jews and the Gentiles. It was up there for a long time. Jews were seeing Gentiles as dogs. There was no acceptance of them at all. It was a divided people. Gentiles and everybody out there in the Gentile realm separated from the Jews by a dividing wall. The blessed were the Jews, the cursed were the Gentiles. Still here? This is getting a little more heady than I wanted it to, but it's important to see this. For me, to go back and read about that wall coming down, that dividing wall coming down, and the fact that there is now God accepting in His community the Jew or the Gentile who believes to make of us one in Christ Jesus. That was Paul's sermon. That was the revelation that Paul had. Paul, this scholar among the Jews, preaches it again and again. He wrote the Ephesian letter. The wall is torn down. Company is there. To all who believe, the Holy Spirit is given. You remember when they laid hands, Ananias laid hands on Saul earlier as we were coming through this book? There's no mention of tongues or anything else. The promise to him was that someone's going to come, lay hands on you, you're going to get your sight back, and receive the Holy Spirit. Did he receive it, even though it doesn't... certainly he received it. We are not the measurers of how the Holy Spirit's working in a life. We are the recipients of Him. And He works in us and through us, giving us the ability to do what He's called us to do. And in this, Peter recognizes it quickly and said, I don't see any reason to keep the water away. Baptism was a big deal. It's still significant, isn't it? To be baptized. as a sign of your being accepted in Christ Jesus, is how the church was doing it. A new birth has taken place. You have died with Christ. You've been raised with Christ. Now you're going to live in this resurrection life until you lay your physical body down and the real death comes that we know about in the world. Then He's going to raise you up with a brand new body. So in between the baptisms, we live by the power of an endless life, the Holy Spirit working inside of us. And we're going to lay this body down someday anyway, no matter how full of the Holy Spirit we are? Because the body is not a part of that new people in a new place, a new covenant beyond this flesh. You're going to get a new body. But when this body dies, you don't die as a believer, absent from it ultimately, present with the Lord. not to remain disrobed or unembodied, but to receive a new body that fits in a world that's different, has similarities but different. I don't think it'll be blood like it is now. It's a spiritual thing, a little more so. Wonderful opportunity for life to come. And Peter is ready to baptize uncircumcised Gentiles as believers in Jesus Christ, a part of the people of God, and he does it. And six men with him who came with him who are believers in Christ but are Jews stand beside Peter and say, yeah, that's good. We saw it. We heard it. We believe it. Yet this marvelous seven voice, yes, to the reality of what they've seen. Wonderful life in Jesus. Wouldn't it be nice if Peter's willingness to recognize the Spirit of Christ like that, whatever their relation to the people, would continue in the church all the way to now? When we wouldn't be so selective as to who we want to worship with? When we could accept anybody, whoever they are, however they talk, whatever their color, unprejudiced, we have prejudices still. If we listen to each other long enough, we'll begin to notice the prejudices. But I think the problem with us most of the time is that we have never yet come to understand just what it means to be one. and accepted fully in the body of Christ. Just how real that is to God. Something to think about, isn't it? So they heard about the Word. How much time do I have? Not enough. So they heard about the Gentiles receiving the Word. And what happened in the house of Cornelius. It doesn't take long when things are changing and events like this happen. Powerful events where the Holy Spirit shows up. Passed back to Jerusalem and other places across Judea pretty quick. And of course when things happened in Samaria, Or with the Ethiopian eunuch those leaders in Jerusalem were checking those things out weren't they? Yeah, we studied that with Peter and John went to make sure what was happening in Samaria when Philip went there after the dispersion Prosecution so you you know, they're going to check out what happened in Cornelius's house So he Peter comes back to Jerusalem and the circumcision party. Who is that? It can be one of two things. Circumcision party can be a reference to all the Jews, because to be a Jew, you've been circumcised as a male, and you're there in Jerusalem, Judea, and that's centerpiece for the Jews, their land. And so maybe it was just everybody had questions about it. Or maybe it's that It's that intense, extreme, severely loyal to Judaism type Christian among the Jews. And there was that group. They believed in Jesus, but they believed that if you're going to serve Jesus fully, you had to be circumcised, you had to start keeping at least some of the law that they're pretty sure is important. The main part of the law was yours to keep. But when they come to him, and I noticed this when I began to read it again, when they came to fuss about what he had done, listen, you heard me read it a while ago, this is what they complained about. You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them. He didn't say you went to uncircumcised men and preached to them. They didn't have any complaint about him preaching to them. What they complained about is that they accepted them, that they ate with them. If you ate with them, if you went to where they were or you sat down at a meal with them, you accepted them, that's huge, big. So that was the criticism and what Peter has to do is a little apologetic for why he did what he did when he saw what was happening there. We'll look at this briefly and then we'll be done. I was in the city of Joppa, he said, verse 5, he's explaining now. I was praying in a trance, I saw a vision, and he explains again that sheep coming down out of heaven, four corners. He adds one group that wasn't there in the former telling, and that was the wild beasts or the beasts that were there who were predators. They're also in the sheep, at least he saw them there. And the other thing it says in this account, apart from the others, is that he looked intently, took some time to look inside the sheet. It wasn't just a quick glance. He took time to take a good look at what was there, to see what was going on. And so having begun with his own vision, he pretty much sticks to what we've heard before. He observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice. He saw and he heard. He saw and he heard. And I heard a voice saying, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. I said, By no means, Lord, nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth. But the voice answered a second time from heaven, What God has made clean do not call common. Now there are two lines. Rise, kill and eat. And what God has called, you know, don't call common what God has made clean. And he said it three times. Each of those lines came three times. Three different statements, same statements, but three times he did it with Peter, making his point. So that he would understand the necessity to accept what is in the sheet, if God has accepted it. And he makes it clear to him somehow, he knows, that he is not talking about animals. For when the people come to get him, their uncircumcised Gentiles come to escort him back to Cornelius's house. And in that, he understands that God has made a point. And the point is, I cannot but accept those whom God has accepted. That makes sense. It does. So he tells us this little bit of his story and gives us some clarity in that at least, applied to people. And by the way, Jesus made it pretty clear that it's not what goes in from the outside that defiles a man. It's what comes out of his heart. It's what He says and does that defiles. Mark 7. You can go read that sometime. It's pretty interesting. That was Jesus saying basically what Peter is going to discover to be true later about the clean and the unclean. It's not about race. It's not about religious preference. It's about God making clean. and saying, you now accept this here. It's about God's work, God's acceptance. Then there was the divine command where he sent him along with these fellows who came to get him, and he took off without any kind of complaint. The Holy Spirit had made him ready, and he's ready to go. When he gets to the house of Cornelius, he finds out just how prepared God has Cornelius when he's ready to preach. God has worked on both ends of this thing, getting Cornelius ready and getting Peter ready, and then brings them together. They each listened and reflected and heard, interpreted how significant what was being said to them was, and obeyed. Cornelius sent the men after Peter. and Peter being prepared to go with the men without any complaint or question follows them back to the house of Cornelius. Every one of these events, God dealing with Peter in the vision, preparing him to receive the three messengers, Cornelius being prepared by God to go get him and bring him there, and then in the preaching, the coming of the Holy Spirit, there are about four basic hammer blows that work on Peter's trusty position in some of these things, his prejudices. Each event takes a little more out of him. And while he's still speaking, the Holy Spirit came to affirm God's acceptance of these Gentiles. Now here are the two questions that are rhetorical that Peter Peter gave us, actually. The 10th chapter, one of them is still found in verse 47. Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? That's one question. Can anyone, can we not, but make it available for them now? The other question is in the 11th chapter, verse 17. where he said, if then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? First of all, if it's legitimate conversion and we just heard it, then we can't withhold baptism. Baptism is the step that connects them. They live as baptized parts of the body of Christ. And if God has okayed someone and said, this is right, to say no is to stand against God. That was what Peter was asking about. How can I stand in that position? I'd be against God who's doing all of this. So water baptism would not be forbidden to these Gentile converts because God would not be forbidden to do what He had done, and that's accept them. You understand that? If God accepts a people and redeems them, what must we do? We accept brothers and sisters in Christ. That's why in memberships of churches, and I spent most of my life in churches that didn't have, what shall I say, a real membership list. I mean, we had a membership list, we just didn't have real membership connections. But we really did. You understand? We knew our guys are people that were involved with churches like that, knew who gave, watched who came. We knew who the members were because they showed up. We had these little sayings back in the church I grew up in. You've been here three weeks? Welcome, you're a member. But if you left for three weeks, you were no longer a member. You have to remember that, too. So it was real easy to become a member and leave as a member. And it always worked because we knew each other. You know, you pastor 300 people on Sunday and you know them all, and yet we didn't have any kind of official membership. We did that several times. Official memberships can be good or official memberships can be not so good. But anyway, it's neither here nor there. Couldn't forbid, refuse, or prevent what God had done. F.F. Bruce, marvelous commentator, great theologian, said, Then criticism ceased, and worship began. When they accepted them as God had accepted them. That's what it says in verse 18, basically. Here it is. When they heard these things, they fell silent, and they glorified God, saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. He accepted us. I'm a Gentile. Most of us are in here, aren't we? At least we were until we were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God. Then we became part of the family of God that we one time were alien from. A people of the covenants of God that we one time had no part in. A redeemed people. When you read these accounts like this, you think of the unity of the church and how God built it. We made no distinctions. Color, race, a lot of other things if you want to name them there. Paul, I mean Peter, will not do it perfectly. He's got it straight from God. He's got it right. But later on, not too long into the future, he's going to visit Antioch as an elder from Jerusalem. And he's going to go down and sit and eat with the Gentiles' fellowship, because this is a Gentile city. They've got a Gentile church. And he's going to enjoy eating with them. He's having a great time until an entourage shows up from the Jerusalem church. And when the entourage shows up from Jerusalem church to see what's happening in Antioch, Peter withdraws from the Gentiles and he moves over to the head table with the Jews. Remember that? Oh, we're going to run right into it if we keep going to that. We're going to get to deal with it. And Paul, inside, just hit the ceiling. And he rebuked him for it. I mean, this is Paul. the convert from the road with the dust still on his face. He had all this time with the Lord, almost ten years back at Tarsus. That time in Arabia, three years, he'd been shown marvelous things. So he said, Peter, you can't do that, man. You're fouling this thing up. What are you doing down here? You're eating with Gentiles. Now you can't eat with them because those people are going to think badly of you. They still have this idea about being a good Christian is being a good Jew. He rebuked him. The good thing is, Peter heard the rebuke. Heard it. And for a man in his position, coming from where he came from and having all of that authority in the kingdom, to be able to hear it was a good thing. To understand there's a heart after God here. A heart in a man once rough. who now in love for the Lord is available for use, has done wonderful, wonderful things. Kingdom work. I like that. Sometimes racism is a hard problem. It still is. Then there's all kinds of other things around the world we can call isms of one kind or another. Nationalism, tribalism, Africa, those things. Difficult. Peter preached the gospel. Cornelius repented, believed, received the Spirit. Gentiles aboard. Let them be baptized, says Peter. And they were. And the first of the Gentiles are ready to live the Christian life. And the change in the world is going to be amazing when Antioch gets on the ground. And Barnabas, the lover, who's able to introduce to churches people that they can't accept, is just the right guy to be an Antioch. And when he knows he can't do what needs to be done in the teaching part of it, he goes and finds brother Paul and says, come on, things are breaking loose here and this is real stuff. The Gentiles are coming to Christ. Spirit is at work in a people. Come. Can you imagine that team? Encourager Barnabas, Scholar, spirit-filled, potent man of God, Paul, who will suffer as much as anybody suffered serving Jesus, but will serve him unto his death. Got the real deal on the road to Damascus. Got the real training in the Arabian desert and back around Tarsus, and died. as a believer in Christ Jesus who had made an impact on the world like not another human being I know of has. Thank God for him. And thank God for Peter. He got the job done in the transition as he was supposed to. I believe God wanted him to be there at the beginning of this entry of Gentiles into the kingdom of God as He wanted him to be there in Jerusalem. Got the same man doing the preaching both places. Same God doing the work. Let me just say, encourage you. Ask the Lord to show you what the Holy Spirit really could do in us, in you. If we just yielded ourselves to Him, made ourselves available wherever we work or live or be, Paying attention to God at work in us. Through us for His glory. Amen. If I don't say amen, I never quit. You know, there we go. Got it done. But you listen good. That helps, you know. Let's pray. Father, it is a joy to be here. This is a special people who we love. Grace and I have have learned to love this congregation more and more. And we love them and want to keep them, too. Keep them around, watch them grow and see them work for you. But we're thankful to be joined together. It's not a unity that we would create ourselves, but it's a oneness, a unity that only the Holy Spirit makes possible. Christ centers us together. Have your way with us this week, Lord. Let us keep our eyes open, our ears open to the Word of God and to what you're saying by your Spirit through the Word of God to us. And let us then speak when the opportunity comes or reach out to touch someone who needs help. Give us, Lord, the grace to be available. Give us the wisdom to do what you're calling us to do. Give us a hunger for the Word of God as we live day by day. Help us this week to minister to our people who need You most. Your name be exalted and praised. In Jesus' name, Amen.